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Category: Business Spot Light

Elevate Your Business: Cole Pethybridge

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Video Transcript

Good morning, Kent Feen with Nine Business Group and Elevate Your Business Chat. We have Natalie and Cole joining us today. Natalie, please introduce yourself, your company name, and what makes you guys different and unique.

Natalie, Cole, welcome. Hi, well, thanks for having me. My name is Natalie Forcier and I’m a retired military member.

I served in the military for 14 years and originally I’m from Saskatchewan, small little French community. I started in this medical field or the purchase of the clinic and building an integrated health care system. Because my experience in the military allowed me to see a different version of healthcare where the military person is not responsible totally on understanding how to navigate healthcare.

The military really provides that support and handholding that the civilian medical system doesn’t seem to provide. And so when I left the military and struggled with the transition because my entire adult life was a military led, the part where I was a struggled on the outside of it was an issue for me. And being able to continue in the healthcare system, dealing with veterans was was my life goal.

So that’s where I started working with Cole and the clinic in building this dream of providing healthcare system support for military as well as like civilians or community and hopefully across Canada. I’m super looking forward to this question because I can only imagine what in the three or four years since you both started in the original business and then expanded into more of a formal healthcare role, what has been the biggest challenge you had to overcome?

How did you resolve it? What does it look like today? I’d say like one of our biggest challenges is healthcare system itself. Understanding and navigating that because it’s ever changing COVID is like, really highlighted how there are parts of healthcare that that needs some support.

So just working with Cole, working with different community partners, a couple mentors, we’ve been able to want to understand where the system is at. And, and I’d say over the last year, we have been in here full time and been able to understand parts or little loopholes in how we do business to be able to better serve the community, bring in more support for veterans and just allowing us to grow in that respect. So what is one thing you know, now you wish you would have known three or four years ago? Oh, God.

That’s a good question. Um, I’d say for myself, I, one of the biggest things that I’ve learned is that nothing happens overnight. Like our dreams and goals and where we wanted to be this time.

Last year is not not at all where where we are at. But I can look back, we can look back and see, like, the areas of growth where you know, that didn’t what an event or specific target that we were expecting to meet didn’t happen as as intended. But the growth that we learned along the way has been helpful.

So nothing happened till we were ready to have it. So that’s very wise of you. If there was a thief, a pirate in around your business, they break in the front door, they hack into your computer system.

What are they stealing from you? Oh, God, what are they stealing? Well, they would be patient information. But we’d be in a lot of trouble. A lot.

It wouldn’t be a certain ideology, the culture, the team, it just simply is our confidential information of our clients. I guess so. I like that question, because it does help people isolate.

Because if I said to you, what’s the most important thing in your business, I don’t necessarily get that answer. So by rephrasing it from a thief, you go right to the root of the core, which is the most important thing to you that you have to protect. So I do love that question for that reason.

In this journey, looking at it today, looking back, looking forward, what is your definition of success? What is a successful business now for you guys? I think for myself, it is like the environment, like when you walk in the environment is, is one that someone feels safe and comfortable. So like the morale of the team, I think is, is probably one of my biggest goals is to make sure like everyone that works for us, and with us understands our goals and is in line with our goals. So a successful business requires a successful team from top to bottom.

I couldn’t agree more. When it’s all said and done, we fast forward 10 years from now, you accomplish everything you set out to do with your business. What’s the legacy? What do you want to be known for? I, I, with Cole alongside me, I want to be known for making the greatest impact on our healthcare system.

So how you would measure that? What would you like to see happen? Like, as Cole had mentioned, like people’s perspective on healthcare, understanding what that looks like, and it not just be your, you know, your doctor reports what your doctor tells you, but your entire socioeconomic, your socioeconomics in your life that, that also contribute to your healthcare, being able to allow society to understand the depths of healthcare and, and it is not a pill that you take that will make you feel better. It is like personal persistence and perseverance in your own healthcare realm. And being able to, like, that be the mindset in the future that healthcare is multifaceted and, and you’ve got your like spiritual side, your physical side, your family, your finances.

So that to me would be what that success would look like. Any thought on the number of people you think you can help, want to help? Like how many I want to help? Sure. I mean, you used to establish something pretty lofty in there by saying you want to change the healthcare system.

I mean, that’s a pretty broad thing. Is it establishing X number of clinics? Is it, is it I totally get I mean, I love the fact that it’s about helping people see health as more proactive. It’s more than just the family doctor.

I mean, I’m not sure if it would be measurable. But like I do know, like our clinic and what we do, it will be replicated in some way, shape or form, because that’s what happens. But we do not have, like we will never reach a point where we would have 100% of the market.

But being able to have replicated clinics that are trying to do what we do with that same focus of, you know, socioeconomics, helping the patient just beyond just their medical needs, but their spiritual socioeconomic. So it would be more of a pandemic type situation where people are starting to understand, like, what healthcare is really entailed, the definition of it, how we access it, what resources are available, and not just your doctor. Excellent.

For those in central northern Alberta, who are anywhere in Western Canada, who want to take more proactive care of themselves, where can they find you? How can they reach out to you guys? And more importantly, who should be who’s your ideal client? Um, so right now, like a huge portion of our clinic is focused on veterans. So we currently serve like we have veterans flying in from BC, we have veterans coming in from Grand Prairie. So I’m sorry, I forgot the question.

Where can people find you? If we’re making an advertisement, we got to tell them where to go.

Yes. So we are located in Fort Saskatchewan.

The address is 9368 South Ford Drive. When you come into the community, we aren’t far to find. And I would say you could locate us on Google, you can give us a call.

And we do have, we can be reached online as well. Excellent. You guys have been great guests.

Love the candor and simplicity. But more importantly, the passion is, is where it needs to be. So keep up the amazing work and keep spreading the word.

Have an amazing week.

Thanks.

Elevate Your Business: Sam Frame

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Video Transcript

Good afternoon, welcome back. Kent Boehm with Nine Business Group and Elevate your business spotlight interview. We have Sam Frame joining us today and no, Sam is not in the roofing business or in the housing business.

Sam, please introduce yourself and more importantly your company, your company name and what sets you apart from the competition. Sam, welcome. Thank you and glad to be here.

My name is Sam Frame. I am the owner of Care Plumbing and we work out of Calgary or the Greater Area of Calgary. What sets us apart? I think just knowing the projects and the opportunities that the clients present and that we can exceed that client’s trust and provide to them a contractor that gives them integrity at the very end and to be honest in what you provide to them as a product.

So thinking about that question, integrity and honesty, without being too personal, did you learn that lesson the hard way or how did that come to you? Was that a mom and dad lesson learned early on or is that I was an employee type of lesson and when I wanted to be in business I wanted to have this as part of it because it’s why I’ve heard entrepreneurs say that. I think it’s another thing to have been in business for 10, 15, 20 years and to live it. So can you give us some insight as to how that came to be important for you? That was instilled in me as a child, also through my Christian faith.

It is instilled in how I carry myself in my business world but also in my personal world. I try to always instill honesty and integrity in everything that I do. Thank you.

Cool. Some insight to you as well, not just the company. Great.

When you look back over the years, what is the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome or more importantly, yeah it’s cool that was the biggest challenge you had to overcome? Me getting out of my own way, trying to wear too many hats. Okay great answer. Can you give us an example because I think that’s different for everybody on for a different trade.

So can you lean into that a little more and kind of give us some what that really means because on the surface it sounds good but how did you do it? I think initially when you start your own company you see the horizon of so many things that need to be addressed and as a business owner you have a certain element of built into you that’s a bit of a control freak and you need to control every aspect to ensure that the company succeeds. As you bring manpower on for the purposes of growth and growing your entity, you need to let go of aspects where a plumber that stands side to side with you is as equally qualified as you are to do the piping and the clients business on that project.

Where your skills are required more deeply is in the managing of the company and in the sales of the company’s product to market for other clients to be interested in working with you. So from that perspective not being on the tools you’ve got to let go you’ve got to get your focus changed and be the manager not the employee. I hope that answers it. It does.

It’s getting so much closer. I would assume in running a team of four or five you’ve had to do that more than once. So what were the two hardest things you had to let go of? Pushing the broom and I think the hardest part is actually not being out there on the day-to-day basis troubleshooting for the clients because that’s what they, from a service perspective, they are seeking from you.

You bring the many years of your discipline to their place of business or to their home they anticipate that you’re going to provide them with proper and effective solutions. Amazing. You shared with me before we hit record around some things you’ve learned along the way from other entrepreneurs from other businesses.

What is the top? If there’s one or two things can you share them with us start with What is the one thing you’ve learned maybe about project management or working on large jobs keeping teams motivated as an example per se of something you’ve learned from another entrepreneur or another business owner? We’ve had the good fortune here in the last six months we’ve been working on a project that started about two years ago in the planning phases and the contractor that is running this project introduced us to one of their programs that has been very effective at managing multiple trades on a project and they call it a pull program and essentially it is a here is an end date for this piece of the puzzle. We need each and every trade that’s sitting at the table so whether that’s the plumber, the electrician, the drywall, or the framer, it doesn’t matter. They’re all sitting at the table and they’re all listening to each of the trades say I need this piece of the puzzle done before I can do my job to meet that deadline.

So it allows everybody to see the bigger picture sitting at the same table but acting as a group in order to hit a deadline for the general contractor and in turn for the client so that we can all benefit from a well-executed process. Well isn’t that just smart and I’m not I’m not trying to be sarcastic that seems and maybe I’ve been around maybe I’m perfectionist when I work with my clients so you’re saying that as if that doesn’t happen very often. I will be delicate around this one there are good business operators that are exceptionally skilled at what they do and there are other business owners that don’t know their business.

I hope that enlightens it in a way that’s delicate. We’ll leave it right there perfect shots fired. I love it.

What is the greatest lesson you’ve learned in business that if you knew it as you know it today you could go back to your younger self and impart that upon you when you start in business.

So that greatest lesson that you know today that you wish you would have had on day one.

Never stop learning.

You will if you have the patience and the wisdom to listen to what clients have to tell you they will teach you things that will help you maybe take a morsel or a nugget from any type of conversation that you can readily apply to your own entity that has done nothing but take a few minutes of your time to extrapolate and apply.

I’ll give you an example there was an old an old oil executive who ran his own oil company for many years and Roy and I met when I was a first-year apprentice way back when and he had retired back then but Roy would talk about some of the pitfalls some of the successes and some of the failures and through that he pointed out to me some of the things that business owners are bad at and that is not recognizing when they’re the wrong person to do that job and being able to understand to get out of your own way as I said to you earlier my only worst nightmare is myself because I don’t know when to quit and let the professionals handle it it’s like when you have an accountant and a lawyer why are you trying to do their jobs you’re not qualified unless you’ve got the alphabet soup behind your name you’re the wrong person for the job. So true I love the insight and thank you for the example.

If there was a thief in your business what would they be stealing from you? Effective time management. You qualified it there why effective time management? Well there are places in time and space where you can get chasing the the nitty-gritty in the bottom of a well that’s pointless because it doesn’t need to happen for three months down the road. Manage your time more effectively and know that those pieces need to occur but do them three weeks down the road don’t do them today because they’re not going to be of effect to you today.

You can also look at about effective time management through your interaction with your client. There are a lot of clients who love the sound of their own voice want to drag you into a long and sorted one-hour dissertation on a subject matter that has absolutely no bearing on the here and now to be effective on what has to happen in order to get them their widget fixed in an hour. That is amazing I was talking to I think if memory’s correct Jen yesterday with I think a marketing company something about owls and blue sky owl or something anyway that was her comment though it was fascinating because like intentional focused conversations so that time is valuable to all of us and to understand not just to respect ours but to go into every conversation every meeting with intention and focus and I love that analogy of understand when it needs to get done and we don’t have to do it all today we can do it in an early fashion and in an organized fashion in a long-term vision.

The last question what does success look like for you what is the definition of a successful business? I think that’s a two-pronged answer I think there’s a personal one through the starting of your own company and I think there’s a corporate answer to that. I think the personal one is going to be the validation of your struggles and your sacrifices that have made that journey worthwhile. I think from a corporate perspective it’s the gratifying to know that our brand was and is a trusted entity providing service to a client and providing employment security for each of our team members that maybe down the road your legacy can live on through whether that’s your employees buying your organization or it’s being sold on to somebody else but what you crafted out of your own efforts is an entity that others would want to keep around. I love that.

The second one I’ve heard many times before but the one I’ve not heard as I love that from personal perspective is that the personal validation of the struggles I think that speaks volumes to me personally part of it is I have this crazy idea I think it can work it’s something I’ve never done before even if it’s tweaking something and adjusting something and doing it slightly different I think that I think that will resonate with a lot of viewers and listeners kind of yeah I thought about it and now I did it and it’s not about the money it’s really about that personal validation. Thank you very much.

Last and most importantly Sam who’s your ideal client and when they’re listening and you they hear you where can they find you to get more information? Well considering I’m not on the web that would probably be a struggle for them. I have been reluctant to play in that field because I’ve always believed you’re only as good as your last job and you have to prove yourself every single time out of the gate so that client needs to know that they can reach us through email or by my phone number I believe you have the links there save me regurgitating it. My ideal client is a client that is in the commercial industry that knows their business has a good team around them and is looking for a company like ours that can fill a niche that needs filled with trusted sub trades that can do the work with integrity honesty and in theory on time.

Amazing thank you very much Sam I love the insight there’s nothing better than talking to an experienced person who not only has been on the tools but also appreciates the value of working on the business and looking at it from the top down and going how can I find better ways to help my business serve me and my team members and my clients.

Thank you very much appreciate have a great week.

You as well.

Business Spot Light Interview: Ryan Schoel

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Video Transcript

Good afternoon, welcome back. I love it. Ketbabe, my business group at Elevate Your Business Spot interview.

We have Ryan today. Ryan, welcome. And Ryan’s with, I believe, the Costume Shop.

Ryan, please introduce yourself. More importantly, tell us about the Costume Shop and what makes you guys unique and different. Wow, that’s a big one.

So, like you said, my name is Ryan or a.k.a. Ry, the Costume Shop guy. You might enjoy some photos that we have on Instagram and TikTok. You can see a lot about us there.

The Costume Shop, what makes us unique? Aside from the fact that we have the widest selection of for-sale costumes in Canada and the widest selection still available for rental on top of our for-sale costumes and then our thousands and thousands of accessories. But really what makes us different is our staff and our ability to create more and unique looks out of existing looks. So, like, you could take a packaged costume of a ninja and say, I want to be, you know, an 80s ninja or 90s.

And what does that really mean to you? Or what sort of twist do you want? You want to make it a rocker ninja so you have the good flowing hair, like Patrick Swayze or something? So, you just laugh. Just the vision makes you laugh. So, that’s one of the big things that makes us really different, which is our staff and the fact that we’re a year-round bricks-and-mortar business that also has our online.

So, we have three different businesses that are operating under one roof, under one name, under one big team, and that’s our bricks-and-mortar, The Costume Shop, the rentals at The Costume Shop, and then our for-sale at thecostumeshop.com. Amazing. How long have you been doing it? So, I bought the company in 2016. I took over August 1st, 2016.

I did that because I was selling costumes. I was a manufacturer’s agent. I moved out from Montreal to Canada about 26 years ago.

Did that land? I moved from Montreal to Canada 26 years ago. So, I moved here with a company out of Montreal, sent me out here to work, and I quickly realized I needed to be a manufacturer’s agent. So, I represented them as CanSew, which is the last manufacturer of sewing thread in Canada and pushing North America right now.

I worked with them for many years, and when I peaked, I kept them and added the largest Halloween costume manufacturer in the world at the time, which was Ruby’s Costume Company, based in Ruby’s, one headquarters on Ruby’s Ave in Long Island, who had, what was it, a 100,000-square-foot office in Markham, and I took over Western Canada, well, a hunk of Western Canada, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and that meant for a lot of driving, a lot of driving, and I opened up and grew that business, and then as my sons were getting older, I realized I was traveling way too much, and every year with all my customers, I would label the year, and in 2016, I labeled the year, the year of change, what are we going to do differently that didn’t work, you know, things that didn’t work in 2015, are we going to repeat them again and expect a different result in 2016, and the owner of the costume shop flipped it on me and said, what does different mean for you? I said, I don’t know, I’m open to anything, and the dialogue became, do you want to be a partner, maybe you want to take over, and my brain went, my son’s going to grade 10, and I need to be around more for him, I want to be around more for him, and made the deal, bought the store, and just in time to lose my life savings for the pandemic, so yay. Well, we’re still here, so congratulations. Thank you, I don’t know how, but I’m here.

So what was the toughest thing to learn going from employee to owner? Probably 89% of my clients kind of start and build their own business, 20% buy an existing business in transition, you’re probably one of the five or 10% that become an employee and own it, so there has to be assumptions, some assumptions you made in that transition that now in the ownership it’s like, oh shit, I thought, what were some of those top lessons that kind of like just got you in the ass that you weren’t expecting? Well, let’s clear one thing up. So I was an employee of a thread company, and then I bought the agency, and I built an agency, and then I basically bought the costume shop, so I wasn’t an employee, I was the vendor to the costume shop. So what changed in the brain set was when I was selling to all of my customers across Canada, which are now my competitors, which is kind of interesting, and most of them all remain good friends of mine, that just shows how I work.

I would approach the customer with not just, these are the things I think you need to buy, you need to buy, you need to buy, these are the reasons why I think you should add this to your store or this sort of tweak, and maybe it doesn’t come from me, you should get it from somebody else, but you need this in your business. And I would do that, I had books every year at the beginning of the year I would make for key counts, and the costume shop was one of them, as a matter of fact, I have all those key books behind me, and I’d say, here’s some pictures, these are suggestions I would make, and when I took over the store, it’s funny you mentioned that comment, my friend who owned the party stuff in Winnipeg reached out to me, congratulated me for now going onto his side of the desk because he had three stores in Winnipeg, and I bought this one, he goes, you know why you’re gonna succeed? And he said, because you’re gonna implement all those ideas you approached us with.

And I’ve been checking them off one by one, trying to do one of the things is networking with you, with others, and I look at business, even though it’s a retail store, where I hang my shingle outside, I don’t just sit and wait for the customer to come in, I’m engaging with the different groups, and I hire everybody around me to be smarter than me, at whatever it is they’re doing.

So the leader of my rental department builds costumes from fabric through, draws it on a piece of paper, and builds a costume. You gotta see it, they made me Barbie, they made me Barbie, they made me Ken from the Oscars with all the rhinestones and the whole nine yards, and I wore that to the last event. My online people know computers and the online much better than I do.

And all my real regular staff, regular staff, we’re all irregular, but all of our regular staff, they know much more about different things, from anime to makeup to wigs, they all bring something unique to the offer, to the customer. And I just spoke to a customer when I asked, how’s your experience so far? They’ve been shopping here for the last half hour or so. They said, amazing.

I mean, I’m getting all this information, building my look, I’m excited. And that’s really what we’re after. We want people to leave here understanding this is the beginning of fun.

I like to say fun starts at the costume shop. Great slogan. So in eight years you’ve had the shop, what is the biggest business lesson you have learned that you would like to go back and tell Ryan from eight years ago, make sure you learn this thing faster or sooner? Well, the sarcastic thing would say is don’t buy business before pandemic.

That’s probably the most bing, bing, bing light. And what other advice would I give myself?

Probably to find a way to take a beat before reacting. The pandemic, and I’ve had a huge big beef that’s going on with the CBSA, Canadian Border Service Agency, which is mind blowing to get down, go down that rabbit hole.

But what’s really interesting is, is that I’m an emotional guy. I’m excitable. I like to say, I like to kind of go with the flow, but realistically is I am excitable.

And I get, and if I really believe in something, I’m very passionate about it. I need, as a business owner, to be able to not just bite my tongue, take a beat, go for a walk, really sit back. I mean, I’ve learned a lot.

I have coaches. I’ve got life coach. I’ve got, I’m part of Tech Canada.

We’re a mentor group. I know what I need to do. And sometimes, you know, going and having a coach and going and having somebody else to talk to and say, hello, Ryan, you know what to do.

You need to do it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop feeling whatever you’re feeling and do what you have to do.

And really being open to reacting. Like as a business owner, it’s really easy to cut yourself a million reasons for why you didn’t do something that you said you were gonna do. That’s gonna better the business.

You won’t, I, you know, if I told my kid I was gonna do something, I’m hella high water, I wouldn’t go against it. If I told my wife I’m gonna do something, I’m hella high water, I’m gonna do something. If I tell a customer I’m gonna do that. For some reason, when I tell myself I’m gonna do something, whether it’s lose weight or go to the gym or finish whatever it is for the business, I give myself more latitude. And I think finding the coaches and finding the people that hold me more accountable sounds childish, but, you know, every business owner I speak to seems to have the same thing. They’ll let themselves off the hook much faster when it’s related to them personally.

I love it. That’s a great insight. I think there’s a lot in there.

Like the most honest, integral people are some of my clients or business owners. The amount they go to work for others and our willingness, myself included at times, to make promises to myself. Like it’s uncanny.

Great insight. Thank you. When, I’m gonna ask this question.

If there was a pirate or a thief in your business, what would they be stealing from you? It’s funny you mentioned that. I actually had to re-put up our stanchions. When you walk in the door, I put up what we had put up for the pandemic.

We had to put an area up where you have to hand sanitizer, make sure you have the mask, all that stuff. Remember those terrible days? It’s like the more apocalypse time. Now we put that, we had to put it back up because where our business is situated, people would park at the front door and they would come in, grab a bunch of things, and I’ll tell you what they’d grab, and they’d run out.

And we couldn’t get to them fast enough. So we just put these fabric stanchions and a stanchion is something like you would use, if you go to the airport and they make you go through the maze and they keep over, that’s a stanchion. And so we just put one of those up.

It’s just a little rope. It’s amazing how they all, and we all follow it like good little sheep at the airport. The customers, it stopped the grab and goes like that.

I haven’t stopped theft, don’t get me wrong, but I did stop the grab and goes and they were the bigger things. And what would people steal? Literally everything. We had an exclusive with some leather jackets here that were $500 a jacket.

Those grew legs quickly. Some different collectibles, some different costumes. I think the saddest thing that we had on a grab and go was a dad who came in.

I’m gonna make the assumption they were going through a really hard time, a kid’s birthday, and they sent us one of my staff to go get stuff from the basement and they were still upstairs and they took everything they were looking at and left through the front door. Everything superhero. But that ends with an interesting twist.

Just before Christmas, that dad came back in the store with cash and said, I need to give you this. He was pretty embarrassed about what he did and I guess it stayed in his head because he came back and he gave us 300 bucks cash. He says, I’m hoping it covers that and more.

And I’m sorry I did what I did. But your question was, what do they steal? Everything and anything under the roof in the store. We do our very best to not let that happen.

Thank you for sharing that. I mean, we’ve been doing dozens of these interviews throughout the last couple months and there aren’t a lot of those heartfelt, genuine stories where there’s some integrity involved. So thank you for sharing that.

That’s pretty cool. You had called in your previous job, you were an account rep, for lack of a better word. You worked with business owners.

You went into business in 2016. In those eight years, 10 years, 20 years, has your definition of success changed? Yeah. As a matter of fact, my wife and I were busy talking about it last night.

What does success mean now? I mean, I had the dream of buying my own house when I was in my apartment when I first got married, right? So we’d get the house and then the cars and then raising your kids healthy and having a good life, taking kids on vacation and preparing them for life. And then selling whatever business I had or the assets and living off of that. To me, that was the success.

The pandemic hit. And just prior to the pandemic hit, I lost my kid brother at age, he was 42.
And my whole world kind of went like, first he went, my mom got sick, she’s thankfully better.

Then the pandemic hit, my wife got sick, she’s thankfully better. And so it really is, what is success? You know, I’m breathing, I’m relatively healthy. I have a business that I can still push forward as my friends keep reminding me, I still have an asset.

Although all my cash that I had saved for the first better part of 50 years is gone. I have an opportunity to earn it back. I’m healthy enough to do that.

Maybe that is success. I have two grown boys. I want them to be successful in their own right.

And I guess the proof will be in the pudding. The definition of success, I guess, is really one that’s really has, is still an evolving picture in my own mind because I really wanted to be getting ready to wind down in these next four or five years. I’m not sure I can.

So being able to still be healthy enough to work and contribute to society, partner with the people I care about, still give fun and provide, do fun things. Maybe I won’t do things that really make me miserable. That is great.

What is, on the marketing side, I would imagine a good chunk of your marketing comes from social media, online as a business to consumer type of thing. Can you share two or three nuggets that you’ve learned over the years that you’d like to give other entrepreneurs who are in the space of business to consumer to maybe accelerate their growth or their ability to succeed faster based on what you’ve learned, whatever those two or three lessons might be. This one lesson is actually probably the most important.

Recognize the fact that you don’t know everything. Every entrepreneur thinks they can run every aspect of the business. If you’re not the bookkeeper, unless you’re the actual bookkeeper accountant, hire that out.

When it comes to social media in particular, if people are getting into it, if you’re creating a social media business, you better be involved in social media and have a good presence because when I’m looking to hire somebody and they say, yeah, I’m great in social media, and I look that they have no following, their legs are cut off from underneath them. And then their answer is, whoa, that’s my this persona. But if you look under this persona, I guess really understanding that the market is really shifting quickly and surround yourself with people that know more than you.

And really, I’m a big advocate of peer mentoring groups and coaching. I’m a big advocate of those two aspects to help business growth. It doesn’t matter what stage you’re in.

More so, I would say at the beginning, because if somebody who’s good at their coaching job can help you, make sure you don’t miss those I’s and don’t miss crossing those T’s. Thank you for the plug. We appreciate it.

Yeah, I guess I would be one for you, right? A disclaimer, you’re not my coach, but it’s great to know you anyway. Well, no, it’s funny because I mean, I’ve been working with entrepreneurs for 20 for two decades now. And when I started my coaching practice in 2007, during that gong show of an economic cycle, which you probably missed.

But I think back to those cycles and I go, man, if I talked to 100 business owners, they’d never heard of the term business coaching. You know, now in today’s world, I mean, part of why I’m doing these interviews is we are talking to probably 30% of the people who’ve had a coach use a coach or in some sort of unstructured mentoring program. But I think more importantly, we’re into that space where people have heard the term, but they don’t truly understand what it means and where that value is.

And I think that’s part of this campaign for me is to help people understand what the value of coaching and what the benefit is. And I think there’s that big difference of taking that step between we hear the word, but now why? And I think, and so, yeah, thank you for that plug.

Now the most important question of the day, who is your ideal client and where do they find you? So there’s, there’s, I guess, two, three answers to that.

And why I say there’s two, three answers to that is there’s different age groups. We sell to everybody up and down the chain. An ideal client is somebody who wants to dress up every single day and into a different look and change your hair, look, even change your teeth color, even change your skin color every day.

That’s a perfect person that wants to come in and just, they don’t want to use their own clothes. They want to use ours. And if we want to go back to reality, we want to have people that want to have a good time, want to come in and understand that the real limitation is only their imagination.

We can help everybody who is interested with a big budget or a smaller budget and understanding that the ultimate goal is that they go to whatever they’re going to or participating in with confidence. And they get to have a really good time so they can have a good story. I got a good example of rentals where I would do this for B2B.

Let’s say you’re having a coaching group and you had three, four people in there and you want to think differently. I would say here a good group pitch would be, I’ll give you all a bunch of fedoras. Okay.

And you all put on the mafioso fedoras. And if your question is the coach of the group was you all have your problem, but this is how you’re going to solve it. Mafia style.

So everybody put on your mafia hat. And if you can enforce any decision on your business, what would it be? So you will buy because I tell you, you’re going to buy. So you can have fun with really anything, understanding that we can play and we sell fun.

You can make business fun. So business meetings, you can make charitable events, themed events. You can make the Christmas party for work.

We rent a lot of Santas. You have kids that are doing a play. You have a church that’s going to do a play.

We can help you. You want to have camp. You want to have Halloween at the lake.

We can help you. We just want to make people understand that there’s one very big difference between us and most of the online businesses. And one of the things and why I had to change one key thing in the store that was really a struggle, which is we made everything final sale.

And the reason for this is as follows. There are many images that either look exactly the same or so similar. It’s hard to tell that that’s not the same costume as the one we’re selling.

And people would buy from us and, Oh, wait, I could get a $20 cheaper from Amazon. And it may well be the exact same costume. And Amazon has a bit better buying power than I do.

Or there’s something slightly different, like it’s a Superman, but it doesn’t have the boot tops.

And then they would buy that and then they would come back with ours and return it because ours was $20 more. And then we’d say, this is not our costume because ours came with boot tops.

And it caused a lot of arguing with customers, which is what we didn’t want to do. Ours has a price. I try and be very competitive. And what I hear from most customers is that we are, but it’s an interesting world in which we live today. It is indeed. Awesome.

And where do they find you? We are a few places you can follow us and find us here at our store, 4307 Blackfoot Trail. You can call us at 403-571-2466. You can email us at WeCare at TheCostumeShop, S-H-O-P-P-E.com, or you can visit us on the web at TheCostumeShop.com.

And that’s two Ps in a name.

Awesome. Thanks, Ryan. Love the passion.

Keep up the great work and keep having fun. I appreciate it. And if you want to laugh, feel free to laugh at me.

I’ll tell you one last story at Expo. You asked about social media. You want to follow us? Follow us on TikTok and Instagram.

And for the very first time I was working at Expo just last week here in Calgary and two kids came up to my staff and said, is that the guy from TikTok? And my staff said, yes. They said, can we get his autograph? Do you think you’d give us an autograph? And I’m thinking, that’s what’s changing in this world. You post a few things and people want it.

I laughed my head off just like what you’re doing now. And it just really, really enforced that we’re just about fun. So you want to have some fun? Come down to The Costume Shop.

We can help you out. Thanks again, Ryan. Love it.

Keep it up. Thanks.

Elevate Your Business: Tyler Hille

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Video Transcript

Good afternoon, welcome back. Kent Payne with Nine Business Group and Elevate Your Business Spotlight. We have Tyler joining us today.

Tyler, please introduce yourself, your company name, but more importantly, what makes you different? What sets you apart from your competition? Welcome. Thanks, Kent. I appreciate the opportunity.

My name is Tyler, Tyler Hill, and I run a marketing agency called Rocket Grid Marketing. I mean, what we do that I think really sets us apart is we integrate with our business owners. So we always work directly with the business owner and companies that are structured that way, and we really try to sit down and create a strategy based on exactly what it is the business is trying to do.

So maybe a business has lots of leads, has lots of clients, but they need staff. So we work on strategy to get them staff, better staff, staff that is going to work their long term. Again, maybe it’s lead generation, maybe it’s selling a specific product or service, but whatever it is, we create that long-term strategy by being part of the business.

So their success is our success. If they don’t succeed, we don’t succeed. So we’re very, very integrated.

It’s hard to kind of get that, you know, no one cares as much about the business and the business owner kind of deal. That’s where we come in and go, no, we do. We care.

We really care. We want you to succeed. We want you to spend your summers with your kids and doing what you want to do or whatever those life goals are.

The business is the best vehicle to get to that destination. I think I’m with you 100% on that one.
A business is nothing more than a vehicle to help a business owner get more of what they want in life.

I can’t agree more. You’ve been in the marketing space now for a couple of years. You’ve been an independent business owner for most of that.

In those years, what has been your biggest challenge? I would say the biggest challenge I’ve had personally running a business has been understanding the sort of nuances of, you know, leadership and strategy. I come from more of a creative background in terms of the marketing
side of things, the physical design, video production, that sort of a thing. So for me to sit down and go, what’s my strategy? How am I going to grow my business? Creating policies, procedures, hiring checklists, that sort of a thing that was not second nature to me at all.

So it’s something I’ve really had to struggle with and just kind of learn, bring in, bring in help, hire up in a lot of cases, having somebody come in with the experience to help me build those sorts of processes. But I found that it’s super important to lay the groundwork and build those strong foundations for growth by creating those policies, procedures, and KPIs, and those sorts of things. Good for you.

Tedious, but important work. You mentioned before, before we went online, that you spent 15 years in the IT background. Now, we’re all out there wondering how we go from being IT, a very stable, very structured work environment to the creativity of marketing, the fluidness of marketing.

How do you talk to us about transition? What kind of, what is the process you had to go through? Or was there a moment in time where if there’s an entrepreneur out there who’s stuck in a job job, what advice or what can you share with them about kind of that transition or that point of, you know, it’s when to make the leap when? Absolutely. Yeah, that was huge for me. And it really was a life changer in my personal life and, and beyond.

You know, working in IT, very technical role, not super client facing, especially in my situation where it was back end infrastructure, creating server builds, that kind of thing. So I didn’t work with a lot of client facing stuff. So for me, I really kind of got to that point where I realized it didn’t really matter how much money I was making.

And in my job, I was just, I would wake up in the morning and not want to go. I just have that feeling my in my gut that it was just sort of, Oh, is there anything maybe my tire will blow out on the way to work and I can call it and be late or, you know, like any excuse possible, because
you just start running through them in your head as soon as you’d wake up in the morning, I just don’t, I don’t want to do this. And once I kind of realized that I was doing that and thinking that way, I got to the point where I’m like, Okay, well, what am I passionate about? And I realized, you know, over the years, I’ve always, always done logo design websites, that kind of stuff for people on the side.

And I always enjoyed doing that. That was my reason for getting into computers as a teenager, was I had to figure out my own problems all the time with software and whatever doing design.

So I decided, well, this is what I’m going to do.

And the way I actually made my transition. I basically went to the company I worked for at the time in it as an IT manager role. And I said, it is an operational cost to you guys.

How about I start moving into doing things that help generate revenue and more revenue generating roles, such as proposal building and creating client facing content and helping bring in money versus just kind of spending money in it. And they were obviously open to that. So that’s kind of how I started my transition.

It wasn’t long before I was helping them hire my replacement in it. And I moved into an IT management role, in that sense where I was able to, sorry, into a marketing manager role, which allowed me to kind of make that transition in within the current company I was in. So, you know, making a transition from one career to another doesn’t always necessarily mean, you know, quitting your job and starting from scratch.

You can kind of get creative with it sometimes and work with the situation you’re in. But I would say, go for it. Do what you’re passionate about.

We only live once. Make the most of it and wake up in the morning doing what it is you want to do versus, you know, just trying to, I call it the every two weeks guy. Being the every two weeks guy.

Just got to make it to my next paycheck. Just got to get in and not think too much. Just sit at my desk and do my work.

Make it every two weeks, which to me was not a very high quality of life in terms of your mental health. No, it sure isn’t. Good for you.

How long do you think you went through that journey of sort of angst, regret, animosity in terms of, was that a day? Was it a week? Do you think it was a couple years? How long do you think it actually, how long was that internal strife going on in you? Years. Yeah, probably two to three years. You know, reading self-help books, kind of trying to figure out what the problem was.

It took a while for me to actually understand I’m not doing what I want to do. And that’s really what this came down to was I’m just not, I don’t feel like I’m hitting my potential because I’m doing something that I feel kind of forced into. And I know for a fact there’s a lot of people in
that state right now where they’re just pushing through doing what they think they have to do.

But I promise you there’s a way, there’s a way to do what you really want to do. Good for you. I love it.

No, that’s, that’s great insight. And that’s definitely be valuable for anybody thinking of becoming an entrepreneur is, yeah, when that internal strife and that noise in your head gets so loud, start listening. You’re now in the marketing space.

So let’s, let’s share with other entrepreneurs out there some awareness. And we’re going to, we can do this any number of ways, but I’m going to simply start with what do you enjoy about the marketing space? And in that marketing space, what do you enjoy most about helping your
clients do? For sure. The thing I enjoy the most about the marketing space is watching, watching my clients go from A to B. You know, for example, they come to me and they’re, let’s say it’s a construction company.

And they really want to work on building custom homes from scratch, full builds. And right now they’re kind of doing a lot of like maybe basement rentals or bathroom rentals or that sort of a thing. And they’re busy with it, but it’s not the revenue that they want to bring in, in terms of the kind of projects that, that it is. And it’s not doing what it is that they’re passionate about, which let’s just say it’s, you know, building high-end houses and they’re kind of stuck doing bathroom rentals or whatever, like they’re happy for the work. But it’s not really why they started their business. So seeing them go from say that, that point to them going “Hey, I just locked in a new build in this beautiful neighborhood”.

And we’re so excited. And the homeowners are awesome to work with. And you start seeing them get that passion because their business is starting to get to exactly what it is that they originally wanted, the whole reason for starting their business in the first place.

So for me, seeing my clients go from A to B is like, obviously super rewarding. Something I didn’t get in IT, which was fixing a computer problem or a network problem or building some backend thing. So I get to really see, see that.

And I guess from a client perspective, it’s their quality of life. Seeing them just get happier.

Maybe seeing them spend more time at home with their families and less time working 16 hour days, seven days a week, or, you know, they’re down to five day work weeks and they’re home at first supper, that sort of a thing like that’s, that’s huge to me to see them see their businesses grow and help them in that sense, get to where it is they want and improve their quality of life overall by changing their business.

Love it. In the number of years you’ve been in marketing, what are the biggest changes you’ve seen that entrepreneurs need to be aware of and start paying attention to? I mean, obviously the big thing right now is AI. That’s probably the biggest pivot or paradigm shift I’ve seen since Google, since people started using Google and the internet in general, like it’s, it’s massive, it’s, it’s such a game changer.

And it’s changing the way businesses are going to interact. So for example, you know, something as simple as running Google ads, which might be like a really standard way to get the word out there, get their business in front of other potential clients, might not look the same in a year from now, or especially five years from now. So that’s something that I see has changed a lot in the last year.

And every month it changes more and more and more, even with open AI now moving into the search, search engine realm where people are just going to ask chat GPT, what they would normally Google, just ask chat GPT, it gives you more specific results, it’s tailored to you and what the kind of things that you’re looking for. And it has more of a almost personal perspective, like a personal assistant would, you don’t have to kind of get really specific, it understands where you’re coming from what you’re trying to achieve. So how does that look for businesses who are traditionally running Google ads, or really focused on Google keywords and trend trending on organic search, those sorts of things are going to change a lot going forward.

So it’s the sort of thing that you kind of already have to keep in mind, like, you know, spending five grand a month on Google ads right now, maybe I’m not generating a ton of conversions off of that. Maybe it’s something we shouldn’t even be running anymore. Maybe we should be putting that money to better use somewhere else in our marketing strategy, or pulling that money in, in preparation for whatever platform is going to kind of take the lead here.

And using that for advertising. So that’s going to be really big, they kind of outweighs any other changes I’ve seen in the past, like, you know, the change in cookies, or the ability to collect data on sites, that sort of thing. Those were obviously big shifts, but this one’s kind of taking the cake.

Can you give us another example? Because I mean, artificial intelligence is a big word, and it seems like people throw it around for fun. And I’m not sure everybody even knows what it means. So can you give us maybe some other examples how artificial intelligence is either how we can work to help it work for us in marketing, or how it might work against us in marketing?

For sure. I mean, AI is something that I mean, we even use a lot in our agency. But it kind of has to be used with discretion, and it has to be used with a little bit of foresight in terms of how it functions out in the real world. So an example of that would be creating blog posts, or advertising copy using AI-generated text.

So you go to ChatGPT and tell it to write you a blog article, and then you post that on your website. Search engines like Google and Bing have already started doing this pretty heavily, which is downranking AI-generated or AI-flagged content. So if you’re just spitting out AI-generated copy, there’s a very good chance it’s actually going to harm your business.

It’s actually going to push you down and counteract maybe years worth of work in terms of getting up in organic search results. So that’s a negative way it can be used. But in a positive spin on that would be there are tools to humanize the copy and to test the copy to make sure that it’s ranking as 85% or higher as human-generated content, and not to be flagged by Google and Bing as AI-generated content.

So versus just spitting something out in ChatGPT and going, that sounds cool, and posting it, there’s a few more steps that you can take to make sure that that copy is humanized in a way that is more organic and authentic, I guess. So what you’re saying is, even though the high school students and the folks who got into early using ChatGPT for science tests and math tests and essays, the teachers soon will have a tool to put that same essay into the machine and kind of go thumbs down. Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be an automatic process at some point very soon.

Yeah, love it. Okay, in all the years you’ve been in business, let’s go back in time. So think about all the things you’ve learned.

Share with us the greatest lesson you have learned that you would like young Tyler, Tyler, day one entrepreneur to know. Never undervalue yourself. If you’re confident about the product or service or offering that you have, don’t undervalue that.

And don’t downsell yourself, which is really, really common, especially when you first get started in running your own business. You’re like, as long as I break even on this, at least I’m getting a client in, at least I’m moving forward. If I could tell myself something on day one, it would be don’t do that.

Don’t cheapen or undervalue what it is you have to offer, because it’s basically you’re digging yourself a hole mentally and financially in that sense. So really make sure that you stick to your guns, you stick to your pricing, you set your pricing, a fair price, something you think is market
value and competitive and stick to it and don’t shave things off to try to, you know, maybe make yourself not feel as uncomfortable about asking for a certain price for something. Great advice.

Absolutely. Thank you. If there was a pirate, a thief in your business, what would they be stealing from you? That’s an awesome question.

I love it. If a pirate was to steal something in my business, I would probably say it would be processes and procedures, the sorts of, you know, templates and documentation and just sort of the way we approach communicating with our clients, I think is very unique and very high end in that sense. And it takes a lot of work to put that stuff together.

And I think that that’s probably a pretty valuable asset. I think you’re probably right. And it’s where not a lot of people put processes in place first.

So one last question, the most important one, who’s your ideal client and where should they find you to get more information? Ideal client is any small to medium sized business who is looking to attain a certain goal or set of goals through marketing. So again, whether that be growing their business, hiring new employees, selling a specific product, just getting out there, rebranding. And the best way they can get in touch with me is just head over to our website at rocketgrid.ca. Thank you very much.

Love the storytelling. Love the examples. And thanks for being part of our progress and looking forward to hearing the rest of your story.

Awesome. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate the opportunity.

You’re welcome.

Business Spot Light Interview: Jeff Griffiths

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Video Transcript

Welcome back. Good morning, Kent Bean with Nine Business Group and Elevate, your chat business follow-up. We have Jeff Griffiths joining us today with Workforce Strategies.

Jeff, please introduce yourself. More importantly, what you guys do, what sets you apart? Yeah, hi Kent, thanks for having me. Jeff Griffiths, I’m a certified management consultant with Workforce Strategies International out of Calgary, Alberta, a relatively new company.

I’ve been around since 2018. What do we do? We’re competency geeks, I guess. So, we’re a competency-based organizational and workforce development for mostly industrial companies, small to mid-size.

And I think what sets us apart is the notion of the kind of that blue-collar mentality. We’re really focused on the people who, you know, with dirt under their fingernails, who are actually generating revenue for companies. The skills and value of those people is where the money gets made.

Everybody else is overhead. Sometimes they’re useful overhead, but they’re overhead. So, keeping on that topic, one thing that comes to mind is this, what I hear in the news as declining workforce.

We have less and less trades, we have robots coming over, you know, artificial intelligence.
What do you see in the marketplace? Not to mention, let’s throw in the other curve ball of we spent the last 15 years teaching our young people to sit down, shut up, and play a video game.
So, take those three.

Now, we have this culture in North America of don’t want to, don’t know how to, don’t have any skills. My skills may not be needed in 10 years anyway. Now, an entrepreneur.

I got a company, what the heck do I do with this mess? Insert Jeff. Yeah, that’s a good question.
And, you know, they always say, again, I mean, I’m an entrepreneur as well, I suppose.

And, you know, an entrepreneur is someone who works 80 hours a week, because they don’t want a job, right? You know, and when you start out small, the hardest thing for an entrepreneur to do is give away the controls, right? And so the notion of you have to grow this through a team, you need other people around, ideally, who are smarter than you are, you hire them, because they’re smarter than you are, you actually have a process for making sure they’re smarter than you are, competency based hiring, and then you let them do their job.
Right. And it’s interesting, because in Alberta, we have the vast majority of companies in Alberta are tight.

Right? I mean, 10 people or less. The owner is the key decision maker, the owners used to being the smartest guy in the room. And the reality is that with technology, they’re changing with the, the workforce that’s changing with the markets that are changing with regulatory
environments that are changing, everything’s moving so fast.

Now, you can’t be the smartest guy in the room anymore. And that’s a really hard thing for an entrepreneur to give up. This notion that I give up control, because that allows me to get more control.

The hardest thing any new entrepreneur does is hire the first new person who’s not, you know, not a subcontractor is paid on a particular job, but is actually a paid employee. It’s the absolute hardest thing to do. And most entrepreneurs fail at that point, because they have no idea how
to do it.

They have no idea how to grow that person. They don’t have a clue on exactly what they were hiring them to do or what that means or what the skill sets are to do that. Many cases, they’re hiring for a set of skills that they don’t have.

So they can’t provide direction and control. So their entire management approach, which is traditionally very micromanagement, doesn’t work, because they can’t micromanage to a set of skills they don’t have. And then the individual who they hired, who may or may not be the right
person, might be, you know, smart as a whip, but soon gets frustrated and leaves, because it’s not a conducive environment.

It’s not a growth environment for them. And people tend to leave their jobs. You know, they don’t leave their work, they leave their manager, they leave their boss.

So where do we come into that? I think it starts with alignment of the organization’s current and future structure. The, you know, right people with the right skills aligned the right way in a proper structure with proper accountabilities and things like that to support the strategy and
the objectives that the organization has. Most small companies, again, they grow organically.

You kind of bolt on pieces here and there. And while as the business evolves, you find out that the organizational structure, the skill sets and the who’s doing what doesn’t necessarily properly align with the strategies of the business. And so there’s a lot of waste.

There’s a lot of inefficiency that comes out of that. And again, people get frustrated, they get disengaged and they bail. Right.

And what size company do you typically deal with? Sounds like probably many to 50 employees.
Yeah. I mean, we’re beyond, you know, two guys with a cool idea in the garage.

Normally we’ll get involved when you’re, yeah, 20 plus employees, 50 to 100 seems like a really good number for us. So the companies that are growing but they’re not yet ready to buy SAP to manage their human capital. Right.

When you look back over years of experience in business, in the military, if there was one lesson, the most resilient lesson you’ve learned that you would like to go back and tell young Jeff when you went into business, what is that greatest lesson that you would like to impact on
the young people of the entrepreneurs of tomorrow? I think the biggest lesson is around vulnerability. You’ve got to be yourself. You have to abandon the notion that you’ve got all the answers because A, you don’t.

But also the willingness to admit that you don’t have all the answers, the willingness to admit that you’re learning and growing all the time as well. And so the organization that’s built that way is constantly learning and growing. It’s constantly in what in educational terms they call
their zone of proximal development.

And so we don’t know what the answer is. The world changes. We’ll learn our way to to an answer.

And those and creating that kind of an environment allows the people around you to thrive and grow and be the best that they can be. And that’s a really uncomfortable place for for someone who’s used to being in charge to because you don’t have the answers. That’s for me, that’s the key.

No, I think it’s huge. I think, you know, the zone of development of what you call the zone of proximate development, learn our way to the answer. I think of my greatest companies, clients, pardon me, who’ve grown companies and accelerated growth and the clients I’ve had who’ve
stalled or got stuck definitely is one of that part of letting the ego go, leaning into the team, growing the team.

And the ones that get stuck is where the ego gets in the way. And they just they just there’s that one or two final pieces of the ego where they just can’t be vulnerable and real. And whether it be systemic, whether it be historical, something mom said, dad said, but that’s all wrapped in
there.

That’s fantastic. Thank you. One last question for you.

Sure. There was a pirate or a thief in your business. What would they be stealing? That’s that’s another really interesting question, Kent.

And, you know, I mean, obviously they’re looking for the gold. Right. And.

The gut reaction is, oh, I’d want to I’d want to hide some of the processes that we use and, you know, go hide my toolkit. But on reflection, the toolkit isn’t particularly useful without the, you know, 70 years worth of experience in how to use the tools. So I think at this point in our
business, what they would steal is the.

You know, the the the young woman who we hired a year or so ago straight out of school to look after our marketing and our digital stuff. Because if she’s gone, we’re screwed because we’re a bunch of, you know, we’re stale, pale and male. We’re a bunch of old farts. What do we know about digital marketing? What do we know about this stuff? You know, we have lots of expertise. She’s the one that makes us look good. Right.

So if I was going to steal something. I would probably steal Jess. Right.

Because that’s it’s that dynamism of that young person, I think, is what has made us better in the year since since since Jess came on board. And that’s not about the toolkit. And that’s not about anything is rattling around in my head.

You know, or Dirk said or Peter said, like my business partners, it’s about trying to translate what we do into into imagery and and messaging and that that appeals to the customer.

Fantastic. So to wrap this up time for the shameless self plug, who which clients, what type of industry would you like to put on notice? And then lastly, where should these companies find you get more information to learn more about what you do and how you can help them? Yeah.

So our core market are, you know, small to mid sized manufacturing, construction, maintenance service type companies. We’ve done a lot of work in that space over the years, kind of moving in some other directions now because the the economy is changing. But that’s that’s still our core.

That’s where we live. That’s where we we we feel feel good. We want to help them grow and thrive in a in a world that’s completely, you know, that’s changing on them literally daily and and help them make the most of the of the resources and the skills and the people that they already have to get ahold of us.

www.workforstrat.com is our website. They can contact us through there. They can contact me directly.

Jeff at workforstrat.com or hit me up via LinkedIn. By all means, I pretty much accept any request for a connection that comes in. And I love to have those conversations with people and give us a shout.

I mean, if you’ve got an issue that we can solve or help you or give you a direction on in, you know, in the space of a 10 minute phone conversation, we’ll do it. Like I’m not going to send you a bill. Right.

That’s great, Jeff. I do appreciate it. I love the insights on team growing team also kind of talked about some of the challenges we face in an ever growing marketplace, because even with robots and automation, we’re still human beings.

We will still have human beings as employees and we still service human beings. And we can’t lose that effort. Yeah, absolutely.

You know, we’ve talked a lot. We’ve done a lot of work on the strategic side with, you know, skills and human capital and everything else. And what’s showing up certainly over the last 20 years is that the those skills that make you valuable in the marketplace are the skills that make
you human.

Right. Because if your plan, you know, is to be better, faster and smarter than the machine, in most cases, you’ve already lost that fight. So it’s it’s the human skills, you know, what we used to call soft skills, but it’s collaboration, it’s communication, it’s critical thinking, it’s team problem solving.

Those are the things that allow you to remain useful in the marketplace, well beyond your technical skills and the interaction with technology to solve those problems as the future as the you know, the machines will be digging the ditches, but it’s up to the people to then manage the ditch digging machines. That’s a thousand percent. It sure is.

Thanks again, Jeff. Appreciate it. Have a great week and looking forward to hearing the rest of the stories that years and months go by.

Excellent. Thank you, sir.