Ep. 2 How rTraction is Rebuilding After Losing a Fortune 500 Client

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Down, But Not Out the show where founders tell their real-life stories of entrepreneurial resiliency. I started this show after my one company Visitor Queue was dealt a death blow by Google that led to us almost losing all of our clients and all of our revenue and that would have happened if it wasn't for the hard work determination and resiliency of our team I love a good underdog so these stories resonate more with me than the story of the one billion dollar exit or the story about how your company IPO'd these are stories of grit meant to inspire you, the listener, to keep fighting as entrepreneurs and business owners we will have our backs against the wall multiple times so let hearing these stories be your fight song your hooraw that thing that gets you out of bed on those tough days. This episode is brought to you by my company, Visitor Queue. Identify the anonymous companies visiting your website so your sales team can follow up with them. Start your 14-day free trial at visitorqueue.com. Now let's dive into this episode today I'm joined by David Billson. David has over 20 years as an entrepreneur under his belt having started several successful companies throughout his career his love for technology and storytelling led to the creation of his creative agency rTraction in 2001 which has worked with several hyper-successful brands and is a certified B Corp he is also the co-founder of the RH Accelerator which in just two years has invested in 16 startups across Canada and Southwestern Ontario specifically to help them and the ecosystem grow outside of these ventures and a number of other ones he currently has on the go. David is a father, husband, sci-fi lover, and a creative thinker. David, thanks for being on the show are you ready to share your Down, But Not Out story? Let's do it. Awesome all right perfect I'm sure I did an okay job at the intro but why don't we give you the chance to give an intro to yourself for the audience. Yeah, I think you encapsulated it fairly well in the beginning there one of the interesting founding stories we want to get too much into it but my creative agency our attraction was actually founded out of the down and out moment the organization I worked for actually went under in the tech burst in 2001 and the group that was together had sort of a choice to go look for jobs together or create a new company together and try to stick together that's how the actual the company was founded so you know I've been doing this for 20 years kind of got into it a little you know through one of those moments where you kind of have to pivot and decide what you're going to do so went from one day being an employee to the next day almost overnight becoming a business owner because of what was happening in the market, so been an interesting ride for the past 20 years for sure. Awesome. I should mention I started in software development and learned over the years if you have a great technical product but the usability is not great then nobody's gonna use it and then the next extension of that was if you have great technology that looks good but nobody knows about it then it's going to fail as well so really have gone from software development to you know UI UX really interested in that and now into the marketing side and helping organizations tell their story and so that people can find out about the product or service. Yeah and knowing you personally I know you do a great job at the storytelling side and you are quite the storyteller and you have a bunch of stuff on the go as I mentioned but your Down, But Not Out story is really related around rTraction so could you tell us a bit more about rTraction leading up to that to that moment? So rTraction always had a good history of growth so previous to 2013, 2014 we had about 20 to 30% year-over-year growth as an agency we started off with four people and from that falling out of the original company that went bankrupt the four of us and stuck together and built something in experience good growth year over year and then we did a lot in the the local region I built a pretty good reputation here in the city for web technology online marketing design that kind of stuff and then we ended up getting a large contract with Disney ABC Television which sort of rocket shipped us and I know you have some other questions coming into that we've always been really kind of focused on a mix of business nonprofit charity and you know the for-profit business side and it's usually been and until disney kind of came into the picture around 60 to 70 percent of our business was actually the nonprofit charitable sector place that's sort of where our roots are and that's where we found strength sort of even in rebuilding is it's a remarkable client base and a great group of organizations to work with so historically we kind of have this this mix of working with marketing communications for nonprofits, and charities, small businesses and then we ended up, through random connection, getting a large contract with the ABC Television so you know there's a kind of a splitting point in the rTraction story there's before I think 2012, 2013 is when we really started to take off with Disney they they started off with the client with us in 2008 but we're you know a fairly minor client and then we ended up doing a major project with them in 2012 so there's that's kind of a demarcation, and then there's the post post-Disney rTraction as well which I'm sure we'll get into a little bit more, which has returned a little bit more to its roots which is working with nonprofits and charities and social purpose businesses and I guess we'll probably uncover why we think it's important to work with social purpose businesses as we go through the narrative of what I think helps you survive a cataclysmic event. Okay so we have this we have this path from starting in 2001 growing as a creative agency and the traditional approach of I think typical yeah But you guys you had a niche of who you'd like to work with and what you like to do and then you have this large client come in, Disney, and they ramp up your agency fairly rapidly right more aggressively than how you were growing previously and then what happened with that like where was that fall off where was that kind of Down, But Not Out at the moment? Yeah it was so with with Disney was interesting, you know one of the employees that we had hired came into my office one day he said would you like to work with Disney ABC Television because previous to that he had been a freelancer and he had a friend that worked with the Disney Corporation and they were looking for some help maintaining a web property so of course like any good entrepreneur we said sure sounds great and it's I mean I think and we can maybe unpack this a little bit later I think now maybe I would question about how it fits with what we want to build in the agency, but in my younger days you know growing revenue and growth for growth's sake was a little bit more not important but definitely on my mind so we're growing we're trying to be London's largest tech company so it made sense to onboard them for sure and then we built up a great relationship with them over you know three or four years of helping maintain an existing property that had been built by somebody else and then we had the opportunity to build some new software with them at that point we were probably 12, 13 people and over the next two two and a half years largely fueled by that contract we grew to about 40 people and then any agency owner who's had a large client will also tell you a very similar story you can try to differentiator like what's the word when you split off your revenues I can't think of the word but you have different revenue lines you can try to protect yourself from having this one large client but at the same time when you have this one large client they consume a lot of the resources and attention of your senior leadership to keep them on site so it's really hard to get different lines of revenue in so even though we knew it was really dangerous to have a large client representing such a large share of our revenue at times it was you know 60 to 70 percent we couldn't find the time and energy to you know get and onboard enough clients to sort of offset that and then of course as a lot of these stores go at one point you know the large corporations decisions are often made way up the decision-making tree so Disney they had mandatory expense cuts across all departments and our project got caught up in that and was cancelled so within about three months we had noticed we went from close to three million dollars worth of revenue as an agency to suddenly looking at how we get to 800 000 in revenue and that was the drop that we were looking at within three months of time it was pretty significant. Yeah hearing this is I think the most detail I've had about the story but I think it's giving me a bit of PTSD a bit of yeah I can only imagine that do you remember how you felt when you got that call or that that email? I remember my feeling of mine as well. I had actually just come off a little mini paternity leave so I had three weeks off when my daughter was born and came into the Monday and everything was great and then Tuesday I got the call from Disney saying that they needed to make the decision ironically enough before the baby was born I had flown out to LA to, Burbank where they are just to make sure because I know when you have a baby you're a little bit out of the loop, so just make sure everything's good with the relationship and you know get the next planning done and things like that so you know everything was fine and I think it was March when I went out there and then June was when I got the call saying that the contract was going to be canceled so even doing best practices get the face time with the client you know go out there so I was definitely in shock and I remember it's interesting because I remember saying to a couple of the team at the time we you know afford staff we had actually open job positions we were hiring we were growing and we were growing outside of Disney as well we had a pretty aggressive glory plan that we just launched to get to 60 people because we felt that that was sustainable and I remember sitting down with a colleague and saying like I can't see us surviving with more than eight people sort of by the end of this is done and I think if you were to track where we went to the low staff mark we were probably pretty close to that over three or four years because I think our payroll was $250 000 a month at the time and you're looking down to okay I can see a line of sight to $80 000 in revenue the other challenge you have in growth, somebody gave me this analogy it might have been Joe Dales is one of the co-founders of the RH Accelerator but one of the challenges with the company so you think of your company Visitor Queue is a certain size right now you think of it as a balloon and you can expand that balloon by blowing air into the balloon and the balloon gets bigger and bigger bigger bigger and then you have an oh crap moment and then you can take the air out of the balloon but to a certain extent the balloon is bigger just you can't actually get it back down to the size that it was before you started expanding it and that reality became real as well so as we've grown we've usually been pretty responsible with what we call the GNA expenses, the non-labor expenses, and it was roughly 15 to 20 percent each year of our overall expenses when this happened we the best we've been able to get to is around 40 to 50 percent of our GNA because we just have so much infrastructure to support all those employees that you have people desks and you know things like that so even when you're looking at okay in the service agency you say okay wait your your revenue is sort of fixed to the people, that was true except for that balloon factor as well so we had a huge amount of infrastructure that we had to kind of take apart piece by piece so it was a long hardest process. We'd also taken on in the expansion of growth working capital loans from BDC and they're a great organization really helped the organization grow we couldn't have grown into the amount of revenue we did without their support but now that was part of the infrastructure legacy that we had that was built on an assumption of increased and continuing revenue growth then now suddenly we're in a position where we're going to see your revenue decline so all of those things mixed in it's like oh god I think you know one of the saving graces was I had pretty much not taken on any debt or anything that had personal guarantees so other than that the BDC had a small personal guarantee that was a sort of saving grace was okay at least I'll be okay, my family will be okay, and the employees will be okay, so really it became about how do we take care of our customers through that if you're gonna survive this type of event your customers become key. Disney was one of them too it was a longer it took I think two years to formally sort of wind down the relationship to the point that it ended and just you know really focusing on customers and our staff and making sure that they were comfortable we did a town hall meeting where we shared the news and it was one of those moments that I wish I could better articulate what the challenges were because I think some people put my message the wrong way but basically said to the staff it's going to be a really crappy ride like I can't sugarcoat this it's gonna be really difficult it's gonna be hard I think we can meet the challenge I think we can make it through but you know if any of the many of you want off the boat, no hard feelings I'll be a reference for you all, support you in any way can. Some people took that as I wanted them to quit which wasn't what I was trying to communicate yeah you know it's gonna be rocky it's gonna be tough it's gonna be a tough slog if that's not in your DNA then I'll totally support you sort of jumping off ship so that I remember that meeting was really hard I'm sharing these with staff because up until then you know we've won Business of the Year we were you know if you worked at an attraction you were at one of the if not one of the largest then at the time you know one of the largest tech companies in the city we were doing some amazing things we were doing a lot of support in the community so it's like almost everyone's kind of collective story of self and where you work and what type of company you work for kind of got shattered all in one flow so it was hard for staff it was obviously hard for the owners Anyway, I think we mostly firewalled that stress from our customers which I think was a success though the existing customers weren't impacted from a service delivery perspective which I credit our team for and that's ultimately focusing on the customers and the ones that we did have this part will pull us through. Yeah you mentioned a few things there that I kind of want to appeal is scaling up versus scaling down and it being almost is equally as hard right people always imagine how hard it is to scale up but I think most entrepreneurs that shoot for the moon and and take those shots right they will likely have to scale down at some point as well in order to take a few steps back in order to take those steps forward that they want to so I think that's an important lesson for for the listeners and for people that are starting a business is yes it's hard to scale up but scaling down is equally as hard if not harder because you have all that infrastructure in place and and now you have to support it somehow and you have a portion of the revenue and the other part there is protecting your current clients I think that's good and that they didn't see the fallout and I think that's a great lesson for everybody as well because what I kept telling myself when I was in that moment as well and we only lost 20 percent of revenue but what I was saying is hey it's better than zero it's better than going back down to zero right we've all started at zero you know what that's like we know it sucks so anything better than zero or anything above zero is better right and protecting your clients as you go through that moment is the existing clients and the revenue you can don't throw that away just because you're mad or you're upset and and you're in a hole because of this other this other issue so I think that's incredibly valuable as well and then tell me a bit about where you guys are now and what you're doing now towards recovering and your employees. Yeah I think for me one of the lessons learned was our attraction had a certain connection so interestingly enough pretty much anyone we hired during the Disney phase growth phase is not with us anymore and a lot of the people that started with us sort of 2008, 2009 are still with us so it's kind of been interesting it's almost like back to the same company we were, there's a few notable changes but I would say if we looked at rTraction in 2009, 2010 we almost have the same staff as we did back then so what I learned through that is you know the people that were into the ride the people that were were there really believed in the purpose of our attraction that you mentioned you know in the onboarding we're a certified B Corp which really looks at taking care of all of our stakeholders including our staff, customers, vendors, the community etc so people that believed in that type of mission were the ones that were willing to stick it through and he came through some some tough times there was impact on staff there's definitely some increased stress on their behalf um so really for us it was focusing on okay what what is the purpose of rTraction where do we start this really goes back to wanting to create stronger communities and build better communities and you can see that you know there's some overlap with the other business RH Accelerator that you're familiar with I'm really about building stronger communities, I like connection, I like helping people to grow, I like people to become the best versions of themselves like how can we help founders how can we help in the rTraction side how can we help customers tell their stories better to reach more in non profit as we reach more donors, reach more community member,s we reach more stakeholders, because I really like a strong vibrant community I think we as humans do better when we're in a strong community i think we do better when we have great social connections and personal connections that's what really fueled me at the end of the day and I think people felt that through the business they felt connected to the business and I think our clients who've stuck with us over the years through thick and thin have also you know believe in that purpose so for me it was figuring out and we're still working on articulating the perfect like why statement but doubling down on that purpose the other thing actually is I have to credit you a little bit with I think you know was listening more to Nathan Lackey's podcast and certainly thinking about how do you build up recurring revenue in a service agency because the the worst thing about a service agency is the lumpiness so you know you get a great quarter where you close $300 000 worth of projects you're like yay let's get to work let's hire some people the next quarter you saw $20 000 you're like oh no we like have to lay a bunch of people off or whatever so um for me it's looking at how do we transform the rTraction business model to be a little bit more like a software as a service or service model so we're looking at really focusing on like a shared services model for nonprofits and charities where whatever the problem is they can come to us and we'll figure it out if they can help with accounting they need help with obviously the digital marketing piece is where we have our our in-core staff they can help with it like just come to us and we'll help you regardless even if it's not inside our attractions wheelhouse will find the right vendor you need leads we'll connect you to Visitor Queue you know those types of things really focusing on that sector that social purpose sector because that's where we find we have the most success and get the most energy so like that's what is fueling our next stage of growth and we'll be back you know COVID's put a weird spin on everything we had a great start to 2020 and then we kind of slid into the muck a little bit over the summer and now we're back to I think some really exciting growth but with Canadian vaccine rollout you know where we're at right now in in April of 2021 I'd say if it wasn't for the the COVID asterix I'd say we'll probably have a great year I'm still shooting for that but I will settle for a good year. Yeah like most of us right yeah we gotta count ourselves lucky that we're not in an industry that's a very hard hit right, running the business as we do are very fortunate, that's what I keep telling myself VQ slowed down as a result of it as well it's a tech company where everyone works from home right it shouldn't be as affected as these other industries and we were affected but you just got yourself lucky you weren't one of the hard-hit ones right. One are our favorite clients at the Science North up in Sudbury and they have in-person events they have in-person education as part of the curriculum they have the iMac and so just you know trying to help them navigate they're like okay we're open this week oh wait we're not and like you just told even that you know this is an example how we can be impacted as our clients are just whiplash they don't know whether they should be working on their events system or they should be you know their online instruction platform we've helped with both projects but like those are you know even so our clients are you know the ones that are we can do our jobs pretty fully remotely but what our clients need and where their needs are are sort of thrashing wildly which is kind of where that translates into some uncertainty for us for sure. I think my favorite part about your story is that rTraction was really the main focus for a while there for 20 years give or take through I know you had your side projects 20 years and you had to do the other projects that you were working on and then the Disney event happened and we know that rTraction was hard hit by that but it almost it's almost like you learned a lesson and we'll get into lessons in a bit but to kind of diverse not all your eggs in one basket because now you have a great growing accelerator that is doing great things for the ecosystem and I'm sure will benefit you guys in the future you have rTraction at a steady spot where it is now and I know you're doing a bunch of other things in the community you have your other software product, is a good day? Good day yeah. So I like how you've kind of you've learned from the lesson of having one big fish, one big client can hurt and you felt that pain and now you've spread out your assets you've spread out your time in order to protect against something like that happening again. I think one of the key lessons there that any other founders could maybe take away is that was a cataclysmic event that we experienced should it could have been an extinction level event losing 67% of your revenue almost overnight but because of our team and because of our clients we were able to make it through and I would say one of the reasons that the RH Accelerator was founded from my perspective was we actually had extra resources that you know we have 40 desks from the rTraction days that we just were sitting empty so that was one of the initial conversations with Brian and Joe was we have the space we've got these desks we've got these I've got monitors, I've got 40 workstations that we're just not using how do we leverage those assets to do something new and looking back on it I think RH Accelerator is going to have a huge impact in our region I think it's going to have a huge impact in certain industry back sectors and who knows maybe Brian and Joe would have founded it without me maybe we still would have found a way to pass cross paths but I think if I was still managing a 60 70 person agency there's no way that I would have the bandwidth or energy or even desire to kind of look at something like RH Accelerator so those are the sometimes those kicks in the face the you know the force pivots the you know the down moments where you have to be really creative okay but I got a space how do I monetize it, how do I put it to work for me, is one of those moments that created the RH Accelerator and I think you know if you look back 10 years from now I think I will be very grateful that the RH Accelerator existed as part of my ecosystem now if you told me that when Disney first pulled the plug on the project I may not have appreciated well ten years you'll be fine you'll actually look at this as a great thing that happened to you but I do I actually truly believe that in ten years I will thank god that happened because I think our community's stronger with there it's accelerating place I think I'm stronger I think I have a better you know portfolio and a better impact job I'm happier than if I had been managing you know an outsourced for Disney right so those are the yeah it took three years and a lot of hard nights and hard days to get through but at the end of the day I think I will say that I'm glad that it happened I'm not there yet. I can see it already for you I think it's looking and it's easier outside looking and it's definitely easier for me to see that it was a not a good thing because I never want to wish that upon somebody right but I think it was positive I guess in a way it you could turn it into a positive and I think so what I want to make is that entrepreneurs do that right they get punched in the face they have this event that happens and then they use the resources that are left over maybe in that downscale like we were talking about or what have you to turn it into something else and that and I've seen a lot of great entrepreneurs do it that and that's what usually separates the two from a good entrepreneur to a great entrepreneur is when they're down, they're out they find a way to use the resources that they have in order to spin up something new or create that new revenue stream they need to in order to keep going. The thing I had too is I had a lot of people reach out to me when I was going through the challenges of just sort of you know trying to get everything structured and set up for success how many stories I heard from other entrepreneurs or second generation entrepreneurs that inherited the family business about how the original family business was nothing to do with what they're doing now and they went through a similar kind of process and pivot so I think as you explore this podcast I just thought of another guest I'll let you know they should have on the show it is a very common story so when you have your oh crap moments know that it could be the birth of something that's new and better that won't necessarily save you in the moment but it's interesting. Yeah I think right along that thought and the thing that drew me to this book the most was that it it tells these this story right the hard thing about hard things it literally tells a story of the resilience the pivoting the tenacity it takes to to be an entrepreneur and to make it, to make it through and actually when I was going through Google, that Google changed that I had to re-listen to the book because it helped me get up in the morning it helped me find the courage to get the team going and to get the team motivated again when I was just exhausted right, too many hours not enough, not enough reward out of it, and I was feeling burnt out so I think there's lessons in those moments and you need to ensure that you're looking at the resources you have available as that's where you're gonna find your pivot, you look at what you have and that'll be where you find your next step so I guess to wrap up a bit was there a point in time you considered quitting? I think it's a good question because somebody might be going through this moment and be considering it or maybe you didn't. Oh no, frequently and I think there's two things that kept me going, one as I mentioned there was a small personal guarantee from BDC it was something we could have absorbed as a family it was not an experience that we want to go through, two was that I mean the team is still with me today is the team that you know was with me in 2006-2007 so I really felt if they were with me then it was worth you know trying to grind through and then I do a lot you know the customers really um the customers that we do have are amazing and I love working with them so it was a combination of okay I hate the decisions I have to make today I hate the decisions that I'm going to do but I love the business I did try it we almost got bought, there was an organization was looking to expand into Ontario and they wanted surplus of development which we had so you know I probably would have taken any offer at that point just to not go through the dismantling of the team if I could have kept the team together you know at its 30, 40 person mark because we had an awesome team I would have done that so I would have considered that, I did consider just throwing in a towel multiple times but ultimately there was a little bit of financial incentive mixed in with the no like we can do this, I think in hindsight I don't know if it was the right decision to make or not, I think there was a lot of energy that could have been put into something new or different and I'm happy that I made the decision that I did if that makes sense like it was it's been four years because then once we entangled Disney then we had to deal with their banking relationships that were you know the ratios were all out of whack because everything was signed at two million plus in in revenue now we're at six hundred thousand so we just you know the numbers didn't work with the banks so then we had to deal with them and then you know and then we come out of that and everything's fine and they hope it hits so it's been probably coming up to five years I think it's 2016 in June when I first got the call from Disney saying we're gonna have to start to slow things down so it's been five years of really daily grind battles, anyway I think it's one of those in five years I'll look back and say thank I did that but I'm still in that it's still a fight to get the agency back up and stable but we're 90% of the way there like you can now see the the like proper real light at the end of the tunnel sometimes I do wonder okay what could have been doing in those five years that could maybe been a better use of my time and energy and you don't have a crystal ball so we have eh sometimes I do. Entrepreneurs such as yourself I see sometimes your past self and your future self can be really handy tools if I try to connect with okay what is David Billson going to think five years from now I have five years from now I think this every decision I'll make I'll say no that was the right you know it was a good call to keep rTtraction going it was a good call to start the accelerator yeah it sucked for you at the time but I think you made the right decision and then also anchoring back to what your past self would would say you know five years previous like no you need to make this work you need to figure it out for your customers so like connecting to past and future selves is sort of an interesting exercise sometimes to think about okay what what am I going to think about this in the future because I know so there's another entrepreneur I've been talking to in the community that has a difficult decision ahead and I think people when I say like well if you think about either path five years from now you'll be happy with that decision I think and sometimes I think it's good to kind of walk down those paths when you're divorced with a difficult decision and realize either way you'll be okay yeah when you look back so that's kind of what i hope that made sense in the context of your question. Yeah I think that it's important that people get caught up and it might sounds like you're caught up in it you have the anxiety of what is my future self really gonna is that the best potential for me in the future but I think you're right looking back five years any decision you make that is progression in some way you'll look back and say that was the correct decision yeah I think that sums up what you were saying and I think it's an important lesson and one that I get anxiety about what in a year from now am I working hard enough am I making the right decision today that in a year from now I'm going to be happy with where I am and every year I've looked back I haven't been like oh I wasted a year's worth of work I've been happy with it so consider that that you might have anxiety about the future but you probably won't have the regret looking back because you put in the time you put in the work and you made some progress and like I said again some progress is better than no progress right. Absolutely and remember this again Joe Dales at one point I was thinking about looking into the MBA kind of thing you're like dude you've been running your own business now for I think probably at the time 10 years you know you've already got the MBA so sometimes I look at those moments too as education moments. Yep. Okay you know I don't know the MBA at Ivey is like 130 grand or something now I was like okay I learned a very expensive lesson but you may be cheaper than at the you're trying to spend a year doing an MBA right so those are two like when you make mistakes or you make a bad decision um that's going to happen but would you learn from it how do you make a better decision next time as an entrepreneur as a leader because there is really there's accelerators like the RH Accelerator but ultimately so much of the entrepreneurial journey has to be learned this is you know learn process where you learn how you make decisions how you, Nick, you know makes decisions is gonna be different than how I, David, make decisions and learning when you make good ones and make bad ones and there's no way through that except to do it right so I think that's the other thing too is even if you can look back and say boy that was a bad decision well what did you learn from that decision because that makes you a better more experienced entrepreneur next time because you will face a similar type of decision next week, next year five years from now and if you can learn from that then that's going to put you in a better class of entrepreneurs and unfortunately I don't think there's any way to do that but through experience so that's the other thing too is like when I fail is thinking about okay what I learned and yeah I think you've seen that with me sometimes when you've missed a goal okay what did you learn from it as long as you learn something from it I think it's fine I think you know we want to set a high target for ourselves and try to achieve those objectives but I always think of especially or growth stage companies as learning mechanisms so you have to be constantly learning about what your customers want, constantly learning how to hire onboard staff, constantly learn how to build a great culture, and learning only comes from making mistakes as well so. For context for everybody when David's saying my goals and him being upset with me for missing them David's an investor in Visitor Queue so that's where that comes from and sharing our goals of their shareholders and a lot of the times I don't hit them because I stretch them and then when i do hit them i'm upset with myself because I didn't stretch them far enough and there's one more thing I want to unpack, getting a day job for anyone that's you know quitting and being a founder and getting a day job I think it's important to understand if you're someone that can now go back to like you're saying you've been an entrepreneur for 10 years it taught you more than going to get an MBA or going back to school but I've talked to other entrepreneurs whether they're being acquired or they're in that stage where they're like I'm going to give up yada yada yada, I'm going to go get a day job and okay are you going to be happy in that day job after this? Are you going to be able to do that day job and not be selfish to that corporation like you don't want your employees to be right get the job and mosey along through it so understand that coming out of your most recent venture at that point of quitting is that an actual option right for you to go get a day job would you be happy doing that I think that's the big caveat there and ensuring that you're going to be happy and you're going to make a real contribution to that corporation. I was talking to another entrepreneur and we were talking, he's at a point where he might get acquired and he said they want me to stick around and I said how long are you gonna last to get to stick around he said maybe a year I'm like I could do a year as well beyond that I think I would have an itch, my thing is I need to be at the point of I think still figuring myself out a bit i'm still at the youth part of my career and my journey as an entrepreneur but I think what drives me is that unlimited potential I don't like to be capped I don't like to be capped in my potential in my in my future growth I like to have that unlimited possible potential so in the corporation obviously and working for someone else that might be that'll likely be capped in what you can do and how far you can grow so I think that's an important lesson that I've derived and that I want to pass on is that ensuring that you're able to go back to that nine to five or that working for someone else if that's a if that's something you're considering. Yeah I think for me what differentiates as sort of an entrepreneur or founder from an employee is being able to the ones that do it successfully are able to take accountability so to the extent that I think part of the reason being a founder being a CEO being a top level leader is so hard is ultimately at the end of the day everything's your fault so even if it's like well the currency moved you know 30 points overnight and I wasn't expecting the US currency to crash well you're the one that decided to not hedge your currency right so like everything in the organization becomes your fault so I think making the leap back into a regular job space is two things one can you handle not being the one to make decisions and two are you willing to play the accountability game because in a corporation or a large structure that you're not at the top of there's multiple different complexities with accountabilities and responsibilities and entrepreneurs are often the type say I'm just going to do it because I you know see a clear path I'm just going to do it get out of my way and a lot of corporations have breaks on that for potentially good reasons they can make it really challenging for that type of personality to do that so you know I think the skill sets and problem solving and entrepreneurship are invaluable I think you know we have a little bit of a bad reputation for being poor employees once we've owned our own business and I think it's because of that you know you can as a business owner you can just decide to go do something and I think you probably like I could see if I landed back in corporate land where I would struggle is not following proper procedures or authorizations because I'm just going to go solve a problem because that's what I do I'm a natural creative solver yeah and it just you know and then getting frustrated when I get in trouble because it's like in math class I would always have the right or frequently have the right answer but not show my work and I would lose marks for not showing my work and I would get frustrated with the teacher and be like well why does it matter I got the right answer right so I think you can draw a pretty much straight line to that entrepreneurship ultimately you're a jet like nobody cares about your product and if you're getting acquired maybe but ultimately you're judged on your income saving your balance sheet nobody really cares in the community like how you've done that work you know you don't have to show your work I guess in entrepreneurship whereas when you're a corporation it's all about showing your work and in some cases maybe even showing your work is more important than whether or not you got the right answer for me it's always output output outcomes did you succeed did you know did you do what you say you're gonna do did you learn if you didn't like it's outcomes driven so I don't like to show my work I guess. Yeah that was the same way I was in school right, I got the right answer who cares what how I got there mean I maybe did I didn't cheat and I maybe used a different way than what you taught me but if I got the answer right why do we need to be careful why do I need to lose half my marks so I think that's probably there's something in there as well it's like that piece so I think in the right type of organization you know I could do fine I think in a senior leadership role probably defined where you had a lot of autonomy yeah but I think you know too much structure process if you had to show your work I probably would struggle. That's fair, so we've already talked about a few different lessons whether it be entrepreneurship or the story you shared but anything else any other lessons we missed about your Down, But Not Out story that event and what you learned either going afterward a year two years what have you something you learned yesterday from that event? I think for me the only thing I would add is you make sure you're taking care of your psychological self I think I did not I entered in I have a personal therapist I started a relationship with in probably 2018, 2019 and definitely should have started that journey a lot earlier because having and it doesn't have to be like a you know therapist per se but I think one of the things I didn't pay enough attention to was the psychological damage that the stress was doing to me and that impacted family and other people as well and you know I thought I was doing a good job of managing the stress relative to the amount of stress there was and I actually think you know most people would agree I did pretty well given the total amount of the stress and I think I could have handled it better and probably done less you know psychological damage to myself and my family by handling that better so entrepreneurship is an incredibly challenging ride I think a lot of that does like there's nobody else really to blame at the end of the day and that's psychological stress you know am I good enough imposter syndrome all those things become really challenging so reaching out you know RH Accelerator is an example of that type of network where you can reach out if you have questions or struggling but also I'd say you know I would not hesitate at all to recommend entrepreneurs if soon you know day one of signing your incorporations find a personal therapist because it's gonna be hard and I think the more we can take care of the psychological safety of our founders is you know even like you mentioned that getting acquired piece that can be incredibly stressful and both outcomes are positive you know you have you know you continue your business as this or you get acquired by another company both outcomes you're gonna be great you're gonna be fine but ultimately that stress is so hard because of the uncertainty and am I making the right decision am I treating my staff fairly am I dreaming like it's just it's a lot to take on yeah so having some resources that you can lean on in times of psychological stress and taking care of your own psychological safety I was far more keen on you know taking care of our staff's psychological safety and sort of I think emptied my my bucket there and wasn't paying attention to how the empty my bucket was getting so I think that would be the biggest takeaway is this is a hard journey if you're on it I've talked to thousands of entrepreneurs I don't think I've had one that's ever said oh no it's fine I never lost the next night's sleep right everyone goes through ups and downs so making sure that you have the take care of your yourself and your own mental health is a key thing that I wish I had done a little differently I think that's I think that's important for the output right if you're an output oriented person not an input then you can take a day off ensure that maybe your input's down but because you took that day off or you took that time for yourself your output is going to be much better right if you can de-stress a bit you can rest of it so I think that's really important and something that people miss is oh I'm going to miss a day worth of input yeah but you're in your output right now is garbage because you're too stressed you're in a terrible mental state right now so you can't actually get a good output you can't get your team going you can't so I think that's missed a lot and a good point to make. Yeah and I'm not like today I did this because I like you and I thought we'd have a great conversation but technically I'm off today and that was literally because I recognized my own stress level it was a really intense quarter first quarter like positive intense I just I could tell I'm at that okay I need a day to just you know decompress and go for run play some video games yeah with Nick and that'll be my day and it'll be much less stressful I still did check my email and did a couple banking things but you know like no meetings no whatever so. Yeah let this be your therapy session for the week a little bit, yeah and I think coming off of coming off of the last point really coming off of that event that I had I knew I was mentally trained as well and I'm sure you felt that as the stress was like no other right when that cataclysmic event occurred yeah there you go you really you're not I think that's one of the worst mental states I was in right after and a few weeks a few months after because it's almost I don't know what shell shock is like but I imagine it's close to that right or some sort of PTSD it's a very traumatic experience right that you're going through and uh and then you have to cope with it right and part of that is ensuring that you're taking time off you're looking after your mental health awesome all right that's all for this episode thank you David Billson for sharing your Down, But Not Out story. Thanks, Nick it's a pleasure to be here. Cheers. Bye.