Gurmeet Judge
Encompass solutions founder and CEO Gurmeet Judge interview successful business leaders as he dives deeps into the world of business to help people like you become successful business leaders!
Gurmeet Judge
The Growth Trap: Why Scaling Destroys Most Companies
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Long-term decision making drives business growth by prioritizing sustainable strategies, innovation, and resource allocation. It builds resilience, anticipates market shifts, and fosters customer loyalty, leading to steady expansion, higher profitability, and competitive advantage over short-term focused rivals.
In this episode, I had a discussion with Angelo D’Amico is a Canadian CEO leading a multi-million-dollar manufacturing company. With a background in economics and philosophy, he combines executive experience with deep reflection on leadership, decision-making, ambition, pressure, and values. Angelo focuses on honest conversations about building meaningful careers without losing oneself, offering real-world insights into the true costs of success.
https://www.angelodamicocanada.com/
Chapters
00:00 Intro
02:40 Navigating Post-COVID Business Challenges
05:33 The Importance of Team Culture and Communication
08:48 Adapting Processes in Manufacturing
11:25 Leadership and Relationship Management
14:35 Stewardship in Business Relationships
17:30 Customer Relationships and Expectations
20:35 Training and Mentorship in the Workplace
23:54 Opportunities for Growth and Technology Integration
26:38 Navigating Technological Confusion
27:35 Understanding AI Risks and Compliance
30:37 The Importance of Stewardship in Leadership
33:11 Aligning Compensation with Business Value
35:33 Adapting to Crisis: Lessons from the Pandemic
42:13 Personal and Professional Development Strategies
48:40 The Legacy of Leadership and Business Transition
Intro
SPEAKER_00The sentiment has shifted among staff in the last 30 years from reverence to respect. There's some uncertainty about international trade policy. There's also some uncertainty about global logistics and supply chain disruption. There's obviously the effort that we're all making to scale up on the tech side in terms of um how AI is going to impact those types of things. Some of the people I respect in my industry make the comment that there are so many options for the things you can adopt today technologically that it can be a little bit confusing, right? Like you can adopt everything. You have to almost say, What's our stack? and stick to that, you know. And that that's a process in and of itself. Do we adopt it or don't? Because if you adopt everything you see, you might make things a little bit more complicated. Somebody could come to you and say, I want to make this much more money. You've got a few different options. Number one, you can say, Okay, and you can stretch to a point where it's not really honest about the company's capabilities and resources, and you could really hurt the company by doing that. Um, it sounds nice, but it also isn't nice because you jeopardize everyone's job security who you care about. On the other hand, there's absolutely not, and there's a philosophy of saying um my goal as a leader is to minimize the labor cost in this thing, so it has to be profitable. And then that's not stewardship either, because I think if you look at people again just as something to be minimized, um you're not getting the best out of people and you're not creating a good system where people stay and and and thrive and these sorts of things.
SPEAKER_01So I think you find that middle balance, which is not Hi there, welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. In this episode, I had a discussion with the Angelo DiMico. Angelo is a Canadian CEO leading a multi-million dollar manufacturing company with a background in economics and philosophy. He combines executive experience with a deep reflection on a leadership, decision making, ambitions, pressure, and values. Angelo focuses on an honest conversation about building a meaningful career without losing oneself, offering a real-world insight into the true cost of success. Now, this was very interesting discussion. We talked about various topics around the business, leadership and operations and team development. Um, Angelo shares some of the lessons learned over the years and also some of the opportunities he's seen in business. He also talked about how you know his approach to finding the right talent and and uh you know coaching and talent development and how to make sure that the teams are taken care of the difficult time in a business. So hope you find it value in this discussion as much as I did. And don't forget to like, share, subscribe to this channel. Until next time, thank you for your time. Please welcome Angelo D'Amico.
Navigating Post-COVID Business Challenges
SPEAKER_01Hi guys, welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. Today our guest is Angelo D'Amico. Angelo, your president um at Canada Rover Group. And uh, you know, we've been trying to organize this discussion, and my fault with the communication side of things. But uh, I'm looking forward to learning from you, looking forward to a discussion. You know, you've been running a business for very long, there's a lot of experience. I want to learn from there. So looking forward to uh our discussion. Thank you so much for time today.
SPEAKER_00Kermit, it's uh great to talk to you today. And uh, I'll probably do a little bit of learning both ways.
SPEAKER_01All right, look, sounds good. So let's talk about the you know, from a business standpoint, Angela. So you've been helping and scaling a lot of businesses uh over the years. What do you see some of the obstacles that, you know, this day and age, you know, whether it's economical challenges or financial challenges out there we're dealing with, where we are at the state after COVID, where do you see some of the challenges that businesses are up against? They're trying to get over those inflection points to scale their companies.
SPEAKER_00Well, in my current industry, we're a manufacturer. What I see in our industry and with our peers is primarily there's some uncertainty about international trade policy. There's also some uncertainty about global logistics and supply chain disruption. There's obviously the effort that we're all making to scale up on the tech side in terms of how AI is going to impact those types of things. And I know that that's pervasive across uh all industries, not just in ours. I see those mostly as the challenges, as well as I think a return to a focus on culture since COVID happened. I would say that I know in my company it forced a bit of a fracturing of people being together. No, it didn't mean that they didn't live up to the values. I was very impressed with our team and their ability to live up and stay true to our values. It was is amazing to see. But I think just the the routines of coming together physically had to be an intentional repair. And so uh I'm not sure if all companies have kind of jumped back on the bandwagon, but I think as we fragment and do flexible work and remote work and all these types of hybrid situations and uh working from home, uh a challenge is how do we how do we stay united in our perspective about where we're all going? And also uh how do we work together to steward this into something good in the future?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, definitely when you're working on us, you know, remotely and you on a screen, you don't know what's going on in somebody else's world, right? Other side of the screen, if they you know, people had a family challenges, they had a financial challenges or health challenges, whatever they're dealing with. And you had to see you, you know, it's it's very hard to see that unless you spend extra time and try to understand that. But definitely that that you know that provides a gap in in a communication and creates a challenge on a human connection side.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think so. What about yourself? You're in the same sort of boat I'm in in a disparate different industry. Do you do you see the same challenges I described or anything different?
SPEAKER_01What are you saying? Similar challenges, Angelo. You know, to your point, there's so many items you mentioned. I want to dissect one by one, but but yeah,
The Importance of Team Culture and Communication
SPEAKER_01similar challenges. You know, work we work in a decentralized environment, some people in the office, some at home. But that you know, managing people uh creates the challenges, you know, definitely because we don't know what's going on in people until you meet them in person. Um, so it's cutting back to the where we're you know, the team environment, back to in my industry, uh, especially we're getting back to the office environment, you know, at least three, four days now. I think a lot of companies are doing it in hardware, three days in office, and Tuesdays, two days at a moldy, but I think it's getting back to the full office environment. That's that's what what I'm seeing in my industry. Because it's very hard to build the team culture, team environment that you had before COVID. There's a more work environment that equates those challenges for, you know, and and takes a lot of time to uh you know get over those challenges.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. We're still doing on a permanent basis one remote day every day of the week for all of our office staff. Obviously, there's a manufacturing component of that, so it doesn't apply there, but in the office it's a day a week. But what we did learn during that time was uh to scale up our tech infrastructure to accommodate the remote work. So one thing that will always be persistent is we have just a higher degree of flexibility than we ever could offer before. So even though we say one day a week, you know, when something happens in somebody's life where they have to, they have an appointment, they've got somebody coming to install something or repair something at their house, or they've got a young child with a different kind of schedule that day, or sick kid at home, those are the types of things we now can accommodate where someone doesn't have to take holiday time. And so it's just made us be a little bit more human that way and be more capable of being human. So that's been a really big win, I think.
SPEAKER_01Did that give you a different perspective on our leadership? How do how do we you know measure performance, how do we measure productivity, or how do you how do you uh uh uh you know make sure that we people manage people's expectations properly?
SPEAKER_00I think from my seat, it challenged me to be comfortable with looser reins because uh you had to trust that people were doing the work regardless of whether they were sitting there where you could see them. You know, it's not that I don't have a trust in people, but I would say it was a little bit scary that first step of now everyone's gonna go work in their own environment with no one around them. Are they still gonna get the same job done the way it needs to be done? And there are some types of things that are constraints when we're working from home and they have nothing to do with people's integrity. It's just things like, you know, how do we work well as a team and how do we uh improve processes? I find that people can do really good work as the process stands when they're remote. But what sometimes can suffer is the ability to kind of collaborate around improvement. So there's a role for both. So I think one thing I had to learn was I do trust people. I've always trusted people, but it still was uncomfortable to see those people you trust all decentralize and go work elsewhere and hope that it's all gonna still work the way you want it to work. And but I have learned, you know, what's the right amount of uh support you can give where it doesn't become uh you're looking over somebody's shoulder and that type of thing. So luckily we have a team that's uh a fantastic team and they all they all live up to that challenge.
SPEAKER_01You mentioned something very interesting, uh Angelo, the process piece, right? So your business manufacturing is a heavily processed business, right? So everything has to be processed. A lot of businesses didn't have that process
Adapting Processes in Manufacturing
SPEAKER_01sorted out, whether it's a system as there's a human process, they didn't have that sorted out before before COVID or pandemic. You know, they had to figure that out on a spot. But your business was heavily, it's always, you know, process came from manufacturing. That's what the process was originating. Did you have to change processes or were were people able to keep up with the process you had set up before uh the you know the COVID started, or did you have to come up with a new system, new process to accommodate that?
SPEAKER_00Well, during that time, I would say that we did have well, many of the processes stayed the same uh in terms of what are people doing. Some of them had to change the how do we do it, but also I think fundamentally our business changed at that time temporarily. We got into providing protective equipment, and so uh we were actually manufacturing stuff we weren't used to and selling things in a way that we weren't used to. So those processes were brand new. But even we've returned fully to normal, obviously, quite for quite a long time now. But uh, from a process perspective, yeah, we're very process-oriented, we're an ISO 9000 company. So for those people in manufacturing, they'll know that that just means that you have a quality management system and you're audited about that and you have to keep things well defined and in order. And so we we do all of those things. But having said that, we don't really believe that there is like one best way that we have achieved, right? So we always want to challenge the status quo on that. So even though the name of the process might be the same as it was last year, we hope we're doing it in a better way than we were last year. So consistency, yes, in terms of our commitment to documenting things and being standardized, but also things are always changing because the world's changing around us, and so we're constantly adapting to that. And you know, we've got, again, great people who are noticing what's wrong and bringing ideas to the table. And so we're constantly making things different. So they're the same process, but they're really not the same process as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So were you investing a lot of time, Andrew, these days? Are you investing in a process? Are you investing in a people? Uh, what part of business that it takes most time from you and any attention from you?
SPEAKER_00The most time for me, I think, is probably a combination of communicating in the direction and having people kind of feel aligned about that, you know, and managing the relationships even outside of the organization. So we obviously rely on a web of, and I'm sure you do too, you rely on a web of other parties. You know, you've got your accountants, you might have even web uh support from from like a marketing perspective. You've got your lawyers, accountants, all these people, insurance people, all this. And and they represent this kind of safety net and insurance net for you that when you have questions that you have to have. So managing those relationships, key vendors, key customers, those types of things, that's one hemisphere of it. And then the other hemisphere that really keeps me busy is yeah, just making sure that we know where
Leadership and Relationship Management
SPEAKER_00we're going. We're evaluating whether there's some new hindrances to that direction and working with people to understand what they're seeing and how we can realign and renavigate around so that we kind of keep our eye on the the longer term.
SPEAKER_01Got it. So strategy and many managing a relationship with the the vendors and suppliers ecosystem looks like that takes a lot of time from where you are currently.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think that we have great managers and great staff at our company, and they're looking after process to a great extent. My role is to make sure that they have the systems that they need to succeed in, right? Like they're all pretty well versed in their roles. We've got a lot of experienced staff who've been in the industry a long time or in our company for a long time. And the last thing that they need is somebody who gives them a ton of instruction about how to do their job, how it how it ought to be done, right? Especially someone who doesn't do it, you know, every day. So the best thing I could do is understand like, how's the system not supporting you? And so, from a process perspective, my my job is to say, you let me know how this isn't working and let me see if I can intervene at a system level in a way that supports you even better. So that might mean adopting new technologies that they're requesting or different types of fundamental platforms that they work within that make their day better and their life easier and the work work the way that they think it should.
SPEAKER_01Got it, got it. Understand. Great point. So you recently had a situation with the vendor ecosystem, right? So, in you know, I know that that environment changing a lot. You know, olden days, we used to see a vendor-customer relationship. And I think these days, what what what what I see is a lot of people are looking as a partner. So, you know, they consider vendors or suppliers as a partner to work together as a partner because you have a common goal of what each one achieves. Um, but you had a recently situation you mentioned. You you know, what was the situation if you want to walk us through?
SPEAKER_00Sure, yeah. So I guess leading into that, I'll give that example in a moment, but uh, I'll say maybe that's something that's important getting into that example is that uh I really believe in people like you and I, people who are hopefully the types of people listening to this, that they maybe have some authority in whatever organization they're a part of. That uh I think it's important we keep our eye on stewarding the organization, that maybe we have this opinion that organizations aren't things that live and die with us as individuals. They ought to be something that endure over time, that we we think that our you know, our decisions accumulate to something. And you know, so you're not just making isolated decisions, we're shaping what the organization is actually going to become over time. And I think that in leadership roles, we're really pressured to make short-term decisions. And so with the idea of stewardship, I'm saying let's take responsibility for what those decisions make us become in the long run. You know, I think people like to quote Will Durant, he was summarizing Aristotle, and he says, uh you are what you repeatedly do, right? You know that one? Yeah, so yeah, uh, that's kind of I think a famous one. So I think that's in 1963 or something like that. So yeah, he's a historian and philosopher, but anyway, that's a a perfect example of what I'm talking about. So we're not just looking at decisions and actions in isolation, we're looking at the accumulation of actions over the long run. So getting into what you what you asked about with that supplier, so we had a supplier not too long ago who
Stewardship in Business Relationships
SPEAKER_00passed on to our to our staff at the purchasing level and at the sales level information that there would be a price increase on on all of the products that they supply to us. But then they also because we have a great relationship, they also called me and said, Hey Angelo, I just contacted your team. I've communicated this increase to them. If for any reason you have a problem with it, let me know. Maybe there's gonna be some things we can do to absorb that on our end if we have to. And they were just being I think what they were really saying was be honest with me, Angelo. If any of your customers are at their price ceiling and you can't raise the price, you know, you know, tell me that sort of thing. So it would have been all too easy. I think your your gut instinct on something like that is to say, yeah, like keep your costs down for us, right? We're gonna make more profit now. That's the I think that's the normal thing to do. We all kind of have that feeling like let's take that. And part of me thought, yeah, like the the margin's great, let's get the margin. But I also feel a sense of duty to that supplier. We've got a long relationship, they're a reliable partner to us. We do we want to have them as a partner going forward in the long run. And so if we hurt if we make a decision that hurts our suppliers, we're hurting ourselves too. We're hurting the ecosystem that our customers depend on. So if I I just said to him, listen, if you if you honestly need it, I want you to make sure you do some soul searching on this, but if you really do need it, if the company needs this increase, we'll take it, don't worry. Yeah, if if you find that you don't need the whole thing, okay, tell us that. But if you need it, we'll take it. Of course we'll take it. You're our partner and we'll win and lose together. So so that's what we did. And that decision likely costs us a little bit of margin, right? When we're talking about what we're paying and what we're selling for. We lost a little bit of margin, probably, on that decision. And I own that, and that's okay, right? But we want a supplier that's going to prioritize us when things go wrong, that's gonna be urgent for us, that wants to help. Because it's easy when things are smooth, but when things don't go so smoothly, you want to make sure your partners are there and that they know you're there for them. So it's all it's all just about uh, again, stewarding the relationship in that case, so that we have something durable over time we can rely on that gives us stability as a company. You know, our customers expect that from us. And so even that, even that becomes relevant to even customer satisfaction in the long run.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's about building those long-lasting relationships that you know those people's gonna be there for you when when something does uh doesn't and in a situation like that, and when you go through a situation together, other side of the situation, it's gonna be a powerful relationship. How about in a customer side? You you you see that the you know your customers also approaching the same way, or they're looking at different ways.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, our we don't have every every customer is not gonna be quite as forgiving as that. Uh we've got a pretty wide
Customer Relationships and Expectations
SPEAKER_00range, and uh you probably know this too in your in your seat. I mean, some customers are gonna have the frank conversation with you, and that's okay. And and other customers are gonna say they really put their work hat on, and they've got superiors putting some pressure on them, and maybe they're getting they're coming from a place of my job's on the line, and that's the culture that they have. And so they're gonna call you and say, absolutely not. You're not gonna give us that, you're gonna actually find savings for us. Here's what we need. If you can't do it, we're out of here, all those types of things. And it can get even to an abusive point where uh they would jeopardize your company. But we have to make sure like we're not optimizing a transaction, you know, we're not optimizing that transaction. We're we're trying to create a long-term relationship, and that that applies on the vendor and the customer side.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It you know, you're never gonna have a perfect, you know, both sides. You know, this I think this is where you come in, you know, you come in the middle, but are you setting up a right example? You know, your approach to stewardship and and uh looking at you know what you know from that approach, at least you have your your way of dealing with it, but you're never gonna have the ecosystem both sides the way you exactly want it, but you're putting your efforts in and trying to build as much as you can. And I think that the best effort in the both environment, you know, and it's that's an example for your team as well, right? When you're doing the right things, of course, the team sees it and they approach those exactly the right way, and you build build a morale in a team.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, are you saying that? I mean, you how long has your company been around? 19, 19 years. Yeah, so there's some people who've probably been a part of it for quite some time, right? Always, yeah, of course. And when things get hard, you hope that they fight for you and they're urgent for you, but they're only gonna do that if you've already shown them that you're loyal to them too. It has to go both ways. And like I think that we call we call them customers, we call them vendors, we call them staff, we call them all these things. They're all people, and yeah, they kind of care about the same stuff as we care about. So it's not that complicated when you think about it that way, right? Let's just treat each other that way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, I hire a lot of younger people in my environment, I actually so we I you know, a lot of people they they have about five years, you know, after university, ten years, they come in about technology is another issue. But one thing I find is that from a leadership standpoint, in the olden days, it used to be you tell them what needs to be done and they will accomplish. But these days, they they're more looking for as example. They they you know, they want to see that you're doing the same thing what you're telling them to do as an example. And I think that's what their expectations are when they come in to work for. They want to be mentor, they want to be coach, but they want to see as an example what you're telling them to do. You're exactly doing that. Do you see that when you when uh when new people uh people younger people coming into workforce?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I I think I think you're right that the sentiment has shifted among staff in the last 30 years from reverence to respect. So they don't look at their leader with some sort of like intimidation factor. They want somebody they respect, and they respect you if your door is open and you speak to them like a person and you don't think you're better than they are, and you show interest in the work, and you know who their spouse is, and all these types of things. And and you you just respect where they're coming from, and you're not inconsiderate and selfish, and and trying to squeeze them
Training and Mentorship in the Workplace
SPEAKER_00as an input into a system and you just don't see them as a means to that end, right? Like that's what they care about. And hey, I'm on their side about that. I think that's exactly the right way to go.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And how do you approach training? You know, do they need a lot of training, a lot of investment and of a time from you to for them to pick up, or they very quick as that once you show them this is how it needs to be done, and they just run with it.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's variable. We we get people of all kinds, that's for sure. It's important, though, for us to take on the responsibility of making sure that, yeah, like we have the process in place, but we're training people well. And sometimes that's enough and sometimes it's not, but we have to be receptive that people learn differently and try to be a little bit flexible about that. So we do our best. We're not perfect at that, but we do our best. And then we have to show them a little bit about not just how to do the job, but what kind of company we are. So we've had lots of examples where people enter our company with a little bit of baggage from their previous employment. Their back is up, they're a little bit defensive, and it takes some time for those walls to come down to know that you know you're not gonna be abusive to them, you're not gonna be unfair, and you're gonna care. So I uh we've seen it a number of times where people come in as one almost one kind of person and they just soften it. It's a really great thing to watch.
SPEAKER_01Very interesting. So let's talk about opportunity. What is the opportunity looks like uh, you know, Canada rubber group? You know, what do you what do you guys see as opportunity and and how big the opportunity is?
SPEAKER_00Well, firstly, we're doing really well. I mean, we're just coming off a record year where we Didn't expect to be able to maybe repeat it again this year, but it looks like we're on track for that. We couldn't be happier about where things are going. We've had a couple of small acquisitions that we've made over the last uh five years. Uh, those are going well also. We've been able to kind of ramp things up in a really nice way that's worked for us and worked for the customers. So the next steps for us, we'll do grow modest growth, but we're really focused now on we've got an antiquated ERP system that's in the middle of being replaced. And that's quite that's an all hands-on deck type of a project. You don't, you don't replace a company-wide ERP system on 60 people without it affecting everybody's job in a big way. And so that's an that's the thing that we're doing right now. Yeah. So we're just trying to become a modernized version of what we are and a more standardized version of what we are, and so we can be the most reliable we can be. But in no way is that kind of like an employment reducing it thing. It's not about getting rid of jobs or anything like that or automating anybody's position. It's really just about having all having the technology that gets the mundane parts of the work out of people's way so they can be a little bit more creative and human in their work. So uh we're working on that. And I think that we we have we have a couple of pockets of what we do that that there's some real growth potential in where maybe we have an international opportunity, but we're really just operating in a couple of countries for those business units. But yeah, I think those are the main things, just getting getting modernized on the tech side and some geographic expansion for sure, and just settling in with the things we've purchased and making sure we're handling those in the most responsible way.
SPEAKER_01Got it. So let's talk about the tech side first. Are you thinking about AI, how it's gonna change your business? Are you are you considering some of that? Are you following some of the trends and all the you know the impacts that AI is making on a business?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, a little bit. I think that, oh, I shouldn't say a little bit. Of course, it's a big part of what we all think about, right? Yeah. We're looking at it in a kind of a couple ways. We understand that there's a different kind of
Opportunities for Growth and Technology Integration
SPEAKER_00data analytics that that's on the table these days that that can be done. And that that analytic horsepower can be really powerful. Because we're using an old ERP system, we think our data is not the greatest for using that way. And I think the new RP, the new software system we're going to be on is gonna hopefully help with that in the long run. The other thing we did was it became a criteria for the purchase when we were looking for our new system that we're adopting. We wanted one that would integrate AI. So we didn't buy one that's static, we bought one that's evolving. So we're trying to learn those things and incorporate those things. And obviously, like everybody's doing, we're using language models in all sorts of ways to help us build up frameworks and clarify our thinking. So those are the main ways we're doing that. But I'd be curious from your seat. I mean, what are you you you must see this company to company all the time, you know? Like, what are you seeing in other companies? How are they approaching AI from from what you see?
SPEAKER_01Mix of both, uh, Angelo. One is uh it's a trend. I want to jump on it, you know, and if whatever AI offers, I'm gonna use it. There's a lot of mistakes in in that area. And the second part is understanding business. How do I increase business value? And and you know, or or you guys have been doing it for so long in a manufacturing is automation. How do I bring more automation? Either I make somebody's job easier or I make my people productive. What can I do? Whether it's is it AI, whether it's automation, whether it's integration, whatever I need to use, how do I make people more productive, make the job easier, and and you know, increase my uh uh impact on a business, right? So, or whether I create opportunities. So people who have done more work on uh on our business side, before they jump on AI, they they get much bigger rewards than simply just going, okay, something's uh you know hot and shiny out there AI. I'm gonna go jump in and start using some chat GPT, that kind of stuff, right? But I've seen the second part where business understand what they're trying to do, they document everything, what they're trying to do, and then they go after, so listen, what do I need to do in order to automate some other stuff so I can make my people productive?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I've heard some of the people I respect in my industry make the comment that there are so many options for the things you could adopt today technologically that it can be a little bit confusing, right? Like you can adopt everything. You have to almost say, what's our stack and stick to that, you know? And that that's a process in and of itself. Do we adopt it or don't we? Because if you adopt everything you see, you might make things a little bit more complicated. I wanted to ask having this type of conversation with somebody like you, it's kind of exciting for me. You deal with people who they're trying to reduce risk, right? And so I had I assume that with kind of this explosion of AI capabilities, some new risks are also present, right? But those aren't risks that we've necessarily experienced yet. They might be risks that we have to think about potentially happening
Navigating Technological Confusion
SPEAKER_00in the future, right? Do you find that companies have a challenge investing in something where the risk is down the road? Or how do you how do you talk to a company like that when there's definitely a a real risk, the cybersecurity risk, these types of things, the risk is is a potential future risk, but it's still a real risk. How do you have that conversation?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so especially around that what are you referring to is a compliance side. If the the business has a compliance, IT compliance, we're talking about, you know, not ISO, you know, ISO is different kind of compliance. If you look at all compliance in for in an IT industry, whether it's a SOC 1, SOC 2, or NES, NES 2, you know, all those, there's about 12 compliance in IT industry. All those compliance are process challenges. But when you when you're looking at integrating AI to something, there there's so much access you're providing to AI without even understanding what access I'm providing. That's where the risk lies. So I was I'll give you an example on a weekend. I you know, this manus AI came out it you know,
Understanding AI Risks and Compliance
SPEAKER_01a few few weeks ago, and I started playing with that. So very easy to, and it can do things. It's not only a chat, I know chat anymore. It's not that you you know you can simply say, Listen, uh, I know create this email, send it to Angelo, you'll get the email, right? Yeah, all you have to do is uh just uh voice talk, find time on Angelo's calendar, set up a meeting for me. So it it action items, a lot of items you know that you want to do it. It's like I have an admin, it can do all that stuff. So you have to integrate all the system. So I integrated about 1112 systems. It I could tell, okay, can you find this uh customer's information? Can you find this vendor? So you can go and find all the stuff and give you the report, whatever you're looking for. I did that, everything worked beautiful. So then I simply said, listen, I already have another you know AI application I use. I don't want to continue this. I done my testing, I want to disconnect that. So when I disconnected all those 1213 systems, I connected with it. How do you know that I disconnected, but the access behind the scene was taken away from those systems?
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01How well the cleanup is done by AI. You know, is it something you know people still have access to the system? The information was I was giving a command to where is that information was stored. So general businesses, this is not of that big issue because it's just the information is stored somewhere. But if you have a compliance challenge that you have to provide to auditors that this is a compliance, this is how you protect information, you can you know, you want to connect with the ERP system where if there's a customer information is in it or your vendor's information in it, if financial information is in it. So if you're going to integrate with those systems, you need to be careful what I'm trying to say. That that that that you know there's a cleanup happening, whatever inform access you're given, it's only given using that access, and you have a way of cleaning that access once you're done with using that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's like Yeah, and I well, and the parallels I draw, they're not so maybe technically deep, are kind of like not all the threats or not all the consequences of things that we do or don't do are are obvious right now. Sometimes they're from a tech perspective, sometimes they're running in the background from a culture perspective or a trust or an integrity or a legacy perspective with our vendors, our customers, your community, your staff, also a lot of those changes are in the background. They're not as obvious on day one, they're not as obvious right away. You know, so we have to make decisions that either to invest or not invest in something that's going to protect us, or to make decisions that are going to protect us or keep us stable. And actually, sometimes when I talk about the concept of stewardship, one question, and it's a fair question, is are we just talking about the soft side of leadership? Is that what you really mean? And it it isn't what I mean when I when I'm talking about stewardship. Because actually, if I could give a couple examples, stewardship would be the thing that would that would make you say, not keep a not keep a customer that's not working for you. Sure they represent revenue right now, but they might be low margin and limit your ability to reinvest over time. Or it might make you actually say no when I don't how many people did you say you have in
The Importance of Stewardship in Leadership
SPEAKER_00your company? 30 31 at the moment. So you've got 30 people and and I've got 60 people. Imagine if everybody came to your office and said, uh you've got a really interesting take on this, and I know that. So we'll we'll save this because I know you're gonna have something interesting to say here. But if everybody came to my office, if everybody came to my office and said, I need this big raise today, and I just said yes because I value them and I respect them and I like them a lot as people. But I didn't think about the resource constraints and the future of the company. We would really just we would sync the whole thing. Now, what I'm saying is you can't make all your decisions in a purely in a compassionate and short-term way, whether it be about customers, vendors, or or staff. And you can't just be greedy in the short term either. And you can't try to please shareholders with one quarter of great profits where you're breaking a system to achieve it, and then you're forfeiting something in the future, right? Like what I'm saying is that's all the wrong thing to do. Now, I think on the staff and compensation topic itself, you've got a really interesting way to tether, I think, that request to what your company needs. And I think I think it's really creative. So maybe you can even teach me a little bit more about that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we it's not work is not done, but what we're simply trying to do, uh, Angelo, there is align people's compensation to the business value. Where are we going with that? So one is that they provide service, you pay them a salary, whatever, you know, above the market price, whatever you want to do them. The second is that all their other whether performance bonuses, whether it's a compensation or or any other uh bonuses you want to give them, you want to add it to the performance, what company sees as a performance, not that what you know, what they think. And that performance aligned to what value and service we deliver to the client. So if you align those three things, that you know, their personal goals, what they what, what what they're trying to achieve, and and you align that with the you know the performances, and the performance delivers value to the customers. If you can lise those three, four pieces together, and then you give them the performance bonuses on top of that. I think that drives not only their performances better, but they also the company's results uh forward as well, and then customer sees that as well. So we we figured we figured out we there's a book called Teamwork from uh Dadley Dawson, and she documented that in a in a in a book. So we we looked at it, we simply said, listen, this makes the sense for a in a service business, and we start adopting some of that stuff. If the work is not finished, but we we you know we started about six, seven months ago, we're working on it, but definitely that is a goal to line those three items together, that personal goals that people have, how much money they want to make, then align that with the performance bonuses, and
Aligning Compensation with Business Value
SPEAKER_01then align that with the company outcome, what we're trying to deliver, and then align that with the customer value, the what they see as a value.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think it's really interesting because it's really it's obvious to say somebody who goes out there and sells for a living, a salesperson, yeah. It's easy to it's easy to tether that compensation to the revenue, but it's harder when it's something that's not directly customer-facing. But I think what you're saying is find that kind of causal link and have them work with an understanding of how they do impact the customer and their revenue and let them take some ownership. And I and I love that because we talk about having everybody responsible for quality, having everybody responsible for customer outcomes. And it is a real challenge. How do you connect it all? So I think what you're doing is really uh admirable. I think I want to keep up with how it's going as you kind of do it and learn from that. I think that's really interesting. And I also think it's a good point, just that compensation can take so many forms and be justified by so many things. It's not just you made this sale or you spent this much time. There's all these other things that are factors. And actually, we talked about the pandemic earlier. And so during that time, we actually had a blip where our demand tanked. Because I mean, the word that happened, right? I think it was March 2020. Everything just kind of went away overnight, and we all had to kind of deal with okay, so what happens now, right? And I remember uh that's one of those times I think March 2020, where were you? kind of people know where they were, right? Yeah, yeah. So our revenue tanked, right? Demand was down, and I think that was pretty universal for most people. And we had to fix the cost base because we were like everybody, just bleeding if we didn't change anything. So one of the things we had to do was adjust labor, and we could have just laid off a bunch of people. That would have been an option for sure. But what we did was we reduced everybody to four days a week instead of five, and myself included, in terms of our pay. Myself and the leadership team, we still came in five days a week. In fact, we came in five days a week and worked at least 12 hour days that time because our responsibility is to solve the problem. But but for staff who were out on the floor and and in other processes that were not on the leadership team, they were just asked to work four days a week, get paid for four days a week. At the same time, we know there's this kind of misalignment between the fact
Adapting to Crisis: Lessons from the Pandemic
SPEAKER_00that, okay, yeah, you're not working those five days, and so you're not getting paid for one of the days, but you're not working for it. It sounds fair on the face of it, but then we also have to think like this is the community we're here to provide and care for. Their mortgage doesn't go down, their groceries don't go down, their costs in their life don't change. So this is hurting them. It's not like it's just fair because we're working less, you're making less everyone's good. It isn't that. And so, being honest with ourselves, you know, we when we finally, when business did come back, and that was a few weeks later on, when business did come back, we paid everybody for that time that they hadn't worked. So let's say there were four days or so where for four weeks, one day a week, they weren't working. Uh, we gave them those four extra days of pay that they weren't there because, again, their cost and their life didn't go down. We also bonus them, like you said, you, but we bonus them in this case because and it was not a bonus to incentivize anything, it was a bonus in recognition of the fact that they all came back, that they stuck with us, that they came back to work during that pandemic and got got the work done that was important to get done. And they couldn't, they didn't have to, they could have stayed at home. So when you talk about compensating people and not just thinking of it in such a binary way, I really like that. And I uh that resonates with me. And and we have to make sure we are taking care of our communities because if you don't have people who buy into it, if you don't have people who will go that extra mile for you, then they're not gonna go the extra mile for the customers. There's all these things, all these ripple effects that end up becoming uh a broken system in the long run.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. One one thing we find uh on that, Angela, kudos to you guys. You guys made up uh whatever the time the people were missing, right? You know, a lot of companies don't go that way, but I think that that that decision, you bring, you know, get you a lot of loyalty, a lot of uh trust with the with the you know with your employees. Um they know that you're there for them, you can help them, whatever you know, possible way you can help them. So that definitely builds culture that builds a trust for the longer run. Uh, one thing we notice uh, you know, I'm not sure if uh that will apply to your business, but what we find is uh when somebody starts with us, then you what we are simply asking, there's a PPP terms like a personal financial goals. So we're simply asking how much money you're looking to make because everybody has different needs, we have different families, they all have different approaches, they all have different goals as well. What are we learning recently? So if somebody says, Listen, I want to make this much money over the next year, so you simply take that, what they're trying to do, and build that again, you know, build them a plan. Hey, listen, if you want to if you're making 100k and you want to make 150, that 50 is gonna come from performance bonuses. And for to earn that, this is what you need to do to this is that the value you need to deliver for a company, um, so we can compensate you for that. So once you build a plan for them, now it's up to them to go out and put effort into it and and and achieve that. It's not companies' responsibility if they have to go out and uh work hard and and they have to put time in. So that's why you see people working after hours sometime. They're working some sometime in the Saturday as well because they want to earn the money, but that also translates then to company value and and and uh the value for clients as well. You know, there's used to be a lot of tickets open on that for clients over the weekend, but now you see somebody's working, helping clients out on a weekend. Good for your business, good for customers, and good for uh for employees as well, because they can they can earn some uh little, they can achieve those goals they set up for themselves, financial goals, right? So that just applied, and I'm not sure, you know, every business is different. That's where we're finding out that more we do, less we have to worry about that that work's being delayed for customers.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I think to him, I I love hearing it. I think it is an example of stewardship because somebody could come to you and say, I want to make this much more money. You've got a few different options. Number one, you can say, okay, and you can stretch to a point where it's not really honest about the company's capabilities and resources, and you could really hurt the company by doing that. It sounds nice, but it also isn't nice because you jeopardize everyone's job security who you care about. On the other hand, there's absolutely not, and there's a philosophy of saying, my goal as a leader is to minimize the labor cost in this thing, so it has to be profitable. And then that's not stewardship either, because I think if you look at people again just as something to be minimized, you're not getting the best out of people and you're not creating a good system where people stay and and and thrive and these sorts of things. So I think you find that middle balance, which is not yes today, but it's how, right? And how becomes like kind of the the nugget in all these things. And we know that about our personal lives too. It's things aren't often yes or no. They're how matters a lot. It's the way we do things, it's not just that we do them, it's how do we do them. So what I think what you said is a good example of stewardship. You didn't just do the the short-term thing in either of those extreme directions. You found a longer-term solution that works for everybody and and makes the whole thing valuable over time, right? Durable.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, it just figuring out how to work together. And last thing you want is there's not enough opportunity in the companies and people going and looking for other opportunities, right? So I want to make sure there's tons of opportunity in this company to work. You don't have to worry about the you know, your career growth, uh, wherever we want to go. But very interesting. So you have also a marketing company as well, uh, beside this business. Uh, Angelo, if you want to talk about that, what do you guys do in that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, okay. So it's called Stable Marketing Inc., but more properly, it's known as Softstall. So Stable Marketing Inc. is is the operating name legally, but Softstall is the flagship product line, and there's actually an equine product line for equine flooring. So we purchased that company a handful of years back. And uh again, it has an international market, but there's more we can do there. There's big things we we expect out of that part of the company. And it's been it's been totally different for us, but that was a different, a different challenge. Small company that we're looking to grow, but just integrating it into our processes and our culture and our best practices, you know, best to that we know now, and and just trying to make it work. So that's what that's all about, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Got it. So, what do you do on a personal or professional development side, Angela? Do you plan stuff? You know, what are we gonna, you know? Um, I know a lot of CEOs I talk to, uh, they plan, you know, what they want to do. So, what skill set do they want to pick this year? You know, what they want to do, you know, it's all about getting a bigger mindset and right mindset, working on yourself, and so you can help your team. So, what do you plan for for your advance or or whatever comes in a way, you just go through that? And how do you how do you take your your mindset and how do you expand your your thinking?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So a little about me. My degree is in economics. So I guess I guess I'm an economist, but don't hold it against me. While I was in while I was in university, I also took a lot of philosophy. I came to know after the fact that I had I taken another, I think, 1.5 credits worth of philosophy, I could have actually had a second degree in it. So I didn't just take a little bit, I took quite a bit. I liked it. But I was under
Personal and Professional Development Strategies
SPEAKER_00the impression I was taking philosophy for me and economics for my career. That's what I thought when I was, you know, my 20-year-old, 18-year-old self. That's what they thought. Having been in this role now for some time and having had a career for long enough now, uh, I find it interesting how much more I use philosophy than economics on the average day. So I'm really grateful that I kind of did those things. But also, I really think young me would be so happy to see that because uh this thing that I think is so great anyway becomes so relevant. And leadership is not, it's easy when you start out in roles that are career roles. It's easy to kind of mimic these archetypes that you think you need to be, the guy who knows everything or the one who's gone it all together, or the smartest person in the room, whatever it might be. Um, and you learn, I think over time that there's really about a lot of beauty in that. I think like I like to say the flowers grow on the branches, not the trunk, right? So, like, it's good. You have to have that core foundational knowledge. But I think it's really nice when somebody gets so comfortable, they can step away from this, like, I don't know if it's ego or whatever, defensive, insecure archetype and branch out into who they are and be a people person and care and and help people flourish and flourish themselves. Okay, now having said all that, being that I value that, a lot of my self-improvement has to do with reading and writing, and oftentimes in in the area of philosophy. It's just what I'm interested in, what I'm motivated to learn about. But then also on the strategy side, I just keep up with like I really like Roger Martin and what he has to say about strategy. Good Toronto guy, U of T prof, but world famous for what he's done with multinational companies on the strategy side. And and and I do listen to some podcasts as well that that can be instructive, both on the philosophical side and then and then. Folks like you who are doing everybody a service by kind of bringing people with different expertise to the front and just saying, like, hey, none of us know everything, but we could all learn from each other. And I think that's a great thing that podcasts are even doing these days. How about you? How do you how do you answer that question of how do I improve? How do how can I become better?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I I my approach is I read a lot of books. I go through podcasts. This is the state I think every business of inflection point, as you know, that you know what inflection point of five million is is different than 10 million, 20 million, 30 million. So the inflection point I'm in right now um is uh conversations and reading books. So I'm going through that. I read a lot of books, people who I you know I talk to and and having a conversation. So I think that's that's what that's the state where I'm uh right now. But it definitely next introduction report is going to be different. But this is how I saw, but yeah, growth for me is very, very important. You know, that I heard um once guy, you know, I recently uh interviewed Roger White. He's written uh five books. We were talking about it, and his approach was your business can never outgrow your mindset. You know, for you to grow your company, the mindset has to get bigger. And I love that's the way he explains that that if you want to grow your company, the first thing you gotta see is go expand your mindset. And mindset comes from the podcast you listen to, the books you read, the information you absorb on an ongoing basis. So I think so. His approach is before you want to grow a company, get a bigger mindset. So I love that. Um, I know that it, you know, why I kind of abide by that is a lot of training we go through, a lot of books, you know, it's time and investment um into all of those, but I think that pays out in the longer run. It gives you a different perspective. Every person I interview, uh Angelo, including yourself. I, you know, I think that you know, I when I started the podcast, was I thought I'm gonna give value to people, I'm gonna connect people. But what I discovered was I take away from every you know interview I you know I record more than anybody else could because I gain new perspective. I learned so much uh from every person I interview. So that is a great learning and learning process for me, and that's why I fell in love with this podcast, and I'm gonna continue doing it because I learned so much from the people I interview.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think I think that's great. And I think there is a good insight in saying uh what kind of like the level of our mindset is gonna be a governing factor for us, or uh it can really limit us. I remember doing I did 10 years of consulting before I do what I do now, and I also sit on a few boards for different organizations, and I do find that sometimes companies who have the resources and the offerings don't achieve nearly the potential they should because they they don't think big enough. Yeah, and it's not about being riskier, it's about really it's just about yeah, they they almost can't wrap their brain around what they could be. And and it's amazing that I think you're exactly right. That guest you had, and you are exactly right, that uh it really does make a huge difference. You live you're limited by the belief you have in the in the capacity. So yeah, no, I agree with that. Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_01Very interesting. You know, you and I can talk, and there's so much to learn from you, so much experience you have. We can you know talk all day, but I want to be mindful of the time as well. So, where can people learn more about you? Where can they find more information on uh whether it's Canada Rubber Group or or other company, marketing company, where can they learn more about you?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Canada Rubber Group is Canada Rubbergroup.com.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I'll include the link below. And the LinkedIn is there as well, right? For for for find further information.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for Canada Rubber it is, yeah. And then for soft stall or stable marketing, it's softstall.com. And for myself, angelodemico.com, and it's Angelodomico on LinkedIn.
SPEAKER_01Got it. So I'll include all the links below uh this video. Definitely uh, you know, business owners who look into you know what we enjoy our discussion, you know. Definitely yeah, there's a lot to learn from you. So if somebody wants to have a conversation, what's the best way to reach you, Angelo, if somebody wants to have a discussion with you?
SPEAKER_00There's a contact form on my website, but also I do respond to messages on LinkedIn to the best of my ability. And but but before we get going, if I can just say I really do want, uh it's a it's important to me that the people that are that are listening that and I know they care about their businesses or they wouldn't be listening. It's something that you hand off, right? It's something that just like in our just like in our real life, you know, the the life we the life we had have now, the quality of it is impacted by people who were before us. And what we do now impacts people after us. And businesses like that. The things we do now affect the future. And we really want to make something, if we're in a leadership role, you want to make something that's not only profitable right now, but that you feel really proud to hand over in time because it you should be considering yourself having some sort of role
The Legacy of Leadership and Business Transition
SPEAKER_00in seeing it through to the next stage. And what you want to do, I think, is create a better next stage for somebody else. So you want to be accountable to those people that you might not even know yet. So it's a really nice way to think about caring about the company, not just extracting from it.
SPEAKER_01Especially in the Canada, where we're looking at is us, you know, about 73, 80, 74% of businesses. I was looking at recent data that business owners are looking for for next transition or they want to move a business forward because uh most of them they're all above age 50 and 60. And you know, right, definitely financial institutes looking that as an opportunity for them because somebody's gonna chain hand in a business. But other side of that is what you just mentioned, you gotta pass on the business to somebody. So, you know, make some make those long-term decisions. So when you're passing on to uh to to that to the next uh generation or whoever you want to pass on to, it's it's a business that's built well, well, and made some good decisions in the past.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a reflection of us.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, we're interesting. Well, great discussion. I enjoyed it. Thank you so much for time, Angel, and we'll talk soon.
SPEAKER_00It's great to meet you. Take care. Thank you.
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