Alex Benjamin - President of You Move Me

On today's episode of Founder Journey, we take a look at the journey of Alex Benjamin, a multi exited entrepreneur that has built not only a fintech business, but also a private equity firm. And more recently, in his role as CEO of Umumi, Alex has been helping his franchisees on their own entrepreneurial journeys.

3, 2, 1. Hey everyone.

Welcome to today's episode of Founder Journeys. Today we've got a great Australian entrepreneur that's a new Canadian as well, one of the first actual applicant through the startup Visa program. Many of you know that follow launch as we are a startup Visa provider and we work with international entrepreneurs around the world. Alex originally hails from Australia. He is a multi exited entrepreneur. He's built multiple companies which we'll dive into today. And I think the last one was acquired what, 12, 15 months ago and since then he's jumped to the other side of the table and built an equity fund or a private equity firm, making some acquisitions, making investments. And he has recently taken on the role of CEO of a large franchise. Alex, welcome to Founder Journeys and please tell us a little about yourself and this new franchise that you're now the CEO of.

Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me on and great to meet everyone. Just some quick background on me. I'm Australian. I grew up in Melbourne and started my career actually in investment banking working on the telephones in a call center just as I'd come out of university when I was 21 and I didn't want to, you know, I really wanted to get to work early in my career and try to. My father had worked in a bank and I felt that could be an interesting career for me. I really like the stock market and, and I managed to talk my way into meeting a lot of the stockbrokers and traders at the bank that I was working at. And within 18 months I was on the trading floor and I got a really great insight into what it was to have people ran businesses. We had a lot of companies that would come and talk to us, come talk to all the stockbrokers about their businesses trying to raise money and certainly was an excellent taste for me in 2005, you know, it was really at a really interesting time in the stock market and obviously it crashed a couple of years after that and I learned a ton. And all this is to say it really took me to this point, to a point as I turned 30, that I really wanted to reevaluate my career and I was not somebody who wanted to do more study. I really wanted to do. And so I got into the world of entrepreneurship and building two startups. And that's really what I've spent the last eight to nine years doing of my life, is committing myself to create interesting products that solve interesting problems. And yeah, I think I'll talk a little bit about that today. But I've spent a lot of time trying to get clear of what I value and what matters to me and that's sort of driven me on my pursuit of what I do now. So yeah.

Sweet. So before you jump into the previous startups, tell us about the current startup that you're in and the industry. Yeah.

I had an interesting proposition sort of land in my lap in the last few months where there's a group called you'd move me in North America, who they're a large moving company, they have a franchise model and they're across just over 20 cities across the US and Canada. And we move people, we don't only move people, we move them and their houses and their families and their lives and have a very interesting position in the market where they sell a premium move to people that like premium experiences. And so we do thousands of moves across North America a month. And given the world and the state that it's in, a lot of people are moving right now. And it was certainly very interesting to me. The company is partly backed by two well known entrepreneurs in Vancouver, Lance Tracy and Laurie Baggio. And I saw it as a big learning opportunity for me to work with two very experienced investors. And it's a business that needs a good leader and they asked me to run it. And there's not too many opportunities to get like that to work with those guys. So we, I'm certainly learning a lot. Look, it's only been two and a half months, but it's great to see the numbers start to perform. And I think the thing that I love and what I know about myself is that Once you're an entrepreneur, 85 to 90% of every business is the same and the differentials are the people in the product. And once you've got the skills to understand the customer purchasing decision, why people buy your product, how you can be different in a market, you suddenly realize, you know, you can go from bioplastic to financial technology, to blockchain to weed, to whatever it happens to be, and you can start to, you know, you realize you can play a hand in every business that you see.

Yeah, I think a lot of our audiences members ears just perked up when you said weed. But I personally have a lot of experience in the Franchise industry. I've owned Dairy Queen franchises for 10 plus years. And so just to clarify you, so you're CEO of. Not a franchisee. You're the CEO of the franchisor. You're the parent company that's now working with independent franchisees around, across Canada or across North America.

Across North America. All of North America. So it's a really, it's an, it's an amazing model and it's, it's really you. And for those who don't understand that model, it's really, you are a service business that provides services to people who buy a franchise from you. So they are the ones out there in the field doing the moving. We don't do it, we just support them with sales and marketing, their financial guidance, operations guidance, a call center, strategy support and basically a brand which when customers come to search for a move, if you're part of a large, well known franchise, the numbers really show in terms of what it costs you. From a search, online search perspective, a brand search is much more cost effective than just being any old moving company.

And so for this Founder Journey series that we're doing, you're actually in a really unique position because not only are you this founder and you're now CEO of this company, but you're also working with each entrepreneur themselves because everyone that has this franchise is an entrepreneur on their own.

Right? They are and they are business owners and they own that business. And so we have, you know, boundaries that we can't step over and they, they also, but we also have very clear guidelines on. They pay us a fee, a royalty every month and we, we support them with services that they need. And you know, it really plays into one of my large values which is like, I do like to see people have success and I like to help others and you know, this is a great opportunity for me to be, you know, a mentor and coach and advisor but also, you know, be the person that complaints get, you know, escalated to people find me on LinkedIn. You know, so I'm dealing with and learning a lot of sort of things, a lot of things that are just very normal. And I think again, if you can, if you can run a business and you've built a couple yourself, like I think it's just fascinating what sort of companies you can get involved in as you get, as you go through your career. I certainly reached a point where I didn't necessarily want to build another one after I had sold the last one. And I've got much more into the world as you touched on before of private equity. So trying to buy smaller businesses, invest in smaller businesses that tick a few boxes for me, that generate recurring revenue and recurring income so that I have more flexibility with what I do and that I don't necessarily have to be tied to a job for the rest of my life. And so. But I'm still very able, fit, willing to work and I'm looking for a great opportunity. And hence this came along and thought, well, this is a good time for me.

Yeah. And I personally know Lance Tracy as well and is a bad person to be learning from and working with as well. So that's a great opportunity. But let's take a side step back. Like your journey. Where did your journey start and what are some of the obstacles that you had to overcome? So we know where you are today, but what led you here and what made you the person that you are?

It's a great question. I think the real pivotal point for me was actually at 30, I'm 39 now. And so at the age of 30, I actually took a year off.

So I've been 2011, 2010, 2011, that's right.

I took a year off work and went traveling for a year. And I'd done pretty well professionally at work. And I. But I wasn't really, I really wasn't enjoying the work and enjoying the people I was with. And that's. No, you know, I was just sort of like where, where I'm at and what am I learning? And in a corporate environment, it can sometimes be. Yeah, it's very hierarchical and are you necessarily going to get what you want? And I think I realized that if I did want to get what I wanted, I would need to build something or try and create something myself and create an organization that represents my values. And I really started thinking about how would I achieve that. And I came to a place where I realized that would be trying to build my own company and I didn't know how to do it. And so I. But I had a fantastic idea, one that I thought was fantastic, and it was a TripAdvisor for aged care homes in Australia. So helping families make better decisions around where to place a family member. And there was, you know, so.

Sorry, take a step back. So the trip advisory company, what exactly did it do?

Well, it was, it was, it was my Idea was like TripAdvisor, but it was to provide reviews. So create a review engine for senior care. So aged care.

Okay.

In Australia. So, you know, that market is a, it's a growing market. There's A huge demographic that are moving towards senior care and senior living. And I felt like my grandparents, my grandmother was going through that experience of transitioning from home into, into a senior facility. And my parents had a lot of difficulty understanding what was good and what wasn't good and where to find somebody. And I spent a lot of time building the website, building out great photographs. I spent a year, you know, trying to build review content and I unfortunately didn't do enough demand testing.

And so this is 2011.

This is, this is about 2020, 12, 2013, 2012.

And so fast forward today, like that's actually a very in demand industry. When you talk to venture capitalists, like that's an area that a lot of them are focusing their attention on senior care and the growing baby boomer population. And so would it have been very different to launch it today as opposed to 2012?

I don't know. I think that what I didn't spend enough time is understanding the why of the customer and why would they use a platform like that. And what I learned was that a lot of customers still rely on their family doctor. They rely on other people who have got a much more detailed understanding of that product, more than just a customer review. And so a review of a hotel or a restaurant is very much different to one of a senior care living facility where this is a 6 or $700,000 investment, if not more, a million dollars of investment to put a family member into an aged care home for some period of time, depending on where you live and what, what sort of budget you have. And so customers might read a review, but they definitely, you know, the decision making process is much more detailed than just reading a review. And so what I found was my product didn't work, people weren't using it, and I hadn't done enough work on the demand side of the equation before I built it. And that's really what changed my. I'm getting a lot into the detail here and you did ask me what was my why. But the fascination of it, really at the core of it for me was I didn't want to do an mba. I did want to learn how to build the business and to run one. And I just had to do this and give it a go. And it didn't work out the way I wanted it to, but it set me up really well for the second business. And then from there, you know, it's just been, I've really invested in my own learning and my own career.

So before we jump into the second business, how did you make the decision to kill the first one time I.

Was like, I felt this. I'd spent close to a year on it and I had met Jonathan Bixby in that year and John was, John was talking to me every six to eight weeks saying, do you want to come to Canada and build a fintech together? And I realized that this would be a very interesting opportunity for me to take what I'd learned. And we were not making progress with, with care review. And at that time, you know, I was really thinking about, you know, does this, would this make, would this make a lot of sense? You know, like, John and I had talked about Lending club and what was happening in the lending space. We'd met sort of, you know, 12 months before I moved to Canada and we saw an opportunity that, yeah, maybe, maybe there would be something to build here in Canada.

And so do you think it's from an entrepreneur founder perspective? It's never easy to put your idea down and move on. Was having another startup to kind of walk into with other partners make that decision easier for you? Or.

There's definitely a real question is like the battle of like cash and how much money you got and how far do you want to throw some, go at something when you, you don't know how it's not working already and you're, you're. This is the first time you've done it. And one of the things I've talked to other entrepreneurs about is like, who you surround yourself with. Because I certainly was surrounded by a lot of people working in jobs. They weren't risk takers, they weren't entrepreneurs that were good mates. But if you ask them for their point of view, it would really, it affected me. Like, I realized, like, I, yeah, you're right. I don't really know what I'm doing, you know, and I didn't have good mentorship at that time. And I, and had, I had what I had when I came to Canada, like, I think it would have been a difference, you know, it would have been a different story for sure. And so obviously being part of the launch Academy community, Stanley park community, and just the, you know, a ton of other entrepreneurs in the. From west to east coast in Canada. I just found it a totally different experience coming here where people were very, very forthcoming with help and mentorship and leadership, and it really just changed. I kind of like had the skills and the energy and it just got me on the right track and I really went hard for it with Landfall.

So just a bit of context for our viewers and listeners. Launch Academy incubator here in Vancouver, Canada. Stanley Park Ventures is a startup studio that was started in Launch Academy and worked at a launch Academy and their entrepreneurs started their businesses within Launch Academy and we kind of shared resources and gave access to a lot of the stuff that we had at lunch. So when Jonathan Bixby connected with you and you guys talked about building this new startup in the lending space, how did you get convinced by Jonathan to up and move to Canada and take on this startup Visa program and start this brand new company in an industry that let's. I don't know how familiar you were with it to begin with, but it sounds like it was a pretty new industry to you as a whole.

Look, I had beginning of my career in finance and essentially lending is lending money and you need to understand the numbers and how to make it work. I think the skills that they had that I didn't have were the customer acquisition piece or really being able to owning the, you know, how to build a business properly. They definitely had a great, a great framework of how to do that and I really saw it as a huge opportunity for me to go get that paid MBA basically that I could work with, hands on, with a group of entrepreneurs that have had a number of successes and I would be no worse off. I felt like if I came to Canada and it didn't work out, I had much more of an attitude of like I would jump on a plane and go back to Australia if I had to. But look, I really grew to like John, Josh and Mike who were part of the Stanley park, you know, part the three partners. And I built a relationship with those guys over the phone and we spoke for many months before I came and you know, we talked a lot about like what the, what would happen if it didn't work out, what would happen if it did go well. And I'm just sort of the person who was like, you know what, I don't want to miss out on something like this. And so five and a half years later, you know, I've had an exit in Canada and I live here, married a Canadian and we have, we have a close to one year old little boy, which is awesome. So I've certainly gone and got it. You know, I didn't sit there and just wait for it to come to me and I know that it does set me apart because I, I do back myself and I love to have a go at things and.

Yeah, well, from a third party listening into this, it probably sounds like oh wow, you've Had a pretty smooth ride and things were coming together and falling into place for you, but I know that's not the case. Want to touch on some of the obstacles and challenges that you had as a founder to get to where you are today? I know.

Look at the start, you're no one. You know, you are no one. And you have to. For me, it was detaching my personal reputation or my perceived personal image. I had to detach it from. I had to detach myself from worrying about how, you know, if I failed, that it would look bad. And I had to really give myself to the company and go, look, if Lenville is going to survive, I need to get out there and talk about it. You know, I have to be able to get up in front of a room. I have to be able to come on a. On a session like this with you or do a podcast or get myself in the press. And I had to get out there and start talking about it before I'd even really built it. And it was a really. It was a big shift, and it was. It was really a painful experience because I was kind of like, I like things to be perfect. I like things to be right. I like things to be. To look good. And that was really hard for me. Like, at the start, I couldn't do it. You know, I found it tricky to cold call as much as I previously did. And I really had a lot of pressure on me early on from the guys to say, you know what, you've got, you've got to do this. Because if you don't, we won't fund, you know, we won't invest in you. You won't be able to raise capital. You could be on a plane back to Australia in three to six months. So in that first year, there were many, many setbacks. You know, I was trying to raise money many, many, many nos. And it's sort of the setbacks that really craft you. You have to be able to realize, like, you need 100 data points, you need 200 data points, and you have to keep working out what's going to land and resonate with investors. And it was hard. It was very, very stressful. I could move here and two bags. We rented an Airbnb in the West End in Vancouver. A very short time frame of like, okay, I have to get proof of concept and get this into market and get going. And so having a lot of pressure on me was the perfect sort of setup for me to perform. But, yeah, there've been many missteps along the Way, like, it's every entrepreneur out there, you'll see their press releases and, you know, you go and see them in the background and it's like, yeah, but we're still like, we're getting pressure. Our data isn't good, Our numbers aren't looking great. We haven't closed around yet. And so there's just. There is a fine art to the optics of it all. And you know, how well you can play. How well it's looking is usually never what it's really like in the background. So I don't know if I've. If I come back to your question of, like, what are the failures or what have the setbacks been.

You touched on one thing a little bit earlier where you talked about your friends in the circle of friends that you had back in Australia when you were first starting out. They didn't understand entrepreneurship. They were not diving deep into these things in the weeds. Then you moved to Canada, where you don't have any network. And probably a lot of our listeners and our viewers right now are entrepreneurs that are starting out for the first time. We have listeners and viewers overseas where entrepreneurship is not as celebrated or actively engaged in. So how do you. What were some of the challenges that you faced of getting out of your bubble and talking to new people that were familiar with entrepreneurship and then coming to a new country and then trying to rebuild a network and get around people?

Yeah, I was looking for personal growth. You know, I was looking for a challenge, and I was looking for something that would make me feel uncomfortable. And the good thing about coming to a new community that is just like here in Vancouver, there are a lot of entrepreneurs, and it's very supportive, is that there are people who are going.

To help you out.

There are people going to have a cup of coffee with you if you go out for it and ask for it. It's also, you know, people already know each other, and so it can sometimes be hard to crack new social circles. But I found it really easy because I had some skills. I had, you know, my business background to some extent. I'd had one startup that I'd already had to go at. I had some mentorship around me, and I then all I had to do was really try, you know, I just had to try and I had to. And it was great because I didn't have a lot of distractions, and I could really sit down and work hard and move quickly and meet deadlines and go for it. So it's. It's very much a personal thing that if you are looking for something where you like, I don't feel like I've got a good group of people around me who are completely understanding of startups. You know, Vancouver is a really, really unique ecosystem to get amongst. There's many different types of businesses here that people have started and are doing really well. And I find that Canadians in general are just a very much, you know, friendly group of people who are, who are really interested, just genuinely interested in how you're doing and will make time to meet with you, which made a big difference.

I think that's part of it, is the entrepreneur world as well is very welcoming, especially in the tech world, to new entrepreneurs and giving mentorship and feedback and collaborating, not so much in traditional industries, we won't dive into that. But this is actually a great segue into work, life balance. And how are you able to transition from building these entrepreneurial businesses and then the time and energy that takes to get there to having a wife and kids and growing older and seeing life through a different perspective.

Yeah, I think my wife said to me once, you know, if you don't leave something in the tank at the end of the day, you're gonna come home and crash and you don't have anything for us. And I made a decision earlier on in my life where I was like, you know what? My family and my wife are just as important as being a CEO and a founder of a company. And they're not necessarily celebrated the same way. They're just equally as important, if not more important, to have a solid family and solid life outside of work. And so it's just constantly a battle between. Yeah. Where I give time and I've really tried to set some ground rules for myself where I'd start work at 8 o' clock and finish at 6 o'. Clock. And anything outside of that is my time. You know, it's not always perfect, but I try to be present, if not get home early to spend time with my son before he goes to bed. And then in the evenings, if I need to do a bit of work, if we agree, you know, tonight, tonight I need to do some work, I would do it. But it's one of those. It's one of those things, if you're a workaholic, you know, you can end up, yeah, you can really love your work and all the people you work with really love you. It's just when you get out of here and the company, if you have a sale or a transaction takes place, if you've wrapped up so much of your personality and your worth in your business. When it changes, it can be really hard. You know, you can suddenly be like, well, what have I got? And it certainly happened to me a bit after the sale of Lenville. It was a really, you know, we had a really, really awesome investor base, great board, great team and the business, you know, we sold the company. And sure it was a liquidity event and there was a lot of ego around that event. But then the dynamics of it completely changed. You know, the swimming upstream every day that I hated and loved, I really missed. You know, it suddenly became, you know, we went to being a work a well capitalized company that had a lot of resources that was now part of the bank. And that just changed. And so for me, I decided that, you know, I didn't want to stay there. Ended up leaving, you know, after a year. And so yeah, it's there that realization.

That having to leave to that actually is part of work life balance. Like why did you make that decisions? Because there must be, yeah.

The drivers of the people that you attract to an early stage business or a scrappy sort of startup that's breaking even or not quite there or is running lean is very different to one that's got plenty. And you know, the urgency in the sense of like duty to the customer can sometimes just be a bit different. And I really love like getting close to the customer and trying to understand what's really going on for them. And sometimes when you're big and profitable and you've got a big market, it's hard to, you know, can sometimes be harder for larger organizations to still do that in the same way that small businesses can do. And so again like making a meaningful difference for people really matters to me. And so I realized like I want to be back leading a business that's close to, you know, close to people trying to solve a painful problem. Um, yeah, so I think it will always be a life struggle and you know, trying to get work life balance. But ultimately you have to set out to achieve something and you should actually talk to it about with your partner and you should actually agree with like when do we take a date, when do we get a babysitter? When do we make time for us, when do we get time for exercise? And you know, you have to be planned, you have to have a good routine. And we just make an effort to really try to plan our weeks out well, organize all our food, get groceries delivered if we can so that it saves us time and that we've got more time to Spend together?

Yeah, I think like 10 years ago, work life balance was just a concept that people are starting to talk about and a lot of people are just waving it off as just some, some new age concepts that, that are relevant in the workforce. But now today, there's a conscious acknowledgement that work life balance is something that needs to be discussed, it needs to be analyzed. And it's not just for more experienced entrepreneurs or companies are further along. Even at the early stage, you have to, like, you definitely have to get shit done and put your head down and work, but you have to realize that there is a balance that needs to be maintained. Otherwise there could be some serious mental repercussions and physical repercussions down the road.

Yeah, look, the fear of failure is really something that drives me hard, but I also embrace failure as well. And when it happens, I can bounce back from it, but I definitely throw myself into things. So when it hurts, it hurts or doesn't work out the way you want, or you can't close that funding round or, or you lose a big customer. I'm really invested in it and therefore, you know, I will have worked hard, really, really hard and been very passionate about landing that particular thing. And so, yeah, it'll naturally hurt when things fall over. And I think, who's going to be there for you when that happens? And it is always your. For me, it is. It's always my family, it's always my partner, it's always, you know, my folks, my siblings, my close mates. And you can't just be there, you can't just go to them whenever you feel like it. When things are tough, you also have to reciprocate. And part of that is making sure that you invest in. You make it just as important as you work, in my opinion.

No, that's definitely sound advice. And more and more people are realizing that, thankfully, I want to touch on something that you touched on just earlier. Um, I think it's kind of your, your new mantra, defining your why and what does that mean to you and how you carry that forward to the people that you connect with.

Yeah, I think it's what I want to. What I want to be known for and what I want to hold myself out there to be. I, I really feel like as I've tried to define my why and the reason why I asked that is because it does help me understand how I share with people where I'm going and what I do and why I do what I do. And I think that's really good because it's sort of like a street sign on my head of like if people come towards me, they know which direction they're sort of going for. If they, if they have a chat with me. And I, there's sort of three things that really matter to me are justice, fairness, and helping other people have success. And the, the, it's, there's sort of the interesting qualities when you think about business because a lot of time it's not always like it's for a lot of people, it's not always about that. But for me, I realized that I can do a lot in business to make those things happen. And whether that's to employee compensation, to whether people get equity, whether that's to, you know, promotions, whether that's to how we deal with our partners, who we are in the community. There are so many places that those things can show up. And you know, I want to make sure that I, I bring those to the front of my conversations with people. So when I think about, especially helping other people, it's, it's, it's been great to sort of be a mentor as well to other, just other entrepreneurs and other people who work in the startup community and at other levels in the not for profit sector with friends and family to just step in and help out where I think I can help out. And because I do love it, it fills me up when I see people have a win.

It's something that transcends just entrepreneurship. This is something that you can apply to all aspects of your life. Defining your why, why are you doing this? Why is it important to you?

Yeah. And it, and it helps me, it helps me realize when I'm not aligned with other people, you know, and if I don't feel something is fair, then I can say something and I can hope to see some sort of change. And if I don't, I think one of the good things that entrepreneurship and being, you know, an investor, you've got the option to not have to do what you don't agree with. And that's either vote with your feet or vote with the checkbook or vote with your voice, you know, and it can make, it can have a meaningful impact. And I realize that's not always open to everyone, what I just, what I just outlined. But you know, I do think about where it is, how I want to change the world and how I want to be a better, better human and better person to other people. Yeah.

So that's the least we should be asking from anybody is please be a better person.

And what's Fair to me and what's fair to somebody else might be completely different. I think it's just, does it feel equitable? And if. Because what it really drives is like accountability and alignment and when you step into a, into a partnership with people, you want to feel like, well, if you're getting this, what are they getting? And if X happens and Y happens and if you give too much and somebody else is not tipping in the same amount, it's often where you start to get misalignment and you can feel things, feel like they're not fair and it's unequitable. It's not just. And I think that's a really interesting thing for first time entrepreneurs. And second time entrepreneurs think, think about when they step into the world of raising capital and taking things from other people and just trying to figure out, you might feel really good about it now, but what would happen in three years time or five years time when things shift, how will you feel? And I think everyone in the entrepreneur world can talk to that tension at some stage.

That's definitely one of the common themes through a lot of these conversations that we've had in Founder Journeys is entrepreneurs raised that question of do you really need to take venture? And I think a lot of the entrepreneurs and first time founders that are listening and watching, they probably don't think about it as deeply as the founders that we've talked to in the series have because they've lived it and they realize that maybe venture wasn't the right decision or I wish I hadn't taken it, or I'm happy that I didn't take it because I've got these more freedoms or I wish I had taken it because I would have been able to grow X times faster or mitigated these issues. And so it's not an easy clear cut decision. But no.

And it's all about the risk. It's all about the risk curve and where you are on it in terms of how advanced your business and your product is and somebody for you to accelerate it and get it forward and be able to hire people and you know, have good marketing spend to get that product out there. If you have a lot more capital to do that, it can be a lot more advantageous for you. But someone is also cutting a check and taking a risk that it plays out the way that everyone hopes it does. And so I think what can happen is people, if you take a check early on, sometimes it can feel great, but later on you might be like, I shouldn't have done that wrong decision, don't hear from those guys anymore. And it's like, well, yeah, but hang on. They helped you out at a really, really risky time and they got, yes, they got rewarded for it. You weren't able, you wouldn't have been able to achieve what you've achieved if you hadn't have. If you hadn't have taken that money. So yeah, with experience and with hindsight, of course you learn. It's just you got to do what in the moment, speak to other people, get their perspective, but you have to work out what's right for you and, and ultimately you have to live by that.

Yeah. And even the most seasoned, experienced entrepreneurs come to situations where they're forced to make decisions that they're not happy about making, but they have to because it's for the best interest of the company or it's the only option that's available for them to.

Totally awesome.

Alex, I really appreciate you taking the time. We're gonna quickly start to wrap this up here. No worries. I got two last questions for you. The first one is what is one app or tool that you have found instrumental in your journey as a founder?

Being organized is really paramount. So if I can have. I've used different apps at different times but they're very basic but like great note taking tools. Like even I use an Apple phone, but it's so basic but like calendars and notes and reminders are just like critical for just staying on top of stuff. So even into the world of. I originally used a platform called Kanbanery which is on Kanban theory of like basically project management. Currently using Monday.com as well to help me manage our workflow with business. But really it just helps me maintain my priorities. All of the things I'm talking about maintain my priorities and helps us just focus on the most important thing at the time.

And how do we. Monday at launch we were actually using it back before it changed our name to Monday. So we've been active users of it for quite a while. But yeah, definitely stay organized is key. There's so many things that come flying at you as an entrepreneur, things that you anticipate, but also a lot of things that you don't anticipate. And so you definitely need to be organized to weather the storm.

Correct.

Speaking about weathering the storm, what would you say is your parting bits of advice for our entrepreneurs and our listeners? Keep in mind some of our entrepreneurs are new and young and first time entrepreneurs. We have others that are seasoned. We have entrepreneurs all different parts of the world. You, an international entrepreneur, come from Australia, now in Canada. What are some last bits of advice for being an entrepreneur, being a founder in today's world?

Great question. I think really think about your blind spots and the things that are uncomfortable for you that you don't want to address. And that can be most of the time, talking to customers or getting feedback from users or how do you get real market data? And I feel so often people have great ideas and they believe it. They sit in their own vacuum. They think this will work. A few friends have liked it. Get out there and try to get validation as to will this work? It's a whole process, but it's not three phone calls to friends. It's 300 or 500 cold calls to people that have worked in that industry before to give you a sense of, you know, is it a good idea or not? And get tons and tons of data. I think my biggest, my biggest regret is I didn't, you know, I didn't know how to do that at the start. And I wish that if somebody had told me, you know, how, how hard you have to work on the BD and the, and the customer discovery part, it would have really changed my whole experience. And I would have figured out early on that there was a different way to run Care Review than the way that I was running it.

It's definitely sound advice, but people hear me say it all the time. Get out of your bubble. Right. You're safe in your bubble when you're talking to people that you know, but you don't really get the true picture until you start talking to people outside of your bubble.

Correct. And. Yeah. What would an unbiased person do? Would they use this product or not? And most importantly, would they pay for it?

Yeah, that's the most important thing.

It is totally. Don't do it for free.

Your business, not charity. Right.

Exactly. Exactly.

So unless you want, you can be a charity. But for sure.

Yeah. And it's, it's. How do you usually. Usually if it's profitable or if it's generating revenue, it allows you to have choices of how you can get market share and how you can compete because your competitors are all going to have resources and it's just. Yeah, you need to, you need to figure out how you get paying customers and how you differentiate what is the customer's purchasing decision and really think hard about how much data you get. And the last thing I'd say that's easy for me to say, how you actually do that is probably another conversation. But I know Ray and Ray's network is certainly one that, you know, there's plenty of books out there that Ray can probably suggest as to, you know, lean Startup. Ash. Yeah, Running lean, I think it is Lean startup, yep. Really talks to that Lean canvas, you know, getting those, those nine or ten boxes addressed on a single piece of paper. Like think about exactly all those things on that page.

We actually have our own course Launch. Course. Launch your startup, Launch your business. Launch your vision, Launch your dream. Check out our course. There's links in our link in bio and Alex, you've been awesome. We love the conversation that we've been able to share today. Hopefully our listeners and our viewers are appreciating as much as we do. And we've got to the point in our conversation now where you've given so much to our audience. Here's a chance for you to be the entrepreneur, the founder and ask for something in return. What's your call to action?

It's a great question, I think. Get connected. If you want to connect with me, Twitter, LinkedIn, I'm happy to help you. I think the world is, you know, so many people helped me out on my journey. I'm definitely helping to, happy to help other people out. Usually it can be, it could be someone in my network I can introduce you to or yeah, simply I might be able to help you field a question and obviously that ticks a big box for me in terms of being able to help other people and help them succeed. So don't hesitate to connect. Alex Benjamin, I'm on Twitter and LinkedIn and love to help you guys out if I can. I know that's kind of almost the mirror of what you asked me, but it is, it is certainly one way I think that, you know, would help me, you know, feel great about all the help that I've had. I'd love to pay it forward, help others.

That's again, one of the common traits of founders and entrepreneurs is the willingness to connect and wanting to connect. Alex, really appreciate you taking the time today and look forward to having more deeper conversations as we move forward.

Thanks, Mike. Thanks a lot. Thanks very much, everyone. See ya.

Thanks, everyone. Launch Ventures is for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. If you enjoyed today's episode of Founder Journeys, please like share, follow and check out our link in bio for all the other good stuff.