Welcome to The Second in Command Podcast, produced by the COO Alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Harald. In the Second in Command Podcast, we talked to top COOs who share the insights, strategies and tactics that made them the Chief behind the Chief. And now, here's your host, Cameron Harald.
Today is Launch Academy's VP of Programs, Sam Chan. Sam oversees the Programming and Strategy for Launch's network of tech entrepreneurs. Over his eight years with the company, Sam has advised and supported thousands of founders from over 35 countries, and those companies have gone on to raise over $2 billion. He helped create Maple, a startup acceleration program focused on helping founders expand their startups to Canada and has helped grow over 100 founders and their families to Canada in the last five years. Sam is also the host of BitSix,
and the Launch AMA podcast, both focused on underthing the stories behind every startup. Aside from launch, Sam is also the founder of Chicken and Advisory Focused on Web 3 Project. So, Sam, welcome to The Second in Command Podcast. Thanks for having me, Cameron. Yeah, lots to dive in here. I love it when I saw that you helped create Maple. I always think of the Maple syrup mafia. Is that the tie in there?
Not exactly. So Maple, obviously a very Canadian thing you, Cameron, being from Vancouver, know this very well. As long as I don't add the word Leafs to it, then it's all fine. Okay, yeah. But the concept of Maple trees and kind of being a staple of Canadian cultures, actually the background of how this program was made, because Maple trees is you and I both know when it comes time to fall as we're approaching.
The trees actually fade the leaves themselves in order to protect itself, right? And they kind of acclimatize to the generally colder weather of Canada. And so in that way, when we're working with companies that are looking into expanding to Canada, we want them to acclimate to the culture and the weather and things like that too. So there's this kind of fancy story behind it, but it's easily recognizable for anybody from abroad, because they see Maple leaves. They recognize Canada.
I love it. And the reason I brought up Maple syrup mafia was the PayPal mafia, the Peter Teal and Elon Musk and that whole investor group. And then there was like an investor group that kind of started. I think it was starting in Vancouver that kind of was, they started calling themselves the Maple syrup mafia. Do you guys tie in with the C100 at all with what you're doing with Maple? Are you familiar with C100?
Yeah, so not too much directly, but we've definitely worked with folks that passed on a bunch of our alumni. I think think if it was and later where some of our old alumni that went through the C100 program. So it's a great tie in right, because whenever we're working with a company that's looking that's already there in Vancouver or they're looking towards company Vancouver.
We don't at the end of the day, we don't want the companies to just focus on the Canadian market. We want them to expand. So C100 is a great program for those that are looking into the valley looking to expand into North America directly from Canada. Yeah, for any of our listeners who don't know C100 is a group of Canadian venture capitalists who actually live in the Bay Area.
And I think at one time there were more Canadians doing VC work in the Bay Area than the work Canadians doing VC work in all of Canada. And that was the kind of the bridge between the Bay Area and up. Now you just kind of like Audrey Schoetz that one of your portfolio companies was think if I got to go back up on that. They are a legit billion dollar valuation company or they were during their IPO stage Greg Smith from Vancouver in Miranda, who's a COO. She's a former CO Alliance member.
Walk me through what you're tying with them was and how did you help them in the early days. I think Epic was one of our day one members. So so we kind of have to walk the story all the way back to the beginning. The Genesis of launch Academy. And really what it was is there was five co founders back in the day. And they were all founders of their own startups. I was not one of the co founders just to be extremely clear about that.
I joined the company in 2015, but in 2012 launch can was kind of formed and the Genesis was very, very simple. They were all founders that were trying to build their companies. They probably precede seed ish very quite early on. And the goal was in Vancouver at the time the community was quite small. There really wasn't kind of like a watering hole where resources could be gathered.
If we wanted to bring in Amazon AWS to come give a talk, for example, they'd probably have to individually no contacts and companies in doing that. So launch can was a vehicle to kind of bring everybody together and the very much very much the kind of general concept of rising tides raises all boats. So when we opened the door on April 1st 2012, there were 12 companies that kind of came in and think, if I Greg and Matt were one of them.
And the fascinating story is one of the co founders of of launch Academy Roger Patterson later went on. No pun intended little bit of pun intended later went on to join Matt to create another company called later Graham at first. And now it's called later. So like the history of launch Academy and its impact on Vancouver startups is this kind of overnight story 10 years in the making.
Wow, interesting. And I'm just kind of scanning through to see I was getting emails from launch Academy back in 2012, 2013. So who were some of the early launch Academy invites you to launch day demo day July, 2012, the hive. Wow, I think I was there. Okay, so who were I think you were I think I was there. Was it upstairs on a second floor.
That's actually really good memory. The building in Vancouver and gas town. Second floor was something called the hive, which was a well known and established the co working center. It's still there to this day. There's still companies working out of there. And then we were on the third floor. And I think a lot of people were initially very confused because it's like aren't you aren't you guys competition.
But not exactly because what we were trying to do is very much focused on startups and growth in program, right. We did have co working desk available for our entrepreneurs and our members and our founders.
Many of which like you know the names of them we've we've just talked about. But the point wasn't to rent out desk. The point was that we could gather these kind of really smart minds. And they could solve problems together. And then because of that, whenever there's a VC or or I think we were just talking before the show we had we had Travis from Uber who came in and he was here for Ted.
But he came and gave a talk to our members. So it became a central point for people to kind of hop in and out. As as they're meeting different people kind of this inflection point. I have a horrible horrible knack for not recognizing super successful talent in the earliest stages. I actually told Garrett camp who is the founder of Uber months before Travis even joined him.
That it was the stupidest idea I'd ever heard. How do you know at launch Academy who to what who to work with who to bet on and kind of walk us through what your model is. Yeah, for sure. So so I think first things first. Because the founders were all founders themselves. I think at that point in time it wasn't meant to be a vehicle for for investment or profit or at least directly. Right.
And so the goal with goal with launch Academy from day one was really how can we create something that's four founders by founders that helps founders. But doesn't dilute their their shares, especially when they're super early on. So for the first couple of years we did a lot of start up education. So these were a lot of folks that were changing careers.
And you know the classical story of I've been in counting for 35 years. I'm tired of the system. I want to build my own thing to make the system better. We work with a ton of people like that. That have kind of gone gone through kind of the ranks and are now starting their their first company maybe maybe their 45 years old even.
And that happened a lot in 2015 and which is coincidentally when I joined the company, but not because of it. That's when we also launched our our conference focus on growth, called traction. We partnered with a great company called boast.ai. And and together we kind of built the traction conference to be become a landing spot for Canada excuse for for CEO CXOs to come to Vancouver and learn about growth.
And as you know Cameron because you've been you've been in Vancouver and you've grown businesses in Vancouver like you don't really need too much of an excuse to come here. But we for a lot of folks it was just that extra nudge because of the traction conference we expanded our brand in our reach a time outside Vancouver itself.
And that's when we started working with companies that are international we started doing trade missions with companies like in places like Croatia and Brazil in in Asia even. And that's really kind of how we branched out, but I know I know I've diverged a little bit but talking a little bit about you know trying to recognize companies that that have talent.
And that's why we're doing this is in all of our programs we have community programs similar to something like on deck, for example, where people can join and they receive programming through receive mentorship and they they meet other people in the system. Really I think comes down to two couple things. I think the major thing for us is because we're not investing in the company.
We're not always looking at their C other LTVs or their their cost of acquisitions that's great and we want to know that you have the capability to do those things. But for me and my team specifically I look I look for three traits one is the curiosity.
So when we talk about curiosity is are they are the founders wondering things about the problems that they're solving like are they genuinely curious about it are they looking at it just as a vehicle for cash grab and they see arbitrage in the moment. Or do they actually want to dig deeper and find out why hasn't anybody solved this yet. What am I missing in the way that I'm solving.
And I think that's the core purpose side. Okay. Exactly. So that's the first thing. So security of the low and obviously doesn't build a company. The second thing that I find that a lot of successful entrepreneurs will have is humility is because first they're curious right they find out. Hey, this is a problem that's really interesting. But then they go to the source they go to the go to sound they go to Cameron and ask them.
Why haven't you done things in a different way. Why are you still doing things the old way. And they're humble enough to accept the answer isn't oh I just need to download this guy's app right there they're observing enough to understand that whatever demographic or market that they're trying to serve in.
That's the way they do things and how can we supplement a solution to the problem without without being argumentative right and so that that part is really key for a lot of entrepreneurs because a lot of people because when we start building we get tunnel vision right we think our solution is the best. Why is another people just using my solution and pay me right that's that's kind of the tunnel vision that we often were building but that humility allows the solution to be morphed.
And then the third piece is tenacity so that's knowing when to step on the gas went to went to you know be humble enough to admit like hey there's no market for this we need to put a pause on it and we need to look in a different direction. Obviously the way I'm spelling it out is sounds like oh this is like the go to strategy but of course all three of these things are very very hard.
Do you do you where I love the tenacity part and then the knowing when to quit as well as well because the tenacity that dog like work ethic to get over under around any obstacle putting those path is one side but then at some point it is like are you the fly just trying to get out the window when you're not going to get out the window right how do you how do you tell them or suggest to them or do you even get involved to tell them when it's dead when it's not going to happen or do you just try to show them or or do you stay out of the way and let them figure that out for yourself in case you're wrong.
I think I've talked to a ton of companies over the years in many different aspects a lot of times people know it usually their wallets are what hits first to be honest with you because if your customers are buying like you don't need Sam telling you that you don't have a market your wallet will tell you that. Yeah you know it.
So then and then ductile into what you're doing with launch Academy then and what you're also doing with traction conference and and I love that when when I reached out to you to ask you to be on the podcast the reason was I remembered what you guys were doing but then I saw the suite of actual speakers that you had coming into the conference traction as like holy shit.
You were really really really strong agenda this is not like the information marketers who are all trying to sell their courses you like some seriously legit COOs and and senior executives of some really great brands how did you pull that all together. Yeah so there's there's a lot of credit I think that needs to be given to you to the gross co-founders both Alex Coppa and Lloyd lovable.
Lloyd it for many years lived in San Francisco himself and he's built an amazing network for himself so I think a lot of credit goes to to our co founders attraction conference first of all. Secondly I think I want to give a shout out to to our VP of operations Alana. Alana as we were talking about before the show she she used to build an answer to Ted conference itself so she knows how to run a world class show and I think I think on top of that she knows how to work with with founders.
And and their needs whether they're speakers or their or their attendees right and so I think our biggest rule of thumb whenever we build anything whether it's something very very small or something as large as as a conference with thousands of people is is I think the golden questions is this something that we as founders ourselves would find useful and I think that's our golden rule for everything.
Okay because I was super impressed with what you pulled together with that as well. All right so let's back up talk to me about your your role with the organization and and kind of how you got yourself into this role because you said you've been there for about eight years you kind of grown up into the VP of programs and kind of effectively the second command in this in this business. How did you get there how did you continue to scale up and grow.
Yeah so I think I started my career I worked for a consulting company that is very very niche it was called a whip and what they did was they were consultants for developer relation agency teams so we work with companies is like Nokia Microsoft Facebook Twilio all those kind of folks and we.
I don't want to dumb it down but we ran a lot of events for them in the goal was like these companies wanted to connect with developers and so very common thing we did there was run hackathons because hackathons is one of the easiest ways for devs to get a hold of your code to get a hold of your tools to see if they're any good is basically beta testing not not for free because I think there's definitely cost running an event but it is beta testing and engaging with your potential customers all in one package.
Yeah through that that kind of led me around the world as this kind of young out of college guy who didn't really I'll be completely honest I was probably very I'm qualified for for the role. And and I saw a project after project after project being built and a lot of them are actually throwing away through hackathons.
That's also when I met Ray because Ray at the time was Ray who's our CEO of launch academy by the way let me just back that up he he was working on a mobile app himself and so that's kind of how I met Ray because through through the different kind of mobile community connections.
That's how we got connected and as he was starting launch Academy up he was kind of attracted by the fact that I'd seen more things outside of Vancouver right so so one of the questions you asked her is like how do you know when. When somebody has something interesting that they're working on a lot of times when somebody trying to pitch a company to you they're trying to tell you that the company is something you've never seen before.
Because of my background of running hackathons weekend after weekend after weekend chances are I'd seen that idea before and I'd seen some sort of you know minimum viable pro version of it right obviously it's not all flushed out because they built it in 48 hours. But it exists right and that was one of the biggest things in one of the biggest growth periods that Vancouver had to go through in my opinion was that because it's so comfortable here we're not looking outside our bubble.
And so I was hired on as as program manager to kind of give more outside perspective to the companies that we had in house right. And a lot of that was just opening their eyes and saying like hey focus on what your customers want not the fact that you have this absolutely unique idea because that uniqueness is probably only unique in the pond that you're in.
Now you said the earlier and I think it was probably even before we went live that you operate as a nonprofit or not for profit are you operating as a venture capital firm as well or as an incubator or as it more as a resource for the text scene what how do you describe it. Yeah yeah so so this is an ever changing term I think the day the terms we're using these days is is a nonprofit accelerator what we do is is at the end of the day the goal is very simple we want to help founders grow.
And that's specifically use founders and not companies because we invest our time in our energy into building founders a lot of the companies that went through on the early days. The companies that they applied with are not the companies that you now know as as think if it can later and so on so far if they were very different projects and a lot of times that involves creating a safe space for them to fail.
And so a lot I mean you've done a lot of these interviews you can imagine like how many of these these founders like made it huge on their very first start it's not it's not it's not impossible but it's rare it's not right.
Exactly so so when it when it comes to you know how we can create the environment it's about creating for us to create sustainability so so we do charge for our programs because we don't take equity but we try to just kind of try to kind of narrow that gap between you know what's affordable for the companies and what doesn't break their back right so we're very careful with their price.
Okay now when you're helping so many founders and you see so many founders do you not wake up in the morning and go fuck I could just do this on my own like to with respect there's a whole cohort of founders that just aren't qualified to be founders.
They're probably not the ones you're working with and then there's this other whole cohort of founders that are just horribly average as normal human beings like the rest of us that you must you're have really really smart guy do not wake up and go got I could do this like. Or you just not want to run you not want to run your own show that's that's a really really great question and I think that's that's where I think I give a lot of kudos to to Raywellia or our CEO.
I think the environment that he's created at launch is is really really unique and it starts with his management style right he I wrote an article I think on year one when it started working at launch Academy it was called sinker swim and and one of the jokes the running jokes now eight years in is that it's not going to be a lot of fun.
And now eight years in is that he never gave me a job description or I don't think he looked at my resume to be honest because we had we had had a couple conversations but like literally on day one like I went in and looked for something to do right. And and we do this a lot with a lot of our coming up the looking for something to do part but where where we kind of give them just enough work so they get a taste test and we see what they can create.
The joy that comes with with my role now I think a lot of people are surprised that I'm still here eight years in and like like yourselves like hey want to go do something yourself or want to actually join a join a different place is think is because I think I get a lot of job satisfaction out of the other is the fact that we're making macro impact.
So the companies that were working with both the companies that were literally importing from all six continents of the world into Canada like these people are going to collectively change the world I could create something small my own maybe it's a lifestyle business maybe it's ventured back right but that silo is not the same impact that we can make again collectively.
And I think that's what kind of motivates me to kind of keep on going well it's interesting because if I think about our COO alliance so we have members that are all seconds in command like you 17 countries around the world we've got members and a bunch of them are brands that you know the names of as well.
But none of them like 98.9% of them have no desired ever being entrepreneur they none like they're super happy just being and getting to run the companies they runs again some that we know the names of like you know 15 five and bumble and like some cool brands that that you know those second you know Cheryl Sandberg the queen B of COO is never wanted to be a CEO she just wanted to run Facebook from our so I get it while you're there.
I was just curious whether that entrepreneurial seizure was knocking at your door ever but for sure and I think something that's special about the the small team we've created is they all have kind of what we call side hustles right so so when you talk enough about you know how to create how to build a brand how to build a business I think you have to scratch that it's a little like we talked about and I think just before like you you have a little bit of our collection.
I know I know we're doing this on audio but I have a wall. I mean I love I love to collect sneakers I like collecting I'm learning now to collect art and best starting with NFTs and web 3 and all this kind of stuff so we do find outlets to to scratch our scratch or itch but right now I think I think if I'm putting you know comparison points the impact is just far greater on what I could do with launch versus if I was creating an FT project.
All right. As a moment anyway. So you get some really interesting visibility to this entrepreneurial and startup ecosystem. What advice do you find yourself either you giving as as kind of the second command there or you know within launch or even attraction.
What advice do you find yourself that you're giving these founders or founded led companies that seems to be consistent advice like what would your top three things be you know you gave us the top things you look for what would the top three types of advice be that you're on you find yourself giving frequently.
I think to rip off Gary Vaynerchuk a little bit the first one is self awareness. I think that anybody that I'm lucky enough to work with here at launch and all the companies that that whether they're applying for companies or applying for programs or whatever it is they're usually very very smart in some things.
And understanding what those things are using that as a strength and then also recognizing the parts that you need help right and so with with needing help that's where something like launch comes in when we have 10 very smart people around the room they're not all going to be smart at the same thing right they're not going to all have shared experiences they'll have likeness but not the same right so you really need to find that that community of support some of the support is going to be within your internal team.
But some of that support has to be outside of your team. Exactly right like right now we're in the middle of a pretty tough period in terms of business and macroly it doesn't look great. A lot of companies are talking about is it time to downsize their teams these aren't issues or discussion points that that you want to discuss literally with with all the members of your team in a very open and I don't know what I'm doing manner right you want us to be decisive.
And so that's where what is your what is your community that you can kind of go to these unclear thoughts these unresolved thoughts what what who are those people that you're going to and that's really what I'm trying to create now at launch with with our launch pad program is we want to be that watering hole you go to to be a safe place to where you don't have answers yet.
Okay so we've got kind of that that introspection on themselves and the understanding themselves what's the next thing you look for that's common be ready to fail. And what I mean by that is and this is something that that kind of cursed me early on as I was creating different projects and things like that. And again back to kind of raise management style of autonomy is he allowed me to build things that didn't work.
And I think I think the big takeaway and probably what I tell myself if I was younger is is that failure is vastly overrated like we think that if we create something nobody wants it or or it doesn't translate to a new market that that's the end of the world as the end of my business we got to start a new we got to go get jobs at McDonald's or whatever.
And that's really like a a fear that I think a lot of entrepreneurs need to overcome that that perfectionism it's never going to be perfect at any part whether it's precedes seed series a to a public company as as you're probably very familiar with you're always going to have headaches things are always going to go wrong. And so and so it's just about getting getting past that part and learning to see that failure can be part of the solution in a long term setting.
I remember one of my one of my early mentors used to say that it's all about bobbing and weaving it's kind of like hopes that went wrong oops that went wrong is you kind of bobbing weave towards success and what would the third thing be if you the third kind of commonality that these founder led companies struggle with.
The third thing I think I think this will really kind of it kind of ties back into to the first two, but it's I think you want to create an environment where you enjoy your lives and and i'm using that very very broadly because I think it's more than just being a founder yourselves.
I because we're not we're not investing in the companies right we will work with a services tech company we will work with what we call lifestyle businesses so just for those in the audience that aren't aren't you know fully familiar lifestyle business are usually businesses that that these are not as interested in because they're not going to grow 100 X or 1000 X.
But for a lot of founders that's the right choice for them maybe they don't want to get bogged down in board meetings or have have advisory meetings all day long and it does tie back into that whole self awareness thing right it's interesting but.
But yeah but for sure like with with these founders a lot of times they they feel this unknown pressure even if it's and a lot of times it's not coming from their investors or family members is no it's a societal and the buzz of what we read right exactly and is knowing what is what.
Knowing what is what is enough for you and and like are you dreading going to work even though it's something you built or you actually enjoying it i love that because it's interesting because if you're in the VC community or you're you're raising money yeah the pushes build build or or if you're in the VC it's build or bust often which is a really really sad you know life's you know this is also our lifebook with the end of the day none of this matters we die there's a great book about that called small giants and bow burling M was.
The the writer of small giants but it talks about people that build these amazing companies that give you amazing lives and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that i'm glad you actually have a space in your programs for those people because you're not driving them all towards just build or bust.
The other one when you talked about your first point there's a great book from years ago called leadership and self deception which talks about self awareness and leaders really truly understanding it was something I really struggled with when I was the COO at 1 800 got junk is I was.
Young is I was often bumping into myself and not noticing the things that I was doing wrong inside of the organization and that book was really helpful for me as as I scaled as the COO back at 1 800 got junk days alright let's talk about about your growth Ray where have you had to grow you know yourself and your skills as you've as you've scaled and I want to talk to you a little bit about you and and Ray as well.
One of the things for sure is when I started out I was definitely risk adverse I think perfectionism like I'm not like I talk about it but I'm not like immune to it i think I think just understanding that that you know we're gonna build things and not everything is gonna work out.
The first time that we talk when we built that maple program and I was talking to a company for my brother is like and they agreed like yeah we're gonna join your program and and we're gonna pay you this money and you're gonna help us move to Canada it all felt so surreal to me. But if I hadn't taken that call like none of the following things would happen right and so so that that really is is the first thing that I think I learned and I grew.
And the second thing is a little bit of imposter syndrome right and so when I when I mentioned that I I'm really blessed to be in a position where I get to talk to really really smart founders and even like i'm sitting in this room with you Cameron like that's that's a blessing to me frankly speaking I'm not just trying to you know brush you up for your show.
But like I really enjoy having these conversations with people and learning their journeys and figuring out how they kind of navigated their lives both both mentally and as they growing growing their business growing their staff and all that kind of stuff.
At the same time as you mentioned like I've never built anything on my own I've never raised money myself for my own venture so there's a lot of a lot of doubt that can come in through the days as you're building out these things and the battle is constant.
Because because at the same time when I write down my bio and things like that I've talked to thousands of entrepreneurs I've watched them grow I've watched them fail and other people can learn from that too right so one of our models is everybody has something to learn everybody has something to teach so that's just something that I have to constantly remind myself.
I love it how do you think you got over the imposter syndrome and I'm going to share something after you tell me what you did to get through but how did you get over it or is it something you're still getting over every day. I think it's something that we're still every every day's a battle right like some days you feel better and some days you get some wins and some days you you feel like shit.
It's funny I so I've been paid to speak now on state over 800 times I've been paid to speak in 26 countries and I've also been paid to speak on every single continent including Antarctica I was paid to speak in Antarctica in January and every fucking time I get ready to go on a stage I get nervous.
And so often I'm like why are they even paying me to speak to this group why like what can I contribute and somehow I end up doing a pretty good job of them but I still feel that today and then I remember years ago I was coaching Marcelo Clare who is the CEO at Sprint you know the 82nd largest company in the US and I'm sitting in his boardroom we're going through a coaching session and I remember him kind of saying feeling like the imposter like I don't even know what I'm doing like.
None of us do at the end of the day this is always the biggest thing we've ever done right it's always that we had a member of our CO alliance. Who I'm at lunch one day at one of our our in person events we had about 30 COs together came up to me and he goes you know I feel like an imposter and I was a guy I would have never known that so I went back into the room and I said just for fun.
I'm not going to say who it was but someone at lunch mentioned this to me how many of us in the room feel like an imposter put your hand up in every single person put their hands up and then we all started to crack up laughing because we realized like none of us thought the other people were imposter we only thought it was ourselves then we realized we're all that I think we're all 16 year olds trapped in our bodies.
Yeah for sure it's a battle and I think I think what your point really really helps because because whether you're celebrity or your will class on springer like you always feel that I think it's lies we tell the ourselves honestly speaking. And it's that kind of balance between being confident and being humble I think that we're kind of trying to straddle that that fine line.
Right I want to ask you something about about the dynamic between you and Ray so Ray is classic entrepreneur right the big shiny object the lots of ideas and working in a very entrepreneurial style organization. How do you apply the breaks to his gas and how do you work with his style that is probably slightly different than your style what what have you guys learned in terms of the dance.
And the in and Yang between the two of you yeah so so with a lot of CEOs I think what's really important about them that we probably haven't talked about yet is they need to be vision casters. The mission in the vision I'm sure these words of the I'm not the first person to mention it on the show. But but when you're running that company and you're in that title we're really looking towards you to kind of drive it you're not the the only person that makes that happen.
It has to come from a tip of the spear and and the CEO in my opinion is the tip of that spear from from my perspective like I'm very happy letting not letting Ray but like having Ray be that tip of the spear in allowing him to to be bold to be to dream things that we didn't think were possible like if you had told me five years ago we'd work with
the company's in every single continent I would have showed you to shut the front door right so so like that's really really important where I think my role comes in and to complement him is I purposely do things that are not scalable.
And that's where I kind of pull him back because because I know for for Ray to get to the top of the mountain or for launch Academy to get to the top mountain it has to start with one foot at a time right and so that that forcefulness where where in this situation Ray is pushing me to think a little deeper think a little longer I'm keeping him grounded.
In the sense that he knows that you know for us to get there we got to do all these kind of a thousand little micro things for us to get there and that's I think really interesting for the team to watch from a from a third party perspective because they kind of have to live between the both of us right.
And and so so that that's kind of the dynamic it's kind of like mom and dad right how do you guys have you know date night what's what are you in ready to stay on the same page and to stay connected. You know after you've maybe had the good the good argument or the good.
Healthy conflict you know what because conflict is really good right if you think about five dysfunctions of a team Pat Lensioni's book the fear of conflict is a really bad things you need to have good healthy debate but then it's kind of like make ups right you know and so what's what are you in ready to to stay on the same page until like each other is humans after you go through the periods or times when you really have the good passionate debate on something about the business.
I would say we're not really up in arms all that often I think I think both of us are are actually introverts believe they're not we we do step on the mic quite a bit but I think naturally we we know when to give her down times and things like that.
It's it's hard I think to continue to build that relationship and I'd say that's one of the struggles because like after eight years like raise raise a close friend of mine he's the mentor he's taught me a ton of things but he's also responsible for my paycheck right so so like that's such a weird dynamic like like a lot of people will go to their watering hole and complain about the boss or complain about their job and that just simply doesn't exist for me.
I'm not that I have a lot of complaints ray of your listening but but I think I think for for both of us we we all have lives outside of outside launch Academy for ray he has probably 15 other ideas or businesses that he's working on. He pulls me into things that are beyond launch when when he thinks it's interesting or to me or helpful but but I think I think what's built our relationship over the years is we tend to put each other's interest first right he's only pulling me into an external.
Project when he thinks I would be interested in it right I'm pulling him into things that are that are not want related because I think maybe he really needs a vacation right right and I I'm like the only person that tells him probably more than anybody in the world like dude you just got to take a week off I'm not trying to get rid of you but you need a break it's super healthy and I'm glad you actually mentioned that as well about about the founders and helping them to have lives and to recognize that you know it is about balance right that you don't find a single pro athlete who is.
Absolutely in the maximum performance of their sport 50 60 70 hours a week it's it's insane they cross trained a decompressed they they relax they outsource everything except genius and then they're on the field and they're hitting hard gang day but I don't understand why business people don't get that especially North America I think it's a huge disease in North America I've been blessed to be spending so much time globally now that I just see businesses being done in another way.
Do you see anything now so your focus is not just the Vancouver market or most of your clients out of the Vancouver marketplace now. Yeah we work with probably hands on the 120 plus companies they're situated all over the world their commonality between each other is one they they have to be working on something technical they're creating or whether it's a product or service there's there's a there's a technical component to it.
The other thing that they have to have in common is they're looking to build global companies right and so that's one of the biggest tie in why a company from from career Taiwan would want to work with us is because Vancouver is a great gateway into the entire North American market.
Yeah for sure so so that's that's definitely one of the goals and and that's what we kind of base a lot of our programming around is like you know how to hang on to what's made you successful in your home country and how to expand that to a new region.
Well if there's if there's any of the clients that have come out of kind of launch academy or that are attending the attraction conference that you know would be good guests on the second command podcast let's make sure that you introduce us to love to be able to give them some exposure and also to learn from them.
And one of the big things I've been most obsessed about in the last years or probably two years is the more that if we truly want to scale and build these global organizations we have to grow our people.
Yeah and if we don't grow our people we're never going to grow the business so and the growing the people for me is all the soft skills I launched this course called invest in your leaders where we focus on you know situational leadership delegation coaching time management email management effective meetings running interviews. Do you work with it with any of your portfolio companies on those sets of skills at all or is it more on the tech side that you're focusing with them on.
I think I think is definitely a little bit of both and frankly because because specifically with the maple program where we're basically tied to these companies for the next three years of their lives in our lives. We we go deeply personal and that's something that that I'm I'm pretty proud of because because our team just seems to care more than I don't want to make it like comparative but they seem to care more than anybody that I've met.
And so so it's not just a matter of hey we'll make sure that your company is doing okay and we're connecting you with the camera and the world and things like that they'll go out of the way and they'll they'll talk to their spouses maybe their spouses need. Healthcare or day care or they need to find work on their own so we're creating secondary services because we know at the end of the day like like to to use like I guess it's only one gender but like happy wife happy life I needed.
I needed the plan so I needed to use that but but we we really kind of take care of the founders holistically right and so so like I remember like one time like we had to pick up one of our founders at the airport. Because because they had their phone had ran out of battery and they don't know how to get through their Airbnb.
So so like those those those aren't going to be in our program specs but at the end of the day it's to to acclimate the companies as much as possible so that could involved working with their teams. Working making sure that I think a big topic right now is is the concept of of hybrid working which especially when you have a global workforce and you have half your team back in India and you're now living in Vancouver.
So we manage meetings right and what are ways to mitigate maybe it's less meetings maybe maybe it's more it's a different environment of meetings and I think right now we're in a period post COVID where a lot of it's frankly trial and error right and collectively if our group of companies can trial and error faster we're going to figure that strategy up.
Or mastermind together right so you can share the ideas and resources together we have a the by the time this air is it will already be completed but we have a CO alliance event that we're running over the next three days in Scottsdale and it's all about building a world class culture post COVID because culture is no longer everybody coming into a physical office space.
One last question I want to go back to to you if you were going to give yourself some advice the you know the 21 22 year old Sam just getting ready to take a launch out into his career what advice would you give yourself back then that you know to be true today. I think I've touched on a little bit of it but I think the overall message I think is is dream bigger right.
But like you know I was no young and out of college and eager to learn but business is the same at the core everywhere in the world there's a problem that you're trying to solve and you have you have a spin at trying to solve it right and to do that you'll need lots of support you'll need a community you'll need customers you'll need
you need sometimes you'll need investors and you'll need to build a team that enjoys working with you and you enjoy working with them and these pieces the basic pieces are always the same right it doesn't matter whether you're at launch academy or why calm or Harvard Business School it's the same lessons and I think I think that that message to to younger self even at that age when I don't have the experience yet but that's really really the the crux of it is there the 30 secret of the business is there's no secret.
I love the whole dream bigger in the reality is business is businesses extraordinarily simple I think we often over complicated yeah for sure Sam Chan the vice president of programs at launch academy and traction conference thank you so much for sharing with us on the second command podcast.
You've been listening to second in command brought to you by CO Alliance founder Cameron Harold if you enjoyed this episode please be sure to subscribe for more best practices from industry leading COO's visit COO Alliance dot com. you