The Rise Above Podcast: Recent Episodes
Bram Bains
Conversations, stories and interviews with everyday people that are building businesses, climbing the corporate ladder, or chasing after their dreams to rise above to the next level.
In this episode Bram reflects on the importance and benefits of doing things that make you feel uncomfortable and the pathways that it can help unlock.
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In this episode Bram reflects back on his dozen years of experience in the Insurance Industry and makes connections in what led him to his current position, in launching his very own insurance brokerage.
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In this episode Bram answers a few questions that hes received after he decided to leave his corporate job (after 12 years) and start the entrepreneurial journey of launching his own insurance brokerage.
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Professional Rugby Player, Global Team Lead of an Incubator/Accelerator Agency, Start Up Director & Father Lucas Caneda joins Bram Bains on this episode of The Rise Above Podcast.
Lucas talks about his Journey with overcoming obstacles in his sports career, wanting more from life, managing a high performing team, explains the value his team brings to startups, and shares insights about the process of taking startups from seed to IPO.
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Interview Transcript
[00:35] Bram: Welcome everybody to the rise above podcast. This is episode number seven. I'm being joined by a special guest today. I've got Lucas Caneda. Lucas is a professional rugby player. Lucas is a global team lead of unicorn. Unicorn is a rural tech incubator accelerator. Lucas is also a director of one of its startups, challenger X. Challenger X is a SAS and B2B company, who is turning Davids into Goliath through digital and traditional marketing. It offers radical improvement of the revenues and profitability of amateur sports clubs throughout Europe and around the world. Lucas is also a father. Welcome to the show. Lucas, how are you doing today?
[01:24] Lucas: Hey Bram, thank you for having me on your show, especially being here doing fine, looking forward to this conversation. Yeah, just let's get into it.
[01:37] Bram: Let's get into it. Okay. Tell us a little bit about your story. You wear many hats there. You know, being a professional athlete. I believe that's pretty demanding with training and playing and recovery and rest and whatnot, but yet you're also a leader there of a team and a father. How do you balance everything? What do your days look like?
[02:00] Lucas: They look pretty busy to be honest, but I do enjoy it. I do think there's more to gain about doing all this stuff and I'm pretty happy to be doing it. Of course, it requires effort, but everything does. If you're not willing to do what it takes, you're probably not getting far. I've managed to join my passions, I would say, which is usually not something easy to do. When I was young, I was, I always wanted to become a professional rugby player. I come from Argentina; I'm currently living in France. Why? Because I knew when I was back home, if I wanted to fulfill my dream, I had to go somewhere else because there were no professional teams backing Argentina. I knew I had to go elsewhere. I looked for my opportunity. I worked very hard for that opportunity. Even the things blocking, things not going as expected, but eventually five or six years ago, I actually managed to get an opportunity and I didn't hesitate.
I flew right away. That's when my professional career in rugby started. I've done that for like say one year, just focusing on that. But after that, I started also studying while I was the professional player. Two years ago, I decided that was, I would say, not enough, that I wanted other things too. I also started working while I played. That's how I came to unicorn. How I started at unicorn and how I managed to mix things up between business and sports. I think there's great connections and a lot of added value in doing both things at the same time. Especially at the start-up world that we live in. There's lots of things that go hand by hand. You need to be able to say, roll up your sleeves and put yourself to work.
You need to be able to learn how to take a hit and stand back up. That happens a lot in rugby, and it happens a lot in the start-ups. You need to know that it's not an easy trip. It's not an easy journey, but the journey itself, it's actually a great experience. There's a lot of synergies between businesses, sports that can actually be of good added value to both sides of the coin.
[04:55] Bram: Okay, awesome. You mentioned the journey there. That's a perfect segue. That's something I really wanted to explore with you and what your journey looked like, your personal journey, growing up and falling in love with rugby and pursuing that passion. Then, it is bringing you here to where you are today. What's your story look like from the beginning? I know there was a little bit of adversity in there. You were told by the majority ofpeople that you're too small to play rugby at 5'7. I know you had an injury in your career as well, that was fairly major and potentially career ending. I'd love to hear about that from your perspective.
[05:36] Lucas: Yeah, sure. I mean when it comes to being too small to play rugby, I was told many times that, if I wanted to become a professional day, I should have been a couple inches taller. I said, okay, that's not something I can change. But I can do a lot more that you guys think I can. Of course, you need to work to get there. You need to do what it takes. Sometimes it's not easy. Sometimes you want to stop, but as long as you have something in mind, I do think you should follow your dreams and do what it takes to get there. I don't like to sound, egocentric or whatnot, but it can be done if you do what it takes. If you actually put the effort into it, you can actually get where you want to be.
In my case, that was becoming a professional rugby player. It took a long while. I finally came to France when I was 25 years old. I had that in mind for the last three or four, I think. It doesn't come quickly or at least not always. But you need to keep going till you actually get where you want to be. If you want to speak about my I would say serious injury. I think on one side that happens. I mean, in every sport, in every everything that you do, you will have problems or obstacles to face, some things to overcome. In my case, I had a big knee injury, broke my ligaments. Some people said it might have been a career ending injury.
After a couple of days. I mean of course you feel a bit bad about what happened, but then quickly turn your mind into positive thinking and start thinking ahead, what's coming next. How do I recover from this? I mean, a couple of things that happened when I was at the game, the game I got injured, our doctor at my team, he was, those kinds of guys that tell you every time that tells you, yeah, keep going, keep going. This is nothing. I got to hit unto the floor, tried to stand up, then my knee started like feeling weird I fell down and called the doctor. I said, hey, strap my knee up. Something's wrong, strap it up so I can keep going. He started checking. He said to me, look straight to me in the eye and said, not this time.
How come not this time? Strap it up. I need to keep going. He said, this time I cannot do this. When he said that, I mean, I knew something was wrong. He never does. He's always the one pushing to keep going. So, I knew it was serious. Then I had a couple of, I would say pointers that helped me recover. Pretty much. One of them was my injury was kind of at the end of the season, there were still some games left, but I knew it was a six-to-eight-monthinjury. I set myself an objective. I checked for the next season, what was our first game. Actually, it was one of the best teams in Argentina. I said to myself, I need to be at this game. I went to my coach, which I appreciate very much. I have an excellent relationship with him.
A great coach. Asked him, hey I know we played this game first game of the season. I need to get ready before the first game you always have, like, we call it friendly games. I know you guys call it in different way. Exhibition. Yeah. It's like tests, you do usually have three games before the actual start of the season. I started doing some math’s and the first exhibition game was five months and one week after my surgery. I tell the coach, hey, I know I need to play at least some exhibition game for you to put me on the team for the first game. But how many do you need me to play? Because first game it's like five months away. I probably won't be there in time. He looked at me and he said, you need to play all three.
I was like, dude, I mean, that's physically impossible. I mean, that gives me five months to recover, fully recover from an injury. Usually, it takes between six and eight. I mean, I can try and push for six, but he said, if you don't play all three, you won't be in the first game. I need to do something. I was so focused on getting to the first game. I remember my surgeon, he said to me okay these are the exercises that you need to do as soon as you can, after you get operated. Couple of very basic things that you need to do. I remember after my surgery; the room was not ready yet. I was on my bed laying on a hallway before going to the actual room, feeling dizzy because of the anesthetics and everything that you, that you take for this surgery.
I started doing the exercises. I mean, I knew I had no time to lose. Then when I told my, my surgeon that I started like an hour after the surgery, he looked to and said, are you nuts? I mean, dude, you said as quickly as you can. I should wait a bit, no time to do this. I don't know if that helped or what did, but the good thing about this story is that five months, one week later, I was playing the first game. Everything went well, I played 10 minutes. Not more just to try it out. But it was more than enough. Second exhibition game, I played like 63rd or game. Then first season game, which was very important. I managed to play the whole game. The beauty of the story is that I don't know, again, if you do what it takes, if you actually invest yourself, the results are usually a lot better than if you don't do as much.
[13:33] Bram: Yeah, definitely. I mean, it sounds like you're definitely on a mission there to suit up and be ready for that game. That's I think that's important to set those targets and put in the work exactly what you said. I think that's a great story being that you're a competitor, you're an athlete. I know you're wired differently. What does it feel like when there's all that pain and adrenaline going through your body and the surgeon is telling you not this time? At the same time, in what other ways have you been told not this time that you've still been able to prove people wrong.
The feeling was pretty weird because it took him, I think three or four times to convince me that this was not that time, not this time. I was like, come on, strap it up. I mean, get it going no time to lose. With the adrenaline, when you got your head in the game, you sometimes lose perspective of what's happening. I do think those are the best moments in sports. When the only thing that matters, it was happening on the pitch. You don't even listen to what happens on the outside. Your head's really on the game. That's where you perform the most. It happens in business too.
Again, it's a great connection between both things that I do right now and what I like, which I really enjoy, right. That you can put into work one side on the other. In terms of business, when our funder [inaudible 15:30] funded unicorn here in Sarlat, which is a very small town in the Southwest of France, people told him this is not possible. We actually had a conversation with someone explaining what we wanted to do for like 20, 30 minutes. That one moment she said, stop, I'm sorry to tell you, but this is never going to be possible.
I mean, our reaction was, excuse me lady, but I'm sorry to tell you that I've already done it. Her face like just completely turned around. What do you mean that you've already done it? Yeah, we are already here. We were around 10 people, 12 months ago. We are over 55 right now from 27 different nationalities. We've created a team. We've crafted a team of different people, different cultures, different knowledge. A very powerful team that allows us to perform, even if we are in a rural area, which is very small. it's one of the things that we try to prove is that you don't need to be in London or in Paris to actually have a business of your own. You can be in a detached area like ours still have the power to do what it takes.
[17:13] Bram: Nice. Okay. Your story in transitioning from, well, at the same time, you're still a professional athlete, but now you're also in the business world. How did that opportunity come about for you to join unicorn?
[17:30] Lucas: Well, for the last two years, I knew I wanted something else. Professional rugby was not enough for me. I'm always looking for more, I would say. It's kind of a part of my winning mentality I think, which some people think it's not a very good idea, but I tried to prove them wrong. I mean, I hate losing. I'm kind of, I would say proud of that attitude. It drives me nuts to lose at whatever I do. No matter the level I'm super competitive, but I think that actually takes you further down the route instead of pushing you down. I think it gets the opposite, at least in my case. I think it just drives me to keep going to keep going forward. Keep looking for more and that's how I decided to look for something else, not just playing rugby, but also finding a job.
What I do like is that you need to be passionate about what you do. I think it's crucial to success. That's why I did what I did for rugby, because I'm passionate about it. That's what I do at unicorn is for me too. I've found my passion on the business world too. That's what keeps me going, keeps me looking for more. The story is quite, I don't know if I'd say interesting, but when the club called me we are a very small club. Sarlat Rugby is a small club fifth division in France. rugby wise, I was not pretty thrilled, I would say, but I decided to take a first step and told the guys I would like to meet you, before I decided to actually commit myself into playing with Sarlat Rugby, I would like to meet you guys, see who you are. I drove with my wife,she was eight months pregnant. We drove like, eight hours in one day to come meet them.
That's what changed everything. Cause I've met Dom, the founder of unicorn. He goes like 200 miles an hour, is always on the run for business. Unicorn actually incubateand accelerate Sarlat Rugby. We consider the club being one of our clients in that sense. That's how everything came together. It's all part of the same ecosystem that we're building. Yeah, that's how it became a reality.
[20:58] Bram: Wow. Okay, so the common denominator there being the rugby, because Sarlat Rugby being one of the clients there of unicorn. That was the connection that kind of brought everything together. You're brave you and your wife at eight months pregnant, you drove that far.
[21:22] Lucas: Not me my wife. I was driving, but I mean, it's hard to convince eight months pregnant woman to drive for five hours. But she said, I mean, if we are moving to that place, I'd like to meet them, okay? Let's go.
[21:38] Bram: Good stuff. That's amazing. She's like a business partner of yours then too. I think that's an important relationship right there.
[21:54] Lucas: Hands down. Yeah. You do need that support. It's the only way I can see the relationship to work, support each other.
[22:03] Bram: Yeah. Happy Father’s Day, by the way, we just celebrated father's day, two days ago. I don't know if it's international. So earlier we were talking, you mentioned your daughter is nine months at this point. How do you do it? Like there's probably so much demands for your time. How do you keep everybody happy? What's the secret? How do you do that?
[22:30] Lucas: Well, I don't know if it's a secret what I do. Hard to say, but I don't really think about what others think, but I like myself to be happy and the people around me, my family or the people are my friends. I tend to focus about that first because I know if I'm happy, I'm going to perform a lot better. That's why I do think that you need to find your passions and work on those passions because it doesn't become a burden, it's all the opposite. If you love what you do, it's not a problem. Also, we come back to the family support that you mentioned before.
I mean, my wife understands when I come back at nine instead of five, because I had three meetings in a row. Of course, I tried to spend time whenever I can with them to my best. I don't know for lunch I go back home, try to spend some time. Little things. I think don't need to do big, great things, but just the little details that can actually takeyou to where you want to be and always know what you want to achieve, what you want to do. Because it's a lot easier when you like what you do than anything else.
[24:27] Lucas: Absolutely. Yeah. You got to, do what makes you happy because when you're happy, it reflects on everybody else that's around you, so you can be the best version of yourself. That's a good answer. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about what you do and the kind of team that you lead a unicorn. I'm really interested to learn more about what it is that an incubator accelerator does. Like how do you work with companies and from a marketing standpoint, what is it that you guys really do to help the companies grow? Then also we'll look to explore your role as a leader. How that looks, how do you lead a team like that and so forth?
[25:13] Lucas: Sure. We take the startups the American way. We ask for three main questions, first do you have proof of concept. Second, do you have a couple of clients, third, were you able to convince at least someone on your family that what you're doing is actually bringing a solution to a problem and not just creating a new problem. Why do we ask ourselves this third question is because if you're not able to come in as your family, how are you going to convince first and foremost ourselves, unicorn to be working with you? Then if we present you to potential investors, how are you going to convince them? Once those three questions are, I would say replied, which already becomes a big filter, would say at least half the people that contact us, don't get to that filter.
We ask ourselves one key question. What is it that we are going to do to add value to what you are doing and how quick? Then it becomes a bit of our understanding of the project. Cause we don't do I would say models. We actually do specific work for specific clients. It's not that we take in everyone, and we just do the same for each client. That usually doesn't work for many reasons. But first being that start-ups are all at different stages, so their needs are very much different, one from the other. Then their objectives are usually different. Their needs differ from one another.
You need to be able to identify and prioritize what do they need the most, what are they able to I would say afford and where is it that you're going to really create the most impact? If we are running marketing campaigns in different markets and we are just starting, we'd like to say the lower hanging fruit, I'm not going to be searching for tons of time ahead, but actually grasping what I can grab very quickly to get us some traction to move forward. Then with that traction keep going. It becomes a negotiation between the client and ourselves where we can, we usually just jump into a call and understand what they are looking for. Come up with very specific ideas or marketing campaigns or actions that will bring them a couple of steps further.
We do measure everything that we do. That's one of the key points in our business, the digital marketing side of what we do, we measure and we do KPIs for everything that we set up that allows us two things. First, to actually show the results to our clients, but also internally, it allows us to identify the things that are working the most, keep doing it to keep doing those and not to the rest. It's I would say a filter to grow up into the pyramid and keep pushing. Just as some information, thanks to these filters. We actually say no nine out of 10 times. It's not because we play hard to get, but actually, because we think there's no connection or no synergy in what we guys are doing. because we hate losing time, wasting time on both sides. I don't want you to waste time, but I don't want us to waste time either. I'd rather be honest and say, no, I'm sorry, but this is not good for any of us, for these reasons and let's hop into the next.
[30:10] Bram: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, in my line of work too, it's something that I speak about a lot with my team and the people that I work with, is pick the right spots to be in and put all your time into that. It's like 20% - at least in our world, - 20% of our partners bring in 80% of the revenue. You really want to focus in and give more of your time to that 20% that are bringing in numbers. It's interesting to hear from your perspective, too, in how you're filtering the people that you work with based on the fit. It's got to be a win-win for both parties. You got to have that synergy to one another. What does your team look like over there at unicorn? In terms of an incubation and helping start-ups, what kind of value do you guys bring to a company? I know you said that it can be different company to company in terms of what you offer, but just as a general overview, as a start-up, if I'm coming to you as a start-up, and I'm saying, I need some help, I need you guys to help me grow this thing, what services and tools and resources do you guys provide to the start-ups?
[31:32] Lucas: Great question. We are a digital marketing agency first and foremost. We do article syndication, SEO, ASO. We currently own more than 5,000 keywords in the Google play app store ranked number one today in 17 different languages. Those are some of the things we can bring to the table pretty quick. I would say that's the first point, like a departure point in anything that we do. Then we bring a mixture of things. For instance, we are hosting the start-up Supercup in here in Sarlat, 1, 2, 3 October. What are we doing? We are bringing investors and start-ups from all over the world to meet each other. It's an event that's specifically designed to make start-ups meet the capital that they need to thrive.
Everything will happen in a concentrated area. People will have meetings between each others that they can set up in advance to actually find that potential lead that they need. We are changing a bit the ratio that everyone does at these kind of events, we are having eight investors for each start-up. That means that the chances of actually getting the funds that you need are much higher. Those are some of the things that we bring to the table, to our start-ups. We bring the opportunity to participate in this kind of events. Also, we are very picky about the people that we bring. It comes again to our business model that we pick our clients. The same thing. The investors that are actually coming to the event are not people just like to travel. They are actual investors coming here yes, because they like to meet us.
They liked to meet the region get to know the place, drink some wine eat some cheese. But the main reason that they are coming is that they're here for business. They're here to find their next investment. We always ask for proof of investment in the past 12 months, for instance, that's one of the requisites for being allowed to participate at the event. We're not bringing anyone; we're bringing in actual investors to the game to meet the start-up that they are looking for. Then I'd say, that's the support we bring to the table. One of the things we do best, and we've run lots of campaigns for many different clients in the customer acquisition.
That's another key point that we bring to the table for start-ups. But again, it depends a lot on what stage are they into, but we would like to consider ourselves once you've replied to the first three questions, we become like A to C incubator accelerator. We can take the whole process. For instance, one of our start-ups, we took from scratch like 14 months ago. In the next couple of weeks, that start-up is going to be floating out Canadian stocks and Germany. We took it from scratch into public markets. I would say that's pretty much whole thing. Evaluation's going to be around a hundred times higher in 14 months, nothing to complain about that.
[35:27] Bram: Nothing at all. That's awesome. You pre-select these companies, you have the expertise there to help them grow their customer base, bring in that revenue. Then you guys also host events where you connect them to investors to add more value and capital and funding behind it. Eventually, I guess the goal is to take this thing to the markets and go IPO and make a lot of people very wealthy in the process I bet too. It's a great business.
[36:03] Lucas: It's a very interesting experience also to take a company public. Some people think it's impossible. Well, it's not. But it's certainly not an easy thing, especially if you don't have the support behind you that has done the process a hundred times and we have the people inside the house to get that done for the companies that are actually on that process.
[36:31] Bram: Good stuff. Okay. What does that process look like? I bet there's a lot of regulations and securities and whatnot to go through. At the same time that you're helping these partners of yours grow their business, at the same time, there's actually a business element to it as well that you have to satisfy all of these requirements to go public. What does your team look like in terms of the kind of staff and the kind of expertise that you have in house? It's got to be the entire thing then from at least what I'm trying to understand from this, you guys actually arebuilding these businesses, not just growing the customer base, but you're actually doing a lot of the business work as well.
[37:24] Lucas: Yeah. I mean, it's two sides of the story, I would say. You need to have the internal people that work with you that have done this for a long period of time. We've got those people in. We have two CFOs internally. One that focus on the US Canada markets and UK, and one for the Europe. Also, you need to have the external help, the relationships with the people that have done this already, because you need the brokers, you need everything. You need the contacts with the securities, you need to know the process and how to go through the process. We know that those kinds of guys too, becausewe've worked with them over the past years.
I mean, that's the interesting thing about it. In fact, we are currently listing one of our companies challenger X that you can find at challengerx.io. We are trying to beat the records in terms of speed for listing. We've funded the company; I would say two weeks ago and two or three weeks ago. The, the objective is to be listing in the acquiesce exchange in London and also in Germany in I say eight weeks total, which is pretty insane.
[39:02] Bram: From seed to the listing in eight weeks total. You're such a competitor. I can feel that. That's awesome. Yeah, that's the idea. That's one of the, I would say the biggest projects we have right now. Challenger X is taking sports and clubs to a whole different level. We usually try to test things first, do the things internally, before we actually tell someone else to do it. It comes back to the same business model. That's why we ask for a proof of concept, whenever we decide to work with the client. That's why, whatever we do, we do it first. We try it and then we put it into work. We believe Sarlat Rugby is our proof of concept.
What we are doing with Challenger X is that we are rebranding clubs, so small clubs, amateur and semi-professional clubs, and take them to a whole different level, make them look and work as professional clubs. If you go to one of the website, you shouldn't be able to notice the difference. This is why we say we are turning David’s into Goliaths. We are turning the small ones into the big ones. This is a process that we've done already, that we've showed that it works through our rugby club. Right now, for instance, we took a social media nine months ago, we had roughly 1,500 followers on Facebook alone.
Now we are over 130k. I mean, that's one of the things we are bringing in, to the table. People told us sponsoring could not be done or could be done just to a certain level that we're reworking all that. We've signed sponsorships all around. We'd like to show other clubs how to do it. We've also signed 62 broadcast agreements all around the world. We currently have on our power, the ability to show the world what we're doing with this broadcast agreements. TV station included. Today we have 90 million household thresholds. We are going to reach out to at least 19 million people through this broadcast TV streaming agreements. That's something we also want to leverage into the thing.
What I like to call the cherry on the top is that today we are in a position that we can mint a token, a social token. It takes us between 10 and 15 minutes to actually mint a token, for any club that we want.
We've done it already with Sarlat Rugby. It's called Sarlat. We have not yet promoted, but we own it. The idea is to provide this tokenization opportunity to the clubs through Challenger X and the beauty about it is that you can actually do whatever you want with it. Being a social token, it allows you to create different groups. Let's say you love one of the players and you like to have a conversation with him. If you own certain amount of tokens, you can actually have a one-on-one meeting with him. You can actually buy a Jersey with a token on our online store, or you can help the team grow, but by sharing Facebook posts, and you can actually earn a token by doing that.
The world is very big in terms of tokenization and the things that you can actually do with them. That's the beauty about it. That's what we like. That's why we think it's a crucial point of Challenger X to have these tokens minted for a specific clubs that participate with us. Also,what we've identified, the problems that we've seen to overcome in every club are the same. We've identified all of them through Sarlat Rugby. We managed to create a know-how, what to do for every club, no matter what sport they're playing, no matter where in the world, they are. The problems are always the same. So, we know how to face them. First and foremost, it's an image branding. It needs to have a complete rework. That was the first thing that we did. We took our logo. We pushed it to the next level. We made something that you can actually identify, your brand. We're not just creating [audio cuts out 44:27] but we are creating a brand.
That's something you need to have in mind. People need to be identified with what you're doing with your brand and wherever you see it, they need to need to know, okay, this is Sarlat Rugby, because that's the connection that you need to bring. We had our merchandise problem. They were only selling jerseys three years old, something you need to fix. You tell the good providers that we bring to the table to the two new clubs for a competitive price. You need to have a product base. We started with zero, was nothing. It's easy to start. We currently have over 20 different products that you can buy. Merchandise that you could actually buy from the club.
There were no selling points of those products before we came in. The only way to buy stuff was at home games, which happens once or twice a month during eight months, nine months. It's very hard. What did we do? We created an online store, an e-store on a website, which is pretty amazing. We encountered over 20 different shops around town that are selling our stuff at their place. Sarlat has a very big market, which is very well known. In fact, we are the seventh most visited town in France with over 2.5 million tourists a year.
We are having a market stand during the summer. Another thing that needs to be done. Things of that sort, you need to put into practice sponsoring before we came in they thought the sponsoring was an ordination. They were going to people and asking for money. They had nothing in return. For me that helps, but that's just a simple donation, which people are free to do, but I'm actually going to offer you a sponsoring agreement where you can get a benefit for sponsoring the club. As you said before, this needs to be a win-win situation where you can actually providevalue both sides. If you are buying a sponsorship with the team, you need to be able to get something in return that at least equals the value.
We always try to give more than that. But that's just us probably our mentality. Yes, this is what you get. We usually try to perform a lot better and give you more. Cause that brings a long-term relationship that you can actually nurture and grow together. All those things fall down into the monetization process. Every small pub has the same problem. How do we monetize? How do we grow our communities? How do we actually benefit from growing those communities? Because at the end of the day, that's what takes you further down the line, because it allows you to have a better stadium, a better infrastructure, a better team, better players.
I mean, it's a circle story where if you get that, then you can actually invest more. You can keep growing, you can keep going up. That's the objective we have. Actually, wewant to go into pro division that second division in France in the next five to seven years.
[48:29] Bram: All with the brand day, the power of the brand. So, you guys come in and you have elements of a design from there as well, that you'll come in and you'll redesign. The business model there. I like it. I think that's really smart. You guys figured it out. Sarlat is your social proof that you can show the results to all the other clubs that you're approaching.
[48:58] Lucas: Yes. In fact, what happened is quite the opposite. We didn't do any outreach and the clubs are contacting us. How did you do this? How can we do it too? That's where Challenger X comes in handy. Equity deals I guess, with these clubs, or are they paying you guys for your services? We are doing a very small fee for the SAS model. Then all the rest is, could call it affiliates, but it's not, it's like commissions. If we provide X amount in value, we get a percentage of what we do, which becomes very interesting because teams have nothing to lose. Their investment is very small, but their potential gains are so big that why would someone say no to such potential deal?
In our case, it also makes us invest ourselves a lot more because we depend on the results that we bring to the table. In every relationship that's always beneficial because you don't just expect me to be working with you, but I need to work side-by-side with you for us both to succeed at the same time.
[50:24] Bram: Mutually beneficial relationships. It's, win-win, it's always gotta be win situation. There's a lot of depth there then behind the scenes, like you guys have got the entire infrastructure figured out. That's the offering I guess really is you're bringing in that infrastructure and that expertise. You're putting gasoline on these things to help these companies, these start-ups, per se, to accelerate their own growth and bring in more revenue to them. Wow. That's interesting. I like that. You mentioned that there's tokens as well. You're talking about leveraging blockchain at this point, is that right?
[51:07] Lucas: Exactly. We are currently minting tokens that are correlated to [inaudible 51:13] at the end of the day, they become your money. The club always owns a piece of the tokens and that's how they will for starters, give their fan base, their community, the added value or becoming, and to be a part supporting their club, which is crucial for success. Giving them benefits and utility on those tokens, because if the token has no utility, then it's that token and it doesn't fulfill the purpose. That's what we are building too for the teams.
Creating these utility and this becomes a means to do something. It's not just a token to own a token. That's why it's different from a security token. It's called a social token. Cause you can actually do stuff. What I love is that you can do whatever you want. Your dream has always been to do the kickoff of a game. Well, own certain amount of tokens and participate on a raffle to become the next kickoff person invited fully paid by a Sarlat. That's something you can do.
[52:53] Bram: It's so creative. I like that. The utility of it. I think I'm starting to make those connections in my mind there. It's interesting. It's a very great business model. Yeah. I've got one additional question that I wanted to ask you in terms of about leadership being a player and essentially coming in now being a team leader, you're essentially now a coach, so a player in the sports world and then a coach in the business world. What are some of the parallels and what have you learned as being a player and how has that influenced your leadership style, and what are the similarities in terms of a high performing sports team versus a high-performing business team?
[53:48] Lucas: Well, I think the connection is right there. I would say in my eyes it's obvious, but I do like the question. In terms of leadership. I've always liked to be, I would say have one focus in mind is motivation. I think, motivated people to extra work outperform. There's a couple of different things that I usually try to achieve when I'm thinking about that. One of them would be creating a good atmosphere, working atmosphere. I'd like people to be happy, come to work, which is usually not the case, sad but true. If you manage to have a nice time when you are working, you would probably invest yourself a lot more into the job would outperform.
You will do more than required, if you are just there because you need to be, you would probably do only the basic, you will never do extra. I think I've learned that through rugby too, when you actually feel part of a team,you're willing to do more for that team. That's what we also create internally. We create different teams for different projects that they work together. Even the sales teams inside our house, it works team. It's not just each of them separately, but we actually work as team. I think that's very important into creating a work ethics and a team spirit that can actually take you further down the line. To being more efficient. But also, I do firm believer that there's always people that are more capable than me for instance, into specific tasks.
I'd rather have those people doing them instead of me, cause they'll do the much better, but you need to be able to identify and you need to be able to accept that there are people that outperform you, at least in a specific task, you need to be able to say, hey, this is where you are much better than anyone else take care of this. That brings the team to a whole new different level. Also, you mentioned the connection to sports and whatnot. Again, when it comes to motivation, I always speak about leadership through example. I think it's one of the stronger sources of motivation and of leadership. I can see that the connection to a rugby game, I would say all blacks are very, very strong in this. They are the best team in the world past 10 to 15 years. But one of the things I love about them is that maybe they're having a game, which is quite monotonous. They're not doing well. There's always 1, 2, 3, guys that start doing something. But they're not telling the people around them, they are doing it. One of them does a positive tackle, smashes someone in front of them and the whole team starts to get excited.
This guy has just saved us from that action with a 40-meter run. I need to be doing the same as him. I need to be investing myself at least to that level. That tends to put the line up and incrementally, push the line further and gets the momentum. I usually call it the snowball effect. It keeps turning and it keeps adding more people and then unstoppable.
[58:20] Bram: Okay, and just a follow up question there. When you have momentum and synergy going and you're integrating new people into that team, how do you get them, like, when you're merging on a highway and you have that lane where you have to catch up to speed and then merge and you're running at the same speed at that point, how do you with a high-performing team, which it sounds like, based on your style and your background, it seems like you run a high performing team. How do you integrate new people and get them on that same level?
[58:56] Lucas: Usually we just throw them to the wolves, but not because we are mean, but I do think that you learn a lot by just being there, by experience. Also, because I put you inside a team that's performing at a certain level. Of course, I don't expect you to be performing at that level at the beginning, but you yourself are going to be looking at the people around you. Oh, this dude is doing a hundred. This dude is doing 110. I'm at 50. I need to be doing much more to get to that level. I mean, fear steps in but also this winning mentality that I always look for, if it was me, I would say to myself, he's doing 100 I need to do 150. I need to get there. If I don't just push you in there, it's going to take a lot more time. Why not? I mean, I'm pushing you in there, but I'm also supporting you, giving you the tools to do it and not just, hey this is said to it no I'm actually giving you the tools explaining hundred times if I need to, but supporting you in that sense.
But yeah, I usually try to do just that. Because I do think competition helps you overcome difficulties.
[1:00:48] Bram: Absolutely. Yeah. being a rugby player, you can identify that in other people. Then your kind of just coach to that and provide to that, to build people up. Like you said earlier, it seems like you're very self-aware. You know the strengths and weaknesses of others and how they can, compliment and help the project then overall bring value to the team. Always team first before the individual, for success. Awesome. Well, Lucas, I mean, again, I don't want to keep you too long. I love talking to athletes. I love talking to competitors. I love talking to business people, because you see the world differently, being an athlete and being a competitor.
I love that. I really appreciate your time, Lucas. If anybody is out there listening and they want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to contact you?
[1:01:40] Lucas: I would say the best way is through LinkedIn. just Lucas Caneda. Drop me a message. I'll be happy to reply. In any case Bram, thank you for this opportunity the pleasure was mine having this conversation with you and with your audience, complete pleasure being here. Thank you.
[1:02:04] Bram: Thank you so much, Lucas. This was episode number seven of the rise above podcast. Be sure to subscribe, share this with a friend who you think it may benefit. For anybody wanting to connect there with Lucas, check Lucas out on LinkedIn. Feel free to send him a message until next time, have yourselves a great day.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the rise above podcast. Make sure to subscribe for future episodes, leave a review and share with a friend who would love to hear this episode. This was the rise above podcast.
Innovation Leader, Speaker, Author, Founder & Managing Director of an Innovation Consulting Agency Ally Muller joins Bram Bains on this episode of The Rise Above Podcast. Ally talks about modern day Innovation in 2021, shares some stories that illustrate a modern day approach to Innovation, and speaks about her book - Corporate Innervation: Unlocking the Genius Inside Your Organization.
Follow us on Instagram @TheRiseAbovePodcast
Update June 15 2021:
I just received my copy of Ally’s book in the mail and I realize that I mistakenly referred to the book as Corporate Innervention in the Podcast...Sometimes I write too fast and I can’t read my own writing.
The correct title of the book is Corporate Innervation: Unlocking the Genius Inside Your Organization.
Just wanted to take a moment to put up the link for anybody interested in purchasing the book and taking a deeper dive into Ally’s work and theory surrounding Innovation in the Corporate space!
Link to purchase book:
https://www.amazon.ca/Corporate-Innervation-Unlocking-genius-organisation/dp/1922391042/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Corporate+innervation&qid=1623763261&sr=8-1
Follow us on Instagram @TheRiseAbovePodcast for bonus content - Be sure to pay it forward and share it with a friend!
Interview Transcript
[00:36] Bram: Welcome everybody to episode number six of the rise above podcast. Today I've got a very special guest Ally Mueller. Ally is an innovation leader. Ally is a speaker. Ally is the author of corporate intervention, unlocking the genius inside your organization. Ally is the founder and managing director of Goya Consulting. Ally, how are you doing today?
[00:59] Ally: Good, thank you. Thank you for having me on.
[01:02] Bram: You're very welcome. Thank you for agreeing to do this. We're definitely getting into a few fun things here today to get the ball rolling. I do have some icebreakers here for you. The floor is all yours. Feel free if you want to answer a short, simple, or if you want to elaborate on anything, it's all yours. What is your favorite movie?
[01:24] Ally: Well, it's a tough one cause I'm a bit of a cinephile. but my favorite movie is actually Casablanca and I know a lot of people love that, but I actually thinkthat's a perfectly written and executed story. That's why it's my favorite.
[01:41] Bram: Classics. Awesome. Okay. Aside from your own, what is your favorite book?
[01:47] Ally: My favorite book, well, I love reading novels, so I really love the book Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. That's something I read when I was in high school and something I reread quite regularly. I really love it.
[02:01] Bram: Awesome. Okay. What is your favorite place to travel?
[02:06] Ally: I really love France. I've been there probably about 22 times. I think it is. I am looking forward to this post COVID world, so I can get back there and do a bit more travel. I just love traveling through the countryside and speaking the language and eating the foods. All those beautiful things.
[02:27] Bram: Who are some of your mentors or influences?
[02:31] Ally: Some of my mentors and influences, I've got some people that I worked with in Australia, some personal mentors, and things like that. They've certainly helped me on my journey. In terms of looking for a wide audience, I'm always looking to many different people and many different things. I don't like to narrow it down into just one set of people. I really love the work of Simon Sinek. I think that is really great, but it's really only one aspect. I like to couple that up with the work of people like Renee Brown and what they've done in that space.
Then if we think about, what people like Michael Porter have done at Harvard University and how they've brought management theory to life in a whole different way and giving it a really strategic perspective. I like to look at all the different pieces of work that people have done and put it together like that. I don't really get into people that are probably a connaissance, so much in the business world. I think we can get away from that a little bit. I think I'm just a bit more grounded in the theory of what people doing. That's what I like to read about.
[03:51] Bram: Are you a morning person or a night person?
[03:57] Ally: Both actually, it sounds to like, I get up really early. I love to get up really early and I love to exercise and, fuel my day with some coffee. I'm a huge coffee fan. Then, I love to work really hard all day. Then, after I've done the family thing and all that type of stuff, I'm still up at night. I'm either, thinking about something or I'm reading a novel because that's my time to read something that's non business related. I suppose I'm doing a bit of both. Burning the candle at both ends, which probably isn't a great thing for an entrepreneur, but that's me.
[04:28] Bram: What is your favorite type of food?
[04:30] Ally: My favorite type of food. Depends on the day, I really like either some really authentic Mexican with some good quality tequila or some Japanese, depending on that. That's probably my two go-tos.
[04:52] Bram: Nice. Okay. What is the most out of character thing that you've ever done?
[05:00] Ally: Well, that's a really hard question. I don't really know, actually. I've done lots of different things in my life. I've done everything from music, dancing, snowboarding to everything. I'm not sure what would be out of character for me. I'll give anything a go. That's probably me.
[05:17] Bram: Awesome. Okay. If you could be immortal, what age would you stop aging and why?
[05:23] Ally: I think I would stop aging at about 40. When I turned 40, which is not that long ago. I'm not too old yet. Because I feel like that's when I started to really embody who I am as a woman and all the wisdom that I developed over time and really started to feel comfortable in who I am. That would probably be the time to stop aging right there.
[05:48] Bram: If you could go back to being 10 years old with all the knowledge you have now, or if you could skip ahead to the year 2030 with $20 million, what would you do and why?
[06:04] Ally: I think I'd go back to the little ten-year-old girl. Money can be earned, but wisdom can be relearned in different ways. I'd go back to the 10-year-old girl. I'd tell her not to stop writing. She stopped writing for a period of time and thought she needed to be something else. I think I'd go back to my 10-year-old self and tell her to keep up with her creative writing.
[06:26] Bram: Nice. Okay. If you could travel anywhere in the world or if you could visit the moon, which one would you choose?
[06:35] Ally: I think I'd see the world.
[06:38] Bram: Awesome. Okay. Some really goodanswers in there. Some gems I think we might touch on a little bit later. Thank you for going through that exercise. I'd love to hear your story Ally. I know you're the founder there of Goya Consulting. You're in the innovation space. Can you share your path that led you to start this company?
[07:03] Ally: Sure, absolutely. It's a bit of a way with journey actually. Might need a cup of coffee for this one. It's a bit long. But the reality is, I have done many different things over the course of my career, and I think that that's what led me to be really good at what we do and starting a business that helps large organizations innovate. The core purpose of Goya Consulting is we help large organizations and leadership teams build innovation ecosystems so that they can take their ideas from Genesis into something that creates bottom line value.
This isn't just about the whole ideation thinking process. This is about everything along the journey. We build a whole systemize and process flow for them but getting there is a really interesting journey because I come via way of, I started my career in politics. I started in a graduate program working for a politician who was the leader of the house in Australia and working in an advisory model in that space. Which is really different, which took me to London, which I worked for a minister in the house of Lords in London doing quite a similar thing.
That entailed lots of research, lots of advice, lots of politics which is very different. Just by chance, and by luck, I was offered an opportunity to work on really large infrastructure projects. What would it look like to lead a team of people in a world first project? I was like, why would they want me to do that? You know, why would I not do that? But also, I was all of 23. I had older bravado in the world, and I thought, sure, why not? I'll give this a go. I had the mindset of there's nothing I'm not willing to learn. There's nothing I'm not willing to research, have a go at ask. I went from there into being an infrastructure, public private partnership, finance expert.
From there, I went into investment banking. From there I came back to Australia, and I was working in the banks over here. I was doing corporate structured finance. Then from there I went into mergers and acquisitions. I got an opportunity for someone to say to me, would you come and work on a startup with me? It was at that point that I was really tired of what I was doing. I felt that it was a little soulless. Sure, you can earn a great way and lots of money, but that wasn't enough for me. I want a full life with everything that goes along with that. I was given the opportunity to do something that I was really passionateabout, which is around sustainability.
We started up a sustainability startup, which was focused on how we were accessing government funding and grant money that couldn't be used in other ways and what we were doing to leverage that in the commercial market, to create solar opportunities and sustainable energy ventures in ways that we weren't able to do before. I really loved that and I thought that was fascinating and fun. Then I took a break and had a family and realized that I couldn't really go back to that in the way that I was previously doing, because I wanted to make sure I'm here for my daughter and I'm doing lots of things with her.
I wanted to rebalance my time. I got an opportunity for one of the companies that I previously worked at one of the major banks and they said, what would it look like for you to come back and build some of your models for us? SureI can do that. I can help you spend your money. That's really what it was about. We've got a really large bucket of money, but we've got a desire to do projects that's double the amount that's in that bucket. How are we going to build, decide, prioritize, and ensure that we hit our targets.
I started to build some structural organizational models for them and some processes. Then that got me on my own startup journey. I did a couple more startups and sold them. Some did really, really well. Some we just sort of got to even, and some didn't fit [inaudible 11:35 not so bad. Then at that point I decided that I could never go back and be an employee ever again. I'm an entrepreneur through and through. I want to do lots of different things. Then I started a business that I had before this one, which was around venture capital investments process around that. That was really fun, really enjoyed that. But venture capital in itself can also be a little soulless. It's also a little unforgiving from time to time and it wasn't giving me what I wanted basically from a soul perspective.
Then I realized that where my true genius is, I do believe everybody has a genius and it's how we tap into it and find it, is that part of my genius is how do I help organizations do this in a particular way so that they can achieve the same results that we were and therefore unlock the genius that's already sitting inside their organizations. So that they can build innovation ecosystems that actually makesense that make money. They stopped looking to different outside replication style sources because it's never a shortage of ideas. You've already got the genius inside. It's how we bring it to life. How we make it happen and how we create the right processes to make sure it truly works inside the organization.
I can talk with them about that because there's totally different rules for innovation. It's how we teach organizations that. That's my long-winded journey on why I started Goya Consulting, why it makes me so happy. It makes me soul happy. If that makes sense, because I spend my day helping other people find their genius and I spend my days showing innovation leaders how to do that for the people that they're leading inside their organization. I don't think there's anything better than that for me.
[13:37] Bram: Wow. I love it. That's a great story. I mean, I think you've got all kinds of amazing background that led you towards this path, which is great. I can see this smile in your face when you speak about it. It's definitely something you're passionate about. I can feel that energy and I think that's amazing. What does the process look like? Like getting a little tactical here for a moment. When you're entering into an organization you've been hired to come in and help them set up this framework, what does your process look like? What do you try to establish first in terms of a framework before you can start tapping in and mining some of those ideas?
Well, we've actually built something. We've got two things actually. We've built the theoretical strategic framework, which we call the corporate innovation operating system. We've also built software to match that. Because there's an understanding that we need those two flows. Part of what we do from a strategic and framework perspective is we need to align the organization on what innovation truly is. Part of the first step is having that mission knowledge inside the organization, the leaders, the people, the board, the CEO, everybody, which is around what actually isinnovation, and what innovation is not.
Then what is the mission that we're here to do. The purpose that we're here to deliver on, as part of this organization. And what are we willing to work through to make that happen? Because one of the things that we need to do first and foremost is we actually need to debunk a lot of those myths. Which is that, we can just replicate something and call that innovation, or we can buy new technology systems and call that innovation.
Or we can say that we're doing digital transformation and working from home and calling that innovation, but let's be clear, none of that is innovation. Somebody else already created that. We are implementing amazing ideas, technologies, and solutions in our businesses to become more efficient, to become better at what we do or to become more connected, whatever the case may be. When we do that and we call it innovation, what we do is we do a couple of things. First and foremost, we turn off the people inside the organization. They say, these guys aren't really interested in innovation.
They're just going to tick the box because it's a trendy fun word, and I also say it's a bit of a buzzword that we almost need to stop using because it's almost become one of those foul four little words that don't mean anything anymore. Then secondly, we're not really understanding what we're doing if we say that. Like, what do we really want out of this? That becomes a bit of a challenge for people, because then they don't know how to deliver their ideas then. Then thirdly, we create a combination of things. We create learned helplessness inside the organization, by saying, if I buy that new thing, I can be innovative.
Or we create laziness in our thinking. We don't have to create. We don't have to think outside, all the different challenges. We don't have to dig into our core customer problems and work out how to fix them if we can buy it off the shelf from somewhere else. We try and get rid of that process and build a new thinking process around culture around that.
Part of that is doing what we call getting rid of innovation theater. Anything that's not truly contributing to innovation really has to go. You kind of have to put that in the bin and think about how we're going to reinvigorate that. Then what we also need to do is once we've done that is we need to get the leadership and the business systems online to say innovation plays by different rules. You can't expect an innovation idea to operate in the same business model, prioritization, budget framework, strategic thinking model that you do for every other piece of work that you do.
It is not business as usual. It is not fully formed and thought out, and we don't know exactly what's going to happen yet. We don't know how much it's going to cost. We definitely don't know what the benefits might look like as yet. We need to build a separate operating model inside the organization to do that, to make sure that the ideas that we want to do from a strategic perspective are flowing, and the innovation ideas that we need to do from the other areas are also flowing. And we're testing out what's going to actually make sense for the organization.
Because if we try and mash it together, we're going to start comparing apples and cows. Those cows, which are the innovations are never going to stand up. They're never going to get budget. They're never going to get resources and they're never going to get the time that they need and deserve to see if they might actually work. That's part of what we do to start the process. Then that whole innovation what would I call it? Critical innovation flow throughout corporate innovation operating system is quite a large piece of work, but it creates a whole new methodology inside the organization that sets it up for huge amounts of success.
[19:09] Bram: Nice. Okay. I take it that your political background comes in very handy here with all the different stakeholders as you're trying to set something new up.
[19:19] Ally: Sometimes. But I wouldn't say I'm very good at that. Quite interestingly enough, I don't really like to play that game. I'm really just a straight shooter. I will say exactly what it is. I'm not looking to do anything other than how do we actually get the best out of this? How do we do this to say, if we do this, these are the benefits, but I think the finance mathematical brain in me that sits in there really well, it's like, what happens if we don't do it? What is the cost of not doing this? I have stories and examples of what is the cost of not doing this. What I tend to do is talk to the boards and leadership teams, and I tell them the real-life examples. I'll give you one right now of an organization that I worked with. They were a very large infrastructure organization.
Obviously, that entails that they have heavy amounts of compliance that they need to work with. They're working with regulatory bodies and plants. Most people say ah, boring. That's not very exciting. You know, these are the things that we need to do. There was a team of compliance experts inside that organization that were quite frustrated with the way that they needed to work at that point. It wasn't very efficient. They came up with a number of different ways that they believed that they could do it better that it would be more efficient, and they would get much better outcomes for the organization.
They put business case forward year after year, they wrote business models. They did some financial modeling. They did some cost assessments. They couldn't get it up in the budget process year on year. It's just one of those things. In their mind it was not as sexy, not as fun as some other projects. They decided to do something about it. They knew they really had an idea. They took a punt, and they left the organization. They pull their funds; they hired a series of really savvy tech developers. They built software as a service compliance model program that they ended up selling back as a subscriber to that organization. They really created something. The best part of that was, they actually then became the world standard of what needs to happen in this particular infrastructure industry around the world.
They became the gold standard. I always say to people, what happens, what would have happened if you'd have kept those people inside the organization? Sure. You know, like you, might've had a software product. You may have chosen to license that to others or you may not. But you have had a significant amount of IP on your book, and you would have kept those brains inside the organization. That's something that's now lost forever. Good on them for following their dreams, but what did the organization lose by not listening? And that's what we try and teach them all the time.
[22:24] Bram: It's a great example. Through your experience and all of the different organizations that you've worked with, what is that gap there between the employees with the ideas and the decision makers that they're not communicating the same way, or they're not understanding what the idea is? Is there anything specific that maybe you can highlight for A organizations in the future, not to miss those opportunities or B for those employees with the ideas, to be able to communicate them more effectively and to the right people.
[23:00] Ally: There are some really significant gaps. These are things that we see all the time. They can come up in a number of different ways. One of the ways that we see this idea gap happen is that a lot of organizations are onto this now. They believe in innovation. They see it as part of their core value for delivering on their future mission. They have portals, receptacles, whatever you want to call it, to gather innovation ideas.
The challenge is that it's decided by quite often, one person. There's usually one innovation lead, one innovation manager. That singular perspective can be a really significant problem because there's always going to be a bias in our individual's brains. Quite often the other really large gap is organizations haven't hired the right person to be the innovation manager. This is quite a controversial conversation that we have with organizations a lot.
we step into organizations and they say, I've got this entrepreneur, I've got this tech person or whatever. It is a really startup type of mentality person to be an innovation lead. But that's actually the wrong type of person that you need in that role. I've got a whole chapter dedicated to who an innovation leader should actually be. We need to think of them as the coach, the lead, the guide, the mentor. Not necessarily the decision maker, because what we're trying to do is we need to think of all the people inside our organization who have all these beautiful genius ideas.
We kind of need to treat them like athletes. The innovation leader is like a coach. The coach isn't running on to the track in the Olympic games. The coach is standing on the sidelines because it's shown them how to compete, how to train, how to manage their diet, how to do everything in that place, so that when they get on there, that they can perform to that elite level. That's what we need to be doing at that point. The other problem that we see in the massive ideas gap is that organizations want innovation. They have an innovation leader, and one of the problems that innovation leaders, general managers, whatever, when they come and speak to me, they say, I've been given this amazing role, and I'm going to do innovation. I'm going to do all these wonderful things. I've got zero budget. What can you do with zero budget?
You can't really turn these ideas into anything. You're trying to create something from nothing. You're borrowing time from people, resources and other areas of the business to try and turn an idea into something. Quite often, it's really hard to do, and therefore it fails. Then what happens is people say, oh, nothing's going to happen. I'm not going to give you my idea, because what are you going to do with it? Nothing's going to happen with it. We have those really significant gaps. There are more, and I could probably talk all day. But they're the two major ones in really large organizations at the moment.
[26:13] Bram: Well, that's a great answer. I like that the athletes and the coach concept. Can we just rewind a little bit? I wanted to ask you to define innovation. I know you kind of touched on what it is not, what would you define as modern day innovation in 2021.
[26:33] Ally: Modern day innovation from an organizational corporate perspective is something new that creates value. What I like to do is add on to that, and it creates value for a customer, not forgetting that a customer can be an internal customer or an external customer. Why I like to add that in is because quite often, when we look to innovation, we're so busy trying to do something from an external perspective. We forget that our internal customers are just as important as our external customers, because if we can help the business do everything it needs to do internally better. Then we in effect help those people that service those external customers better and more efficiently. I know you said you are working in insurance and it's exactly that. If we can clean up all of our backend, that allows all the claims management, the money management and everything that goes along from that perspective, to give a better experience to the customer.
Ideally what we need to do is not only think of new ideas for customers to make it better for them but give them a seamless process in the background. I like to think about innovation as new things that add value. I say new things because efficient things should be put into business efficiency and different things. That's how we separate those things. We think we need to do both, but new is new and making it streamlined and more efficient because we're adopting different processes or new technologies is business efficiency. Because they are two different things and two different ways of thinking.
[28:23] Bram: What role should senior executives play in innovation?
[28:29] Ally: I like to see this as what I call it top down, bottom up. Senior executives need to play a role of a visionary vision offices in the innovation space. Point us in the direction that we need to go give us our strategic objectives and show us where the long-term future in your mind of this organization is. Then where necessary take a step back, because the ideas are going to be coming from the bottom up. Those senior executives need to take on those coach guidance mentoring roles, as well.
As opposed to the owners of the ideas. They need to support guide and when necessary provide the guard rails to make sure we're operating in the strategic objective, because we need the ideas to come from the bottom up. Because they're the people that are doing the work every day. They see our customers every day. They're doing the workaround on the problems, the challenges, and the issues that we've already got. Because they see our customer internal and external every day, they can see the future of where something could go.
How do we tap into their genius and their thinking? That's the role of the senior people, is to give them the opportunity, the space, the guidance, the time, the processes, to allow them to test their genius in that space.
[30:02] Bram: From the bottom up, the frontline where all the gold is laying, waiting to be mined. What are some strategies around getting those employees to engage and getting people involved and starting to get the conversations going? Starting from zero? How do you get the ball rolling? Do you have any do you have any strategies and pipelines that you create?
[30:26] Ally: Yeah, that's actually something that we do a lot of. We do create those strategies and pipelines. To be honest, we come into organizations where these people are a bit jaded. They're like, oh, we've heard this before. You're not going to do anything with my idea are you? These are things I hear every day. One of the things that we have to do is get them used to putting them into a separate type of innovation process. This is not like giving it to our team leader or a manager anymore. We're putting it into an investment process. That's how I view it in innovation investment process, which is how it's being assessed in a completely different way than they've ever had before. If someone has provided an idea into that, I want to bring them into the process.
If we can, and if we can support that process, we either bring them into an incubation team to help deliver on that idea or we help them become the subject matter expert for collaboration of information, depending on how we need to operate in that space. I never let them go from the idea. Once they've given us an idea, they're with me on the whole journey, and that creates a different culture. It shows that they've added value and it gives them a little bit of satisfaction. They can see that, hey, something really happened with this idea. This wasn't just something that somebody took away and took some credit for.
They become part of that holistic team that is delivering value back to the organization. It's also knowing that it's never one person that brings an idea to life. It is a huge number of people. It's how we bring them into an entire team to create value. Then we give credit and recognition and rewards to that team in that space. It takes time. It's not something that happens straight away. You know, we do have those cynical behaviors to get past because they [inaudible 32:24] heard it before. No one's going to be thinking, this is just going to be the golden ticket to innovation. But it's how we work through that slowly and change that culture. It does take time.
[32:39] Bram: Yeah, that's true. I mean, changing a culture that can definitely take quite some time. It's a very long process, perhaps at least to get the ball rolling. Then once some of those successes start happening, I think people start to really change their mindset and get more active and involved. That makes sense. A couple of key things you said there. You mentioned throughout the conversation about finding genius, what does that look like in terms of finding individual genius?
[33:11] Ally: Well, for me, it's about knowing that you never know where the ideas might come from, and everybody's got a little bit of something inside them and an idea it's just whether they're ready to talk about it at that point. How do we then work with them to show them that they are actually capable of going through a full process and an innovation process to enact that? We've got all the tools, the thinking processes. We've got everything. We've got massive toolkits of how we work with organizations, but it's taking that to an individual level and showing that just because they had an idea that doesn't mean they need to leave it there.
They can actually do something with it. The other side to the genius is that quite often people think of ideas in alternate areas of the organization, from where they work. Somebody who's in claims might think of a new idea for a sales management software solution, or something like that. We've had all sorts of different things come together with us, and especially in the banking and finance insurance world, which is something that we work within. It's how we tap into that and bring them together with other people to build collaborative teams and show them how to have some strategic conversations and build up those thinking tools.
Then we can tap into that genius and then we can show them how to run an incubation process and keep them on the journey all the way through. Then they've gone from, oh, I might've just been a claims processor, but for whatever time during the week or the day, I get to build out some thinking over here and we're elevating, creating, and making people have greater skills for the future in what they do. That's what I call tapping into their genius. Because you never know what you might find.
[35:07] Bram: Very true. I like that. Ally, if there's anybody out there listening, they want to get in touch with you. They would like to get some more information. What is the best way to contact you?
[35:22] Ally: Just shoot me an email at ally@goyaconsulting.com.au. Or you can actually pick up a copy of my book, which is called innovation on Amazon. You can read that and then, yeah, shoot me an email. I'll always reply. I'm always interested in hearing what other people have to say. I think we just need to expand this conversation. Please get in touch.
[35:47] Bram: Definitely get in touch with Ally. Pick up a copy of the book again, the name of the book is called corporate intervention, unlocking the genius inside of your organization. Ally, thank you so much for your time. This was episode number six of the rise above podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. Be sure to share it with a friend, share it with somebody that you think it may benefit. Until next time, have a great day.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the rise above podcast. Make sure to subscribe for future episodes, leave a review and share with a friend who would love to hear this episode. This was the rise above podcast.
Fine Artist & Social Activist Natia Lemay joins Bram Bains on this episode of The Rise Above Podcast. Natia talks about deciding to leave the corporate world to pursue her passion for Art; Natia shares her story and the inspiration behind her work - to inspire social change - and describes the influences that shape her work. Natia explains Art Culture by drawing parallels to Hip Hop & the Music Industry.
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Interview Transcript
[00:01] Bram: Warning this episode of the rise above podcast does contain some coarse language. I would strongly advise if you have any children in the room with you to please stop listening and come back later when it's safe to do so hope you guys enjoy. Thank you.
You're now tuned in to the rise above podcast interviews with everyday people that are building a better life as we speak. For those building and business from scratch, climbing the corporate ladder, or simply following their dreams to rise above to the next level.
Welcome everybody to episode number five of the rise above podcast. Today, I'm being joined by a very special guest. A good friend of mine Natia Lemay. Natia is a mother. She's an artist. She's an activist. In the fall, Natia is going to be a student. She'll be attending the Yale Master of Fine Art program. Natia, how are you doing today?
[01:16] Natia: Good. How are you?
[01:17] Bram: Doing great. Thank you for joining me. I really appreciate your time. It's a long weekend here and you've been generous with your time to connect and do this episode. Before we get into some of the questions, I'm going to ask you some icebreakers here, just to kind of get the ball rolling. Don't overthink anything. If you want to give simple answers, or if you want to elaborate on anything, feel free. The floor is yours.
[01:42] Natia: I will say, I didn't know it was a long weekend until this morning. Thanks for reiterating how stupid I am. I had no clue that Monday was a holiday. I had no idea. I'm like, why is everyone talking about what they're going to do on Monday? Don't people work on Monday? It was a moment. Okay, go ahead. Ice breakers.
[02:05] Bram: All good. What is your favorite book?
[02:09] Natia: My favorite book right now is called the name of the wind. It's like a trilogy, but only two of the three have been written and I've been waiting 10 years for the third one. I've read the first one, like three, four times. It's a fantasy novel, but it's beautifully written. I will say my favorite thing about this book is that the main character as a musician and the way the author writes about music, it's like, you can hear the music while reading the book. It's like the most bizarre thing ever, but you can feel the emotion of the music while you're reading it. That's why I love that book, man. Depends on the decade, but I read a lot.
[02:48] Bram: What is your favorite movie?
[02:51] Natia: Oh, the matrix always.
[02:54] Bram: What did you name your first car?
[02:57] Natia: I never named a car. Why is that a thing? I never named a car ever. I remember my best friend's first car. She named it Oreo because she was a white girl in the car was black. She was like a black of the outside and white on the inside. But that was the only time that I've ever met anyone that name their car. Yeah. It's weird.
[03:23] Bram: What would be the title of your autobiography?
[03:26] Natia: Wow. I don't know. That's a hard question. I have no idea. I can't answer that one. I don't know. My parents had a book written about them. It was called the stroll. Maybe it'd be like the stroll 2.0, I don't know. We do not live the same life. I don't think it'd be appropriate to be named after their book, but yeah, no answer.
[03:47] Bram: That's cool. I didn't know that about you, that your parents had a book called the stroll.
[03:53] Natia: I can tell you about it after if you want to know, but yeah continue.
[03:57] Bram: Okay. What would be your super power and why?
[04:02] Natia: I have two answers for this. If I was to choose any superpower in the world and it's just like mine, for the fun of having a superpower, it would be time travel because then you could do all kinds of shit and like predict the future and come back and fix things. I think that would be dope. But if I was to personally based on like my skills have a super power, it'd probably be something along the lines of like, people listening. I could like use my platform and help elevate voices of others and like, be able to say things that people actually take it seriously and make change based on it instead of like how the world is now. Yeah, I think that's relevant.
[04:45] Bram: If you could choose any person from history to be your imaginary friend, who would it be and why?
[04:53] Natia: Oh, Tupac always. First off it'd be hilarious to walk around with tupac on my shoulder all the time. Yeah, he's a poet. He's an intellect. He made music 20 years ago that still is super relevant and important today. That just says so much about the character of a person. He's a revolutionary who was way ahead of his time I think. It would definitely be him a hundred percent.
[05:21] Bram: If you could instantly become an expert at something, what would it be and why?
[05:27] Natia: Coding? Yeah. Cause it seems like a good skill. There's a few are projects that I've worked on that I thought would translate really cool to tech. I tried really hard to code the shit. It was a complete and utter failure. Very disappointing. If I could learn any skill it would be coding Yeah. I don't know how to code.
[05:50] Bram: What was your favorite school subject and what was your least favorite school subject?
[05:56] Natia: Least favorite school subject had to do with writing or reading. In school, I hated reading. I don't think I've read a whole book from cover to cover till I was like 25 and now I read like 25 to 30 a year, but my favorite subject was art. Outside of art, it was biology. I liked dissecting things.
[06:19] Bram: Would you rather explore outer space or the bottom of the ocean?
[06:27] Natia: I've never swam in the ocean. Like I've gone to the ocean and I'm like, I'm not going in there. I would rather go to space. The ocean scares me. I don't know what it is. The fact that we're not looking at the ocean tells me that there's something down there that they don't want us to know about. I'm definitely going to outer space. At least you can see long distances, you know what's coming for you. The ocean you can see in front of you. You have no idea what's creeping up behind you. That's freaky.
[06:54] Bram: Okay. Would you rather have $10 million or access to infinite knowledge?
[07:01] Natia: Oh, infinite knowledge. Money doesn't motivate me at all. With knowledge comes everything else.
[07:11] Bram: Nice. Okay. All right. That's the icebreakers. There's a couple of things in there that you mentioned that we'll kind of touch on through the rest of this conversation. Cause there's some interesting answers in there, which I want to pick your brain a little bit further, but before we get into that. I'll tell about how we met each other and then share your story. I mean, we first met, I think it was like at this point going on like nine or 10 years ago. Might be longer than that. It was at grey power insurance brokerage. I was in a training class. You were one of the mentors in there. One of the sales mentors. Essentially, you taught me how to sell insurance.
Then as our careers kind of progressed, we both went different ways, but we always kind of kept orbiting around each other. I think there's three separate occasions after that where our careers intersected again. We just kind of stayed in touch throughout, which as a sidebar illustrates the importance of relationships for all the youngsters out there listening to this. Relationships are key in the corporate world. I'll just say that. But yeah, you taught me how to sell insurance and you actually got me into the high net worth space a few years later, which is where I'm currently at.
At that point I was entering a position and you had already left the position and you decided to quit your job altogether and go into art school full time, which I thought was really, really interesting and admirable. We've talked about this many times offline as well and getting into that story, I'd love to hear about it from your perspective.
[08:51] Natia: Yeah. I think a lot of people know, like what you've explained, that's usually how I explain it to people. I was in the corporate world for a long time. I just found that there was just so many things that I disagreed with personally on like a value and morals basis. I grew up really poor. Like I grew up in the hood. Both my parents were drug addicts and drug dealers and like I've done all kinds of things to survive over the years. Had a kid at 19. Was on my own and trying to navigate life as best as possible. My life was really always about survival.
Every choice I made was out of necessity instead of wants or what I thought would actually fulfill me as an individual person. When I got into the corporate world, it's like you grow up in this world thinking that you need to be successful. You need to have, house with white picket fence and 2.5 children and like a corporate job that you put a suit on every day and go to work, you sit at your desk. That was my idea of success when I was in my early twenties. When I rose up the ladder, when we first met and all the other places that our paths have crossed, I was really locked into that very like Western idea of success, but it wasn't satisfying. Insurance is a very money centered industry, right. It's all about connections is all about who you know. It's all about how you present yourself, how good you are at making people feel comfortable with you and building reputations to create a client base. It just becomes a constant circle.
But for me, I thought it was authentically not who I was. I couldn't see. I just had a problem watching millionaires bitch about a thousand dollars on an insurance premium or cry about their 21 Lamborghinis and how much they were paying for them. I'm like, there are starving people out there. Like I grew up starving and you're crying about Lamborghini. Like it just to me was just like, I couldn't, I just couldn't deal with it anymore. I always painted. My dad was an artist who was a stone sculptor. My grandfather used to build model ships. My brother is tattoo artist. Like my family there's always been that creative gene, but it was never something that I saw as a way to become, like, to make a business off or a career out of until I got to that point where I'm like, I'm not going to live for survival and more. I'm not going to do what society tells me is the appropriate thing for me to do because that's the world that we're living in. I'm going to do something that fulfills me in inside and out and create income off of that and create a life off of that.
I just had enough one day. I was working and I'm like, I can't do this anymore. I'm applying to art school. I don't know if I'll get in. Now, mind you, like, I barely graduated high school. I had a baby really young, so my life was already filled with all this stuff. Then I got the acceptance letter into OCAD. I quit my job instantly. As soon as I got it. I'm like, here's my notice. I gave them six months notice. I close all my accounts because I had a lot of them and transferred them all over to the new person and walked away and haven't looked back since. Best decision I ever made.
[12:14] Bram: Nice. I mean, you're definitely on a different trajectory altogether now. I mean, the success that you've achieved after that has been amazing. Would you call that the moment where it was red pill or blue pill?
[12:28] Natia: That's the matrix moment. It's like, do I keep going down this path and stay within the matrix or do I see how far the rabbit hole really goes? That's what it was. Like going into art is like, we're conditioned to think that creatives and whether that be music painting, it doesn't matter what kind of creative industry that it's almost impossible to be successful off of it. Like they tell us like, oh, you're going to die a starving artist. Like that's the saying of starving artists. If you have a business mindset, if you already have that foundation of understanding how important networking connection building is and making yourself be the first person that people think of.
Like, that was always my strategy. Even when I worked in insurance, it's like, I'm gonna make sure that my people hear me. They hear my voice. The next time an opportunity comes up, they're like, Natia would be good for that. I carried that right over into art and that's why I've been able to be successful is because when opportunities, when shows come up, when curation office movies come up I'm the one a lot of people think of. But yeah, it was definitely the red pill, blue pill moment where I was just like, I can't. I'm like, I can't do this. We're going to see what this other one does. I have no idea where it's going, but it's not where I am because this does not feel right.
[13:52] Bram: Nice. Okay. Did you wanted to go into our school or was that based on your history at that time and being around arts? Were you actually practicing art as well yourself? Or were there any other options for you or was it always going to be art?
[14:06] Natia: That's a good question. There were always other options. Again, the other options that most of us kids have though, I'm going to be a doctor and I want to do be a lawyer, like all these very mainstream safe choices. But I made the choice for art because throughout all of my life whenever shit was going down and like things were bad and things were hard, art was like a form of therapy for me. I would find paints like when I was, when I had my daughter and we were living like in the middle of nowhere, in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, when I first moved to Toronto with like a suitcase and a purse, that's all I came with, my kid. I would find buckets of paint and like little jars of Dollarama, paint in dumpsters.
I'd like go around dumpsters and find old backs of panels from dressers, the wood panels and dressers. I just take them inside and I just paint on them. Not that I expected anyone to ever see them. It was never a point of having people see them. It was more of like the meditative act of putting the brush and the paint on the structure and that's all it was. I never saw it as a real thing. I saw it as like, this is my relaxing time. I'm just going to relax and paint this canvas and no one will ever see the canvas. I'll throw it out when I'm done, but I'm just going to do it. But I realized that brought me so much joy and safety and it was something that was consistent throughout my life.
It was something that made me feel better. Like it brought me to a place where I just felt at peace. I just threw caution to the wind. I had to put my portfolio together in six months. I had to paint like 10 pieces. There's been six months to apply to OCAD because I threw everything away as I made it. People would ask me for commissions. I do paintings for people as I came up, but it was nothing serious. But yeah. I've always painted. Art is kind of, I don't know, it's in my blood, I guess.
[16:12] Bram: Through the process like when you're painting, where do you draw your inspiration from?
[16:16] Natia: This is one of the most common questions I get because people have no idea how my process works. My process is really unconventional. Like a lot of artists do sketches and studies and they like, draw everything out on a piece of paper first, what they want the painting to look like or make a collage. I don't do any of that. I can't preplan any paintings, like even the one in the background. I can't preplan it. I just, usually I end up reading, I'll read a book, I'll do some, like, I love history. my minor is in sociology. So like human behavior and a study of human behavior. I just like, I read and I find like one sentence that I like find really interesting.
It'll be often based on a quote and then I'll take that quote. It'll just like sit in the back of my mind. I experiment with materials a lot. I collect random objects and like plastic and like plaster and stone and just like really weird things and just fiddle. Like, even today I've been molding new pieces of plastic that I've recycled. I just play with it until all of a sudden like one minute I'm doing something with my hands and the next minute, just like a light goes on and I'm like, that's exactly what I'm going to do. Then when I start painting, I like put up the canvas and I literally just paint a brush and I do a rough shape and then start going.
If I'm working on something thing very specific, - I mostly do figurative artwork, like painting people of color - and I need a pose that I can't make up off the top of my head, I'll just like pose myself and take a photo of myself and use that as reference for like size and like just motion. But yeah, outside of that, it's just like I wing it. I totally wing it. When I do commissions, people send me like six or seven pictures of themselves and I like collage them mentally together to make like a family picture. I'm like, that's what I'm gonna paint. It just pops into my head. I have no idea. It's weird.
[18:11] Bram: No, that's pretty cool. I respect that. It's kind of like part process, but then part freestyle. You kind of balance both of those elements together, and then you create something.
[18:21] Natia: I think it's a lot of intuition too. It's trusting yourself. Like anything, if you're making a decision that's informed and if you believe that you have the skill to be able to do it, then it will be successful. It's as soon as you start doubting yourself, no matter what you're doing, whether it's being in the corporate world or like, playing basketball, right. I played basketball for like 15 years. You start like second guessing things that you're doing, then you start making mistakes. Then you start like questioning your movements where you're supposed to be, where the brush is supposed to be on the canvas. Who you're supposed to talk to. That's when you falter.
You just got to use your intuition, take your feelings, do all those things and just plow through it and stop when you feel like you're done. That's where I mess up things. Sometimes I just keep going. Sometimes I go too far and I'm like, oh, I ruined that. Oh, I can't back it up now. Then I just start over. I do multiple things over and over again. I'll have one painting that I'll start and I'll hate it and I'll just start the whole piece over again. Scrape the canvas and start the whole thing over again multiple times until it looks exactly how I want it to look.
[19:29] Bram: Wow. Interesting. Yeah, that was going to be the next question I was going to ask you, if you're painting and if you can stop and like go from there, if you do something you don't like, or if you have to start all over again.
[19:40] Natia: It depends on how far. Because I paint in oil. Oil takes like weeks to dry, if not months. When I'm paint in oil, like I have more than enough time to erase and start over. When I paint an acrylic or if I'm working on sculpture and stuff, then there is not really that same room for error. You literally got to scrape and start over from scratch.
[20:05] Bram: Okay, cool. Do you listen to music when you're painting?
[20:07] Natia: No.
[20:09] Bram: No? Just silence?
[20:11] Natia: No, I'd go insane. I do really weird shit. I can't listen to music because then I get too picky. Cause like if it's not the right song with the right tempo, cause I love music. Music is life. Like I absolutely love it. It's just the part of who I am. If it's a song that just doesn't like, if it's too lyrical, then I'll be listening to the words instead of focusing on the painting. I can't listen to podcasts or like audio books because I get too into the audio book. So I watch the same TV shows that I've watched like 20 times over again. I'll put on in the background like the office. I've watched the office like 26 times. It's just because I don't have to look at the screen. Right. Like even the matrix I'll put the matrix on in the background. I don't have to watch it. I can just listen and know exactly what scenes are coming up and I'll have to think about that. It's just background noise and then I can go ahead and get into the work.
[21:10] Bram: What's your favorite character on the office?
[21:14] Natia: Michael Scott is awesome. But Dwight is my number two. He kills me bad. My favorite opening [inaudible 21:22] Asian Jim. You remember that one where like they replaced Jim with an Asian guy and Dwight's like, but you're not Asian. He's like, oh, it's going to be pronouncing color, like a family photo of an Asian family. Dwight's like, what the hell is happening? You haven't seen that episode with the Asian opening? Dwight and Jim, just their dynamic. I just love it too much. It's just like a love hate thing. The pranks just kill me. I love that show.
[21:51] Bram: Yeah. Legendary show. Okay. One thing I wanted to ask you, pick your brain about this. Cause you mentioned, interestingly enough, you mentioned coding as something that you would try to become an expert at. Are you familiar with like NFTs and the whole NFT movement? What does that mean for you as an artist? To what extent can you explain what that's going to do to change the industry?
[22:16] Natia: I don't think it's going to change the fine art industry a lot. I honestly don't think NFCS are going to be a long-lasting thing. I don't, I think it was a sad thing. Like, Banksy where he shredded the piece of artwork and the auction house, it became like this, oh my God, he shredded his own art or the guy that taped the banana on the wall at the biannual in Miami. Did you see that he literally just duct tape the banana on the wall, it sold for like $28 million. A fucking duct tape, banana. I was like, what is happening? I don't know if that's an exact figure, but it was a lot of like, it was a ridiculous amount of money. I think it's like that new thing that people are experimenting with. Do you know how NFTs work?
[23:12] Bram: At a very high level, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but at a very high level for artists, what, what I understand it to be is using like the blockchain, anytime that you sell a piece and it sells again to somebody else. Anytime it transfers hands, the way that the coding and that works is that part of the money commission per se, is always going to get paid back to the artist.
[23:37] Natia: Yeah. That's right. That's one of the pros of having NFTs for artists. The issue is that NFTs are always going to be only digital images. Like it's only created digitally and the owner of it owns that original digital docuor JPEG or whatever it is, PNG. But they're still all over the internet. You're still going to see the image everywhere. It's similar, like Mona Lisa, right? There's only one original Mona Lisa, but you can Google a picture of Mona Lisa everywhere. You can go and see Mona Lisa whenever, like, if you're at the loo, you can go see Lisa. I don't think that in the fine art world, possession is what makes money. It's the fact that someone can say in their house that they own that painting and no one else can see it unless you give permission to see it.
It's funny because I complained about leaving insurance because of like super rich people that are like cody todyand art is just as bad. It's like that idea of like it's a commodity. I own it. You can't touch it. You can't see it. It's only mine, which is also why I think the banana taped to the wall made so much money because that one person owned it and no one can ever see it or own it ever again because of banana rotted and it's gone. It's that knowing that you were the one person to have that one thing. Now with NFT the pro, is that the artist is going to get paid for every transaction. Cause right now in art, it doesn't work like that. You will sell the painting and then it'll go, that person will sell it in auction.
Only that person will make the profit off of it because they are the owner of it. It no longer is yours, but I don't think that it's going to blow up the way people think it's going to really blow up. Like, I think artists want it to work, but it's purely digital. Art is more than an image. Art is a feeling. Art is an object. Art can do multiple things. When we reduce it down to only a visual picture, then we're losing so many aspects of art that makes art important, especially when it comes to like activism and change making. I'm not too worried about NFTs, but here's what it is. Getting someone to pay for something that everyone in the world can have is the hard part. Everybody can have it. It;s just being able to say, I have this ticket that I own the original, like, I don't know.
I don't know. It's a thing, it's going around. People are talking about it a lot, but in the artist world, we're not really as interested in it as the miners are and the people that work where you about cryptocurrency, those are the ones that see the value in these more than artists do. It might turn into something that's like, the Instagram artists that aren't real artists, they just paint. Cause I know it'll blow up on Instagram and they'll have millions of followers. It's going to be like, I feel like it's going to be that thing where there's going to be those super basic graphic drawings, that don't really give a shit they just do it because they know they can profit off of it. That's going to be the NFT thing. That's what I think. I don't know if I'm right. We'll see.
[26:38] Bram: Different industry altogether. So it's like a different culture altogether you could say versus like traditional fine art, like going through like the Sotheby's and the auction houses and the museums and all that two different worlds.
[26:50] Natia: Yeah. There's multiple different layers in the art world. I think a lot of people think it's just the one stream, but it's really not. There's commercial artists that work on paintings that go in banks and go on like, in TV sets and do like abstract, basic things. Then there's like fine artists that do artwork that they know sells. It's still good. Like it's good quality, super talented artwork, but they know what sells. They're going to paint exactly what they know is going to make them money. Then there's activist art, which is a little bit different. It's more political. They don't do what society wants them to do an they're often not in mainstream and like mainstream institutions, they're more underground artists.
It's like hip hop, right? Like there's just like rap music. There's like the mainstream rappers that like make garbage trap rap. They just mumble on the whole track. Then they make millions of dollars. Then there's the underground artists. Like, even the immortal techniques that have been out for forever that make deep thoughtful lyrics, but don't get the hype because they're not talking about what mainstream society wants to hear. Art that exact same way. Like you could break it down just the way you can break down the categories of rap music. It's an easy way to put it, but I'm sure you'll understand.
[28:07] Bram: That's a great perspective. It makes more sense to me when you use that analogy for sure. I'm trying to learn and understand more of like art culture in the world, Like the business side of things. One thing that I'm trying to understand, and I'd like to get your perspective on it is, you've got like the auctions, you've got the institutions and so forth, and there's a group of artists that are selected. What is the criteria? What is it that they're looking at? What is it about the work? Because I mean, if we're comparing it to, the music thing where you've got like the industry will take someone in and blow them up versus, you've got more talented people that may not get access to that world. In art, what is it?
[29:02] Natia: The exact same thing. I'm gonna get super political here for a minute, if we think about the world we live in, we live in a capitalist society. We think about who owns these corporations. Like not just race wise, but motivation-wise, there are people that their number one intent is to make money, make profit. Then when we really consider who controls, like when we're thinking of music who controls distribution, who controls radio plays, like they're going to promote stuff, like who listens to it. We know that the people that buy like music, again, the people that buy albums, the people that pay for music are not often like lower class black and brown people.
We don't usually have disposable income to go to concerts, to go to shows, to buy hoodies, to buy swag, to like to do all that stuff. We download illegally. We streamall the shit that we need to do to get the content. But the people that buy the music are the middle class, upper class people. Music record labels that are money motivated are trying to go open artists. They're considering which one of these artists will target that group, that middle-class group the best. That's who they choose to promote because super deep thinkers and even J Cole perfect example, he is a lyricist to the core. He makes super political music and he's so talented, but he hasn't blown up to the level of like the Drake tab. Like, to me, it blows my mind. Cause I'm like, why wouldn't you want to hear that? But he says shit that makes that group of people, that middle upper-class group of people that are buying the content uncomfortable, because he's not saying the things that they're used to talking about drugs and money and parties and stuff. Talking about politics and like black lives matter.
Art is the exact same thing. The people that get chosen into these auction houses and the people that get chosen to do these big shows or like blow up on Instagram are usually the ones that are making safe bets. Every once in a while, there will be that artist that comes around that challenges, everything, and everyone will get behind them because they're doing something that hasn't been done before and they can't ignore it. Those are the artists that, to me, that I look up to. It's the same thing. Those artists that make so much noise that they can't be ignored the institutions have no choice, but to acknowledge them because they lose their legitimacy as a leading institution, if they don't also back that artist that the rest of the art society backs.
It's like, everyone's saying, this person is amazing. Why aren't you auctioning their paintings? They're going to look stupid for saying, no, they're not amazing. They have so much power to a certain extent, but once all the people rally underneath, then it's hard to ignore it. It's how society operates. That's what we live in all the time. One person makes the decision and we usually don't fight it until everybody speaks up and fights against it. Then we get hurt. For me I've made very political artwork. The paintings I make just by the fact that they have black figures in it is a political thing, because no matter what I paint, people, non-black people will 90 percent of the time misread my intention.
Like even if it's just a family sitting, chilling on the couch, they're going to think there's a super deep like, oh, it's like, they just overcame like a drug battle. Like, I don't know what they're thinking. Right. Even because of where I came from, they're going to assume that I'm talking about always like my own personal shit that I've experienced. It's a hard thing me painting black people who's super political. Me not painting people they know or recognize makes them uncomfortable. My last thesis project, I burned a history book that I spent a year and a half researching and putting together. That made people uncomfortable because they're like, we can't see it. We can't own it. Nobody can buy it. I'm like, I didn't make it as a thing to be bought. I made it as a tool to prove a point that you can commodify my skill and my labor and profit off of my work.
But going to an institution like Yale and being accepted by them is a huge thing because they know that I'm making this super political work and they're backing it. They're saying, we're going to put the stamp of approval on you. If you go into an institution, they can't say this isn't important because we've already, it's like I said, that one person is like, nope, this is good. You know, I'm getting that little group of people saying, this is what you need to look at. It's like anything else, man. It's like in people. You gotta be good at people.
Like you have to get to people, but yeah. Artists are just like, anything else.
[33:53] Bram: All it takes gatekeepers, all that stuff. But it seems like when you get the power of the people behind you, I mean, it raises you up to the next level, right? I mean, if like you said that many voices, it can't be ignored. They have to kind of accept it.
[34:06] Natia: Even if they hate you, it's the same thing, right? Just like in rap music, if they hate you, they're still talking about you. If you make them uncomfortable, they're still talking about you. You're making them feel something and that's all that matters. In my version of the real art world, I was like the real art world. Cause like what I care about, that's my real art world. I like those things. I like people that make you feel shit, make you uncomfortable. Those are the only opinions that I really care about.
[34:36] Bram: Who are some of the artists that you have your eyes on? Like who are, who are some of the people that influenced you?
[34:45] Natia: It's always a hard question. I don't want to seem like a dick. That's always the thing. Like oh I'm an asshole. I will say this. I'm very, well-researched on a lot of the black and indigenous artists that came before me. I did that intentionally to see what strategies they were using and what paths they were going in. I felt that most black and indigenous artists that are out there are using specific tropes and iconography. Like their paintings are for white people.
I'll use another analogy. Cause it's easier for me to explain the art when I use analogies. It's like, when you watch the black movie, like 12 years of slave, how many black people do you know, actually watch that movie. Like I didn't watch that movie. I'm not trying to watch the trauma of my ancestors on the screen. Like how many black people have you seen watch like, what's that new show that was on prime. That was like the black family getting beat up in the south. There's all these movies that make propaganda out of the black experience.
Like boys in the hood. Perfect example. Like we all watched that when we were kids, but it's like, I grew up in that so like I didn't enjoy watching shit that I was living on screen. Like it didn't make me feel any better. I don't think that they make those things for black people. I found a lot of the big black and indigenous artists out there are doing the same kind of thing. Like they're making it for white people. They're not making it for our people. They're making it because they know that those powers that be, the owners of the galleries. This has been proven with statistics, like 93% of gallery owners in Toronto are white because it makes them feel like they're reconnecting with the community they don't know.
That's the stuff that they're familiar with. Cause that's what seen on TV. They're not used to seeing the normal, like executive like black woman, lawyer, that's running her industry. Like that's not a normal thing for them seeing on TV. A lot of the artists, I find that they're not making those challenging, and those hard paintings that make other people feel comfortable. Now it might just be that's at the stage of their like maybe that's just what they're interested in.
I don't know. I've never talked to them. I don't really know, but I find it disappointing. Like I really do. Cause I'm like, I feel like you're just doing what you know will sell. I feel like that's a safe bet. Like if I painted my mom who was a crack head smoking crack, like people would be like, oh, it's so emotional. That's your mother? I can't believe you went through that. Like that's so traumatic and they probably connect with it because they feel something. But that's not for me. I'm not painting that for me because I've already lived it.
Why would I put it down on a piece of canvas when it's already my experience? You know what I mean? Like it's not helping anybody else. Maybe it's making people feel less alone, but it's not going to be commodified in that way. It's going to become something else. Something that I didn't intend it to be. But the artists that I really love are mostly dead. Adrian Piper, she was a mixed-race woman and she was a boss, man. She got mad. Same thing that I'm talking about. She got mad at the industry because they only wanted to show her pieces that talked about blackness.
Even though she was half white, like me, like I'm white and indigenous, but it's like, people want to hear me talk about blackness. She did a series of portraits where she painted herself in like multiple different races. Then she would go into like go into galleries and refuse to talk to anybody about her work. She's like, I'm not telling you what it's about. I'm not explaining myself to any of you.
People really hated her. Like the black community thought she was like turning her back on everyone. But her point was, is that you're not going to make me only my identity. You're not going to make me only my pain and only my trauma. You're not going to sell my trauma to other people to profit off of it. I refuse to participate in that world. I love her for that. There's another artist Stanley Brown. He was a conceptual artist, again, a black artist. He did weird shit, like really weird. Like he would go around and ask people for directions and for them to sketch the directions in a book and just like collected drawings from random people in the street.
His work is like a series of random drawings from random people, just talking about the human experience overall. But the cool thing about him is he also refused to acknowledge his race. There was only one picture of him ever taken that confirmed he was black because he knew that if he was black, he would be forced to make certain kinds of artwork in the art world. Especially during the seventies, when he was in the sixties and seventies, he refused it. He was like, I'm just not going to let anyone know what my race is and make the shit that I want. I really admire them because they were doing things that made people feel uncomfortable. It made our own community feel uncomfortable. I think that's where we need to be now is to start making us uncomfortable, so we get up and fight for change because we're doing a lot, but we could be doing more.
Living artists, there's not very many. Like my peers, I have Charlotte, Charlotte Haley, she's a painter. She does phenomenal work. Claire, [inaudible 40:03] she's an Asian Canadian artist. She did a series of porcelain paintings on like eggplants and gender. Like on actual vegetables and then they just rotted because she's like the same thing, the fetishization of Asian women. When you're from an Asian community, it's like, you're exoticized as a woman immediately. She's like, I'm not going to allow that to happen by painting things that I know will sell and become a commodity. They're like eggplants, which look like penises and like painted on them and just watch them like turn into mold and knew that no one can take it.
No one would own that piece of her that she made. Yeah, I thought it was beautiful, but yeah, that's who I admire, not the big name, people that a lot of people assume I would.
[40:50] Bram: That's cool. That's interesting. I like to hear that perspective though, especially from you. Cause I would say you're a respected voice in this community, given your success and the trajectory that you're on and that Yale co-sign. I mean, that definitely means something too. Just to pull back a little bit, so painting on eggplants and then it rotting away. What is the art there? Why? Not being a shit disturber or anything, but is that like you take a picture of it fresh and then take pictures of it as it rots away and that's the art? Yeah. It's more like you create something and then you photograph it and then it's the story of that. Then it's gone and no one can have it again.
[41:36] Natia: Exactly. That's conceptual art. I'm sure you've seen really stupid things. You're like, how was that art. Like that doesn't make any sense. Just chalk it up to conceptual art. It's not about the object. Conceptual art can be defined, like it's not about the object of the material or the art making or anything like that. It's about the idea behind it. The actual outcome does not matter. It's just the idea and your concept and then that's what the art is. It takes art out of the material world and brings it into the intellectual world. So it's like just my thought becomes art and that's to me what it is to be an artist. You don't have to make shit to be an artist. You know what I mean? Like you don't have to have a business to be a business person. You can still think like a business person all the time.
It doesn't necessarily mean that you have a business right now just means that that's something that you are, you have that mentality, that hustler's mentality. And it's the same thing. That's what conceptual art is. It's all about the idea.
[42:42] Bram: I didn't know that. You taught me that today. That helps make a lot more sense out of some things. Appreciate that.
[42:47] Natia: Well, when I first started in art, I remember a class and this guy was talking about a girl that sat in a room, eating a brick of chocolate for like three days, just sat there eating chocolate. I was like, what the fuck is this? Then another guy that just filled a room with balloons and I'm like, what is going on? Like, I'm not here to learn how to fill rooms with balloons. But now that I'm like, as deep as I am and I've had like, I don't know, a bunch of shows and I've curated a bunch of shows. It makes sense to me because it's like how do we challenge the system using the tools made by the system? Do what I mean? Like how do you do something that's supposed to be outside of something when you're only using what they've given you, you can't, it's impossible.
That's why conceptual art to me is so interesting. Cause it's like, you're not using the tools that they want you to use to make something new. That's really the only way that you can make new shit.
[43:45] Bram: I wanted to ask you, so I was looking at your website and some of the artwork that you had there. I saw you did a self portrait in 2018 and then you did another one there in 2020. The first one it's you sitting there and there's like flowers and whatnot. Like a wall of flowers behind you. The second one that you did, it looks like you're sitting on a stool and there's like elements in it of like your hand is black and white. I believe like it's all, it's all white. It's not in color. It looks like you're, you're naked too. Going from one to the other, this being a self portrait, how you're drawing yourself. What was the change from 2018 to 2020 that you went through? How did you try to illustrate that in your self portrait?
[44:44] Natia: Yeah. That's a really good question. Both of them are the same, but different. The flowers in the background of this first one, when I got the first one, I did it right after I got my ancestry DNA done. I don't know if you've ever done an ancestry DNA, but that shit changes like every six months, like the first time you get it, it's like you're 29. I don't know about normal people, but I was like 36 different things. Then it isolates down a little bit more. Then you're 16 different countries, eight different countries. What I did in that one, my interest in identity, in my heritage and my ancestry stemmed from a place of hurt because of the way I grew up.
My grandmother, she grew up on the same plantation that her great, great grandmother picked cotton on the south. My great grandfather, stowed away on a ship to get here from the Dutch West Indies. My great, great great-grandfather, this is all on my paternal side, because there's multiple great great grandfathers. One came to the American revolutionary war and has been in Canada since like the 1700s. My ancestry in Canada and America and through the slave trade goes really, really far back. But I noticed like it doesn't matter how far back it was.
My family has been fighting the same battle for the last like hundreds of years. Like I have letters from my great uncle that he wrote to like the Toronto star complaining about how his white neighbors were calling him racist things and telling him that black people should go back to where they came. He's talking about how like all of us black people are only trying to make ourselves better. I have an ancestor that did work with Nelson Mandela. It's like, we were always doing the same battle for recognition and for equality and equity amongst other people. What really disturbed me was the fact that my father, because of the crack epidemic in the eighties, we all heard the story. Like the crack, that was where I came from.
My grandmother's life was to horrifying being from where she came from. She passed those traits down to her children. My grandfather had a terrible life dealing with racism in Canada for all the decades that he did coming from, all that epigenetic. Do you know what epigenetic is? It's when like trauma and stuff gets passed through DNA into our ancestors. Like all the that my family has been through then eventually came to my parents.
They were drug addicts because crack entered the thing. They became drug addicts. My father was illiterate. My mom didn't pass grade eight. She ran away from home. Like, it's just like, I sat there and I'm like, I'm the product of everything that came before me. My identity was like summed up in how society has created this oppressive force towards black and indigenous people. It was the result of me and my childhood and like all the trauma and pain that I experienced, like my accident that I had when I was a year old, like all of those things came from everything that came before.
When I did my first self-portrait, when I was getting my ancestry, I was trying to really figure out more about myself and like what brought me to be here in this place on this starting ground. Like what were the causes that made me start off in the worst possible position in society in Canada? Why? We've been here for so long. There's no reason why I have to start off so shitty. Like I should have had any step up from anything, even a house or,[inaudible 48:19] my dad couldn't read a book like easiest, basic shit. I was looking at my ancestry. The background is actually the flowers from each of the countries that my ancestry came from.
I took the percentage and I put that percentage of flowers in the background. It was me sitting there in a very like calm, like just like chill, just thinking, like thinking manner, contemplating where I came from and how it brought me to be in that position sitting where I was. How that transitioned to 2020 is that I did more research. Then as I did more research, I became more hurt and it became more important for me, not only to talk about what came before me, but how that impacted me as an individual.
When the second one, it has both black and white and things in completing complete because I'm still working on my identity. I'm still battling those two narratives of myself, of being mixed race. It was the first time I painted my scars. Just so everyone knows I was in an accident when I was a year old. My mother was a drug addict. As I mentioned, she put me in my brother in a bathtub. I was one, he was two, so she could shoot up. Bathtub had no water in it. It was just an empty tub. Cause she thought we can't run around the house if we're locked in the bathtub.
Unfortunately my brother turned on the water. Of course he's two, it was an accident. He was able to climb out of the tub. I couldn't yet walk properly. I was trapped in the tub. As it's filling up with boiling hot water, this was in Toronto, before they had the temperature gauges on hot water tanks. It came out like scalding hot. Nobody really knows how long I was in the tub for, but eventually my brother woke my mother up. She came out, picked me up out of the tub and wiped all the skin off of my legs. Cause it was pretty much just like decimated.
Since then I've had like 36 surgeries, reconstructive surgeries to like try to put it back together. The doctors thought I would never walk again. Like it was all the shit, not to mention also dealing with drug addict parents and poverty and like all of that, other, all the other stuff that comes along with it. But in that second painting, it was important for me to show the results of all the systemic racism, all of the bad choices my parents made. All of the obstacles that they had to overcome. How difficult it is to fight addiction. How difficult it is to keep going when you feel as if there's nothing for you. I think that's something my dad mentioned all the time is that, he didn't think he had any other choice, but to sell drugs.
Because he couldn't read, he couldn't write. He was six foot four and he was a huge black dude and everyone was terrified of him. Being a pimp was the easiest job for him because like it fit him perfectly. The second one was really just like, there are people living today that are the direct result of the issues that we talk about, that need to be changed in Canadian society. A lot of people don't acknowledge that Canada is racist. A lot of people like, oh, it's not that bad, but I'm like, I am a direct result. Like I can literally trace every obstacle that my family had that made it not easy for them to make a good decision. Then especially if you don't know good decisions. Like if you don't know what the right thing to choose is you're going to make the same wrong choices over and over again.
Yeah, so painting was like the incompleteness of me and my identity and my search for finding. Which is why some of it's incomplete the two colors about battling each other, which is my two sides. But then, exposing that raw portion of myself, that's still very open and very hurt. That's, everything had to come to be the way that it did. My life sucked as a kid. Things were horrible, but yeah, you gottaroll with it. Now that's my activist. Like that's why I have this drive for activism. Because like, I understand on a deeper level how over policing, how the prison industrial complex affects black people how, like my father died in the hospital from COVID, in Winnipeg.
I questioned did that have anything to do with him being a black man and want to pick hospitals? There's all of these things. That's why I pursue activism because I firsthand know the results of all of these things that go on in this world that people refuse to acknowledge. Yeah that's the difference between the two. And we'll see, in none other two years I might do another self portrait. They'll probably be completely different. Maybe it will be completed. I don't know.
[52:58] Bram: Hey, there's definitely a lot of depth there to the art for sure. I mean, that's incredible and who knows two years, and then two years after that, it might change again, like you said, as you continue to learn and grow and evolve, I guess that reflects in the work that you're doing. Especially something as important and significant for yourself as a self-portrait. That's interesting to hear from your perspective. That's pretty cool.
[53:27] Natia: I don't know if people read it that way, but who cares? I don't know. Yeah, it's weird. It is what it is.
[53:34] Bram: Okay. What kind of music are you listening to these days? You mentioned that you would have Tupac there with you? Do you listen to a lot of Tupac music or is there any other artists that inspire you or touch you the same way that Tupac did? If not, I mean, who or what is it that you listen to today? What's on your rotation?
[53:56] Natia: Right now the only thing I've been listening to as the new J Cole album, because like I have to. I feel obligated at this point. I've been following him since day one. Since the mix tapes came out, I've been to all of his concerts, like some loyalty thing by now, but Kendrick Lamar, for sure, the dude is like super dope. I'm going to be honest. There's not a lot of new rappers that I like. I'm not a fan of Drake. People hate it when I say that because I live in Toronto, but it's the reality of my life. But other than that, yeah, J Cole, Kendrick Lamar. I listen to a lot of RnB. So like SIR, I don't know if that's how you spell it. Say it, sir. All those dudes like RnB right now, I think is killing the game.
Rap is not doing it. RnB is like off the charts, but my playlist always reverts back to old school. Like Dr. Dre, Eminem, [inaudible 54:43] Nas, Jay Z, Biggie, Tupac. Like that's just always the classics. Like my kids get mad at me cause they're like, why do you keep playing this stuff? I'm like it's the only good music. What am I supposed to do? But my son [inaudible 54:58] so that's great. I'm teaching them the classics and but it's funny. Cause like I'll pause songs and I'll be like, did you hear that line? Did you hear what he said? I'm one of those moms. It's funny. They probably hate me for it. But they'll love me when they're older. Yeah so classics, classics, right. Have you listened to the new J Cole album?
[55:24] Bram: Yeah. I'm pumping, applying pressure. That's the one I like.
[55:27] Natia: Pride is the devil is my favorite right now. I think that he threw in like so much flavor in that old album that reminds me of like early two thousands hip hop. Like there's even having a Cameron on audio and when I heard his voice, I was like, pinaudible 55:44] Yeah, but hearing Cameron's voice it just feels good, right?
[55:53] Bram: Yeah. That was a nice little Easter egg in there for sure. Throw back there. Kendrick Lamar. What's your favorite album of his?
[56:00] Natia: [inaudible] butterfly.
[56:02] Bram: Yup. I figured, I thought so because of the Tupac references on there. Mortal men. Yeah. Yep. I listened to that album late. I listened to it last year and I think that's why like three, four years after it came out. But I caught that one late and mortal man is the highlight on that one for me, for sure. The way that they created that crazy.
[56:28] Natia: After that I started playing songs all the way until they skip to the next one themselves because like, I don't want to miss it. Cause I think the first few times I listened to mortal men, I didn't catch the endings. I was just skipped it because I'm like, I don't want to hear the outro. Like nobody cares. Yeah. The interview though was like, so good. But even the shit Tupac says in that, is like grounds in a competence swallow you low. Like it's just so beautiful, man. That dude's brave is just different.
[56:57] Bram: Definitely. My wife, she is obsessed with Tupac. She's born on the same day, June 16th Gemini. That's who I got that painting for from you. It was for her.
[57:09] Natia: She has good taste. She has good taste
[57:12] Bram: For sure. 100%. I don't want to keep you too long. We could talk for hours for sure. Every time I speak to you, I feel like always learn something, which is amazing. I definitely appreciate that. Where can people check out your work or how can anybody get in touch with you? If anybody wants to make a purchase, how can people contact you?
[57:38] Natia: Best bet is to go to Instagram. Natia Lemay Art. It's the easiest way. It's the only thing I respond to. I haven't updated my website in forever. Yeah. Commission requests, all that stuff. It's better to just go through my Instagram, hit me up there. At least I get the notifications. I'm really bad at responding. Any other form of notification I probably won't look at it right away. Yeah, Instagram is the best way, but I'm not good at posting, so not all of my stuff is on my Instagram. I keep a lot of in my pockets. Just because I like to keep things to myself. I'm very open, but I'm also very personal. Yeah, but that's the best way to reach out.
[58:20] Bram: You're such an artist, man. You're such an artist. This is like meant for you. When you pivoted, when you decided to quit your job, go to art school, it seems like you fell right into the right alley of your passion. To see that you're on this trajectory and to be doing your masters now and to be getting that co-sign from Yale, big things. Anybody listening, you guys, I would recommend get those purchases in before the price goes up because the price is most definitely going to go up. That's for sure. Natia, thank you again for your time. Anybody that wants to check out Natia's work, Instagram @natialemayart. This was episode number five of the rise above podcast. Be sure to subscribe, share it with a friend, share it with someone that you think it may benefit and until next time have a great day.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the rise above podcast. Make sure to subscribe for future episodes, leave a review and share with a friend who would love to hear this episode. This was the rise above podcast.
Owner/Operator of Algonquin Pines Campground Chance Ott joins Bram Bains on this episode of The Rise Above Podcast. Chance talks about leaving a Corporate Job to start his own business and shares some business insights on how to accumulate wealth.
Follow us on Instagram @TheRiseAbovePodcast for bonus content - Be sure to pay it forward and share it with a friend!
Interview Transcript
[00:35] Bram: Welcome everybody to the rise above podcast. Today we've got a very special episode. I'm being joined here by Chance Ott. Chance is a father. He's a former insurance broker turned entrepreneur. Chance is the owner and operator of Algonquin Pines Campground. How are you doing today Chance?
[00:56] Chance: I'm doing well Bram, thanks for having me on.
[00:59] Bram: You're very welcome. I'm happy that you're here. We're going to talk about your story, your campground, your business, and all kinds of fun stuff. Before we get into it. I bought some icebreakers here for you. Some quick questions. Floor is all yours. Okay?
[01:14] Chance: Okay. Let's get into it.
[01:15] Bram: Let's get into it. What is your favorite movie?
[01:20] Chance: I'd say my favorite movie is Goodfellas, Goodfellas or Casino. Classics.
[01:22] Bram: What is your favorite book?
[01:24] Chance: I've been reading the millionaire next door, really enjoying it. I think it's good advice about staying humble and creating wealth.
[01:33] Bram: Who is your favorite actor?
[01:37] Chance: I don't get caught up in celebrities to be honest. I probably don't have a favorite actor. I like all the raunchy comedies. But I guess if I had to pick a favorite actor, I'd say Leo.
[01:49] Bram: What is your favorite place to travel?
[01:51] Chance: Malta. My wife and I booked a trip to Malta. We were going to Italy. We wanted to do a multi coast. But we figured we'd add another trip. Like make it like a 10, 14-day kind of trip. There was a cheap flight to Malta. I didn't know much about it. It's awesome. Anybody who hasn't been there, you should go. It's cheap. Everybody speaks English. The food is a great mix of African and Mediterranean and Italian. It's a really cool spot and you don't need to be there long. You can see everything in a short period of time.
[02:23] Bram: Who has been a mentor figure for you?
[02:28] Chance: My father. Pretty cliche answer, but my father was a career entrepreneur. He started and sold businesses. Built up businesses, kind of brought them back from the grave. Growing up with parents who are running their own business, it was always my goal to be an entrepreneur. I'll say my mother didn't get enough credit for it. She did all the books and the administrative stuff on the back end and really was the brains and the glue. Probably didn't get the credit that she deserved. Everybody looks at it and give credit to my father. So, my parents.
[03:05] Bram: What has been your favorite item that you've purchased during this pandemic?
[03:10] Chance: Patagonia rain gear? I would like to spend a lot of time outside. We were on a campground. I like to go fishing, hiking anything in the woods. I didn't have solid rain gear. Patagonia, rain gear. I treated myself.
[03:23] Bram: What is something that you've tried and you would never try again.
[03:28] Chance: I'm pretty open to trying new foods. I guess some of the crazier seafoods I'm not into. Like anything I need to pick out of a shell with a weird device, I'd say it would be something like that.
[03:42] Bram: If you were to sail around the world, what would be the name of your boat?
[03:49] Chance: I wouldn't name it. I wouldn't be sailing, so I wouldn't have a boat.
[03:55] Bram: If you're in the Olympics, winter or summer, what is it that you're going to be winning gold for?
[04:03] Chance: I'm not winning gold for anything. I'll say it's going to be summer and it's going to be speed walking.
[04:09] Bram: Okay. If you could hang out with any cartoon character, who would it be and why?
[04:16] Chance: I think I would grab a beer with Peter Griffin or maybe Rick and Morty.
[04:25] Bram: All right. Chance let's get into the story a little bit. I mean, you mentioned that your parents were entrepreneurs growing up, that your father was in the business of building businesses, bringing them back from the grave and so forth. What kind of businesses was he working with?
[04:44] Chance: My father was a tradesman initially. I remember when I was a young child, maybe five, something like that he sat down with my sister and myself, and kind of told us that he was thinking about buying us a snowmobile and ATV dealership and asked us what we thought, which was interesting. My parents used to do that with us, kind of include the kids in adult conversations, which I think is a good practice. So the first business that he started, I guess he did some sawmills stuff just on the side before that, but he bought an ATV and snowmobile dealership. They built it to be one of the largest in Canada for the brands they were selling.
We're very successful with that. They sold the business. Then they started like a tractor dealership, lawn tractors and some are commercial grade tractors. Right now his business is teaching, the hunting and firearms course. If you wanted to get your gun or your hunting license. He had some gyms. There was a number of things. He did real estate as well. A lot of different businesses there.
[06:00] Bram: It sounds like you were always exposed to that entrepreneurial and business mindset. Did you know as well growing up, that you wanted to follow in your father's footsteps and be a business owner and an entrepreneur as well? Or did that kind of just fall into place?
[06:16] Chance: No, I knew that from a relatively young age. I'd say I went from, the typical kid answer of, I want to be a firetruck or something like that to, I want to be an entrepreneur because I think that's pretty natural. You see what your parents do and, if your dad's a dentist, you're probably more likely to be a dentist than the next guy. From a relatively young age, I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur because I saw the lifestyle and it was familiar to me. I didn't like school, if I'm being honest. I wasn't I wasn't terrible at school, but my mindset was, I'll go to post-secondary cause I know I have to, but I went for a two-year college business marketing program.
Really, I learned a bit, but not that much, it was more so just an exercise to get the diploma. But from there I figured sales is where I would start. I mean, you and I were selling insurance together, back at gray power. I've always had interpersonal skills. I've been able to talk to people pretty easily for most of my life. But my wife and I we've been together for over 10 years. Got tagged, got married at a young age. We always knew that we wanted to run a business together. We liked the idea of working together building something together, spending a lot of time together outside of home life. I think that probably wouldn't work for a number of couples, but for us it does.
Then as for the actual business that we ended up in, it didn't just happen. It was our goal to run something nature related. We had talked about maybe like a cottage rental resort. There's a lot of those in this area, or a campground or like an outfit or fishing guide kind of thing. I was interested in this beforehand. After I worked with you at grey power, I went to a different insurance brokerage. I worked there as an employee for a year and a half and then got a producer contract. That was my first step at kind of being self-employed. They gave me a fair amount of leeway, make my own hours work from home if I wanted to. I had my own business that I did own.
That was nice, but it didn't really feel like I was working for myself. I mean it did and it didn't. I didn't feel like I was working a nine to five, but I was still going into the office. I had to keep good relations with the brokerage and it didn't fully feel like I was self-employed. But one thing I was passionate about was this type of business, a campground, a resort, a fishing guide, a hunting guide, something like that. I targeted those businesses because it was something that I was passionate about interested in and had identified a need and it was pretty successful.
My first year of being a producer, I went from having a salary and a steady pay to no salary and you get paid commission and you might make $300 in a month. That was a big risk. I would say that would be the first time that I kind of took the plunge. We had a mortgage and plans of having a kid, which now we have two of them. We did have a lot of responsibility, but my wife had a good job and supported me. I took that plunge. As I started to ensure these places, the campgrounds, the cabin rentals, the resorts, it became pretty clear to me pretty quickly that the campground was a good business model and maybe more so than the cottage rental places, because Airbnb was taking a good chunk out of that business model.
Then I was starting to really not like the industry and my job. I just didn't enjoy it anymore. It was stressing me out. It was making me anxious and my business partner at this place now who happens to be, my cousin had said to me, one day when I was kind of venting about my role, he said, well, let me ask you two questions. One, what do you think you're best at? And two, what do you think would be a good business? I said, what I'm best at is talking to people. I was in sales before that. I can easily strike up conversations. Then I said, I think that glamping is an interesting business. Glamping for those listening, that don't camp would be glamorous camping.
What I meant specifically by that was places that would set up yurts or kind of like canvas fixed to tents that would stay up for a full season. They're outfitted with, a nice memory foam mattress and lights and heat and carpet and all that stuff. So my idea there was, get people who don't have camping gear. Who've maybe never camped before, try to encourage people from the city who are interested in it, but not exposed to it to come out camping with us. I guess that was in 2019. We started having those conversations and then we started looking at potentially buying a chunk of land, getting it rezoned and building out a glamping campground.
Full stop glamping not camping, like not like trailer camping or anything like that. We realized the risks associated with that pretty quickly, if you buy property and you can't get it rezoned. At that point we kind of switched gears and started looking at existing campgrounds that we could kind of mold to fit our business model. This campground had been for sale for a while and it was on my radar. I had camped here a couple of times in the past. Probably 16 years ago, something like that. We decided to come up and take a peek at it and anybody who's ever taken a big risk like this, whether it's buying a house or something like that, you start to explore, what it might look like and what the steps are.
As you start taking more and more steps, it gains momentum that gets more and more real. Then one day you wake up and we're doing this thing. That was a long form answer to your question.
[12:25] Bram: No, that was a great answer. I think you kind of touched on multiple different areas there that we'll jump into a little bit further to dissect a little bit, because I'd love to hear more about that. I mean, it definitely seems like you're definitely passionate about this, which is amazing, most people kind of lose sight of that, but you rounded yourself amongst that type of industry. Even while you were an insurance broker, you decided to serve that type of demographic in that industry and kind of stay around it, which I'm sure helped lead you towards this path, which is great.
Speaking about the insurance piece while you were working as a commercial broker, and these were your clients, what was it that caught your eye when you were talking about like the business model and kind of like looking at the financials and then starting to look at it more so from that lens? What caught your attention?
[13:22] Chance: Well, so a couple of things, one thing is most of these businesses are mismanaged. I think that still rings true today. I think it is changing, but a lot of the businesses like this, whether it's a cottage rental resort, a small resort even like motels campgrounds, a lot of them are mom and pop operations. I think that was confirmed in our first season. We had our first season last summer. I would talk to a number of the campers and most of our clientele are mostly either retirees or young families. Everybody says, this is my retirement, this is what I want to do when I retire. In fairness, that's what my wife and I said, as well. We said, down the road, it would be nice when we're ready to start slowing down to buy something like this and have the passive investment.
Well, it's not passive at all. It's a lot of work. I think that a lot of these businesses are exactly that, retirees who decide, this is a nice lifestyle move for us. Then the campers come in and somebody is having a bachelor party at one of the sites and you need to go out and tell them to put the bonfire out or whatever it is. You start to realize how much work goes into it. It's not just tinkering around with a water pump or a chainsaw or something like that. There's a lot more, it's a serious time demand. Last summer was our first season. We only hired on two staff, which was really skinny. But the way we looked at it, we said, we don't know all of the steps.
We don't know all of the processes that should be in place. We don't know how to do everything. We need to figure that out. We can't really hire on staff and tell them to go do something that we haven't figured out how we feel it should be done. We went crazy last summer. Like, I mean, everybody said to us, one of the previous owners of this property, not the guy, we bought it off the guy before he came by on one of our first weekends. He said, don't burn yourself out in June. I know that in June of last season we had, this is a moment that stuck with me. You asked who my mentor was my father. Like I said, he texted me on maybe 11:30 at night on a Saturday night, one of our early weekends, maybe our third weekend of our first season.
He said, how's it going, buddy? I said, it's a grind. I worked 18 and a half hours yesterday, 18 and a half hours today. I'm just shutting it down. I got a full day tomorrow and he texted me back and he said, what, buddy, the only thing more stressful than being busy is being slow. I think that's really good advice for entrepreneurs because it is easy, when things are going good, it's easy to complain about how busy you are. I mean, that's a good problem to have for an entrepreneur. It might feel like you're struggling to keep your head above water, but that's better than having your head under water.
[16:18] Bram: Most definitely. What is glamping for those of us that don't know. I've never been camping before. Give me an idea, walk me through what's the experience.
[16:27] Chance: Okay. There's a few different tiers of glamping. Actually, this is one of the things that led us to the style of glamping that we've adopted here. If you go Googling glamping in Ontario, you're going to find a handful of places that are offering it. A lot of them are very expensive. It might be, four or five, 600 bucks a night, and maybe you show up your tent and there's a bottle of champagne and chocolate dipped strawberries and all of this stuff. That would be like the high-level glamping. There's only so many people who are going to pay for that kind of experience. It's not overly accessible for your average person to spend a thousand dollars on two nights and camping essentially.
I figured that there was a market somewhere in between. There was a cheaper version of glamping. Our glamping tents, they're on a deck. We have two person tents and four person tents. They're canvas. They're circular. They kind of look like, a circus tent, but prettier than that. They have an awning with string lights and it's really quite a nice scene. Folks listening can check out our Instagram page @algonquinpines for a little plug there. But, yeah, so you walk into the tent, it has carpet, double bed memory foam. Our four-person tent will have two beds in it. It has a lamp, a side table, a heater. Every glamping site will have a fire pit and a picnic table.
So, you get the experience of camping. You have your fire, you can have your smores and all that, but when it's time to retire back to the tent, it's dry, it's warm and it's a mattress. And you don't need to bring anything. The other thing that we offer is, you can purchase linens just like you would at a Airbnb and same with like a camping cookware kit. You'd have everything you need to make all your meals on like a camp stove. Because again, people who are just trying camping, aren't going to have a Coleman stove and folding chairs and all of these things. It can be pretty expensive to get into. Once you're into camping and you have the gear. You take care of it. It really is a cheap hobby to do, with the family a lot cheaper than a weekend in Niagara or something like that. But why go out and buy all that stuff if you don't know if you're into interested in camping.
This is kind of a nice way to bring people along. The glamping we're doing is cheaper. It's 135 bucks for the night for our four-person tent or 115 bucks a night for our two person. They've been really popular and just on the business side of things, we get really good customers that come to our glamping tents. You know, generally they're really respectful young couples from the city.
[19:30] Bram: Nice. Okay. No wild parties, stag parties, and that kind of stuff.
[19:34] Chance: Not in the glamping tents. But we've seen a lot of crazy stuff for only one season. 95% of people are great, but there's always one group.
[19:49] Bram: Now regarding the business. you said that you, you run the business, it's you and your wife, and then you had a team of two staff last year. What does your day-to-day look like?
[19:59] Chance: Okay. This season, we have a newborn baby, six weeks old. This season we can't do what we did last year. We knew it was unsustainable last year, but it especially stacks another kid on there and a two year old who's much busier this season than she was last season. We hired on three more people. We have five staff members for this coming season, but last year, starting a business in a pandemic, we were pretty skinny. We were careful with every dollar. Last season, our days started at five 30 in the morning on weekends, six in the morning every other day. My wife and I would go over and clean the washrooms. Then we come get our daughter up, get her breakfast, then come over to the store, we'd open the store at nine. But we'd have to be over here, maybe 8:15 clean the washrooms again. Open up the store. Do emails. Get ready for all of our check-ins for the day, go around inspect sites where people have checked out. Cleaning up garbage. Frequently selling things like firewood, where we deliver that out to people's sites.
A lot of in and out there, and then depending on the day of the week, there's certain things that need to be done on certain days. We might have a delivery, like a firewood delivery on one day. We need to be out there unloading it and stacking it. All of that. I guess I want to say every day was different, but it really, it wasn't, it was the interactions that were different. So, you kind of follow the same cycle every week. The weekends were crazy busy. Then the weekdays were slower. What my wife and I did last season is, we'd have Sunday afternoons off and Thursday afternoons off. Sunday afternoons, we'd go into Huntsville, which is the nearest town to us. We'd sit on a patio; we'd have a drink. That felt like a day off. Just having an afternoon off. Then Thursday afternoons, we would take off and we would do things like grocery shopping, hair, cut. All of the stuff that you just need to do to keep the house in order.
But other than that, we work from probably, probably April 15th last year until thanksgiving weekend, we didn't take any days off and we were allowed to open June 12th, but it was leading up to that. We had a lot of work to do to get the campground in order being new owners. Then you're always on. There's always people on your property. The phone rings at 1:30 in the morning, somebody needs or maybe it's a noise complaint or somebody needs their breaker reset at their site. You're always on, but come thanksgiving on weekend or season ends, we had, the whole winter off. You take the good with the bad, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. I think if there wasn't a light at the end of the tunnel, it would be a train.
Then this year we have more staff. This year we'll be able to focus more on just kind of keeping the business running as it should and doing some stuff that maybe got left behind last year, because we were running so skinny on the staff front. Whether it's, fresh coat of paint here or fix something up there, whatever it is. Yeah, this year, maybe we'll get a day off this summer, I guess, is what I'm saying.
[23:30] Bram: How's your experience been through the pandemic being that it's a campsite? How did that impact you guys?
[23:48] Chance: Last year we weren't allowed to open up at the start of our season. We were planning on opening May 1st, last year, we weren't allowed to open until June 12th. We lost almost a month and a half of our season. With that said, we almost took that as a blessing in disguise because there was more work to do. Then we knew we had a lot of work to do, but there was more than we than we had thought the previous owner had just kind of run it like a hobby. He would never rent out maybe more than 10 campsites. We ramped up the business quite a bit. There was a lot of work to do so that extra month and a half was pretty helpful. We realized that sometimes the snow is not gone by May 1st. If the snow is not gone, we can't really open up the campground.
It was almost a blessing there, but at the same time, by June 12th, we were ready to start having some money coming in because we were pretty tight, having spent a bunch of money to get the place, and then not having money coming in when the bills are going out. Then as for the season, last season, it was actually the demand was up for camping. We benefited from that. You know, people couldn't travel to the states, so they couldn't go to Europe. We had a lot of people camping with us who wouldn't otherwise camp, because it was something that you could do. For that, I was thankful. As for like government support in the skinnier months at the start, we weren't eligible for it. So, we really were on our own and there's reasons for that. We were a new business. A lot of those government programs would look previous revenue on the books. We just kind of fell through all the cracks there.
What I will say is our community stepped up and actually provided us with some support. The district of Muskoka, which was, amazing. I think that small businesses should play a significant role in their community. It's nice to see the community support small businesses. This year, we changed our opening date from May 1st to May 2 for weekend. Not this coming weekend, but next. Right now, the stay-at-home order is supposed to lift on the 20th. The 21st is actually our first date. As it stands right now, we're not going to lose any of our season, but we'll see what happens. I wouldn't be surprised if we lost a couple of weeks again, and it is what it is. I mean, we'll be resilient.
[25:57] Bram: Let's talk a little bit about that book that you mentioned the millionaire next door. What are some of the takeaways, the lessons overall, what you've learned from that book.
[26:09] Chance: The big takeaway is being careful with your expenditures, being careful with your money, not spending money on a BMW, because you figured that's what your clients want to see you driving or the big extravagant house. I think really something he drives home in it is the millionaire next door is a profile that he's created. It's not, your Elon Musk, right? It's not the guys who everybody knows they're rich. It's the person who's living in a neighborhood with middle-class homes, driving it and your old vehicle.
But they've been an excellent creator of wealth because they're being careful with their money. They actually, like, I don't want to mention specific industries because he does call out specific industries as being poor wealth accumulators. But some that surprised me anyways on overachieving wealth accumulators where people like auctioneer's specifically, he mentioned, actually I'm remembering this, one of the things he mentioned in I think the second chapter, is he mentioned two really good businesses off the top of his head are dry cleaners and campgrounds, which is funny. I'm reading the book now, so it didn't influence our decision, but yeah, I mean the book, the angle of the book is to be careful with your money, invest it, be smart with it. Don't spend money you don't have. Don't spend money to try and impress other people.
If you are careful with your money, you'd be surprised at what you can accomplish. If I can just add a quote, that's kind of unrelated to this book, but a quote I really like. "People often overestimate what they can accomplish in one year and underestimate what they can accomplish in 10." I think that's pretty important. I think about that a lot because it's easy to get caught up in where you're going to be this time next year and set some unrealistic goals, which unrealistic goals can be healthy too.
But to look a little bit higher, a little bit further where am I going to be in a decade? Well, think about where you were 10 years ago. You might be impressed that you're probably kind of surprised where you are today. Even just, something like being a father. Ten 10 years ago, I wasn't thinking about that very much. Now I think about it all day long.
[28:30] Bram: Nice. I like that. That's a good perspective.
[28:33] Chance: That was another angle of the book, right? Is that these things take time? I know Warren Buffet always says that. I don't know if this was actually a quote. But I saw on social media that Jeff Bezos asked Warren Buffett, why more people don't follow his advice because it's pretty simple. He said, well, nobody wants to get rich slow.
[28:56] Bram: Everybody wants it now. It's true. Okay. What does your portfolio look like? I'm not asking like, in terms of like dollars and so forth, but like when you're trying to position and map out, how you're going to build your portfolio and different kinds of streams of income, it sounds like you definitely have that type of a mindset with some of the takeaways that you're getting from this type of content. Having like a business that's generating cashflow, what is your philosophy on kind of investing it to cumulate wealth in the long-term?
[29:27] Chance: Being careful with your money. Not spending money that you don't need to spend. You know, my wife always jokes about how cheap I am. She does a grocery shopping. I'm always looking at the receipt being like, you paid how much for grapes? But I would say being careful. Being careful with your money. Thinking about every expenditure. I don't do too much online shopping. My wife can handle that. But as for the portfolio, I really like real estate investing. My wife and I bought our first house when we were pretty young, and it had rental income in the basement. Now that we've moved up here, we've continued to rent it out. I like those passive streams of income. Of course, the stock market. I think that it's a great tool. I don't like mutual funds.
But yeah, real estate investing is what excites me the most. I like doing the deal. I like strategizing on the deal, how can we make our offer more attractive than the next one? How can we structure this in a way, maybe it does the seller want to quit closing or something like that? Real estate investing has been my favorite thing to do so far, but I'm not set in my ways. If I see an opportunity that I like, I'll go pursue it. I'm not set in one lane.
[30:46] Bram: Chance, how can people book a campsite with you if they're interested in trying out glamping?
[30:54] Chance: The best way to book it is going on our website, you can reserve right through the website. We are working on a new website that's going to be more user-friendly, not to say that the current one isn't, but our new website is going to have pictures of all the campsites on it. Just for the people listening, we're not just glamping. We do have some glamping tents. We also have a small cabin. We have 10 campsites. We have big campsites for large trailers like 40-foot buses and trailers, that kind of thing as well. Yeah, people can go on our website or they can give us a call or they can just pop by and see us.
[31:30] Bram: Awesome. The website algonquinpines.ca and your Instagram is Algonquin Pines campground. Be sure to check it out, give it a try. I know, definitely I will probably try glamping because I'd prefer to sleep on a mattress to be honest. I mean, I appreciate your time Chance, thank you so much. You've given a lot of information and gems and wisdom throughout this podcast. Definitely much appreciated for him.
[32:01] Chance: Bram it's been great to catch up with you. Congratulations on the launch of the podcast. I've listened to the two episodes you dropped so far, look forward to being along for the ride. I appreciate you thinking of me and having me on.
[32:11] Bram: It's been a pleasure chance, much appreciated. Thank you for those words. I mean, thank you for being part of this roster and part of this journey as well. I mean, I definitely look forward to connecting with you again in the future. I'm sure we could do some follow-up episodes and celebrate the growth and the success. Until next time this was episode number four of the rise above podcast. Please be sure to subscribe, share with a friend that you think may benefit and until next time, have a great day
Thanks for listening to this episode of the rise above podcast. Make sure to subscribe for future episodes, leave a review and share with a friend who would love to hear this episode. This was the rise above podcast.
Founder & CEO of an SEO Marketing Agency Jeff Peroutka joins Bram Bains on this episode of The Rise Above Podcast. They talk about the Art & Science behind the Modern Day SEO of 2021 and Jeff gives advice to Entrepreneurs on how to build processes.
Follow us on Instagram @TheRiseAbovePodcast for bonus content - Be sure to pay it forward and share it with a friend!
Interview Transcript
[00:35] Bram: Welcome everybody to the rise above podcast. Today, we have a very special episode today. I have Jeff Peroutka joining me. Jeff is a founder and CEO of Core Marketing. Core Marketing is an SEO firm. How are you doing today, Jeff?
[00:51] Jeff: Pretty good. Pretty good. Thanks for having me.
[00:54] Bram: You're very welcome. As we get into it, I'm going to go through a couple of icebreakers there with you to get the ball rolling. Then we'll jump into the interview. We'll learn a little bit more about you get into your story, kind of what your vision is and where you see this business going into the future. What is your favorite movie?
[01:11] Jeff: My favorite movie is Jobs by Steve jobs? If you talk to any of my friends, they'll tell you that I've probably seen that movie at least 50 times. I just think it's a really good story. You know, Steve jobs is definitely oneof those figures that I got a lot of motivation from, just kind of hearing his story, how he overcame so many obstacles down the road. I think it's just really inspiring and great movie. Yeah.
[01:40] Bram: Good stuff. What is your favorite book and why?
[01:44] Jeff: I would say the Alchemist. I think it's a really, really good book. It's a short book. But it's just so jam packed with life lessons. I think it's just perfect. There areso many different things that, you kind of think about and yeah, that's great.
[02:03] Bram: Nice. That's a great book. What is your favorite place to travel?
[02:09] Jeff: My favorite place to travel is probably Bali. I'm born and raised in Hawaii, but Bali's kind of the beautiful aspect of Hawaiian island culture. But it's still very, I guess, undiscovered undeveloped which is just super beautiful. It's kinda got that old roots beauty to it and it's really cheap and yeah, it's just awesome. I encourage everyone to go check it out.
[02:33] Bram: Who is your favorite actor or actress?
[02:38] Jeff: I'll say Liam Neeson. I really like Liam Neeson. He's a really good actor. I think. All his movies are just really good.
[02:46] Bram: Who do you look at as kind of like a mentor figure?
[02:50] Jeff: Yeah, I would say moving it back to Steve Jobs like I mentioned. I think Steve Jobs is a really goodkind of mentor figure, just because he, like I said, overcame a lot of obstacles. I think lately Tim Ferris is a guy that I definitely turn to for a lot of insight and inspiration. There's a lot to learn from that guy and not only does he have really great books but like his podcasts and so forth are just so packed full of information.
[03:20] Bram: Okay. Cool. All right. Jeff why don't you tell us a little bit about your story, your background, how you set this company up and what inspired you, and currently where you're at today?
[03:36] Jeff: Pretty interesting little story. Actually, startedkind of my entrepreneurial break probably when I was a sophomore in college. I basically came up with this idea. It was called fit. It was my previous company before this one, it was an iPhone app. The way that we were selling it was basically kind of like different clothes, a new way of shopping this gamified shopping experience, the machine learning algorithm.
Yeah, basically I was kind of working on that pretty hardfor about two to three years. Then right when COVID hits it kind of rattled everyone's cage, especially because, in my head I was a senior in college and I was like, hey, I'm going to graduate. I'm going to make this my full time. When we got venture funded I'm moving to San Francisco and just going to kind of go from there. But yeah, COVID really kind of shook things up and especially having a bunch of other founders that were also seniors in college, everyone was kind of like, hey, this is a cool company, but at the end of the day, what's going to pay the bills in two to three months.
The company kind of went in their own separate ways. I basically pursued SEO as a freelance. Basically,throughout college, I was working at a digital marketing agency doing full-service SEO. What I did once that company kind of went south is I basically just focused all my energy into basically taking courses on Udemy and basically improving my skill. Started freelancing through LinkedIn and Upwork. Eventually became a top-ratedspecialist.
Eventually got the number one SEO in San Diego. Then we kind of just decided, hey, it makes sense for me to start my own firm. Basically, I started my own practice. Now we have a few employees trying to build that out and can't really complain too much. We're in a nice spot right now.
[05:35] Bram: I mean, self-education definitely makes you a fortune and that's what I've heard. You said you were taking these courses on Udemy. Is that a website?
[05:43] Jeff: Yeah. Udemy is basically a marketplace where you could buy courses made by other people. I don't know, a lot of people always talk about YouTube and YouTube has this plethora of education. What I found was YouTube is great, but there's not a lot of organization in terms of, you watch this, whereas Udemy kind of had that pre-packaged course like, hey, you want to be the master at SEO take this course, it'll teach you this specifically. It's just really cool because there's a lot of really good, accredited teachers on there. I think there's a lot to learn, so it's definitely a really cool platform.
[06:25] Bram: Nice. Okay. You took courses online by yourself and then you went to Upwork, and you started offering I guess, a service for SEO. Before we go a little bit further. Can you explain what SEO is and what capacity, what kind of services that you learned and that you offer and how it helps businesses perform better?
[06:47] Jeff: Certainly. Yeah. SEO search engine optimization is basically the science of getting websites ranked higher on Google search engine. Essentially what we are is we're competing for organic search traffic, which is basically kind of the Rolls Royce of traffic. Basically,when you look at all the different types of traffic that you can get on your website, you have social media traffic paid advertising traffic and then you have organic search traffic, which is basically traffic that could be attributed to when people find you on Google search engine.
Just like Google, when you type something in, there's 10 results. Then there's a second page, third page, fourth page. Basically, what SEO is, is it's getting websites that are on the second page, trying to get them onto the first page. That's essentially what my day-to-day looks like. How do we do that? Through a plethora of different strategies, we have our keyword research. We have our page speed. We have fixing broken pages, optimizing some of our content link building.
The SEO, especially the modern-day SEO in 2021, wears many hats and it's constantly evolving. Google's algorithm is not stagnant, it's changing on a week-to-week basis. I would say the SEO and the future and the SEO that succeeds today is definitely going to be the one that's very versatile. I'm a real student of the art and constantly learning and evolving.
[08:11] Bram: Nice. Okay. Organic search traffic. What does that look like?
[08:15] Jeff: Yep. Basically, whenever someone types something onto Google search engines basically they'll be all these different websites that'll pop up. Basically, it has a title it has like a brief description underneath. Basically, there's an order to those specific results. Basically, what we try to do, what SEO do is systematically figure out strategies to rank those websites, higher placement onto those search engines. Basically, what that'll do is that they'll bring an organic search shopping, which is basically people that find your website organically.
Now the reason why this job is so great is because once SEO is done to your websites, it's considered a permanent shopping solution. It's traffic that consistently comes to your website each and every month converts a really highrates of visits many pages per session, bounces less. Typically, all of the really important metrics that we look out for Google, SEO checks all those boxes.
[09:17] Bram: Nice. Okay. There's an art and a science definitely to the SEO. It seems like everything that you've described is kind of like the science piece of it. Like the actual systems and the structure and understanding the algorithms and how they all kind of work in harmony. The art piece of it, like the creative. What does that look like in terms of the search traffic that's being funneled to these websites?
[09:43] Jeff: Definitely. When I talk about SEO, SEO is also an art form. Basically, the way that I describe it is there's two different worlds out there. There's kind of be very, very creative content writing world where, we're aiming to be very creative and talk in a specific way that communicates directly with your audience. Then there's the more technical side the SEO language using specific keywords, using specific keyword phrases and so forth. Basically, what my job is, is to find the happy medium between both of the worlds.
Let the creative still be creative while at the same time, suggesting certain elements that they can incorporate to their pieces to just make their content rank a little bit better. I would say giving that guidance and really knowing how to incorporate some of those keywords and strategies. I would say that's the real art to it.
[10:40] Bram: Okay, awesome. It definitely seems like it's very collaborative, like kind of a project that you would get involved in working with some of these businesses and these companies. Okay, cool. What kind of clients do you currently deal with and in terms of, like case studies, what kind of results are you able to achieve?
[11:01] Jeff: Right now, it's three main industries. We have cannabis companies. We have medical websites, so those are kind of the doctors. A lot of the dentists and so forth. Then we have law firms. Those are basically our three niches in terms of results. We recently worked with a law firm that actually we still work with. We started the project a little over a year ago. They basically in their first four months they increased the organic search about 688%. Basically, getting some of their keywords back onto the first page.
As for law firms to increase their search traffic that much. With such a high conversion rate, it really yields that ROI and moves the needle in a really positive way. One thing I also want to point, those are three industries that we service. But we also do direct to the consumer, meaning that we focus directly with businesses and work collaboratively with them. But at the same time, I would say most of our clients nowadays are digital marketing agencies. Those marketing agencies are contracting us and basically outsourcing to us to build some of their client needs.
[12:20] Bram: Nice. Very nice. Currently, what does your team look like?
[12:28] Jeff: Yeah, so our team right now, we have a sales team of about four people. We have a PR agency that we're currently working with. We have a few social media people that are running our social media team. We have two content writers that are both freelance that we basically work with on a contract-to-contract basis. Then I do pretty much all the high-level strategy. Then I do have a VA that helps me with some website implementation. That's basically what we look like.
[12:58] Bram: Nice, good stuff. Now where you are today, what advice would you give a younger version of yourself?
[13:11] Jeff: To be completely honest? I probably wouldn't give myself any advice. I think, one of the biggest things that I learned from fit was just to expect the unexpected just because, working in that star lifestyle especially running it through an incubator where there's constantly someone, over your shoulder, kind of watching over you. I would say you hit a ton of speed bumps and I would say those speed bumps are the biggest learning objectives.
From my perspective, I'm kind of looking forward to that, just because anytime there's a pickup, then it makes me kind of reflect and build a better product or anything like that. I think, I wouldn't really tell myself anything. I'll just tell myself to keep going. Just because there's going to be hiccups naturally and that's how you learn even better.
[14:06] Bram: Okay. Mindset wise, I've heard that at any given time you're a reflection of the five ideas that you keep around you. That being said, I mean, what kind of influence do you take and what kind of ideas do you have around you at all times?
[14:30] Jeff: Oh, yeah. I would say definitely right now, a lot of my friends that I have in my close-knit group of circle or also other agency owners, other business owners. Definitely very, very collaborative. I think, kind of branching off from the five ideas, I think you are also kind of the sum of your closest friends. I believe that a lot. I definitely think that, if you surround yourself with around really positive people, really positive energy and really positive ideas, you're going to be something awesome.
[15:09] Bram: Okay. I've got a couple of questions here that come from an MBA student from DeGroote School of Business from McMaster. Is this the career path that you envisioned for yourself or did this kind of fall into place? Like what was the backstory there?
[15:30] Jeff: Really, really interesting backstory. Right when my first company was kind of going south, I kind of had this period where I was like, oh my God, I'm not going to be doing this for the rest of my life. What do I do? I'm graduating college. Basically, what I did was, I was actually gonna buy an agency that was very similar to mine. Essentially what we do right now is we do link building, and I was going to buy this other link building agency with basically just this money that I saved up through college.
Basically, I couldn't buy it. They didn't accept the buyout and I just kind of said, what, I'm going to start my own. That's basically kind of how it started. Try to buy a competitor out and they said, no. That's pretty much how it went. Didn't really plan for anything and couldn't be happier.
[16:31] Bram: You built it yourself. That's amazing. How was the process of building it yourself and what were some of the challenges that you had in building the company and assembling a new team and how did you overcome them?
[16:48] Jeff: Oh yeah, I would say the biggest challenge was, this is kind of an unorthodox piece of advice that I tell a lot of people, because a lot of people, are real advocates for, you should do everything yourself. You know, another business really well. For me, that's what I was really trying to do at first. I was trying to do the company, social media. I was trying to do the PR. I was trying to do all the graphic design, learn graphic design, learning the paid ads, so I can do paid ads, myself, content writing. But I just found myself being stretched in all these different directions.
At the end of the day, I kind of said, this isn't sustainable, this isn't scalable. I'm good at SEO and not good at all the other things that come with running a company. Basically, I kind of just decided, it makes sense for me to just hire a consultant, pay them more money to build a framework that I could then contract someone into and basically, have systems in place to define success and progress. That's basically kind of where we're at right now.
You know, we built all these systems for how to run social media at a really high and scalable level. You know, what our goal should be for PR how do we see ourselves in one year? All these different things, I think, especially with running a big company that has, scalability in mind, I think that's definitely a big piece of advice that I would give to startups.
[18:21] Bram: Amazing, good stuff. In terms of running and being a leader virtually and so forth, in the environment that we're in, what are some tips that you can kind of share to still get the engagement out of the team and make sure things are efficient and productive at a high level?
[18:38] Jeff: Yeah, I would say definitely using more than one project management system. I think a lot of people they just rely on Slack, or they just rely on Sheets or something like that. I think, it's definitely really good to incorporate all these different plethora of project management. Just so that you have documentation, just you have kind of a real big picture of, where the projectsat. I think our key to success for running a really highproductive team is just making sure that everyone's on the same page, making sure that we have all our information in one centralized place. Everyone knows, hey, this is what's expected. This is when it's expected. Just building systems around that. I think that's just really important.
[19:26] Bram: Okay. Good stuff. Kind of more on a personal note, what made you want to leave Hawaii?
[19:31] Jeff: Yeah, great question. I think Hawaii especially, I remember when I was graduating high school a good amount of the people that I went to high school with all stayed on Hawaii. I think it's just; Hawaii is really beautiful. But a lot of people in Hawaii get stuck on the island and they don't really branch out. They don't ever move or travel or anything like that. I guess I was just raised by parents that really love to travel. At a very young age, I really, got that travel bug and really wanted to the world. I think, naturally I wanted to get out there, and California especially San Diego was just the best access to the west coast and really good weather and some sort of life.
[20:19] Bram: Awesome, man. Sounds great. Okay. Speaking about the Alchemist, what does that book mean to you and what was your takeaway from it? Yeah, I would definitely say following your personal legend. I think it's really interesting how they say that, when you're actively seeking it and when you're actually actively going after your personal legends, then the universe is going to do everything in its power to guide you closer there. I think that's super right. I think it's really interesting how there's all these hiccups along the road as he's trying to go along that quest.
I think, you can definitely look at life in that same vision. I think, yeah, the biggest takeaway for me was just, follow your dreams and do exactly what you want to do. Because at the end of the day, that's what really matters.
[21:20] Bram: Okay. Well, thank you so much for your time, Jeff, for anybody listening out there that wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way that they can connect?
[21:29] Jeff: Yeah, definitely connect with me on LinkedIn. Jeff Peroutka. Yeah, check me out on LinkedIn. I also have a link in my info box for my calendar link. Basically,giving out free 15-minute consultations for anyone that has a business. Take me up on it.
[21:51] Bram: Amazing. Thank you again, Jeff, for your time. This was the third episode of the rise above podcast. Be sure to subscribe, share it with a friend that you think this may benefit any business owners out there. Definitely check out Jeff on LinkedIn and until next time, have a great day.
[22:12] Outro: Thanks for listening to this episode of the rise above podcast. Make sure to subscribe for future episodes, leave a review and share with a friend who would love to hear this episode. This was the rise above podcast.
Sales Director for an International Beauty & Make up Brand Crystal Presse joins Bram Bains on this episode of The Rise Above Podcast. They talk about self development, growth, empowerment and Crystal gives advice for how to succeed in the corporate world.
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Interview Transcript
[00:35] Bram: Welcome everybody to the rise above podcast. Today we've got a very special episode. I'm happy to be here speaking to a really good friend of mine. Her name is Crystal Presse. Crystal is a sales director for a very large makeup brand. I think a lot of the ladies are going to know which brand this is. We'll get a bit into it. Crystal is also a mother, and she is one of the funniest people I know. One of the most authentic people I know, and somebody that I'm really happy to be able to connect with and gain some knowledge and wisdom and mentorship.
I'm really happy to be here today with you Crystal. Really happy to have a conversation here and, help get to know you better and share some of the knowledge and experience that you have with others that are kind of following through on the same path as you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your time. How are you doing today?
[01:30] Crystal: Well, you're so kind. Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here. You're a good friend to me too. Anything we can do together I'm happy to join, and I'm doing great. It's the second, third day of sun this week. I'm a very happy person. I feel like spring is around the corner and that is super rejuvenating for me.
[01:47] Bram: Yeah, definitely. I think this winter has been a little bit mild being in the house the whole time. I know not going outside and commuting to work has been positive for me. I've really enjoyed that. How's the pandemic been for you?
[02:02] Crystal: You know, we've been lucky. I mean, I think the first thing is, you don't want to say I've been great. Because there's been people who've saw such tough things happen in their lives, are such destitute and we've been lucky to keep working my husband and I. That is obviously one huge stressor that didn't have to come into play, and that remained healthy and, doing our best to keep our family safe, but also trying to keep saying. I think those are two things that everybody's trying to figure out. It's like there's the right thing to do. Then there's well, can we just do something so that we don't go crazy?
But overall we've been doing really well. I know, I feel like I've been kind of going internal with it where I've been like, okay, you said you never had time to work out. Now that's not an excuse. You, you were always on the road, you couldn't eat. Right now that's not an excuse. Your husband's still annoying you about something, now's the time to work on it. You're in the house together. I feel like I kind of went in and started to try to kind of better myself or evolve my own world of relationships, so that hopefully when the world opens back up, I can do things like giving back more.
Getting my daughter into, giving back more, spending time with others. But we've been home. I'm like, let's get everything in order, but I couldn't get an order when life was going at, ultra speed. We've been holding up really well. Thank God.
[03:25] Bram: Good sounds super positive. I think that's a general vibe or frequency that I've been hearing a lot out there. That people have been taking that time to kind of just work on themselves and progress in other areas of their life. That's good to hear. I want to get into a few things, but first and foremost, I mean, what I'd like to do is set up a couple of icebreakers just to kind of get to know some fun stuff about you there and get the ball rolling. Speed round. I'll ask the questions. The floor is yours. If you want to speed round or elaborate on anything, it's all yours. What is your favorite place to travel?
[04:09] Crystal: Oh, well we've done a lot of the Caribbean. We we're all inclusive people. I love a good week of like, not having to worry about anything. I would say our favorite place to visit and that we've been multiple times, we got married there, is Jamaica. Just beautiful culturally, the people are just such beautiful souls, sense of humor. I feel like the sense of humor is so similar between Jamaicans and Canadians.
Even when I meet Jamaicans here in Canada, we just have such a connection and it's just a place where obviously weather and food and all those things too. But culturally it's just feels like a really good place to be. I have to say, Jamaica is our favorite spot.
[04:48] Bram: Jamaica, excellent choice.
[04:50] Crystal: My daughter was like one when we took her there, one and a half. I think that was like one of the first things she said when we taught her yah man.
[05:02] Bram: Who was a role model of yours growing up?
[05:07] Crystal: I don't think I have one role model. You know, celebrity wise Jlo is like my girl, someone who was just so fabulous, but always so classy throughout her life and did a little bit of everything. She was kind of a master of everything that she's done. I think if I had like a celebrity idol or crush, she's definitely someone who always impresses me to do everything that she does and do it with such integrity and grace. Then I think, for me early on in my retail career, because that's where I've been my whole life is in retail. There was people, there was moments where, I remember this district manager way back in my days at Old Navy, she would come in and her name was Trudy Love if she ever hears this. She was just a fabulous woman. I remember the way people would feel when she walked in the room. You felt calm, you felt safe, you felt like she was going to take care of you.
She had the answers. I think that's the thing I've always been aware of. It's just like your emotional wake I call it. Know what your emotional wake is. We have such a power. We decide how we want to make people feel. We're always in control of how we want to make people feel. I thought, I want to be like her when I grow up, and I think in the back of my mind, that district manager job in retail, being able to see and touch many people, was always so intriguing to me. Really for that, I've never been much for the title or the pay.
I always feel like if you're doing the job you have really well, things will just work out the rest of the rest of it. I hope I answered that, but I think that's kind of it. I've had some great leaders along the way that have guided me and given me the right direction and support to get me to the next level. She was definitely one of them.
[07:00] Bram: Okay. J-Lo and Trudy Love. When did you first feel like you were becoming an adult?
[07:18] Crystal: Well, I mean, I won't overthink these answers. I think, when I came back from maternity leave, I was, 31 and when you have a child and then you have tohave a career, that's a really demanding career, you have to rely on everyone more than you ever did before, to help you get through the day-to-day stuff. Your family, you have to rely on new people. Now there's babysitters and daycare and all these things in your life. I had to figure out how I was going to do it all because I knew I loved having a career. I knew I was going to work. If I was going to work, I wasn't going to do something to just get a paycheck.
I was going to do something I loved and that fueled my soul, that was just for me. I feel like when I came back, that probably was a real, and it was like, not even adulthood, but it was like womanhood. It was like, I knew who I was. I knew what I wanted. I knew what I wasn't going to allow in my life anymore. You know, the way you got treated by maybe poor bosses or stuff that would happen in your own relationships, whether it was friends or your marriage, and you thought, well, I'm not going to go back there and do that anymore. I've been someone who it's like, I've been really good at things in my job, then there's stuff I struggle with and we all have strengths, but I think my strengths, I really decided, hey, it's okay, this is what you're good at.
This is what you should harness. In your career, you should try to get closer to this. That's what moved me away from that job. It's a four as a district manager, it was like, there was parts of the elements of that I was really good at, and it was the right job for me. There was parts that it really wasn't. I wasn't doing myself a service and it was doing a disservice to the people who worked for me. I just thought, you need to figure this out, whether it's at Sephora or it's just moving on completely.
I've been with them at 10 years at that point, I just felt like I needed new relationships. I needed to start fresh. I needed to like reset who I was in my career and what my next path was. I really feel like it really started coming back from maternity leave. It was like really owning who I was.
[09:26] Bram: If you had your own television show, what would be your genre or theme?
[09:34] Crystal: Well, I would love to have my own television show. As you and I have discussed, what could I do to just like engage with people and just connect. Because that's kinda my jam, but I would have to say it would be some kind of female empowerment show for sure. I just finished watching a season of Firefly Lane on Netflix. This woman in there telly has her own talk show called the girlfriend hour. There's a connection to why it's called that, to her past. It's not really what I'm going to talk about, but I remember seeing that going yeah, yeah. That's what I would do. Like women empowerment, but mine would be about what I'm so passionate about and what will be kind of, I think where I'll spend my time when I start being able to give back is just women being confident, being powerful, owning who they are.
It really frustrates me when I see women in my life or people that I don't know, but I meet and they're a victim to I'm too busy. I say a victim because I'm not talking about women who are a real victim, like of abuse and things like that. But that stuff too, like how do we get you out of there? We'll help you let's get you out of there. But then it's the things like where I'm not in any kind of destitute situation, but I'm choosing not to just get it right. I'm just falling victim to a busy schedule and to all the needs and demands and going, I'm not going to make the time to work out.
Like there's women who were also just not making it happen. Like lots of women could easily say, well, no one really has time for anything. It would be about getting women to just always feel really confident to say, this is what I need. My time is valuable and it's okay that I need time to myself. It's okay that I don't want to be with my kids right now and I want to go work out. I want to go have a drink with my friend. Well, there's a lot of women who don't have the confidence to ask for what they want or they feel bad about it. That's the big problem too. Women just feel bad.
I still feel guilty. You know, if I'm going to go out and I'm leaving my husband home with the child, which I don't know why I do, but you do. Or you're like, oh, let me set up the whole house before I go anywhere because I'm going out. But if the man was to go out, he just goes out. He just walks out the door. That is a real serious struggle still today with, with, that kind of balance. I'm not like a super big feminist, but I definitely am like, female empowerment. I know women, men have roles in the house. I kind of liked some of the traditions. But I like women to also be, let's be a little bit modern here and like mama needs to go. Mama's gotta go. Mama needs things for herself.
I think it just that big rally around women kind of continuing to take care of themselves and not being scared to ask for what they need. I don't know if that answers your question. I feel like I'm going on a rampage here, but it would definitely be about that because that's what I do every day. Whether it's the women I work for, it's friends, it's family, it's the people who take care of my daughter. I'm giving back to those women and trying to empower them all the time in my own time and in my own way. And it's a pretty good feeling when somebody is there.
[12:50] Bram: Wow. It definitely sounds like you're passionate about the female empowerment piece. I think you've found your niche right there. You're working currently for Too Faced, which is a major brand. I don't know much about this world of makeup and whatnot. But when I asked around for anybody who may have questions for you, everybody was like, whoa Too Faced. Okay. That's a big company. I definitely knowyou're doing something very well there with a major brand.
So happy to hear that you made a change from Sephora to an established brand on the other side. What was that change like for you? You spoke about an emotional week and realizing, or maybe that there's other things that you were looking for and what you kind of had outgrown at that point in time. Can you be a bit specific about what led you up to that? Like, was there a specific moment or was it just an epiphany or a realization where you were like, okay, I need to do something different. When you made that decision, how soon after did it materialize in terms of an opportunity coming up?
[14:01] Crystal: I kept coming back. Had a beautiful career with Sephora. Met so many people had so much experience, wonderful company and it became super internal. Like it was me, I owned this. It wasn't anything that anyone had done to me. It was what I was doing to myself. I think I kept coming back and coming back to a place of just feeling like this isn't right. There's parts of this that I'm not, I'm not able to do to the best of my ability that I'm not enjoying. I've always said like in my work environment, it's just important for me that everyone is like, oh, Crystal. Yeah, I like working with her. Yeah she's helpful. Or yes, she's good.
You want to feel useful. You want to feel like, yeah, that person brings something to the table. There was parts of the job where you just kept coming back to, it's not the right fit. When some of that stuff, I just don't want to get into from a confidentiality standpoint and kind of what I did in my job. Not to be specific about people, but just in general, just leave some of that on the table. But it was a real personal journey of like waking up on this roller coaster of like, yay, I'm happy. Oh I'm down again. Yay. I'm happy oh down again. I'm like, okay, I keep running into this wall. It's time to make a change.
I really do, I think you and Gigi talked about this in her podcast, but that was the power of the secret, what's that book? The Secret and that power of like, I never even read the book. I'm the girl who reads the title in the back of the book and I'm like, oh, that's great. I've already learned something. Thank you so much. But I am a huge believer in like, positive and putting out what you want in the world and it's coming back. Right. I mean, lucky enough, obviously when you're working at Sephora you're meeting brands all the time. You're making connections naturally in relationships.
In my heart, in the back of my mind, was that the right fit for me? Is it the brand route? Is it this route? Is it getting out of this altogether and doing something totally different? It was like getting bigger and bigger and then you're like, oh my goodness. Eventually you get to the point where like, it's nagging at you every day. You know you have tomake a change. That's when, I found out that there was this job happening and then a conversation was had, and I applied.
It was amazing. It was like, I really felt like somebody was helping me out there and was like, Hey, what about this? I'm very lucky that everybody was very supportive of that in my current role and in my new role. I still work very closely with Sephora, but it was a wonderful supportive conversation. I was able to make that change to a brand. But yeah, that didn't come overnight because I was not going to make any rash decisions.
Like I said, I was in a wonderful company with a wonderful job, but it was something that no one could fix for me, but me and I think there was just aspects of that role, that weren't right for me. Then aspects of this role that were, and now I feel like I've come into something that holistically is better for me and that I can even perform better at.
[17:31] Bram: Yeah, definitely. It sounds like what I'm hearing is there's parts that you were looking for more growth for yourself, not only in a career, but personally as well for your own development. It seems like that might've been what gets you going and gets you engaged and makes you fulfilled and happy.
[17:54] Crystal: I think the big thing was, I mean the growth would never end. It never ends in your life. I had lots of growth opportunity there, but there are things I want to eliminate. There are things in this job that I don't want to do and I shouldn't do because I'm probably never going to be amazing at it. To me, it's about mastering something. I want to feel like I'm mastering something and then I'm really moving on at the right time. I'm hoping that I can do that now on this path.
[18:20] Bram: Nice. Okay. So Jamaica, Jamaica is a great place. It's beautiful. Gurpreet and I have been there only once actually.
[18:30] Crystal: Oh my goodness. It's where we met you.
[18:32] Bram: That's where we met. Yeah. We met there at, I forget the name of the place. Bahia Grand Principe.
[18:40] Crystal: See, this is why, this is also my favorite place. I met you guys. Ryan and I were playing pool in like the common area. they had a little show set up that night, a little bar set up and like just kind of like just outside, in like a random area. They had moved the pool stuff, moved the pool furniture and yeah, you guys walked by and kind of looked at the table. Another couple of come by before you guys. I was like, oh no, I'm not even looking at them. Like this guy looks like he's not going to be fun. She might be, he does not look like a good time. I'm such a, like, I'm the person who would go, oh, do you want to play pool? You can have it.
I always worry about everyone having a good time and if everybody's happy. So stranger or not, usually I would just offer it up and I'm like, no, my vacation, I want to play pool I'm into this. I would love for another couple to join us, but it's not going to be them. I remember just letting them go by and kind of not giving them any attention. Then you, and, well it's Gurpreet but I call her Gigi. Gigi came by and I was like, oh, I love them right away. Then I said, yeah, do you guys want to play? I think Gigi was like, no, no, that's okay. I'm like, come on. I'm like girls against, then she's like girls against guys. I think she said something that made me go, yeah, this is going to work.
Then you guys joined us and we spent like the whole vacation together.
[19:58] Bram: Yeah. It was a great trip. It was awesome. You mentioned to me too, like at the time that you just finished reading a book, the five second rule. What was it about that period of time that you were going through that you were reading that book? I know this is going back a couple of years.
[20:24] Crystal: It's going back a few years, but I think at the time that's probably really when I was in, well, I'm always in the throws of wanting to evolve. I'm a thinker too much, but there was something about that time. Somebody else told me about that book. I learned about it through somebody at work. What I loved about it was the overthinking. I think at that time too, maybe like slightly overwhelmed with everything that was going on and just trying to find my way out of it.
Then I would get like analysis paralysis. I would sit in these things and not just go, what do you want to do? Just make a move. I would be scared to be wrong. I would be scared. It's like, I don't need a ton of approval or pats on my back. No news is good news to me. But at the same time, if I have no idea where I stand and that kind of freaks me out, like even if someone says good job and I don't hear them from them for three months, I'm like, okay, at least I know I'm in the right direction.
I think I was in a place where I just felt like I wasn't taking action. The day would go by, or the week would go by and I didn't do anything actionable or meaningful because I was so inundated with information and overwhelmed with it that I was just kind of scared to make a move. I loved the sound of that five seconds where it's like, you have five seconds to either let fear rule this and let it go away or just make a call. Not that it was yes, all the time, but in five seconds, it's like, just make like, just go and do it. It helped me through a few things. I don't really live with that one as much today as I do with other kinds of things that I've learned.
But I think it was really helpful at the time I was going to say, there's this book called, eat the frog. I have never even saw this book. I don't even know what the cover looks like, but it's about procrastination. Not to put things off. Of course ultimately it's about, what's the thing I really don't want to do today. I'm not looking forward to it, or I know it's going to be the hardest thing I do. Meaning, not just emotionally talk, but maybe it's mentally tough. Like there's a report you have to build. It's going to take you more time. You got to do these things first, or you've got to do them at the best time of day for you. If you're on in the morning and you're firing on all cylinders, get it done then. If you're three o'clock is your magic hour, do it then. But this eat the frog. I loved it because anything that I wasn't looking forward to in my day, or I knew it was going to be tough, I did it first thing in the morning. I never read the book. I only heard the title.
I downloaded an app called headway. I think where they, you kind of fill out your profile and you tell them your goal of how many minutes you want to read a day, and then they'll suggest books based on the themes you picked. That's what they'll do for you. They will chunk that book out and read it to you in 15 minutes, if that's your Catholic, give you kind of all that. Very cool. I accidentally subscribed and it's a little more expensive for the year, but now I'm in it. I accidentally did it. I subscribed for the year. But it's a cool app.
[23:52] Bram: Enjoy it for sure. Okay. A couple of questions here for some people in my network that are kind of in the same industry, a little bit earlier on in their journey than you are, but from kind of like a perspective that you have and how you've kind of designed your own career, and you've progressed through the different roles through Sephora, and you've established yourself as a leader in this space. What are some of the tips that you can give to people? I guess just starting out entry level roles. How can they build a personal brand and set themselves apart and really grow through the business?
[24:28] Crystal: I think, it starts with first, have one focus, have one job goal in mind. If you're the person saying I'd like to get promoted, whatever you've got open, no one likes that person. Because that means you're hungry for title and you're hungry for money. Not that those things aren't fabulous and they're great at the end. But if that's what you're in it for, you'll have a hard time getting to where you want to be. Integrity is like my number one word in life is that, you wake up every day and you do your best.
You be honest, you be helpful and you do the job you have in front of you. There will always be opportunities if you're doing that well and being a kind person, then people want to work with you. It starts there. Do people wanna work with me? Do they trust me? Do they want to be around me? That should be organic. Then it starts with hopefully you're going to be known for something. Then it's figuring out, like I said, at 31, I was kinda like, this is what I'm known for. I shouldn't be ashamed of that. That's okay. If I'm not the best at that, or I'm not the best at that. I'm going to work with people who are. Everyone's gonnahave their strengths.
I used to be more intimidated by people who maybe were smarter than me, I guess you could say. Or stronger in something. Now I'm not as intimidated by that. I wasn't intimidated because I didn't want them to get where they were going or pass me or anything like that. But it just, if you're going to be their leader, you've got to find your place, but it's all about, am I supporting you? Like, okay, I've hired someone or someone's on my team who is super strong. They don't need me to kind of handhold them and say, this is how you do this. They need to help me get them to the next level. That's a different kind of leadership in someone brand new. But I think, yeah, it starts with showing up, knowing who you are, knowing kind of what you want in life.
Maybe you don't know the exact job title, like I know I'm a leader in retail? I'm a leader in beauty and retail. I'm not in marketing, I'm not an education, I'm not in HR etc. It's first kind of having just doesn't have to be this perfect path because that's the other thing never expect to go straight up. Sometimes, life is a zigzag. I'm going to go here and then maybe I'm taking a lateral move right now a little bit, but this is going to help me. It's going to give me exposure. It's going to give me experience in something I don't know anything about. Now, I'm going to go back over here. It's not the straight line all the time, but you definitely want to have a direction and not say hey, what's open. I want to work these hours so I'll take that job.
Like people see through that very quickly. It's not an admired trait by any means. Then, recognizing what your strengths are and honing in on those and then surrounding yourself with, if you're not a leader, then just the people you work with. Don't be scared to ask for help. Hey, how did you do that? Or I'm trying to build this. What did you do? There's something there's always something you'll have to offer that person, but also ask them to help you. So much to learn from kind of working with others, especially others who aren't like you. That rounds you out because if you want to be a leader and you're not there yet, you're going to work with all kinds of personalities.
You know, I go through four or five different check-in calls a week with my team, all those conversations are different. I'm the same person, but I'm having a different kind of conversation with all of those people. I manage them all differently. Some of them need more hand holding, not hand holding, but everyone has different areas of strength and opportunity. This person I may need to help them with that. This person's firing on all cylinders on that. I think I hope I'm answering this question because sometimes I can get kind of on a tangent, but I think those are really important pieces.
[28:35] Bram: Wow. Yeah, no, that's great. For sure. Something somebody told me is you kind of have to be a chameleon per se. It's good to hear that from your perspective too.
Because it's similar traits.
[28:52] Crystal: That's good feedback too, is that you have to be really flexible, adaptable, be able to work in the autonomy, the unknown a little bit. There's not always an answer. You've got to be able to be a self-starter get up and go. Take the initiative and make things happen and be okay working in the unknown for a little bit and help take people through that with you.
[29:17] Bram: Definitely. What are some of the challenges that you found being a leader. Going back I know now you're a lot more established in your position and you're great at what you do, but when you were just starting to get into that world, that at the beginning, what were some of the realities that you kind of weren't expecting or prepared for or things that came a little bit of a surprise to you that you had to really quickly adjust to and get comfortable with? What was some of the uncomfortable scenarios that you went through?
[29:53] Crystal: I think one thing that I guess I've learned about myself, and talking about leadership specifically like being in leadership, because even when I started retail young, I'd be the key holder, or the logistics supervisor. I always had some kind of, I guess, authority, even if I wasn't managing people. I had to manage the floor. I had to make sure we close the store down or whatever. One thing that it's just people. People surprise you. You never know what's gonna come your way. When it's bad, when it's tough moments, when someone won't do what you say or someone's being really insubordinate or you just come across, do what you say that sounds wrong, but what I'm saying?
Like, people surprise you and you don't know what you're going to come across as a leader, or you find out things about their personal life. Now how do you manage that? This stuff wears on me very heavy. I love connecting with people in a really positive way. It would only be in work that maybe anything really negative has come up with me. But that's again, because I was in leadership. Tough moments come up or tough things that you find out and then how do you work through it? But you like the person. You know what I mean? But then there's this business element that comes into it. Sometimes you might have to hold someone accountable to something that's really tough.
I'm someone who just loves people. I love different kinds of people. I don't like everything to be the same. I like the constant change and static of personalities and backgrounds. It wears very heavy on me when things don't go well with people, because I will always assume the best. I will always assume best intentions and we should. We always should as humans, and there's more good than bad. But there's either people who surprise you and let you down. You go, wow, I hired them. I thought that was going to go great. Or wow. They told me that story. I believed in them then it was so untrue. That will never end, because that's just human nature and there's more good than not good.
But I think for me, that's been one of the most, probably most surprising and ever learning pieces of leadership is just, what's going to happen. What's going to come across that's really tough to deal with and you have to be prepared. You get prepared through experience. I mean, some of it's just inevitable. You've got to go through it. There's things that I can say now today, that I'm like, I can look at someone and say, no, don't do that. I've had a million people tell me, not a million, but I've had a hundred people telling me they wanted to do that. It didn't work out every single time.
Let's save you the hardship and not do that. If there's career decisions or things like that, helping people through some stuff. Now I can actually say definitively, this is my answer on that. I think it's been really hard. It's experience. Then it's surrounding yourself with sport and how you navigate those things. If you're in a company you're naturally going to have it. If you're not in a company, then you need to ask someone or you need to go look up stuff on the internet, you need to watch a Ted Talk, you need to figure it out. But that's probably been one of the toughest things.
[33:22] Bram: Yeah. Just, you always have to kind of be open to learning and looking and seeking information and asking for it and so forth. You mentioned that you had a district manager Trudy Love back in your Old Navy days. She had a presence about her, right. She was always kind of open and welcoming to help people and support them. When you define giving back to others, I'm assuming here that a large part, like you've taken influence from people ahead of you that you've admired and so forth. In what ways was she giving back to you and how did that influence the way that you're giving back to other people that follow you?
[34:14] Crystal: I think it's kind of just like what I mentioned before. It's knowing and understanding and appreciating, that as a leader, you have the power to change someone's day. Just from a simple conversation, a look, a comment. As a leader, you don't always get that right either. I've made mistakes. People didn't understand what I meant. I said the wrong thing. I threw everything awry. It happens. But knowing that you can walk away from a store or people they're either motivated to continue and they're excited for the next step or they're not. I saw leaders do the total opposite of that and leave people in ruins. I thought, oh my goodness, who in the world would ever want to make people feel this way?
If I make someone feel that way I can't sleep, I can't eat. I'm in turmoil until the relationship is better. There'srelationships that aren't good with people that I work with today. I hate it. It still haunts me. It'll haunt me forever because I don't want that. I want a healthy connection. I think that it all started there as a genuine care for people. It's a genuine compassion for people and their wellbeing. I think it really started there for me.
[35:29] Bram: Nice. Okay. I think you would have a really good TV show there about the podcast. We spoke about this too in the past. I was trying to encourage you to get your own thing going. I don't want to keep you for too long. I know we're approaching our time and you've been generous with your time. You're parked over there on the side while you're traveling location to location. I just want wrap it up there and just, thank you for your time. You've given a lot of gems in this conversation. The purpose here for this podcast is to just connect with people that are growing and evolving, and kind of pursuing some of the same things, that we've talked about in the past, just growth professionally and personally, and just overall that being the theme growth. Thank you for your time. Where can people connect with you?
[36:24] Crystal: Oh, my. Well, if there is anyone that wants to, I guess Instagram, you can find me at cpresseon Instagram. I guess that's an easy way to connect and reach out. We can connect virtually or, as the world gets better coffee, wine. But always love to connect with people and help them, if I can in any way. Thanks so much for having me on it. It was fun to do this.
[36:54] Bram: It was absolutely my pleasure. Thank you so much. That is episode number two of the rise above podcast. Be sure to subscribe, share it with a friend that you think this may benefit. Thank you again for your time and hope you guys have a great day.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the rise above podcast. Make sure to subscribe for future episodes, leave a review and share with a friend who would love to hear this episode. This was the rise above podcast.
Children’s Author, Entrepreneur, Mom Blogger, Influencer and Social Worker Gurpreet Virdi-Bains joins Bram Bains on this episode of The Rise Above Podcast. They talk about Gurpreet’s first book, the inspiration behind the book, advice for others looking to start a business and more.
Follow us on Instagram @TheRiseAbovePodcast for bonus content - Be sure to pay it forward and share it with a friend!
Interview Transcript
[00:35] Bram: Welcome to the rise above podcast. This is episode one. My name is Bram Baines, and I am your host for this evening. Today we have a very special guest, social worker, life coach, mom blogger, influencer, and now children's author and entrepreneur, my beautiful wife Gurpreet Verde Baines, aka GVB
[01:06] Gurpreet: What's up. What's up. You tell me. I live with you.,
[01:09] Bram: You know, what's up too. It's book launch week, man.
[01:12] Gurpreet: It is the, we have, we're just five days away from the book coming out.
[01:16] Bram: How do you feel? I feel excited, but I kind of feel nervous. I hope the book lives up to everyone's expectations, but I know it will. I think.
[01:27] Bram: It's a good book. You got to be proud of that. You built that. That's an idea that you had, and you put it out there. I mean, I'm sure everyone's going to love it because it's got a piece of you in there, right?
[01:37] Gurpreet: I hope so.
[01:40] Bram: Anyway, jumping right into it, I wanted to use this opportunity to help get to know you a little bit better. I mean, for from a perspective of your audience. I know you like to do the Sunday polls and engage with your audience, and it's gained quite a bit of popularity. I thought it might be interesting to ask you a couple of questions, some icebreakers. Get you a little bit loosened up and warmed up and start talking about the book.
I'm going to ask you 10 questions. Speed round kind of style, but I mean, you can answer how you want, if you want to expand on anything. I mean, the floor is yours. Okay. First thing's first, what is your most used emoji?
[02:25] Gurpreet: It would be the laughing and crying face.
[02:30] Bram: If you could kill any fashion trend forever, what would it be?
[02:34] Gurpreet: It's actually not a trend right now, but I hope it doesn't come back and its low-rise jeans because my stomach does not look the way it used to when I was younger. I think a lot of moms out there can relate to that.
[02:51] Bram: Okay. Okay. You have to sing karaoke. What song are you picking?
[02:54] Gurpreet: 1,000 miles by Vanessa Carlton or maybe the boy is mine. Cause then I can play two different people.
[03:09] Bram: What book did you read that changed her life the most?
[03:15] Gurpreet: That would have to be the secret by Rhonda Byrne. I read that in high school and it kind of opened up the door to the law of attraction and manifesting for me. That obviously was like the biggest, most transformational book I've ever read.
[03:30] Bram: You put me on that book too. So, thank you. I appreciate that. Changed my life as well. What's the best piece of advice that you've ever been given?
[03:39] Gurpreet: Oh, okay. I've been given a lot of good advice. On the top of my head, I could think of something my therapist said to me once. She said to me, whenever I have thoughts, thoughts that are not happy thoughts, it's not a fact. She says to me to question the thought and say, well, who told you that? It isn't true. Then it made me think, oh, I am just making stuff up in my head and believing it. To me that was good advice. Cause I use it every day.
[04:12] Bram: Good stuff. Good stuff. What would you like to be known or remembered for?
[04:20] Gurpreet: I want to be known or remembered for someone who brought mindfulness into their child's lives through books and different tools.
[04:31] Bram: Nice. If you had to teach a class on one thing, what would you teach?
[04:36] Gurpreet: Positive psychology and fun fact, I actually just enrolled into a Yale university course for gratitude. It's online obviously. I would have to teach that.
[04:50] Bram: You would love to teach a course on gratitude?
[04:51] Gurpreet: Yeah. That's I'm learning it. Joking. I'm joking. But I think that's something I would love to teach.
[04:59] Bram: If aliens landed on earth and offered to take you with them, would you go?
[05:05] Gurpreet: Yes. You know, this. We've talked about this a lot of times. There's no doubt. I hope that it's something that happens to me one day. I know they'll return me too.
[05:19] Bram: They might think you're weird. Just drop you back off.
[05:22] Gurpreet: No, they'll drop me off and pick me up again at a later time.
[05:26] Bram: They'll be like this was fun. We should do this again. What's your favorite place of all the places that you've traveled?
[05:33] Gurpreet: I'm going to say Bali. Bali's beautiful. Peaceful.
[05:42] Bram: Okay. The last question here. As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
[05:48] Gurpreet: I grew up wanting to be Oprah Winfrey. I liked how she interviewed people and I always wanted to be that person in the chair to interview somebody. Kind of like what you're doing to me right now, actually. As a kid, I used to role play a lot. I used to pretend that there was someone sitting in front of me, and I'd have a clipboard and I'd ask them questions. I always kind of wanted to be Oprah Winfrey.
[06:16] Bram: Okay. How about this? If you could interview Oprah Winfrey, what would you want to know about her? What would you ask?
[06:23] Gurpreet: I kind of already know about her upbringing, and how she got to where she did in her story, but I think I'd want to hear it from her sitting in front of her.
[06:35] Bram: Okay. That being said, why don't, why don't you tell us a little bit about your upbringing and your story?
[06:42] Gurpreet: I don't know if you have enough time for my story. I'm just the simple girl who grew up, had a baby,and just wanted the best for her kid, found that I couldn't find books out there to teach my daughter the things I want to teach her. I made it happen and it's not the first product. There's another one coming up and it's not the last book. I found a solution for something that was missing.
[07:18] Bram: You found a need there in the marketplace and you decided that you're gonna create something and fill that need. Not just for your child, but I guess for children everywhere.
[07:29] Gurpreet: Yeah. The future generation. There are books on gratitude for children, but they're not at the reading level that we would teach young children. I think it's important to start at a very young age and in a way that children can understand it. That's why I wrote the book the way that I wrote it.
[07:51] Bram: Speaking about the book, what was your inspiration for writing about gratitude and specifically about nature?
[08:03] Gurpreet: Well, during quarantine, we weren't allowed to go anywhere. We spent all our time outdoors and we really saw how much our daughter loved nature. She loved like pulling grass, playing with pinecones, putting leaves in her mouth. Just something about her nature, just running barefoot. She loved it, loved it, loved it and so did I. I've always connected to nature, but I really connected more so during the time that I was experiencing postpartum depression. I found that every time I went out into nature, I would instantly feel better just with my bare feet in the grass sun shining on me.
It was like a real mood booster. I really started to appreciate the little things about nature. Then I started thinking about it from a child's perspective. Then I realized there's so much to be grateful for. There are things are around us, that we take for granted every day.
[09:10] Bram: Definitely. I mean I think that's great and I'm kind of biased here because I've been with you every single time through the quarantine that we'd take her out and just seeing how she would light up and how much she enjoyed being outdoors. It's a beautiful thing. I think it's amazing that you turned that inspiration into a book, into a product that you're going to put out there. You're blossoming into this powerful entrepreneur. Do you have any kind of business background or business experience before you decided that you wanted to release a book?
What kind of got you. How did you do this? Because you did this all from scratch. Like what resources did you use?How did you figure it out? What was that process like for you? Being that you're doing this independently?
[10:11] Gurpreet: I have no business background whatsoever. That's all you. I kind of did the research on my own. The power of the internet. I did everything on my own. I copyrighted the book. I did the ISP and barcoding illustration everything on my own. That was all done through personal research on good old Google. I don't have any business background. I kind of leaned on you for a lot of that. I'm more like the creative part.
[10:45] Bram: You're a lot more business savvy than you even know. Believe me. I was just here just cheering you on along the way. I mean, give yourself some credit for that. You said Google and YouTube.
[10:58] Gurpreet: Not YouTube actually. I didn't use YouTube at all. I kind of learned more by reading. I don't like to really watch instructional videos, if that makes any sense. I'm also HSP highly sensitive, so I don't like a lot of sound and videos. It's too stimulating for me. I like to read information. A lot of it was found on the internet, but I also feel like when you do something that you really, really like doing, you really enjoy the research part of it as well. It's exciting. I think the most exciting part about this whole adventure is creating it. That was all a part of it.
[11:35] Bram: Just having an idea and seeing it come to life. So, the whole process from inspiration to research to research then executing and creating and this entire launch. How long of a process, like would you say that was?
[11:55] Gurpreet: I would say about six months. Sorry once it got here?
[12:00] Bram: From idea to the point in time that we are today, where you're getting ready to release this book in a few days.
[12:08] Gurpreet: I'm going to say about six to eight months. Once you have the idea, everything else starts kind of rolling pretty fast. Once you have the illustrator in place and you have the idea. I think the hardest part is figuring out the wording for the book and kind of the message you're trying to convey, and making sure, everything sounds right and looks right with the illustrations.
[12:37] Bram: So, when you say six to eight months, I mean, granted, there's a lot of time in between where there's, inactivity, like you're waiting for illustrator to get back to you. You're waiting for samples to come in and so forth. That whole process with all the gaps and so forth in between, what kept you motivated to keep on moving forward?
[13:03] Gurpreet: To be honest, I mean, well you know this, for me, it was on to the next product. What other products are complimentary to a book about learning gratitude? How do we cater to different types of learners? Not everyone likes to read. Some people like to play. I started developing my next product.
[13:24] Bram: Okay. Okay. Do you want to speak on that as well a little bit?
[13:28] Gurpreet: I mean, it's going to be a set of gratitude flashcards, and those will be coming out hopefully by summer of this year. But that's another thing that kind of kept me busy. Cause I feel like when you have a flow of creativity, you have to run with it and use it up, because that energy and that flow doesn't come to you all the time. And you know me, once I lose it, I lose it. There were times where I would have like four or five days of not doing anything. I would just sit upstairs in the room and just like want to sleep. But then when I had the drive to do it, nothing could stop me.
[14:09] Bram: So, you just kind of keep moving it forward and then pick it up every time you get that burst. Because I mean, give yourself credit at the same time. You're a new mom and going through a pandemic and whatnot, I guess you just kind of structured your time accordingly based on when you felt the inspiration to put in some work, you put in that work.
[14:28] Gurpreet: Yeah. Thankfully inspirational was struck after [inaudible 14:32] goes to sleep, but I'm also someone who's like mind comes to life at nighttime. I'm most creative at night and most productive at night. No,I'm not most productive at night. That's not true ever since I became a mom, but my ideas flow to me more at nighttime. That's something that kind of was cool and worked for me.
[14:52] Bram: You've always been a creative person. You've got a large imagination. We have some great talks and a lot of jokes. We have a lot of good conversations. I mean, this can't be the first idea that you've ever had. I'm sure you've had many ideas in the past.
[15:13] Gurpreet: Yeah. Actually, when I was younger, I thought I was the first person who was going to invent this. But back in the day when we were young, we never had Google or at least I never got access to it. I thought I was the first person who was gonna invent a heated ice cream, scoop. You can scoop the ice cream without having to run it under top water. Then obviously it was already there. But I used to think of adventures a lot actually, now that I think about it when I was a kid, but in my adult years, I've always known, I want to write a book.
[15:49] Bram: That was one of the things that's been on kind of your vision board.
[15:53] Gurpreet: Yeah. I think I told you this when I first met you too.
[15:59] Bram: I'm asking for the people. I know these things.
[16:06] Gurpreet: Anyone who knows me personally knows that I've always wanted to write a book.
[16:09] Bram: So, all the ideas you've had in the past, this one, what was different about this one that you were like, I'm just going to push it all the way I'm going to take a chance. I'm going to bet on myself. I'm gonna put out this book. What was different this time?
[16:23] Gurpreet: It was different because I had my daughter, and I was doing it for her, and she was the drive. I want her to grow up, having these kinds of books and resources around her. When I look at her every day, I feel so motivated and inspired to do something, to create something because of her. I mean, there was no way I wasn't not going to do it. She's like my biggest inspiration.
[16:52] Bram: This book it's going to be released on Valentine’s Day, February 14th. What's the significance of that day for you? Why did you pick Valentine’s Day to release this book?
[17:05] Gurpreet: I think Valentine’s Day because the book is titled Aura's gratitude for nature. On February 14th, Valentine’s Day, I took a pregnancy test and found out that we were pregnant with Aura. it was only fitting that we were going to release this book on Valentine's Day two years later. Fun fact, the book was her first birthday present. First sample, which was a shitty sample. Thank God we didn't go with that type of book. But it was Aura's first birthday present.
[17:51] Bram: When you say it was a shitty sample, like you mean, it was the first one, right. Your kind of were getting a feel for the thing.
[18:01] Gurpreet: Yeah, were feeling out different materials for hard cover books and the cover was just not hard enough. Like it, everything was mending together. Like you've seen it. Over time the pages started to kind of all kinds of fold into each other. The quality wasn't good. We did our own kind of quality control and we wanted to make sure that, we had all these samples for a while and we wanted to just keep them in the sun, pour water all over them, rub crayons all over them, just to see if they could withstand all that. Cause with kids, everything gets dirty. We test the different materials and that first sample we had didn't make it. But the one we have now is super durable, pages are always going to be protected and you can spill water on that thing. Nothing's going to happen.
[18:56] Bram: So, we know it's a durable book. We know you were inspired by Aura; it's releasing on Valentine's Day. It's a significant thing for you. You want to be known for being a kind person and teaching people gratitude. I think this is a great product. I mean, I've personally, I've seen the whole process start to end and I can tell you and you know this too. Aura loves that book. It's replaced I love you through and through as her favorite book.
[19:39] Gurpreet: We've been reading, I love you through and through to Aura since she's been born and she knows the book so well, like she will touch her ears before that page even comes. She will touch her eyes. But when I started reading her my book or her book, she like instantly was drawn to it. She understands that we're saying Aura, that it's her. She points at herself in every page, and she kisses herself, which is adorable. We still read her I love you through and through because it's part of her routine and we don't want to take that away from her, but she always follows it with her book.
[20:18] Bram: The main event is now Aura's gratitude for nature. The opening act is the I love you through and through. Yeah. I mean, you touched on it right theirbedtime routine. Do you want to kind of share what you know about bedtime routines and what the routine is that we use for aura?
[20:41] Gurpreet: I think that's actually really good, I think to get into, because that is also a part of the inspiration for the book. We've had the same bedtime routine for Aura for the longest time since she was born. We started doing affirmations with her when she was really young. I remember I used to rub like oil on her body and say I am strong, I'm smart, etc.
That's kind of where it started. There's something that we do every single night. We're during bath time is we thank the water for making her clean. You know, we thank the lotion, thank the warm milk, all that. We've kind of started instilling gratitude into her daily routine bedtime routine. I think it was just a nice addition to have a book about gratitude. For that to be the last thing she hears before she goes to sleep. Actually, I think something really cool I should share with everyone is that the first word of 2021 from Aura was thank you. Which was pretty cool. Cause I think she started saying it like on January 1st, right? Around new year's, she started saying, thank you. It's so fitting, so fitting.
[21:57] Bram: Okay. Gurpreet another question I have here for you is, pretend I'm out there and I have a dream as well. You mentioned earlier that you have a dream, you wanted to write a children's book and now you're accomplishing that dream of yours. I have a dream too. I'm out there. I'm listening to this podcast, and I also want to write a book. What advice would you give to me?
[22:24] Gurpreet: I would say when you feel the inspiration strike, take lots of notes. Write everything out, whether it's imagery. If you have pictures that come to your mind, that things that you want to illustrate. Words, outcomes, learning outcomes, whatever it is, just write everything down. Once you've written it down, just kind of, I guess, meditate with the ideas, sit for a while. Don't expect the words just to come together overnight, take your time with it, write it out and then start looking online for people who can help you, whether it's illustrators or editors. There are so many people out there. The year is 2021.
We have so many like services out there that we can go to for help when it comes to publishing books and whatnot. But the first thing is to have your idea, write it down, solidify what your idea is and just keep your imagination running and just writing everything down and make it come to life.
[23:31] Bram: Nice. Okay. Good stuff. Write down the idea, meditate with the idea. Don't be afraid to ask for help and just try to keep moving it forward. Don't let it ever kind of disappear, right?
[23:43] Gurpreet: Yeah. Cause I've heard this analogy once where it's like, if you don't on your idea, it's an idea like an Adam it'll go to someone else. If you don't take that idea and make it yours, don't be surprised if someone comes out with it later because that happens. That's happened and it's not because someone knows what your idea is. It's just the ideas travel like that. I truly believe in that. That's why I acted on it right away.
[24:09] Bram: Good stuff. Okay. Okay. Well, hey, thank you for doing this. Definitely, really appreciate your time. Definitely I know a lot of people are gonna benefit from hearing your story and I know that's not going to be the first time that people hear from your story. You've been on quite a remarkable journey. It's been fun to see the milestones that you've been checking off. It's been really fun to see your growth and converting what started off as a life coaching blog into a motherhood blog into now, a self-published author and an entrepreneur, creating a business to sell products to the audience that you've created. It's been truly amazing to watch. As well as be a part of. So,thank you for that. Thank you for being generous here with your time, just to kind of go over your story and give back a little bit of information to those that might be looking to do the same thing as you. I think that's very important and there's honor in that. Again, thank you on behalf of everybody. Tell us where people can get the book when it launches on Feb 14th.
[25:29] Gurpreet: Yeah. The book will be available at www.aurakids.ca. I also wanted to mention if any of your listeners have any questions that they want to follow up with that I haven't answered in the podcast, they can reach out to you, and I'd be happy to answer any questions to help make other people's dreams come true.
[25:53] Bram: I haven't thought that far ahead about contact information for myself, but yeah, you can, you can feel free to shoot me a message and we can arrange for a part two with some more follow up questions and whatever it is that people want to hear about. Purchase that book Feb 14th, www. aurakids.ca follow Gurpreet on Instagram at raising aura and follow Aura kids on Instagram at aura kids co.
[26:31] Gurpreet: All right. Thanks for having me. I'm always happy to discuss or have conversations in the comfort of my own home, my pajamas with my feet up. This has been nice.
[26:42] Bram: It's been very nice. Thank you so much. That's the first episode of the rise above podcast. Be sure to leave a review like this podcast, share it with a friend and definitely feel free to reach out if there are any questions you have for Gurpreet. We'll definitely do a follow-up after this, by then the book should be out too. Many of you should have your copy as well. It'll be fun to kind of share some feedback about what you guys think about the book as well. Thank you, guys, again for your time. This was the rise above podcast. My name is Bram Bains signing out. Have a great night.
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