Leadership Journeys [235] - Jonathan Brun - "Anything valuable and lasting takes time to build."

Welcome to Choosing Leadership, a podcast for high performers with big dreams and for leaders who know that they are more powerful than the level that they are currently playing. I am Sumit Gupta, your host and the founder CEO of the Deploy Yourself School of Leadership. I am here to help the best leaders get better and to help organizations massively improve their output and impact. And at the same time eradicating workplace stress. Yes, completely eradicating, not just reducing, completely eradicating. I believe in creating a future and a work culture where people wait for Mondays, not Fridays, and get to do their most meaningful work. The aim of this podcast is not to provide you more content, but instead shift the context under which you operate. This podcast is titled Choosing Leadership because that is what leadership is, a choice. In each episode, I will celebrate leaders who have made such choices, which are not always easy and comfortable, but which has helped them get to where they are today. And let us celebrate the leader in us for choosing to move over our fears, for choosing to be motivated by something bigger, than ourselves and for choosing to deal with every challenge that comes on the way. Let us celebrate you right now for stepping into the unknown and taking courageous action, as those were the moments when you chose leadership. At the end, I will share how you can be our next guest on this podcast. And with that, let's get started. Jonathan is the founder and CEO at Mnemonic. In the interview, Jonathan candidly shares the ups and downs of his own leadership journey, admitting mistakes, learning on the fly, and finding purpose beyond profit. His heartfelt honesty offers reassurance to leaders that being real, staying curious, and caring for people matters more than having it all figured out. Hey Jonathan, welcome to the Chosen Leadership Podcast.

All right, thanks for having me.

Why don't you start by sharing a little bit about yourself and what is it that keeps you occupy this?

Sure. So my name is Jonathan Brun. I'm the president and founder of a company called Mnemonic, based in Montreal, Canada. It's a business that helps companies around the world stay in compliance with laws, regulations, and engineering standards. I started the business in 2008, so it's been about 17 years. It goes pretty fast. And just growing and helping the business grow over the last 17 years. We're now about 55 people with offices in the US, China, people in all parts of the world, Europe and India, Dubai, and other places as well. At a very high level, that's kind of what we do. It's a SaaS application, B2B SaaS, about 900 customers around the world across pretty much all industries.

Perfect. Thank you for sharing that. Before we get into that, can you share a bit of your backstory? What got you into entrepreneurship? What got you into even what you were thinking about compliance? I think it's not something which you hear a lot when you talk about starting up a company. Can you share a bit of the backstory and how you like starting this?

Sure. I think it was always a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit. When I was a kid, I had little businesses. When I was a teenager, I would help install computers and networks and give lessons to the moms of my friends. On how to use the internet and things like that. I grew up in the '90s. I studied as an engineer, so I did a degree in metallurgical engineering, the production of metals, steel, copper, nickel, all these metals. And I worked in a few places around the world, but notably I worked in China for about a year in the steel industry, so steel manufacturing. When I was there, I saw a number of environmental and safety issues at the steel sites where I was located. After China, I decided to come back to Montreal where I'm from and reorient my career into more the environmental protection space. This was around 2005 when sustainability was starting to become a thing in the media. I joined a consulting company, offered engineering services and consulting services to help businesses reduce their impact on the environment primarily. They had started building a database of the environmental laws and regulations in Canada. Canada has a very decentralized system. There's 10 provinces, 3 territories, and each province has its own set of regulations. If you're operating in multiple provinces, it's like operating in different countries. It's a blessing and a curse in many ways. They started doing this database for 2 clients of theirs. And after a couple of years of working there as a consultant, I decided I didn't really want to be a consultant. I wanted to do something on my own. And I proposed to buy this database from them because they were losing a lot of money on it. It's one thing to build the database and the software. The other thing is you have to grow it, you have to maintain it. So there's a fair bit of operating expenses. And the business model for a software business is very different from the business model from a consulting business. Consultants get paid by the hour. You have to invest a lot of money before you start to see a return. So they were losing money on the project and I said, hey, why don't I buy this from you? I'll try and turn it into a standalone business. That is financially sustainable. And I didn't have any money. I was 26 years old at the time. So I said, look, I don't have any money, but I'll pay you out of our future profits. And they agreed to that. We basically transferred that asset to a new corporate entity and then we started rebuilding it in a different way, changed the business model, changed the product offering, and over time figured out what worked in the marketplace and started to grow the business. Get more customers. We added more regulated areas like health and safety, and then we added more jurisdictions like the United States and Europe and other things. And over time, basically build up our customer base. So that's more or less how it started. It was this journey through engineering into environmental compliance and risk, and then starting the business to try and turn around this initial product or prototype they had built at the company.

So when you took that call, what was the driving factor? Was it starting something on your own? Was it like entrepreneurship or was it you saw an opportunity, you saw a problem statement and you wanted to fix that?

Yeah, I don't think that I thought through it very much. Like it was just, I wanted to do something on my own and I knew I wanted to do my own company. I wasn't necessarily particularly picky about what that company was going to do. I do like technical things and I like software and I can program. Had I been in a different place, I probably would have started some sort of completely different business. So it's not like I had a deep passion for compliance when I was 26 years old. I think I actually have developed a passion for compliance over the years as I've learned more about it. But when I was 26, like, I really didn't know anything. I thought I knew a lot more than I did. If there's one regret I definitely had was I didn't take enough time to study, and to learn the field that I was in. I assumed way too many things and that led to mistakes. It led to wasted effort. And when it comes to regrets, I think I should have spent more time studying the field before diving into it. But it wasn't some sort of grand thought-out plan. It was really more, hey, you guys have this product. They were willing to sell it to me free or a low price. Let me give this a shot and see how it goes. And then over time, adjusting got it to work. Over time, I've studied a lot more compliance. I think I understand it pretty well now. And so it's evolved a lot.

Even earlier you said you were helping your friends' moms, right? So where does this desire to do something on your own, where is that coming from? Because it takes guts, it takes that courage, right? Even when you're not prepared to take a bet on something or to do something on your own, where is that desire or even that motivation coming from? Is that something from your family, from parents or some other inspiration?

My parents, they were not entrepreneurs. My father's an engineer. He worked for a big company. My mother was in the financial services sector working for a big bank. I think my grandfather was an entrepreneur, but I never met him. So it wasn't a family thing. I think it really just was in my DNA. Like even young, I just enjoyed doing my own projects, doing my own thing, trying to make it work. I do think a lot of it is DNA for better or for worse. And then I grew up in the era of Steve Jobs and Apple, and that was definitely a big inspiration for me when I was young. Younger was just that story of Silicon Valley and what have you. So I always just had a deep appreciation and interest in entrepreneurship, but I wouldn't say that it was due to any person or family thing. It just was in my bones. And I think that's true for most entrepreneurs. Obviously I can't speak for everybody, but the entrepreneurs I know, particularly the ones that have been successful, it's like this itch. You just can't help yourself. And so that's, at least that's my analysis. I don't know that you can take somebody who's not really entrepreneurial and make them entrepreneurial. I think it's in your DNA. And then obviously you want to equip the right people with tools and knowledge to make sure they do a good job of it. But yeah, in my case, at least I can speak for myself, it was always there, even when I was very young.

17 years, that's a long journey. So one thing which I would commend is the consistency behind the commitment. Can you share a bit more on 17 years later now? How has that vision, how has the passion evolved or grown into what is it that you want to create? What is it that you leave behind? How do you think about it that way? Because one thing which I also see with many entrepreneurs is like this constant itch of doing something new, trying something new. So the 17 years in consistency is, I would say, something really commendable. Can you elaborate a bit on that? How do you see the next phase of what you're building today?

What in the media and in popular culture is often a sensationalized concept of anything, whether we're talking about politics, whether we're talking about entrepreneurship, you see these entrepreneurs like, oh, we went from $0 to $100 million in ARR in 2 years, then we sold it for $1 billion, or whatever. Like, those are like a tiny fraction of businesses. The vast majority of businesses that succeed, obviously most businesses fail, but the ones that succeed, it usually takes decades to make something substantial. The overnight success is really the exception, not the rule. And I was always inspired by companies that had that sort of long-term vision, that long-term thinking. They call it like the infinite game now or things like that. When I started the company, I even wrote blog posts about taking inspiration from Japanese companies, some of whom have been around for 500 years, and they've obviously changed a lot over those 500 years. So I do firmly believe that to build something that has a lot of value and that's going to last, you, it takes time. You just can't do it overnight and it takes consistency. So there's this story of the two Arctic explorers that were in Antarctica, which I always tell the team here. You had Scott, who was the British guy, and Amundsen, the Norwegian. Scott was this gung-ho British guy who thought he was super tough, and so he went down to Antarctica with ponies and with a lack of equipment and provisions and a lack of training. His goal was just to go as fast as he could to get to the South Pole. And he ended up going down there and basically dying, him and his whole crew. Whereas the Norwegian, his way of doing it was a lot of training. He went down with husky dogs instead of ponies, a lot of provisions. And then his goal was every day we're going to do 20 miles, whether it's good weather or bad weather, we're going to do 20 miles. On the good days, we do 20 miles, we rest. On the bad days, it's a bit tougher. But this consistency of 20 miles every day with a lot of preparation and the right equipment led him to be successful and to reach the South Pole and to make it back safely. And I do think the majority of successful businesses follow that sort of consistency and planning, but you just hear a lot about these overnight successes. How many of these overnight successes then go on to collapse a few years later? So it takes time. And so where are we at on the journey today? I think in many ways, even though it's 17 years, I feel like we're just getting started. There's still so much opportunity. We've acquired 5 businesses over the course of the 17 years, and we're now in a position where our brand is starting to be more recognized and more respected, and we have enough of a customer base that we can start to really invest in a variety of initiatives and grow the business. I really feel like we're just getting started. I have no goals to sell the company or do anything like that. We're one of the last independent companies in our space. Everybody else has been acquired by private equity investors or by large strategics. And I want to, as much as possible, keep the company independent and strong financially and build something. We were at a customer a couple weeks ago, one of our customers, Atlas Copco. They're a Belgium company. They started in 1873 and they're still operating today. They're publicly traded, very large company. And so I have great respect for that. These are companies that survived wars and famines and massive changes. And it takes time to build that. Most successful entrepreneurs are actually people who start in their 40s. They're not the 20-year-old programmer whiz kids. So it takes time, it takes experience. That's my belief at least. And that's what we've been trying to do here at Mnemonic. So I still feel we're really much, still very much at the beginning of the company's journey. And I hope to build something that will last much longer than myself. Over time.

Can you share a bit more about that vision? Like that will last beyond you. And then also you said something wonderful, right? That 20 miles in Antarctica every day. What's a version of that for you? So the vision and then the small daily or like weekly or whatever it is.

Yeah, we, a few years ago, we embarked on using a framework for growing the business called Scaling Up. It's by a fellow by the name of Verne Harnish. I definitely recommend it for anybody who's trying to scale a business. Within that framework, they recommend setting quarterly goals for the various parts of the business. And then that fits within a broader, like, strategic vision. We actually do it on 2-month cycles. So we have goals for various teams for every 2 months, and we work— we report on them weekly, and we try and demonstrate progress towards those 2-month goals. And every 2 months, we revisit the goals, update them, change them, add some new ones depending on what's happening in the business or in the marketplace. So that's been a really good way of doing our 20 miles. It's like, that's our 20 miles every 2 months. And yeah, I mean, I think it's that consistency and clarity and that those goals and the progress are visible to everybody at the company. We review them for half an hour on Mondays and it's really just helped us stay focused. And we chose 2 months because even quarterly we found was too long in a relatively small business. So we wanted to have a higher kind of frequency of revision of our goals. But that's been very positive. And in terms of lasting beyond myself, a lot of that comes down to building the team, having a lot of other people that are very competent, putting in place systems, procedures, processes. Many small businesses are dependent on like their founder or creator, and even large businesses too sometimes. And I definitely want to try and avoid that to the best that I can. And so that's systems, processes, highly qualified people, motivated people, incentive structures for people. That lead them to want to do the best for the company. We should all be thinking about the best interests of the company, not solely our individual best interests. That's what we're trying to do.

Yeah. And even in your industry, right? As a result of you being a successful company, what will that create in the industry? What will that create over a period of decades? What will that leave behind for the customers that probably doesn't exist today?

Right. Yeah, it's a good question. Every month at Mnemonic, we watch a movie or a documentary about an industrial disaster. There's been many industrial disasters, whether it's in India and the Macondo, Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, various chemical products. These disasters have happened all around the world and are still happening and will always happen. We use those as learning experiences for the staff. So what we're trying to accomplish in the industry, we help avoid disasters that are linked to compliance, like poor engineering, poor quality control, poor compliance laws and regulations, put people's lives in danger. Or outright kill people, create contamination in the environment or cybersecurity issues. So we have this idea of trying to help make businesses more mature, help them implement a system that's fundamentally reduced the risk of a big problem, make that system as accessible and as easy to use as possible, because it is complicated. You're talking about hundreds and hundreds of laws that will apply to any given company, hundreds of engineering documents they need to use to build their products. And there's still tremendous work to be done. When you look under the hood of the vast majority of businesses around the world, there remain a tremendous amount of compliance problems. And even these are well-run publicly traded companies. So there's a lot of work to be done. And that's our vision. I just finished a great book called Bottle of Lies, which is about the generic drug industry in China and India and a few other places. And basically the lack of quality control and compliance which leads to poor quality or low quality drugs being manufactured and sold all throughout the world. And that is literally killing people. So our vision of how we want to help the industry is really helping them reduce their risk, reducing their compliance problems, improve the quality of their products. I'm convinced that we have plenty of work that will long outlive me.

Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I think that's a huge and global and probably never-ending vision, right? Now, coming back to the current state of the company and the growth path that you have in the future, what do you see the most difficult or challenging part of your route?

I think that one of the most challenging parts of our road is the fact that we're an independent, self-funded company and we're competing against much larger entities that have financial backing and who can spend more money on marketing and sales and to a certain extent product development as well. So we have to be very strategic, very nimble. We have to pick carefully what we're going to work on, where we're going to invest our resources. I think that's one of our biggest challenges for sure, is basically competing against much larger players. Now, obviously we have advantages. We can move faster. We can deliver better customer support. We can do a whole bunch of things they struggle with. But I'd say that's one big challenge. For sure, AI is inevitably going to change many industries, including ours. And so trying to figure out what does AI look like within the context of compliance? How can we deliver efficiencies to our customers while at the same time assuring them of quality and of accuracy in the data? Because if you go too fast on the AI, there's risks of errors, of a false sense of confidence. And so that's a balancing act that frankly we're still trying to figure out, and I think everybody in the industry is. So I think there's a number of challenges, but yeah, those would probably be the two at the top of my mind is the size of our competitors and the whole AI angle and how that will impact businesses, how they buy services, how they use services, things of that nature. Yeah.

At the same time, what I see is that you have some unique advantages, unique strengths of doing things your own way. And what you were just talking about, right? The size of your company. So we, they have more marketing money. They have a bigger brand or a shinier brand. Does that require like from you or from the key people when they represent a company outside more from a leadership and authenticity, boldness point of view, they can stand for themselves, they can take a powerful stand and speak more boldly even without a marketing budget to push a message. Does it require more from you and from your key people on a leadership point of view?

Yeah, I think for sure we need to make sure that our salespeople are Highly qualified that they really actually know their domain and their materials. Same thing on the customer success team. So we spend a lot of time trying to train them and educate them in compliance and risk management because we don't necessarily have the brand that you can just rely on. The famous expression was always like, nobody gets fired for buying IBM. So there's a lot of companies out there that have established a brand over decades usually, and that brand just carries them like, oh, we'll buy the service from I'm gonna buy my car from Toyota, not 'cause I know anything about cars, but just because I know Toyota makes good cars. And so if I buy a Toyota, it's like a safe bet. The salesperson doesn't really matter that much. So we're in a position where we need to make sure our customer-facing staff are very good, very knowledgeable, very professional, because our brand, though we do have some reputation, is not as powerful as some of the other brands out there. So for sure, that's part of our challenge. So far we've been able to punch and fight our way into the market. And yeah.

And if you could have like either for yourself or for your, like these key people who are representing the company, if you could have any one skill or ability, like just at the press of a button, what would that be?

If I had to press the button to embed something in people, it would be the ability and particularly the desire to learn. What I've seen over the years is leaders are readers is the expression that I've heard that I think makes a lot of sense. So getting people to obviously want to learn, want to improve their knowledge of what they're doing, want to get good at what they're doing. Self-motivation is probably the thing I would press a button and get people to do. So many of us get into routines where we're, oh, I'm doing my job, I'm doing the stuff that's being asked of me, but I'm not necessarily reading new publications or books or watching videos or improving my skillset. To either become more knowledgeable or to become more efficient. And that's, I think, the skill that I try and encourage people to develop. Obviously, it's very difficult to do that. Some people are more motivated than others, but for sure, that desire to always want to get better at your job is, for me, the most important thing. And frankly, one of the hardest things to find when you're looking to hire and retain people and what have you.

Yeah. Let's zoom out a little bit, right? Even outside of what you do. Actually, this has consumed the last 17 years, but there is more to life than just what you do. Can you share something which is interesting, which is exciting about who you are, but which is beyond what you do, right? Maybe something which your colleagues might not be aware of.

I used to be fairly involved in a number of nonprofit organizations. I started a few myself that have now moved on and been managed professionally. A lot of them were around government transparency initiatives, access to government data, various social causes around affordable housing, around basic income, around some like civil conflicts around the world, nonviolent actions. So those topics have always been of interest to me and I've been involved in various organizations that work on those topics. I'm certainly a big advocate of nonviolent noncooperation when it comes to improving political or political conflicts, taking a lot of inspiration from Gandhi and other leaders that did nonviolent noncooperation. So that's a bit of a side passion for me. I used to do more of that, but now I have 3 young children. So my time is very limited between the company and the children, but definitely I advocate for having a balanced life. Life is very short. I'm 41 now. I'll be 42 next week. So having a balanced life. That gives you fulfillment, gives you a purpose, but not spending all your waking hours working, I think is important as well. And I'm a big advocate of not being too greedy. I mean, in the sort of the business world, sometimes we celebrate these people that have billions and billions of dollars or achieved these heights in whatever way they have. And I'm a big believer that you don't need that much to be happy. Obviously you need a certain amount of income, stability, and what have you, but learning when enough is enough, I think is one of the most important skills in life. I see so many people that are very wealthy but miserable. I thought like, what's the point? So I'm an advocate of that. And there's people that I really admire. There's a book called The Billionaire Who Wasn't There, and it's a book about a guy by the name of Chuck Feeney, I think his name was. And he ended up making about $4 billion by creating the duty-free stores in the airports. This is going back into the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s. Eventually sold that business to LVMH. Anyways, what's interesting about his story is not so much the money he made, but the fact that he lived very humbly, a basic apartment, and he gave away all that money in his lifetime before he passed away. But what's even more remarkable, he kept $40 million for his 4 kids, I think it was, but $40 million out of $4 billion. And he did it all anonymously. And I think that is the most noble way to do it. Some people make a lot of money, but then they want their names on buildings. He did it all anonymously through charitable organizations and gave all his money away and asked for no spotlight or publicity. And that humility, I think, is really quite inspirational to me at least, because the ego can lead you to very bad places. That's somebody I take inspiration from, and there are other people around the world like him, but I think there's tremendous amount of good that can be done in the world. and I hope to contribute in my little way over time.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. One last question before we wrap up. As you rightly said, we also live in this world where there is the sensationalization of almost everything, especially in the business world and especially in North America where it's a very individualistic culture. But you, what you are talking about is long-term business value for hundreds of years. And you're talking about people like Gandhi who have created huge impact. Without any personal gain, right? So for you, does that create a friction? Because you are also leading people who want to grow, who are living in that culture. And is there a desire for you to contribute to something bigger beyond your company itself? You used the word greed, and I want to bring in a word ambition. Do you feel a friction that ambition to grow or ambition to even contribute or to make a difference presents itself when you lead an organization or when you have those big dreams for yourself?

I think you can be ambitious without being greedy. It boils down to where are the profits going to accrue and are the profits all going to accrue in your pockets or are you going to share those profits with the team members that helped you get there, obviously with other shareholders, things of that nature. I think Gandhi was a very ambitious person in the sense that he wanted to liberate India from British rule. But as you said, he did it not for his own aggrandizement. I definitely think I'm an ambitious person. I'm a very competitive person. I love to win and I hate losing. I hate losing more than I enjoy winning. I think that's true for a lot of competitive people is I hate to lose. So whether it's a contract that we're bidding on or competitor or things like that, I view business as a game. It's a game. It's a long-term game. It's an infinite game. The rules are always changing because the market's changing, the people are changing, but it's a game like playing chess or other games. And so it's fun. And yeah, we're very ambitious. I want to build a strong business that stands on its own without me and that provides good working conditions, a good life balance to the staff. As we grow our profits over the years, the plan is to share that through profit sharing and what have you with the team members who contribute. So I don't know if there's necessarily a conflict between ambition and greed and humility. If there's one thing that drives the world and drives a lot of the sensationalism that we see, it's not even necessarily greed. It's actually envy. Charlie Munger, who just passed away, he used to run Berkshire Hathaway with Warren Buffett. He was asked like, what drives the world? And it's envy for, hey, my neighbor has this nice car, this nice house, et cetera. And I think envy is actually one of the most dangerous things, is being envious of what other people have. That can make you very unhappy. But anyways, that's my way of thinking about it. I don't expect everybody to think the same way, but the goal is to be ambitious and to build something that lasts a long time and provides a lot of value to the customers, to our partners, to our team members, that helps improve the community through all of that. Because people with good salaries and good jobs end up usually being good community members. So it's all connected, I think, at the end of the day.

Thank you for adding that last part, that being competitive and hating to lose. And yet being ambitious about not just for you, but for a larger purpose, right? For creating a company which outlasts profit sharing and even like everything that we spoke about. It's really about service, but not in a way of where, where you still play the for-profit game. You still are ambitious, but you're not doing it for envy or just for filling yourself up with ego or, oh, I can both have them. Can you put that? So before we wrap up, anybody who's listening who wants to find out more or reach out to you, what is the best way for them to do so?

The best way, LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn, easy to find, just Jonathan Brun, and feel free to send a connection request or a message or anything like that. Obviously, if you come through Montreal, let me know I'm around. And then, yeah, I think that's probably the simplest way is just LinkedIn. And then we can always switch over to email or something else afterwards.

Perfect. I will include those links with the show notes. And as we wrap this up, I want to thank you once again, Jonathan, for coming on the show, sharing what you have done in the last 17+ years, but also how you have done it in your own unique way. So I want to thank you not just for the success and what you have done, but also for being who you are and what you shared in this conversation today.

It's my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me on the show. And it was a pleasure and hopefully it inspires a couple other people to go on their own journeys.

That's it for this episode of Choosing Leadership with Sumit Gupta. I choose leadership every time I record this podcast, and I invite you to do the same. I invite you to design a life of joy, meaning, pride, and satisfaction, not just for yourself, but for everybody around you. If you got something out of this episode, Would you share this episode on social media? And if you know somebody who would be a great guest, can you tag them on social media to let them know about the show? And if you are a leader who wants to acknowledge how far you have come and have big dreams for the future, please reach out to me to be a guest on this podcast. And I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. This is what I do most naturally. To lovingly and gently provoke you, to help you see your own light, to help you see what you are already capable of. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up, ratings, and reviews go a long way to help promote the show, and it means a lot to me and my team. If you want to know more, go to deployyourself.com. And subscribe to my newsletter or follow me on LinkedIn. I want to thank everyone who contributed to making this show a reality, and I want to thank you for listening. Always remember that you are enough, you are loved, and you matter. This is Sumit. Until next time, keep choosing leadership.