Meet our podcast host: Bruce Croxon

Melanie Carter (00:04): Hello and welcome to season 2 of the Export Impact Podcast, brought to you by Export Development Canada (EDC). Thank you for joining us today. Before we begin, I’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting to you from EDC’s head office in Ottawa, which is the traditional and unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people. We value taking this moment to deepen the appreciation of the Indigenous communities wherever we are, and to remind ourselves of our shared debt to Canada’s first peoples. 

I’m Melanie Carter and I’m a regional director of the small business team here at EDC. I’m very pleased to be your host for today’s episode. Now, to kick off the second season of our Export Impact Podcast, I’m thrilled to introduce you to our new host, Bruce Croxon.

Bruce is a well-known Canadian entrepreneur, television personality and venture capitalist. He’s currently a partner at the investment firm, Round 13 Capital, and co-host of The Disruptors, a weekly TV show on BNN Bloomberg that covers international business news and provides expert advice for Canadian companies.

Bruce also co-founded the dating website, Lavalife, and was a member of the cast of CBC’s Dragons’ Den from 2011 to 2013. This season, Bruce will be sitting down once a month with Canadian entrepreneurs and industry experts to take a deep dive into what it takes for businesses to thrive internationally and grow on the global stage.

We’ll talk to seasoned entrepreneurs about the highs and lows of exporting and how they overcome the challenges or key challenges when entering new markets. 

Welcome to the show, Bruce.

Bruce Croxon (01:53): Hey, great to be here and thanks for having me.

Melanie Carter (01:55): We’re so excited to have you as our new host for season 2. Now, to get us started, we would love to hear more about you, on your incredible journey as the creator of Lavalife and on how you became a venture capitalist with Round 13 Capital and a dragon on TV’s popular Dragons’ Den. But also, we’re curious to know a little bit more about yourself. I mean, we’d love for you to tell our listeners about what you enjoy doing in your free time when you’re not busy with all of the various business ventures that you’re part of. So, take a moment to introduce yourself.

Bruce Croxon (02:29): Sure. Listen, my name’s Bruce Croxon and this will resonate with a great deal of the audience, I’m sure. I’m a father of two kids, 21 and 19, so when you talk about time and focus and attention and what occupies your mind, kids are usually the first thing that pop into my mind—even though my kids are off and running.

I’m a lifelong entrepreneur, first of all, I’ve always done my own thing and tried to carve my own path. So I’m very, very familiar with two steps forward and one step back. It’s not a path, or  road, for everybody, most certainly, but it’s definitely one that I took. I was inspired to do so by watching my father do it as an immigrant to this country with $40 and a Grade 8 education. And you know what the benefits of hard work and surrounding yourself with the right kind of people and doing the right thing could result in.

My journey’s been one of many small businesses becoming medium-sized businesses and selling them and getting back and doing it again—both as an investor and an operator. You did mention Lavalife; that was one of my first and most notable successes. I co-founded what was arguably the first online dating site in the world. Very, very common today as a way for people to meet each other, but we were breaking new ground back in the late 80s, mid-90s as the internet was just starting to become popular. We were amongst the first and that brand became big enough and the success of it became noted enough, I guess, that as you mentioned, CBC got wind of it and wanted to know who the entrepreneurs were behind this software, online business.

They came calling and I did agree to do three years with them, which was a fantastic experience, and also provided me the opportunity to launch Round 13 Capital, which basically used the television platform and entrepreneurship and seeing a lot of different businesses as that show did to let entrepreneurs in Canada know that I was moving into a new stage in my career— moving from operator to investor—and if they were looking to be funded as a Canadian business with global aspirations, that Round 13 would be a good place to come and I would be a good person to partner with, not only with a cheque, but hopefully, with some expertise and advice to help small businesses, as I said, become medium-sized businesses and hopefully, like Lavalife did, sell to an interested party one day. 

When I’m not working as an investor these days, or hosting an EDC podcast, I’ve stayed pretty active and I’m an outdoors type of person. I like to ski and play tennis and surf and I do like to travel to spots that have good waves and good snow and that kind of thing. So, I try and travel pretty light, but still focused on the investments that Round 13 has made and making sure that we’re continuing to grow and advise the entrepreneurs who we’ve cut cheques to. And until those companies are sold, I’ll be close by and at the helm.

Melanie Carter (05:49): That’s wonderful. They’re lucky to have you, for sure. Great experiences to share. And through this episode, we’re going to learn a little bit from that experience. As we know, exporting is a key theme of the Export Impact Podcast, so please, tell us a little bit about your own experiences of doing business internationally.

Bruce Croxon (06:11):  I think my first experience in doing business internationally was probably Lavalife. And you know, most of my investments have actually been software-oriented companies. The export portion of software versus some sort of hard goods is arguably very, very different. One of the reasons I was motivated to join EDC in interviewing entrepreneurs was actually to learn a little bit myself as well about what the journey is and maybe give some practical advice on how things are done in the material world, as well. 

From Lavalife’s perspective, our first cities were Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. We had a basic service that was putting people together for love, dating romance, and we didn’t really think there was any reason that just because there was a border existing between Canada and the United States, that this wouldn’t be applicable to the U.S. and frankly, anywhere else in the world, but we weren’t sure. So, San Francisco was our first market. My first advice to entrepreneurs looking to go outside of Canada is get over the sort of reluctance that the markets might be dramatically different, or there’s a lot of nuances that you might not understand to the point that it would stop you from doing it.

We took a bold step and on a hunch that people wanted to get together wherever they might be in the world. And at that point, it was a very local business. We were putting people together in local markets. 

So, we launched in San Francisco and were very, very successful right out of the gate. Picked up some tips on how to do business in a local market, like San Francisco, through trial and error. But the notion that if you had a product, or a service, that was successful in Canada, there was no reason why it couldn't be successful in the U.S., and actually, we ended up going to many cities in the U.S. after that and also jumped off to Australia. Those three markets, Canada, the U.S. and Australia, were relatively similar in terms of demographic and people’s needs. But again, there were nuances to each market that we had to become aware of along the way. If I had had EDC advice earlier, I mean, it would've saved us some time.

Melanie Carter (08:34): That’s super interesting. Thanks for sharing that with us. You mentioned San Francisco being your first city outside of Canada. Did I get that correct? 

Bruce Croxon (08:43): Yes. 

Melanie Carter (08:44): And then you expanded throughout the U.S. Did you find that it was very different from one region of the U.S. to the next?

Bruce Croxon (08:49): Yes. In our business, it had a heavy customer service and call centre perspective. What we found was that in our business, people liked to deal with people in their local community. Definitely when it came to connecting with people, there was a very local bias. I mean, if you were looking for love in San Francisco, the odds of it being somebody in Toronto—possible, but really there was much more desire to hook up with somebody that you could get to within an hour or so. Even more importantly than that, just the sort of nuance on the advertising, how customer service people dealt with people who were calling in, that they knew they were from the local area seemed to make a big difference to their comfort and their familiarity with our product. I think as we learned that and made sure we populated locally, I think it really benefited us.

Melanie Carter (09:49): That’s very cool. Clearly lots of success in your career with Lavalife and then with Round 13 Capital. My next question is kind of twofold and it bounces off what you just said now. 1. What strategies would you use to expand internationally? and 2. How do you identify those right markets to enter?

Bruce Croxon (10:10): First of all, I think it’s highly situational, depending on the product or service you have. The first thing I would be looking at are the human needs, or if the needs for the product are the same by region, right? And while you're at it, you might as well have a look around to see if those needs are being met through a local competitor you might not have had in your own market. So, it really is aboutdoing a market study. One of the few things I picked up through university—I wasn’t a great student—but I remember this guy named Maslow. He had the whole hierarchy of needs thing. And you know, one thing I’ve come to realize is that the lower down Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—it starts with food, shelter, companionship— luckily, Lavalife was next up.

The bigger the problem that you’re solving—whatever community or region it is—the less you’re going to have to spend on marketing to let people know about it and the easier it's going to be to build a business. It really makes a big difference if you're solving a real problem. Those problems can vary from region to region and they can be translated differently from region to region. I think understanding the region that you’re going into, seeing that the problem you’re solving in Canada may or may not be the same kind of problem and who else might be doing it, relative to the market that you’ve already been successful in, I think would be all relevant questions to ask.

Melanie Carter (11:38): You identify those markets then by doing research and then you realize that they may or may not be the right markets for you, or maybe the right market for you at a certain time?

Bruce Croxon (11:48): Yeah, or it’s going to yield a rank order priority as to where the biggest needs and the biggest opportunities are, based on competition access to the market, how the problem is being solved in other ways in some markets versus yours. There’s definitely nuance to market and there’s definitely different regulations by country, by state that may or may not impact your business. We’re talking about export now and interesting, you know, with the time that we’re facing our largest trading partner to the south, because there’s a lot of questions and answers that seem to be changing by the day. Staying on top of that and understanding what the latest playing field is, I think is going to be very, very important over the next four years, certainly. And who knows if the policies they’re laying down are here to stay? This could be something that we’re going to be faced with in terms of the challenge of exporting for quite some time.

Melanie Carter (12:46): Just goes to show how one of the benefits of exporting just might be the more diversified you are, the less exposed you might be to what’s going on in one region versus another. That kind of speaks to that.

Bruce Croxon (13:02): Certainly agree with that.

Melanie Carter (13:04): So, you're talking about doing research and market plans and so on, and identifying the right countries. In my years at EDC, I’ve heard multiple companies, especially small businesses, are more opportunistic, right? They get an opportunity somewhere in some markets; maybe they hadn’t researched too much and the question is do they jump? Do they go? Do they not? What do they do? It’s not always so planned out.

Bruce Croxon (13:31):  I think one of the characteristics that make people entrepreneurs in the first place is that they see opportunity around every corner. And one of the most common mistakes I see is that great asset that entrepreneurs have can also be their biggest headwind. Because there’s only so many things you can do at the same time well, and at the same time, if you’re a small business and trying to meet payroll two weeks Friday, you can't really afford to turn down too many opportunities. If something falls in your lap, it’s very tempting,  except when you get to the point where you realize that it’s distracting from what should have been your Top 3 priorities or markets, or what have you, based on all the good things that we’ve done to learn why that’s the case. 

So yes, it’s a very fine line. You don’t want to kill the entrepreneurial spirit, but you do want to augment that instinct and intuition with good research and discipline and then, sort of train the ability in the entrepreneur as to when to say no to something, which sometimes is the absolute hardest thing to do.

Melanie Carter (14:37): That kind of leads me to the next questions about mistakes. 

Bruce Croxon (14:42): Made a few?

Melanie Carter (14:44): Well, no, well, maybe. You tell me.

Bruce Croxon (14:45): I tell you, I’ve made a ton. I call it my 51/49 rule as an entrepreneurship: 51% of the time, you’re moving the ball ahead; 49% of the time, you’re taking it in the teeth. It’s just the way it is. But that’s 2% to the good. If you can keep doing that, you’re good.

Melanie Carter (15:04): You know what everyone benefits from learning from? Other’s mistakes. I’m sure you’ll have an opportunity to share some of those during the various episodes with other entrepreneurs. You would have mistakes to share, but also during your time with Dragons’ Den. You’ve heard many pitches from entrepreneurs looking to scale their business, right? You spoke about the one mistake of jumping too quick and not reflecting enough on the opportunity before jumping. What are the most common mistakes that those entrepreneurs who were pitching were doing when they were planning for global expansion and what advice would you give them on those mistakes?

Bruce Croxon (15:46):  Whether you’re planning for global expansion, or just trying to grow a business, I think the biggest mistake people make is—especially when you look at Dragons’ Den, it was really 40 minutes of pitch that people had. They spent the first 30 trying to convince you there was a human need for the product. If they got you there, then the last 10 was, well, this is the product that’s going to solve that human need that we didn’t think existed in the first place. So, I come back to, listen solving a real problem and a human need is sort of square one. And then when you get going, understanding what the priorities of an organization are, as we spoke about earlier, and sticking to that plan. One of my old business partners had a saying: Focus is choice, right? You can choose to focus and if you don’t, then it becomes very difficult for not only you to move things ahead, but your team and the people around you. 

The third thing, again, back to where you spend your precious time because time is that really precious commodity for small businesses in terms of where they prioritize. You need to put an extraordinary amount of time into making sure that you choose the right people and partners to work with. So, many times you’re either working with friends who wouldn't normally be the best person for the job, or you haven’t given enough thought to the core values of the people you want to be around. Because at the beginning of a venture, or even when things are going great, everyone’s on their best behaviour and everyone is a pleasure to work with. But inevitably in a small business, you’re going to run into hiccups and it's called “the cycle” for a reason. Sometimes, things are good, but often things are a struggle and it’s how you act during those periods of struggle. And it goes to the kind of people you’ve hopefully, thoughtfully thought about partnering with and who you turn to it for advice that you can count on to get you through those struggling times.

Melanie Carter (17:51): That’s really great advice. Inevitably, you’re going to make mistakes. Some of them can be avoided if you speak with the right people and ensure that your circle are the right humans to accompany you through that.

Bruce Croxon (18:05): And that’s often not only core values-based, but experience-based, right? As I think about what I’ve learned about EDC and the amount of time the organization has actually invested and put into understanding markets outside of our own, clearly there’s no agenda outside of helping people get globally expanded for the good of the country. There’s no room for dual agendas in a mandate like that. So, things like trust and transparency and aligning yourself with people who are doing the right thing for the right reason, I think are worth thinking about in advance before you get too committed to a path or people that aren’t going to have your best interests at heart.

Melanie Carter (18:48): Switching gears a little bit… we've talked about the great benefits of exporting and to name a few, there would be like increased sales and increased opportunities, and companies that export tend to invest more in R&D and are more innovative. They generate more revenue generally, but there are also risks and challenges to consider when you’re exporting. As a venture capitalist, how do you support Canadian companies looking to expand globally? And what advice would you give them to ensure that they’re prepared for those challenges that come with going global?

Bruce Croxon (19:22): You have to understand, again, the nuance of every market, right? Every market would bring with it a set of risks that you might not necessarily have at home. Like if you think about Canada, Canada is a big country, but it’s really not. And one of the reasons is, for example, why as a venture capitalist, we only—not only, but 95% of the time—prioritize backing Canadian companies because there’s not too many people we can’t get to understand who it is that we’re backing, what they’ve done before, who they’re friends with, what they, as you asked, like to do in your spare time? I mean, we can get at all that information because at the end of the day, we’re a relatively small community stretched out over a large geography. If you’re going into the United States, it’s 10 times the size, using the U.S. as an example, with relationships and ways of doing things and connections and methodologies that can be quite different than our cozy little ecosystem here in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, the holy trinity. You just need to put in the time to understand that.

Melanie Carter (20:38): Very well. You talked about connections and we all know, or you would know building connections overseas is crucial when entering a new market. You’ve alluded to it already during the conversation. Based on your experience, what are the most effective strategies for connecting with potential buyers or distributors? What advice would you give our listeners?

Bruce Croxon (21:01): I think it’s as old a method as it’s been around a long time: Gathering people together. We had a hiccup on this during COVID-19 where getting together in person was difficult and some would argue that you can be as effective over Zoom. But you know, trade shows and associations and getting together where people are all there for the same reason, which is to compare products and services and explore markets and develop partnerships and relationships around whatever product or service that you are vested in, I think it’s very, very difficult to replace that. And I also think it’s very difficult to replace what you get from a face-to-face meeting as well, depending on the size of the opportunity. 

And then after that, I think it’s basically Customer Relationship Management (CRM) management and making sure that you stay in touch with people and continually refine your product or service to make sure you’re addressing a real need. And then knowing as well, when the efforts aren’t bearing fruit. Because what I’ve just outlined, not only can be a great deal of expense in terms of time spent, but it can also be a great deal of expense in terms of travel and being away from home and away from your organization that you hope will continue to do what you need it to do in your absence. And depending on the size of that company, that can be either a massive leap of faith or we’ve got the structure in place, I’m OK to be away for X amount of time. You know what I mean? It really is situational, but definitely would be taking all of those things into account as I look to expand beyond my border.

Melanie Carter (22:42): That’s a great piece of advice. I’m hearing the human piece, of course, the human part is important, but you talked about the CRM, right? The operations need to be stable and solid, which would give you the data to identify whether or not you were successful in whatever endeavour you took on, if it was worth the investments or not, right? I mean, that whole operation piece and collecting of data is also so crucial.

Bruce Croxon (23:07): Important. Yep.

Melanie Carter (23:08): Let’s look ahead a little bit and talk about trends, or opportunities, that exist for Canadian businesses in the global marketplace. My question is two-part for you: What are those trends that you’re currently seeing and how can companies position themselves to take advantage of these opportunities and expand in new markets, for example, in the growing Indo-Pacific region?

Bruce Croxon (23:33): It’s funny, I don’t have a lot of investments in the Indo-Pacific region currently, but you look at markets that are fast growing and have come from here and are now on a rapid pace to there. I mean, obviously, if you can identify those markets that are catching up, if you will, or that are an active hotbed of activity, obviously, if you can become part of that and your product or service fills a need that is required, that’s definitely where some time and attention should be spent. In terms of global trends, again, 90% of what I do and look at are software. So, artificial intelligence is obviously front and centre, in terms of what venture capitalists are investing in these days, but it’s also a lesson. We experienced it this week and I don’t know when this will air exactly, but it was this week, sort of the last week in January where the Chinese came out with an AI innovation that completely upended the valuations of what artificial intelligence had done domestically and in the U.S. in terms of progress and valuation.

I think that’s a really good illustration on just how quickly things can change and I think that’s a big thing that’s changed over 20 years. You used to be able to get a foothold in a product or service, and the pace of innovation was such that you had some time to develop a market. You had some barriers to entry, particularly in technology, but I’d say that would apply to other industries, as well. I think one of the things that we need to realize is that supply chains and logistics and technology have helped all of this move a lot faster. So, when you get a sniff of something working or a market that you’re moving into that you get some early signs of success, I think it’s imperative that you need the organization to be ready to move very, very fast. There’s no secrets anymore and information travels very quickly, so you need to be in a position to be agile and take advantage of opportunities as they arise. And that goes back to the earlier part of our conversation. Sometimes that's difficult to do if you’ve got too many balls in the air at any given time.

Melanie Carter (25:57): That’s fair and funny that we talk about Indo-Pacific, an emerging market that there’s a lot of focus around it right now, and you're saying you don't have a lot of investments there right now, but you did mention in the beginning that after the U.S. with Lavalife, you actually were in Australia. 

Bruce Croxon (26:15): We did. And the reason we went to Australia was our research and our intuition largely told us that Canadians and Australians have a lot in common. I knew that from travelling the world myself, but we just had a hunch that the markets were similar enough, English speaking, ex-Colonialists, right? We thought we would be successful there. One of the challenges we ran into early—and it’s one that you need to consider—is the time zone difference. When you’re trying to do business across the world while trying to run a company back home, there's only so many hours in a day and the fatigue and the trying to manage a company with midnight calls while you also have a day job, again, goes to the size of the organization, the capacity to take on something and then actually execute well enough to get it done. Those are definitely factors that you need to take into account. But yes, we did very well in Australia. It’s just been many years since I’ve had a product that I’ve launched or relaunched down there.

Melanie Carter (27:24): Fascinating. So, to your point, this is up and coming in the sense that there’s a lot of focus there, a lot of attention, there’s a lot of support for companies to go into that region right now, and you’ve seen how you can actually be successful. But there are definitely, like in every market, considerations, like time zones that you need to think about to prepare yourself to go into these markets.

Bruce Croxon (27:45):  One thing we haven’t talked about is the legal infrastructure in different countries. You know, if things go wrong, what court of law? And unfortunately, it happens right? Where you have a dispute, or you don’t get paid, or you’re arguing about something that you thought you’d agreed on. Every country has different systems and laws, and some are just impossible if you’re an outsider to cut through. There’s heavy bias in some markets. Canada’s, I would say, are relatively fair in how we treat people and how we treat...it’s not always the case. So, understanding how different markets react to disputes, how you get paid, if you’ve provided a product or a service and there’s trouble with the money coming your way, what do you do? Every market’s different.

Melanie Carter (28:37): Totally goes to show there’s so much to learn so equip yourself with the right people around you, seek advice, ensure that you have the right advisors to support you in your endeavours, right?

Bruce Croxon (28:49): Exactly. I mean, sometimes selling the product or service is the easiest thing; getting paid for it might be the toughest. And if you don't get paid, you’re not going to be successful.

Melanie Carter (28:59): You’re not going to be in business for long, that’s for sure. So many great things were shared already and like I said, I know that a lot of these little stories and experiences will be shared throughout the various episodes. But before we wrap up today, Bruce, please tell us what excites you about season 2 of the Export Impact Podcast, and are there any particular topics or themes that you’re eager to explore with entrepreneurs in the upcoming episodes?

Bruce Croxon (29:27): Being a lifetime entrepreneur, I have tremendous, tremendous respect for anybody who has decided to take a shot off the sweat of their own labour without reporting into anybody to try and generate enough interest in a product or service to cover your rent, hire some people, put food on the table, take care of your family. I know how hard that is. I know getting from zero to five, even five million or 10 million in sales, which is still considered a very small business, it’s a very, very tough thing to do. The people we're going to be talking to this year, by and large, are out doing it. They’ve had some modicum of success. They’re looking for and are open to ways to continue to grow and be successful. I’m a curious guy by nature, and I love asking questions and I love learning about people’s endeavours. I find actually in the entrepreneurial community that those qualities are often shared. And I think we’re going to have an exciting season of give and take and questions and discussions and maybe the odd disagreement that I think the audience will benefit from and we’ll get a chance to share some insights with.

Melanie Carter (30:47): Bruce, thank you so much for your time and for your generosity and sharing your insights and great experiences with us today. It was truly a privilege to have this discussion with you and I will be listening and I look forward to tuning in to season 2 of the podcast.

And to our audience, thanks for joining us today on the Export Impact Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, we’d love you to subscribe, rate, and leave us a review on your favourite streaming platform. And on that, until next time.

Melanie Carter (13:10): Absolutely. And then her mantra is actually pretty impactful, right? Fail fast and fail forward.

Joe Mimran (13:17): Yeah, fail fast, fail forward. I've been using it, I completely ripped her off on that. Being in the fashion business, copying is a compliment. So yeah, fail fast, fail forward. I think that's one many entrepreneurs should adopt.

Melanie Carter (13:33): Absolutely. She was mentioning that she has never experienced a big failure, which is wonderful. She always fails fast, right? So no big failures, little ones that you pivot from, that you learn from is so much better, which she was explaining actually allows her employees to love what they do. When it doesn't work out, they pivot quickly and they adapt. If you're dragging it for too long and your employees are disengaged, it actually has an impact on the overall business.

Joe Mimran (14:03): Yeah. That's so true. And again, as a female entrepreneur, I think she's a fantastic role model.

Melanie Carter (14:10): Absolutely. Absolutely. So next we are gonna hear from Tricia Pitura, from Mini Tippy.

Joe Mimran (14:17): When you think about the designs that you currently are creating, is there sort of a historical aspect to them? Where do you get your inspiration from and how did you come to that? Because it sounds like you almost had a self-discovery journey as well as a business journey.

Tricia Pitura (14:37): Yeah and that's what I am grateful for Mini Tippy. And now like if you think about my voice, like I even just found my voice or who I am and who I'm more confident telling people I'm indigenous just because of how with my grandmother, our culture was taken away and I wasn't proud of who I was. And so now I'm just finding my voice and I'm hoping to help other people connect or reconnect and learn. And I get emotional a little bit when I talk about that because I've come a long way just to be talking to you about it out loud. But I get inspired to learn, I wanna learn more. I was exposed to it but never really taught the meaning behind it of how I can connect and how other people can connect to it. Because I believe right now Canada is thirsty to learn and everybody really wants to support indigenous business or just understand the culture and where we all came from and where we can all like reconnect together.

So I feel like when I collaborate with the artists, we provide the platform for them to also express themselves and pass down those teachings that they were taught from their elders or their community. And so when they have a designer, when we have an inspiration for a design and collaboration, sometimes our artists take a really traditional art form such as birch bark biting or traditional quilt making. And that's usually done one piece at a time; that takes a lot of time and a lot of craftsmanship and just the amount of work and beauty that goes into that. And what we do is kind of modernize it in a sense that we take those teachings and those traditional art forms and we create it into a textile where it makes it accessible for everyone to learn a little bit about the culture, connect with it, and each one of those designs have a story to tell.

And that's what I think that a lot of our feedback from our customers, non-indigenous and indigenous, is that they have so much connection when they receive that artist card in their box, when they receive our product and it has the artist who they are, what nation they're from, what they do as an artist, but also what that blanket means and why that artist chose to do that design. So I feel people connect to our product as part of an experience and we create a conversation where people can learn and talk about it and celebrate the culture and wear it proudly for themselves or whether they're gifting it. Gift-giving is really strong and indigenous culture too, and it has lots of meaning and significance and impact. So I feel that when people receive our products, they're grateful of what they received, but also that they can wear proudly, like I said, but also indigenize fashion and make it part of society as a norm. 

Melanie Carter 17:18 So Joe, what were the takeaways from your conversation with Tricia?

Joe Mimran (17:21): Well that was a really emotionally charged moment there and she really buried her soul. And this whole journey of self-awareness and recognition as an indigenous entrepreneur, I think was exactly what this podcast is about. Hearing these wonderful stories from entrepreneurs and again, how their personal experiences get intertwined with their business experiences and how it really does lead to, I would say, success in many cases. And because they're digging deep, they're not just putting out a product, they're doing more than that. And it's a fascinating story in the sense that I didn't know about birch bark biting and how she brought that art form into her products. And again, traditional craftsmanship and bringing that to the market and showing how she's developing an international business just through, you know, again, digging deep and I really enjoyed chatting with Tricia. That was a great moment.

Melanie Carter (18:23): I agree. It just goes to show that when you bring your whole self to the world, great success can come out of it pretty spectacular. So next up is a clip from 18:36name] from 18:37name].

Joe Mimran (18:37): It's a wonderful vision and you speak of it in an evangelistic way, which is also an important part of leading a team and being an entrepreneur because you specialize in a technology that regenerates all this post-consumer and post-industrial plastics into these new materials. Well, it's not really a new material, it's reusing the material. Perhaps you can also share with us some examples of the customer service that you provide and how you meet some of the key demands from your customers. 

Joslyn (19:11): Well sure. I mean we're just starting now to get our product in the market. So it's essentially the product was the core of our interest for the past years. Now, we're really starting to develop this after-market business. But right now, essentially clients come to us when they have this need for what I call recycled styrene. It's this one chemical, it's a commodity chemical. But now we're able with our process to make that identical chemical identical virgin with waste. And so you have lower carbon footprint. So we have a carbon footprint impact. So people come to us and say, well we'd like to offset our virgin styrene with renewable styrene, low carbon footprint, et cetera, et cetera. And so they come to us, they send us their material, we test it, okay, technically it works. Here's the deal. We sell them the equipment, we sell them the license, they operate it. And eventually of course there's some aftermarket like data analysis and we can help them with the parts and training and everything like that. 

But I think in the end what they have as a service is that they've been able to reduce our carbon footprint and they've been able to meet their recycle content targets. And this is what drives the economics because otherwise they would have to pay a tax for carbon or they would have to pay a tax if they haven't met the recycled content. And most of them, they would lose this right to plea. If you do not comply with the regulation but your competitors do, then you lose the right to plea in this market. But that's kind of the value proposition in a nutshell and that's why people come to us and that's what we offer.

Melanie Carter (20:41): I learned so much from just lay on renewable energy and its possibilities. What was memorable for you during that interview?

Joe Mimran (20:48): Well what I found interesting was this clean tech put by Canada and how Canada is leading in so many areas and the fact that it is being supported. This was not an overnight success, this is a process that took quite some time to develop and then to be able to export that technology essentially, which is what that is, and to be able to do it with a name brand like Michelin in France. Again, I think it was just a wonderful success story. And it was not easy, you know, when Joslyn was talking about his journey, it was not an easy journey to get to those markets. And then again, how to be persistent and how to break through into a market and how you do that, how you develop your relationships and how again, if you know how to use EDC, they can make these inroads for you. They can help you, they can help you make the connections that you need. They connect you with the government offices, they connect you with suppliers, they connect you with different business people in the community and they become a partner in a way that when you're exporting and taking that level of risk, that's the kind of support you really can use. And I think I'm very excited to see the circular economy continue to become a very important part of the mandate that EDC and the government is pursuing.

Melanie Carter (22:21): Indeed. We are making great successes out of Canada in terms of circular economy. That said, you know, there's a lot of work to be done in that area, right? And Joslyn mentioned it, right? They are going out there with a certain mandate, they have the subjective and then they're realizing that there are all sorts of other problems that need to be solved for them to be able to put out their product and market, which was quite fascinating, right? It's almost created another opportunity for a new business opportunity, right?

Joe Mimran (22:49): Yeah, it's great. And you know, there are so many unsung heroes here in Canada when it comes to entrepreneurship. So many other stories that, you know, I've had the opportunity to meet with so many CEOs and founders and I don't think their stories get told enough. I think they're an inspiration for entrepreneurs and we should be yelling at the top of the mountain of, you know, as to how successful many of them are and what they're doing because It is inspirational.

Melanie Carter (23:21): Absolutely. So it sounds like there are many more episodes to be made for this podcast because certainly there are a lot of entrepreneurs that could have a voice here, that's for sure. But this interview, as I said, I learned tons from it and it was charged with great content. So much so that we actually have a second clip from Joslyn and Power Wave.

Joe Mimran (23:38): And exporting is such a challenge for so many companies. There are new laws and there are all kinds of things that come about when you go into a new country. But just talk us through some of the biggest hurdles and challenges that you've had as you've been exporting. 

Joslyn (23:56): Well, for sure the culture is always a big challenge. But we are lucky enough that we speak French here, so we're able to communicate very easily, let's say with our French counterparts than with other countries. However, the culture is different for sure, but I think if the language barrier is at least eliminated, it helps a lot. But we did face that in some Asian countries for sure. So not only on the language barrier side, but also on the way they do business, the way they say things, and the way they don't save things. It took us some time to understand that essentially our client was telling us something that we didn't quite understand. So there's one thing we learned where we now partner with local agents, it helps us in how we develop the business and how we establish the business strategy. 

I think the culture is certainly one thing that was very difficult and we engaged with a lot of companies and it didn't go through mainly because we were not able to understand each of them very well. So it's quite sad that you have a fantastic company in front of you and then it's just impossible to understand. So we hired people who speak the local language, and we've learned how to make things happen. These clients come back to us now. But for sure I think the culture is certainly something that we underestimate. We think, you know, we speak English, we're North American, we're not used to that but when you speak with different European countries and all do business differently, it may create some tensions sometimes.

Melanie Carter (25:16): Joslyn makes a very valuable point, right?

Joe Mimran (25:19): Yeah, this cultural issue is huge and understanding it and going into the market, understanding the various cultures, whether you're in Japan, whether you're in Korea, whether you're in China, whether you're in the US even they speak the same language but even there, there are some cultural differences that you need to be aware of. Much more subtle of course in the US but by the same token, if you don't get a line on what that is and the importance of simple things like a face-to-face meeting, where in some cultures that is critically important, making that connection and then having interpreters that you can trust and that do the right job for you as you go into these markets. And I remember when I was opening my stores in Japan, we had people on staff that actually learned the language in order for us to be able to communicate better. And that took time. You know, that was a 12-month process, but we had people on staff that would learn the language, learn the customs, and it went a long way. You know, we were able to penetrate that market very well. That one point really resonates with me having done business around the world.

Melanie Carter (26:30): Without putting that effort there is an opportunity or a risk to lose business, lose contracts altogether. Definitely something that we hear a lot here at EDC is that important of finding partners in market and working with local agents? As to your point, it goes a long way. Next is Jake Carl from Midday Squares.

Joe Mimran (26:53): Yeah, I think you've got the right spirit for it and I love the story of seeing an entrepreneur and that's what I learned when I was on Dragons Den was I saw people who had real passion for what they were doing. And I think passion is at the heart of it. And that's what I get from you. So when you were first launching the business, what did you do to raise capital?

Jake Carl (27:14): So my first two businesses, I didn't raise any money. I used my own personal money. Midday Squares, the three of us used everything we had in our bank account. So my sister, my brother-in-Law and I, my partners, we each put $150,000 in to get product market fit. So that took us about a year in that we could use that capital to show that we could sell chocolate bars. We had a million-dollar runway, we decided to raise some money. And here's why it worked out well for us is because we decided to build out loud, our marketing approach was to show everything on social media. So I mean on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on TikTok, actually TikTok wasn't existent at the time, at least in Canada. And we use those platforms to show customers, potential investors, potential retailers, who we were and what we do and the hard work that we put into the business and the true authenticity of who we are as individuals.

And what that did was it actually attracted investors to reach out and be like, Hey, what is this company? You guys are doing something different. Your product is tasty. I could buy your product, I could try it. But now your storytelling is really like authentic. You are showing the whole behind the curtains of the business. And that's what happened. Boulder Food Group out in Colorado reached out to us and they said, Hey, we love your product, we tried it, you got a really cool brand, the story is capturing, can we come visit you in Montreal? And I couldn't believe it. And basically, how they did that was they wrote a handwritten letter and sent a massive box with all their portfolio branded products and said, do you mind if we come visit you guys? And immediately we were so excited that they came in and they became our first investor and they continued to invest in us over time. But I think the secret was we had product market fit so I think that's table steaks. But I think the second thing is that we built out loud so we were able to get the attention of the investor before even reaching out to the investor. And I think that allowed us to have a little bit of a playing field more than other brands did.

Joe Mimran (28:59): Yeah. And I think it's more pull than push even though you were pushing very hard, like you said from an investor standpoint. They came to you and that's always a better position to be in. And this first investor obviously had a leap in faith in yourself.

Melanie Carter (29:16): Loved the energy from...

Joe Mimran (29:18): Oh my god, Jake. Jake is so energetic and he actually had come to my office, he introduced himself before I did a podcast with him. I didn't know him. He just cold-called me one day and said, you know, I'm in Toronto, I'd love to meet you. And that really sums Jacob up. He has no fear. He is willing to be in front of the camera 24/7. He even proposed to his wife-to-be on camera. And I think to be that brave and to show your entire business life to the public and to be there with the public on a day-by-day basis, that's a lot of energy, man, and you've gotta have courage. I gotta hand it to them. I think he's building an amazing business and I know his goal is to hit $100 million dollars in revenue. He talked about it on the podcast and I'm sure he will get there

Melanie Carter (30:16): Absolutely with that energy and the confidence that he does have indeed. And I loved the little secrets that he left for us, right? The secret is building out loud. I loved the way that he positioned it. Great piece of advice for other entrepreneurs out there.

Joe Mimran (30:34): Absolutely.

Melanie Carter (30:35): And then we have Nita Tandon from Dalchini.

Joe Mimran (30:41): I call it sometimes giving tough love, right? Because you do sometimes one of the criticisms is they sometimes are blind to the fact that they are pursuing a dream that perhaps there is no market for. And they're so blinded by their own innovation or their own idea that they forget that they've really gotta serve the market or else they won't be successful. And the other thing is just raising capital. Entrepreneurs spent so much of their time just trying to raise capital, which I think you were lucky that you were able to get the capital from the bank initially.

Nita Tandon (31:18): They want to help, but they don't know how to help. I mean, I'll give you an example, A very specific example was during the pandemic, the borders were closed for personal travel, the borders were never closed for business. And so, I have a satellite office and I'm very close to a border and a satellite office there. And I was doing a deal with Good Morning America and some things needed to get signed across the border and I needed to go over. I went to the border and I said, this is what I'm doing. And they said, no, it's not for that kind of a business. Like this is for like big business only. And I said, well, no, I am. And I had called ahead of time and asked them specifically, what do I need? And I'm also very cognizant that when I speak I sound white and I do think there's a difference when I suddenly get to the border and I'm not what they're expecting. And they told me that I wasn't allowed to go across the border. They said it's not for my type of business. And so that preconceived notion was I just didn't look like a business person to them. So I was escorted back to Canada and even though I was doing a deal and I said, here, I can show you some emails. And they said we don't wanna see them. They wouldn't even look at my registration because That person I'd spoken to on the phone said, make sure you bring this blah blah, blah. I don't take that lightly. 

So I come back and of course my husband's saying, don't, they've got a lot of power. Like do you really wanna go down that road and just do business in Canada? And I thought, no, because then I'm not changing it for the next generation. There's gonna be women that come after me and we're always gonna be with the same set status quo. And so I came back, I sat and thought about it and I called them up. I spoke to the same person I'd spoken to before and I told them exactly what happened. I told them the time that I was there, I told him who I spoke to, what happened, everything. And he apologized and he said, this country is absolutely open to people like you. I'd like you to consider coming back. And so it's how you change the system. 

I will say the same thing happened when I came back to Canada. Now the Canadian said to me, you're not business. The only people that can come through are truckers. And I thought, well, like we need to change the definition of trade. We need to change the definition of business and we need to change the view of what business looks like. Because if you still Google it today, the images that come up is very much male in a blue business suit with a white shirt; that's not what I am. So it doesn't mean that I'm not business, it means that we need to change that definition.

Melanie Carter (33:45): Her comments are so powerful.

Joe Mimran (33:47): Yeah, it was an interesting interview podcast in the sense that this was much more about her personal take on being a woman of color and in business and as opposed to the business itself and the challenges of the business itself, I think it took on a whole different direction. And she was very emotional. Again, a very emotional point of view here. And trying to do something to get that message out and to change perception, which I think is again, supercritical. I think it's great that she's so vocal about it and that she's really making an impact in doing that. We talk about it being the Export Impact podcast. And I think she extended that from export impact to social impact as well. And I think that's something that we have to give, need a lot of credit for.

Melanie Carter (34:42): Completely agree. The difficulties and the barriers that she faced, right? Other entrepreneurs are facing in the same way. And so we're gonna use words that I've heard before in our conversation, which are persistence or determination. And so she's certainly being a role model, which is great to hear in her session for sure. A couple of words that come to mind for me are passion and authenticity. Those two words came out in multiple ways through the conversations. So I have a couple of takeaways after hearing all of the clips and the highlights, A few words that come to mind and maybe you can tell me if you agree or disagree or if you have others that come to mind as well. So the first are passion and authenticity.

Joe Mimran (35:25): Yes. And that passion is something that I have noticed drives most entrepreneurs. You've got to have it, you've gotta have the ability to take on risk. I think that's a very big component. And when you have that passion, the risk becomes easier to take on because you're so passionate about it that you're willing to take the risk. So I think they go hand in hand. And that's what I love about meeting all of these great founders and CEOs of these businesses is that they all have these common elements and it shines through in the way that they build their businesses and the way they communicate. And that communication also bleeds into the organization because when you can be very clear and articulate about the direction that you want to take the business in, then people can follow that much easier and you get your business disciples and you need them. They've gotta be there on the front lines with you when you have all of these challenges that you will inevitably run into as an entrepreneur.

Melanie Carter (36:33): The other ones I heard through the conversations are the importance of product market fit and understanding markets.

Joe Mimran (36:42): There's the left side, right side of the brain, you know, some people refer to the sort of the creative side versus the analytical side. And the analytical side really is very important. You cannot just go with passion. If the idea is an idea that the market doesn't require or that the market doesn't want, that the market doesn't need, then you have to be very honest about it. And I do think you have to have at least the analytical skills and the honesty. I talked about this tough love. I get many people who come to me with ideas and they're very passionate about it, but sometimes you do have to deliver that tough love. So they don't spend five, 10 years on a concept that really the market doesn't want. So I think again, a really good point you raised, Melanie, in that it better be something that is market-correct, market-right, market needed.

Melanie Carter (37:38): Absolutely as passionate as you might be, it won't fix the issue if there's not a fit for your product. So we've come to the end of our highlights. So Joe, thanks for the discussion and for the opportunity to chat about this season's highlights. And very importantly, thank you for having been a magnificent host this season. Your great questions, your calm approach, and great listening skills allowed for guests to be comfortable to generously share their stories and their journeys with us, right? I'm sure that our audience will have acquired a number of advice that they'll be able to bring to their own adventures.

Joe Mimran (38:14): Well, thank you, Melanie. It's been a real journey for me as well. I always love to hear about entrepreneur stories, trials, tribulation, successes, and I get inspired by it. And as an entrepreneur and as seeing so many entrepreneurs through my personal experiences, it's interesting to note that I never get tired of hearing about great stories and EDC, the role that EDC has played in helping those stories come to light and helping entrepreneurs take those risks and being there for them and being there not just for the successful entrepreneurs, but also for the groups that sometimes don't have ready access to capital. And I think the ability to go to an EDC and to get the support and backing, whether you're indigenous or whether you are a marginalized group, to know that there's somebody in your corner is so helpful and really will encourage I think more growth and more excitement in the Canadian marketplace. And so I thank EDC and I thank you today and it's been a real pleasure.

Melanie Carter (39:32): Absolutely. Same here. So thanks everyone for joining us today on the Export Impact Podcast. If you enjoy today's episode, we'd love for you to subscribe, rate, and leave us a review on your favorite streaming platform. Until next time.