209. Going from employee to consultant with Reza Saeedi

And in this episode we talk about his transition from employee to marketing consultant, advisor, CMO, uh, where he was able to get a few quick clients, uh, right off the bat, right after leaving his job and. And how he eventually ended up taking on a new and exciting role at a company called passage, which we'll get into and how he plans to do advising on the side. So I thought Reza had an interesting story because he was able to find success so quickly after leaving his job.

And that is a very difficult thing for a lot of people. Usually I recommend that you do whatever work you can take on. As a freelancer or consultant to get at least a base of work going and then build more leverage and profit as you go along, but Reza was able to jump right in and advise right away.

So we, we talk about things like, you know, how he got into marketing, how he was able to get those clients as quickly as he did, uh, the various ways he's been able to help clients and the kind of challenges and questions they have and a whole swath of other topics that are super relevant if you're trying to get into this strategic marketing advisor role, fractional CMO role. And so we talk all about the business model and some of the various factors that go into it.

So without any further ado, I'll get into it and I'll see you on the other end. Reza. Thank you so much for joining us today. Really excited to talk to you about your career and your path from going from in house to consulting, advising, interim leadership, and transitioning again, back in house and doing some advising on the side.

So you've had, you have an interesting background and story, and I thought you'd be a perfect person to bring onto the podcast to show people what you've been through and how you've kind of transitioned through in and out of working and advising and consulting. So thank you for joining us today. Uh, how are you so far in this fine Friday, Friday morning? Thanks, Kevin, super excited to be here. It's been a busy, but amazing week. So excited to be wrapping it up with you here.

Yeah. So you're at passage now you're starting, you're working in a new business. We'll, we'll talk about that briefly. So you're doing a kind of a soft launch with them, a funded, uh, government funded program. It's a company, I guess maybe you can talk about it. That helps immigrants in Canada for now connect with jobs. Is that sort of the general concept of it? Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, I can share a bit more about passage.

So passage essentially, uh, is empowering people who want to be doing more with their lives. So our philosophy is that there are a lot of people with a lot of latent potential sitting on the sidelines because of the lack of, uh, because of the lack of financial access. So our mission is to provide these individuals around the world with access to life changing opportunities. And to start with, we are matching top international talent with opportunities in Canada and help fund their journey.

And the sort of the secret sauce I'd say to passages that is why it's so interesting and so exciting for me. Um, and excited to be sharing it with the world very soon as well. It's not just about doing. And any educational or career opportunities, it's essentially enabling those destination countries and destination environments.

In this case, Canada, that we are launching with to also be thriving in the sense that if you're bringing, bringing international talent from these different countries around the world, we are also making sure that they're coming here and attending opportunities and graduating from opportunities or essentially starting careers that are contributing to Canada's economy as well. So it's a win win for. It's for the society and for individuals at large. Yeah, I love that.

I love that integration piece around, you know, connecting people with the economy because without that traction, then it becomes very difficult for immigrants to plug into the economy, which is essential. And we're, we're in a time now where people are migrating all over the world. It's, you know, you're just seeing it across the world with, uh, with that, and especially here in Canada. So that's. Great concept, and I'm glad to see that that's, uh, getting up and running.

Um, tell us, how did you get into marketing? How did you sort of, what was your origin story, if you will? And how did you end up here today? So fun fact, I actually went to school and started out my career as a chemical engineer, which I've realized a lot of the people in marketing and sales have actually gone through as well. But soon I realized my love for business, marketing, uh, startups and generally just building things.

And that passion at the time, we were talking 10 plus years ago, combined with a very close friend of mine, this is back when I was studying and sort of graduated from a university in the UK, close friend of mine quoting his very predictable and safe job as a lawyer, so that Me realizing that I'm not going to be a fit for being an engineer for the rest of my life and combined with sort of that exposure encouraged me to do the same thing.

So I went and started my own business at two sided hiring marketplace, ended up becoming a hiring marketplace, uh, after a bunch of pivots and ever since then, for the last decade or so, I've been leading, uh, marketing and growth, um, as a first ish, I would say first, second, third, uh, marketer at now five early stage startups. Wow. Yeah. I love that.

Uh, first of all, you're the second chemical engineer I've spoken to in a couple of weeks with Dylan Bridger, who did a workshop on copywriting and email marketing. Also a trained engineer who realized this isn't what I want to do with my life. And I love that you used to kind of started a business as a way to get into being a marketer.

It's like, you, you know, you, you want credentials, we'll go start something, go build something, and then you'll develop skills, you know, coming into it sideways that can lead to a whole bunch of opportunities. So what happened to that in the end? Did it, did you end up selling it or did it just kind of fizzle out or how did that go? Yeah, we went at it for about two and a half years. We had a mini exit, I would say.

So we ended up sort of, uh, giving the back end of our platform to a local publishing company that ended up sort of using it for their own purposes. At the time they were building something similar. So it was a very amazing learning opportunity. I'd say it wasn't a huge exit opportunity, but at the time, at the same time, we were able to translate it into something useful, uh, coming out of it. And then I, at the time I had the opportunity to move to a new country, Canada, where I am right now.

And I call home. And, um, sort of that felt like a natural transition to either looking into starting something here or joining an early stage environment. Right. And so you ended up, at on deck, I think when you kind of joined the mindshare group and you were, and that was like kind of after a series of marketing jobs that you had, and it sounded like you based on doing some LinkedIn profiling view, it sounded like you had a role you got in.

Is as a leader in the marketing department, growth, and then you sort of developed as the head of growth at some point. And then you were like, you were embarking on, you left the on deck and, uh, which is a very well known, uh, I guess, cohort training, uh, business. If I'm not, you know, miss misspeaking, but you left there and then you went into consulting. And so what made, what compelled you to, to dabble at this world of independent?

consulting, advising, interim leadership, and why not just dive right into the next career opportunity? Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's super relevant to the MindShare community as well. So probably like taking a few steps back, I've always throughout my career, even before OnDeck, I've formally or informally advised early stage founders.

So having started as a founder and gone into working at a bunch of early stage startups, I had this natural passion and love for helping early stage founders because I love to build and I love helping people who are building. So, um, marketing growth, revenue being my sort of area of expertise. I wanted to enable. Founder friends or people I'm being referred to. So helping them out, but it was kind of informal on an hourly basis.

It was never something that I really relied on, uh, or really invested time in. But during OnDeck, so going back to a question as I was sort of wrapping up with OnDeck and OnDeck is like the way you explained it makes a lot of sense. But OnDeck throughout my time, about two, two and a half plus years, went through a lot of transitions as a company and the way we position ourselves. And now right now it's OnDeck has actually gone back to its roots of. Providing founders with support.

They need to essentially start a company from very early days. So I'm super excited about the direction that the company is taking with on deck. It was a very natural transition towards the end of my time there, where I was essentially being a community of founders. I was as part of my job, helping run office hours for the founders and really help them understand their go to market. Distribution channels, what works, what doesn't work, how do we build an experimentation pipeline?

Um, all that fun stuff that I, I really consider fun and really enjoyable because there's no right or wrong answer and it really comes down to doing a lot of things, understanding your, uh, ideal audiences and really testing, iterating and realizing what works.

But there are areas that you can essentially be very confident that because you are operating in the space for these type of customers based on past experience or based on existing competitive data, you are going to be getting X or Y results. So as part of that, I, I started working very naturally running these office hours or the founders.

And I found it, it was kind of a reminder for me of how much I enjoy doing and getting exposed to, say, I was running it on Thursdays and Fridays and there was a, like a Calendly forum and every one of those founders would come to you with a different type of problem. So within that forum, there was a questions like, what is your biggest GTM challenge? And they would fill it out and as, as different as they were, they all had sort of the same sort of confusion within them.

And really you could categorize the questions within like five categories. So that was interesting to see. What kind of question was you there though? What kind of questions were they asking? What were those just out of curiosity? What's that common thread? Just prep, I'm going to answer by prefacing to say that on deck doesn't really, it's very agnostic when it comes to industry or type of businesses. So sector wise.

So it was interesting that in a given day you would get, you would be talking to a B2B company serving mid market to like, uh, Direct to consumer app and really for this stage of companies having raised a seed round or just getting ready for a series, series a, or in some cases just being an idea company, idea stage company, just contemplating and deciding between which of the two ideas should I go with and how do I, how do I validate that? How do I do customer discovery around that?

I think it was, it was mostly, so depending on the type of companies, there was a questions ranging from, again, what I just said, how do I go about asking the right questions? Which one should I really go deep down in and, um, how do I optimize my landing page, uh, to increase conversion to then how do I increase like really the question of what are the type five channels I should be investing in? Should I do pay? Should I do organic? Uh, what's the right mix of channels?

Uh, what is the right mix of channels? Uh, look like, um, and occasionally some sort of advice around. Uh, raising funds as well. And how do I again, do positioning messaging? So a lot of that, I'd say like product marketing slash, um, finding the right distribution strategy is, is, is, is content the right sort of channel for us to focus on, um, how long does it take for it, uh, for it, for it to yield. Um, and yeah, I'd say like, it really comes down to early stage founders.

Debating between whether or not I should be investing in paid channels. Or should I, how, how long should I be going at sort of exhausting the organic channels, my community, my referrals, my word of mouth before I invest in something and how do I make sure that it's going to yield results? And the honest answer is that you wouldn't know in most cases until you actually try. There are some educated guesses you can make. Uh, but yeah. Yeah. Interesting that like a lot of that. So strategy.

And, uh, I mean, we're all trying when you're creating something new, that's a bit novel. You're always trying to figure out, is this thing going to work and do people want this? Or am I just obsessed with an idea that frankly, the, the world isn't even looking for? And, uh, and it's funny that all industries, all businesses more or less have the same categories of problems. And that's why even my methodology that I teach is like, yeah, let's get strategy and messaging completed.

Let's figure out some analytics and then let's go run experiments. Let's get a landing page on a website going. Yeah. So you can start to invite people back to it, but there's no point in running ads until you've kind of, you know, spoken to people, done some of that strategy, done some of that research. And it's all the same sort of layers, no matter what the business is. And sometimes you can fast track through them. And sometimes you have to really spend more time at earlier stages.

But I always akin it to kind of like, it's like a doctor's able to see all kinds of people because people all have the same general anatomy. Um, but it's like how you, how you interface with that person and what's the right levers to. Explore and, you know, that's the fun of our job. So that kind of brings us back to our question.

So you were actually doing some, you were leading some of these calls and presumably doing a bit of mentoring and, and helping people think through some of these questions along the way, you weren't just marketing on deck, you were. Very involved. It sounds like in the delivery of the program.

And, um, so you've, you obviously have this bent toward startup, uh, interest and that because you're kind of scratching your own itch, you figured marketing is very much related to product price place promotion. And so now you're kind of helping people do that. And you're sort of transitioning into a growth revenue marketing kind of capacity. Um, is, so then what, what, what specifically then let's go back to that question, what made you want to go into consulting advising interim?

Is it just the next independent version of the same thing you were doing with the job?

Yeah, so continuing down that thread, having those conversations made me realize how much I love it, how much I love mentoring, teaching, it's always been a consistent theme in my life, in my career, I was a private chemistry tutor when I was in my secondary university, just teaching somebody who I'm proudly, I can proudly say, as a side note, went from having a C grade to an A plus grade, I was a grading scheme back in the UK, and then going on to do a PhD in chemistry at the university of

British Columbia. So, uh, from the UK. So I know that, that, that, that student of mine, it was just a backstory. So even from that, that age, I just love teaching. So that the theme sort of kept coming back for me while I was doing that. And then as I was wrapping up my time at on deck, um, I naturally was having a bunch of conversations that, uh, with founders, um, that really. Sort of provided this environment for me to be taking this, this conversation more seriously.

And these were the founders who basically needed more help. And around that time, I sort of started learning more about a lot of people were getting into these like fractional consulting advisory on, obviously there are having learned from you, there are differences between how you like talk about them and what each entails. I kind of started introducing that and sort of wanted to. Um, scratch that itch a little bit more and understand how far I can go.

And tied to that, I, I always said to my network, I'm sort of doing this. Um, I was having really like exciting conversations. So I ended up having around 12 conversations with different founders, different companies at different stages, considering joining them and collaborating with them. But while doing that, when I was chatting with friends on my network, I always said I am also open to considering and looking at my next thing, assuming it fits and checks the box or boxes.

I should say there are a couple of things I can chat about it that I sort of consider when I look at my next thing, my career, my full time thing, but at the time it just felt like there wasn't any of that. Any of the conversations I was having wasn't really. Fitting that bill. And at the same time, these conversations I was having with these founders, they were, they were the type of companies and kind of people that I wanted to help with.

And I thought there was an amazing fit and I could really help these people. So with that, I think people, which people, the ones who ended up helping. Yes. The people I end up advising and consulting. So I'd say I have, like, I wrote all of these down. This was, um, around like, um, towards the end of last year, I had around like 12 conversations and I think, um, we like, I ended up sort of, uh, going forward with three of those companies or helping them out one within a fractional capacity.

So being very specific and one and two in like a consulting sort of a less hands on capacity. Right. So, okay. So I guess you were thinking, I'm going to leave this job. I'm going to see what the market, what I can do. Independently for a little while. Right. Rather than just jump into the next thing, it sounds like you have a criteria for what you would look for in a new position. And you maybe like finding a job is a full time job.

Um, so you, between on deck and, and your new current role, how long was that period of time? Was it like six months? I'd say it was around like three, four months. Oh, three, four months. And in that time you helped, was it three organizations? That's pretty good. I mean, a lot of people don't, a lot of people pick up one kind of client at a time in the beginning, you have a unique opportunity because you can let people know that. You're available for hire. You're leaving this, this thing.

And you tend to kind of be able to shake the tree of your network and people, you know, apples tend to fall off. And then, and then there's kind of this long tail where you have to actually market yourself and grow your business actively through content and education. Um, how were you able to generate 12 conversations so quickly? Was it just because your network is steeped in founders and people you've kind of met over the years, or what did you do specifically to get those conversations going?

Yeah, that's a good question.

I think I would credit a lot of that to, to my network at on deck, just being so connected to founders and through every, and this is a key part and probably helpful for, for the community as well through those, every conversation that I was having that wasn't even relevant to just catching up with friends and, and my, uh, ex colleagues or anybody that I was speaking with, I communicated this sort of mission or this goal of mine that, I am, this is what I'm focusing on.

And if I find this other opportunity that takes X, Y, and Z, then I'm also open to like a full time opportunity. So, and when it came to the advisory and, um, consulting side of things, I was being very specific around like who I can help with and what I can help them with. So I think there's a difference between being specific and niching down. So I don't necessarily personally tell people to niche down too early on.

I, I probably advise them to understand what their strengths are and what they want to be doing more of. Because this is a, this is your unique opportunity to actually wake up every day and say, like, I'm going to be doing these three things that maybe in my full time job, I didn't have the opportunity to do because I had to do everything, uh, because I couldn't outsource them. But right now you actually have this unique opportunity.

If you're starting out to focus on the kind of things that you want to be doing and you feel like you're good at, it's like that whole concept of Ikigai. So in this case, it's like, what am I good at? What, what do the clients need and what do I enjoy doing? So I think relating it back to that, I think there, I really understood that and made it really, really specific. And in my communications with people, I made it really clear.

So precede to series a type of companies where I've worked out or have the experience. And I'm going to be helping them with, I can dive in to details, but really like helping them with, uh, finding scalable channels to, uh, go from, uh, A to B, for example. So I can get more specific around this or positioning statements, but I think, I think that was key.

But if I guess clients, and this is something I've learned from you and reading your, uh, blog posts and emails that you send us super helpful, like your buyers can find 10 people who look exactly like you. Um, there's a good chance that you're not going to be working with them because, um, Yeah. So I think, again, don't necessarily tell people to niche down, but I think it's important to like be very specific and do, do a few things and do them really well.

Yeah. It's interesting that you landed on the pre seed, which usually is a group of people who don't have a lot of money. And usually that means, uh, a lot of downward price pressure, um, but they need you the most. And so in those opportunities, did you have to, did you have to change your pricing structure and bring it down? Or, or is it just like, look, you're going to go down this venture, you're going to invest the next years of your life.

Um, Yeah. Yep. You know, here's the, here's the investment to work with me. It's, it is what it is. Like, how did you navigate fees, commanding fees that you wanted? Yeah, you're right. I think those are more challenging conversations to have. I'd say. Yeah. Like one of the companies I worked with was a pre seed company, but I think we managed to sort of land on something that communicated the value up front.

I think that that was important to sort of really as detailed as possible, spell out what you can expect in the next 90 days, three months and be able to deliver on those and make it also risk free. Again, one of the things I learned chatting with you is making it clear that if you realize a month in, you're not a fit. Give both sides the opportunity to sort of opt out and sort of. Discontinue the relationship.

So I think all of those, the risk, the opportunity, and then once you deliver the value and they see how much value you're able to bring to the table, that made it easier, but I think by and large, in most of the conversations I had, yeah, the, the investment ranges felt a bit more difficult for pre seed company to make work, especially like the fractional model as well, but at the same time, it's a low risk model if they want to see results fast and they don't want us.

Then five months hiring somebody full time and it doesn't make, really make sense to hire someone within that capacity full time as like the second or third hire at the company. So, um, overall the ROI felt felt reasonable for that, those companies.

But I think you were right in general, uh, that the later stage of the company, um, probably the easier, the investment conversation, but probably the fit conversation would, might not make as much sense for later search companies as well, at least in my case. Yeah, it would be interesting. Cause if you kind of dive deeper into why, why you like that precede really what they're trying to do is get traction with an idea. And so.

You could theoretically apply that to a more established business who maybe has a bit of funding or has been in business a while that needs to either make a pivot or start a new product or, you know, kind of expand in some kind of way where there, where there is uncertainty again. And if your core skill is, is going from that zero to one or one to two. And really getting that, the rubber meeting the road.

Then you could theoretically apply that same skillset to someone who's a little further along, but maybe has gotten to a, maybe they're plateauing a bit too early. So they're not quite on it, but they're close to it or they have good retention, but they're not quite able to attract people because their messaging is off. So it's, you know, it's kind of interesting rather than picking a niche, picking a problem like.

Gaining traction where, where there's uncertainty in either bringing a new business or a new product to market, uh, could be kind of a, a through line to your work that, that you can talk about ad nauseum, because anyone who has that knows that, okay, like, I think I'm close here, but I think I'm just adjacent to the right messaging or the right positioning for this.

I think, you know, I'm close and I think that's, and I think your, your content can resonate with people at different levels of the spectrum, but it makes sense in your short window that you started with people you were most closely.

Relating to, and I think if you stuck with it longer, as you go along further, you might find that your core skill is saying like, let's look for signs of life, let's build around the kindling that's working here and let's, you know, follow your processes to talk to customers, talk to people and validate and get landing pages and then prove concept before you go pour a bunch of. Fuel on the fire with say ads or some other channel. Um, anyway, that's thinking a lot. I love that. I'm taking notes.

I'm learning from you here. I think, yeah, I was trying to minimize the number of variables going into this new thing for me. And the variable being trying out this thing as, as a full time thing, incorporating a company and sort of working, like asking you about all the accounting stuff, you know? Yeah. So I think. Yeah, I think, and that was like the comfortable, so that was the uncomfortable side for me and the comfortable side.

So trying to find an intersection was the type of companies I worked with. So I was very confident going back to the fit conversation that after 12, 12 conversations, actually, I went back to maybe like three or four of them and said this, this actually, I don't think it works. I don't think I can help here. So I think that was that for me, it gave me the confidence that like, I can easily help these people. And if again, I'm waking up every day and feel like.

One, I'm not enjoying this and two, I'm not really helping out this, this founder because that's my, that's my mission to help them because knowing how, how many things they're juggling with, knowing the founder life, I wanted to be super helpful for them and, and not really, I wasn't in it for just making, making personal profit. I think that that made it easier as well, but I agree with you in probably larger environments. You could, you could apply this to a segment of that business as well.

And just really any, any large business, you could look at it depending on the initiatives and how the business is running. You can look at every new thing as, as its own like startup because it's spinning out. And, um, yeah, that's, that's an interesting way of looking at things. One thing I wanted to touch on that like was, was a consistent theme working with these startups. And I don't know like how relevant it is.

So, so taking a tangent here, it was interesting what they felt those companies. Needed versus what they actually needed. So going back to like your conversations with the, with the GP, with the doctor, I think a lot of the times you just go and say, I can, I can sleep and they, they prescribe something for you and you can sleep better. But I think a good doctor actually takes a step back and say, okay, so what are you, what are you eating before bed?

How many hours before bed are you stopping eating? Are you doing your workout before going to bed? All of those things combined can actually get you to a better outcome versus prescribing something right off the bat. And I think a lot of Marketers out there should take that approach of, especially in the advising world to try to be more helpful and really doing that discovery to a T so that they can essentially prescribe the right thing.

And in some cases, the prescription can be, I'm not the right kind of person. I'm going to refer you to some, so, or you probably don't need this based on my opinion. And like two of the three companies I ended up working with, they sort of, their problem statement was very different from what I ended up doing for them. And it took that first conversation or in, in, in one of the cases, like.

Two or three conversations to really tell them this is what we should be doing and it's so rewarding after a month You see that they come to you and say, I'm glad we did this. And they are in agreement with what happened. So that was very refreshing to see. And it felt, it felt really good as, and it was really one of the highlights of my, my career.

I would say, yeah, really interesting analogy there, you know, someone coming looking for sleeping pills, but, and they go to the doctor and, you know, good doctors say, okay, let's, let's actually look at what's going on here. And let's think about this, you know, like a professional and not just write a prescription that will put you to sleep, but won't actually fix.

Something going back to what you were mentioning before about like, you know, being helpful to, to founders, especially in that early stage where maybe they don't have a ton of money and things are very uncertain. I just want to point out like that, that desire to make sure you get a result for clients is always there and that's what we want to be doing.

And if we feel like we're not, we're not actually contributing, we, we shouldn't consider ending an engagement early and parting ways and letting people or referring or whatever and holding that idea. And if you're the best qualified person to help them. Navigate uncertainty and you've done it before and you know, what signs of, you know, what to look for.

It's like a guide knows what to listen for in the forest of there are the jungles that other ones, you know, other people won't, you know, signs of a Jaguar or whatever that other people are invisible to. It's kind of like this balance between I want to be helpful and if it were easy and if you could just pay someone to, to get you to result. Uh, everyone would be Apple. It's like, it's kind of the thing I say, right?

Like everyone would be a trillion dollar business if you could just pay for a financial outcome. So we always have to balance this. Like, am I the best suited for this job? And if so, knowing that like. You're a figure you're feeling your way in the dark, but at least you're the most likely person to be able to help them get there.

And that's a very difficult thing to wrestle with when you're getting paid good money to do, to basically help, like, especially in the uncertain, the getting the traction segment, it's a lot easier to add fuel to fire later than it is to get kindling going and get, you know, get an initial flame going so that I can imagine there's a lot of imposter syndrome. So people who are working in early stage, even C day.

There's a lot of, uh, there's gonna be, like, there's gonna be difficulty and, like, mentally, uh, And much of the value is capitalized a year from now, once the direction has been set. So when you come in here and diagnose the true cause of the issue and then begin to fix it over three months, like you're only really getting it, like you're getting into those habits, which we're going to talk about later. Uh, you're getting into like, you're, you're building the boat, as I say.

But three months, you're not going to be getting the boat to Hawaii across the ocean, like that's going to take longer. And so much of the value is actually gained many months after that period of time. And we just sort of have to hold those ideas in our head. Uh, and you kind of know intuitively whether you're actually adding value or whether you're wasting someone's time.

And you have to listen to that instinct, but at the same time you have to remember that, like, you're the best suited person to help them explore the unknown. And so I don't know how you, if that played into your mind at all, like, battling, am I adding value or not? Because I can imagine at that early stage it's uncertain, and it needs more time to play out. Because even the best ideas don't get immediate traction.

They need to notice, and that takes time, and then to buy in, and I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, if that resonates at all with you. Yeah, I think it's important to continue to examine that because again, I, I can talk about my case of working in early stage environments where there's a limited number of people, everyone is sort of specialized in doing certain things. You can really clearly see who's contributing, who is not.

And if you're going in as a consultant or a fractional CMO, uh, it's like. One is like, you can do self reflection and realize like, how am I helping, Build this ship and contribute to it. And I mean, and in some cases I felt like in some areas I was plateauing a little bit with some of the businesses and it was, it wasn't, I couldn't, I couldn't go any further. And in other cases I was excited and I felt like I could, I could do more.

Um, I think it's important to do that and just like realize where that sweet spot is. But then philosophically, if you're helping out and then you realize that you're sort of. You hit a wall and you're not really doing much for the business. You could be helping out another business that needs a lot of help. So if you're doing it, you're kind of. Spending your time on the wrong thing as well and really not contributing at the same time.

And this is easier said than done because if you're getting paid and doing something, even if it's not at your full capacity and you're not really enjoying it. So all of this is with a caveat that sometimes you just as, as a solopreneur or as a, as a one person business, you need to make the ends meet as well.

So this is like, obviously looking at a perfect picture, but if you had the option and the choice to work with the companies that you're truly passionate about, and they can see that, that impact that you're making as well, I think, I think you should do that. Yeah, I think my north star is if as long as I'm looking out for your best interest, my client, and even potential client, like people's best interest at all times, but particularly your clients and being a fiduciary. Right.

I'm looking out for their interests above my own and being transparent with my own interests and aligning myself with their interests as best as possible. I think you're going to be in a good place. And if it means that like, look, I can see where this is going and it's going nowhere fast. Usually it takes having been through a couple engagements that hit a brick wall and ended up kind of falling apart to for you to then recognize that pattern and preempt it next time. Um, but you're right.

Like you want to be in part of being a fiduciary part of being a, an advocate is. Getting yourself in a financial position through effective marketing for marketing yourself effectively. So you have more opportunities to lean on so that you can turn away business and or disconnect relationships where you can see that there's no future and not feel like, Oh, I got to make sure I pay my bills. And that's why I say it's your, it's your ethical duty to market yourself.

You know, 30 to 50 percent of your time should be on biz dev and working on your business and growing. Because if you don't, you don't have enough opportunities to then, you know, be able to turn away business that isn't a good fit. And because you're always feeling like I gotta make sure I feed the beast or at least keep my family fed or whatever. So it's an interesting dilemma to be in. And I love that. A couple, a couple of things to that. So one is.

I didn't really get to that part of like doing a really good job. You look at my personal website right now. It's not really doing a good job sort of positioning me as who I am and what kind of things I do. I'm going to work on it. Maybe by the time this podcast is published, it's looking better. So like I would say. Doing content, making sure you're present and where you should be, where your audiences are.

I think it's super important in marketing yourself to your audiences, but then also consider word of mouth and referrals as a strong marketing engine and marketing channel as well. So I don't know how, like, had I stayed at this on this path, a longer had, when I would have sort of saturated this referral and word of mouth channel, maybe, maybe very soon. But I think that. To go back to the early point of turning down people and really communicate to them that I'm not the right fit for this.

I can't help. And this is the person that we can help you. I think that in it on itself is like a very good indication that you're in it for the long run. And those people will remember you and actually refer you to the right people. So, and yeah, for me, it was, I think, for better or worse, I. Sooner than I expected, I landed and sort of, um, was offered to, to join joint passage. So the exciting opportunity that I couldn't turn down. So, um, yeah, I really didn't get there.

So I can't really like speak to the, the, the longer term effective marketing channels. No. I know that I want to be doing, I want to be helping founders for life. So this is like, this is my philosophy in whatever capacity, either a coffee or like helping them as an advisor. And that's why like early stage building excites me. Uh, but yeah, really, uh, Passage really sort of tick all the boxes for me for that next full time opportunity. So, um, I've sort of stopped, stopped things there.

Yeah. So going back a little bit, you said something before about like how teaching was fundamental. Is this something you enjoyed ever since you were in school and probably before that, and, and intersecting teaching with your entrepreneurial experience and then your experience in marketing. I think advisors are teachers and vice versa. And I think it's like advising is a form of teaching. It's like a personal guide or a teacher. Um, so it's just an interesting thing that you mentioned there.

And I think more advisors and consultants can do, can continue to think of themselves as teachers, not just in their marketing, but in how they contextualize their methodology, how they create some kind of a framework around their best ideas. And then teach it either for money as a program or, uh, you know, in the course of your consulting or as a course or product or small digital products.

Um, like we don't have to wait until like, we don't have to do some massive course that, you know, makes millions of dollars. We can, you know, the very active consulting forces you to think through your ideas. Organize them if you're diligent and then, and then you use that later as a teacher.

And that's to me, I think the path of the consultant is going from doing, which might be as a fractional marketing manager, or it might be just as a freelancer or an agency owner to, to advising, uh, and then to teaching. And I think it's kind of a, a spectrum that if you're, if you're in that advisor mindset, uh, it's just interesting. You mentioned that earlier. I wanted to come back to it. Uh, I don't know if you have any thoughts on teaching.

Do you, do you foresee yourself being, doing more teaching in the future or selling digital products, educating that kind of thing? Definitely. I think it's something that I want to be actively doing more of and making more time for is really like just wanting to do it is not enough. I'm very aware of that. So I definitely want to make time more time for creating content.

Um, I'm actively sort of looking at where I could be sort of doing some, um, like teaching opportunities at universities, maybe like a course or two. Uh, but I, and yeah, I think through content and just thinking about, again, going back to like your, what's your personal mission is helping out more people. If. You and I are having this conversation at a coffee shop. It would just be the two of us getting inspired and not even recording it.

But now this podcast has a potential of impacting and changing at least like five lives if they listen to it. But with the reach that you have probably a lot more people. And I, I used to run two podcasts as well, and it's. It's just amazing. I run a newsletter on the side as well.

The kind of people I'm sure you're familiar with this and Kevin, I should really give you the credit of you are the kind of person that I learn from a daily basis and you're just really good at playing the long game and just doing an amazing job of like all this teaching. But when it comes to Anything in life, but talking about like marketing advisory and fractional CMO stuff, I think mindset plays a huge role in all of that.

So I think I, I applied this, this like philosophy mindset principles of it, but I think just like watching you in action as well has sort of impacted me massively over the last year or so. So I wanted to sort of give you that kudos as well. Um, but yeah, going back, going back to, um, forgot what I was talking about. We were talking about teaching, yeah, teaching in general. Yeah, teaching, yeah.

So I think, yeah, it's definitely something I want to do more of and just being able to like expand my region and get, get to more people. So like, often things I've done, the newsletter, the podcast, it's just really inspiring for me. What really makes me happy at my core is that stranger reaching out to me and say, like, I don't know you, but this thing. Today reading this changed my life. And that, that's just that, that, like that to me is the purpose, purpose of life.

And you're turning this into like a philosophy podcast now, but that I'm a philosophy major, so that's, that's relevant. I'm not a chemist, but I have a philosophy major. Um, but even like, even taking that note a little further, right? What I love about what you're working on and what you're doing right now is that you have what I call the universal value proposition. You have a through line, through everything you're doing, which actually allows you to put a lot of weight into it.

And your through line is, I help founders. Get traction with their ideas and grow them into real profitable businesses. And maybe your language changes, or you can put that on your website. I really should use that. Yeah. But the cool thing about that is like, it resonates deeply with you as the, as a founder and an entrepreneur at heart.

And then a marketer kind of as a secondary trait to that and an analytical thinker, cause you're an engineer and, uh, and then all of your education stuff that folds into it. And so you have these, as long as your through line is, is, is pointed in that direction. And you're like, okay, yeah, my job takes up, you know, the bulk of my hours, right. And my energy, uh, but on the left and right of that are up and down.

And I, on either side, I can advise part time the right fit clients who maybe can do email or asynchronous with the occasional call on an evening or a weekend or a lunch break, depending on what your, your schedule is like, and, or I could create a little product and, or I could have my newsletter and, or I could have a little book or something of that nature. So you're, because you're, you're actually aligned, right?

Even if you have a job and you're doing some kind of an entrepreneurial, you know, side project stuff. Um, so it must feel good to feel that aligned, it's consistent, coherent. Well, I, I didn't really, I didn't really feel that confident and good about it until you sort of called this out. So I appreciate you. I mean, your, your stamp of approval means a lot. 'cause you, you deal with this stuff all the time.

I still feel like I can refine things a little bit more, but I think this North Star you call, you use North Star saying just like it being.

Wanting to help people who are building, wanting to build with people who are building and changing the world and doing, doing something impactful and positive and yet like sort of applying that to anything I do in terms of my career, at least, and sort of talking about those like criteria for, for me, next thing on a good segue into that is something that I always like talk about is people, product, and then sort of personal growth are the three things for me.

And then just hearing here being a passage and like being exposed and interviewing with people throughout the interview process and just like, Seeing the excitement for what they're building and the type of individuals that they are, that, that is like sort of a motivator for me. And they are the type of individuals that I want to build with.

Uh, so that is, that is like something that I'm excited to, to wake up to every day and, um, feel like you're truly like making a mark on the world, especially with again, passage being such a revolutionary idea and changing people's, not just people's individuals lives, but their family's lives and their generations to comes, uh, to, to come it's, it's just so, so fulfilling, but also like, Scale, I think matters. But also going back, back to what I was saying about Yeah, exactly.

Just making, like even if you inspire one person, that's what I'm trying to work on. That, that, that, that can have its ripple effects. Well, that's the beauty of our, of what we do as well. Whether you're advising or, or if your mission is to help founders take ideas, profitable entities, whatever, is that you get that personal satisfaction, that reward totally. Right.

Whether I'm helping, like when I help individuals and do mentoring, like I feel good knowing that I've helped someone find clarity and their business grows and they make more money and they support their family and their mission. And, uh, when I help entrepreneurs grow in scale, like it's very personal. There's no, it's, and I work with mostly small businesses who are one to 10 million, uh, or maybe a little more sometimes.

And it's very personally rewarding and teaching to me is the tip of that. So like teaching is the highest leverage form of thing you can do in a digital world and mentoring, maybe a little less leverage, but still very rewarding and advising same thing. And, um, so it's, it's important to find that context of what you're doing and that broader meaning, I think. Right? So you can, and like, you and I are both immigrants, right?

To Canada and, um, big immigrant population here and, and just tapping into like that and helping, you know, other immigrants and future generations. And this is setting them up and really connecting them with the economy, which is what the country needs most rather than just more people. They need more connected people doing their best work and not being exactly. Left out.

Um, so it's great that you have some of these things and you've got your through line and you've got your personal mission going with that. So in terms of your side stuff now going forward, so you have a job. Uh, it sounds like you have some flexibility to do stuff around the hours of your job. Uh, your plan is to take on select advising clients still, obviously you wouldn't do interim leadership roles cause that would probably be too demanding.

But, uh, is that your plan now is advising like what else is your, is in your cards while you have this job? Um, what surrounds that? Yeah. So I joined passage, uh, probably exactly around two months ago and it's been, it's been busy. So excited. I don't know again, when this podcast is going to go live, but, um, we are, we are launching officially launching passage soon. So do check out passage. com. So it's been busy. It's been exciting. Lots of hours.

And, um, I have, uh, I haven't actually given it much thought, but what I'm like, my Again, going back to everything we've talked about so far is again, with my personal Northstar being wanting to help more businesses, startups, founders, I want to, I want to sort of look at this advisory, I'd say.

So like looking at helping people in, um, whatever capacity that I'm able to, and doesn't sort of downgrade my performance, um, at passage, looking at helping, helping more people with an advisory sort of on the side. Advisory capacity and, um, yeah, I think there was some of the engagements that I had was sort of having hourly hourly calls, um, every week and sort of being available on on slack for quick questions, like, really making it clear that what's the, um.

Expected sort of response time is within, like, 12 to 12, 24 hours, but again, just making sure that I'm able to help out people that I'm excited about. I'm excited to see grow. I look at it as the same as sort of my, my newsletter or my podcast. I want to go back to doing it. Whenever I do a podcast like this, I'm just. I love it. It's so, so much good stuff comes out of it. And again, sharing it with the world is so, so encouraging and inspiring.

I look at it the same way, uh, this sort of advisory thing, even if you're in a full time role. And I listened to your podcast with Kevin Lee, um, one of the amazing marketers that I know. And that conversation was super inspiring to you. You asked me, you actually shared that podcast with me and advised me to take a listen. And I think it's something that I think would actually boost my, my day to day full time, uh, Engagement and role as well.

If I'm exposed to more businesses at a similar stage and helping them with auditing their website or their product marketing or their content strategy, content road mapping, I think that could translate itself into, uh, some of the things that I'm doing for passage as well. So, and if I'm as a hiring manager, I would always. Look, look at it as a positive thing.

If somebody is doing something on the side of their job, it just makes them a lot more focused, especially if that's something that's relevant within the industry or the sector, uh, or the function that they're working in. Yeah. And we live in a very performance, like you mentioned in a small organization, you can tell if someone's pulling the weight and contributing or not. And it's really about outcomes and performance.

Although you want to be obviously cautious about work hours and everything else, but it sounds like you're putting in more hours than the typical nine to five, which is very, uh, typical of a, of a startup culture. And, um, you know, so finding ways to be flexible without. Without taking away your productivity and your energy from your main thing. And that's about leverage, right?

Then teaching can be a way of doing that, where it's like, maybe you show up once a month, you do a little training on Saturday morning or whatever. Um, but, uh, there's many ways you can approach that at the right levels and advising is a very high leverage, you know, high effective hourly rate thing, especially when you have. Unique skills and you have templates or people that can help execute. And you can say, go away, fill out this workbook, send it to me.

And I'll give you some feedback on it. Cause that'll show me where your head is at. Um, like things like that tools can really help create additional leverage and your relationships for people to help implement your ideas. And you know, the various other ingredients training, for example, go watch my video on this thing that I've, that I've taught, like these are things that can really make advising very low.

And that's one of the reasons I'm able to have it lower for the mindshare members is because I've got a DM Slack DM access thing, uh, but it compliments the live group calls and it compliments the training. And, uh, that makes it very low labor intensity for me. I can be like, show me your revenue sheet. Show me this, do this.

And you know, so those are the tools that you can use to make your life less labor intensive as you, as you have a full time gig and systemize some of that process as much as you can. I love that. I'm trying to do more of that and get better at that. And I think I've noticed. So through the two consulting engagements that I had. And this is more to contextualize it and to tell people what the engagement look like.

I think it was more in terms of acting as a co pilot to the CEO or, and, or their marketing director, marketing manager. And it's the same way, I've had situations where I've worked with a career coach or just a personal, personal coach that they might not even know much about you. So they haven't done a ton of discoveries like a therapist does, for example, but. They ask you questions that guides you in the right direction.

And within like being on the other side of the table in those situations, working with somebody, um, less experienced marketing person, and just seeing how much value you can provide in a 30 minute call and how you're able to steer them in the right direction without having to do anything. So I think you're, you're a big advocate of like, you can bring a lot to the table through just an advisory model with having to do fractional or, um, having to be fully hands on.

And I love to maybe touch on it briefly now, or, uh, separately. Uh, if you, if there's something you can share in the links, but I think, I think there is a lot that can be a business are listening as well. I totally encourage them to. Bring on an advisor in the areas that they think they need more help with, or they're unsure if they're walking the right path.

I mean, it's the biggest hack you can have is tapping into your decade plus of experience and all the people you've helped with and all the trial and error that you've gone into. Like some of the, some of the engagement that going back to mindset, um, some of the most effective work I've done has been just a tip, just like, it's almost like, like gently tipping something in a new direction very slightly and, or pointing attention to one or two things or switching something out.

And it looks like a, almost like slight of hand. And the next thing, you know, they're filling their. Their, their spaces or their business. And like, and, and what the mindset is, is that it's not about deliverables. People don't want deliverables. They want results. And it can be very weird and disconcerting for you and the client when you go, Oh, look, and you're just like, the light bulb is not working, but like, you just have to tighten it like six degrees.

Uh, and then they go, wait, we just paid you 10 grand for that. And you're like, yeah, but like, notice how the room is really bright now. And, uh, And so it can be very disconcerting for you and them when you can come to a result, which happens the more you've seen your pattern match, the more you work with the same kinds of people. Uh, but just asking the right questions, you know, like not anybody does that. Just asking the right discovery questions and really diagnosing it in the right way.

Yeah. I think that's a really key under underscoring as well. Uh, it's about that initial, you know, diagnosing before subscribing, just like the wind without pitching manifesto. I don't know if you've read that by a Blair grapevine around for over a decade. It's called the wind without pitching. Manifest. I'll put it in the show notes, uh, by Blair ends. And he, one of the, one of the mantras he has is we will diagnose before we prescribe, and it's such an important thing.

And if you're not sure what the problem is, sometimes just doing a little diagnosis engagement to figure it out, uh, can be a really helpful way to kind of kick off an engagement on the right foot, solving the right problem. Totally. Yeah. So last thing I want to touch on with you, and then we'll wrap this up. You're very kind of. Uh, you're, you're into productivity, um, systems, habits. Tell me just like, what is your personal operating system, if you will, that allows you to be.

That allows you to work with startups. Cause Jesus is like having, I have two young kids. So I, so I imagine working with early stage startups is the exact same thing, but like a different capacity. Uh, how do you maintain your energy? How do you maintain your productivity and your output? What are your core kind of pillars?

Uh, yeah, I can do an apple to apple comparison in terms of if it's the exact same thing, but It is, it is challenging, but also rewarding at the same time working at startups. So productivity, I think we should do a whole different episodes on like systems and, uh, operating, operating, uh, sort of methods. Um, I love this stuff and I think I've always been like this, but I read a lot.

And one thing I realized say like 10, 15 years ago, I've been reading from an early age, but every time I was holding a book, physical book, or later on Kindle, It just really bugged me that I was digesting this information and statistically you will only retain 2 percent of the of the information that you're you're reading. And me reading a lot of non fictions just made me feel really bad about that is that I, uh, I want to be, I want to be retaining more of this information.

So like highlighting, going back to the notes is a big thing for me and I use this app, Shameless Plot, um, an app I love using called Readwise that kind of collects your highlights and sort of resurfaces them back to you. Amazing team building a bootstrap company. They're, they're, they're great.

So, uh, as part of that, I've sort of been keeping building on, I think that this whole like notion of, and I learned this from Tiago Forte's, um, second brain course is like the concept of codes or capturing, organizing, distilling, expressing. So like this whole, like, create creative model. So I'm, I'm very good at capturing and organizing. I haven't been amazing at sort of distilling and expressing my, my, my personal knowledge management, but, uh, personal knowledge base, sorry.

But I think, uh, It gives me a lot of joy to be able to go back to journal entries from like 15 years ago or notes from a bunch of calls that I've had and be able to like, take action on them and turn them into something useful for, for, uh, for the future. So I use, I use a lot of like, we can probably like. Habit of different conversations, several conversations about like tooling.

But I think one of the things I've realized that has enabled me and really helped me sort of, uh, boost my engagement with founders is being, being super organized and like one of the founders that I worked with recently really called this out, um, actually like maybe two of the three that I recently worked with and it's like a very consistent theme is just, and I think it's like speeds me up a lot in being able to deliver and do what I'm good at. Building the systems.

I also like being mindful of not over optimizing the systems and adding too many tools to the, to the, to the stack and trying to also keeping it minimal. But like, what's the minimum viable set of tools that you need on top of your Google calendar and your email to enable you to operate at a higher efficiency. So if you are at 80 percent right now, can you get to like 85 percent adding those tools to your stack? And then like, what can you do to your sleeve to make it 90%, et cetera, et cetera.

So. Yeah, I think, I think it's important, but also what I've realized is that there could be a point in time, one of the podcasts that I did, uh, with my cohost, we did, we actually did a full session on this. You can actually get into the rabbit hole of what is this next tool that I should be exploring for my note taking. And there's this like interesting, yeah, exactly. Shiny, shiny object syndrome.

Uh, there's this Belk, uh, Belk. Uh, shape curve, uh, that we can probably link it in the show notes where it shows like Apple notes on the left hand side and Apple notes on the right hand side for people who are like great note takers. They use Apple notes and those who have no idea they use Apple notes and in the middle, there's all these people exploring this like 200 note taking tools.

So I think I'm now on sort of the right hand side of the spectrum where I'm like going back to Apple notes and maybe having notion one thing I've realized like a personal tip. I'm going to wrap it up is that probably there's no perfect tool and maybe you should like create your own ideal stack. So I'm right now, I'm not taking in three different tools, notion, reflect, apple notes, and occasionally not occasionally very active. I use day one for my journaling.

So, and I'm using what I'm using consistently across those is like a tagging system and a classification system. So if I need something to do with marketing advisory or like career principles, I can always find it across four different places. So there's no perfect tool. Um, and I don't think anybody can build it. So it depends on the context and situation. Yeah, totally.

Well, I mean, if you have that propensity for liking to gather and organize and synthesize information, first of all, that makes you a better educator and a better advisor and makes. You know, that goes like to my, my Trello board as an example of having some kind of a playbook. I call it, I'm calling it idea management at this point, where it's like store a place to store all of your best ideas into some kind of cohesive framework.

And I sell access to this with membership, but also advisor operating system that's available on my website. Um, but like having some way to like, okay, you've come up with a good idea, a good method, good process. How do you put that into some kind of an ecosystem with the rest of your ideas? And without over optimizing without over, you know, cause it's going to be different for every person, but at least. Memorialize it in a column or in it, whatever, like I use Trello to store these.

And, um, it can really, really help to like make your next engagement. It feels like you're kind of unrolling a tool belt, you know, like you kind of come out and get the leather satchel or whatever, and roll it out and you've got all your different tools and you're ready for operation. So that's kind of how I feel with it. But. Do you exercise? Is that part of your routine as well? Or, uh, how's that going so far? Yeah, exercise.

I talk about sleep a couple of times and just like nutrition, sleep hygiene, exercising has been a consistent part of my routine for the, like I say, like I've done it for the last 15 years, but very seriously since like 2016 around the time, actually, I moved to move to Canada. And yeah, it's something that's a non negotiable and that together with these tools, I think that is also an enabler to, to the kind of work that I do.

It's just like how much more your brain can process, you know, throughout the day. And those things are like small, small adjustments, but sometimes taking a specific supplement or making sure like you work out in the morning, or if I haven't worked out for a while, I realize the difference, the Delta is very obvious. So I think it's, it takes up some time. I did this analysis. I'm a geek when it comes to these things. So like, Not this year.

Last year, I did the full analysis of how much time I end up working out. And it was about 10 percent of my entire waking hours, which is not that much. So every time I'm in the gym, like if I go four or five times a week, I'm like, I'm actually spending a lot of time in the gym. This is like, this is a huge time suck. But then when you look at it, like, I mean, 10 percent could be a lot or it could be not that, not that much, but then I was expecting it to be a lot more than that.

But if you, if someone told you, if you invest 10 percent of your time now, and you're going to be operating, like the whole thing about health and fitness is that. While you're here now, it can actually help you live a better life. And obviously you can get injured or risks and, uh, there are other things that can happen outside of, um, like the predictable stuff that can cause your, um, health that can harm your health.

But I think 10 percent isn't that much of a huge investment and, um, there's a lot of benefits that comes with it. So it's even 20 minutes a day, even like taking something like, you know, showing up for 20 minutes a day and be like, no excuses. I'm going to work out for 20 minutes. I find if I even do a 20 minute Peloton ride or an exercise or whatever, like I am like a way different human for the entire day, or if I get 45 hours, yeah, I'm doing a 45 twice a week and that's a definitely a key.

And actually, I feel really great today. Like I did one this morning and then I'll feel good again tomorrow with, with or without an exercise, but I'll try to do another at least 20 minutes to kind of get the blood flowing. But like the less time you have to exercise, the more you actually need it. It's just like meditation. And, uh, and yeah, sleep is another thing, although when you have little kids, that gets even the best intentions can sometimes get derailed with that one.

But, um, but it's so important to try your best to give yourself good night's sleep and get a little bit of exercise. I know I'm like, I'm not a, I'm not an exercise guru by any stretch, but it helps so much to give you more clarity because you're ultimately selling your brain. Right. And. If that's not firing and clean and feeling energized and with serotonin and, you know, like then you're not going to make as much money. Like you just look at it that way.

You put 10 percent of your time into your gym, I guarantee you'll make 10, 20, 30 percent more money and you'll be healthier and happier along the way. I just, I believe it. You're right. You're totally right. And something I want to do more of is actually just mental health. There's meditating a lot more. I keep falling off the track. So, uh, I, it's something I'm trying to actively, I use this app called waking up with by Sam Harris.

So just as a, as a recommendation, if somebody is using it and yeah, I think that is also like. You could argue that that's even more important than physical health, mental. So something, a resolution for me, I don't really set resolutions, but something for me to get better, get better at this year. Awesome. I love that. Well, two last questions.

One, uh, what book, if, if anything comes to mind and it doesn't have to be definitive, that has made an impact on you, a dramatic or significant impact on you personally, professionally. That, um, that you feel like has been in some way, like a little minor turning point or something you come, come back to often. Yeah. One that is obviously so fundamental. A lot of people have heard of it. So, uh, probably just mentioned two. So one is called meditations.

By Marcus Aurelius, uh, the Roman emperor who was living, uh, being an emperor, but living through a lot of suffering throughout his time. And this, this book is his journal entries that was never meant to be published and translated to, um, to our, uh, generation and us being able to read it. So with that in mind, it's, it's. It's just such an amazing set of entries.

I remind myself of a lot of it every day is based on this whole, I guess the whole like Stoics and Stoicism concept or way of living has been built, uh, by from that book. And everyone from Robert Green, Ryan Holiday, who are promoting that, Tim Ferriss sort of been taking a lot of inspiration from that book. Uh, and then the other one that I read recently, so which is like, probably like less fundamental.

It's a nonfiction called 4, 000 weeks, which talks a lot about how finite our time is 4, 000 weeks is an average number of, uh, weeks that a living person would leave by the, by the time they die and live this planet. So, and that's been an inspiring read as well. So highly recommend that one as well. Awesome. Thank you. And last question, um, where can people go to learn more about you? Follow along, uh, email us, that kind of thing.

Yeah, probably like the best place and somewhere I need to get more active at is, is, is, um, Twitter. So, um, we can like, I can provide the links and you can put it in the show notes. Um, it's R A Z S A E E D I, my handle. I definitely want to just publicly share more about my learnings, like going back to the teaching. So gonna do a lot more on that.

And then I. Infrequently, I used to be very consistent with it on a weekly basis, publishing newsletter called out of curiosity is where I share a curated links of what I find useful. So you can get access to that within my Twitter bio as well. Great. And then obviously, yeah, Reza. so is my, is my, is my website. So check that out. All the links are there. Um, and I tend to sort of put up my sort of book highlights and book notes are as well, uh, been meaning to write a lot more actively.

So look out for that too. Um, and then obviously, like I mentioned, check out, um, passage. It's going to be. Changing the world, hopefully for the better very soon by 2030. Our goal is to remove this financial access problem for immigration and study abroad for people. So it's a big mission. It's a big problem. Um, as our founder, Martin calls it a disease that exists in the world that we need to fix and, uh, and solve forever, especially today. So, um, this is our goal.

We have, we have about six years to solve it and we are super excited. So check out our website and join our mission. That's great. And it's not going to be in Canada forever. You hope to broaden this to other countries? Yep. This is going to be a global, global movement. We are starting with Canada. We think Canada needs a lot of help. A lot of people want to come to Canada for better opportunities and Canada can provide that. So it's a win win for people and for, um, the society at large.

And we're going to expand this to not just educational opportunities, but career opportunities worldwide as well. That's wonderful. Well, good luck with you to you on that mission and with this business and continuing to follow your through line of helping founders. And by extension, many other people, right? The companies we help impact many others.

And, uh, so continue that through line and, and, uh, we wish you well in your journey and, and, uh, I look forward to staying in touch with you and learning all about the new projects and whatnot that you're working on. So thank you so much for, for being such an open book for sharing your journey and, and, uh, telling us about how you made the leaps in and out of advising as a, soon to be part time advisor, but a full time consultant and former employee and making that leap.

So really appreciate you jumping on with us today, Reza. Thanks Kevin. This has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you asking really good questions and I'm excited to continue being a part of MindShare community and giving back as much as I can. And that's it for the interview. Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end.

If you want to get more content to resources like this head on over to kevin.me and you'll find a crash course on how to sell your expertise as a marketer, how to go from doing to advising to teaching your expertise and how do you create more leverage and profit in the process? So that's all over there. I've got a mini crash course, right on the homepage. You can get it and yeah. Um, If you're interested in the community, we've got a lot going on in the community. We're starting to do.

A lot more member trainings as well. We've got some AI training, some personal branding, training, some copywriting trainings and all kinds of other stuff from the members of Mindshare as well, which is really neat. So if you're interested in any of that, definitely think about the community. It's a great place to learn and get feedback from your peers network, get advice, and ultimately help you create a more leveraged and profitable marketing practice. That's it.

I will see you in the next episode. Thanks again, as always. And. Stay tuned because I'll be doing probably more solo podcast episodes just because I. Can produce them a lot faster these days. I'm quite busy on the consulting side and, uh, I share a lot of private podcast, kind of rough audio forums for members, but I'd love to do a few more of these. Solo episodes to kind of teach and share some of the ideas so that you have an idea of what we're actually doing inside the membership.

So if you're curious about the membership, you can head over to how to sell advice.com and hit the membership tab. And you'll see what that's all about. Tons of training on business model and marketing. It's basically the business side of marketing consulting. So you can head on over there and check that out. Doors open and close. So if you're interested in, you see the doors open, which they currently are now. Make sure you're signed on otherwise. We'll see you next time. The door is open.

That's all for now. My friends. Bye.