How 2 canadian founders got started - our story

Welcome to another Founder Wisdom podcast. We have Corey Blumenfeld with us today. Corey's CEO and founder at Blue Moso and another company called CS Moso, which we're gonna talk a bit more later about. Previously co-founder at Linked Agency, Caribou. Believe you had an exit from one of these, CoHealth, right? So serial entrepreneur, guy living in Playa del Carmen. Uh, fellow Canadian. So the vibe is here. Cory, welcome to the pod. Tell us a bit more about yourself, dude.

Yeah. Thanks for having me, Charles. Uh, yeah, I don't know. I feel like I've been a lifelong entrepreneur, but I didn't know it for most of my life. Um, you know, I first went to school to, I thought I was going to be a doctor. I think we talked about this last time, right? Like everything's been completely accidental. So I went to school to be a doctor. Um, Never got to the point of writing my MCAT, so I wasn't that close, but everyone told me in my life I had to be a doctor. You want to be an entrepreneur, you want to build cool stuff, you have to get that piece of paper, and it was completely wrong. So I started working on my first company, did that for 6 years, and yeah, I call that my MBA. I learned everything about running a team, building tech, and just growing a business, about business models. I didn't have that training. So I exited that business, started building another business. And yeah, in that business, I learned about how important focus is and how important it is to just really start with a business model that proves and validates there's a business. But yeah, anyways, long story short, it's just, I've been through all the trials and tribulations of building a business. I never would've thought I would've been an entrepreneur, but You know, the reality is I was born an entrepreneur. Um, and there's nothing else I'd rather be doing than building. And I know that's probably, probably, you know, something that we resonate on.

Yeah, for sure. Your first one was Seal the Deal, right?

Oh yeah. But that wasn't a business, right? Like that was a way to pay for school. And this, this was even before I knew I was going to be an entrepreneur. That's why I don't call it a business. It was like, how do you pay for school? How do you, how do you get money in the summer so I can go out and have fun with my friends? My parents weren't going to give me any money. They didn't have any money. So it was like, I had to go make money, but I couldn't go and work for other people. Like, I started doing that. I was like, why am I giving— like, I can just do this myself, you know, classic entrepreneur problem. It's like, you see the problem, you're like, yeah, I'm just gonna fix this. So it was like, okay, split profits, or go watch a few YouTube videos, come up with a sales pitch and go and do it. So yeah, Seal the Deal was the first business, but I don't even classify it as a business because You know, we didn't think about scaling it, we didn't think about setting it up like a business, you know, it wasn't incorporated or anything, it was just odd jobs.

You and I were different and similar at this age. Let me ask you another question, because I got employed at a couple of jobs, and then I realized I could make more through entrepreneurship, versus my hourly rate, right? And then I went into entrepreneurship and I was fully focused on mostly partying when I was quote unquote employed from 15 to 19. And I would use YouTube to watch, I don't know, video game, not to educate myself. Both of us are ADHD, right? But it seems you were, you were on the righter path than I was, or did you get also on a rough path before fully transitioning to entrepreneurship?

I don't know. I, you know, I started right out of school, like even before that. So, you know, like, to be honest, when I was in school, I never really went out that much. Obviously I did enjoy myself. Heck, I have a tattoo on my arm that says, have the most fun, but it's not like go out and party. It's like enjoy what you're doing and enjoy like, you know, work life, make sure you're having the most fun doing it. But For me, the YouTube videos and everything, it's just this feeling inside of me that you need to do something. So Seal the Deal was like, I've never been someone that spends a lot of time on social media or watching stuff online or watching TV. I liked being outside. I liked being with nature. I liked, I don't know, building stuff with my hands. That was fun for me. You know, like, and I always need to be doing something with ADHD. So I wouldn't say, you know, what, like, I was on the right path. I was still trying to figure it out. I was struggling growing up, you know, the ADHD. I also have learning disabilities, right? I feel like they made me stronger. But when I was younger, I didn't know how to leverage them, right? Because that's what it is. You know, we both have ADHD, but we didn't know how to leverage it. I know you're a biohacker now, you know, to leverage that, right? You know, to leverage your body, you know, to leverage your mind.

Yeah.

I didn't have that information when I was younger. So yeah, I probably just sat around, just chilled, didn't do as much. I wasn't as productive as I could have been, kind of like what you're saying. So I needed to go through that to figure out who I was. Without that, then, you know, like, I wouldn't be the person I am today. So I think we both went through these stages in life to figure out what we need to do to be successful and to be productive.

But you were on YouTube in 2010. That's fascinating to me. Are we the same age? Like, you're 35, 37, or—

Yeah, born '91.

33. I'm 33 or 32, I always need to ask my wife. I'm '93. So you're 2 years older than, than I am. But dude, I never thought of going on YouTube in these days. That was very uncommon to go on YouTube and to, to sort of learn stuff, or at least in my generation. So you had that curiosity. I didn't have Learning disability, but I had an addict's personality, right? So that's why I've gone out and partied quite a lot, and I always needed an addiction, right? After it was alcohol, I needed to transit to caffeine, yeah, and entrepreneurship, and playing the game of entrepreneurship instead of partying, right? So I, me, I always need to gamify this brain of mine so that it follows the right track, right? So I'm just curious, like, why you were so nerdy, like, so at such a young age? And also, what was your first serious company? Was it CoHealth?

Yeah, I'd say CoHealth was my first serious company, which was incorporated, but I don't know, it just felt like, you know, so I got that summer when we were doing Seal the Deal, before that, I got this odd job. I found them on like, you'll know this, Kijiji, it's a Canadian company, but you know, it's Craigslist in the US, same kind of concept, and just like, I want to do landscaping. I don't want to work some normal job like everyone else. I want to be outside. I want to be working with my hands. It looks cool and fun. So I found this random posting on there, probably, you know, in hindsight, probably not the best decision. But, and I wouldn't— when I do have kids in the future, if I do have kids, I probably wouldn't let them go and apply to these ads. But I did. And these folks came and picked me up and they taught me, you know, they were doing driveway repair and I was doing door-to-door sales for them and I was like, okay, well, what they're doing doesn't seem too hard. Um, just the curiosity of like, do I need to be giving, you know, I was probably taking home like 10%. It's like 10% or 100%, you know, that's what went through my mind. And I was like, okay, what, what I don't know, I can find out on YouTube. That information was there. Like I knew it was there. I knew And, you know, at the time I would do like research projects in school and it was like, okay, all the information I needed was always online. That's it. If I didn't have the information, I knew I had to go and get it, right? So it was like, if I needed to learn Excel, it'd be online. You could watch a few videos. And I started realizing these hacks, right? Like in the descriptions, you didn't have to watch a whole video, but if the information was there, the formulas were there, you plug them into Excel or Google Sheets and you could do whatever you needed with it. And It was the same for like learning how to do driveway sealing, right? Someone's on there created a video showing you exactly what to do. And then, you know, like, it just, it all came through. And then buying the materials was like, go to Canadian Tire, right? Like Home Hardware and buying it. It's just like, it was there. And it was like, the information was there for me to learn how to do it. I just had to go and find it.

Right. What I'm getting from this, your learning disability might have been an edge because you're Ways of learning were unconventional to me, at least from from an outsider's perspective, right? And you were you had a different mind on your shoulders. You did things differently. Me, I was in the common educational system. I was always smart. I could adapt to it, but I didn't think of doing these things. The first business that I made money with, funnily enough, because you mentioned Kijiji, I would buy shit on AliExpress and I would resell it physically on Kijiji. I would buy these Invicta watches. That's not an Invicta. Obviously, but the Invicta was pretty prestigious back then, right?

Yeah.

It's like $50. I would buy it for $80. It was gold-plated, and I would resell it on Kijiji for $300, um, Canadian. And then I was like, fuck, I can make money with this. My— it's like $40 an hour instead of my $10 an hour at the golf, right? Um, another interesting one is just like you, I tried to start like a at-home type of service, a mobile car wash. Dude, we bought the car for 6 grand. We bought all kinds of shit, the lawnmower, not the lawnmowers, the car wash equipment, right? Pressure jet, all the soaps and all of that shit. And we printed the flyers, but we never had the guts to distribute these flyers, me and my friends. And we didn't know shit about sales back then. I think we were 18. And because of that, that business never even saw the light of day. So terrible. Where did you actually learn sales on your side?

Dude, it's literally the same story. Like, you know, we first, we came up with the flyer, like the name Seal the Deal. And then we got some guy we went to high school with and we knew to— we didn't know Photoshop back in the day and you needed to know Photoshop. But still, I found this poster. It's in my email. It's hilarious to look at where the technology has come with Canva and everything. And so we built this and You know, where did the door-to-door come from? So at that point, I don't even think I had my first job where I was just standing in a grocery store selling credit cards. You want something that, you know, you have to have fear, like get rid of all fear and doubt, that's a great job, even though you're selling credit cards, which is soul-sucking. But yeah, I don't know. As a kid, I used to go door-to-door and You know, if it was the fall, I would rake leaves. If it was the winter, I'd shovel snow. And I got used to going door to door there. And like, you know, there were these books they made you sell in school or they'd— for charity, or you'd have to sell chocolate bars for like— those were things that I did. And I was nervous doing it, like super nervous. I have such bad— like, I have bad anxiety, but I'm working on it, right? Like, it's one of the things that I'm working towards. Like, how do I get on stage? How do I do more? How do I get in front of people? It's like, That is a goal of mine, and it's been a goal of mine for as long as I can remember. So, you know, I had a good friend that he had a real, like, his personality is also like, he'll just get in front of anyone and say whatever he wants. So, you know, I had the friend, we put the posters together, he had the car, so we didn't have to spend $6,000 on a car. He had the car, this beater, it was this Honda Civic from like the '90s. And I was like to him, okay, listen, We'll ruin your car. You'll take a little extra percentage to clean the car and everything. We had the posters, we had the pitch, you know, pay for like our tuition, because that's what they were helping us do. And we just did it. I think, you know, I think everything aligned, right? I had the friend to help. And I think the other thing is like back then, I also used to rely heavily on other people. Like it wasn't just me. If it was probably just me, I wouldn't have done it. But I had a friend who had the car, who was willing to go to the door with me and do the pitch with me. So it wasn't just me.

We didn't have balls, right? Like, why doesn't society not teach you to have balls, right? 'Cause me, my first sales experience was probably as abrupt, if not more than yours, was like picking up the phone and doing 200 cold calls a day, selling LED lights to architects and engineers with my weird-ass French accent, getting hung up on, 80% of the time and 10% of the time getting a fuck off, right? I think that's where my ego died, or at least a part of it, right? Died in the name of money and capitalism, right? And after that, I was fully equipped to launch my own business. So why do you think we're so afraid when we start? Why do we have to wait at like 19, 20, 21, like to To learn how that shit works and just have real-life experiences like this?

I mean, doubt is all around us. You know, I had this mentor, if it was so easy to start a business, everyone would start a business and be successful. That's the whole thing about being successful. It's, you know, we are, a lot of folks are scared of success or they don't know what it looks like. And we latch onto the things that we know. So, you know, the scariest thing is rejection. It is like, you know, whether you're dating, whether you're in business, whether you're just asking a simple question, we don't want to hear no. And I think when it comes to, to, to like something we can control, especially when doing hard things, we can control our feelings of comfort, right? So like, why jump in and do something super hard when you know there's an easier path, or it feels like an easier path? To me, that sounds like the harder path, you know, 9 to 5. That actually sounds harder to me. It's because like I have to take instructions from someone, and I can handle taking instructions. I like to listen. I'm working on that. But, you know, like, we define what a harder path is and what sounds harder. And I actually just got this tattooed on my arm here. It says, find your easy, right? Like, so the question is, and I think this is what we need to be figuring out younger, it's like, what is that easy? No one ever talks about in school, like, what are you natural at? Like, what is it that brings you fulfillment. I never heard that in school, right? It was like, this is what society needs, this is what you need to do. And, but it's like, what are you natural at? What is just so much easier? Because when you find that thing, that's— door-to-door sales might not be easy. Sales, it takes a special person to do sales, right? But it's like, okay, so sales isn't for you. What is easy for you? And then there's some people like you're in school and they're naturally school smart, right? They are going to be the doctors, they are going to be the lawyers. It just comes easy to them, right? But then There's a huge percentage of the population where it's just like, we force them into this, like, you know, this glass box. And it's like, this is where you have to perform. And it's like, no. And then you start to doubt yourself in that, right? Because you're like, I don't fit into this.

Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. I think though, we should teach kids to just go out there and, uh, strike conversation out of nowhere. You know, like, uh, I study a bunch of, uh, people and, uh, this week was like, Neil Strauss, the pickup artist, you know?

Yeah.

Bad example, but just like go up to people, strike conversation, and just try to find commonalities really quickly, and teach kids to actually do that, but we teach them that strangers are scary, right? And careful, don't talk to them. I'm thinking of starting an AI school, and we would put them in front of, what, 10, 15 founders and CEOs on a daily basis, Right, and they could approach them, they could pitch them their stuff, right, and get feedback. I think that's important, right? I also subscribe to natural stuff, uh, that you mentioned. I certainly subscribe to me, uh, buying shit on AliExpress for so cheap and reselling it at 10x, 20x markup, like a simple business model, and having the kid understand that, hey, look, you can make three or ten times more money doing entrepreneurship stuff than being employed, and you can buy more candies, right? It's like it's it's A is is leads to B. But yeah, I'm sort of sometimes I'm reflecting upon this past, and I was like, why haven't not been introduced to entrepreneurship and making money and basic principles, right? First principles earlier on in life, even at college level, they would give us like classes about entrepreneurship. of how to make a fucking business plan.

Yeah.

Dude, have you done a business plan as of late? Like me, I just go to market, I gather feedback, I'm like, oh, there's a product-market fit there. I talk to people, right? Like on this podcast, and, um, I think like kids, kids could very much use that. To talk about your current stuff, right? Because I want to get to the current stuff. CoHealth, um, you had the Nexit in 2020, tell us about a bit more about that one, you started in 2015, and you got acquired by Akto, tell us what happened there.

Yeah, you know, we were working on, as I said, that was my MBA, I had no business experience prior, so, you know, you start building something, and you're like, oh my God, this is gonna be the greatest thing, and, you know, like, we're gonna do all these amazing things, and we did some great things, I think some of the hardest things for a founder to do is to be real with themselves and ask, are we the people to get this business to the next stage? Especially when there's a lot of bureaucracy that we have to deal with. So towards the end of that business, it was clear to me that we needed to bring on another partner, one that had more connections and more access to us that could help take the company to the next level. You know, it was also a Canadian business. We didn't have US clients. We were actively trying, but, you know, the Canadian healthcare system, you learn a lot, like, you know, there's a lot of bureaucracy involved. So it just made sense to hand it off to some folks that could help us see it through. And so we exited that. My business partner stayed on and helped bring it into Akto. I was really focused on taking everything that I learned and applying it to the next. You know, I just, there's always something more out there. I know for me, I need to be focused, but it was like, wow, I've learned so much. If only I could do it again, this is what I would do next time.

Yeah. The next one was Caribou, right?

Yeah. And Caribou—

Great CMO for that one.

Yeah. Caribou. It's interesting, right? I'm Canadian. Mentioned it a few times here. We became experts in US health insurance. We went to like financial visors and their clients. I would explain to them Medicare and the Affordable Care Act and everything. You know how I learned how to do that? YouTube, the internet, just watching videos, listening. Like, all the information is readily available. It's that people don't want— like, they, they don't want to put in the effort, right? They're willing to pay people sometimes to give them information, right? The reality is, and I'm not saying go and do this, but if you want information about your health. It's all out there. It's just the thing is, we're not trained how to decipher what is accurate and what is not. That's the same with any piece of information. It's like you can become an expert pretty quickly. I think Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours. I didn't spend 10,000 hours in the U.S. health insurance system, but I spent a lot of time learning about it and reinforcing and finding the right people. Surrounding myself with the right people helped. That's what we did. We found the right mentors, the right advisors. And then we found a problem that people weren't solving. It was the biggest reason for bankruptcy in retirement in the US. Okay. So if you go to your financial advisor, they didn't have the actual unit economics. They would just give you a standard number. And it was like, okay, well, if this is the biggest cost in retirement, shouldn't you have more accurate numbers? And that's what we did. We built software to do that. We built a process for analyzing the person's current health insurance, their medications and everything. And that was a really cool business. I wound up exiting that, I think, 3 years ago. But yeah, it was, you know, I learned from that business how important clear roles and responsibilities are, to define that early on, and to have that plan in place, you know, from the beginning, to have difficult conversations with your business partners, with the people, your people. This is the other thing. It's like, we're scared to have difficult conversations. I knew I was, but now I know, like, if you don't have the difficult conversations early on, How much more, like, how, how, you know, difficult they become later on.

Yeah, dude, uh, ticking time bombs for sure. There's also such a thing as having too much of these, right? Like, there's the right equilibrium because both me and Sunny were like too radically transparent people, right? And sometimes it's like, okay, let's go, let's go easy now. It's just like, uh, Let's let it cruise for some time. That led to, I mean, were you like financially set after these 2 exits? Like what was going on through your mind after that? And when was the move to Mexico?

I was already in Mexico. I came during the pandemic. I've always wanted to live somewhere tropical, to be honest. And, you know, the pandemic was a great time to do that. I went to Florida and I was like, oh, this is awesome. It was just my calling. So, and then Mexico, there were a ton of entrepreneurs that were here. Bali was shut down. Southeast Asia was kind of shut down. And it was also just not the right time zone. So it was like Playa del Carmen, let's go. And so the exit, I'd say it put me in a position to invest in myself. It gave me some capital that I could put towards the next thing. And that's what I did. I've always believed in investing in myself. Right? Like, I am the best investment.

Yeah.

You know, put money in the stock market because it feels safer. But I also know that like where I'm going to get the biggest returns is in myself as an entrepreneur and building something new. So yeah, that business gave me the ability to invest a little in myself and, you know, I invested in building my brand and building content on on LinkedIn to start. I thought that that was where I would find the next thing to work on. And I guess, you know, accidentally I was right. It led to a business that I would never have thought that I would be building.

Yeah, Lumoso is like, I ran an outsourced sales agency for quite some time, almost 10 years, managed over 2,000 employees, half of which were like salespeople. I did that through from 2015 to 2020. So exactly when you started, I stopped because it was like, this is fucking hell.

Yeah.

But I'm going to tell you, you're the 3rd guy in 2 weeks that I speak to that is scaling a VA agency and potentially the right way. I mean, I've never been like in VA specifically, and I love the move you made with CS, right? You're niching down. Meet my niche with sales, right? You need to sell an end product. Why is there a renaissance in like starting these these VA companies, right? Like just yesterday Cherry Assistant, they leverage South African talent. The day before Oceans Talent, they leverage Sri Lankan talent. Oceans is used by the way. I think they're like 500 to 1,000 employees. They've been started by the co-founder of What's that called again? The news outlet. I think this guy's from Toronto as well. Um, but anyway, it's a big one. Um, why do you think there's a renaissance in, in that specific niche?

Yeah, you know, I think call it a renaissance, call it like just people realizing that there's really good talent that's accessible now to them. I think it started during the pandemic, right, where we realized that Talent isn't landlocked. We can get access to them. So why now? Because, you know, I think it's just more accessible. I think that this— and I've talked to a lot of people in this space— it's not that it's something that's new. It's— I think there's a combination of things, right? And I'm just like reflecting on it. I think you have a lot of folks that are starting businesses, right? It's easier than ever to start a business. That means there's more competition. It doesn't mean it's easy, but it's easier than ever to start a business. More people want to start a business, right? They need a team. They can't just go out and build a team. It's expensive. And I think accessing global talent, highly qualified individuals, you know, at a competitive rate that's fair to these individuals where they live, it makes it feasible to start a business, to grow a business, to to be that one person, you know, solopreneur. So I think that's one reason. I think the technology makes it easy. I think AI is also making it so it just makes sense to also leverage global talent. And I think it just, you know, I'm hoping a lot of people want to do good. There's a lot of people in this world that have a lot of talent and people want to give them access. People want to Um, provide, you know, equality to folks not living in their geography. That's my hope, right?

Yeah, me, it's like, oh, AI is replacing humans, so not a good time to launch that. But what's currently happening is AI does, I don't know, 80% of the work through vibe coding and actually need a human to finish it. Hey, Cody— Corey, thanks for, uh, being on. I need to run because the next guest is here. Where can people Find out more about you and BlueMoso.

Yeah, bluemoso.com, B-L-U-E-M-O-S-O dot com. You can find me on LinkedIn, Substack. Started a newsletter there, takingmytimeback.com. Find me there, and then csmoso.com is more of our client success, client experience offering. So csmoso.com.

As Corey and Charles for another founder.