Episode 6: One-Man Show to Portfolio CEO - Lessons not found in school with Jean-Francois Rousseau

In this candid and thought-provoking episode of Build to Last, we sit down with serial entrepreneur Jean-François Rousseau (JF) for a wide-ranging conversation about building enduring businesses, navigating acquisitions, and the lessons only failure can teach.

JF shares his remarkable journey—from being “forced” into entrepreneurship at 16 to building a portfolio of companies with over 100 employees. With a sharp eye for opportunity and a people-first approach to leadership, JF reveals the real challenges of scaling, exiting operations, and balancing multiple ventures. The conversation flows through hard-earned wisdom about letting go, building trust, and staying relentlessly focused on learning. If you’ve ever thought about buying a business, leading through change, or building a team that runs without you—this episode is a goldmine.

🔗 Links and Resources Mentioned

Connect with Jean Francois on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanfrancoisrousseau/

Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) – A global peer network for entrepreneurs - https://eonetwork.org

Wallace McCain Institute – An Atlantic Canadian Entrepreneurship peer group - www.wallacemccaininstitute.com

Henry Mintzberg – Canadian academic and author known for work on business strategy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Mintzberg

Warren Rustand – Renowned leadership speaker and mentor - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_S._Rustand

EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) – A business management framework - https://www.eosworldwide.com/what-is-eos

EMP Program (Entrepreneurial Masters Program) – A program for growth-minded business leaders - https://www.eoapac.com/upcoming-events/entrepreneurial-masters-program-emp

The Hummingbird Project – Feature film JF worked on as a technical advisor - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6866224/

Crucial Conversations – Book on effective communication in high-stakes situations - https://cruciallearning.com/books/

Jim Collins' Great by Choice – Business book on building enduring companies mentioning the concept of Return on Luck https://www.jimcollins.com/books/great-by-choice.html

Quotes Worth Sharing

“The worst thing I can do is believe I’m right. Always assume you’re wrong and try to prove otherwise.”

“If I do one thing in a day—and it’s the right thing—that’s enough.”

“You don’t need to be everywhere all the time. You just need to show up when it counts.”

“Integration is more important than the price in any acquisition. If you lose the team, you’ve lost everything.”

“Being vulnerable earns trust faster than being impressive ever will.”

Breakdown with Timestamps

• 10:00 – School vs. Real-World Learning -Degrees vs. the school of hard knocks
• 14:00 – From One to Many: Building Multiple Companies
• 24:00 – Letting Go to Scale Up Why hiring for leadership—not skills—made all the difference
• 31:00 – Buying vs. Building Businesses The importance of understanding a seller’s true motivation
• 40:00 – Due Diligence & Integration Lessons - What JF looks for (and avoids) in acquisitions
• 45:00 – Leadership, Learning & Legacy - Prioritizing family, personal growth, and volunteering
• 54:00 – Language, Culture, and Entrepreneurship in Quebec
• 1:03:00 – Peer Groups & Entrepreneurial Loneliness - Why peer groups changed JF’s life
• 1:24:00 – Partnership Wisdom - Lessons from good (and bad) business partners

Chapters

• 7:11 School vs. Real World Learning
• 12:00 From one to many companies, lessons learned
• 28:00 Buying and Building
• 45:00 Understanding life priorities
• 1:06:00 Peer Groups and Loneliness
• 1:23:00 business Partnerships that last

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Welcome to built to last the podcast where entrepreneurs share real stories about the triumphs and challenges of building enduring success, hosted by Colby Jardine and Levi Lawrence. All right, really excited to get started, so I'm going to quickly pass this off for a little second intro for Colby, but we're now. I don't even know what Ember episode we are, but the built to last podcast where we're having really interesting conversations, especially about those topics where there's no easy answers. And I think this conversation for us is going to be a lot of like scratching our own curiosity, which has always been the most fun. So I this is the very first moment I've met Jean Francois and Colby. You've met him a little bit longer, so maybe you give a little bit of an intro, but this you're foreshadowing Jean Francois is we are going to get you to introduce yourself to a certain degree, because nobody wants to read the profile. So we'll hear a little bit about how you met and how we got you on the podcast, but then we're going to pass it off and allow you to introduce the highlights as you'd like to Colby, take it away. Sure. Thanks. Well, great to see you again. JF and JF and I met through the EO bridge chapter, and I've found, and continue to found JFS career very mysterious and and also like he's got all these insightful things to say and passing and good conversations over suppers and stuff and and so I really there's been a few things that you've said to me over the past few times that we met that made me want to have a longer, deeper conversation. And what better way to do that than to just record it, put it to the whole world. Yeah, you're on the hot seat now, but I would like you to introduce yourself, because I, even when we've chatted, I I'm trying to keep all the things that you have on the go straight, straight in my head. And so now we're going to have it recorded, and I'll be able to play it back anytime I have questions, so I'll let you introduce yourself. You know where you're from? You know whatever you want to tell us? Yeah, I was born in Quebec City, raised and born there. I speak mostly French, so that's why my English is sometimes a little bit strange. But and I had the opportunity. When I was young, I was always the Shy Guy, the person who didn't talk that much, and at 16, I was forced to start my first company. So I didn't choose to start it. There's a good story if you want to hear it later, but I was forced to start a company and learn how to become an entrepreneur. So that's how I became and since that time, I've been building companies. I have, currently four companies that I'm running and have management teaming them and everything. So I'm learning. I am a forever learning, man. I always want to better myself. So that's how i Very good. Well, like as we do in peer groups like EO and Levi's and one called Wall Wallace McCain institute, we might as well dive right into it. So I would love to hear the story on how you were forced to start your first business. Please define force. You'll see it's really I was 16, and I was doing some volunteering in the in the school, like the principal wanted, like his teachers, to know what was internet. It was 1996 it was the beginning. So every Monday night I would go there and teach the teacher how to use internet. So we're teaching like Netscape 1.0 and where the teaching works. Word didn't exist yet, so things like that. So we were doing that, and it became very famous around in Quebec City. It was really successful. So the principal said, Oh, this works. So I will have another problem is that there was one tech people per two schools at that time. So imagine, like, fixing all the computers, and they never were able to do it. So he said, Okay, we'll teach you. Like to fix computer. Then you can help people fix computers, so it will be better. So the principal, like in he wasn't the guy at all. So he thought, like, you can, this can be taught in one evening. So he bring the technician from the school board, and he asked him to teach out to repair character in an evening. So I was really shy at that point. I didn't speak much and not a lot of friends, things like that. I was like, two years before this incident, somebody told me, Oh, Jeff, you're as present at the door frame. You're like a door frame. You are you're always there, but you never speak. So that night, I don't know what, like maybe something bite me, or maybe it's teenage hormones or things like that, but the tension, I didn't know what it was doing, but I knew what it was doing wasn't right, couldn't be made. So I really ridiculous him all evening. I made it look really goofy, everything, so much that people around me said, Oh, are you right, Jeff? Are you sick or something like that? I didn't know. So the day after detection came back to me say, okay, he wanted to get back to me, because I really ridiculous. So he took a printer, put it in front of the principal that asked him to do that there. There had been 510 trying to fix that printer. Nobody would be able to fix it. So I went there and like, you know, when all stars align, it was the same printer model that my parents had bought two years earlier. I'd already seen the bug before. So it takes me, took me five minutes to fix it. So I was like, the superhero and everything that nobody could fix that printer, but was just luck, like, but it said to me, oh, yeah, so you're really good, so I would want to iron. But you know is here, there's labor laws and everything. There's a syndicate. There's like, I don't know the word, like, I cannot really hire you. So he said, take 30 bucks from your parents, go to the justice place and start a company that's I will be able to pay you. So I started a company without knowing what, what it was, starting company just to get paid. So that is less aggressive than I was thinking when I heard the word force. So there was no whips, there was no chains, there's, you know, to take advantage of an opportunity. I was forced to, like I if you don't do that, I won't be able to be Yeah, so that's why I say it's force. It's not like there was no whip involved, nothing like that. But then I made all the mistakes, like I had no job experience and never had a job before, so I did every mistakes you can think of, even like taxes. I learned, like, four years after that, I had to pay taxes when they started running after me, things like that. So that's all I learned by just doing mistakes and learning and learning and learning jump front so I just learned that last year. So it's interesting, I've had this conversation with a lot of different business owners. There's some people who go to a school like have the degrees and the MBAs and all that stuff, and then there's people who kind of schooled of Hard Knocks or figured it out, or, you know, learned it. And the question has always been interesting to discuss is, what costs more, the degree or the hard lessons from mistakes made? And you've now, since done a lot of professional education. I see on your LinkedIn like, I'm impressed at all the continuous learning you've invested in. In hindsight, would you have changed anything? Would you have done a degree and then business? Or do you think it was best that you jumped into business first, even though that you didn't have a lot of choice, there's a lot of thing that you cannot learn in a school or in a learning environment, like I have one friend that I love. He asked minsberg, how do you teach how to be an entrepreneur? And Mintzberg famously said, You cannot, like, there has to be an entrepreneur that coach another entrepreneur. That's how you learn entrepreneurship. That's all like, no amount of teaching. Or third call theory can teach you how to make pay by the end of Friday. So that's really practical things that you need to learn, doing it with other people, mentor or coach, that else you do it. So I think you have to as part of it, because if not, you won't be a successful brother. You have to suffer some of it. But like in 2012 I decided I was was enough suffering, like suffering for everybody, because, like, when you make a mistake and you're really small, it's easy. You just pull an all nighter, then you fix it. But when I in 2012 we're like 30 some people. So when somebody made a mistakes, it was not the one all nighter, it was a week of all nighter to fix it. So I said, why the consequences are higher as well, exactly. So I said, Why not go learn from people what really did it? So that's, that's how I started learning and going to all those trainings and all those schools everywhere, yeah, because I, I have, you know, I worked for people who failed in business and really wanted to do my own business. And so I was like, oh, what? I need a school. And I went back and did a business degree when I was like, 2728 and thinking that prepared me, I opened a business leaving business school, and quickly realized that there's like, Business School is great. I enjoyed my time at university, but I learned, like, terminology and how things operate. I i understood some more framework, but it didn't help me start or understand the actual entrepreneurship side. But it's easy to mistake yourself. You know, I've said this in a couple conversations, but when I started my first business and I had my first location, signed my first commercial lease, and I'm operating, I have a business plan. I've convinced number of people to give me money. A number of people have looked at my business. Plan. I did all the book work, right? And then I found out as I started, that there's HST on a commercial lease, and that never come up, and nobody had caught it, and so I hadn't budgeted a fairly significant chunk of money that I needed to pay every month. And it sounded so stupid as like, well, there's no school for that. And, yeah, and that, you know, I agree with you, it is like, it's that peer group, or that person who's done it, or those programs that are designed for entrepreneurs that bring people together. It's not just skills transfer and knowledge transfer from an instructor. It's not academic. It's structured sharing. And that idea of, like, the the, you know, and I know this isn't always true, and MBAs are valuable, and, you know, maybe to do later in life, but you know, the the idea of hiring an MBA is is something that could be considered dangerous for your company, because it's almost like a false confidence going into a new environment, thinking that, like You know how this works, and the way I've heard it said is there's nothing, there's nobody more confident in their opinion than the newly minted MBA grad. And that's easy, that that's because we are at school. They're always the best one. Everybody tell you're good, you're the best everything. So they start to believe it, and that they they will always win. But the truth is that, like, having company is really hard work, and you always get, like, slash by surprise from something there's always something new that's happening, like the tariff right now. There's always something new that you have to adapt all the time, so you cannot be right. You have to assume that you're wrong. It's not a case study, and that there's a segment real life is not a case study. That's the one thing that I've started saying to everybody, is that the worst thing that I can think is to think that I'm right. So always believe that you're wrong and try to prove that you're right. So it changed the mindset still, and somebody else told me this, I can never attribute good advice, but it's you need to have that line between I need to have enough confidence to move forward, but I need to have enough self doubt to always be assuming I'm going to be wrong. And it's that mix between the two, because if you don't have enough of either, things might go wrong, it will likely go wrong. And I'll also add that there's a really nice thing about being a fresh entrepreneur with the the level of like, the ignorance is bliss, naivete is necessary, yeah? Because if you, if you did know how challenging this was going to be, you probably wouldn't have chosen to do it. And, you know, you have to be naive to start a campaign from scratch, yeah, yeah. Oh, so naive. So So JF, keep, keep the story going. I want to know more like so you got was this when you started at 16? Did that company keep growing right into 2012 it was, What? What? I still have this companion right now, and it's about 100 people right now. So it's grown and grown and grown slowly. It says custom software development company. So we've developed custom website, custom portal, web portals, or things like that, for clients, BBB clients, and it's still growing. We also started doing some hosting back in 1999 and we're still our hosting company. And we also government website, things like that. So it's always been growing slowly and and surely. That's how I do it. And when we it's something then we've changed that strategy. I've learned a lot in the after 2012 how to build right the right strategy, how to check your strategy, or to make sure that it will work, things like that. So it's still continuing, and now I have partners that are in this company, and we're building a portfolio company to manage all those and companies and bring other company inside, because like, when you start, you don't know all of this when you start a company. So like, the first million of your new it's really hard. You just learn. But after that, from one to five millions, it's another step. It's really hard to but nobody teach you what to do that like in school at MIT at Harvard, they tell you to come from to go from 10 millions to 100 millions. But that first part is really how to try. And I we think we have found a way to do it and to teach and coach the entrepreneur to bring them there. So that's what we're building right now. Do you have a business card? Jeff, yeah. So what was the I know, because eventually, like, this is a topic we're thinking of a lot about. I want to get into that, but I'm curious what the first we I always call it the business affair. The first thing that was distracting to the eye when you were focused on your first company, what was the first side thing you started or jumped into that was separate from your current or your current business at the time, the first destruction was service company. So. Like we build software per hours, like being paid by powers. So in all those service company, it's always like the lure of having a product. It's easier to have a product. So I tried nine times to start products, and the ninth time it worked. So it's even harder to start projects, but you don't know that when your service can be finding that out right now, Jeff, stop, stop yelling at me. That's that thing, like, it's always greener in the on the other side, and that's just fact of life, like I've learned, I tried to start those products, they didn't work because I didn't know enough about marketing. There was always some blocking, some things that blocked me. And mostly it wasn't that. It was just lack of focus. Like when you start a product, you must be so focused on it to make sure that every clients will be amazed, and things like that, that if you have a service company, there's always somebody complaining that you have to take care of and things like that. So it's really hard to mix both of both of them. So in 2020 17, we decided if we start a new product, it will be a separate company and will separate the employees and everything. And then it worked. So the only one completely distracted was you. I got out of the company. So, oh, you literally, like, name a new president, name a general manager, and I get, got myself out of the company and start a new thing from scratch with everything that I've learned. Did you take those steps and then do the final like idea, or did you have the idea you wanted to lead to? And then I knew I wanted to do something else, like between 1996 and 2017 in 2014 I said to my leadership team, I want to leave. And they knew about it. So we made a plan. I hired somebody to replace me. I named my partner, President. We did all of that slowly, and then I got out. But one year before I got out, then I met and I found an idea, and then we started it. And after that, I built that. So I was searching for the right idea for three years, and I found an old client from 2000 that was crazy about this new idea. We took a year to perfect it, make sure the strategy was good, the revenue stream would work and everything. We tested it with a sheet of paper. And then I said to him, like, you have to sell two of those. So you have to go to clients. They make you a check of $50,000 Canadian. And if the we I get two checks, then I will invest the time and money to build it. So that's how I did and it worked. Wow, yeah, and and tell me about those two checks. Like, how did that? How did that play out? Do you remember? Yes, it was really hard, because it was a IPTV and Wi Fi solution for hotels. So it was really like, we had to build hardware and things like that. And he had only a sheet of paper to sell it. So you have a sheet of paper with the arguments. And I said to him, if you can sell this, that that means there's a need for it. If you can sell it, and nobody will pay 50,000 upfront for it, then it's not a need. We won't do it because there's a lot under the hood of that. There's a lot of meaning under that statement. Like, it's because in technology, where we all like, fan of technology, want to build the next thing. Like, I'm a programmer, I'm an Android System Administrator. I really want to build things. That's what I like. But it's not because you can build it, that it's worth something on the market. So I didn't want to do that mistake, because I did it with a lot of projects before write that down, underline, exclamation mark, yeah, go to the tattoo parlor after this. Yeah. Oh, that's funny. Wow. I'd love to just take the opportunity now that we just got to this point of talking about, as you made the decision to leave the company, and that two year journey, first of all, understanding, like a lot of people here, like, that's not something that is easily done. Like right now we often talk about, like, that two or three year journey. What talk a little bit about like, did, I guess, the way I would like to frame this question is thinking back with the power of hindsight. Is there any big critical things you did right, or you did wrong, or you would do differently about that two year period I want to get out to you having the freedom. Yeah, one thing I did right is I had a partner who wanted to become president, so I named him, named it, and he was really good at it. So that went well. This the best thing that I did, was to our General Manager. But I didn't hire her on her skills. I only order on leadership. I. Is that, like even a few weeks ago, she asked me again, why did you choose me? And I said, it's easy when we talk. We did during the thing. And there was one thing in on our our curriculum that stand up. She was on the board with, it's a small, small grocery store, and that's a cooperative. So she was on the board. She went that because she didn't have a job for a year, and she was on the board, and the next year they named her prison. So just because of that, that's why I earned because I knew she was a leader, like people would follow for her, for a good reason, because she was able to bring people together and lead them somewhere. So iron the earth just for that. And this was the best thing I did when I got up. Wow, any big mistakes? Big mistakes was when I left. I left too fast. You know, you don't want to stay and be like the old uncle that always like, Go Go backs and like that. So when I left, my partner asked me to not have any contacts or anything with the old company anymore. And this was a mistake, because I didn't like pass in the power of leadership. Like, I didn't say, Yeah, he is the right one. He is the one that I'm I'm like, putting in charge, and I trust him. We didn't do this for three or six months, so this created a lot of problem after because people will sit, come to me, and I would say, No, you have to go to him. Yes, but why is it true that you trust him? We didn't do that, like appearance of transfer, and that was a big mistake. And the way you're talking, I assume you, you stayed in an ownership shareholder position, but left operations. Was that a was that a choice? We talked to a lot of people who like, I want out, I want sold. I want the liquidation moment to focus. I'm just wondering, did you was that a conscious choice you made, or just landed that way? It was a conscience choice, because, like, a service companion, it is not worth that much. Like, it's a small multiple of buyer or profits. So like, I wouldn't have been able to really take my retreat and do anything else after so I chose, like, purposefully, to just get myself out and still get the review every year for that from that company. It was worth a lot more than just selling, yeah, right. And so the, I'm just going to go back to the the kind of leaving too quickly thing. So would you say that was a communication to the staff issue, like just clear communications on that changeover just could have been done better. It's not communication, it's what they see as actions. Like the staff didn't see me like doing action that said he is the new president. They just saw me late. So I did it again in the last month, and that time I did it right? We did it slowly, and I'm staying on the on the leadership team to make sure that I approve everything that the new president is doing and everything, and it's working a lot better. So you cannot leave like in one week. You have to transfer the authority to the new person for maybe 234, months. But it cannot be like, just in a weekend. Fascinating. Wow. And did you have a big office? Like, is it was everybody in an office with this company? Yes, yes, they will still have this big office. Like, it's 12,000 square foot, it's still going strong. So okay, so they would see, everyone would see what was going on, right? Okay, gotcha, gotcha. So I liked how you talked about, like, I needed the space to focus, and that's what made a product company successful, and we see that and hear that. But then you also, earlier said that you now operate for and you said, I wrote it down. You said you're running for. So I would love to understand if you've just learned on how to split your focus, or what you've put in place to allow you to have How do you focus on different entities successfully these days. What have you put in place or thought about? The trick is to delegate, like three out of the four. I only see the financial statement in each month. I don't get involved inside the company. So I will do, I will do the strategy meetings like every quarter, but no more than that. I don't want to influence them. I don't want them to do it by their own. So I put leader in place in every of those company, and they lead and they make them grow. I cannot be like controlling everything. If I control everything, it just holds because I don't have enough time. So I'm really investing my time in one company. So. I'm running really inside the company, like doing tech support and everything that the new startup, but everything else, every other company, they're run by other leaders, and I just meet with them every three months. Okay, that must take a lot of discipline. Yeah, I would be distracted not only by the fires that might come up, but like, I genuinely like knowing and fixing and being involved. Yeah, you must learn to accept that other people will make mistakes that you wouldn't have done like they still made mistakes last year that cost a lot of money. I wouldn't have made mistakes because I knew. But then if I did it, if I run that company, I wouldn't have success in other company. So you cannot do everything. You have to choose. You have to let go, let it go divine. You have to trust that people are working for the greater good of the organization, and you have to put people that really are working on the greater organization. That's called leadership in my definition. So that's why I all my leadership team. I only iron on leadership all the skills they can teach. I can coach things like that, but I need strong leader for it to work. So that's fine, because, like in 2021 it was working so well this model that we did an acquisition of another company at about $1.5 million company. And the first time I learned it is they came to me and they said, sing, sing those paper. We're doing an acquisition. I didn't have to listen or do anything, any meeting. And I met the owner after the fact, when we presented it to the company, and I said, I'm your partner. You didn't know it. I've so much vote so, so with the first company, I mean 100 staff. I mean that's obviously you're doing great revenue with, with the tech firm and the professional services firm, being able to have, and we've talked about this over supper a couple of times now, is like finding the cash to be able to make those acquisitions or go work on those other things. You kind of half jokingly said, Oh, you don't need cash to do certain things. And I'm like, well, whatever do you mean. So, so how did this really, how did you make those steps and maybe run us through a couple scenarios, even like, if we wouldn't mind starting just like, when did you think acquisition versus build? Because it sounds like your second business was another build. So the build versus buy? When was your first buy versus build? A first buy was in 2003 we built a website that's called snatch.com that is like an entertainment movie, a website that's really popular in Quebec and in all the French part of Canada. And we bought it because it was an opportunity. That's how I learned how to buy COVID. Was our first try. Went really well. It's still one of the company where I'm running right now, so that that's good, but I've learned that, like growth can come organically or by acquisition. And the thing is that it depends on where the market is and what's your strategy. So during the past, we did, I think I have done nine acquisition in the last 15 years. So it's always the thing that I find that acquisition is like selling you're selling another entrepreneur to sell it, sell this company, you're it's a sales process. So once I understood that, I had a great mentor that told me how to buy a company. And that's was always saying is like, it's like a sale job. You sell yourself to this auto earner to sell it has to sell your company. And if you take this it's not always money that they want. It can be like legacy. It can be they just want to check from the taxes because they have losses. It can be a lot of things that they want freedom. It can be freedom because, like in life, if life happens, there's something like somebody, his wife was at the cancer, so wanted to spend at least the next two years with her. So he sold us or his company, things like that. The first one, he was in the sect, and he had to give money to his guru, so he sold his company. So it's not always you need to find what's the case, what they really want. If you can't find what they want, then even if you have the most money in the world, you won't sell. Well, right back to, as you said, sales principles that you need to understand the motivation to sell Exactly. And once you understand that, then you don't need that much money, because if the guy just want legacy, it will sell you for almost nothing, and you will just pay, pay him for like, 10 years, and he will be happy. So if you understand. Was the motivation of the people selling was their market? Are you alone in trying to buy it? Or is there 10 people trying to buy it? Then you can know if you need money or not to buy it. Have you ever built or started from scratch again? Or are you primarily acquisition now? Yeah, in 2017 I started from scratch, the startup in the hotel industry. I was talking to you about, I started from scratch everything, and I didn't remember at the time how art was. It's still art, even with experience new level of naivete. Coming back exactly, I was naive again, yeah. So I So, I know you already, kind of already asked this COVID, but actually, like, how, how do you now approach acquisition? Or how would you suggest somebody else? Like, we're, I think it's common knowledge we are interested in that too. Like, we're a company that is ready to help a company that's challenged by succession. Or they don't have a lot of processes, but they're, you know, they want to get out. We could take a business and do some of those revamp and process improvements and stabilize it a bit, and so we're looking and we're excited about the process. What would you advice would you give us specifically around how we would approach that? The way you have to start a CRM for your acquisition, that's as easy as that, and you have to follow leads. So I have the CRM, we put leads, and we put everybody that we might be interested, and I just contact them and say, Do you want to go to lunch? And I like and the question will die 10 times, because before you make it, so the deal will all fall apart. And many times before you do it. So you have to, like, take time with the owner, connect with them, build trust, and over the years, then you meet them, like, if you're six months or once a year, then you build, you build a building that. So that's how I do it. And then one day life happens them, like they're in a bad position or something in the friendly app and or they want to change, they want to take their pension, they want to do something else. Then they call you back, and you make a deal, and you make a deal that you want, and after that, all of those targets that we have, we choose like, Is it like the same customer that we have right now, or is it something else so we can sell something else to the same customer, or is it something that we're doing that we can send to other people? So it's like the bowling alley, if you know the strategy. So we always try to do that to make sure we minimize what we'll like spend on an acquisition and get back the modif, the fastest possible. I'd love to hear more about the I don't think I've heard a bowling alley analogy there. Yeah, it's you can have, like, the same technology that you sell to other customers, yeah, or you already have customers you want to sell something else. Okay? So every time you find an acquisition that fits that, it's easy for you, because you have all those synergies, like the same sales people can sell the same thing, or you have to other clients. Are you already the clients that your current sales people can go and sell them? So this cost a lot less than the acquisition that's in something completely different, that you have to start over and learn all the market works and everything. So it's a lot easier and costs less. It's less risky to do it that way. So for example, like, we're doing all this business improvement stuff and installing technology, but like, I'm an adjacent step that might make sense for us, for example, might be like a smart bookkeeping firm or something along those lines. Exactly right, because it's the same thing that you can it's new thing you can sell to your existing customer. So that's a nice bowling out with strategy. Interesting. Yeah, we're actually between the two, because we're actually all excited about the idea of something new, product based different, having used to him, not professional services, we gotta decide. But it's been, really, it's an interesting I guess we're when did you start? I Are you just starting now? Or have you already thought about that idea of the portfolio company that like shared management? It's been, we started thinking about it in 2017 when I left, because I we had a discussion with my partner, and he said, Okay, where do we want to go in the future? And I said, I would really like to do a conglomerated companies. That would be a dream for me. But I said, I don't know exactly how to do it, but then we work slowly. It's not something that you do like in six months, and it's done, and you're going so we tried, so we bought a campaign in 2017 we tried some things like that. We bought another one in 2021 that we decided to stay separate, to keep them separate so they can keep their own culture and just put the finance together, the HR together, and things that. Are really easy to do, and it worked well. So now, so that was in 2021 and now a month ago, we formalize it, and it's it has a new name and everything, and it's going strong, and we already have two deals in the making. So even your like, first, 234, purchases. Like, would you? Did you consolidate? Like, accounting, hiring, HR, policy, did you consolidate some of those key executives functions? It was worse than that. Like the first company you buy, you say, Oh, I will just like, fuse them with the existing company. It will be easier. Wrong answer, you lose like 50% of the employees. You lose out. You lose all that knowledge and everything, and then you get stuck with nowhere, new, nothing. So you really have to have a good strategy. If you look at statistics in Canada, like every time a company buy another, they come the company that get bought lose 50% of their employee for the next 12 months. That's the mean, that of it, some of them, I know a lot of people, will lose 100% of the employees in the next 12 months. So you really need to have a strategy and how to integrate it. It's more important to have a good integration strategy than the price that you're paying. The prices is really not that relevant. In the end, if you pay, if you don't pay a lot, if there's nothing else left, 12 months after that, it's not worth nothing. It's zero. So you have integration. Is the biggest thing that you need to do in acquisition, and it's where we focus most of our time. Now we work with people struggling with integration and change. So, like, I think hopefully we would do that. Well, if we don't do that, well, we're not telling anybody, but that's where I'd like to think we do best. Yeah, that's interesting. It's just like, it's not necessarily the price of the company. It's, it's, you know, we've been talking about things like that, but I think you just put it in a nice little box of like, we need to really be confident in our strategy and how we're going to deal with this a lot earlier than we might have approached it. Yeah, normally my process, we start the integration during due diligence, okay, so before due diligence, it's like, Okay, do we have like, a strategy that will it work? Can we, like, sell this to the owner once assigned the loi, then start the due diligence. That's where we start integration. So we start having a plan. We always have a 100 day plan. We do the all those things during the due diligence. So when we announce it to the employees, everything is in place, like it start at that moment. So when we announce it to the employees, we meet with all of them, and truly, we tell them the plan. We tell everything, so reassure them, so we get good integration. And then you have to have wins that they see action, not what you're saying, but they need, they need to see action that you do for real, that will impact them and that will positively, yeah, they need to feel the difference, not be told what the difference is going to be exactly right? I think that's across everything. Actually, what is a somebody gave me a good advice is like a show, don't tell, yeah, yeah. The I know this is a public I'm reminding that this is the public conversation, but I'd love as transparent a truth as possible on your thoughts around, like, the business marketplaces, online websites and brokers, because, like, we're I like the idea of building relationships and sitting down, but a lot of those business opportunities that I've already identified, they want to sell, create this gateway where you don't really have an appropriate way to go direct, and we're just trying to make some our own judgments around that. Another thing is that it's like having a filter with the owner. When you have those brokers, I add some success with them, but it's really hard. Like, I like brokers that just present you to the owner and then they just let go. That works for me. Like, it's like finding fees, things like that. I'm fine with that. But like, when the eye behind between you and the owner, you don't get everything. You don't get all the information you cannot really tell if what's the real truth? You cannot, like, sometimes you cannot even visit the company to see if what they're doing is sane. And maybe some, sometimes just a front. And I the thing with broker, I got presented a lot of offer, things like that. And when I do the diligent due diligence, I find frauds, things like that inside the company, and then the deals fall apart. So I haven't had great success with them. As I told you, those who just present you, introduce you. That's fine with me. But more than that, it doesn't usually work out for me. Is there any universal like largest risks you look for now that you. Been through the process like, I know, the due diligence and looking for fraud. But is there any like, big things you're now the first things you look for, biggest risks, biggest risk is the company, company that are not well run like, you know, we use Eos, and we use a lot of things inside our company to make sure that we have, like, financial every month and things like that. And just two months ago, I met with one company, we opened the book and everything, and I had to come back and tell them, sorry, but you're bankrupted technically, so I cannot buy you. And they didn't know. So, like, when the company is not well run, it's easy to hide things and not see what's happening. And I, I had to announce in the past to three company that they were bankrupt, and they didn't believe me. But a year after, they were buying bankrupt, so oh my gosh, yeah, I've heard of that. Yeah. Have you ever bought a distressed business? Like, because strategically, like, that's a about three of them. One of them is the best deal I ever made, because when you know what to look for like in a service company, what you want its contract? Sign contracts. Yeah. So I bought the company in 2012 for about less than 2000$200,000 but they add 2.3 millions dollar in contract that I just did and I I paid the company in six months, the company in six months. But since they didn't have good financial they didn't do that. So wow, it pays to know your numbers. Like, just when we do the due diligence, we will redo their numbers. So we will take everything, all their accounts and everything, and do our own financials internally to find all those things. And there's a lot in financial things that, like small company, they don't know how it works, like if you work in advance, some some contract, you should have them in their financials, but they don't do that. So sometimes, like a company, you say, Oh, we did that profit last year, but that's not true. You did a lot more. You just don't know. So that's the kind of tricks that you can just read and take care about, about few in distress company that were in distress, and those were good deals too. We just, like, took the clients, make the keynote clients happy, and cost us peanuts. And so I didn't even want that cost me nothing, because I just said to him, I will pay you 5% of what I sell to your old clients for two years. So that's like, you're not even marketing, marketing fees. It didn't cost me anything. Wow, yeah, I don't see your name taking. Luckily, we're recording this. That's the same like you need to find why the person is wanting to sell. He was working in other another company, and wanted to go all in this new startup his old company didn't like anymore. So once you know that, then you can find a deal that's working for everybody. And he's, I told him that I made a lot of money on his and he was, is really happy that I made money on his own. So that's fine, yeah, incredible. I mean, I mean, I there's an economic driver, for sure, but the idea that we can buy businesses that otherwise will close fires me up. Like the idea that some businesses, like we will be part of the reason why they exist 15 years from now, feels super cool. I mean, I don't want to lose money, and there's an economic driver, but this just allowing it to survive the next generation is super exciting to me. Aside from just the economics, and there's a lot of owner that are just searching that they know they won't sell that for iron numbers thing like that. They just want a legacy. So if you can be the legacy, as long as you're really good at execution, that you're really strong process, you're really good, if there's a dancer, you can adapt really fast so it won't die, things like that, then you're good. You can have a large company that wants to be sold that's exciting. This episode of built to last is brought to you by Iron House Pro, your behind the scenes partner in building organizations designed to thrive. We specialize in solving the big challenges, the small annoyances and everything in between. So while you're out there dreaming big, we're here making sure your systems processes and people are ready for tomorrow. Iron House Pro, driven to create lasting organizations. Learn more at Iron House pro.com I have a segue that moves us outside of acquisition. So, Colby, you have any other further follow up before I'm just, I'm just so happy that we're having this conversation. This is great. It's very timely for us. This is we're selfish in these conversations like this is all about us expressing our own curiosity. But I have one is like, I, you know, I did a little deep dive. Been to you on LinkedIn, and we've had this conversation, and I understand. I'm jealous, is probably a strong word, but I'm I'm excited by the level of continuous education you've invested in yourself. It's something that I want and like right now. It's one part of my world I don't have, like, I don't currently have something like that, scratching that itch and but you also run four companies, even though one you're deep in the rest and your ownership of others. And then I see the level of involvement you have in scouts. And for me, I always talk about like the you have all the legs of the stool, like I can see your professional I can see the education. I can see the personal investment. And then I see this outlier volunteering and community activity. And I, I would just love to know if you have any personal rules, or how you divide your time and focus outside of just business, because I want to do a lot of these things. And, you know, I'm deep into the business side right now and and it looks like for a long time, you've not, I'm not. I don't like the word balance, but you divided your focus in a way that I'd love to know. If you have any transferable learnings around. Yeah. Thing is that the scales, all my copy wouldn't exist if it were for the scouts. It's like this, you know, there's like, business relations and all this networking that you do in business and all volunteering, there's also, it's like a parallel network that gives you access to many things that you would have access so it's like, it's all connected. So like, I'm on a board meeting, on board with Colby right now, and I'm trying to set it, set it up, but that's what I learned from the scouts. And in scouts, I learned how to do projects that I'm playing in company. So it's all related. How do I divide that is that I always put family first. So if there's something with my family, it will go first every time. Then if then second is business. So if I have something to do with business, it will take priority for everything else. Then after that, it's me time, but me time is mostly volunteering, because it gives me a lot of energy. I learned a lot in that too. So this is the third priority. So whenever I get invitation or I get something, I always use those three priorities. I said, Okay, it's something family. Then I will drop everything in the business. I've rolled up everything volunteering. I will say I just can't be there. And the truth is that you always think that you're necessary, and you need to be there for your business, you need to be there for volunteering, or you need to be there for your friends, things like that. But you don't need to be there all the time. You just need to be there when it comes. And I've learned to when I get out of the business because of family matters, the business starts to run by itself. When I get out of volunteering, then people find ways, and they they go for it. And same things with my friends. When I say, I cannot do this game, this dungeon and Dragon game, and on that date, they just fix it up and find somebody to replace me. So life is too short just to block yourself and focus on only one thing, you have to be balanced and do everything if you want to be happy. So what you just said in the last 30 seconds sounds like one of the things that you can't be taught and you have to learn. But I was wondering if there's any like, real specific moments that you learn this. I have to assume you didn't start out with this in 96 because you wouldn't have had a family that likely work. Any any big moments that this became like, I know I think people have to learn this, but I'd love to understand some of those moments in time where this crystallized for you. It crystallized when I went to EMP mostly one speaker, Warren Reston. I really loved him, because there's two things he taught me about family priority. You only have one family, and if you scrap it, and if you destroy it, you won't have it anymore. And it's really hard to build, a lot harder than business, a lot harder than volunteering and friends. So he taught me that. So you have really have to choose and put your priorities. And he told me, like it was like the assistant of President Ford. He was a personal assistant, and he tells a story about every morning you would get with him, and they would put three priority for the day, three lines on a sheet of paper, and one like, life for President. US president is like, it's crazy. You do everything and everywhere. You don't control your time. But it will say at the end of the day, if I did once, it was like, amazing. We did one today, if it did two, it was out of this world. And they never done they never done three. So it's the same thing in life. You have a little. That amount of time. So when I realized that he was speaking to us and things like that, I said, Okay, I want my family to be first. This is the first thing. I love business. I love doing business and building things. So why not put this second then turn my volunteering? Before that, it was all mixed up, then it became clear, and I said to myself, I won't force myself to do all of those things. If I do once, only one priority a day, that's fine. That's okay with me. I don't need to do everything and be perfect everything. If I do one, and if this one is my in when I find it for my family that day, I will be happy. That's all, wow. That's incredible. I thanks for sharing that. That's I met with Warren over zoom just before I'm Christmas time, and he walked me through that prioritization exercise, and it's pretty heavy, like it's key. He's got this like superpower to be able to just cut you down and and he affected some of your decision making pretty quick. He did, yeah, yeah. Well, he was the first I went for supper with him at an EO Atlantic thing. That was when I first met him. I had no idea who he was, and he sat beside me, and he was asking me some questions. And he's like, how long have you and your or, how do you have a girlfriend or a wife or anything? I was like, oh, no, I have a girlfriend. And he was like, Oh, how long have you been together? And I was like, 12 years. And he's like, get your stuff together. Like, are you gonna marry? Or, like, what are you doing? Like, like, I think, like, a month and a half later, we were engaged, and then when I met him the second time, because we've been unsure about when we're getting married, he's like, are you married yet? And he was like, go to the calendar, point your finger at a date and go get married. You'll figure everything else out, like, stop. And he was like, That is the most important thing as a partner, that you choose through this journey, then you can backfill everything else. And I was just like, okay, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir. Another thing that he told us was that his bucket list, yeah, that's pretty amazing story, too. So now I have a bucket list, and I'm like, trusting every year at least one maybe two things on my bucket list. So I segue, what? What's the big bucket list thing? This year, I'm trying to go teach a course in a famous university or so I'm trying to get in and I'm trying to be study case study in one university. So that's the two things that I'm working on right now. But in the past, like I had this item on bucket list to be part of making a big blockbuster movie in the US. So just because it was on my buckets list, when somebody told me I'm searching for that, I just read my hand. I said, I want to be that it's on my bucket list, and I did it. So I was part, I was a technical advisor on a big, big movie. So you're allowed to say, which one are you allowed to say, what movie? Yeah, it's the hummingbird project. Oh, yes. When did that come out a few years ago. I don't remember, and my name is in the generic. So that's what I want. And I got it, even if they said, take the Oliver's advisor. I'm not supposed to be there. I pushed really hard. I said, just pay me less, but I want to be there. Wow, wow. Quickly. Go ahead. That's great. I am Iron book. Change topic again, unless you had something else, COVID, no, I'm all over the place. This one, I'm not sure there's a conversation here, but I would love to see if there is. We live in New Brunswick, COVID and I both in, you know, in province bilang. And there's, I find a very unfortunate rivalry between the languages in New Brunswick. And I grew up. I started in French when I was young. I was a linguistics major my first degree. I'm a big fan of languages. I've worked in Luxembourg and Belgium and speak French and speak German and and then I moved back, and I'm living here. And the anger and just and the challenges between working bilingual and French and English and the business communities has always driven me a little bit insane. I have to assume that Quebec French and English, or Quebec versus working outside of the province, there's a similar issue. I'd happy to know if it's not the case, but I was just thinking how you've navigated, or anything you've learned, or anything around the cultural differences or language differences in working French and English, I would say I find it worse in Quebec, because there's a lot of like. Sigma, speaking French or speaking English in a French city, like, I would give you an example. Like, it happened at least three times at Costco that I was speaking English. No, my wife was speaking English with my daughter, and somebody came by and said, Pau, France, AC. So they were like, trying to bully them to speak French, and that's about how I feel businesses. Like, taken in Quebec, like, if you do business in English, it's like, not well seen. It's like a bad thing, like, so I find it real, but I think it's when I went outside in our other countries is the same thing everywhere. So it's just a universal thing. I think it's just, if somebody is different, they just don't trust them by default, something like that. So because I've seen it, I've heard yours, like from Russia, do the same say the same thing, and Belgium do say that exactly the same thing, because I have two language and I think it's a universal thing that we just need to get over. And I think I just had the exposure because I lived in Luxembourg for a while, and in Luxembourg, you can't work at McDonald's without knowing four languages fully. And so it's just a different mindset. But like, I don't know if you know this COVID, but I when I started consulting after my first business close, I delivered services in French, strategic planning and consulting and speaking and coaching. And I stopped consciously, and I no longer offer it as a service. Even though, you know, I am fluent in French, I can pass the tests, but they don't get as rich of an experience because I can't tell stories or adapt quickly like when I deliver in English, I'm pulling anecdotes and stories and emotion in real time, and in French, I can't, I don't have that accessibility, but I would love to be able to. It's a big challenge. We've been asked to do French services, and I just, I would never want to say yes, unless we could deliver the same quality. Yeah, and mostly in Quebec, I think it build the bubble around Quebec, like it's like a productive bubble that everybody outside that want to come in Quebec and do business as to learn French, or at least have a minimum of French. So it's hard for people to get in, yeah, but it's so hard for people to get out. I get a lot of programmers that don't speak English. So they could, they're amazing programmers. They could have, like, jobs at Google, but they can because they don't speak English. So do you do a lot of business outside of the province? I never like you're of all your business. Are you mostly within the province of Quebec? Mostly Quebec and Ontario? Okay, that's mostly a little bit in the Atlantic, but that's mostly where we do business. And that's, I assume that's this, because it's this bubble that protects us but make us, make make it hard for us to go outside. There was Jeff. I'm not sure if I told you this or not, but when my fiance was in veterinary medicine. We did three years in South Africa, and 11 official languages there. And like also a really small population that is Afrikaans, which is what she speaks. And it's just interesting, like in a country of whatever it might be, 65 million people. There's 4 million people that speak up this, this kind of language that's, you know, who knows how long it will, you know, go on, because it's not a language that people are learning, and anyway, it's just interesting. So aside from language, is there any other big cultural differences? You find it because you now have been in a lot of American and international groups and schools and case studies and peer groups. Eo is an international thing that you've been involved in for a long time. Anything else come to mind that is either a really strong Canadian or Quebecois cultural difference in business, I would say we're most in Quebec, most business or lifestyle business. There's a lot more lifestyle business in Quebec than everywhere else, like in Ontario. And when the US people want they want to make money in Quebec, they want a lifestyle. They don't care that much about money, as long as they can pay themselves a lifestyle they're happy with it. So I think this would be a big difference from Quebec to other provinces. Maybe somewhere else in the world is the same thing. But I find it real hard, like I would approach another company and tell them, here you will save that amount of money in the next 12 months. If we do that for you, and they say, oh, no, it would be complicated. No, we don't think. And if I do the same thing in Ontario, in the US, it's like, where do I sign? So it happens every week, interesting. So like, less focused on scale and growth, for growth's sake, and streamlining and math. Maximizing it's, yeah, okay, yeah. Interesting. Does that mean that there's a lot of opportunity there? There's a lot of opportunity. Yes, in Quebec, there's a lot, like, there's a lot, I don't know the numbers, but I think 30 to 40% of the Small Business will just owner will retire in the next 10 years. So there's a lot, and most will just close because they don't have anybody to buy them. Yeah, we're hearing very similar things over here in Atlantic Canada. Yeah, very similar. Yeah. Might do like in France, France, like in the 1990 it just became only big companies because all the rules and everything, all the small business, they almost all closed. So it might be, we might be living the same thing here. So well, I don't know. Maybe I'd like to be a part of the campaign to not have that happen. But yes, but then you have to talk to people in high school, like, we ask high school every year to bring children and bring people, our students to tell them about what we're doing. And I always speak to them about entrepreneurship, and I'm always saying, like, you're 16. I started this company when I was 16, so I will always want to help them, like, have those dreams that is, it's possible you can do it. It's a lot of work, but if you want, you can do it. I know new Bruns, like, we work a lot with the Department of Education here, from like, a communications standpoint, and they're doing a big push on entrepreneurship and choosing different paths and understanding that that gap and that void needs to be filled, which is exciting. And I know it's a big challenge, and you know, it does fire me up anytime I do get to go into classrooms and go to their entrepreneur classes and see how they're thinking, and that's a blast. And I think you're totally right, there needs to be a big interest from an early age, and understanding that that's a possibility, I think, like it took me till I was, I don't know, probably 20, to even understand that that was a career path. It just didn't seem clear at the time. And and it wasn't. It wasn't a very prominent in our schools entrepreneurship class, like we make a board game, and, I don't know, just silly stuff, and now it's actually quite focused and like they're dealing with real cash, real people in the community and and it's it's interesting. That's great. Another thing that I think we don't as a society, we don't push enough, is that all those students in high school that have difficulty, that don't think like the others, that are always on other paths and things like that. We should talk to them about entrepreneurship, like every year, so they know it's an option and the excellent that after that, and not a disability, exactly. And it's even like I had a first podcast, and I one of the questions around was around the word entrepreneurship, because people have loaded definitions of what that word is, and they don't understand like dairy farmers and freelancers and influencers for speaking to the younger generation. And there's lots of different ways to go into generating an income or making things happen. You know, entrepreneurship, you know, making sure we understand the broadness of that term. It's not just I'm a scale up or a startup, or I have a company. There's lots of ways to there's like, this kind of popularity around having a startup. And I think if, from an earlier age, it could be understood that it's okay to make a lifestyle business if you want to. Let's just make the choice and figure out the strategy around that and versus the the raising funds and all that kind of stuff when you're 17 years old. Well, it's, it's a dangerous word and culture. It's, it's so I I realized later I had started a business and was growing a business before I realized so I have one side of the family, or eight generations of dairy farmers, and then the other side, they own a Christmas wreath factory. They own a campground, and they owned they were real estate agents, and on the other side of the family, they were doing like shuttle services. Anyway, in hindsight, every single one of them was self employed and didn't have T for income. Not one of them would have ever in a million years described themselves as an entrepreneur or ever having had a startup. And it was just like, yeah, no, we just were self employed. And my my wife's family, professional hairdresser doing her own thing, and professional photographer doing their own thing, and neither of them would ever have called themselves an entrepreneur or or have ever had a startup, even though they made the first and so, like, it's just like normalizing what it is to do your own thing, or there's different ways to income. It's not all a job. Or a startup is a really a great kind. Conversation, just exposure to the different things that can happen, exactly, and there's a lot of things that can happen, like every time there's somebody that comes to me and say, I want to do a startup. Can you help me? I just explained them. What I've learned over the years. When you raise money and everything and that you're not in controls, you don't decide anymore, and then at the end, you will get maybe five to 7% of the sales. So he kept it, it's not worth it. Yes, I know. Yep, yeah. I found myself in that situation, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the people who work 60 hours to avoid working 40 hours, right? It's true. The amount of times I hear people say, Oh, I got 5% of this thing, and we're on our fourth round of funding, and I'm just like, yeah. Funny, yeah, go ahead. I'm curious, slightly changing gears again. I'm curious, how did, how did the peer group joining EO, or was that your first peer group experience? How did that affect your life? It changed my life, because before that, I thought I was the only one. I was alone. Yes, the there's the saying you're only lonely at the top, I really felt like that. I'm it mostly so we don't get a lot of like posted feedback or like people saying, Thanks. It doesn't really exist in it. So like, I really felt alone for a long time. So when I joined my first big group, it was like, Okay, I'm not alone. There's other people that have the same problem, because you cannot tell this to your wife, to this if you're telling her, like, I won't make pay this Friday, she will just stress out. She will that helps you, it will just be worse and and if you say it once, it's always going to be in the back of the head of like, is that going to happen again? Is this going to happen again? And that's, that's a scary conversation, because you can't transfer your your visceral understanding that things, that you are going to figure it out and but you just can't really vent that all the time. Or you're just tolerance of risk. It's different, right? It's different for everybody. It's, it's not fair to ask others to adopt the same it's not, yeah, it's not exactly like for me. I'm ready anytime, like any day, to lose everything and start again. I'm fine with that, and I mean, at peace with that. So I take a lot of risk. A lot of people who say, Audi, can you take those risks? Oh, can you sleep at night? I don't really care, because I don't really care about money. It's more like I have objective like, I always say my financial at the end of the year, it's like my bulletin at the school. It's like, did I well this year or not? But the amount of money I get, I don't really care. It's not really that important. Yeah. So when you're like that, you cannot have those discussion with your wife every week or with your family. Like, you know, I had a lot of lawsuits in the last few years because I'm in the telecom industry, and that's working in that industry. So I didn't tell my parents for a lot of time, but once I told them, they didn't sleep for two weeks. So that's the power of peer groups, because you can have those discussion with people that understand what you're going through. They have experience that will help you to and they have personal experience on how to deal with the same thing, but with your immediate family, with your wife, your children and everything. So that's Westminster. What was telling that's how you learn to be an entrepreneur. That's all you you get the knowledge that you need for so it really changed my life for me, and it allowed me to grow a lot more and a lot faster, and not even knowledge. It's the ongoing access to what you need when new things come up. It's that continued access that you invest in, because there's going to be new problems tomorrow. How did, how did you react to the level of vulnerability within like, when you've had your first few forum experiences, it was a big learning for me. I'm really an introvert, and it was really hard at the beginning, but once I embraced it, it was amazing, like I understood, that's when I understood, when I learned a forum how to, like, gain trust of people, like being vulnerable, allow you to gain trust, like instantly from on people. I had a lot of sensor in my life. Like where I was out of the company for a long time, then I came back, because it was like my partner, we had the this big fight, and I took back the leadership of everybody in the leadership team in one week, just by being vulnerable. So being truth pump to myself, being authentic, things like that. So it's something that's really important, and I've learned in iron. Wow. Speaking of vulnerability, I just realized. Is that most of our conversation, we've been painting you with somebody who has had all everything work out, except for some product ideas. I have to assume that with all these acquisitions, you've gone through some of some things not working out, what have been the most things you've learned? Because we, I don't know, we recently had a conversation recently, and you're had a conversation with somebody else who's also in peer groups, and most of the conversation was around failures we've had and what we learned from it and and how that reflects on our identity. I assume not everything in your world has worked out. What are some of the big learnings you've had from things not working out? That's funny, because I always ask other people, what's your biggest failure? Because that's where I learned most. I have a lot of fear, mostly because I'm a tech guy. So empathy was one of my strengths when I was young. So this was I had a lot of failure because of that, like losing good people, making myself in deep trouble, being like, a few years ago, I got sued for $94 million so it was like, I put myself in big trouble a lot of time. But then I said, Okay, it's an opportunity to learn every time. And I always take this as, what can I learn from that? And isn't, is in every crisis, there's an opportunity. So I'm always trying to find them to make sure it's worth it, and all the artwork and everything that I suffer is not for nothing, but I would say the lawsuits was from the telecom industry. Was a big one. I've earned a lot from that, and we lost in court partly. So it was like a big learning. It put everything in in problematic like we didn't have any more cash run any of the company because of the lasso. So I had to learn and go back and do the basics and collect clients and things like that, because I put myself in big trouble. Wow. I Wow, heavy time that in acquisition, I made mistakes, I pushed like I was in love with the target, and like I really wanted the deal to go through, but there was all those signs that it wasn't a good fit, it wouldn't work, and things like that. And we bought it, and six months after, there was nothing left, yeah, so many hard lessons, and it brings us right back to one of our first sentences out there. It's like, some of this stuff you can't learn as a pro book, like you can learn from others, and you can talk about it, and some of it you kind of got to go through, yeah? Because, like, when somebody write a book, they will write their version of the story, yeah, like, because there was all those things that were in the market, or all those things that happened that didn't, didn't really control, that made them a success, but you can't replicate those. It happened once in time, at that time for for that person, happy, for it. For them, let's go. They got their millions. They got their success story. That's fine, but you cannot replicate word for word for this. So I'm always, I'm always getting back to the causality link. Every time I read a story or anything, I try to find a causality link between everything that they did. And if there's no causal link, then it was a spur. It was something unique, fine for them, but you can replicate it. So I always trying to do the same in everything I like you're not putting putting people success up on a pedestal because of the the other factors that might have been at play. And right? Yeah. But once you find a causal link, a causal dealing, then you know, you can replicate in every I mean, luck is a real thing for some people at the right time, yeah. But they're rare often. So when you find one, you cherish it, yeah. Or the, is it Jim? Good to Great. Jim Collins, this is the whole. I think he's the one who had the whole like, the idea of being like, the return on luck and being ready to take advantage of luck when it's there. There's a whole like, I really resonate when I was you know what I would learn that I could have the attribution completely wrong. But it's like luck might happen, and are you ready to notice it, and are you ready to take advantage of it and use it? Is mostly not because it's not always clear. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would say that for me. I've always had, like, rose colored glasses on in all situations, just thinking that everything's going to work out. We'll figure it out, that kind of thing and and now my new mantra is, nothing is as good as it seems, and nothing's as bad as it seems. Most people stress about bad things, but like, what's the worst consequence? Like, I will lose everything. I will start and get a new job that's not a bad life. Like. It's not I want. I still have food on my table. I can feed my children. They can be happy. That's fine. So bad things are not really that bad. The old saying is, like worrying is like praying for things you don't want, exactly. That's a good one. Yeah, and I think it was Tim Ferriss that practices, every once in a while, practices losing everything. So he'll, like, you know, eat really cheaply. He'll sleep on the floor with a sleeping bag and just like, put himself through this. Okay, this is rock bottom, all right. I can deal with this if you travel a little bit. You know that because you go to some shitty countries where they're happy just to have water. So it's like we live like in paradise. In Canada, we have everything, like, even if we don't have anything, we have at least, like social insurance that will give us a little bit of money so we can eat. There's no nothing that can go wrong in Canada. There's always something there that we have, a mentor, that we work with, that I feel like you should meet now, because I think you would really enjoy him. He's kind of like a Warren rust and type character, and he'll probably laugh that I call him a character, but the he said something one time, we were having a bit of a rough couple of weeks, and I forget exactly what was going on, but there was, think it was a conflict in Syria at that time that was happening. And he got on the phone call, and he didn't ask how we were doing or anything like that. He just said, Hey, did you notice today that there wasn't bombs being dropped on your heads and, you know, losing family members? And he went on this little bit of a rant, and then he said, How are you guys doing? That's really good. Yeah. And we were like, we had nothing to say. We had nothing to say. So before we leave today, is there anything that you wanted to talk about or ask us or conversation? Any any curiosity scratches, or two junior, junior world, or this is people in New Brunswick. Maybe you talk a lot about acquisition, yeah. But what's your goal with that? Like, I find that in life, you need to have a like, a 10 year goal, or something like in the far future. What's your objective with that? Because that's fun to do, acquisition and things like that, but it needs to be part of a bigger plan. So what's your future plan for you? Whether, where do you want to be in 10 years? What do you want to be when you grow up COVID? You go first. Oh, I went first last time. It's a really good question. And the three, there's a third business partner who's not here today, Aaron. And we asked ourselves that question, and because we do want to kind of go in face forward. For me, is I? I want to have a greater impact. I want to be part of why businesses from yesterday will last tomorrow. And I also, you know, I've been doing business for 15 years, and I've, you know, made some decisions that I don't, you know, I don't have a great relationship with money, and I haven't for a long time. And so the way I word my goal is I want to get to a point where money can be seen. I can see money as a tool and not as a constraint. For me, it's a limiter in the way I and so I want to have the the impact. And I, similar to you, like I love learning and education, and every time I get under the hood of a business, I feel that's where I'm learning the most. Why I partnered and I, you know, we chose to merge companies a few years ago is I would get lost in the impact in learning. And having three partners means we're also focused on margins and bottom line and strategy, and so I feel safe to express my goals of learning and impact, because I'm part of the three week partnership. But to be honest, my driver has never been big house, big money, it's been like, I think, I think I could make a lot of change positively, and I'm excited about the opportunity, but I want to do it safely, because my first business, you know, I grew up from two people to 40 people over eight years, and did a few things. And I believe that one of the larger driver for it failing is I was concentrated on the impact and the staff and the culture and what I wanted it to be, and less about it making margin and growing safely, and so I protect myself, but it's the impact. Colby, yes, we. Somebody asked us this question a couple of weeks ago on another episode and and similar answer to like I do, I don't think I realized how much I wanted to make an impact and how I could make an impact even a couple of years ago. And I probably had, like, a lot of confidence issues around having imposter syndrome and the type of work that we were doing and and now that I'm like, I just. Feel a little bit more mature in that, in that thought process, like I do think that we can make it a large impact. And I like the idea of this whole continuous learning and seeing what like my full potential is. And I don't really have an interest in anything else, except for building things and, and I've got a really big passion around bringing the right people together, and, and, and kind of the whole HR side of things, like, I love, I love the idea of building teams and, and, you know, having a really strong network and entrepreneurship has allowed that kind of dream to, you know, further itself, I suppose, you know, obviously I want some cool things and want to live in an experienced that's why I joined bridge. I would I wanted to travel. I wanted to meet more entrepreneurs, get inspired. I wanted to be at the bottom of the totem pole when I joined bridge. And that's exactly what I got. I'm very overwhelmed by the conversations that that I have with people like yourself and Brett and Dan and those guys and and it's just, yeah, I want to I want to see the world. I want to make an impact and do some cool things along the way with people that I want to be with. And I will say that in my last business, I had, like, this kind of pivotal moment where I think the rug kind of got pulled out from underneath me, and no contract signed. And lots of you know, confidence loss in that situation, but I remember thinking I could either choose that everyone's out to get me and everyone's out for themselves and selfish, or I can think of the two or three people that are value aligned with me and I would go to war with for the rest of my life, and assume that there's more. I just need to build some parameters around how I let that let new people into my life, and how I vet that relationship a little sooner. So yeah, it's been great to choose that option. As I hear both of us speak, we have had the conversation that we're really in it for building, for fixing, for relationships. We have identified that we need a very strong operations strategy and partner in any acquisition, because none of us are really going to be the people who flourish two years after purchase. So I say that out loud, in case there's anybody's like, oh my, we know we're really good at change, we're really good at Build, we're really good at fix, really good at people and process. And that was a maturity thing, yeah, like when we were talking about failures earlier, like I would say, I'm not sure if it was really a failure. It was just something that I was unaware of, that my lack when I was younger, I didn't understand the importance of execution and consistency. I could get I could get to the door, I could get the big conversation, I could get people excited. But I didn't have this muscle or understanding of how important execution was, and when I got into the accelerator program, just beating cash, strategy, execution and people over and over and over again with some accountability, it was just like, okay, I can, I can get behind this. My favorite moments was Colby coming back from some of the accelerator learning, and he's like, what about this? It's like, Yeah, our company does that. He'd be like, Oh, we do that. Yeah. Okay, so you need really a strong integrator, and all your acquisition that you will do, yeah, yeah, yeah, strong integrator, yeah. At least we know that's the first step. Well, I think we're actually looking for in a perfect world, there's actually somebody in the company that wants to stay is just not the owner currently would be the archetype that we're kind of looking at, but, but that's, that's part of your due diligence, yeah, exactly. That's like step one of your integration plans, though, yeah. And if you, if it doesn't, if there's no but in the business, maybe the deal should not go true. Probably true. Probably true. Yeah, the three of us wrote down on paper a lot of rules that we have to look at because otherwise we get excited. We're curious people, so don't fall in love with the deal. Yeah, that's the worst thing well, because sometimes it's hard to mistake lust and love, right? Like, it's like, sometimes you lost after the deal. I remember a quote from a Warner Brother exec when they bought a well, AOL, you remember that? Yeah. It said, like, agus acquisition. It's like teen sex. It's really crazy. Everybody wants it, but not enough of them. It worked. Works. Yeah, yeah. That's true, to be honest. Like, this conversation has gone over all the kind of the areas I wanted to and I all the other stuff I would come up to ask. Feels like I'm gonna make it more more shallow, like these are really great topic this conversation. Was a lot of fun for me. Yeah, me too. Is there anything else that you'd want to share with people who make it to this point of the podcast? Maybe we didn't talk about it, but like partnership, business partners, that's a whole topic that should never be under some underestimated. I got a lot of partners, but there's a way to deal with them. There's a way to act and everything. And I see that you too, like, are okay to work it and work your things together. But often this is a big topic that, oh yeah, hold the phone. Let's, let's double click, because that's that is, like, one of the largest things we've had. Our issues, for sure, I would say that the three way works really well. That sounds dirty, but you know what I mean? The I in 21 I didn't I had a business, and I didn't want to grow it on my own, or I didn't want to do it without partners, and so I went looking for partners, and Colby and Aaron were already partners, and we decided to merge. And so we merged two cultures, and went through, you know, not an acquisition, but acquisition adjacent. And we went through a lot of significant internal strategic planning, personality testing. What I appreciate most is that we, we do have a really safe place for healthy conflict, and we're very different people. What are complementary skill sets and aligned on values? And we spend a lot of time on that, but I don't think I ever want to run a business of my own again. What was your first partnership? Like my first partnership? When, when I started, one year after I started my company, I partnered with a guy that was doing the same thing in schools as me and everything we like, build a company together for a few years, but he was sick. He had the mental problems, and I didn't knew at the time. So it ended with me calling the police on him, so and I had to buy him back and everything less. He would spend all the money in the bank account every month. He had a lot of personal problems. So that was my first partnership. But then I got other I've got a partnership, one partnership, that lasted 20 years. So this was great, but then it ended two years ago. So it's really, you really have to build trust and build that safe space and never let it go. Always build it every month. It's really important, because if you lose that safe space, or even, like just a bit of mistrust, then your partnership is gone, so and you have to find a way to get somebody else to replace or do it yourselves. So truly something critical, like when you have business partner, you really need something that, like you said, complimentary, you're not the same. That's fine, but you you get yourself on value, that's perfect, but everybody has to bring, everybody has to be on the same understanding of what's expected from them and things like that. So, and this is something that now I spend a lot of time every week with all my business partner build, because I know if I stop doing that, it has big consequences everybody. Yeah, and there's, there's a lot of things that you know maybe, maybe things get busy for a while, or somebody's working on another project, and some time goes by, the stories we tell in our heads are wild, and just making sure that you're working this as a marriage should be treated, is something that mentor, that I'm going to introduce you to, kind of worked with us on. It was making sure that, you know, we've got, what are we ex? What are we expecting for acceptable behavior during conflict and like, and, you know, once that's settled, it seems like everyone's kind of guard is down where, like, okay, we can have this conversation. We know that it's not going to get too extreme and have it often. And now, out of some of these conversations, there's a, did you read Crucial Conversations? Chef, yes, that book changed my life, and that was an EO recommendation. And now there's like, you know, we kind of joke around about it now, but it's like, Colby, what are you not saying? Because I sit and think about things a lot, and then it builds up too much, and iron and I are not the same. We are quick to speak. Sometimes bring Colby in exactly. But that's the thing that's one of the trick that is right. Ask your face doesn't say what you're saying. So tell tell us the truth. Yeah. And then what Crucial Conversations did for me was that it it gave me a better framework to say things that otherwise would have been extremely harsh or. Come off as harsh because I just, I didn't I was, like, a zero to 100 guy. Nobody's ever seen me go to 100 and I never want to see it. It's great. But, like, I need, I needed to find that middle ground where I could say what I needed to say, that the point was understood. But I'm not, like, you know, freaking out or yelling. I'm not a yeller, obviously. But anyway, it's just a it was a beautiful thing to now have a framework that gave me the confidence and less anxiety around having those conflictual conversations more often. And one thing I'm doing for last few years is every year I have this discussion with my partners. Where do you want to be in 10 years? What are your personal goal, family, core, things like that. So we can align, or know beforehand that in two years, you won't be there anymore. That's fine, as long as we know when we plan for it, that's okay. But like being in business partners, like a life cycle, there's like the start, there's like the middle, and there's the end, and most, most, most business partners don't think about the M they just, oh, we're in it, so we will be the in it for forever. But that's not true. You have to think about that. And the same thing, when the acquisition will do, the business partner would come with it. There's life cycle with it. So it might be there for two years, five years, 10 years, but you have to have those art discussion every year to make sure that you're aligned and you don't get surprised. I'm curious, when you started doing multiple enterprises, I assume you didn't bring your partner along in all the other projects the first few months, I bring him along in every every projects. And that was fine with me. That was the thing that we did together. We said, Okay, we'll always be the same partnership in every business so it doesn't we don't care if I work more in one or more in the other, I will always be working where it provides more value. That's one thing I did. And now which I tried, I think different business with different partner, and it's hard, because then you spend more time somewhere and they become jealous. Yeah, you couldn't. Should come back. And so now I'm trying to do that portfolio company so I can spend time anywhere and everybody will get value from it. I don't want to have to have those art discussion like you should be at this meeting. Yes, but No, this one is provide more value. But that's the decision that are to do by they buy in, where I would say we just recently renewed our alignment in our December. We do, and I think we're all three of us aligned. But the conversation does come up is like, what if? What if we look in acquisition and only two of the three partners, or one of the partners wants to go forward, you know, just like, what about that focus? And we've been kind of all in, not all in, but, you know, just interesting conversation, because it doesn't immediately feel comfortable, because then, yeah, immediately the stories like Colby said that you tell in your head is, well, yeah, you're there if I call you, but what are you not? What are you not doing for us that you would have done if you were all in where, if you're all in everything, then you don't have those conversations. But if, if we suddenly split up. So I would say, Everything's good now, but it did cause like, oh, that's probably a conversation for the future that we're going to come up on. So, yeah, it's complicated. No one answer, no one answer, but at least the discussion has to take place, yeah, and often, not every five years. That was one of my mistakes with some of my partners, we didn't have that conversion enough. And with others, we have it every year, and it's going well, because I know some of them are there for the long term. I have one that I know he wants to retired in three years, so I know the plan. So I have to find a solution and make sure that we are ready when he wants to retire. And that's fine. And we actually don't all live in the same city and move around. So like, I think what we found is in that, like, we don't have an office where you would go to and that's not of the plan we need it more frequently, I think we've gone a few times where friction or challenges came up, or things were going unsaid too long, and it's probably just because we went that four or five, six weeks without talking about it, because it's easier to ignore things or not Say things when you're on a zoom call. I think Jordan Peterson said something one time about, like, you know, if you leave your house, you don't come back for a while. It doesn't get cleaner. Yeah, yeah. So we've had to make a commitment to, like, getting together in person more often, but then also just creating space where there's an hour on the docket without a strong agenda to force that conversation. And don't forget, like there's wife that will influence every one of you so and girlfriends things like that. So they have to be part of the conversation once a year too, so they don't know if I. And this is a funny side, sir. I don't know if you know this COVID, but so we were in due diligence on an acquisition. I don't know where it'll go, but it was getting to like, you know, it's not perfect. It might have some red flags, but it's still exciting, that type of conversation. And I was like Aaron, when it comes time for us to decide how to finance this, and there's a signature on anything that involves commitment. You are going to present this to my wife, and she has to say yes for me to be able to be both feet in and he sat back. Is like, you need better control. Is like, no, Aaron, no, no, you are going to present this to my wife, who's a very, very like, she gets it. She was my first business partner, and we survived a business failure. Like she, she understands. But I was like, anyway, it was, it was a clarify, clarifying conversation. I thought that was a really good and you know what, Kane is probably also going to get a similar presentation 100% because, like her, her and I want to go into business together in the veterinary world, like we want to buy a vet clinic and and maybe see what that that whole world has to hold for us, and and having Iron House involved in that as well, and improvement projects and that kind of thing, and and seeing her grow and her mentality around that has been fascinating for me. All the times I've come home from EO events and just verbal diarrhea, everything I learned for four days with you lunatics. And I don't think she's listening, rightfully so. But then now she's like, bringing stuff up. She's like, noticing improvement projects. She's saying the term improvement project. And I'm like, oh shit. Like, this is interesting and and I'm seeing this kind of leadership thing come out of her, which is just fascinating, but yes, she will need a presentation, because you have to include them, because they are the one that's talked to you on the pillow. So they have a great influence on you, and it affects your business partnership, so you have to take care of them too, not just yeah for sure, yeah. And if the family, if, if us as a unit, have financial goals that don't match up with all the decisions that we're making, then all of a sudden that doesn't make sense anymore. It's like, oh, there's like, what? Why are we going to go buy a distressed company instead of a company that's like, you know, we can easily switch on the on button for revenue, or they've already got good revenue. Let's figure out another way to make that good revenue. Yeah, so that's why business partnership art, because there's no one size fits all. It's always difference. And there's so many people influencing the business partnership that that's art. That's really art. We're gonna it's not unique, but it's interesting, because we're all about business improvement, but we're also all in peer groups. So it's like we each have a very qualified, intelligent partner in our home lives. I would say all three of our spouses, or better halves, are really intelligent and with it, and are involved. But then each of us have a peer group. So we have, like many boards of directors independently of each one. And so when we come and we have probably three advisors, we meet with one on one. And so we're, we're heavy on the top end to hold us all in. But it's like, it's got to be 25 voices when we come to, like big decisions. So it's which has its own issues, but it's still like, I'd rather more feedback than less for sure. Yeah, any hard and fast rules, like any rules that are in stone that you would never break around partnership, I will never break. I think one thing that's really important for me is to be be there for the other partners. It's like, you said it's like a mortgage wedding is the same thing. It's like a life partner being a business partner. So being there when it's not going well, that's the most important thing for me, that when I wouldn't like even if it's like shit and everything is not working, I will still be there, yeah, and I expect my partners to have the same thing. I appreciated our partnership the most a year into us merging because I wanted it. I'm looking for it. I was excited about it, and it was growth and strategy and all these ideas. But a year and a week after we merged, my wife's father passed away suddenly, and I was able to just hang up my keyboard and say, Guys, I need a week or two. I'll call you. And just the ability for that level of like, I know that the big things like receivables and HR and hiring and firing and sales and getting clients in and like, it's, that's not something I would have been able to put on a management or employee. And I was just like, I just, I think it was a Slack comment or something. It's like, I guys, I'll call you when I can call you, I'm out. And that's, that's when I truly appreciated the what was. You built. And I have to say those, those are the proudest moments, yeah, yeah, yeah. I really appreciate that you brought that into the conversation I hadn't. I should have, because we spent a lot of time talking about it. But that's a really important vein that you know, we've chose, we didn't inherit, and we actively chose partnership, and I know a lot of people who avoid it, and so I love having that conversation. Yeah, fantastic. All right, I kind of want to call it to an end. I think that was a really great conversation. And finisher, yeah, that was great. Well, thank you very much. Yeah, yeah. Thanks so much. JF, I knew this was going to be good, and it exceeded my expectations, even, yeah, beyond that. So thank you so much for taking the time, and you're going to be responsible for all of our Quebec wild listeners, exactly. Well, maybe we'll get this one translated. That'll be fun, yeah, by our South African guys, yeah, that'll work out. Well, there's tools for that. We can figure out an AI somewhere. Yeah, exactly. Love a new challenge. Well, thank you very much. And I'll I think we can stop the recording. Welcome to built to last the podcast where entrepreneurs share real stories about the triumphs and challenges of building enduring success, hosted by Colby Jardine and Levi Lawrence you.