Beyond Titles with Kendra Johnson

Okay, so Jonathan, thanks so much for being here today.

Really excited to chat with you and just to kick us off, I'd love if you could give us
some insight, high level to, into where you're at now in your career and your stage with

Mnemonic Inc.

and your journey up until this point.

So I started the business in 2008.

So it's been, guess, about 16, 17 years that I've been working at Mnemonic.

It's grown from basically, say, a one-person operation or a two-person operation to about
50 staff today.

So zero to 50 staff in about 17 years.

And I'd say the business, even though we're 16, 17 years old, we still have very much a
startup mentality.

We're very much in a growth phase.

and we've done five acquisitions.

We continue to grow.

Things are going well, and I'm just as excited or maybe even more excited today about the
company than I was say five or 10 years ago.

So we seem to have accelerated our velocity and the company continues to grow and we
continue to seek expansion opportunities.

So yeah, the company's doing great.

If you'd like I can revert back to how the company started.

So Mnemonic started in

around 2006 as a product within a consulting group.

So I had worked as an engineer and I worked in the steel industry, particularly in China,
where I saw tremendous environmental damage as well as worker occupational health and

safety issues at metallurgical sites in China.

So after I was my experience in China, I decided to come back to Canada, back to Montreal
where I'm from.

and devote myself more to sustainability and environmental issues.

And I joined a small consulting firm that around 2006 had started building a database of
environmental regulations to help businesses stay in compliance with environmental

regulations.

The truth back then, and frankly the truth today, is that most companies don't have a
robust process to ensure they're respecting current environmental or worker health and

safety regulations.

And the consequences is lots of issues, let's just say.

So in 2006, this company started building a small product for a couple of customers.

But after a couple of years, they realized it wasn't a good fit within the consulting
business.

They were losing money.

And software, in contrast to consulting, you have to invest a lot of money and time and
resources to bring a software product to the point where it is commercially successful.

Versus a consulting business where you're paid by the hour and basically your risk, if you
will, is quite low.

So it wasn't working within the context of a consulting business.

And I didn't feel I was a good fit for the consulting business either in terms of my
personality or my soft skills.

And so I just said, I'm going to leave.

But if you're interested in getting into this product that you've started building but
you're losing money on, I could purchase it from you.

Now, of course, I was 26 years old at the time.

So I didn't have any money.

I had very little money, let's say.

And I said, I can pay you.

But I can pay you at a future earnings.

So basically, give me the product.

and I'm going to try and turn it around, change the business model, change the product,
turn it into a viable business and I'll pay you back in three years, I said about $50,000.

It took us about probably seven or eight years to pay them back.

I don't remember exactly, but we did pay them back eventually and they were very kind of
patient with that.

But we took the business, we put it into a separate legal entity, which is now Mnemonic
Inc and that's existed since 2008.

Basically rebuilt everything.

We changed the business model, we changed the product.

And we've of course evolved the business a lot since then.

So we started really with environmental compliance, but over the years we've expanded the
content geographically, so not just Canada, but also US and other countries, and also

expanded the topic.

So it's not just environmental compliance, but it's compliance to safety regulations,
compliance to insurance regulations.

Basically any regulation that's out there that a business needs to comply with, we can
help them manage that from the point of determining what applies to them.

to building a workflow and then having an update process because these regulations are
always changing and there's new ones coming out.

So we've expanded the business, we've done five acquisitions of similar companies to us
and today we're about 50 staff spread out in Canada, US, China and a few other places in

the world and we continue to expand.

So it's been a great journey.

It feels like it was yesterday that I was, you know, writing up a business plan and...

and getting things started, but it's gone really fast and of course ups and downs, but
generally speaking, a very positive experience.

Wow, that is quite the journey.

Thank you.

Thanks for sharing that.

mean, not many people can say, yeah, I decided to take this, turn it around and...

and be so innovative with the buyout strategy.

I think that's something that I really admire, that it takes a lot of conviction, great
vision, and obviously a lot of confidence in what you're building.

And so I think that's fantastic.

And obviously your success has paid off.

So congratulations and your vision way back then.

Now with that, younger you had to make some tough decisions and of course had some
learnings as you grew and as the business evolved over the past 17, 18 years, which

probably came in ebbs and flows and I would imagine still continues to, but are there any
of those tough learnings or lessons that really stand out to you from the early days?

I'd say if I were to go back and redo it or to give my younger self advice, I should have
done more research and I should have studied more.

Not necessarily in a formal setting of like a university or anything like that, but just
take in more time to analyze the market, to analyze what the customers really needed and

other elements of operating a business, whether it's the financial side, whether there's
the human side, but just take more time to really understand

the opportunity, what I'm getting myself into, and sort of best practices out there.

Trying to learn from other people who've built businesses, grown businesses, worked in
businesses, rather than trying to figure it out as you go.

I think I probably could have shaved a few years off of the art development if I hadn't
made so many mistakes myself, and instead just taken some time to do a bit more research

in those first few years.

So, you know, that would be the main advice I'd give to myself if I could go back in time.

but I can't, so here we are.

Yeah, mean, it said every entrepreneur ever, right?

We if we could go back in and kind of insulate ourselves from some of those mistakes, but
they are the some of the greatest lessons learned.

And now you're at a point where you I would imagine have you've built all of those those
skills and all of those those lessons, you kind of lay the foundation for yourself.

So in a sense, you're

You're a generalist, understand the complexities of your business rather than just coming
in and having other people do things from the get-go, right?

Yeah, for sure.

And it's not like we've figured everything out.

I mean, we still have problems every day.

I think any company does.

And of course, we're trying to improve.

And we are.

But it's a journey.

It's constant learning, and the market's changing, the people change, the customers
change.

So it's anything but stagnant, let's put it that way.

Yes, yes, definitely.

And you know what?

I think that your product really helps people stay abreast of the things that are
constantly changing, especially when it comes to compliance.

mean, just to know that when you said that there's the mechanism to update, I think that's
such a key component because things are changing, you know, like the direction of the

wind.

So to have that in your back pocket and know that you're supported in that, I think that's
a huge asset to any business.

Yeah, I think businesses more than ever need to stay on top of regulatory changes, changes
in engineering standards, and all these things that affect the products and services that

companies deliver.

The scrutiny is higher than ever.

If you have an incident at your facility or if your products have a product recall, it's
extremely expensive just in terms of time and money, but also in terms of your brand

reputation.

And so in a sort of internet world where word of mouth spreads super quickly.

it's critical to get these systems in place to prevent as many problems as possible.

Yeah, for sure.

Absolutely.

And you said something really interesting and something that, you know, touched on on one
of my favorite topics, which is soft skills.

And you said that on the consulting side of things, that it didn't really fit with your
strengths or the soft skills that you had.

And therefore you chose to go a different direction.

One, congratulations.

Know thyself is one of the biggest assets and any entrepreneur, senior leader can have
that degree of self-awareness.

But then as you transition to becoming an entrepreneur,

and you know over the last 17, 18 years, how do you think you've built out your team to be
able to support some of those, perhaps those areas that whether it's you don't necessarily

want to dive into because your zone of genius is elsewhere or have you completely you know
revamped that and said I really want to learn my soft skills for this reason or particular

skills.

Basically how did you develop your team in the early years to support you with the things
that

you maybe weren't the best at so you could stick to doing the things you were great at.

Yeah, I'm a believer, I guess, in a couple things.

One is that your type of personality, you can be successful regardless of your type of
personality.

So whether you're introvert, extrovert, whether you're more technical.

I've read enough books about enough entrepreneurs, enough business people to know that
there's a huge variety of very successful people running, who've created, ran businesses,

et cetera.

the personality,

correlation to success I think is not true.

Sometimes we think the entrepreneur has to be well spoken and do this and that and in many
cases that's not the case.

So I think personality is not critical but it is important to surround yourself with
complimentary people who maybe have other assets and skills that you don't.

And so we've really tried to do that at Mnemonic.

We intentionally have a lot of people who are

very technical, very introverted, very good at what they do, very disciplined, very detail
oriented.

You know, I have my skills elsewhere.

And so we've tried to build a team that is very diverse and given people flexibility in
everything from their work-life balance in terms of more vacation or ability to work from

home or things like that.

So things to accommodate these different types of people so that they can contribute in
their respective ways and have a complementary

network of skills and people.

I don't think I can change that much as an individual and I don't think other people can
change that much and so it's not realistic.

It's certainly not realistic for me to ask other people to change fundamentally who they
are.

Obviously they can improve their skills and things like that.

So over the years I've really tried to move away from say performance reviews and
coaching, which in some we used to do a lot of that, and instead really focus on finding

the right person

for a specific job and within that job, identifying anything that they don't enjoy doing
and trying to remove that from their job as much as possible.

I we all have to do things that are not our favorite things to do, but try and sort of
trim or tailor the job and rule so that it's as ideally fit for that person as possible

out of the box.

And you're not instead trying to kind of put a round peg in a square hole sort of story.

So I'd say that's a shift that we've made over the last six, seven years.

where we used to have these four five page performance reports and this is how you can
improve and blah, blah.

They never worked for us.

People just kind of kept on doing their thing and sometimes that led to them resigning or
other issues.

And so instead we said, let's just change your job.

Let's change your job and give you something you really like doing that you're going to be
good at and get rid of all that other crud basically.

Yes, excellent, excellent.

No, I agree with you.

And I think it's about, as you said, so eloquently finding complementary skills so that
you have a network of skills and a network of individuals who are great at what they do.

So that makes total sense.

And, you know, then being in different geographies, I'm sure adds another element and
layer to to your hiring process, to finding those those good fit candidates, the ones who

are great at their jobs.

So if you were to think obviously technical skill,

are one component, but when it comes to the overall culture and the goals of mnemonic, are
there any specific things that signal to you that this person would be a good fit or they,

you know, we have the role for this person specifically when you're hiring around the
world?

I think in the hiring process, we tried a variety of things, but the one thing that really
kind of came back as being an indicator of a future good team member was when the person

came to the interviews prepared, when they had done research and they had questions.

I personally like to start off my interviews with the candidates as, know, what are your
questions?

I'm not even going to ask you about you or your background.

I just want you to demonstrate to me that you've

thought about this role, you've thought about the company, the industry, and you certainly
don't expect a candidate to know everything.

I mean, they've only seen the public information.

But to come with the questions, to come prepared, that usually is an indicator that if
they come prepared for the job interview, they're likely the type of person who's also

going to prepare when given a certain task or responsibilities within the company.

So that's always been a really good indicator.

And then often we've seen people who start with us in a certain role.

and evolve into a completely different role.

We had one person started in regulatory analysis, basically loading data into the system,
and they now run our AI team.

And they were able to make that transition because they really showed that, A, they wanted
to learn and grow.

And once we gave them the opportunity to do that, they executed, they did it really well.

And then we of kept adding on more responsibilities and more team members to that team.

So again, on the entry level sort of jobs,

It's about that preparation.

And when people write us cover letters, if anybody listening to this who's applying for a
job, is the cover letters that always stand out are the ones where they're written for the

role and for the company.

And they talk as much as possible about what this person will contribute to the company,
why they want to join the company, and not cover letters that I see very often, which are,

did this and I did that and I went to this school and I, and they're like boasting
basically.

And I'm like, good for you, like,

I don't really care.

What I care about is what are you going to do for the company?

And highlighting that in your cover letter, think really does help you stand out.

just hired someone who said, I applied to like 50 different jobs before we got hired at
Mnemonic.

And over time, they figured out they had to change their cover letter, change their
approach.

And I think in this job market, depending on the roles you're looking for, you got to
really stand out from the crowd.

There is a lot of competition for certain roles currently.

Absolutely, absolutely.

That's really interesting.

It's such a simple and subtle tweak.

but it's so impactful.

And, you know, I always say that no matter whether you, you classify yourself as a
salesperson or not, you are always selling yourself.

You're always selling.

And so a cover letter is a perfect example of that.

And to only speak about the things that you do well is, a complete disservice to, yeah, to
the company.

They don't know what you can bring.

They don't know what you'll offer.

Do you know what you'll offer?

Right.

So that's, I think that's a really interesting

interesting thing to look for and that paired with the fact that people come prepared
which translates into initiative once they're in the company, that's huge.

So those are some great key indicators and I'm happy to hear that you figured those out as
well because a lot of organizations take a lot of time to figure that out.

Some don't ever figure it out.

get me wrong.

I we still make hiring mistakes.

We still hire certain people that don't end up working out for various reasons.

So there's no perfect solution.

Humans are messy.

Companies are messy.

But we do our best.

mean, we try to just learn and reduce as much as possible our mistakes, because hiring
mistakes are very expensive.

Turnovers are extraordinarily expensive.

So you definitely want to avoid it if you can.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Now on the vein of messy and mistakes, one of the things that I think helps to navigate
and to mitigate some of those mistakes and some of that mess once people are in the

organization doing the work every single day is having a solid structure and process.

And, you know, you and I briefly touched on this earlier that you model some of mnemonic
structures and frameworks on the likes of some of the big players of excellent cultures

like Toyota.

So

if you wouldn't mind just touching a little bit on how the decision to use structures and
to follow some of those models has really helped to shape the culture and the operations

within mnemonic today.

Well, I'd say a few years ago, probably around 2018, Mnemonic had been growing since we
started and we got into a position where we were a little bit too, we expanded a little

bit too quickly and we were spending too much money.

And we decided or we had to decide to let go a few people, not because of performance or
anything, but purely from a financial point of view.

And when that happened, we kind of took a hard look at ourselves and we said, you know,
why we were growing, growing, growing, but we were going in so many different directions.

We were trying to appease many different customers who had very different needs.

And we tried to recenter our focus on who are the real customers we should be serving as a
business.

Where can we be excellent in the marketplace rather than trying to make everybody happy,
you know, make a smaller set of people or smaller set of customers very happy.

And so we looked around for different models of companies.

and one that stood out was Toyota.

for those who aren't familiar, Toyota's innovation in the automobile sector dates back to
the 1950s, 60s, 70s, where after the Second World War, the Japanese economy was decimated

and they wanted to figure out how could they catch up to American and European auto
manufacturers very quickly.

And basically the Toyota approach, which is what's called lean manufacturing, is this
concept of reducing waste.

standardizing systems, making work kind of consistent and equal and we could do a whole
podcast on lean manufacturing, but basically putting in place policies, procedures and

systems and then focusing on getting quality right at the beginning rather than trying to
fix problems after they've occurred.

And what Toyota did with this process is they demonstrate that it's actually much more
cost effective to solve quality upfront rather than just produce huge volume.

and then fix problems afterwards.

And just trying to summarize this concept in just a few minutes is difficult, but
basically we tried to apply this to Monek where we said, okay, what can we cut out of the

process?

What can we simplify?

What can we standardize?

And where can we solve quality problems before they appear down the road and then we have
an unhappy customer or some other issue.

And so we put that in place over the last years.

But I think anybody who knows Toyota's lead manufacturing

principles which are now used in basically every manufacturing company in the world.

You cannot compete in manufacturing if you are not a lean manufacturing company.

putting this in place really did save the business and we focused on these are the
customers we're going to focus on.

This is the service we're going to focus on.

We removed parts of the software, we removed parts of the company and since then it's been
a lot more stable and predictable growth with less headaches.

zero headaches of course, but less headaches.

And so that's been a huge benefit for the company.

And so there's lots of resources out there on this philosophy that can be used not just,
we're not a manufacturing company, we produce software, but basically any company, even if

you're doing consulting or training, anything at all, you can apply these principles in
your organization.

They're very, very powerful.

Absolutely, yeah.

And the proactivity is key, rather than adding to the stress of having to go back.

And one thing that you said that really, I think, resonates with especially entrepreneurs
these days is that, as entrepreneurs, we have many ideas, which means that we can start

many projects.

so one...

One piece of advice that sticks with me and it's a common adage, but if you're a jack of
all trades, you're a master of none.

so knowing kind of who your hundred raving fans are and sticking to those and making sure
that you can deliver a quality product upfront so that you can then continue to grow.

And when you said predictability, I think that is one of the key things, right?

And especially in this day and age when everything is changing around us, if you have
predictable and sustainable

growth as much as possible, then that's just one less thing to worry about and the rest is
focused on maybe new innovation, focused on how we manage the change that comes from

external factors.

So I think that's fantastic that you made that change and that it's been working out.

Yeah, I think it's a balancing act.

Getting quality perfect upfront is extremely difficult, extremely costly.

And if you don't have the capital to say work on product development for two, three, four
years, whatever it might be, that's just not realistic.

So you need to take into consideration your own company's resources.

We're bootstrapped, meaning we've never raised external institutional money from venture
capital or

private equity or anything like that.

So we've really just grown with our revenues and a little bit of debt, know, bank debt
over the years, but minimal amount.

And so that's constrained us.

also forced us to focus and forced us to be sort of responsible financially speaking,
whereas some companies will go out and raise a lot of money from investors.

And that comes with advantages of having a lot of capital, but it comes with the
disadvantages of having to give a return on investment to your investors within a certain

timeframe.

And that creates tremendous

tremendous pressure.

But as a bootstrap company, there's no question that we sometimes over promise to our
customers.

I I'll be totally transparent about that.

They come to us and say, can you do this and that and that?

if it's aligned, and this is the key thing, if it's aligned with our strategy, we will say
yes, right?

So if they are asking us for something that's going to help move the company in the
strategic direction we've chosen to do, we'll say, yeah, we can do it.

No problem.

Don't worry about it.

And sometimes that means running like crazy and getting it done really quickly for the
customer before they realize we didn't have a product to sell them when they first

contacted us or we didn't have what they wanted to sell us.

But the trick there, which is the mistake we made back in 2016, 2017 is we said yes too
often or we said yes for things that were not aligned with a strategy.

We didn't even have a strategy at that time.

And the consequence of that is that we just went off in like five different directions at
once and that

was killing us.

So it's all about strategy first.

And if there's another, I want come back to one of your other questions, something I would
recommend to myself, younger or to a new entrepreneur, is figure out strategy first.

Take your time to really figure out strategy, which is very difficult to do.

And I think that's where the majority of businesses fail, is they fail to take the time to
work on strategy.

And they jump too much right away into tactics, meaning

a marketing campaign or this or that or whatever it might be.

But figuring out strategy and how you're to position yourself within the market, how
you're going to differentiate yourself, and then testing that strategy and then focusing

on it and staying focused, that's, in my opinion, the core.

But you don't have to figure everything out upfront.

We definitely tell customers, yeah, we can do it.

Don't worry about it as long as it's aligned with strategy.

Yes, no, excellent.

And I would agree with you that most companies struggle with that strategy piece.

And I actually had that conversation with the team today that they didn't have, they
didn't feel aligned.

on the goals or the strategy and it felt like everybody was kind of going off in different
directions.

And so I think that your emphasis on creating strategy and having strong strategy in place
allows you to have team members.

And I'm going to go back to what you said earlier, allows you to have team members that
can put their heads down, focus, and you can leave them to do the work that they do.

They have autonomy to be able to do so because they know.

they know what they're striving for.

Everybody's facing the same direction, working towards the same goals.

When you don't have that, that's when there's a little more coaching that's needed, right?

Yeah, think strategy, even if you set a strategy and you communicate to everybody, it's
something that you constantly have to reinforce.

I forget what the numbers are, suddenly you need to hear a message 50 times before it
really sticks in your head.

I hence why companies spend so much money on marketing.

I Coca-Cola's marketing budget or Apple's marketing budget, whatever billions of dollars
it is, there's a reason that they are constantly reinforcing their brand.

in our heads through the advertisements and as someone who runs an organization, whether
it's for profit, non-profit, governmental, whatever it is, if you're trying to keep people

aligned, you can't just send one email or do one meeting and be like, okay, we're good for
the year.

It's not gonna stick.

So you gotta constantly be reminding people and not in a way that is always the same thing
because if it's always like an email or a Zoom call,

it kind of gets a bit redundant and it goes in one ear, comes out the other.

So we try and mix it up.

We have team events.

Every month we watch a movie related to a compliance disaster.

So a disaster that was usually caused death and damaged the environment because
regulations or engineering standards weren't followed.

So many of us will know things like the Deepwater Horizon platform in the Gulf of Mexico
that blew up about 12 years ago.

But there's many, many industrial disasters around the world.

So we watch one movie together, a documentary a month.

Then we do different activities, team events, there's emails obviously, there's all this.

But it needs to be this constant reminder of like, this is why we exist as an
organization.

These are our goals.

This is how we're to get there.

This is how we're different from our competitors.

And then also like kind of having competitors and sort of making it a bit of a rivalry can
also help reinforce that strategy.

So there's a whole bunch of tactics out there, of course, to do this, but it's a constant
reminder it needs to happen.

Yes, absolutely.

mean, I just want to underline rubber stamp highlight when you said that you can't just
send out one email and expect that everybody has understood what you've said.

And the movie, that's a really interesting one.

I haven't heard that before, but I think that's such a neat way to engage your team and to
create a moment to bond and to connect.

So that's really, really cool.

I love that.

Yeah, I haven't done that

I watch some of these movies because we ask people for recommendations on disasters that
are linked to compliance.

And so I've learned about disasters I didn't even know about.

And it even helps me stay motivated and focused.

So I think it's beneficial for everybody, even the leaders, if you will.

So then let me ask you from the recommendation standpoint, if there are people listening
who aren't so familiar with compliance disasters and what that could mean for them, their

organization, or organizations around the world, what's one good movie as an entry point
for them to watch?

Yeah, these movies aren't generally like the most sort of uplifting and happy movies to be
fair.

But if you want one movie that I thought was very well done, and it's a movie in the sense
that it's a recreation, it's not a documentary, I would recommend the film Dark Waters,

which is about the lawyer Robert Below who investigated PFAS.

So you might hear about PFAS in the news.

It's called these forever chemicals.

It's basically if you have a Teflon pan, which many of us do, the chemical that is Teflon,
Teflon's the brand, but the chemicals that are in Teflon are, the acronym is PFAS, and

these chemicals basically don't break down in the environment.

And so when you consume them, they stay in your body forever.

And more more regulators now are starting to regulate these and ban them.

But it's really all because of this lawyer's work about 25 years ago, where he was...

investigating some claims and eventually led to large lawsuits.

So I think the movie is very good just as a movie itself in terms of a narrative and story
and acting.

So Dark Waters, I think it was on Netflix for a while.

I'm not sure where it is now, but you can find it.

It was a big Hollywood production.

So I'd watch that one.

I would recommend that one.

That's the best one I've seen, I think.

Excellent.

Okay noted.

I will add that to my personal movie list.

and they'll probably throw it all your Teflon pans afterwards, hopefully.

So it's pretty scary stuff, honestly.

Yes, yeah.

And there are so many things that we're not aware of and...

I think one of the interesting documentaries I watched recently, the name escapes me, but
it was about the clothing industry and where all of the returns from a lot of the brands

go and what happens to them, or I guess I should say what doesn't happen to them.

it's, you you think the lifestyle and the life cycle, I should say, sorry, the life cycle
of a product that we create.

If you don't think through the full life cycle, then you do end up with a lot of
compliance issues.

You end up creating more problems than you're solving.

So I think documentaries like that are key, especially for entrepreneurs who have an idea.

Think to what happens when this is no longer relevant.

This service isn't, or this product isn't required by our clients anymore.

Then what?

How does it die, so to speak, right?

Very interesting, very interesting.

Lots going on out there for sure.

But staying on top of trends is something that I think is super important for any
business, any person as well.

Obviously AI is the hype of the town as they say these days.

But I mean, I was marked by some people that I know who started businesses and didn't
really stay abreast of the trends and basically were, you know, were sideswiped by things

that changed in the market.

And that's a difficult thing to do is to kind of stay on top of what's going on,
competitors, new technology, new trends, things of that nature.

And certainly in the consumer space, it's maybe even more challenging than in the B2B
space where we operate.

But yeah, there's a lot of information out there, a lot of noise to be fair, but trying to
distinguish that, you know, the signal from the noise is really the crux of the battle, I

think, in many ways.

Yes, definitely, a clear strategy helps you get there.

A strategy that you know got to evolve over time.

Nothing's set in stone.

You your strategy today may be very different from what it is in 10, 15, 20 years, you
know whenever things change.

So there's a good, one of the frameworks that also helped us a lot, that I definitely
recommend is a framework called Scaling Up.

It's by a fellow named Vern Harnash, it's pretty well known.

And so in there they have four pillars.

It's

cash, so cash flow to make sure your business is sound, people, strategy, and operations.

And one of the things they recommend is like basically doing a strategic review, I think
it's like every three or four months or something, taking into fact trends.

know, people know about the SWOT analysis, which is like strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities, threats, very popular.

He recommends adding to that trend.

So what are the trends in your industry that may have a significant effect?

on your business.

It might be AI, it might be something else, but looking at trends is a big part of that
framework and I think it makes a lot of sense.

I would have to agree.

I would have to agree.

And especially, you know, trends in an industry, but also geographically, I think is
something important.

Another layer to look at, right?

That you, for yourself, you operate across different continents, which means that there
are different trends happening at different times.

So one of the questions I have for you just about your team and the communication and
cohesion that you have is how do you sort of centralize your communication and centralize

your collaboration with your team when everybody is so spread out and have different time
zones, operate on different time zones as well?

Yeah, I think just, I mean, just to start with the last one about time zones that we
actually did a bit of like an education session with people about time zones and sort of

like taking into consideration that what you're trying to call to somebody in Asia,
there's a you send an email, then they start their workday.

So it's automatically a 24 hour delay basically.

So we did some education around there, but you know, we've divided the, we've tried to
keep the company very flat organization, basically like two or three level layers.

And

Then we have distinct teams and each team has targets and objectives and the targets and
objectives of one team kind of correspond to the input for the next team.

So think of it as like a production line, again, coming back to this Toyota idea.

So each team sort of, this is where you're taking in as material or as things and this is
what you have to produce and this is the output and then that feeds to the next team.

And so you have this sort of production line type of environment, even though it's not a
physical good, it is digital.

but there's the inputs and the outputs.

Then we measure on a weekly basis, we look at are all the teams hitting their targets, are
there issues, and then obviously when there's issues, we dive into them.

That's helped create clarity as to what each team needs to do and then the KPIs for those
teams go down to the individual level and say, you can try going to do this and John is

going to do this, these are your targets, and they roll up to the team level.

Then when it comes to communication,

put in place pretty basic tools.

I don't think you need anything particularly complicated or sophisticated.

We have the Google Suite Gmail and Google Docs and what have you.

We have a Wiki that we use internally for procedures and information about how the
business runs.

And then basically we have a project management tool called Trello where we put things in
there and people can comment and annotate and we have a sort of a process in there to move

things along.

But say with those three tools and then our CRM for the sales team, that's basically it.

It's only like four or five tools to ensure that everybody has access to all the relevant
information within the organization.

then, yeah, I mean, so it's not the tool or the software in this case is not the hard
part.

The hard part is, think, getting the teams aligned and setting these sort of a structure
that makes sense for everybody.

And then just having some basic tools in place, obviously, are.

critical for email and video calls and things of that nature.

Definitely, and I mean the tools are only as useful as the people that use them.

That's what I always say, right?

So I find that organizations that have a lot of tools, it's just, to use your words, more
noise and more things that people have to align on, they have to check, rather than

actually allowing them to focus on doing the work.

It's more in maintenance, which isn't always helpful at the end of the day.

I every tool you add, every system you add is maintenance, as you said.

And someone needs to operate it, people need to understand how to use it, as long as it
breaks.

So before adding in new things to an organization, you got to really determine if it's
justified.

The counterpoint to that is like, if you wait too long and you do too much analysis,
nothing ever gets done.

So it's this weird sort of, there's two sides of the coin.

But yeah, you got to push back.

then when there's a clear value, it's like try and move quickly and implement it.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And you open yourself up to some compliance issues with more tools too, right?

For sure, yeah.

mean, every software system now with the IT security information, data privacy, in theory,
like a modern organization, they have to vet all the tools that are coming in, validate

that they're in compliance, that they have robust systems in place for data privacy.

And even us as a vendor to many large companies, I've seen the procurement process
dramatically increasing complexity and in requirements.

10, 15 years ago, people are like, I need a new software, I'm buy this thing, no problem,
go for it.

Nowadays, it's like lawyers and IT specialists and audits and it creates costs, it slows
everything down.

But on the other hand, we've seen these big hacks where companies get hacked with
ransomware or they shut down pipelines, they shut down very large operations.

So understandably, companies have put in place more robust verification process before
they onboard a new vendor.

Absolutely.

And I mean, as they should at this point.

So it's, it's not the worst thing.

Very nice.

Okay.

To wrap up, I have one final question for you.

So the question is for yourself, obviously an entrepreneur for the last 18 years, you've
built a phenomenal business.

You're continuing to grow.

What do you think is the most important?

And again, I.

Use that if you want to list a couple, that's fine too.

But what would you say is the most important soft skill that a leader in your position can
have or possess in order to achieve the success, to grow a team, and to run a business

sustainably like you do?

I think the most important soft skill is the listening or listening with intent.

And so just being able to really listen to colleagues, to customers, to other people, so
much insight can be gained from a good conversation.

So much insight can be gained from just listening to another person explain a problem, a
situation, opportunity, whatever it might be.

but you really need to be listening attentively to what they're saying and often you will
pick up on small clues that, okay, they're talking about this problem, but in reality,

there's this other root cause or this other effect or cause or symptom or what have you.

So just focusing on listening to me, if I had to give one soft skill, it'll be being able
to listen and take in information with attention.

I think there's a bunch of books and there's a term for this probably, but yeah, just the
ability to really listen to what the person is saying, I think would be something I would

encourage everybody to focus on.

Excellent.

Perfect.

Well, thank you so much for sharing all of these nuggets of wisdom, for sharing your
journey and your experience.

I think there are a lot of key takeaways for folks at any level in any organization.

So I just really want to thank you for your time and for sharing your knowledge today.

My pleasure Kendra.

Have a great day.

Thanks so much for having me on the podcast.

Thank you, my pleasure.