Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 45. From CNC Shops to Saudi Royalty: How Minds on Fire Got Here with Marcus Gaughan

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45. From CNC Shops to Saudi Royalty: How Minds on Fire Got Here with Marcus Gaughan · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:03
  What's happening everybody? Welcome Scrappy What Successful, the show where I sit down with your
• 0:07
  favorite consultants and we find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated or because
• 0:12
  they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple Consulting Firm
• 0:17
  and Pineapple Analysts AI, always helping small businesses become more data-driven. Fun fact of the
• 0:21
  day, we got a Canadian fun fact for our guest today. So Ontario has 250,000
• 0:26
  lakes. Sure, a lot of lakes, whatever. It represents 20% of the entire world's fresh
• 0:31
  water. So shout out to Ontario. That's pretty sweet. That's neither here nor there. Today
• 0:36
  Yeah.
• 0:39
  I'm Jen. I'm joined by my friend Marcus Gon. Don't even try and pronounce the
• 0:43
  or spell the last name. Just go with Gone. He's the founder of Minds on
• 0:48
  Fire. He works he partners with businesses to unify the growth, strategy, marketing, sales, automation
• 0:53
  into one cohesive framework. Calls it the growth operating system. You got all sorts of
• 0:57
  AI stuff going on, so we may call him an AI expert. We'll see how
• 1:02
  the episode goes. But
• 1:04
  Don't give me that too quick.
• 1:07
  Marcus, man, I'm so pumped that you're here. we know that you're successful, but the
• 1:11
  question we have for you today, do you think you fall more on the sophisticated
• 1:15
  side or more on the scrappy side?
• 1:18
  Yeah, I love that. I okay, so definitely scrappy to start, at least. I I
• 1:23
  was always a entrepreneurship was a you know get the sale first, then figure out
• 1:29
  how to make the whole thing happen, you know, like reverse engineer from getting some
• 1:34
  kind of in or win or success and then figure it out. Like figure it
• 1:40
  out, figure till you make it, all of it. I'm like such a my god,
• 1:45
  I I'm such a a proponent of both those concepts. I I love sophistication. I
• 1:51
  I love learning. I've always loved science and physics and all of these amazing subjects.
• 1:56
  And then getting into tech and tech startups and that entire world, I love the
• 2:02
  sophistication of technology and even like society getting a little fancy with people sometimes. But
• 2:08
  but I scrappy 100%. Like absolutely. I think that's like the only way to really
• 2:13
  be. An entrepreneur, I don't know, you gotta hack it together until you really learn
• 2:19
  how to do it right.
• 2:21
  Exactly. Exactly. You get an idea, you have a bias for action, you put it
• 2:23
  into play and you see if it works and if it doesn't you try the
• 2:25
  next one.
• 2:26
  Yeah. Yeah, totally.
• 2:31
  tell us where where'd you grow up? did you have any entrepreneurs in the family?
• 2:35
  Yeah, sure. So I grew up in Guelph, southern Ontario. I've like I live now,
• 2:40
  you know, an hour drive from where I I grew up and I I've gotten
• 2:45
  to travel but just never lived away from this region like in southern Ontario. I
• 2:50
  love it. Like I I don't think we would ever leave. And so Guelph and
• 2:56
  then moved to Kitchener, Waterloo for university. I went to Waterloo, did material nanoscience and
• 3:01
  business, which was really fun. And that
• 3:04
  Well
• 3:05
  was I that was my like total science nerd side. And where I basically learned
• 3:09
  like, my gosh, I might like something even better than you know, than science, like
• 3:15
  getting into entrepreneurship and marketing and business and then into tech. I yeah, it's been
• 3:20
  a lot of fun. So I I came to Kitchen Waterloo that would have been
• 3:26
  2000 like nine or something like that. Gwennitz University, and by second year, I was
• 3:32
  already working for an incubator in St. Jacobs, this like little town north of Waterloo.
• 3:37
  And just like, I don't know, absolutely fell in love with it. I, and then
• 3:43
  it was sort of history from there. I I worked for research entrepreneurs accelerating prosperity.
• 3:48
  this group called Reap was the first one ever, and then I went to work
• 3:54
  with. Like Velocity, Commune Tech, Accelerator Center, Founder Institute, and then a bunch more worldwide
• 4:00
  and around Southern Ontario and North America and even further. And and then I mean
• 4:05
  recently just moved to Woodstock to get a little bit of a smaller place and
• 4:11
  you know, like a smaller city for us to live in. But Kitchener Waterloo is
• 4:17
  still a big base for me. so we Yeah, my gosh. Like it's I just
• 4:22
  I love the the region and the area, like Kish and Waterloo especially, all the
• 4:28
  work I've got to do there has just been amazing.
• 4:32
  It sounds like there's a good like incubator startup community there. Is that is that
• 4:35
  kinda what drew you on 'cause it was such a big part of community?
• 4:38
  Yeah, a hundred percent. I n well, I I knew that I wanted to be
• 4:43
  an entrepreneurship and loved just business and tech and innovations and trying to take on
• 4:49
  all these big bad problems, but I only kinda knew that on paper, if that
• 4:54
  makes sense. You know, I hadn't really done it yet and didn't really know that
• 5:00
  incubators were a thing, actually. I went to Waterloo because it was like not my
• 5:05
  hometown. I was like escaping and getting my own place and the nanoscience program was
• 5:11
  great. So it was like there were a bunch of different reasons, you know, for
• 5:16
  going that direction. And I I don't I don't know. I yeah, I'm kinda what
• 5:22
  was the question again? I got lost in stories of all my first startups. my
• 5:27
  gosh, I'm like, there's too many to even to even go through.
• 5:32
  No, this is great. Keep going. What's what's the first start up that you actually
• 5:35
  do?
• 5:36
  my gosh. Okay. So when I went to Waterloo, I so how did I get
• 5:40
  introduced to this? So I went to I had a what is it called? An
• 5:45
  elective for an entrepreneurship course. We walk in the first day, it was Jeff Malik
• 5:50
  was the professor, and he's giving a bit of a speech, you know, to these
• 5:54
  first-time students. And he's like, I offer three things to every student that I have.
• 5:59
  If you want to work at Reap at this incubator, I'll get you a job
• 6:04
  if you want one. If you, you know, need any introductions, I'll make them for
• 6:08
  you if you ask me nicely. And if you come to me with a business
• 6:13
  idea, I promise you I will help you and not steal it. Like so he's
• 6:18
  like, and I so a little goofy, but still pretty legit. And we and he
• 6:23
  said he was the director at Reap, and he had all these, you know, kind
• 6:27
  of different ins and different places. And like end of the first class, I'm like
• 6:32
  right up at the front of the class, just to like take him up on
• 6:37
  all three. I he's I like remember waiting behind a few people. I finally get
• 6:41
  up to him, and it's like, I want the job, I've got this cool idea,
• 6:46
  you know, and I need this, this, this, and this, this, and trying to be
• 6:51
  as nice as possible. And I, apart from asking for the job, an idea that
• 6:55
  I had, and this was like very near and dear to my heart. I okay,
• 7:00
  so I was born with just really bad vision in my right eye. It's amblyopia,
• 7:05
  it's a couple different things, something that can't be fixed by laser eye surgery. So
• 7:10
  Familiar. Yep.
• 7:11
  so kind of grew up thinking I'd fix it, found out around, you know, 14,
• 7:15
  15, 16 that there was just not really a cure for me kind of thing.
• 7:20
  And then 17 years old, my grandma finds this light therapy. So it's not lasers,
• 7:25
  but it's literally me looking at different colors of light in a certain order and
• 7:30
  doing these other like hand-eye coordination exercises and patching my good eye. And she finds
• 7:35
  this whole regimen that you can also do. And it's this experimental thing in St.
• 7:40
  Catharines. And it's like, Only this optometrist does it. It's an hour and forty five
• 7:45
  minute drive away from home. But we get the treatment and I'm, you know, seventeen
• 7:50
  at the time. I didn't have my license yet. So I'm like asking parents to
• 7:55
  drive me and it's like this total pain and it's like all frustrating and whatever.
• 8:00
  But we get through three months of this and it gets my vision that I
• 8:05
  shouldn't have been able to make any better ever, about seventy percent better than it
• 8:10
  would have been had I done nothing. So not as like sexy as being able
• 8:15
  to say, and it cured it, like bam, like laser eye surgery, but but still
• 8:20
  kind of like miraculous. And I came out of this thinking, you know, I'm like,
• 8:25
  it was right before I or a year before I was going to university. I
• 8:30
  knew I wanted to go there. I knew I loved tech. So the whole like
• 8:35
  all the time I'm thinking business idea, business idea, business idea, like whatever. And around
• 8:40
  the end of this, I have the idea, what if we make a portable version
• 8:45
  of this treatment? And I bring that to then Jeff Malik, this professor, and he
• 8:50
  gets excited and he ends up putting me in touch with the head of the
• 8:55
  School of Optometry at Waterloo. And then he puts me in touch with another optometrist.
• 9:00
  And then I get in touch with the original one. And then I start trying
• 9:05
  to get all these things going on. So this is the first project I ever
• 9:10
  really tried to pursue. And it was crazy. Like I built a prototype with this
• 9:15
  friend of mine. It was like a pair of glasses with screens kind of like
• 9:20
  taped onto the inside of it and like wires just going to a little Raspberry
• 9:25
  Pi. And then it was really simple because we really just had to make these
• 9:30
  screens go a certain color for like 10 minutes and then 10 minutes and then
• 9:35
  10 minutes. So it's fairly easy. We do all of this. The school of optometry,
• 9:40
  the head there, and I'm I'm awful, I forget his name. He tells me, like
• 9:45
  in the process, okay. You know, Iris, this huge provider of eye care products, they're
• 9:50
  watching this experiment. We want to do an experiment jointly with this optometrist, like blah,
• 9:55
  blah, blah. You know, I'm like 18 or I think it was 19 years old
• 10:00
  at the time, and I was like on the edge of launching my first optometry
• 10:04
  experiment and launch a prognosis whole thing. And then I go to do the final
• 10:09
  kind of blast to that. original optometrist who had all the licenses and knew the
• 10:14
  tech and all this kind of stuff. And I go, okay, we're ready to go.
• 10:19
  And he basically just comes back and says, No, I don't want to share with
• 10:24
  anybody. This is mine. And just the whole thing just like rug out from under
• 10:29
  feet, immediately just gone. Like in one email. my gosh, right? It was like when
• 10:34
  I read that email, I remember getting the re I got like a reply and
• 10:39
  I opened it and I'm like, and then I just it was like heart shatter.
• 10:44
  It was like I think it was his wife was his receptionist, the optometrist, and
• 10:49
  it was one line from her, like, No, this is ours, we're gonna take it
• 10:54
  ourselves, bye, like never talk to him again, never heard anything about the project. It
• 10:59
  was it was crazy.
• 11:01
  Crap. And that's I can imagine that. Like you see the you get the notification
• 11:02
  on your phone and you're like, it's from the guy. It's from the guy. This
• 11:04
  is our green light. This is we're good. And then
• 11:06
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 11:13
  that's heartbreaking. my god.
• 11:14
  dude. But I was like addicted by that point. And so I was like to
• 11:19
  just business. Like this whole chase that I went on for I don't know, it
• 11:24
  must have been six months, you know, building this up and meetings. not quite that
• 11:29
  bad. Maybe like three months. You know, it moved pretty quickly, but still, it was
• 11:34
  just it's kind of I don't know. I at the end of the day, it
• 11:39
  was just only a good thing. Like I walked away from it thinking, If you
• 11:44
  push on the seemingly immovable walls of the world around you, sometimes those walls actually
• 11:49
  move. And sometimes they turn out to be made of s dust and they crumble
• 11:54
  entirely. Like you just you just don't know. Like, I don't know. It's sort of
• 11:59
  I think that was my first kind of high of one person with a bunch
• 12:04
  of ambition can kind of walk around bending reality if they put the right work
• 12:09
  and care and thought and research and learning into the practice of it. I I
• 12:14
  don't know. I I love it and that just really stuck with me.
• 12:19
  Did you ever get another business partner or have you done everything solo founder from
• 12:23
  then on?
• 12:24
  my gosh. I I had this con this whole phase from probably twenty until I
• 12:30
  don't know, twenty seven, where anytime I had an idea, a business, if I had
• 12:36
  a sale and needed to build a business around it, I was like trying to
• 12:42
  give equity away. Like I was like, hey, you know, you want to be a
• 12:49
  CTO? Here, 20%. Like
• 12:51
  Yeah.
• 12:52
  Like, have you ever marketed before? CMO, like 10%, you know, like, and these could
• 12:57
  be people that I'd meet, and it'd always be not random people on the street,
• 13:02
  but it'd be people within the startup community and incubators and networks that I was
• 13:08
  in and networking events. But still, I just found myself like chasing my tail, trying
• 13:13
  to build a team of people around every idea. before the idea was really rounded
• 13:19
  out and before we actually knew what we were doing and we had any traction
• 13:24
  at all. So I had this weird tendency to like wrap myself up in all
• 13:30
  this complexity and we need fast agreements for equity and NDAs and like non-compete and
• 13:35
  non-circumvention. And like we're throwing around all these dip documents and agreements that we need.
• 13:41
  And now nowadays I'm just like like can we just do like a quick Bang,
• 13:46
  like partnership, like revenue split, whatever, get this over with, and then we can never
• 13:52
  talk with ever again. But so at the time, I you know, I kind of
• 13:57
  had tons of partners, but no partners. Like it was there's
• 14:02
  Yeah.
• 14:04
  this patchwork of people who were all partners on this and this and this and
• 14:09
  this. And then I just find myself working alone on so many things. And then
• 14:15
  there were a few, there were there were a few projects. Like there was one.
• 14:21
  This was between like 2017 and 2020. I had a it was a a digital
• 14:27
  platform, a web-based platform for manufacturing companies. For we ended up we started out general,
• 14:33
  we ended up focusing more on CNC manufacturers, contract, machining, that kind of stuff. But
• 14:39
  we are a platform for these small manufacturers, see it turned out to be CNC
• 14:44
  shops, to register their equipment. And then they could each bid on projects and share
• 14:50
  work and team on projects. So a way for them to.
• 14:55
  What what's a C and C shop?
• 14:57
  So CNC in manufacturing, we have a lot of different pieces of equipment. CNC is
• 15:02
  when you get into automated equipment. So you're getting into
• 15:06
  I see.
• 15:07
  these large, usually big box machines that you can put a bunch of different fixtures
• 15:12
  into, different drill bits, different routers, all kinds of different things. And then you put
• 15:17
  in, you know, a block of metal, a block of whatever, and then you can
• 15:22
  write code, you know, with G code or various other other languages that you can
• 15:27
  code in. And you can basically program this machine to, you know, drill, then route,
• 15:32
  then do this, then do this, then do this, then do this. So they're very,
• 15:37
  very flexible machines. It leaves you with a lot of capabilities, but they're also expensive.
• 15:43
  You know, they also are not universally capable. So you do need to make sure
• 15:48
  that it's the right type of materials and clients and stuff like that. So it's
• 15:53
  I had spent a few years, you know, selling with different startup companies and just
• 15:58
  happened to sell into a lot of manufacturing and just noticed that there'd be machinery
• 16:03
  down, you know, quite often. And sometimes it's because they didn't have business, sometimes it's
• 16:08
  because that machine, you know. was purchased for a huge contract they got, but that
• 16:14
  contract only requires them to run it for four months of the year because it's
• 16:19
  a seasonal part need or it's some replacement when a company goes into shutdown or
• 16:24
  into repairs like like mining and oil and gas ha are very seasonal in that
• 16:29
  way, especially in Canada. So it was a really interesting platform. That one, I had
• 16:34
  several teams of co-ops and needed a lot of coding. And so I thought, okay,
• 16:39
  And this was like eight, nine years into trying out all these businesses and doing
• 16:45
  all these different, you know, pseudo partnerships and like whatever you call these things. So
• 16:50
  I'm like, I tell myself, okay, you know, I'm like, I'm a grown-up now. Like,
• 16:55
  I know how to do partnerships. Like, I can do this. This is like, yeah,
• 17:00
  I'll go get a partner and it'll work out super duper well. Like, really, really
• 17:05
  well. And I go, I network, I meet this guy. I won't say names or
• 17:10
  whatever. But I meet a guy who becomes my CTO. And I bring him on
• 17:16
  for equity. We do 50-50, joint agreement, and just proceed to spend like eight months
• 17:21
  just disagreeing with each other, like over what this platform should be. He came from
• 17:26
  a company that was in government tenders, you know, like government RFQs, RFPs. And for
• 17:31
  that entire time, it was I need this kind of rugged manufacturing platform where people
• 17:36
  can register machinery and maybe get analytics and where they can bid on projects, but
• 17:41
  that each other create. Like it'll be this peer-to-peer kind of black market of manufacturing
• 17:46
  jobs, you know, that people are sharing with each other. And we just kept coming
• 17:52
  back with these like government tendering, bidding, RFP writing mock-ups. And it was him managing
• 17:57
  both my co-op teams. So that one kind of just puttered along, not really getting
• 18:02
  to any kind of launch stage or revenue because we just kept going back to
• 18:07
  the drawing board and it just became this like whatever, whatever. So that was the
• 18:12
  last time I had a partner was in like 2020 when we ended that. And
• 18:17
  the pandemic was kind of the final nail in the coffin because we probably would
• 18:23
  have kept tripping along with that platform for Who knows, another year if we if
• 18:28
  it hadn't all gotten shut down. So, like, I don't know, a minor blessing in
• 18:33
  disguise, you know, with that whole thing happening. Cause we we were pushing hard on
• 18:38
  that business right up until March of 2020. And that was when we just decided
• 18:43
  to drop it. And I don't know, better for it. Like then with Minds on
• 18:48
  Fire, we had a huge reset in 2020, and it was just like Okay, well,
• 18:54
  now we'll go rehire, but we've got to be way cheaper. Now we'll go do
• 18:59
  marketing. But now there's just I don't know, a huge amount of immigration and a
• 19:04
  huge amount of saturation in the marketing industry and in these simple services that we
• 19:09
  were giving. And my gosh, like it's just roller coasters upon roller coasters. Like it's
• 19:14
  crazy. But that's the last time I had a partner. It was that manufacturing tech
• 19:19
  business. And now I have Partners on everything, but like arm's length partners and not
• 19:25
  to and I find it just works better. Like now we agree on the services
• 19:30
  we're doing, we agree on the cost we'll share or what roles we have on
• 19:35
  a certain project or some specific client or what have you, and then you know,
• 19:40
  we do the work, we knock out of the park, we walk away, like we
• 19:45
  come back when another project makes sense. Like I really don't I don't know, I
• 19:50
  I don't even see I don't know. I don't see why I would partner at
• 19:55
  this point. Like unless it was like just for a very specific product launch or
• 20:01
  like SAS product that we put out or AI usage platform, something like that, which
• 20:06
  we're doing now. But yeah, so I don't know. I don't know if anyone will
• 20:11
  ever own a peace of minds on fire. I like I've got this little dream
• 20:16
  in the back of my head now that now that I'm gonna be a friggin'
• 20:21
  Dad for the first time next February. Yeah, thanks. my gosh. I guess January thirtieth
• 20:26
  technically. I'm like now I'm like I have some little some little chidrons that like
• 20:32
  might need to take this business over one day. Like, you know, I I gotta
• 20:37
  save it for them. I I'm not sure.
• 20:40
  Right. Okay. All right. Thinking about the future. Okay. All right. Right.
• 20:44
  Yeah, a little bit. Thinking about right now and thirty years from now, yeah.
• 20:50
  that sounds like an AI startup if I've ever heard of one.
• 20:55
  my gosh. And we're pushing so many AI products and platforms right now. We're having
• 20:58
  a lot of fun.
• 21:00
  Yeah. Is that I mean, so I all right, give me give me some ridiculous
• 21:04
  marketing stuff. So when all this is going on and you're you're in manufacturing, you're
• 21:08
  in AI, you're doing all this stuff, like I gotta imagine there's some pretty good
• 21:12
  hustle stories of zero dollar marketing budget, but we need clients. I'm gonna go knock
• 21:16
  on doors or you know, whatever it was. Give me give me some ridiculous scrappy
• 21:20
  marketing.
• 21:21
  that's funny. I mean, I the one thing that comes to mind is some ridiculousness,
• 21:25
  is maybe this is like shooting for the moon, even when you have nothing. It's
• 21:30
  like as we so pandemic, you know, wipes out the manufacturing business, and then suddenly
• 21:35
  I'm sitting here, like March 2020, with mine's on fire, but kind of our main
• 21:40
  product is gone. All the clients that were doing extra work with us are gone.
• 21:44
  And And that's it. And and the rest of the clients that we would usually
• 21:49
  be put in touch with would be startups. And startups and investment, all that just
• 21:54
  dried up. Like it just absolutely froze. So that week that I the week of
• 21:59
  the pandemics, I I realized we need to pivot, calling around, call a couple investors,
• 22:04
  like blah, blah, blah. I get put in touch with this guy, Nick Batchy. And
• 22:08
  he's this event organizer. And we're put in touch on the phone. And we like
• 22:13
  hit it off right away. We're like best friends. We're talking about both our businesses.
• 22:18
  I tell him I just lost this manufacturing business with all the but I have
• 22:23
  all these contacts and I don't know what to do with them. And he tells
• 22:28
  me, Well, I'm an event planner, you know. I I plan impactful conferences and events
• 22:32
  that bring together investors and startups. And so I'm kind of, you know. I'm kind
• 22:37
  of floating out in the ocean without a paddle right now as well because there
• 22:42
  are no live events and we're shutting down so much stuff. And we talk, we
• 22:47
  find a ton of synergy, a ton of alignment. We become like best friends. We
• 22:52
  start partnering at all kinds of business deals that we start pushing. He's got people
• 22:56
  looking for PPE like gowns and and sanitizers. And I've got all these suppliers and
• 23:01
  manufacturers that we're talking to. So we start joining forces on a bunch of stuff.
• 23:06
  And then here's the story. So then we're like hacking together minds on fire. You
• 23:11
  know, we're we're just doing whatever we can. We're picking up marketing clients, we're doing
• 23:16
  these small manufacturing or or purchase deals, we're connecting people, we're trying to charge consulting
• 23:20
  fees, like we're just all over the place, like trying to figure out what we're
• 23:25
  doing. And then we get to twenty twenty two. And I'm starting to think, okay,
• 23:30
  I need to take this really seriously. Like, how do I push this out? How
• 23:35
  do I widen my net? How do I go b find some big clients? Cause
• 23:40
  I'm thinking, you know, I want to go find like a quarter million a year
• 23:44
  client and just start getting some huge things. So at the same time as I'm
• 23:49
  thinking this, and Nick starts to open up again. He starts to do live events.
• 23:54
  And I at this point, we'd been very good friends for like two years. And
• 23:59
  I know a lot about what he does now. And he knows a ton of
• 24:04
  people in publishing in media, in TV, in telecoms, you know, it's people with, you
• 24:08
  know, large audiences, influencers, all kinds of stuff. And he and I have all kinds
• 24:13
  of crazy rapport now. So I tell him, kind of my heel, I like confide
• 24:18
  in him, hey, I want to start taking minds on fire seriously again. I feel
• 24:23
  it. It's time, like we can start pushing, making it like it was before the
• 24:28
  lockdowns. And he just goes, okay, like let's do it. Let's see what we want
• 24:32
  to do. Why don't you come to Bahrain with me in the Middle
• 24:37
  Yeah.
• 24:38
  East? I'm about to to do a big investor conference. We're gonna be putting it
• 24:42
  out in New York, across North America, like in Times Square. We're gonna be putting
• 24:47
  out in Europe. We'll have flyers, we'll have logos, and like you know, because you've
• 24:52
  been helping me out so much, I'll do all your marketing for free and I'll
• 24:57
  fly you out so you can be at the event and like participate and just
• 25:02
  see because you've been helping me out so much. And I just like Fa and
• 25:07
  and we both say this to each other all the time. We just like found
• 25:12
  people we could trust in this like crazy world, you know? Like and I went
• 25:16
  to Bahrain and I I remember I I had to because of some partner crap
• 25:21
  that happened before twenty twenty, I had to redo the structure of the business. So
• 25:26
  I like rushed to get that done early twenty twenty two. Wanted to get new
• 25:31
  bank accounts that could go international and could do multiple currencies. So I'm like suddenly
• 25:36
  building the business to make it look legit. I like print new business cards, make
• 25:41
  a better logo, get a website up before I go to this Bahrain event, and
• 25:46
  just walk in there trying to look like as close to a million bucks as
• 25:51
  I can. And I just, you know, just said, I didn't say. We're the company
• 25:55
  that started in 2017 and then basically got obliterated in 2020, but now we're back.
• 26:00
  It's just like, now your mind's on fire. We build this, we do this, and
• 26:05
  work with these startups with this, this, this. And we did get two clients. One
• 26:10
  of them was pretty insane. another one worked out fairly well. It like, I obviously
• 26:15
  you can tell it like didn't immediately just like slam dunk make us, but It
• 26:20
  kind of made us too. I went to I went just internationals, my first time
• 26:25
  to the Middle East. I got to just get myself in some rooms of people
• 26:30
  that before that I almost didn't think I just I don't know, didn't think I
• 26:34
  could hang with. And I there are some levels where that's just fully true. I
• 26:39
  mean, I walked into this room and my gosh. Like at one point Nick, who
• 26:44
  I'm like trying to stay within ten feet of this whole time, of course, at
• 26:49
  first, cause I'm like Halfway around the world and have no idea what I'm doing
• 26:54
  here. You
• 26:55
  Yeah.
• 26:56
  know, I at one point I'm standing there and I meet this woman and she's
• 27:00
  very nice. She looks like any other woman. She's like business professional, whatever. We meet,
• 27:05
  she talks about a few things. She's from Indonesia. She walks away. All good. Nick
• 27:10
  comes to me about half a second after she leaves. He just leans in and
• 27:15
  he goes, do you have any idea who you're just talking to? And I go,
• 27:20
  Cool, like no, tell me, tell me. You know, tell me who. And he takes
• 27:25
  his phone out and he goes, That's Queen Isla of Indonesia. And he takes his
• 27:31
  phone out and he shows me a picture, and it's her, but like the most
• 27:36
  adorned in gold and feathers and massive gowns and this whole thing, literally sitting in
• 27:41
  like a frickin' throne in Indonesia. And it turns out she's like Queen of the
• 27:46
  Native. Population or one of the major sects of of Indonesia. And then he sends
• 27:51
  me like a website link and he and I open it and it's this dry,
• 27:56
  like wealth management website that's kind of poorly done, like barely has anything to it.
• 28:02
  And he looks and he goes, What do you think of this? And I go,
• 28:07
  Okay, well, obviously it's like a trick question or something. So I'm like, I don't
• 28:12
  know. I'm done guessing. Like I'm freaked out now. And then he goes, Well, this
• 28:17
  is her wealth management company. She has about thirty million customers in Indonesia and manages
• 28:22
  about three point two trillion dollars in wealth. So it's like there's a little bit
• 28:27
  of fake it till you make it, which I think I did super well. And
• 28:33
  then there's a little bit of like these people actually outclass you. Like and you
• 28:38
  also realize they're super normal in these weird ways. Like they're, you know, fifty bucks
• 28:43
  to your name, fifty billion dollars, and you're like the head of a family office.
• 28:48
  And I don't know. A bit of it had me an awe, and a bit
• 28:53
  of it just reminded me like. We all put our pants on like one foot
• 28:58
  at a time, you know? It just it gave me a bit of that. I
• 29:04
  but just crazy. So I mean that I don't know, that was the most creative.
• 29:09
  Sorry? my gosh, no, I wish. No, then
• 29:12
  Wait, was sh did she become a client? Did she become a client? Okay.
• 29:20
  no, that would be amazing. The other two clients though were so one was a
• 29:25
  company out of England. nothing royal about them, even though but they were like really
• 29:30
  cool and like really well connected. That was a a platform in sustainability and sustainable
• 29:36
  products, and we did a big rollout in the in the UK, and then to
• 29:41
  we were playing to Canada. And then the other one, which like funny personalities in
• 29:47
  these people, was a man named Sultan al-Sultan. He was
• 29:51
  Okay.
• 29:52
  the son of the governor of Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia. And he
• 29:56
  was a character. He He heard me talking about what we did, about Minds on
• 30:02
  Fire. And, you know, there were maybe 300 people at this event the entire time.
• 30:08
  Like that were invited total. So you don't meet everyone in an hour, but it's
• 30:13
  a small enough room. And it was, you know, say a four day, four day
• 30:19
  program of events. So I kind of knew he'd been floating around me for them
• 30:25
  first day, and then the second day, just unprovoked, he comes and sits down beside
• 30:30
  me. And he just and he has pretty good English. He'd studied at like the
• 30:36
  MIT Japan location, like in Japan. or the or
• 30:40
  Interesting.
• 30:41
  I think it's just the Japanese Institute of Technology, something like that, or Tokyo Institute
• 30:45
  of Technology. So he spoke English very well. And he sat down and he goes,
• 30:50
  Hello, do you know who I am? And he starts up this conversation being a
• 30:55
  little cryptic. I'm like, No, I don't. He says, I'm Sultan al-Sultan, you know, my
• 31:00
  My father is currently the governor. He's been the governor for 40 years, like of
• 31:04
  Riyadh. And then he tells me, Someone told me that you know about smart cities.
• 31:09
  And I and I immediately I have like 10 thoughts go through my head. My
• 31:14
  first thought is, my god, hell yeah, I'll build a smart city for you. And
• 31:19
  then the
• 31:20
  Yeah.
• 31:21
  second thought I had was I know I have absolutely no business saying I have
• 31:26
  anything to do with building smart cities. And then the third thought was, well, just
• 31:31
  see what happens anyways. Like you can always say yes and then die defer to
• 31:36
  some procurement agency and then just pick up the marketing and tech and s and
• 31:41
  tech design or something. So I'm going through all these like grab whatever opportunities in
• 31:46
  front of you kind of thinking. And it just I I did not end up
• 31:51
  building any smart cities, but it ended up getting into talking to him about him
• 31:56
  about he was into what is it? It's like GIS systems. It's where they use
• 32:01
  satellites to map the surface of the earth. and to track for you know, for
• 32:06
  a watershed, for heat, for resources, for all kinds of stuff. That was the area
• 32:11
  of his focus. And we did do a bit of work for him. He did
• 32:16
  become a client. We did a few reports for him where we took satellite data,
• 32:21
  organized it to make it look presentable, and you know, make it something he could
• 32:26
  send out to a few investors, things like that. but I don't know, didn't end
• 32:31
  up becoming like the royal family's, you know, preferred marketing partner or anything like that.
• 32:36
  But it was cool. I don't know. And then I I went to Dubai through
• 32:41
  Nick as well, and then Los Angeles lately. Miami in about three weeks and then
• 32:46
  Vegas at the end of the year and Austin in October and whatever. And now
• 32:51
  I'm not faking it as bad. Now I'm like have all the marketing material to
• 32:56
  actually bring in with it and really show what we do and what we've done
• 33:01
  in projects. And now we're yeah, it's a combination of traditional marketing and I do
• 33:06
  a lot through NYX events. Like just it's a lot of fun.
• 33:10
  Dude, you are fake it till you make it through and through. I love it,
• 33:14
  dude.
• 33:15
  I'm so bad. I'm so bad. I just like I don't know. I have a
• 33:19
  confidence sounding voice. Like so even if I'm like
• 33:22
  That's all you need.
• 33:23
  I use it and abuse it like totally.
• 33:26
  That's okay. Give us give us the fifteen seconds. I what the heck do you
• 33:29
  do today? There's no there's no smart cities. There's some AI stuff. There's some growth
• 33:33
  my gosh.
• 33:36
  operating. Like give us the 30 seconds on today.
• 33:39
  Yeah, sure. So Minds on Fire grows businesses primarily through the use of technology. And
• 33:44
  when and now technology with that comes a lot of other areas. That comes down
• 33:49
  to workflow design, it comes down to data, it comes down to a lot of
• 33:54
  different areas and making sure that we connect that back with real people, like with
• 34:00
  the customers you're going to have at the end of the day. But at the
• 34:05
  end of the day, that is what we do. You know, Minds on Fire started
• 34:10
  as an incubator. I that was my idea for it. I wanted to be a
• 34:16
  private incubator where companies could come to us and we give them a menu of
• 34:21
  resources. We open networks and funding up to them and help people grow. I just
• 34:26
  ambition me is like I can't even put it into words. Like it just it
• 34:31
  means so, so, so much to me. Like even the name Mind's on Fire. It
• 34:37
  has so many different levels, but it started with an article I read in neuroscience.
• 34:42
  That long story short, found through brain scans that when a person thinks ambitiously, when
• 34:47
  they really get thinking in the process of them thinking about things that they get
• 34:53
  really passionate and ambitious about, the way the energy moves through your brain resembles fire.
• 34:58
  And you literally, well, okay, not literally, but you as close to literally as possible.
• 35:03
  You set your mind on fire when you pursue dreams, when you pursue ambitions, when
• 35:08
  you are ambitious. So it's really, it means a lot to me. And so that's
• 35:14
  what I wanted it to do: was build entrepreneurs and build companies. Today, we're a
• 35:19
  lot more focused. We're more like a scaling agency. When we come into a business.
• 35:24
  We're looking at it top down strategically, what they've been doing well, where they want
• 35:30
  to be, what they've tried, what the state of the business is. We have a
• 35:35
  technology focus, so we come in and look at whatever technology they're currently using, and
• 35:40
  then now, and we like I love just the more technology we get our hands
• 35:45
  on, the stronger we get. Before, you know, up until about A year, a year
• 35:51
  and a half ago, it was all just automations. You know, it was a lot
• 35:56
  of email campaigns, automated follow-ups, nurtures, things like that, with as much analytics as you
• 36:01
  could get, and then feeding that into the right people. Now we're more agentic, we're
• 36:07
  building platforms, we're building custom tools that surgically fix problems for companies. So the 15
• 36:12
  second is really that Minds on Fire helps companies grow through technology, technology and workflow
• 36:17
  optimization. And we by nature, and just how I am, I'm constantly trying to get
• 36:22
  myself in front of the best technology I can. And so naturally, AI, naturally, all
• 36:28
  kinds of ERPs, CRM platforms, all kinds of automations have come just to the forefront.
• 36:33
  And now we use all of them. We even are the next project that we're
• 36:38
  going to be launching is a platform, a self-serve platform for agent building, where a
• 36:44
  company can come into this platform. And choose, you know, do you want to reduce
• 36:49
  your estimating and quoting time down to nothing? Do you want to add intelligence to
• 36:54
  your transcripts? Do you want to add outbound? Do you want to add analysis on
• 36:59
  your ARAP, something internal to save money? Do you want offensive or defensive AI? What
• 37:05
  do you want? Pick here from a menu. Here are the agents built for you,
• 37:10
  for your business, inside of your business. And here we go. We will build your
• 37:15
  business and grow you. We are a scaling agency.
• 37:19
  What is what is defensive AI?
• 37:21
  Defensive is internal. You know, offensive is you're going out. Think sales and marketing. Like
• 37:26
  so, offensive is to get content out, is to send cold outreach on Reddit, LinkedIn,
• 37:31
  Facebook, Instagram. So it's like you're going on offense, you're going out and finding things.
• 37:36
  Defensive is internal, more for efficiencies. Think any technology that saves you money or time,
• 37:41
  or both. Both ideally. So if you bring in a tool which Scans all of
• 37:46
  your invoices where say you have a chatbot that we build into your into your
• 37:51
  CRM or an agent into your CRM where now you can ask it, what invoices
• 37:56
  are critical that I need to send out? And rather than you scrolling and going
• 38:01
  through pages and checking emails and checking and checking and checking, we build you an
• 38:06
  AI that in 13 seconds will come back and say, pay the invoice from yesterday,
• 38:11
  two weeks ago, a month ago, this is missing this. Don't send this one yet
• 38:16
  because it hasn't been scheduled. And that's it. Rather than your entire morning be spent
• 38:21
  chasing the progress of four jobs, suddenly you've had a report in five minutes and
• 38:26
  then you're managing your team and going back to business development. Yeah. And these are
• 38:31
  things that we can start to very much quantify as well. You know, we know
• 38:36
  salaries, we know what hourly rates people are getting. We know what sales are. We
• 38:41
  see how much time things take. We can show companies as well how much we
• 38:46
  can save its. It is rarely not tens of thousands of dollars for a business
• 38:51
  with even five, ten, fifteen employees. Like it's incredible. So defensive, save time, save money,
• 38:56
  be more efficient internally. Offensive is growth. How do we go forward? How do we
• 39:01
  find the business? How do we grow? That kind of thing. Yeah.
• 39:05
  Okay, this is super cool. This is I know we were talking before and all
• 39:08
  the all the crazy Nick stories and all this stuff and all the different businesses
• 39:11
  and this is
• 39:12
  I love it.
• 39:15
  it's so cool, dude. let me hit you with some lightning round, scrappy versus sophisticated.
• 39:18
  I think we know we're gonna land, but still. We'll we'll we're gonna play the
• 39:22
  game.
• 39:23
  Okay, cool.
• 39:25
  you were getting a review from a family member.
• 39:29
  Yes, I have.
• 39:31
  Nice, nice. do you ever have to play the credit card timing game where you
• 39:37
  wait till tomorrow to charge something? 'Cause that's next month's statement.
• 39:42
  I don't know if I've ever worried about that. It was more about trying to
• 39:46
  get cash flow in as quickly as possible than trying to mess the statements in
• 39:50
  generally.
• 39:51
  You were s you were straight offense.
• 39:53
  Yeah, it's like I want that money. We gotta grow forward now.
• 39:58
  Okay. you're traveling around a decent amount. What's your airport personality? Are you get in
• 40:03
  the lounge, grab a cocktail? Are you first on the plane? Tell me about it.
• 40:08
  That's so funny. I I find when I go to airports, suddenly I get the
• 40:12
  urge to read. I especially even if I don't have a long layover, I'll grab
• 40:17
  a book. I this time it was actually on the way back. It was LAX
• 40:22
  coming back to direct to Toronto. but I had a couple hours when I got
• 40:27
  there, and so I got two books, one of them the 5 a.m. club. which
• 40:32
  I'm about two thirds of the way through. I've I naturally wake up at around
• 40:37
  five AM, but I don't like get up. I kind of might sleep in a
• 40:42
  bit or I'm I'll get my phone out, which is horrible, but I'll like start
• 40:46
  working. I'll sort of I'll like get my offshore teams working and delegate and answer
• 40:51
  a few emails and whatever. It's been getting me out of bed to do the
• 40:56
  twenty twenty twenty rule, like meditate, work out and learn for an hour from five
• 41:01
  to six. So I like my personality is that. Kind of chill, grab a couple
• 41:06
  books. I don't really care when I'm on the plane. I yeah, I feel like
• 41:11
  I'm pretty calm. I I do I I do have a little bit of that
• 41:16
  swanky feeling that I get. Like there have been a few times where I'll go
• 41:21
  grab a drink if I see like a cool looking bar, you know, before I
• 41:25
  get on the plane, that kind of thing. And I don't know. I It feels
• 41:30
  pretty cool to travel. I I do love it 'cause I just I don't know,
• 41:35
  you know, even just being up in the air and seeing like the curve of
• 41:40
  the earth is just crazy to me. I just I love all of it. So
• 41:45
  yeah, that's kinda my personality.
• 41:47
  Okay, alright, alright. That's that's pretty sophisticated grabbing some books there. something there.
• 41:52
  yeah, true. Okay, guess so.
• 41:56
  at home, do you work from your couch at all? Really?
• 42:00
  No, no way. No.
• 42:02
  Okay.
• 42:03
  I've got an office. I I never find couches comfortable. Like I find I'm like
• 42:07
  leaning or hurt my back or something like that. So I'm always an office working
• 42:12
  guy. But from home.
• 42:14
  Okay, okay. do you
• 42:16
  no, I'm sounding more sophisticated by the question, aren't I?
• 42:19
  I well we're gonna ruin that, don't you worry.
• 42:21
  What that's
• 42:23
  do you leave voicemails or do you leave texts?
• 42:29
  Mmm depends on the person. I I probably probably more text messaging and I guess
• 42:34
  maybe it is because of my generation a bit, but I just feel like I
• 42:39
  feel like I like to prep people with a text. You know, I don't just
• 42:44
  call it the blue as often. I yeah, for better or for worse.
• 42:49
  Okay. All right. I I'm in the same boat.
• 42:52
  Yeah.
• 42:53
  how do you how do you organize your calendar? Do you do you block time
• 42:56
  for like dedicated working time, dedicated thinking time, or are you just, here's my calendar,
• 42:59
  it's open, book some time.
• 43:01
  Meh. So it could be better, but my calendar is pretty complex. I I use
• 43:06
  my Google Calendar primarily and I've got everything from events, deliverables, to-dos, thoughts, workouts, meditation.
• 43:12
  So yeah, I think I There are definitely areas where like I don't quite say
• 43:18
  this hour is to do nothing or to think on a certain thing, but kind
• 43:23
  of, like I I don't know if you can see I've got like it won't
• 43:29
  really show you. This is today. it won't show. But there's about six, eight, ten,
• 43:35
  twenty, twenty four boxes on just today. And that's like meetings, thoughts, deliverables, to-dos. It's
• 43:40
  like a couple little random ones like take your vitamins, you know, it's just everything.
• 43:46
  So I I am I don't know. I'm a little bit of a slave to
• 43:52
  my calendar. I don't want to say that I am, but if it disappeared tomorrow,
• 43:57
  there'd be a lot of stuff that I was not actively trying to remember in
• 44:03
  a list in my brain. Like yeah. Yeah, 100%. I would not remember everything.
• 44:09
  be dropping the ball on a couple things. I'm in the same boat, man. how
• 44:14
  many icons are on your desktop? Do you have like just the trash bin or
• 44:20
  is a bunch of random folders?
• 44:23
  Mm, let me check. it's not too bad. I'm actually pretty not pretty I'm not
• 44:27
  like O C D, but I I organize that. It's like three rows along the
• 44:32
  left side, like three vertical rows. That's all. And they're
• 44:36
  Okay. Okay.
• 44:37
  like apps. They're not random, you know, like documents that I just gave a shortcut
• 44:43
  to desktop to or whatever. But don't
• 44:47
  Okay.
• 44:48
  let that make me sound good 'cause my files are like, my gosh, I've way
• 44:52
  too much to solve my downloads. I'm like a horrible person.
• 44:56
  And that's gonna be a new question. How much is in your downloads folder currently?
• 45:01
  Ugh yeah, that'd be awful. Probably try like a hundred gigabytes worth of whatever like
• 45:08
  has accumulated
• 45:09
  Yeah.
• 45:10
  over the last ten years. I've had like this computer in particular, like not my
• 45:16
  newer one. my gosh.
• 45:18
  that's great. I gotta add that in. all right. Type me inside the inbox. How
• 45:23
  many emails unread is too many.
• 45:25
  my gosh. Well, it depends on the type of email. Cause there's like zero unread
• 45:31
  emails which matter to me. And I okay, that's horrible. If I've ghosted anybody and
• 45:37
  they're like, my god, they
• 45:40
  Yeah.
• 45:41
  don't matter. But I w in my brain, it's all the promotional stuff and all
• 45:46
  the newsletters and all the just random junk. They I pff I don't even know.
• 45:51
  probably have a hundred thousand emails in my Gmail and probably seventy thousand of them
• 45:56
  are unread because I just got sick of deleting them and don't feel like paying
• 46:02
  a VA to go and just delete stuff for the next six weeks. Like I
• 46:07
  just I don't know.
• 46:09
  Okay. All right. That's that's up there.
• 46:11
  Well what does that count as? That can't be sophisticated. I wonder which one I
• 46:13
  get a point on for that
• 46:15
  No it is not.
• 46:17
  side.
• 46:21
  Yeah. all right, maybe last one here. Have you ever sent an email that's just
• 46:26
  the subject line only, nothing in the body?
• 46:30
  my god. I hate that. I
• 46:32
  Yeah.
• 46:33
  I think I did it once to someone who kept doing it to me. So
• 46:37
  I was like, okay, fine, I guess that's how you and I talk to each
• 46:41
  other. But I like if it if someone does it to me, I'm just like,
• 46:45
  ugh, like, there's a body for a reason. Like I'm like
• 46:48
  Yeah.
• 46:49
  Like not not really. Like it's never made me think less of a person, but
• 46:52
  it's i I find it strange. Like I usually put in I'll put in a
• 46:56
  short, quick body, like they get straight to the point, but I usually put both.
• 47:00
  A body and a subject. Yeah. Not just a subject. That's great.
• 47:04
  Yeah, yeah, you gotta have some. You gotta. Yeah, okay. All right. a hundred percent
• 47:08
  scrappy. I mean, what are we doing here? This is a hundred percent scrappy. I'm
• 47:13
  a
• 47:14
  I love it.
• 47:16
  big fan, dude. This is it's so fun talking with you with all the different
• 47:19
  AI stuff, and I learned about defensive AI, and it's it's so cool to see
• 47:23
  your journey. Okay.
• 47:24
  Offensive versus defensive man. And money's in the defensive side. That's where people gotta know.
• 47:29
  Like defensive, that's where all the money is.
• 47:32
  There you go, dude. Okay. all right. what do you want the folks out there
• 47:38
  to know? Anything you want promote?
• 47:41
  Do I want to promote? Well, Mines on Fire is going agentic. We are building
• 47:45
  customizable agents for every use that we can possibly find. So if anyone out there,
• 47:50
  if you are a solarpreneur all the way up to leading or managing a large
• 47:54
  team, we have something for you. I promise you. Let us talk, come talk to
• 47:59
  us. Let's hash it out. Let's put a few things on a whiteboard and we
• 48:03
  can find it. Agents are the way the future agents are how you save all
• 48:08
  your money. It's how you make more money, it's how you increase efficiencies. And I
• 48:12
  think the number one thing, and this is absolutely core to us, like I started
• 48:17
  as an incubator for people to drive their businesses. Every single time we bring AI
• 48:21
  into a business, cutting people out of the business isn't it doesn't even enter the
• 48:26
  conversation because what we're finding is that the amount of increase in productivity and efficiency
• 48:30
  that we see by putting AI in the hands of a person. Who already knows
• 48:35
  their job and has internal knowledge and can be that judgment and that feedback to
• 48:39
  make sure that what the AI is doing is correct. That is absolutely key in
• 48:44
  focus. So I would say AI is absolutely everywhere, obviously. Everybody's seeing it everywhere. Everybody's
• 48:48
  worried about if they're gonna miss out. Yes, there are things that we need to
• 48:53
  get into not to miss out, but it's nowhere near as hard as you think.
• 48:57
  Like we would love to talk to any business that wants to talk to us
• 49:02
  and see what we can do. A simple agent can give you five, ten, twenty
• 49:06
  hours back of your week. It can triple your sales, it can increase retention. It
• 49:11
  can turn your CRM and your ERP into a an intelligent brain that you can
• 49:15
  talk to suddenly where you couldn't before. Like the just the sky's the limit. And
• 49:20
  we're figuring out how to make it more and more affordable all the time. I
• 49:24
  mean, we've got some few hundred dollar a month services that we offer to companies
• 49:29
  now to get AI into their businesses and save a ton of money. It does
• 49:33
  not have to break the bank, does not have to replace anybody. It can be
• 49:38
  a lot of fun when you plan it into the business. So I just say
• 49:42
  come talk to us. Like we'd love to chat AI with anyone who wants to
• 49:47
  I highly recommend it, folks. Go out there and do it. There's people way smarter
• 49:50
  than me have said at one point websites were the big thing, then apps were
• 49:54
  the big thing, but now agents are the big thing. And Marks is a guy
• 49:57
  for
• 49:58
  Absolutely.
• 49:59
  it. So, buddy, thank you so much for coming on. A hundred percent scrappy. I'm
• 50:02
  a big fan.
• 50:03
  I love it.
• 50:06
  thanks again, man, and stay data-driven, everybody.
• 50:08
  Thank you. Take care.