Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello, I'm Jeremy Rivera, your unscripted podcast host. I'm here with Brad Poulos, who's going to introduce himself, give us a taste of his expertise and what he's been working on recently.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Sure. Hi.
I'm an educator and a consultant in the small business space. So I teach at Toronto Metropolitan University in wonderful Toronto in the entrepreneurship department and I've been doing that for about 15 years. I also do consulting to small businesses in Canada and the United States.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Over that course of your career, what in the curriculum has just gone the way of the dodos?
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Probably the way we do business planning. So the.
If I go back to maybe just a little bit before I started teaching, when I launched a satellite based Internet product for a big company here in Canada, we wrote a business plan. You know, it was like this thick, full of spreadsheets, lots of numbers that were complete fiction, of course.
And I managed to raise $2 million from the board of Canada.
Sorry, board of Bell Canada, who. Bell Canada owned our company. So we had the same board of directors.
So I presented this business plan to them and they gave me the $2 million right in the meeting.
And up until that point I had never spoken to a prospective customer.
And so nowadays, of course, we practice lean startup and we put sales ahead of anything. Yeah, we still do business planning, but we do it in a much different way. So that's probably the biggest thing.
The other thing though is that entrepreneurship is just so much easier now from the point of view of, well, here let's talk about that exact same project.
We wanted to be able to take credit cards from individuals.
And in order to do so, we had to write the code that interfaced with the bank so that we could take credit cards. And then the bank had to approve our code.
Now it's a checkbox on Spotify or, sorry, Shopify.
Right.
And that's a double edged sword, of course, because entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship is a lot easier, but it's easier for me. But it's also easier for you.
So it's a heck of a lot, you know, it's a much more crowded space now.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: So you're trading off competition versus capital requirements which impose their own, their own level of competition. Because you could previously only compete if you could find that budget, that initial investment to overcome that hurdle. Which is kind of, it reminds me like the tattoo industry of like, you know, the government imposing, oh, you have to have this many sinks, you know, to, in order to open a shop. And of course you don't need a sink every five feet just because you're doing tattoos. But it was just to raise the capital cost.
So we've traded that type of road blockage on digital infrastructure.
So is it better to have more lean competitors or was it better when you had, you know, just five 800 pound gorillas running around?
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Yeah, so better is a value judgment. So I'm a little bit hesitant to make it, but I'll do it anyway.
I'd say it's better in the sense that it's more democratic, it's more available to you and to you and me and anybody else. Right. So in the old days it mattered, I think a lot more who you kn.
And now, of course, it's probably more important about what you know.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: So that is one of the benefits of the pace of technology improving things is the baseline access. You know, in order to succeed as a SaaS, you do have to bring something to market that's of use.
And so, you know, we're seeing, you know, more infrastructure out there that's marketed to small businesses. You know, everything from, you know, email signature tying in to this system, all of the little loops and, you know, challenges that large digital marketing teams were facing now seem to have at Every corner a SaaS that's offering yet another solution.
How, how does that work in terms of standing out though?
Especially when you have a big player come into the market who says, don't do that, just use my AI tool to code everything.
So which is it? Is it better for teams to just, you know, look around the market now that there's tons and tons more opportunity for small businesses to fill up those niches that have been empty, or use the Omni tool of AI to solve their, all of their own problems.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: Yeah, it's tough. And I mean, there's becoming a proliferation. I mean, I'm guilty of it too. The number of different things now that I'm subscribing to is starting to get silly.
And I think eventually there'll be some pushback. Right.
And probably move more to like you call them Omni sort of tools.
Yeah, I think that's going to be one of the outcomes for sure.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: It's challenging because I used to work In a large SaaS company called Raven Tools within the SEO industry.
And I saw the challenge of, you know, once you lose your, once you achieve your core mission of hey, we're going, we're going to tackle agency reporting was the primary piece, you know, but then there's this pressure of yes, and, and once you start down that path of not specializing on that particular thing, then the expertise starts to diversify and you need, you know, if you add, oh, we also want to add social media management, oh, we want to add PPC management, then the specialization and the focus and the capability and the features that you can release.
Then you're releasing features for multiple types of tools within the same platform.
So you're right that there is a tendency towards like that, you know, consolidation of platform. The platformization of every SaaS tool occurs. But it also has that wraparound effect of, well, yeah, it does more. Now we have to support more.
Yeah, it does more. But you haven't updated your original core reason that they bought the thing in six months because you over the last five months released new stuff.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a couple of implications there. So the one that you just mentioned, for sure. So I'm a firm believer in, you dance with the one that brung you. Right. And so you've got to make sure that you never lose focus on what your original mission was and don't abuse the product that got you there. Right. But the other thing is that when you start to do that, you're now competing with much larger, larger players and they're probably in a much better position in many ways to compete in these broader markets than you are. And perhaps staying in your niche and doubling down on that is the better strategy.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: I'm curious what your advice right now for SMBs that are in manual services.
The tree trimming in Georgia, you know, installing concrete walls in Florida, doing home repair in Tennessee. Like if you're geo and you're doing services, what does that look like right now from your perspective?
[00:08:23] Speaker B: Well, I actually love those kind of businesses, so they're never going to go away.
So a lot of digital tools may come and go, but tree trimming service will, will virtually always be here.
The, the, I guess the, the thing that's changed over the past, perhaps maybe even generation, but certainly Last sort of 10 years is the really good players are both good at executing that, but they're also good at executing digital marketing. Like it's becoming necessary to, you know, to stand above the crowd and to, you know, to get the leads first or at least early.
You've got to be good at.
So like I'm a member of a group that has a wedding photographer in it, and that wedding photographer is spending $200 a day on Facebook ads.
So you better be good at it when you're spending $6,000 a month. It's a huge amount of money
[00:09:28] Speaker A: about the state of play in B2B. You know, as technology increases, as, you know, these things come out.
What's, what's the play for, you know, a oxygen monitor company that's providing, you know, monitoring for an ice cream shop or for, you know, chemical plants or paint shops. If you're selling business to business, how has that changed or been impacted by, by time as things progress?
[00:10:04] Speaker B: Well, I think targeting them is different now.
So, for example, like, it's really tough when you're in a category that's new. If you're in a category that, that has existed for a while or where people know what they're, what they want, then search marketing is an option for you.
But if you, if you're selling something that's, that people don't know about, then you're really looking at other forms of marketing. And it can be tough, especially with B2B. You know, B2C is one thing because you can find these people on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, pretty easy to target them. A little more difficult with if you take search out of the picture and it's B2B. You know, we're looking mostly at probably LinkedIn and a lot harder to target people there. One of the reasons, I think, and it's not an area of my absolute expertise, but one of the reasons I think is that people, I think, are a little more mercenary about the time that they spend on LinkedIn.
Whereas, you know, so like a serious business person might, you know, quickly browse LinkedIn in the morning when they, maybe when they're having their coffee or waiting for the coffee machine or something, but then they go home and they'll endlessly scroll on Instagram, you know, so, so I think that's one of the implications for B2B that's definitely different from the past now that the focus is so much on digital marketing. And we've lost the trade magazine, for example, which is something that I used to use extensively 20 years ago.
It's not even important anymore.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: That is true. I mean, I think about the times where I have that, that hat on and I'm being paid to be interested for, on behalf of my business, to, to do stuff. That's a limited window, you know, and the nature of the shotgun saturation attempts of marketing is of remarketing programs. It's like you visited something and then it shows on totally unrelated sites until you go back and buy the thing. But, you know, if you're lurking around and showing me stuff on Instagram that's related to what I do for it's, probably not nearly as effective as, you know, in a B2C niche.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: That's right. Yeah, exactly.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: Talk about some of the different channels that you're and the challenges that you couch that recommendation in for entrepreneurs to understand, you know, their marketing opportunities.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So we always start with person to person and that's obviously the most rich. If you can do it in person and do that efficiently, that's wonderful. So one of the things I preach is go where they are. Right. So that means industry events, trade, you know, trade expositions, that, that kind of thing.
And I think for very early, not so much marketing, but customer development, you know, like customer discovery type work that in person, whether it be the way you and I are talking right now, virtually or actually physically in person, nothing beats that. That's where you get the greatest insight.
And then beyond that, it's not really rocket science. So it's using different forums on the popular social media sites as well as Reddit. Reddit can be very helpful because it's very sort of subject orient and one of the last bastions. If, if my, I might say this, that you know, hasn't been totally ruined with ads and garbage. So, so that th. Those are the main ones.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: Reddit's a fascinating microcosm because on the one hand I've been on the receiving end of there's a very strong self protective nature of like this is this, you're a shill. This is spam. Like we don't want this like either through the mod rules or the community getting downvoted into oblivion.
But it's like 60% of the time it works every time and bounces out. But you'll see very obvious, like this is a totally commercial enterprise and everybody loves it and blasts it to the moon. It's like on the front page, you know, like it's some guy who like, you know, did this painting with his toes and like he sells, sells things for like $10,000 and you're like, okay, so there's like a lottery effect of like being able to, to, to like sell on Reddit happens, but very rarely, right?
[00:15:13] Speaker B: Yeah, just enough to like so much about selling actually as, as learning about your customer and the problems that they have, which is the work that you're doing during custom discovery.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: That's fair enough. So if you use it more as like, okay, I want to understand, you know, how people are discussing the current ways that this problem is being solved. Because at the end of the day, if you're an entrepreneur, the question you should be Asking yourself is, how do I display empathy to the market? Because that empathy is what, you know, that understanding of that pain is what you, you know, it's like white blood cells, you know, in a body. Like there's a pain point and the businesses coagulate and they form around that pain point to try to solve it.
[00:16:04] Speaker B: Right, yeah, that's a great metaphor. I'm going to probably steal that one.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: You're welcome.
Tell me. I'm curious about, you know, coming from the educator side of things. You know, I know in SEO, in digital marketing, it's very tough to have a curriculum because so much changes. You know, any of the textbooks that would have been written four years ago are ridiculously, ludicrously outdated. So is at the higher education level in your niche, you know, kind of post textbook at this point or is there some foundational things and then really post textbook?
[00:16:53] Speaker B: No, absolutely post textbook across most of the courses, at least that I touch for sure. And for the reasons that you pointed out. And you know, we can't, we as educators especially, like, I'm not, I don't really specialize in any one area other than entrepreneurship and small business more broadly.
We use subject matter experts, you know, so that's, that's what we do. We bring people in that like SEO is a great example because there's an individual, he's actually one of our grads, he graduated like 10 years ago and he's sought after SEO, you know, marketing specialist.
And so, and every, every year I bring him in and every year I hear, I hear new things. And so that, you know, that's, that's the whole idea. Now some things don't change. You know, physics, physics probably doesn't change a lot. But digital marketing, yeah, it's absolutely in the post textbook world. And there's one course where I'm sort of mandated. I have to use a textbook that was prescribed by the curriculum committee.
None of the other courses that I teach even have one.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: Entrepreneurship, you have to wear so many hats in order to be successful.
What do you teach about psychology, about mentality?
Because I just interviewed, you know, George Rivera and he's got this whole program where he sits down with successful founders who have totally destroyed their personal lives because they've over committed to the business and haven't maintained those boundaries. And they are so focused on, you know, getting things launched that they forgot to do lunch with their wife.
So what you teach about, you know, getting into entrepreneurship, that's on the human side of being that person wearing those hats.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: Yeah. So there are a handful of characteristics of successful entrepreneurs at kind of any level.
You know, I'll preface this by saying that when we look at the ones that, you know, the kind of household names, those people had some luck as well.
That's kind of what differentiates the billionaires from the millionaires. Right.
Like even to be a millionaire you gotta be good at something.
But yeah, to get to the billionaire level, you probably have a little bit of luck along the way.
But for any entrepreneur, having a high internal locus of control. So believing that you are the kind of the driver of the bus that is your life, that's very important. And it's one of the things that we find a lot in successful entrepreneurs.
They're not passengers in their life, they're very much driving their life.
There's actually a book that we use a little bit in our program about the concept of effectuation or effectual thinking.
And there's kind of five themes to that. And one of them is the pilot in the plane. Right. So you're in charge of where your life is going, you're not a passenger in it. Now, as it relates to the kind of life balance stuff, I have to admit, we don't spend a lot of time on that.
You've got me thinking that maybe that's something that we ought to.
Because I've certainly seen what you're talking about. Yeah, it's very common.
You look at almost all of the household name entrepreneurs, most of them are on at least their second marriage.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: So there's definitely an impact.
I think that discussion revolved around one core concept, which is structuring. Structuring. Your business isn't successful until you've structured it where you are not the primary and singular activator of revenue for your business.
If you are the singular, you know, junction point for generating revenue, then you don't have a business. You have a consultation because it's exchanging your knowledge.
And if everything has to go through you and you can't step away from your business, then you're really just hired yourself.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: Yeah. In fact, one of the things that I, that I tell my students all the time is if, look, if you can't go to Barbados and sit on the beach and you're making money, you do not have a business, you own your job.
And which is better than having a job?
[00:21:52] Speaker A: I'll give you that. Yeah, it is better. Like I've, I've fluctuated back and forth over my 20 year career in SEO from being freelance consultant, I've worked in house in House with SaaS. And I've worked at an agency. I've subcontracted with agencies. I've spun up my own projects. I've gained affiliate revenue, I've gained referral revenue. Basically, almost any way in SEO that you can generate revenue. I've tapped into it at different degrees to different levels of success. And there, you know, there were moments where I realized, you know what? I am paying myself so poorly as an employee. I'm putting in so much and getting so little out because I'm the only person working in this shop.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And actually, you're sort of segueing a little bit into one of the books I released recently called Most Problems Solve Themselves.
And what that's really about is that idea of letting go.
So there are kind of two things behind. So the book is actually not about that. The book has 52 articles in it. One of them is called Most Problems Solve Themselves. I chose what I thought was one of the more provocative titles of the articles to put on the COVID of it, and that's kind of where that ends. But what that article is about is really two things.
So one is when I was really, really busy working on a project back in my corporate life, I still had to do my regular job, but I was also tasked with this side project by the president of our company.
And so I kind of adopted a philosophy that a lot of people have told me is not the greatest, but it's what I did. If somebody that wasn't, like, my boss or an employee of mine that I knew needed help, if they asked for something, I made them ask at least tw.
And what I found was a lot of the times I never got the second email, so I just considered that a problem that had solved itself.
But the other way I look at it is about empowering employees.
So when people would come to me with a problem. So I used to travel a lot when I had my own businesses, and they spanned the entire Americas, so South America, Central America and North America.
And so I would be out of the office a lot, and somebody would come to me with a problem, and I would say, well, you know, gee whiz, Jeremy, last week I was in Vancouver and, like, what would you have done if it was last week?
And they'd say, well, I would do this. And I go, well, you know what? I think we should do that.
And what I was doing is putting the decision back on them, empowering them, showing them that you have the autonomy, you also have the intellect. Like, you make good decisions, which I will back up.
And when you let go like that, there's a couple of things that happen. One, it frees up time for you, but also it helps develop really good employees.
And if you think about it, good employees want some autonomy. If they don't have it, they're going to leave.
And I won't say bad employees, but let's say B players, they kind of want to be told what to do.
And I want a company that's full of A players.
So yeah, that's my philosophy about that.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: I think it, you could state it as don't delegate tasks, delegate outcomes.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: Great way to say it. Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:31] Speaker A: Because you want, you, if you want something to come out of that, you know, you, you know, like LLMs and AI tools right now are definitely A, B, C, sometimes a C level player.
And I can recall, you know, when I was, you know, a manager of a team of 12 people, there are definitely people who will do exactly what it is that you say, specifically how you say it, and nothing more, nothing less because then they'll get in trouble, but they will do exactly what it is that you say without thought of the consequence. What's next, what the next piece is? They'll okay, turn the pipe seven times. Done. Okay, well I wanted you to turn the pipe seven times so that this nuclear bomb didn't go off. But this next thing over here also needs to be turned.
Not beyond my peg red they'd say, right, yeah.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: Or not every pipe is exactly seven times. Some of them need seven and a half turns. And then we kind of want people who can figure that out on their own.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: Is that just human nature? And do those people that, you know, as an entrepreneur is there sometimes that you just want to find a couple of B players to, to. Because at the end of the day like sometimes you do just need somebody to turn a wrench at a particular time and place.
So is it really just having that awareness that there are different types of employees and knowing, knowing that can save you from that frustration of asking somebody something that they're not capable of doing?
[00:27:26] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. In fact. So there's there's some actually probably now 60, 70 year old theory about organizational or like how you organize your company and you can actually apply it at the, at the subgroup level inside your company? Basically the two, the two extremes are mechanistic and organic. And so in an organic organization we want those people who, who are show a lot of proactivity, who can basically give an outcome to. And they'll figure out the tasks lots of communication going in every single direction. That's what an organic organization looks like. And a mechanistic organization is more like the military where communication is up and over and down and decision making is pushed up, not down.
And we don't really encourage thinking out of the box. And a good example of that is like a McDonald's franchise.
You don't really want to hire people that are super, super entrepreneurial to be working in the back. It's probably actually going to be a little disruptive because they're going to want to tell you a better way to cook the fries.
And the fries, we figured out a long time ago how to cook those fries. And the people kind of want them done that way. Because in an organization like a McDonald's we want consistency not just in our own operation, but between my one in Toronto and the one in Shanghai.
So.
And you can actually have portions of your organization where you kind of want to run it mechanistically and then others where you want to have it more organically. And I think knowing which ones are which and then being able to figure out the right values to find in people to get them in the right seats on that bus, that's kind of what makes a really good leader.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Agree or disagree.
Tangent off of that is scaling truly the enemy of creativity in business?
[00:29:38] Speaker B: I think in many ways it is. That's why big companies purchase a lot of their innovation. Right.
So you know, a lot, a lot of companies that are purchased by not just big tech companies, but even, you know, like consumer packaged goods companies like Procter and Gamble, you know, they're, they're buying creative people because they don't have them inside the organization.
And I think just the, the things that come with getting big, you know, the having to create some level of bureaucracy, otherwise you've got pandemonium can tend to stifle creativity. So, so yeah, I think it's a, it's an inevitable outcome. You can probably mitigate it to some degree. You know, Google having their, their. I don. If they still have this, but they used to have that, basically 10% of your time can be put toward a skunk works project that's of your own making. Those sort of things that could probably help a little bit, but it's tough. There's no question about it.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: This is probably controversial, but do you think that one of the fundamental problems with business is that when these companies are chartered, when they're founded, when an entrepreneur starts them, that there isn't a thought as to how this, this thing ends and so you end up with the singular driving line, which is profit. This company must do whatever it does and generate profit.
Would you say that's, that's true?
[00:31:14] Speaker B: Well, especially once you bring in outside investors.
So if you, if you can manage to stay bootstrapped and, and, and be a founder owned and operated company or at least family for some period of time, you can probably get around that profit only motivation. But even in a family business, once it gets to a certain size, you end up having, you have people in the family that are owners that don't work in the business. So they may not feel that same sense of purpose and they're just demanding their quarterly dividend check.
It's certainly true of the public markets. And I think it's one of the things that's really a tragedy about the way we do capitalism.
Not sure I have the answer as a better way to do it, but the profit above all else motive I think doesn't serve society particularly well. It serves investors well, it doesn't serve employees well.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: Therefore, in what way should a SaaS consider transitioning off of bootstrapping? Because I know a lot of solopreneurs and I know and I do see that lure, that golden carrot. Oh, hey, if you make a deck and you approach some VC folk, you can get funding and you've got Runway and you know, you can achieve all of the things that you want your software to do, but it comes, it's a carrot on a stick held by somebody who's very willing to beat you with a stick to death.
Once you give them that power, they hold the stick and they can direct you. You can choose to ignore it, but there's going to be consequences.
[00:32:58] Speaker B: So maybe less modest growth, but still scaling to some degree through using an angel, for example, and you search one out that has a similar mindset to yourself. A lot of angels are investing, of course there's a financial incentive there, but also to give back a little bit, certainly more than the VC community.
That's maybe one way that's good advice
[00:33:26] Speaker A: and knowing that there are, you know, different mechanisms for funding for your business because I, I talked to, I was at a backyard barbecue with my family and I was talking to this guy who is in the restaurant industry and he's like, oh man, I'd be free if I could just get a million dollars. I was like, what do you mean? Well, you know, I have this idea for a restaurant and I know all the ins and outs but you know, I'm never going to get that million dollars. And you know, my mind was like, bro, there's so many different ways to get funding and do you actually need a million dollars?
Probably not. I mean, you could probably start towards a path of doing something where you're not in a 9 to 5 at a job that you hate and you come home exhausted. But if you know the nation industry, you have that it doesn't take a million dollars anymore to launch your stuff.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: Yeah, you could probably test the concept at least in a much more modest fashion for sure.
Maybe it's not exactly the space you'd like, maybe it's not as large as you want, but you find, to take your example in the hospitality industry, find something that was previously purpose built for that industry. So a lot of the leasehold improvement ideas don't have to be.
They may not be exactly as you've envisioned, but you can test your concept for sure.
It's only a pretty elaborate restaurant or bar club that needs a million bucks to get off the ground for sure.
[00:35:06] Speaker A: Let's get spicy. Let's say, what's your most controversial take at the moment in the entrepreneurial world? Speaking to anybody, what's your most controversial thought that you're putting out there?
[00:35:21] Speaker B: A lot of people might not like this, but the generation of students that we have created post pandemic are they're nowhere near as good as previous generations at solving problems at and part of the. And I blame the parents primarily. I also blame the public school system, but the combination of those two, we have an enfeebled generation and it's tragic in our department. We try to beat it out of him, but we're tough.
But it's tough love, right? And the world is tough. Once you get out of university accommodations go away, or a lot of them do, and you're going to be expected to solve problems or you're going to have to find something else to do.
So that's probably the most controversial thing I could say about entrepreneurship today.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: It's crazy because as a millennial, there was so much avocado toasting of our generation, such scorn handed down of like, oh, you're such milk sop, like suck it up, buttercup type rhetoric to hand it down. I think quite unfairly from, from my generational perspective that I to, to a lot of degree I've resisted, you know, some of the, you know, mud slinging towards Gen Alpha to the point of like, am I gaslighting myself about this? Are they really not grasping this?
Are these jumps and leaps in this logic, in this process and I questioned that until I volunteered for our homeschool co op to teach a class on a science fiction club and just challenging them to take the next step each time.
It took a lot of effort to engage that creativity, to get them to engage with a curriculum, to go further with thought processes that rather than just the surface level.
So, you know, from my, you know, anecdotal thing, it's, it's, it is striking but somehow encouraging to know that I'm not crazy, that, hey, there is something with the current generation that's different.
And do you have an opinion as to what are some of the factors of our society that's led to that? And is, is that reversible or is, you know, have we programmed this in with social media? Like, what's the, what's the causation that you're, you're looking at?
[00:38:24] Speaker B: I, I think there's a few. I think the pandemic didn't hurt. Help for sure.
So locking these kids down for a few years did, didn't, didn't help.
But it's mostly, I think it's over parenting.
It's, you know, I'm obviously a little bit older even than you, Jeremy, but, but I'm from the generation where we had two rules as kids.
Be home before the street lights come on and don't come home in a police car. And that was about it.
Okay.
And there were no devices. We were left to our own devices, if you will. We made our own fun. I'm a Canadian, we played a lot of street hockey, but we also, we were out in the forest building forts and just farting around.
And as you know, I think in each subsequent generation, we over parent like, you know, the idea of a play date, like, can't kids figure out how to play themselves? Do you really have to set them up on a date?
And then the other thing that we see here in the universities, and I suspect a high school teacher would probably see it even more, is the idea of, it's not even helicopter parenting anymore. It's now bulldozer parenting. Parenting. And they bulldoze every problem out of the way of their kids so that by the time they get to me, they can't solve a problem.
They think the rules are a list of things you're allowed to do as opposed to a list of the things you're not allowed to do. Like when you go to the public pool, you know, there's a list of rules. Don't spit in the water. You must have a shower before entering the pool. Like These are the things you're not allowed to do do. It doesn't say, you know, you're allowed to swim.
And they look at the world through the lens of like, is it okay for me to do that? Well, do you see anywhere that it says you can't? Well, then do it.
And we don't inculcate that sort of, you know, mentality in our children anywhere to the degree that I think we should. And there's a book by a fellow by the name of Jonathan Haidt. I don't know if you've heard of him, but he's a Prof. At, I think it's nyu, but it's one of the New York based universities and he teaches in the business department and I think he teaches ethics, but he's written a lot about young people and he wrote a book called the Coddling of the American Mind. And there's basically three kind of major themes in the book. And the first one is this notion that we treat children as fragile when actually they are antifragile in the sense that, like this cup, if I drop this cup, it's fragile, it will break.
If you drop a kid, metaphorically, it gets stronger.
It's antifragile.
You don't break them by exercising them, you make them stronger.
And I think we need to adopt a little bit more of that kind of mentality.
[00:41:29] Speaker A: I agree.
Kind of transitioning to the end here. I'd love to hear, you know, some of the projects that you've been working on, if you've been releasing books, are you speaking anywhere, what do some of your engagements, what do you, how who are you here for? You put yourself out into the podcast world. You know, I'm sure conversation is nice, but there's also a motivation at the end of the day. Who are you hoping to, you know, speak to?
[00:41:58] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So my, my primary market is small business owners that have built the business. So I do work with startups, but my primary market is business owners that have a business somewhere in the roughly, you know, this isn't a hard and fast rule, but roughly five to $50 million, couple of dozen employees.
I've recently released a digital product at a website. I have my own website, bradpoolis.com but@confident operator.com, i've released a new product called the Operator's Cadence that helps small business owners that have grown their business without having a lot of structure to it and find themselves in a situation where they've got a little more of a chaotic life than they expect. So it helps to take take away some of that chaos through a planning cadence that works right down from a 10 year vision to a daily planning cadence.
I mentor at several Ontario based incubators and that's work that I do. Most of that is for free. Sometimes I get paid, but most of that is just me giving back.
And I've also got three books on Amazon. Two are aimed straight up at small business people. The one I mentioned already which is most problems solve themselves.
I also wrote a book called the Small Business Operator and then earlier this year I released with a co author a book called From Pitch to Payoff which is about venture finance. So this is a finance book but aimed at the startup operator because there really wasn't a book that we found in that they kind of covered that space.
[00:43:43] Speaker A: So I appreciate you stopping by in the fascinating conversation.
What is your preferred social media channel of people? Some of my Generation prefer to at people and message and send DMs before they start an engagement. So where can people find you?
[00:44:01] Speaker B: Yeah, so I'm on all of them. Well I shouldn't say that I'm not on TikTok, but I'm on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and my website and it's all the same. It's just my name. Brad Poole. Coolas B R A D P O U L O S so you can find me at if you just at me. Also on X.
Same handle.
I don't use X a lot but I can be found there.
[00:44:26] Speaker A: Fantastic. Well I appreciate you stopping in.
[00:44:29] Speaker B: Well that was fun. Thank you so much.
