Built for Freedom: David Salerno on Designing a Business That Runs Without You

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Step into the world of success with Your Brand Amplified, the ultimate podcast designed to unravel the intricacies of thriving businesses. I'm your host, Anika Jackson, and I'm on a mission to uncover the stories, strategies, and secrets that have propelled entrepreneurs and business leaders There seems to be a theme in several of my past guests, and that is how do you create freedom and flexibility for yourself while running your own business? How do you keep yourself from becoming the person who's holding everything else back, right? And having that freedom. David Salerno, I'm really excited to have you as my guest today. And for those who are listening, David started a packaging company out of necessity. Now it does $10 million a year in revenue, has 600 B2B clients across Canada, and he runs it remotely, working less than 12 hours a week, not because he stepped away, but because he built it to not need him. He's the founder of SoulPak Packaging Solutions and of Entrepreneur Sherpa, where he now teaches founders the same system, the Sherpa Method, that gave him his time back. And I have a copy of David's book, Built for Freedom, which I'm very excited to discuss with you today, David. You also have been a finalist for major awards. You're a Forbes Business Council member, vice chair of the Montreal Economic Institute, and of course we have your new book, Built for Freedom. Thank you very much for coming onto Your Brand Amplified today.

Well, Anika, thank you. It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure to be here with you.

So take us back to your businesses, your business roots, the foundation. where you decided to go in your journey and then starting your own company?

When I was a kid, I somehow, because I had a father who was a serial entrepreneur, not all successful actually, so it was very inspiring in different ways. I knew I would be an entrepreneur someday. So, at the age of 17, I was fortunate to be able to have a student painter franchise for a whole summer. So, that was quite the experience. And then, went in the corporate world. And finally launched SoulPak maybe 15 years later, and then the rest is history.

Wow.

What was the impetus behind starting SoulPak as the business? Because seeing somebody, right, it's— you're not failing in the businesses, you're learning the next lesson for the next entrepreneurship journey that you're building. But what was it about that industry and that need that you saw in the market that you said, I'm the one who can create the solution?

Yeah, that's a great question. So, the impetus was I was waiting for the opportunity to start my business, being in the corporate world. And in a way, I was learning the ropes of good management. I was fortunate to be in 2 great companies learning management. And the business model is what attracted me. It was in packaging, and it was in food, and it was in a product that was compostable. So, 20-some years ago, that was Kind of an innovative product. Still is to some extent. Our product is still not, hasn't been copied yet. And I just saw it was like a perfect, perfect storm, I guess, of launching this crazy idea of going on your own, starting from nothing.

Wow. And what was it about the other businesses, the student painters franchise, working in market research telecom, that pulled you towards saying, ah, I am going to start my own business now? Right? And I'm going to take the lessons I've learned from these, as well as what I've seen from my father.

I suspect I'm an eternal optimizer. I love to talk about systems. On a recent episode of your guest, I forget her name, but she was talking about systems, and I was like, oh, I'm not the only one obsessed about systems. This is encouraging. So, being the eternal optimizer, Student Painter was in itself a franchise, so I understood at a young age that when you have a system already in place, it's such a hack in life, right? So, this was more of a learning than anything else. And then, in the marketing world, it's funny because I started doing interviews on the phone, like market research surveys. And very quickly, I thought I knew everything. You know, when you're 19, you know everything, right? And I basically told the call center director that the program for training the people sucked. It wasn't good enough. And I got lucky not to get fired, but be asked, okay, David, do you have something to suggest? I was like, give me the weekend. And I came back with kind of proposing something that would be a structured way of doing the training because it's market research and there's science behind market research. I had to do a lot of reading that weekend. So that's what got me into this and then got me into the next one. And then this SaltPack opportunity I thought was amazing and I thought we could improve the way people package meals, basically. So, it was always optimizing.

Yeah. You've written about an early moment when your wife challenged you to walk away from food packaging side of the business before it was even working. What kept you motivated and kept you going through that doubt?

Yeah, so there was a period where I became my own man, so I had nobody else to look at and thinking, oh, I could do this better, right? When you're in the corporate world, there's a lot of teams working together, hierarchical structure and whatnot. Now I was my own boss and things weren't going the way I thought they would go or not as easy as they would. So I started falling into a loop where I'd be like, how am I going to do this? I can't do this. Typical kitchen table dinner conversations. At some point, my wife was like, well, if you can't, just do it. Go back in the corporate world. You have colleagues calling you asking you if you would take a promotion and go back into that world because I was good at it. And I was like, no, it's either I I make it or I break it. So, that conversation was really—

Yeah. And what was the moment when you realized, ooh, this is actually working, and you knew you were onto something and you could continue?

I, once I broke the ice in terms of defining what was my offer, what was it that I was really bringing to the table, and clients starting saying, or future clients saying, where were you all my life? This is exactly what I was looking for. I knew I had packaged the offer. And when I say package, I'm not talking just marketing words and whatnot. Really, what was it that we were going to do for our clients? That's when I knew we had it. And then it was just scaling from there.

Amazing. And you reached that moment, though, when you decided that you needed something more out of life. So, talk a little bit about that. Was it, you know, so many times I think that it happens because maybe we've been thinking about it, but we have health issues or something else happens in our lives. Did you have that big disruption? Or was it more quiet realization of, ah, this is fantastic, I've been able to build this amazing business, but there's more for me?

Yeah, I don't know if it was a slow realization that the promise of building a business and being a founder, a business owner, there's a lot of romanticism around the idea, right? And I felt there was, I'd been sold a bad rap Because I was like, this is not what I thought I was getting into. And we're doing good, and we're doing good financially. So, probably again, as the eternal optimizer, I was like, there has to be a better way to build this. If I look at these businesses out there, and some of them, the founder is nowhere to be found, literally.

Yeah.

So, I realized I had an issue, like most founders have a clarity. They don't have an effort problem or a hustle problem, they have a clarity problem. And I realized I wasn't Working on the right things so that the business would truly be of service.

And is that the moment when you kind of started creating the Sherpa Method? And when did you come up with, ah, this is the thing that I've been able to develop for myself in my own business, and I can help others do the same?

Yeah, absolutely. So, after a couple of years of tweaking and working on, like, the typical work on your business, I realized my real product was my business, not what we were doing. What we're doing was great. And I still thought it was amazing, but I let the team do that. And the pivotal moment, so when I realized I need to write this down or do a framework around this is when I had a banker come to the office, you know, they do their rounds every year for their accounts and whatnot. And we're chatting and super interesting conversation. And maybe 90 minutes into the conversation, the banker is like, what is going on here? So I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, we've been sitting here 90 minutes, your phone hasn't rang. Nobody came to the door. There's no panic. I see people working, they're all happy. Like, what's going on? And I was surprised by the question. I was like, well, isn't that how it's supposed to run? That's when you run your business and you do a good job. He's like, no, David, this is rare. I usually see panic and calls and people throw me out because they don't have time. Now they have to deal with an emergency. So I thought it was amazing. I was like, okay, what did I do here? Because I remember those years when I would be like that. So, That's when the Sherpa Method kind of came up to fruition.

And the method is built around grow, sustain, and serve, right, with different questions. Can you walk through where that structure came from, and how would a founder start using it?

Yeah, the impetus was a— I think, so don't quote me on this, but Pablo Picasso apparently had said, computers are dumb because they can only provide answers.

Ah.

So, I thought that marked me because when I started thinking, okay, we did something great with this company, and there's other markers that show that we had something good. I started asking, what are the questions that I resolved? And then, I was trying to synthesize, and then I realized the first problem was growing. If you don't have enough growth, you don't have enough sales, which means you can't even fund your own salary, you're stressed out, then eventually you fund a team. So, that's, you got to figure out your growth. When I was talking about scaling an offer where people are like, where were you all my life? That's the aha moment. So that was the first kind of challenge. Then the second one was, how do we make this sustainable? So I'm not constantly the guy deciding or being asked, how do we do this? Or what do we do? So, you know, the right people, the right systems, the right numbers to focus on. And then finally, I was like, once you get that, you need more, the team needs more. And how do we become of service? So the serving part, right? How do we become memorable in our clients' minds? How do our people, wanna work with us and ask others to join the team because what we're doing is of service and they feel that not only the clients are served, but the team. So, it's kind of the 3 challenges. How do you grow, make it sustainable, and how do you be of service?

Yeah, and I think a big part of that is you want to do all these things, but you also have to make sure you have the right people and that they really, that you've given them the agency in the business, right? That is something that I think a lot of founders find really hard to do. So, you know, but it's something, it seems from the outside like it was something very easy for you when we're looking back and seeing all of who you are now and the things that you can share with us, right?

Yeah, always looks easy from the outside, right?

Right, yeah.

So, I think you're right on. It's a, it's a matter of trust, but you can only trust until you've had put in place, uh, I'm gonna say the right systems, but the right people also. Once these two, and, and nobody's perfect, the entrepreneur first, but if we've got 80% of the solution in terms of the right system to do what needs to be done and the right people to operate them, if I could say, then as an entrepreneur founder, you can trust your people, you can trust your systems. It's all about trust.

Yeah, but did it take time for you to find the right people that you could trust? And were there certain characteristics you saw in them, certain questions you had to ask?

Yeah, no, yeah, absolutely. I can't say that we didn't have a— we always had great people in the team, but sometimes because the company was evolving from $300,000 of sales to 8-figure now, sometimes the right people were not right anymore as we grew. It was overwhelming. Some people couldn't handle the added volume or the new type of clients we were serving. So, I think it's an ongoing process of trying to make sure there's a right fit. Sometimes it's giving new responsibilities to the same team members. Sometimes team members left the team because it wasn't a right fit anymore. It's not an easy process. I mean, it is work.

Yeah. Well, and at what point did you decide that, ah, now I'm going to start The Entrepreneur Sherpa as another business, right? And I'm going to take all the lessons I learned and share them with others. And then, of course, you put them into a lovely book, Which has, I mean, I love the fact that you can go through every chapter and really dig into the questions we need to be thinking about and how we are going to design our own businesses and lives.

That's very kind. Yeah, the book was written with the idea that it could be Lego blocks, so you could decide that you only want the red Legos, you don't care about the greens. So, that's how I designed the book. But to your question, at some point we're in a meeting in our our tech, our service tech guy, he's like, David, we're having difficulties with this vendor. And you know what, I think we should teach them the SaltPack way. So, I thought that was very— maybe it lacked a bit of humility, but it did highlight the fact that we had structured in such a way that now we had expectations with our partners and had great conversations, great rapport. So, that kind of lit a light in that. And I was always in business groups, right? Tech entrepreneurs groups, and sometimes in discussions, and then eventually I started mentoring. I would see patterns, and that's when I decided, okay, let me encapsulate what we did and the questions. And at the end of the day, those 3 challenges end up in 3 steps, 3 questions, so 27 questions total. And like, if you can resolve these 27 questions, there's a good chance you're going to be successful and not trapped in your business.

Wow. And you talk about your own promise of transformation for SoulPak, right? Yeah, it came down to 3 things: fast, reliable shipping, no minimum orders, unlimited technical support. So is it through this series of questions and prompts that founders can find their own differentiators and narrow it down to a shortlist as well?

Yeah, absolutely. And the answer really lies in your existing clients, those that tell you, where have you been all my life? Just ask them, what is it that you find so amazing? Please enlighten me. And then they'll tell you exactly what your differentiators are.

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And, you know, of course, grow is the first thing that we talked about. How do you help somebody figure out if their profit model works, if there are things that they're missing? Because I know that you had that experience of realizing exchange rates, shipping costs were eating into your margins. So, how do we figure out, are we actually charging enough? Do we have those ideal customers, right, coming in saying, where have you been? I need you and I need more of you, right? Versus thinking about, oh, we think this is right, this is the industry standard, or this is, you know, The magical thinking that goes around?

Yeah, so that could be a whole day of discussions on pricing, right? I mean, the classic, we're always scared that we're going to charge too much, and especially a founder, somebody who starts up, they want to be competitive, they don't want to lose business, and we think pricing is key. And it could be the business model. Walmart proved it by lowering pricing. I mean, at what cost? That could be a different debate, but that being said, If you're bundling your service, and that's why Sopac was offering an offer that bundled a tray, a physical tray, film, equipment that would be lent, and technical service, we bundle everything together. So, we ended up charging maybe 40% more than the competing tray. However, everything came from the same place, properly stocked, because in the packaging world, there's a lot of backorders and alternative products until we get the product. We didn't have that at Sopac. It was fast shipping. Sometimes you have to be on a route, so you'll get it every Tuesday. So if you call me on a Wednesday, you're stuck for a week without shipping. We ship same day. So these are all examples, but the pricing at the end of the day will be supported if your offer is really unique, to say the least. Now, to come to your question about the profit model, the experience that I lived is I came from telecom management and then I'm in packaging, know nothing of pricing structure, prices, And I was suspecting my margins were not going to be enough. So I basically scaled up the business and took my existing numbers, projected them, okay, what if I sold $1 million of this instead of $300K? And I realized I still wouldn't be able to pay me a salary that would be at the corporate world level. And that didn't make sense to me. That's when I realized my margins were not there. I rethought the profit model, bundled up all these things together, thought, okay, I'll need systems to make sure we deliver what we promise. And that's kind of a relaunch of SawPaik in year 2, I think, more or less. So, yeah, so it's very important, project your sales at, let's say, the next threshold, whether it's $1 million or $10 million, and see will your numbers make sense for you to have a company that's sustainable.

Yeah. What took you from, you know, the day-to-day coming up with all of these things that you could then share or teach to even your existing customer base for SoulPak to picking up Becoming remote, really coming to it, going from Can— living in Canada, operating in Canada, to moving to the United States, launching Entrepreneur Sherpa as a second business on top of your other business, and, you know, being able to find that time and that flexibility, that freedom to do both, and also to do all the other things that you want to do with your family.

I had a taste of it when I decided that I would put the framework together, so I would leave SawPak for 2 or 3 days. While the operations were running. And by then, I'd worked on the business like it was my product, and I was very content with my product. Some call it MVP. It was a minimum viable product. It was my business, these systems, these people. We still had work to do, but this was a right combo. And coming back after 3 days and realizing sometimes they did things better than when I was there because they felt more agency, the sandbox, the values on the walls and whatnot, they could let them breathe them. And I realized, okay, wait a minute, maybe I have to be the one who's a bit like the director in an orchestra, will have worked with the team, with practice. And now all I do is— I don't claim to know how being a director is, and it must be very hard. When I go to the orchestra, it looks easy, but to see a piece. But that being said, that's when I got a taste of it. And then I realized eventually through the years, I could do this whole thing remotely, basically. And now with technology, Thanks to COVID, it got all of us used to doing what we're doing today, right? Remote.

Yeah, absolutely. How did you come up with the name Entrepreneur Sherpa?

Yeah, I kind of painted myself in the corner on that one because I met once early on Sherpa, I met a consultant who was like, you know, it's a great name and which mountain did you do? And I was like, I'm so sorry, I'm not a mountaineer by any chance. I do a lot of walking, but unfortunately not mountaineering. Was really the idea that I was walking next to other founders, entrepreneurs. I could carry some of their load with systems that I would provide. So, it was the metaphor basically. And I can get there because I've been up the mountain many, many times. I've seen the storm where, you know, we're maybe not going to make it. And at the end of the day, I'm just an experienced guy willing to help others do the same trek up the mountain.

Yeah, wonderful. And what is something that you have— you find yourself correcting, a misconception perhaps, that founders get wrong, right, about their businesses and thinking, oh, but my business can't run without me because XYZ?

The expression, and I hear it all the time, the expression, my business, my company is like a kindergarten sometimes. I feel like I have to manage my people and I have to get involved in all these interactions. To me, that's actually hiding a deeper problem, which is one of structure and lack of clarity in what each individual is responsible for.

Yeah, that clarity issue. I mean, and you talked a little bit about that earlier within your own business, that some people stayed, you changed their positions, and some people, the clarity was there that they weren't supposed to be there anymore.

Absolutely, absolutely. Whenever there'd be a conflict, I loved one concept from E-Myth, Gerber was the author. It was the key frustration to me that was the keystone of his whole proposition, although it aged not that well when it came to saying people, right? Take like to the most common denominator and it should be like repetitive. So, I got inspired from some of the elements, but then we gotta have that evolve. I believe in agency and your own sandbox for each individual with clarity. That being said, the key frustration to me was always not— don't make it about the people, make it about the system. What's missing that these two— are not getting along. And often you'll realize it's because there's no— there's a lack of clarity in the way they do things or what they're responsible for, and there's overlap or gaps. And that's what you have to fix by a system.

So walk us through an example of what kinds of businesses and entrepreneurs are you working with presently? And, you know, how are you able to help them shift that mindset?

A good one would be, for example, we have— I have A lady who's running a garage. It's a specialized service in the mechanic world of injection for, uh, 'cause we have winters up, up north in Canada.

Oh.

And there's injection of, of protective oil at the bottom underneath the cars, right? Or trucks. And we've had discussions, different discussions where she would hit like a, a knot and that was it. That's all that was in her way. And then we would work on on resolving that knot, whether it be hiring, how do you find good employees or great team members? What do you do with a potential client that could offer you a lot of business, but it's kind of more promises than actual business? So, not accepting anyone just for the sake of sales. So, that's an example of somebody that I've helped.

Yeah. So, you customize for each person to, as long as they are wanting the kind of freedom and flexibility, right? And That success in their business. Yeah.

Yeah, because at the end of the day, it's people, people helping people get a product or a service delivered, and we all have systems and we all have ways, but at the end of the day, it's, it's pretty much using the same concepts. It's, it's the same desires from the entrepreneur's perspective also. We want to do something that's great, that's amazing. Uh, we depend on people to get that done. We, we have a vision to communicate. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a big challenge to be an entrepreneur.

Yeah. Well, I'm really curious, what does life look like for you today, day to day? Because you have these 2 businesses, you have this book, right? You are coaching people, you're speaking, you're working with other organizations. So, that sounds very full, right? Very robust. It could take a lot of your time, but yet you've designed your life so that you don't have to work 60, 80 hours, right? So, can you talk a little bit about what that looks like now for you, having implemented your Sure.

So, it's always busy. So, I'm not drinking margaritas by the pool. But in the last, I'd say, 10 years, I was able to spend a lot of time with my kids. I would drive them to school, a lot of traveling, working on another book that's now fiction. So, working on that.

Wow.

Sopac, I'm still leading Sopac remotely because we have ambitious goals to double the size within the next 4 years. So, that's exciting. That's where I put my time for Sopac, the Shukupak Project, also mentoring. I'm involved in the think tank. So my days are full. I wake up early, naturally around 5-ish, and I'm just passionate. AI came to the scene, so that's just, it's almost R&D, I'd say. I do a lot of R&D. Let's call it R&D, trying to figure out how do we integrate this in our family life, but also how do we are integrating this in the business world.

And that is, you know, of course, that's one of the big topics of conversation these days, whether it is how much is too much AI, Is it doing the right things for our businesses? You know, is it, are we still seeming authentic and transparent to our customers and our clients for our business with what we're putting out there, how we're operating internally, or, you know, how we're putting content out? So, what are some of the things that you're seeing as most helpful with technology these days, or things that you think should still be innately human?

Oh, that's a big question. I'm curious to hear your opinion, so I'll play my part. I'll answer your question, but I'd be curious to hear you, 'cause I know you're interested in this too.

Yes.

If my research is correct, right? So I've always believed technology is a great tool and to be used to its maximum because it's an enabler for humans to do even more. There's a period of time where you had 50 people in a room just typing memos because we needed to send out a memo. And all of a sudden, you have Word system that comes around, and we don't have that anymore, but we're kind of enabling humans to do something where we call upon more of our potentiality, if I could say so. So that's how I see technology as a whole. Also, it could be very mind-numbing. So that being said, for AI, I think we're in the heydays of AI in the small and medium businesses. It's both a curse and a blessing. I'm sure you've lived it. We've noticed how we've created a lot of what I call AI slop. Like you'll generate content and then you send an email to your colleague, you're all proud of the work you did and they have to read for 12 minutes your thing and 3 attachments, right? I don't know if you've lived that, but I've lived it, and I came to realize we have to keep ownership of synthesis and reflection before we just delegate this to AI. But I'm curious to hear you. What are your thoughts on this?

Yeah, well, I have a number of thoughts. One is, as a small business owner, who is me and a, you know, very small team overseas right now, I've looked at how do I streamline things. So, I do use some tools. Like, I have a lot of projects set up in Claude, and I'll let it, I'll use it as a thought partner of like, okay, this is a week I really need to focus on this, this, and this time block my, and I'll let it time block my calendar for me, right? So, I think those things are useful, but then it doesn't have that nuance of, oh, actually this happened today, so I need to move that time block over here, or I need to not schedule that extra meeting with this person. So, It's, it's a, I think a push-pull because yes, it helps us do many things, but it, it doesn't have that nuance. I am seeing a lot of business owners I speak to saying that they want to hire people, that they still wanna keep the human element because that is most important, you know? And if you use even simple tools, Canva and things, everything shows up as AI now just because they might have one little, uh, you might create an image and you have your brand colors, but if you use one little thing, it's gonna toggle everything on as AI content, whether it's truly AI or not, right? And I like to create, I like to work more on the, some of the problem solving of like, you know, oh, for my podcast, right? How do I use AI to better vet my guests? And, and is it pulling up the right profiles? And so, what am I feeding it? And what questions am I asking? Are they nuanced enough? Is it really picking up the audience segmentation for that, that person's gonna be a good speaker to my audience? But then I also do things like, This used to be a PDF that you could fill in for a Zen project I work on for your monthly wheel of life of how you're doing in different areas of your life. How do I make it interactive, right? Using AI. And then it gives personal questions and reflections to each person, personal quote based on what their chart looks like. But then I need to make sure I'm APIing it to the right thing. So, you know, some things that I'm not as good at, that I can have AI help me do. But then sometimes it also creates more work because you're saying, oh, it's not connecting here and there, and let's troubleshoot. And what, is there something wrong in the code? So, it's a little, it's a brilliant tool and it's also a burdensome tool in so many ways.

So, you do a lot of R&D as well. That's what I'm hearing.

Yes. And I wish I had more time for the R&D, right? But we have to pay, we have other parts of our lives.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

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But interestingly enough, I have a friend now who bought the book and he's in construction. And at some point he's like, David, your book is fantastic. Thank you very much. I love comments and I love the compliment. But I asked him, it's like, in what way is it helping you? He's like, well, actually one chapter I asked my team members, he has a team, I think of maybe 40 people. And he's like, I've asked each team or department to take one chapter and work on that. So I thought it was amazing. And he texted me the other day and he's like, David, have you considered doing a Sherpa AI? Meaning take the Sherpa method and make it a solution where it will interact with entrepreneurs and ask them the questions and guide them depending, because at the end of the day, there are questions, the answers are within the entrepreneur. So that's where I'm hoping to bring AI. In Sherpa itself. In Solpack, we're doing something else, but it's a very promising technology. Obviously, some see it as a threat. There might be risks. There are risks, actually. We'll get to live the tale to tell.

Right. But that is a brilliant use of the technology because then— but, and hopefully, you know, that means people read the book themselves, but then they can also use the technology to help them workshop some of the solutions and maybe get to them a little faster. than they would have on their own, or if they can't come to you, you know, for the mentorship and the coaching.

Absolutely. It's funny, I was gonna say to this point, I have an entrepreneur friend who was like, David, tell me about this Sherpa. You did this with Sawpack, you have the framework. How are you gonna live your life with freedom if you're the face of Sherpa? And you end up having to go, because I did workshops, I did mentoring, coaching. It's like, how are you gonna handle it? And it's still, It's still an interesting proposition. I'm like, wait, maybe AI is the way where my thoughts and the framework I'm proposing can be deployed this way.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's— I have a Delphi clone who, granted, I don't do as much with it, but she's programmed with all of my podcasts and every, all the courses I teach, workshops I do. So, my students or anybody can go and learn a lot about the way I operate and my thoughts on branding or podcasting or business or marketing. And get that information before they even have to come to me to discuss. And that, I think—

That's amazing.

So, that's, yeah, so, there are great tools out that can help us with these kind of shortcuts, as long as we make sure that there are guardrails and safeguards, that it's still our IP, right? So— That's right.

That's right. Yeah, that's, that's a big question. Yep.

I'm curious, because there's a couple of things that you talk about, and one of them that you said was letting people go if they're not the right, and you call this unrecruiting. So, can we talk a little bit about when is the right time to coach somebody versus unrecruit them?

Yeah, unrecruit with compassion. So, my— I'm not sure why, but my— one of my forts in the corporate world is I rarely had to fire people as a manager. I usually would end up coaching, eventually having a little more heartfelt discussion, and usually it would end up with, let's go for a walk. And the reason I do that is to really not make it like a duality, face-to-face corporate thing. It's like we're walking together trying to figure this out. And often what would come up with this is the person would realize that they're appreciated for whom they are. They have great strengths, and sometimes they just didn't fit. In those days in telecom, it was in a call center activating, let's say, new clients or invoicing or whatnot. And they'd say, you know what, this place is not for me, or this role is not for me. I'm going to apply. And that to me was always a victory because I did 2 things. First, the company has objectives, I have clients to serve, and if that person's not fitting and it's an issue, we got to resolve that. So, recruiting with compassion to me is— the first part is, is there clarity in what the role is and what's expected? Sometimes even that is messed up, especially in small businesses. It's not clear or it's unrealistic. Too many things have to be done. The second step is, do they have the abilities and the willingness. And if they do, then it's coaching, it's tweaking. And usually that works, and the person just takes on or learns what needs to learn. And if you do all of these and it still is not working, then you gotta have that talk again, the walking talk. And that's what I call unrecruiting with compassion.

Yeah. Well, I've never heard that coined before, so I really appreciate it. I think it's— there's a nuance in that, right? And you also, I mean, and you're leading with empathy. And you also do that with selling. You talk about selling with empathy instead of being pushy. So, I think these are concepts that people don't always think about when they're thinking about building a business.

Yeah, the visual I have on this, I must be a visual in my learning style or something. The visual I had early on, because packaging was such a new world for me, and at some point I was trying to sell yogurt containers, just to tell you how Sopact started, and yogurt You know, yogurt with a little nut side that you could flip and it becomes like this Greek. And 20 years ago, it was starting to be innovative, but that was not where I brought value, but I didn't realize it. Long story short, the metaphor that I came up with is I have a cube. You know, when we were infants and we'd play with a cube and you'd put in shapes, right?

Yeah.

I was like, don't try to force the triangle into the circle. Just your You're doing circles. This is what you have in your box, and it goes in so easy when you're talking to the circle, when you're putting the circles in the circle. And that was the metaphor, is make sure that you're clear on who you're really serving the best, because if not, it might go in, but it will not really go in properly. So, that's kind of my thoughts around your question.

Yeah, and that's interesting that you kept evolving the company to figure out what circle matched the circle. Right. Yeah.

No, absolutely. And it's tough. It's tough because I'd have a new salesperson and they talked to me about this project and it sounded like it could be amazing sales for us. And it took me a while to accept and that we would say, no, we're not going to go for that business because at the end of the day, it's going to cost us a lot to figure out, to make sure it works well, to source it. We won't be competitive on pricing. So, to be able to say no is such an important thing. And the only way you can do that is by asking your client a lot of your prospect or future client a lot of questions. So, you really understand what are they going for, so you really offer them something or tell them, hey, you know what, I got a better solution than what I have. Let me refer you.

Yeah, and that is a place where a lot of entrepreneurs get hamstrung is we see something, we think, oh, this is great. It kind of fits. We will make it fit because it's a customer, it's a new customer, and it's a new client, it's a new project, and then that I find is when we maybe don't have success, right? But it can take time, as you have found in your own businesses, to figure out what is the right fit, what will be my success.

Exactly, absolutely. And it's hard, especially when you're launching. You have to be able to, what's the word, iterate and iterate until you get to a point where you love what you're selling or offering and your clients are sending the love back, like you have that echo. And that's when you know you've got it. So, you have to be willing to iterate until you get that kind of positive feedback.

Yeah. When it comes to businesses these days, particularly the small to medium-sized business, how they're built, how they're sold, what the direction that we're heading in, what are some things that you're seeing, perhaps some trends or things that you think are happening that people are not paying attention to?

AI is on everybody's lips. I saw a meme the other day where you see like this Chrome browser and all you see is Claude logos everywhere. Like, everybody's talking about Claude. And so AI is a thing. I was on the phone with an entrepreneur, I think it was yesterday, and we had talked about Claude a year ago as an upcoming thing. And then early this year, they came up with Claude Cowork. And I was like, how's it going for you? He's like, yeah, no, we really got to do this. So there is a big gap in how do we understand what this— how this AI can serve my company. And this guy's company processes thousands of documents monthly, thousands. For sure, it could streamline, but he hasn't figured it out. So, I think there's gonna— there's a gap there for sure, and there's probably gonna be a whole industry serving these entrepreneurs.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I think some of the ways that people are trying to serve them are probably not quite the right thing. Yeah, and there is that room. I completely agree with you. So, what does it look like to work through the Entrepreneur Sherpa? Are you working one-on-one with founders? Are you doing group work? Or what does that look like for you now, especially now that you also have the book?

Yeah, so, so we've done, we've done workshops where we talk to a smaller team, not just the entrepreneur, smaller team, and we do segments. Usually it'll be whatever the challenge is. If it's a challenge of— often it's sustainability because Growth, you're in startup mode and whatnot, and you're all into this, and you're trying to self-educate. But the sustained part is where we often will have workshops in establishing what are the numbers you should focus on, systems with the people, training. So, workshops is one way, and mentoring or coaching is really the other way. And then the book, and then maybe an AI Sherpa one day.

Yeah, I'm thinking probably one day soon.

Ironically, my sister, Michelle, great mind, she had told me during the writing of the book, she said, David, I feel like you should have like a counterpart in the book. Because I narrate the story, I intertwine my own personal entrepreneurial journey, because I wanted to make it kind of interesting and resonating. And we came up with the concept of the small Sherpa, Little Sherpa, sorry. So, Little Sherpa is the little orange character. For those that have a visual, it's a little— right? So, he's in the book, and he's basically calling me out, the author, because sometimes I make it sound like it's super easy, and it's not easy. And I'm thinking maybe that little Sherpa could become, like, the face of an AI-driven coach online, maybe.

Well, everybody's hearing it here first right now. So, David, once you have created that, you'll have to come back on to talk about it and And, you know, what, how the business has evolved since then.

That's right. Now I've, I've kind of publicly po— especially, and I spoke about this to, to another colleague entrepreneur, so now I'm, I'm almost tempted to, to get on it.

Yeah. I'm curious if you've had to adapt the Sherpa Method as you've continued working with more people. Is there anything that you had as one of the main components perhaps earlier on that you said, ooh, I need to switch this up a little bit.

Yeah, so I'd say that down to the level of the questions, the 27 questions of the framework, I'm very happy with the way they are living through times. They're aging well, if I could say. Some things I say in the book, example, how do you create a promise of transformation? I came with detailed, like a formula that a lot of people use now. It's something that I created a few years ago. Now, Everybody seems to be using it because it's common sense. Like, I help X do Y and avoid Z, for example, right? So, it's positioning it. So, some of these things will be answered differently. The question remains the same. What is the journey that your client is going through and how are you helping them transform? So, that remains the same. The way you word it and the way you might explain it or present it will evolve over time. So, these are things where I'm like, Yeah. Today I would write it differently in the book, how to answer that question or this question.

Yeah. Interesting. I wanna turn a little bit to, you teased out that you're writing a fiction book, so—

Oh yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. So when I was— Yeah.

Yeah. Sorry.

Go ahead. Oh yeah. It's, it's, it's 2 years. No, sorry. It's 2 years in the making. It's, it's funny cuz when I was a teenager, I used to write all the time. I just love writing poems, whatever. I guess it was a way for me to get my thoughts out. And somebody said, you know what, you speak like a writer. And I thought that was a very nice compliment. I was like, I don't even know what that means. But doing the experience, it's a very tough thing to write a book completely. And I was very happy I did it for the Sherpa book. But for this one, I wanted to do something, and I always wanted to resonate with people so that they basically create their own story. So the— how do I do this? The temporary title is A Life in 9 Cars. It's basically going through a journey of a young man via 9 cars that he had and which represents different periods of life, including the minivan for family and basically the lessons. So it's something around having 9 cars and everybody has had cars. Anika, I'm sure you, if I asked you about your first car example, maybe you have memories around your first car, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

So that's, that's what I have in mind. That's what I've been working. I have characters, scenes. It's coming up slowly but surely.

Yeah, wonderful. I'm sure there'll be a lot of life lessons in there too, so.

Hopefully we make it stimulating, but also inspiring.

Of course. I feel that you are providing, you know, a tease into a masterclass for building a business that doesn't need us on the day-to-day basis. You have the book, again, I'm gonna show it, Built for Freedom, for anybody who's looking, you can see the book, and it breaks down your framework that we talked about a little bit, little bit. And we can also— I know I'm going to have your website and theentrepreneursherpa.co in the show notes because people are able to grab the free chapter 1 for free, correct?

Yep, yep, absolutely.

Yeah, so thank you for sharing your expertise and your wisdom, for talking about things, you know, that we don't necessarily think about when we're starting businesses, or what's the first thing we need to focus on before we can It's the next step and the next step, those systems and processes that are so important but aren't always— I know what, sometimes I've started businesses without any of that because that's just the way my brain works. But then I have to backtrack and go, oh, but I need to make sure I have all of this outlined and that I'm really meeting the core and that I have the right profit method and all of the different things that you talk about in the book. So, it's definitely something for us all to look at and review. I think it doesn't matter how many businesses you've started before. These are always concepts you need to revisit when you decide to start something new, or when you're partway through and you get stuck.

Yeah, and at the end of the day, they're longstanding success recipes. And what I put in the book is, I believe, common sense. A lot of entrepreneurs could say, yep, that's exactly how I would say it, like this particular chapter. And I was trying to embody what I think is, there are many Sherpas out there. I'm sure you're one of them. You teach, you have this podcast. So, we all have this wisdom about business and helping fellow entrepreneurs reach that success. So, I'm happy to be part of that tribe.

Amazing. Thank you so much. And I appreciate being connected and part of your tribe and being able to learn so much from you. David, do you have a favorite quote, mantra, verse, poem, family motto, Words that continue to inspire you on your journey?

It's funny because I, I had asked that question and I wanted to encompass it into like something that would drive me. And the build for freedom definitely is, not just from a business point, but even from a detachment. We could talk about Buddhism the next session, but the ability to be detached and build for freedom is, is to be free from attachment. Sure, right? We could define it also to be focused on impact and how How can my action have an impact on others that is positive? And finally, I'm obsessed with how do we make it a legacy or how can it outlast? Nature is the best example. We look around and like, if we're all gone tomorrow, nature is still continuing and it's got its thing going. So, it's basically something about freedom, something about being of impact and somehow making it outlast.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lots more for us to dig in next time we have a conversation.

Sure.

Yeah, fantastic. Well, thank you, and thank you to everybody who's listening to this episode or watching it on your favorite platform. Think about how you're running your business. Are you asking yourself the right questions? Are you putting the right structure in place to have freedom, to have success, to be able to be the person who takes yourself out of the business and can entrust others with the thing that you've been building? So, lots of things for us to think about, and again, I'll have all of David's information in the show notes for you. I'll be back again with another amazing guest to share Some of their story, their journey to help you very soon. Thank you. Don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast listening platform. And if you want to learn more, check us out at yourbrandamplified.com.

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