Tea Nicola - CEO and Co-founder of CI Direct Investing (Wealthbar)

Today on Foundry Journey, we're very fortunate to have one of the pioneers in the fintech and wealth management industry, Thea Nicola. Tea is a major reason why a lot of the regulators have accepted and adopted the innovations that we see today in these highly regulated industries. Join us as we dive into a really fascinating discussion about being cognitive, about the stress induced emotions and your behaviors as a founder and, and how they affect the people around you and your team and your family.

3, 2, 1.

Hey everyone. We're back at it again with another Founder Journey story. Today we've got a really interesting guest. She is a founder of a fintech financial technology company. I've known Taya for quite a while now. It's probably about more than eight years and she's been one of those entrepreneurs that had this hustle and this drive in her that it's unfortunate but it is rare in entrepreneurs and we'll kind of dive into what motivates her, what drives her. But she has been extremely successful in the fintech world, a highly regulated industry. She is a woman that gets shit done and it's an unsexy industry. There's a lot of dry subject matter, a lot of regulatory requirements, but that hustle has paid off. Nicolette welcome to our Founder Journey stories. Please tell us a little bit about yourself and Wealth Bar.

Thank you. Well, so Wealth Bar or currently known CI Direct Investing was founded in 2012 by myself and my husband who's also my co founder. And we saw a problem in the world where people like us who were upwardly mobile, really infowars and wanted to understand a bit more about investing, didn't really have anywhere to go to get a true investment advice because it was reserved for people who had over a million dollars at the time. And when we started wealth bar in 2012 I actually started pitching this. This was my original pitch and nobody understood what I was talking about. And so then I had to actually dumb my pitch down and say okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to do like portfolios of ETFs in your RRSPs. And my elevator pitch went down to we do RSPs and TFSAs and we do it all online. It was literally like I was talking to a five year old. But then over time, over the last 10 years as the model which actually we pioneered in Canada became a bit more prominent and a bit more known in the marketplace, I am now able to say that we actually are here to democratize net worth wealth management and offer high end portfolios to people who have only $1,000.

That was always sorry just for the audience. And when we're talking about the marketplace, you're talking more about the investor landscape, the professionals, the industry, not so much the end consumer because they still need it kind of dumbed down. But as you said when you first started in 2012, the fintech industry wasn't as prominent and lack of knowledge and awareness of what's happening in traditional fintech and how it can be automated and turned into something that's more democratized and available across different wealth spectrums. But that type of lingo and jargon just flew over people's head because they didn't get it even though they themselves are in that industry. They didn't get it until people like you, the pioneers in the industry, came in and started to dumb it down for them and really get them understand. And now you're able to really be proud of what you're talking about and how you're pitching it because you're honing in on exactly what you're doing without having to dumb it down now.

Exactly. And it was also actually one of those things. So one first obstacle I had to overcome is getting over the fact that people were looking at me like I had two heads or was slightly insane when I went to the regulators.

I think a lot of entrepreneurs feel that.

So it's just one of those facts. If you are a true innovator and if you are breaking barriers and look, we weren't even innovating from let's say Steve Blank's perspective. From Steve Blank's perspective, all I did was resegment existing markets and recreate a process that involved, you know, the cloud. It's not even from like startup world and innovation world. What we did wasn't even that cutting edge because not a lot had changed and we still had to plug into the rest of the industry. But if you are Uber or Facebook or something that is like coming out completely different and truly disrupting or coming changing the way people do things, then when you pitch people are going to naturally be very skeptical. And so the first obstacle as an entrepreneur is that it is getting over that fact. Now that's a bit of a double edged sword because it's one thing to be tenacious and to be sure and confident and overcome that, that obstacle that everybody looks at you crazy. And then there's another thing where you actually take that too far and, and don't take anyone's feedback. That's the other side, that coin. So you have to Be careful to kind of like teeter on the edge of it. And I know that's hard, but you'll eventually figure it out, as most people tell you. You know, things that are kind of similar and then you can adjust them. But that was the first time. And then went. And then once we got regulated and once we got approved, then it was, you know, money raising was always an obstacle. That's always an obstacle for everybody, anybody in this world who is a startup entrepreneur who truly enjoys raising money.

I haven't met one yet. Right.

So. But it's a necessary thing. And raising money was actually one of those things where I think taught me the most of being an entrepreneur, because I truly had to convince a. I had a really good mentor for raising money, and that's Paul Guyer. Paul Guyer has been a supreme in Vancouver for a really long time, and he and I have a very similar style in how we approach businesses. We're very mathematical, very analytical, we're both engineers. And so he would. Oh, he would put me through the wringer when we was raising money and I had to prepare my package, and then he would kind of like make me do it six other ways. And not only did I learn how to raise money from Paul, and he was a great mentor, but I also learned how to read P and L and how to read an income statement, how to properly project into the future and all of these things when the investors are asking the tough questions like discounted capital and discounted cash flow analysis and all of these things. I'm in finance, right. So I'm raising money from people who know finance and they're asking me things like finance people. Right. So I had to have all of this. And. But it was invaluable lessons that I've learned through that process on how to make business decisions, because I know you're an accountant, so you can agree with me, but books can inform you, like, oh, my goodness, it's. You can learn so much about your business from trends in the. In the books if you. If you properly are honest in your books to yourself. And you know what I mean. Like when sometimes books can be interpreted various ways where they look better.

Well, so first off, even the most seasoned entrepreneurs, you'd be surprised, a lot of people are very intimidated by numbers. And numbers are the lifeblood of your business. And good or bad, that data, that information is gonna help you strengthen your business because you learn from the struggles and challenges, but you also learn from the positives and see where things are working. And so when you talk about being true to numbers in your books, you have to notice where things are not going well, where they are going well, where there's areas for improvements and where there's areas where you should just know that things are not going to get better because those costs are fixed and there's no way to change that or whatnot. So definitely is a big challenge. Excuse me. A hurdle for a lot of entrepreneurs is to get over that fear of books. And even for you, as somebody that's in finance, it can be intimidating, especially when you have third parties grilling you. And I get this all the time myself. People ask me about something like, aren't you an accountant? Shouldn't you know this? I'm like, yeah, I am. But that's not an area that I specialize in, like tax, international tax, and things like that. Those are things that I don't really spend a lot of my time doing. But, yeah, there's so many things to know.

Yeah, absolutely. And then the. You know, and then sort of we. And then all the milestones you hit, you hit, you know, a million dollars of revenue, you hit a thousand customers. You hit all of those things, you celebrate them all. But the biggest milestone, I think that made a difference to me in my business was finding the first commercial partner. And that was actually a managing general agency out of Alberta called PPI, and they have a network of 3,000 advisors. And we joined forces with them to create an advisor platform. And we still to this day have that advisor platform. It's called PPI Valet, powered by CI Direct Investing. And it was a. And that partnership probably was the first. When we made the deal, that was probably the first time that I felt that this was on solid grounds. Like, this was a. The viability point we reached before that, a fair bit before that, and the viability point, I mean, like the Ramen profitability. We had enough revenue to operate skeleton crew and buy ramen, you know, sustain the business, but it wasn't going to be growing or anything. It was just one of those. We didn't have to shut the door completely. And then later on was the commercial partnership. And I think the commercial partnership was a big deal where I felt a little bit more comfortable. It was a lot easier to raise money after the fact. You convince a large corporation to partner with you, investors will literally give you money. Like, take my money. That round I had to turn people away. I've never. I've never turned investors away. I've expanded every round to encompass everybody. I wanted to. That round I had to turn investors away after we had that partner because I just didn't need the money. And at the time, I had this large supporter, and he's like, why would you now add another shareholder when I could just give you money. Money. So it ended up being, you know, you do actually amazingly reach a point where money is no longer a problem. But. Yeah, but it's.

It's hard to see that and believe that when you're early. But it does come to that point. And to your point, adding an extra shareholder, shareholders, investors can add a lot to the company. But at certain times, too many heads in the kitchen just don't help. And so turning certain people away is not a bad idea. Even if you are struggling for money, sometimes that investor is just not a good investor for you.

So one thing I learned is you can't make a good deal with bad people if you don't have. And by bad people, I mean just not a fit. And if it's not a fit, I would literally tell you that you're probably better off not having that check. I mean, I know that's a story that everyone's heard a million times, but the headache is rarely worth it.

Yeah. And those are relationships that are hard to break up. And you can't just say, okay, here's your money back to get out of my company. There's a lot of encumbrances that come with when you take somebody's money and bring them in on investing in your business. But I want to kind of jump really quickly back to when you said it, when you got that foundational customer, that corporate client. That's a problem that a lot of people face, especially in old school industries, regulated industries. Changing that mindset and getting that buy in. What was that journey like? You were one of the pioneers.

I cheated.

Yes.

Yeah. So I cheated. So. So I had someone else do that deal for me, somebody who is an insider of the industry. And obviously it wasn't.

You know, obviously, that's not really cheating. You found a champion to.

I found the champion. So, yeah, I had somebody else take these two decision makers out to dinner in Toronto and paint them a picture from the point of view of an insider in the industry. And then after that. And that was just the original, you know, the. Yes. And then it took like a year and 14 months to write the agreement and seal the deal and write all of that, because it was a significant partnership. But that was the. Initially, a lot of things that I did. I had to find a proxy in the industry And I don't really know how to interpret that, whether that's a hack or whether that's a necessity. But it is a incredibly relationship driven industry. And when I say relationship driven, I say like, these people are each other's godparents of their kids. Like they are deeply entrenched in each other's lives. And when.

That'S a fact that a lot of people don't realize, especially in the, in the finance industry, there is a lot of old school, old mentality, old money that's involved that is very protectionist around what happens. And that's not just the finance industry. I'm in the sports industry. And that's another industry where you're seeing a lot of old school mentality and old relationships that are hard to break into.

Yeah, absolutely. It's really, really hard to get in. So I use the proxy both times, the two big deals that I did. One was obviously my exit and one was the first commercial partner. I used the proxy for relationship to kind of get my foot in the door and then opened the door and then I closed the deal and finished it. But that initial, initial pie in the sky sale pitch was done by an insider for me on my path. They were both stakeholders, but you know, that's their job. Then that's a pro for more shareholders you have.

Yeah, but at the end of the day, you're the one that orchestrated it. You're the one that had to identify, okay, this is probably the best path for me to get in front of this client and I'm going to use this tactic and this strategy and I'm pretty sure you fueled a lot of the conversations from the sidelines and then when it was time for you to step in, you stepped in and closed the deal.

I wish I can confirm that it was all that premeditated, but you know that the startup is flying by the seat of your pants. And it was mostly like, hey, you know, I need to, I need an intro to that guy. Can you. It was done in text and you know, you know how it's reality, right? I'm a pretty real. But yes, it was absolutely. These people were. Had my blessing to do so. It was our intent to execute on their initial conversations. But yeah, that was the first thing I did was the proxy.

And hey, it worked out. And I'm pretty sure there's lots of conversations that didn't work out, but that's one of the ones that did.

Yes.

I want to shift gears here. You and I know each other fairly well and we've been entrepreneurs for many years and we've seen other entrepreneurs around us go through ups and downs. You're somebody that I'm comfortable talking to about some of the taboo topics, the hard to talk about topics of entrepreneurship and being a founder and that's founder depression is one of the first ones. But there's financial challenges, there's emotional challenges, co founder challenges. And you're in a unique scenario there as well with your spouse being your co founder. But can we dive into some, some of the taboo topics? What would you like to talk about?

Yeah, I think that one of the things that I would really like to talk about is people relationship and how your stress affects your behavior. And I am going to admit that you know, when you're CEO of a company you have a certain allowances as an authority, as a person of authority. But you also, with that allowance it also comes responsibility of what you do with that allowance. And a lot of type A personalities who are entrepreneurs who, you know, end up making the right, the tough decision to start a business and taking a risk and are really drivers. And like with a driver, I'm talking about, you know, Myers Briggs definition of a character. It's a driving personality. And when people like that go through anxiety or depression, one of the symptoms of that anxiety is anger. And I wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, because a little bit about the volatility of emotion that you can exhibit in front of your employees.

It's unknowingly, you just naturally react that way, but you don't realize what you're doing.

You don't realize what you're doing. And we often don't stop to think just how damaging that is to the person on the other side. And it might be, you know, as my nine year old says when she throws a tantrum, what your body needs in the moment. But it is so important that you take the higher road and not do that because of, forget even the, you know immediately that you're damaging the person and that they're gonna have a bad day because their boss yelled at them or something like that. But it's, it's also the toxicity that that can create in your organization is probably one of the things that can kill you as an, like not literally kill you as an entrepreneur, but kill the business. People won't necessarily want, you know, and everybody talks, you know, tongue in cheek about, you know, all these great entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs throwing chairs in boardrooms and all.

I was just going to bring that up like that some of these are glorified stories of Steve Jobs. And that's one of the, probably most well known is how difficult he is to work. He was to work with. And his expectations were so high. But hindsight looking in, you can probably tell that a lot of the things that he said or the opportunities, opportunities that he wish he probably could have taken back were probably induced by stress and not him trying to just be an asshole and tough person with high criteria of what he'd accept. It's just he was tough on himself and stressed out that he lashed out.

And that's exactly. And that is when you are anxious and when you have anxiety and stress. A lot of, like I said, type A personalities exist with anger and yelling. You know, they truly yell. So it's a. Because of my background, I was a, you know, I'm a refugee from Bosnia. I've been through war, I've been through shit in my life. I'm actually quite hyper aware of my behavior. And I also am very susceptible to, you know, depression and anxiety and all of that. And I started. There was. I remember a decision when I, I remember a conversation, first of all I had with the head of client services who came in and said that the paddle whacking, as he would call it, like when something goes wrong in our business.

Paddle whacking?

Yeah. I take out the paddle and I just go whack, whack, whack. Because like we go through catastrophes. Like we're financed and we're plugged into all of these vendors. And I mean, just like another. Any business, catastrophes do happen. And so I get into this like mode of reactionary mode. It's completely unproductive, but it's trying to get to the bottom of it. I just basically take a paddle and go to the first person that I can think of who's on this path and then ask a million questions in this really like aggressive way. Then they've done something like paddle whack and then move to the next person and paddle whack until I get to the, to the bottom of the problem. And it was not, you know, obviously I didn't hit people and it wasn't even that angry. But the sheer amount of enthusiasm and zeal that I brought to this made people uncomfortable. And the head of client services came to me and he said, this is totally not productive. It's not, you know, we're sort of a root square analysis problem, root cause analysis kind of group. And it's not productive. And then we had a really hard to heart conversation. And that's when I realized that I needed an outlet to express my. Or to elevate myself as a manager or as a CEO and not really take it from my employees. I had to elevate myself and be a little bit of a, you know, authority figure and be careful what I say and be careful how I behave. Because as we were getting bigger and you know, hiring different personalities, not everybody was my BFF anymore. Like we're no longer company around a coffee or around the dinner table. We were a bit bigger and I had to behave accordingly. And so.

And you're probably hiring more senior people that had other corporate experience or lots of, let's say, exposure to how other managers handle themselves and work corporate world.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So there was a lot of, A lot of things were forcing me to do this. So you mentioned business coaching at the beginning. We were chatting and I wanted to touch on that because I really, truly think that some type of coaching or peer mentoring or somewhere where you can go and be without a filter is probably invaluable for a CEO that's under a fair bit of pressure and under this kind of pressure where you kind of have to be on. And I don't want to call it an act because it's not an act. It's a respect for the position and respect for the.

I think it's more of a. It's layers. Right. So there's a certain layer that you are willing to show the public. Then there's a layer that you're willing to show your team and your coworkers. And there's a layer that you're willing to show your board. Then there's a layer that you're willing to show your co founder. And then there's a layer that you're willing to show your family. And then there's that true layer that even you looking in the mirror sometimes don't see. And I think, yeah, that true layer can really affect the way that you treat your spouses, the way they treat your family. You're going to treat them a lot more harshly than you would your, your team because you feel more comfortable around them. But then again, when you really dig down to the bottom of the onion, you're going to be more harsh on yourself because you can. And that's where you probably do the most damage.

Yeah. And it's really important that you can talk to somebody at that level. And I don't like I truly had a. You know, obviously I'm married to my co founder, so There's a totally different relationship there. And sometimes you have a true partner and a co founder where you can, where you can truly share the burden of the position or the role or the job with them. But oftentimes people are quite lonely in this position and there are organization like YPO and McKay and tech and all of these organizations where you get to chat with peers of your size, different industries, but it doesn't really matter. And be truly open and vulnerable and discuss things that, everything from how much I had to drink at Christmas time to how do I fire and hire executives to, you know, how do I distribute the bonus. Like, really like. It was fascinating to discuss, you know, things with, you know, CEO of a major developer in Vancouver or another major financial institution or a fishing business or a recycling business. And to understand that even though I'm a tech company and I'm in finance, our problems are really the same.

Yeah. And it's that cross pollination of strategies and ideas that work in one industry. You might not think they work in others, but they do. And it's all up to you how you tweak and shape them so that they do fit into your business. But you can definitely learn a lot from other industries. I think that's one of the hesitations a lot of entrepreneurs have is they stick in their bubble.

But I think it's support. I think it's the moral support and the cause I used to call, I used to refer to it as a group therapy for CEOs because it has that, you know, your spouses attend socials and there's a weekend getaway once a year where you go and you become, you know, you dine and wine with these people for 48 hours and you become friends. And then when you do have to bring something that's high and vulnerable, it's a safe place. And so it was absolutely one of the things that helped me a lot to just, just function better as an entrepreneur and as a CEO.

And as you grow as an entrepreneur, you need to change those circles as well. Like I go back to launch Academy and what we started there at the very early stages, your peer network is other entrepreneurs are just starting out and you like we've seen firsthand like those relationships that are built there. There's some great camaraderie and bonding. But there's certain entrepreneurs that like yourself that start to become more successful and the problems that you're faced with, those peers can't relate to and they can't help you. And so you need to level up that network. And that's where we created the CxO dinners. So you can connect with the different type of entrepreneur and then you get into more structured organizations like EO and ypo and. Yeah. There's numerous other organizations, industry organizations, to your point, it's that camaraderie and being able to talk to somebody about challenges and problems that they can relate to or they've faced themselves.

Yeah. And with the degree of, you know, confidentiality and it's, it's. It's. I think that's. That support network is hugely important.

Yeah. And just being able to have that person that you can talk to outside of your business, that understands business. So it's one thing to talk to your spouse and open up to your spouse. In your case, a little bit different because your spouse knows your business. But a lot of founders, their spouses, even their friend network, their close friends, don't understand entrepreneurship or don't understand the business or the industry that you're in. And so having the ability to talk to people that actually understand business and the struggles that entrepreneurs go through, because it's very different than a senior manager or even a CEO of a company that wasn't the founder of the company was parachuted in after a certain level of success. What the founder goes through is very different. Yeah. So I really appreciate you broaching that subject. And there is no magic pill that anybody can take to solve that. But it is a open dialogue that needs to continue. And people need to admit that these are challenges and these are struggles that entrepreneurs have, and there are outlets, there are opportunities. I also find that there's a lot more.

It's just people are. It's a lot more common than you think. And it's. And talking about it, you know, and all of these conventional things that people are saying, talk about it, you know, get some help. You should do them all. That's just, you know, how much it takes to get out of sometimes to get. Pull yourself out. And, you know, life can. Life events can definitely help or hinder this progress. You know, I had a baby in the middle of my entrepreneur journey, which actually added to my depression because I went through postpartum depression. So one of the. So you just have to kind of figure out how to cope and how to deal with it. So one of the ways that I coped with Parker was to take Parker to work. And Parker was two days old when I showed up to work for the brand reveal party for the latest version of the Wild Bars brand. And it was a brand Reveal. And the CEO is the chief brand officer. I gotta be there.

So.

So it was two days. He was two days old. And I carried that baby around me for good five months until he was able to kind of stay home with the Danny and I went back to work and it helped a lot. And it was. And I talked about it. I took Parker to investor meetings, venture capitalist meetings. You should ask James from LaBarge. Weinstein. I changed a diaper on the boardroom table.

You got to do what you got to do. And again, 10 years ago, those things were somewhat taboo. That's 10 years ago. 2010. It's not 1980, when it was taboo. Even 10 years ago is taboo. But thankfully things are starting to open up and people are accepting and willing to understand that life happens. To your point, you life happens and you don't know what other people are going through. And so you have to. When somebody does lash out, if you're on the other end of that, you have to take a step back and realize, okay, something is happening. How can I help? Or how can I address the situation? Maybe it's just a matter of just airing it out and letting you know that this is actually happening and letting that CEO become aware that this is happening. Or a more intervention type approach where you're diving deep and trying to help that CEO solve that problem for sure. But it is two way conversations. It's not just up to the CEO. Definitely the CEO is the cause of it, but it's the people around the CEO that also need to kind of help alleviate that situation and recognize that these are happening. Because I don't think enough of the team, especially at later stage. Companies that really understand the challenges that a CEO goes through and the problems that the founder goes through that they're shielded from, they don't know what's happening, that they're fighting these battles on their behalf behind the scenes, whether it's investors or industry or things like that.

Yeah, I understand. But that's sort of like as somebody once said, if you take the seat, you take the heat. It's the role of the job. And so it's like, it's like the head of the state. You know, everybody wants to be the queen until you actually get to be the queen.

Yeah.

Because it's not as easy as it looks. And it's. Yeah, it's not.

Yeah. But there's a level of awareness that people, people don't see the ugly side of it. They just see the CEO, oh, you're making the big bucks. You're driving a nice brand new Mercedes, you're living the dreams. Like yeah, no, that's not the case. I was driving a beat up car. I was taking public transit for 20 years prior to this. And yeah, so that's been an awesome topic to talk about. Like I said, not enough people talk about it and happy that we're talking about it. I'm actually doing a series of posts on that in my Instagram about health and wellness and mental wellness, in my opinion, is also tied to physical wellness and physical health. And getting out and exercising is an outlet for some of that anger and that stress. And that also for me personally helps in how I manage myself around my team. A lot more relaxed and able to address issues because I was able to get that frustration out in the gym or during a run in the morning.

Exactly. So I actually had a Stanley Park Loop and a heavy metal playlist. So if something was really bothering me and I was about to go on my paddle whack episode, I would instead get on my bike, put on my death metal and go do a Stanley Park Loop. And I was totally fine by the time we got back.

And those are again, simple things, but so effective.

Yeah, yeah.

Taya, this has been an awesome conversation. I want to kind of round this out with two specific questions for our audience benefit. One is a app or a tool that you have found indispensable as a founder, as a CEO, as an entrepreneur, whether it's for your personal life or for business life that you think our audience might be beneficial from trying out themselves.

Okay, so I have two things because one is just a cute story about how much I miss Lotus Notes, which is like the most God awful on the planet, but it has a feature called stationery that allows you to pre write template emails and no other email program has ever had this feature. And I do not understand why, but Google comes close with something called a canned response. And especially when you get an assistant who shares your inbox, I often have a bunch of canned responses so that she can just reply to emails inside with just my words or what I wanted to say, and you can quickly give directions. So that has been invaluable. So for example, when you know, we get venture capitalists coming to us and saying, you know, can we talk? And so there's a bunch of canned responses depending on what they say, what stage of the business we were in, how much you know, if we were raising, and now we have this canned response, nobody's exited, you haven't done your homework, goodbye. But but it's just, that's been really invaluable. And then on the other side, before I had the assistant, is the calendly. Calendly has really changed the way that I approached customer service and client services and changed a lot of processes in our business. Calendly comes with a bit of a warning, though. I was slapped on a wrist a couple of times by people. When you are. When you want to impress somebody, you want to work with a VIP or you raising money, don't send them an automated thing for them to make their own calendar. Like, try to make an effort and do it personally and all of that. I am not a person who would get offended by somebody sending me a link to a calendar. But I have learned that a lot of people do get offended. And so if you're truly not trying to offend that person, don't send them a calendar. But.

I find that too, I think it's more again, older school. It's kind of hierarchy thing. People that are senior, I think ego comes into play a little bit there where they're like, oh, what, you can't take the time to talk to me back forth trying to mutual time. You just want me to go and do it for you. But at the same time, it's a tool that has worked extremely well for entrepreneurs and for all types of people in the workforce. I use CozyCal myself, which is a launch academy company that's got a similar tool to Calendly. But yeah, definitely it's a tool. But I totally see your point. Sometimes people will prefer and appreciate that more on hands, on approach to finding a mutual time to meet up and coordinate calendars. But you cannot discount the fact that Calendly is so useful and such a handy tool.

I know, and it's like if I'm trying to book a meeting with four people and I have six slots and then, you know, if I send three to one and then two people pick the same slot, it becomes a nightmare. Right?

Yeah, just especially, especially when you've got like, I definitely want to meet with this person, but I can't commit to a time until I find out what they want to meet for these other meetings. It just doesn't.

Yeah, exactly. So that was definitely one of the things that was a big. A big change for me.

No, that's a great one. And okay, so one of my last questions is, if you were to do things over again, what advice would you give to yourself as an entrepreneur building a business in today's world? Was it you wish you knew or you would do differently today as an entrepreneur.

I think that you know, as you. I don't know that I have any specific big mistake that I made that I would have, you know, gone and done totally differently. I think that one of the major things that I learned in business is that when you are direct to consumer business, do not underestimate the importance of marketing. And I repeat, do not underestimate the importance of marketing. The no matter how clever your product is and no matter how good it is or how well performed, it is your value proposition or you're just your bee's knees from a product perspective. But if nobody hears about it and nobody knows about it, it is going to be totally useless. So the B2C is a bit different because that sort of, especially if it's a SaaS model, there's definitely a sales strategy to get to the once you get to the repeatable, scalable business model, the sales process. But B2C marketing is incredibly important. And I think that it's not a lesson that I learned too late because I also didn't know anything about marketing, but it's just through the nature of hiring that executive who is going to take us to that next level. It took longer than I would have liked and but it's not so there are things that I would have done differently slightly from a marketing perspective, but it's usually, you know, at the end of the day and you say yeah, there's definitely things that I would do differently if I did this again. But I pretty happy with how things turned out. On a grand scheme of things.

I think proof is in the pudding. You definitely have done it well. Last bit for you. You've given some valuable time and insight for our audience. What can our audience do for you? What's your call to action for our audience?

I think that it's you can obligatory, you know, give CI direct investing a try. It's a great product for people who are trying to save money. Talk to one of our advisors. There's no obligation but I directinvesting.com yep. But what I really want you, as you know, on a personal level is to talk a little bit about authenticity and being authentic to yourself, to your employees and to your business. And really that means whether you're about to start or you're about to raise money or whatever journey you're on, the sooner you admit to yourself what the problems really are as opposed to what they appear to be, or the better you will be able to actually address them and address objections. Whether you're in money raising or looking for partners. Mark Twain I think it was Mark Twain. It's in one of my presentations when there was a quote that said first learn your facts and then you can distort them how you please. So you have to be true to yourself and your business. And like when we talked about learning and looking at the books and really looking at trends, you can read data and metrics that it looks like your business is blowing apart no matter what set of data you have. Like it is possible to interpret data favorably most of the time, but really try to break that favorability and try to figure out what data it is telling you that there is a problem. Where's the canary in the coal mine and where are the indication that things can go wrong? Understand that, be prepared for it, have a strategy, address it. Don't necessarily solve problems you don't have, but be prepared for when you speak to investors, partners and honesty and authenticity has carried me so far and I have continuously been given allowances and breaks even because I was straightforward, including how I exited. I literally told my buyers how much money they had to give me and rendered the president of CI Financial speechless for about five seconds.

But I think that's a totally underappreciated art is honesty and how far that takes you in the business world, especially with other honest entrepreneurs. Taya, this has been a great, valuable session. I really appreciate you and the entrepreneur that you are and the impact that you had in the ecosystem and not just in Vancouver, but in the fintech industry globally. I look forward to having drinks and cheerings with you when we can in person, but for now we'll stick to zoom. And thanks again for spending some time with our audience today.

Thank you very much. Cheers.

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