Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to the Impact Innovators podcast. I'm your host, shane Johnson, and this is the podcast where real founders share their real stories and hopefully give you some actionable ideas that you can take into your own business and use right away today. So every week, we explore the journeys of innovative founders who've turned unique visions into thriving realities and explore stories of creative breakthroughs, strategies that maybe defy the odds, tales of determination and ingenuity and success, but also alongside some inevitable failures that we all experience as startup founders. And on the show today we've got Yelmer Stedjink I hope I pronounced that last name properly. He's a boy from the Netherlands and living in Canada here for several years, though. He is the head of the DMZ Innisfil group, which is here in our little town of Innisfil, which is about 45 minutes north of Toronto, and that's a business accelerator program. It's a part of the economic development group within the town of Innisfil. So, hjalmar, tell us a little bit about your journey of getting to that point where you're heading up a business accelerator for all of us startups.

Speaker 2: 1:04

Yeah, no, it's an interesting bet. Certainly not something I set out to do initially.

Speaker 2: 1:08

I went to school for sports management graduated, worked at Allstate, then started my own business, a big cycling event, and from there worked with startups and after that started working in municipal government. And yeah, I found out that there's a lot of challenges with a municipal government that are very similar to running a business A similar level of intensity but different heart and really I enjoyed working and trying to solve those problems. So I worked initially in Mississauga for the city of Mississauga and active transportation. My job was to motivate more people to ride their bikes, run cycling events, cycling education programs. Then I moved up to Innisfil and then a few months later, an opportunity came up with the economic development team in the town of Innisfil and that's how I got my start in economic development.

Speaker 1: 1:53

You're even getting that position with economic development. You've led a number of initiatives, or did you have your own business? I think you've started a couple of things right Tell us a little bit about some of those things.

Speaker 2: 2:04

Yeah, about a year into my career.

Speaker 2: 2:06

I always thought I wanted a big corporate career, but a year into working for an SP5 from a company, I realized the reality that it's going to take a long time for me to do the things I want to be doing working my way up the career ladder, and I guess I wasn't blessed with the patience to pursue that when opportunity came up. Through that job, I met the person that turned into my co-founder for the business and together we launched a cycling event. Think of it as a marathon for cyclists. It was called the Grand Fondo. Cycling was becoming very popular in Canada and we jumped on that trend and created an opportunity for people to challenge themselves and to ride a route through Halter region anywhere from 50 to 180 kilometers in a supported way, with rest stops, police at intersections, finish line festival. But we grew that from basically the idea to about 5,000 participants in three years 5,000 participants is not a small event.

Speaker 1: 2:57

A Viking event that has, I think we're about 2,500, maybe close to 3,000, but that's also a relay over 24 hours. How did you do that?

Speaker 2: 3:07

A lot of it came down to timing, I think, having the domain knowledge in the field, understanding what cyclists were looking for, being able to find them, connect with them, promote them and then really give a great customer experience at the event and motivate them to come back the next year and bring their friends. So I think that was a lot of a little bit drove, our growth catching lightning in a bottle rather than a sustainable growth strategy. But yeah, it was a ton of fun and that really set me you were also.

Speaker 1: 3:35

Also, I think you mentioned to me one time that you were like semi-pro before coming over here to canada too, weren't you?

Speaker 2: 3:41

correct. Yes, I was a professional cyclist back in Holland. I rode for the Dutch national team, raced all over Europe on the road and unfortunately got an injury that kind of forced me to quit right at the point where I might have been able to make that step to the next level up, but quickly pivoted my kind of goals from sports into my social career. Thankfully, I was already doing a bachelor's degree at that point, worked really hard to get my marks up and then ultimately I was able to get into a graduate program here in Canada and yeah, that's how I arrived here.

Speaker 1: 4:12

Very cool, like training for those kind of events is not a small task either. Do you think that some of the trials and tribulations and pains and pitfalls, and then maybe some wins along the way, that some of those skills ported over to the business world?

Speaker 2: 4:26

Oh, I think it's 100% transferable. I think endurance and entrepreneurship are like the very similar approach towards success. It's a lot of hard work, consistent hard work, without really any direct results. You're just investing, you're doing the right thing for a long time and ultimately, if everything works out, maybe you can in the right thing for a long time and ultimately, if everything works out, maybe you can deliver that performance that you've trained for. But there's no certainty right, it could just as well fail. And I think the discipline, the training, the ability to deal with discomfort frankly those are all things that really transfer well over into entrepreneurship.

Speaker 1: 5:06

Yeah, and certainly just, you've got a goal in mind and you put a plan in place and then you start executing on that plan on a day by day basis, getting closer and closer to that goal. So a lot of the same kind of idealistic concepts that we poured over into starting up a company and a business. I like it 100%.

Speaker 2: 5:24

I think there's tons of synergy and I wish I were more active these days, like I miss the hours and hours on the bike, having time to think and being out. Things are pretty busy. I try to get out as much as I can, but it's definitely a good balance right. Getting back to endurance sports, cycling, running, swimming, going to the gym are really I mean, they're cycling, running, swimming, going to the gym are really absolutely example for me to perform well in my job, taking care of myself from that perspective, which I think is very underrated in entrepreneurship yeah, our mind body balance equates directly to our creativity.

Speaker 1: 5:59

I try to, wherever possible, schedule a couple of hours every friday afternoon to get out on my bike, go for a ride, and I find when I do that if I'm having a problem or the creativity just isn't coming to me, it just opens right up after a couple hours on that bike. So listen, I often ask entrepreneurs that come onto the show here remember that Simon Sinek TED talk from probably about 10 years ago, where he talks about who do you serve and why. He talks about the, why he says the mind can be convinced, but the heart must be. People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. So talk to us a little bit about that. Why are you doing the things you do to help all of these multiple entrepreneurs get started and accelerate and grow their businesses?

Speaker 2: 6:41

Then no, I love this framework. I've used it so many times for myself for help business kind of think through it. It's a very powerful way to communicate. So I work for the town of veniceville economic development. I lead the dmz in this program and the dmz in this program is really focused on helping local businesses start and grow. To put in perspective. So we believe entrepreneurs have the power to transform our community, From creating jobs to driving innovation and building relationships. Businesses are the backbone of local communities. We run support programs for local startup founders and small business owners to help them start, grow and scale their business and build their version of the future. That was a quick riff I wrote up this morning, but I think it captures the essence. It absolutely does. I think that we believe in investing and providing local entrepreneurs with the support and resources that they need and will help them grow, and if we help them succeed in touring, they'll help us grow the economy.

Speaker 2: 7:36

There's two big strategic goals behind this. Number one we want to increase the rate of new company creation. Number one we want to increase the rate of new company creation. If you look at data, there's a cool report at the BDC and it shows that 20 years ago, on an annual basis, three out of every 1000 Canadians used to start a business. Today the number has declined to 1.3. So really significantly lower.

Speaker 2: 8:01

The economic philosophy is slowing down. Not as many Canadians are building businesses, so locally here we want to try to motivate people and support them in starting new businesses, because businesses are such an important part of our community, and at the same time, we want to increase the success rate, like the survival rate of small businesses. If you look at Stats Canada data, it shows about 20% of small businesses fail in the first year and over 50% fail in the first three years. So if, on one end, you increase the velocity of company creation so more local companies get created, and on the other end, you help establish local companies grow and you help them survive and succeed, Ultimately there'll be more local businesses, we'll provide more local jobs and I think ultimately that is really building a stronger community and our businesses will help our community drive growth but also make sure that growth is sustainable and create prosperity. In the end, we want to create a connected community where people can live, work and play, and having local jobs to support the population is super important to make this happen.

Speaker 1: 9:13

Yeah, yeah, I would agree. I'm really big on the philosophy of that. The rising tide lifts all boats and when you're sustaining a really good, healthy economic environment with the local businesses, that floats everyone, not just business owners but everyone in the community as well, and it becomes a flywheel effect. It's reciprocal. But it's interesting, that stat you said what was the stat that you first started with that's going down right now.

Speaker 2: 9:40

Yeah, so it used to be one in three or sorry. Three in 1,000 Canadians on an annual basis would start a business, and that has decreased to 1.3. So it used to be one in three or sorry. Three in 1000 Canadians on an annual basis would start a business and that has decreased to 1.3. So it's come down significantly.

Speaker 2: 9:50

And the BDC study also looks into why is that right? It's more difficult. There's not the right kind of support, and that's exactly where we play in with our program. Right. We want to be able to support local entrepreneurs, help them navigate the challenges and opportunities of starting and growing a business. We work with lots of regional partners and it comes down to understanding what the entrepreneur needs and then connecting them to the best possible resource, whether it's mentorship, whether it's a grant, whether it's information or a service provider. And another big part of this, I think, is community. It's incredibly difficult to build a business alone. It's still difficult when you're well-connected. But I think meeting other local entrepreneurs, connecting with them, being able to build relationships locally with other entrepreneurs that are building businesses, is another big pillar of what we focus on at DMZ Innisfil. Creating that community and that peer-to-peer support within our founder community, I think is super valuable.

Speaker 1: 10:45

I've been a part of that community going through the DMZ Innisfil cohort last year, and so I can attest to the fact that is a really great, immersive community. We're very helpful to each other and I'm a big fan of I don't know if you've ever heard of the author Stephen Kotler. One of my favorites that he wrote was called the Rise of Superman, steven Kotler. One of my favorites that he wrote was called the Rise of Superman. He talks about the science of flow. Now, he came from a background of writing for adventure sports magazines, so a lot of what he talks about is for the adventure sports world. But now he's also a business entrepreneur, so he talks about what's been discovered in terms of the science of what can get us into those flow moments where we're very creative, we're really immersed in whatever it is that we're doing and we're contributing to that environment really well.

Speaker 1: 11:32

Community and the power of community being able to activate flow triggers in us. That allows us to contribute to others but also to grow ourselves much quicker than we would on our own. So it's like the concept of one plus one equals two. No, but in a community one plus one is three. It's a multiplier effect. So I'm sure you found that too. In the community of people that are coming together, you're just starting a new cohort of business owners. Can you talk to us a little bit about that Getting into flow and being able to contribute to each other and grow at a quicker rate than we otherwise could? Plus, we've got the EIRs the experts and residents that are contributing to helping mentor us through it too.

Speaker 2: 12:20

Absolutely. Yeah, I think it's a mix of all these ingredients, right? That kind of creates an optimal environment for a founder or a business owner to focus on working on their business as well as working in their business. Yeah, figure out like what are those core things I need to focus on to try to grow my business? We're just onboarding a new cohort 18 business owners and entrepreneurs coming into the program.

Speaker 2: 12:41

Always a lot of work goes into promoting going through the FETI process. We just wrapped up our OKR meeting so our program is entirely customized for each participant. So we kick up the program by helping the entrepreneur develop a set of goals and objectives. We use the OKR planning methodology from Google and, based on the entrepreneur creates these goals, we talk about it and then, based on their goals, we help them prioritize and then we set up mentor meetings to help them work towards achieving these goals. But it could be completely different, like one founder might be focused on trying to validate a business model or finding a problem they can solve. Another founder might be working on scaling up their sales or figuring out how to drive pipeline to feed their sales team. They're all in the same program but because the support is customized, we're able to serve a very wide variety of businesses. So in this cohort there is anywhere from a smaller local service business startup to a local restaurant and a startup that's building software and hardware and has the IP for the solution they're working on. So it's a really wide scope.

Speaker 2: 13:54

But that really creates an interesting community aspect.

Speaker 2: 13:57

And I think that getting the founders together, creating opportunities for them to engage, but making it like not mandatory, so to speak.

Speaker 2: 14:05

But hey, we're organizing events, come by if you have time, no worries if you can't make it, but we try to ask founders to try to make time to at least attend a few. And I think that's really where this community building happens. And I find founders also really good at helping each other navigate the resources, even in the program or in the ecosystem at large. For example, you would have met with an EIR and said, hey, this guy was great at helping me figure out, like, how to structure my sales process, and then I hear that and I might want to meet with that mentor. Or maybe there's a grant you just applied for and got and you let other people know. So it's a very supportive community and I think, between the structure and the program, creating the focus, the work on the business, on these big, important goals to drive growth, supporting founders with each other in the community, and then to that expert advice through mentors and EIRs. That's really the core of what we do at DMZ Innisfil.

Speaker 1: 15:00

Yeah, you're bringing up some memories for me. I remember going through developing my OKRs and having that dashboard in front of me, and then the next level was really getting into what's the product to market match and what's the problem that I'm solving, for it may be a problem that I feel that they have, but is it a problem that they feel that they have and is it something they'd be willing to pay for, to pay for? So, on that light, how do you find that most entrepreneurs, most startup founders, are approaching that? Are they overcomplicating things? Are they focusing on just that problem and expanding on that? What do you see as, when you're looking at all these business founders?

Speaker 2: 15:37

It's a really good question. I think we love entrepreneurs and founders with big visions, right. But I think there is a little bit of a misconception in how to approach the early stage of a startup or a new company. And when I say startup, I'm not talking just about software tech startup. This could be building a lawn mowing company, right. Really, it's just the early stages of a business.

Speaker 2: 15:57

Um, what we see? A lot of founders early on. They have a big idea and they want to go big, and they want to go big right away and they focus on the product, building the product, figuring out how they can deliver the product, but they're not really engaging their consumers. So there's not enough clarity on who is that ideal target consumer. What does this really mean to them? What is a problem they have that you're solving? How can you make sure that this problem is real right? How do you make sure that there's actually demand on that?

Speaker 2: 16:33

And it's interesting because this clarity is super important when you get started to validate, figure out okay, what problem are you solving? What are you solving it for? Can you engage this ideal target consumer in some conversations to learn more of what this problem means to them? You leverage that information, that knowledge you've gained from a specific consumer to develop a solution. Can you then engage them again in conversation, say, hey, you told me you had this problem. Would a solution like this, would this be something you you'd be interested in? And then, because ultimately you need to go out and talk to this consumer anyway and founders typically want to build the product and then try to sell it.

Speaker 2: 17:10

Oftentimes it's like a 1% difference on whether it will work or not or can be, and engaging the consumer early enables you to build a solution that actually solves the problem that you're targeting, and this understanding is super important. It really helps you be a lot more risk adverse and I think, in the end, entrepreneurs waste heaps of time and money, which for, like buildings. Entrepreneurs love building things. I love building stuff too but you got to make sure there's demand for the product. As an early stage startup, generally speaking, you don't really have the resources to generate demand, so you need to find existing demand and tap into that, and using a validation process is super valuable. It's counterintuitive to go talk to your target consumer before you even have anything but engaging that consumer and really understanding their problem and going a lot more niche too, than what people think.

Speaker 2: 18:09

Yeah, I want to build a big startup and make an impact on the world, or make all marketing managers more efficient.

Speaker 1: 18:15

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:16

Like the journey of achieving that goal, like you start really small. It comes down to can you help one marketing manager become more efficient, make this person really happy, get the case study and then find two more and then two more. You got to get the first thing right and then keep on building, and this is a lot of what we do in the program. Help founders think through what does a validation process look like and how can we support you work through that. The funny thing is that when it comes to marketing, there is a similar process that we work with more established businesses, because a lot of businesses, when they want to grow, you need to have a sustainable, scalable growth engine. That's the holy grail, right? You want to be able to spend $50 to get a customer that you make $200 of profit on type of thing. So you get your one to four return on head spend ratio and just keep on funneling money into ads to grow.

Speaker 2: 19:16

For example, in today's world, from what I can see, a lot of businesses hey, this is hard to track, like setting up the data analytics, but that aside, often cases the cost per acquisition what a business needs to spend to buy a customer, so to speak, it actually higher than the profit they would make of the customer, at least initially.

Speaker 2: 19:37

Right, like, uh, yeah, my first purchase is really hard. So if you're in that spot and if you want to grow, a very similar process I think is helpful, really diving deep. Who actually is the customer you're serving? What is their problem? What does that mean to them? How do you build your ads, your landing pages, like everything you do to try to sell to them, to focus towards this, to make sure that you have like message, market fit and that your conversion goes up, like both of these. It sounds simple. I hope I don't make it sound too difficult, but it is actually really hard to do in practice. But so finding product market fit and building sustainable growth engines, I would say, are two very big overarching topics that we end up supporting companies with that are part of the program.

Speaker 1: 20:29

Yeah, I think you're right and it's not really extremely well understood. I see this a lot too when I'm doing in my world of marketing where I'm running paid ads. I have to be very cognizant of making sure I have those dashboards in place so that we can measure return on that investment. Like you said, I've seen everything across the continuum from early stage startup or early stage product. In the early stages they really need to get an ROI, whereas in the later stages they've got everything dialed in. They know their numbers, they know their backend numbers, they know their LTV or their lifetime value of the client. So they can under-recover on the client acquisition side on the upfront because they know their numbers so well, they know that over two months or three months or six months or maybe even 12 months, if they really know their clientele well, they know they're going to not just recover that initial investment in acquiring the customer, they're going to maybe double or triple those returns. So in my world we always say the company or the business that can spend the most to acquire the most customers is the one that wins. What's a client worth to them? How long does it take to recover and what are they upselling or what's the recurring price that they're selling. They really know their numbers well.

Speaker 1: 21:42

So in the beginning stages I always advise my clients even if you've done all of that upfront research and you know the problem you're solving and you've got maybe some beta customers and everybody's happy, I like to go with the MVP formula minimum viable product. Let's just get the basics in place and that's not just for the product itself, but it's also for the marketing and the wrapper that goes around it to promote it. And I find that with a lot of my startup founders, they want to make sure everything's right. They want to make sure it's all perfect and the T's are crossed and the I's are dotted.

Speaker 1: 22:15

I had a customer last week that said hey, my video ad that you're running, it's done in a 1080p format, but it would look better as a one-to-one format, like a square format, if it's in the Facebook feed. I'm like, yeah, what you don't realize is that I'm running, I've got five different headlines, five different descriptions, 10 different images, two videos and I'm putting them on 50 different placements. So you multiply that all together there's thousands of permutations. So what advice do you give to your startup founders in terms of getting that stuff. Once you've done that initial research and you've got that beta customer and you know the problem you're solving, what's the next stage in getting it launched to grow that next level?

Speaker 2: 22:56

It really depends on the company and what they're working on, but I'd say overall, founders love working on the product Speaking. That does not help in the beginning. You need to get to a minimal, viable product, minimal, lovable product. You need to be able to provide this ideal target customer with the solution that solves that problem and you need to be able to delight them right. But what I see is that, especially early stage, it gets so much more comfortable to build, like whether you're coding or whether you're building websites and landing pages. You're in your comfort zone behind your computer having your coffee, you're working away, you feel productive, but you're not out there trying to sell. And I think the split there's a book called Traction that that really like defines this nicely. And I would say early stage founders often spend 90% of their time on products and maybe 10% on distribution being selling it. That ratio needs to be drastically different, probably 50-50, if not like 75% distribution, 25% product by the time you have something to sell, 25% product by the time you have something to sell.

Speaker 2: 24:15

Even early on the validation, running a process, engaging with these customers, learning more about it, doing problem interviews, doing solution interviews to me is part of distribution. It's really kind of brick sales. It's like your early go-to-market strategy. If you do this right in a deal case scenario, let's say you interview 25 people for the problem interview and let's say out of those 25, 20 are okay with doing a solution interview. Let's say that a handful, maybe two or three, become your first pilot customers. When you build a solution, you can leverage those case studies and the referrals to start going. So to me, early go-to-market and validation really go hand in hand. Not only do you confirm that there is a problem, you understand the problem better, you build a good solution. The most important thing, too, is you need demand right. You need people to say, oh no, this is yeah, I'll use it, but then like it's built and I don't end up using it. So I'm a believer of like early selling to really validate the demand and that kind of transitions into sales. But this is a time consuming process but it's less comfortable because you need to go, step out of that comfort zone where you're building the product and go into market, or at least validation, with a very rough concept. So you're selling something that's imperfect.

Speaker 2: 25:24

There's tons of different approaches towards this, but I think that if you're not at least a little bit embarrassed about the product when you first launch. You've gone too far in trying to perfect it. And the great thing is, if you don't go too far and if you do this, you're going to fix the product, you're going to make it better. But you can leverage the users and look at their data, you can talk to them. You can actually perfect it more to the use case that they want. Because it's really hard to imagine what the customer wants and this is one of the biggest reasons for startups to fail End up building a tool or a product or a service that no one needs and it becomes. It's really hard to sell and the company doesn't work. But the founder spends so much time and effort in trying to build this, thinking it would go somewhere, making the assumption that people need this. I'm a big fan of challenging that assumption early and confirming this is what people need. So, almost like more of a sniper approach very niche, really geared towards a dual target consumer and not like moms, right, like moms and dual target consumer, that's great if the business is a bit further ahead, but I almost want to be more specific. Right, you literally need to be able to walk up to your dual target consumer and I think, yeah, engaging them early on. And there's a couple of good like resourcing.

Speaker 2: 26:49

Books Like this is all based on the lean startup methodology that's even developed like since that came out. Like I like the book Running Lean by Ash Moria, I know that one. It guides you through the process of almost doing exactly what we're talking about and we put guardrails on. Hey, here's a problem with your view. Here's how you figure out how deep you need to go in terms of like target consumer. Find 20 people and ask these questions. Look at your notes. Here's how you do a solution in a few. So it gives you a template to work through, which is super helpful, but it's counterintuitive and it's hard to do. Even for me, it's more fun and easier to just go build something and try to sell it, even though the risk of failure is so much higher than it is to say, maybe I don't start rebuilding, but I start with validating.

Speaker 1: 27:36

We all have a tendency to bury ourselves in our stuff and we think we know what people need, but a lot of times it's based on, maybe, what you needed or just an imagination of what you think people need. So we have, like I've put together product launches where we had an idea of what we wanted to launch, but we didn't create any of it to begin with. So what we would do is we would just do a product launch around, getting a bunch of people that liked the idea of whatever our expertise was. Put them into a group, start teaching them a few things of how we do what we do. In my world it's about how to do paid media marketing, how to do product launches. Put them into a group, start teaching them some of that. So we're getting them a couple of steps closer to their desired end result, but not all the way. And then slowly, over time, through an iterative process, we were asking them okay, so if we were to do this, how would you want us to build it? Do you want us to have this or this? And okay, so if we were to do this, how would you want us to build it? Would you want us to have this or this? And it's like a live survey, so to speak. We've done it many different ways. One of the most common ways was just putting people into a Facebook group. They all want to achieve the same thing. Start teaching them a few things. They see the expertise you have and then say, okay, we're thinking about building this. Would you want us to do it this way or this way?

Speaker 1: 28:50

And so I think the iterative process of getting that client feedback is just vitally important, especially in the early stages, to make sure that your outcome is successful, that you're going to actually sell and make money and make an ROI. So I think you're onto something there that's key. And in growth levers, I describe it as the Archimedes lever, where you've got a lever that you're in a fulcrum that you're pulling back on. It's easy to pull and get a large movement if you know exactly where to put that fulcrum and where to position your lever, similar to what we do in business. So if you can find your growth levers early on, then I think you're going to be much more successful. And finding those growth levers is, I think, very, very much in tune with getting that client feedback. So good point there. Can you tell us some disasters that you maybe have seen, without naming names or anything? What have you seen? That's really messed up.

Speaker 2: 29:43

I mean more. So, like myself, right, I mean I won't speak about other people's failures, failure on itself, I think as long as you learn right, it's a bad four To me. In between starting my career, launching that business, starting to work for municipal government, I've had many pilots or startups. I mean when it's a startup or startup there's a landing page you can buy, but maybe no one does so I've learned the hard way that basically doing it the old-fashioned way, just coming up with an idea, trying to build something, trying to sell it, it's you can spend. I probably spent the first ever business. I tried, I don't know, two or three weeks to pick the perfect bentone color for the logo, let alone the landing page and the slider photo.

Speaker 2: 30:27

And, but it's almost like you need to train the muscle and I think launching multiple projects, going through that learning like taking small bets and testing to me has been incredibly valuable in terms of learning. I think it's a foundation of what helps me better understand entrepreneurs, because I've been there to an extent. I think it gives me that perspective that is helpful in understanding them. Lots of failures, no big failures, with like big losses. If there would have been 10 projects, 8 failed miserably and maybe 2 were moderately successful. There's a real transformation in the way I approached these kind of opportunities, right when I was first a person that would just go by myself and build something and then it's all done and it's yay, it's launched On the website. How do I get traffic here? More focused on actually trying to validate problems. Running a validation process is also time consuming. On validating a problem as real or not real, that's a lot less time than building and spending hundreds of hours trying to build the service and then needing to try to sell it.

Speaker 2: 31:47

Yeah, you're just testing what doesn't work really to find the things that do work, exactly If you look at, and it creates an opportunity for the next thing right If you only spent 20 hours, you would have been on to the next problem, and maybe so you can try 10 more chances that one of those 10 would have beaten the one? Yeah, but you never know, because you were stuck in trying to build something that, in hindsight, was never going to work, but you didn't know it while you're building. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 32:15

I know it's been well-researched and like statistically, when you look at the more mature companies that have come out the other side and are successful, they've always looked back and said only about 10% of the things that were successful. There's this kind of it's the 80-20 rule, pareto principle thing where when you're trying new things, you have to iterate and try several of them before you get it right. And be able to do that quickly like minimum viable product kind of concept I think is very key. And be able to test quickly, find the things that are going to work and the things that resonate with your audience and that you're solving the right problem and that it's a problem that they'll pay for is very key 100%.

Speaker 2: 32:55

The other thing I think it's very important to continue to do this right. The other thing I think it's very important to continue to do this right. It's continuing to talk to your customers, actually set up a call, learn more about them, like how things are working out. I think it's a really good practice to continue to validate right, because times change, markets change.

Speaker 1: 33:23

And I think continuous customer discovery is great for relationship building, but it also really helps keep a finger on the pulse as you continue to grow your business. Yeah yeah, I remember actually a story I think it was PayPal, and it was early stages not really early stages, but they were bringing in a lot of new customers that were putting PayPal as a merchant provider onto their websites, but what they found was something like it was an absurd number. It was something like 90% of them weren't ever running a transaction through PayPal and they couldn't figure out why. So then they started doing some research by surveying and talking to their so-called clients that weren't actually using the service, and what they found was that a lot of them that were putting it on they were small, very small startups and they just didn't have clients yet Put in a process whereby they would do a little onboarding questionnaire thing and then they would segment the 90% over here so they could do a nurturing or an education process with them to help them grow. And then the 10% they gave a white glove onboarding process to. So they were assigned an account manager. The account manager helped them with growth and all kinds of stuff, and so then they were able to capitalize on the best customers, those 10%, and grow them even more while they were nurturing the other 90% to get things started.

Speaker 1: 34:35

And then they also discovered early on, I think, that if they were to put a little bit of code where I guess everyone who put something on eBay this was in the early days before they were being used as an eBay payment processor, and so they put a little code on, every time somebody put something up for sale on eBay, a message would get sent to them and they'd say, hey, do you accept PayPal? Kind of posing as a potential buyer, and so that got everyone to start putting PayPal onto their eBay selling. So there's some levers that you can put in institute in early on that will get the 10% that you may not know where they are. Where are those 10%? What is that growth lever and where is it and how do you find it? So by talking to your clients and surveying them. I think that's a key thing. What about in the future? What's happening for dmz? Tell us a little bit more about that and where you're headed and how you're going to grow for the town of innisfil yeah, no, the future is exciting.

Speaker 2: 35:34

Honestly, I'm super happy and honored to be able to lead this community and to be able to support local entrepreneurs, and our support from council has been tremendous, and same from the whole town, and so we're looking into expanding the program. We now have over 80 active companies and alumni in our community. The program typically lasts for four months and we do two intakes per year. Beyond that point, we continue to support our alumni through on-demand mentorship community events. We're working on a more structured approach to continue to support alumni, so where we can basically provide a similar kind of support goal to companies that are ready for the next right, like a growth accelerator, so to speak.

Speaker 2: 36:22

So that's in the works. We don't know all the details yet, but that's likely something launched shortly which will give us an opportunity to continue to work with the founders in the community, and then the program is likely to continue to run the way we run right now. As we get to know our target consumer better the entrepreneurs in the program and in the community. We want to build solutions that solve their problems. So I do anticipate we'll launch several new initiatives and programs next year, but I don't know exactly what that is yet because we want to actually validate and not come up with it and launch it.

Speaker 1: 36:58

Interesting. So how are you going about the validation process?

Speaker 2: 37:02

Very similar as you would as a business owner. Right, we're talking to our alumni. What are things you need? What's good? What problems do you run into? Like how can we better support you to find out what the structure of perhaps a more structured program for alumni could look like? Going into the business community and talking to early stage entrepreneurs better understanding what their problems are, to then help us figure out how do we build solutions that could help then work through those problems.

Speaker 1: 37:32

Interesting. I like it because, as an alumnus, when you're finished the program, you almost feel like there's this drop off. Anytime you're working on a project or you're doing something and then it finishes, you feel like you're finished the program. You almost feel like there's this drop off. Anytime you're working on a project or you're doing something and then it finishes, you feel like you're on the other side and I still have that craving. I need to have the connection, or maybe even the community.

Speaker 1: 37:49

On our own, we created a little mastermind group, we call it, where alumnus can be a part of it and even some non-alumnus have been invited into it so that we can carry on that community level thing and we just get together once a month. Sometimes we have a presenter come in and talk about something we all want to learn about, or quite often we just do 360 feedback amongst the group and we share things that are working in our business, maybe some challenges that we're having and where we need to grow or where we need to expand, what we need to learn, and then the group gives you feedback and so we gain momentum just by doing that. It's the one plus one equals three kind of concept, so maybe we could plug that in somewhere along the line with what you guys are doing too 100% no, and we love seeing that.

Speaker 2: 38:32

I think the for founders by founders is a very powerful like initiatives, like we shepherd and we lead the community by creating these opportunities. But it's yeah, I think founders taking that initiative is great for us to see and it's absolutely something we want to support I think it'd be pretty cool.

Speaker 1: 38:47

It might even be an incubator for your incubator.

Speaker 2: 38:50

If we start bringing in other businesses that haven't gone through the dmz accelerator process, then they become a part of our community and we help pre-sell them for you guys, and that's really also something we're leading into as we're growing and as we touch more and process, then they become a part of our community and we help pre-sell them for you guys, and that's really also something we're leaning into as we're growing and as we touch more and more businesses in the community. We also have not, like, a positioning problem, but there's a lot of entrepreneurs, especially small businesses, that are not really privy to the startup world incubators, accelerators, all this terminology, right that might not think that what we have to offer is relevant to them, right, and we need to look better at explaining that and leveraging our community and ask them to invite their other entrepreneurs to come to events we organize, for example, the beer group, and get a little bit of a sample of what's going on here. I think it's a really great way for us to meet new entrepreneurs in our community and to explore their synergy and to figure out if we can help them. In some cases, that help is the DMZ Innisfil program. In other cases it could be other programs. Like, we have many partners across the ecosystem. We all support businesses in their own unique way. For example, georgian College has the Henry Winnick Entrepreneurship Center. They run an amazing program called Fooder Faster. That kind of is entrepreneurship. We learn a lot about what it is to build a business in a 12-week kind of forward course with in-person workshops. We don't do that at all and, depending on where are your business, that could be the best possible program. So we often make referrals to those kind of partners and so we're almost like beyond running the programs.

Speaker 2: 40:23

Here in Innisfil. We're also like an ecosystem navigator, right when there is so much support available for entrepreneurs. It's so hard to find and understand for entrepreneurs that there's like a gap and we try to like kind of form that API. That I think is a takeaway for anyone listening today. Try to find out what relevant opportunities there are in your community.

Speaker 2: 40:48

Like there is a lot of entrepreneurship support, whether it's incubators, accelerators, small business centers, mentor programs. Like there's so much support and chances are around. That support is a community of entrepreneurs that you can meet. You can join. Chances are the support is relevant to you and it can help you solve some of the challenges that you're dealing with. The world would be fundamentally changed. Yeah, absolutely. That's not the case right now. So I think it's great for entrepreneurs to take a proactive look around. Okay, where's my closest starter accelerators. Is there a small business center? And just reach out right Things similar to us. These hubs are also navigators. If they have something to help you out with, they'll likely be happy to do so. If they don't, they'd probably be just as happy to try to connect you to the right organization that can help.

Speaker 1: 41:36

I was going to say it's interesting. You brought something up that was interesting and that is that a lot of the entrepreneurs, a lot of the startups, don't even really know about the business accelerator or that there are those services available or just what is the process of going through a business accelerator Maybe as a setup to bring in new leads I guess you'd call it into your ecosystem is to maybe have a process in place. Could be just like an online course or it could be a template. When I was going through my OKRs and doing that whole product to market fit, I found an interesting template on Notion that was just for startups and it just gave you templates to step you through all of those cycles of that process, that startup process of doing product validation and so be interesting just to do some lead generation for you around.

Speaker 2: 42:28

even if you were to sell a simple template or a simple course, yeah we're working on this, like I think the part of the opportunity is building a bigger funnel, right? How can we support more local entrepreneurs in our community and how can we do this in ways that work for them. They're, frankly, signing up for a four-month program with 15 hours of mentorship and events Not for everyone, also not possible for some people due to scheduling constraints. So we are looking at how do we better support earlier stage entrepreneurs in our community. How do we get to know them? How do we provide value to them in an asynchronous way, like, true, like online resources? How do we host more specific events that are targeted towards the challenges and opportunities they're dealing with, to get to know them and to bring them into our community and to start providing value earlier than we are right now by using a slightly different strategy.

Speaker 1: 43:22

Yeah, it'd be interesting to do that. I think you'd probably find, because a lot of people just don't know what they don't know. Maybe they're not quite ready. There is some, there's a time contribution you have to make. Maybe they're not sure that they want to do that.

Speaker 1: 43:36

So, just doing that early stage lead generation and nurturing of them through a course or a template or some knowledge of, like you said, putting on an event, and it could even be just a virtual event too. You could run a webinar and even put the webinar onto autopilot so you're evergreening that right through. People could sign up for it whenever they want and start to get to know about your incubator and what is the process and what's involved and how much time do I have to contribute and how do I do that. I find in my world anyway, in the marketing world, if I can give them those first three steps maybe it's a 12-step process If I can give them those first two or three steps and get them micro-engaged into some momentum, I find they're much more likely to continue that momentum on.

Speaker 2: 44:22

So that'd be cool. Yeah, 100%. October 7th is the Emerging Entrepreneurs Summit, which is entirely focused on people that are early in their business journey. It will be an in-person event at the Innisfil ID Lab and Library. Tickets are on sale right now so you can check it out. If you Google it, it's on the Innisfil Economic Development website. Then another event that we're hosting later in November is the Innisfil Business Summit, and this is a great event for really any business owner to attend, because we invite all our ecosystem partners to come attend this event, set up a booth. So again, it's at the Innisfil D-Lab and Library. There's likely going to be 15 to 20 different types of organizations that work with and or support entrepreneurs in one way or the other, so you can literally just attend, walk around and learn more about what the programs and services are that are available and making it really easy for you to connect with all these different organizations and learn which one of those might have some value that you can take advantage of.

Speaker 1: 45:18

Yeah, interesting, okay, yeah, interesting, okay, yeah, definitely send me those links and I'll make sure that they're in the notes here for anyone who would like to attend. It's for local people, though, right, if you're in Toronto, you don't allow them to come into the DMZ, right?

Speaker 2: 45:32

Correct. Yeah, so for the DMZ specifically, we have two programs. We have a business accelerator program. This program is exclusively focused on supporting Innisfil-based small businesses. There is criteria we're looking for. It's all listed out on our website. And then for the startup incubator program, we are also looking for Innisfil-based startups. We are able to support startups that are located around Cinco County. The catchment area for that one is a little bit bigger. We're not able to support companies that are outside of the catchment area, for that one is a little bit bigger. We're not able to support companies that are outside of the catchment area currently. True core programs, but events are free or like anyone can attend.

Speaker 2: 46:09

So if someone's in Toronto and wants to learn more about what's going on in Innisfil and Simcoe County, that November event, the showcase be a great event to attend.

Speaker 1: 46:16

Okay cool. Creative attitude, okay cool. I'll make sure that we do a little video clip and we'll promote that for you as well. That'd be amazing. Yeah, for sure. So we're just rounding out to the hour. Is there anything, just as a final finishing closeout, that you'd like to say to our entrepreneur startup community?

Speaker 2: 46:33

I mean I think this is a great conversation. The real takeaway point is don't do it alone, right, like you're going to have to do all the work, but if you can surround yourself with like-minded entrepreneurs and create a bit of a peer group, and if you can take some advantage or support resources that are out there in the ecosystem, I think you'll increase your chances for success, to start a business that works. It is the concept in my experience is different than what most people think. Right, it's much smaller. You want to build something very big, but it starts very small and it's like zero to one, one to two, two to three and like it's a thousand steps. If you focus on the wrong steps, you might never get there. Right.

Speaker 1: 47:16

So prioritizing, like perfecting your logo or something Exactly, right, so prioritizing.

Speaker 2: 47:19

Like perfecting your logo or something Exactly, and so I think that you really need to find a specific ideal target consumer who has a problem that they want to solve but are not sure how to, and if you build a solution that helps them solve this problem, you tap into an existing demand, and I think that's really the key to a successful start.

Speaker 2: 47:47

You need to find people that have that problem, understand what that problem means and build a solution that helps them solve that problem. So, like I said before, the beginning is really as easy as finding one person that you solve this problem for and delight them, capture their experience, learn from the experience and then move on and scale that case study, but it's getting to that one successful case study. If you're worried about getting to the hundred, not to say you shouldn't focus on a market that's big enough there's a lot of other things that come into play here when it comes to business model development, and so it's more complex, but I think in the end, something really big starts small, and if you try to launch big with limited resources, it's really difficult yeah, I completely agree with you on that.

Speaker 1: 48:31

And even if you're a more mature business but you're launching a new product, it's the same cycle over. Start small, make sure you're solving that good problem that they know that they have and that they want to solve and that they're willing to, that there's some commerciality to it. They want to spend some money to get it solved because it's important enough. So I completely agree with you on that and I definitely can attest to the DMZ being a fantastic program. You and your team at DMZ, innisfil and the economic development group, as well as the folks from Toronto Metropolitan University, the EIR, support that. We have the experts in residence. Just fantastic all across the board. So I am highly endorsing you guys and I'll make sure it gets out into our community for you awesome Shane, appreciate the opportunity to join today for you, awesome Shane, appreciate the opportunity to join today.

Speaker 1: 49:21

Thank you for having me, for sure. Thanks so much for being a guest on the Impact Innovators podcast and. I'm sorry it's good, all right, bye-bye.