PROFIT BusinessCast

Most businesses realize that engaging with consumers on social media is now a necessary part of brand management, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing it right. “I think most brands are blowing it,” says Erica Ehm, creator and publisher of YummyMummyClub.ca and YMCworks.com.

Ehm formerly hosted a TV show called Yummy Mummy which ran on Life Network and Discovery Channel outlets around the world. Once the show ended, she launched YummyMummyClub.ca as a way of continuing to engage with fellow mothers, and then set up the branded media company YMC to help connect brands with her audience. “In a way, I became a pioneer of what is now known as content marketing,” she says.

Earlier this year, YMC released a whitepaper titled “Creating Shareable Content for Mums: What Brands Need to Know.” Ehm says that while companies are likely spending a lot of time and dollars to connect with consumers on social media, they’re not necessarily getting results. “I thought it was really interesting that 81% of moms said that they did not have a valuable, engaging moment with a brand online,” she says.

Here are three things Ehm says brands must do to create content that consumers will want to share on social media.

Be proactive

Many brands use social media platforms as listening tools, monitoring to see when they’re mentioned and then jumping into the conversation. Often, those engagements are about dealing with customer complaints or trying to defuse negative sentiments. “Listening is fantastic,” says Ehm. “To be there for your customers to answer their questions in the social space and then take it offline is definitely great customer service.”

But this reactive model means brands are only engaging with existing followers or customers. Ehm says companies should be using social media platforms to try and reach untapped audiences. “There’s a lot of brand management but not necessarily a lot of new engagement from brands,” she says.

Engage, don’t sell

The ultimate goal of marketing is, of course, sales. But pushing your product or service in your social media content only guarantees that most people will ignore what you have to say. “You don’t have to make it a hard sell,” says Ehm. “What you need to do is create content that your core base wants. They’ll be thankful, they’ll share it, and they’ll connect with you.”

Understand your audience

YMC’s whitepaper examines the preferences and habits of Canadian moms who use social media. Ehm says brands need to understand their audiences on a similarly granular level if they want to create shareable content. “It’s one thing to create it, but if nobody shares it, then you’re not really getting the full impact of what you’re initially setting out to do,” she notes. “So when you’re creating these programmes in the social space, think about your audience and the content they want to hear.”

Moms, for example, won’t share content that focuses on the brand itself. Rather, they pass on to their friends and followers content that resonates with them. “What they do want to share is content that they find really funny, that is about parenting, that reflects a mother’s life, that makes a mom really feel like their heart is coming out of their body,” says Ehm.

Make it personal

On Valentine’s Day this year, a social media specialist at Indigo sent Ehm a personalized valentine via Twitter direct message. “That’s super smart, for a brand to take the time to follow key people and then make meaningful private connections with them,” says Ehm. “[Social media] is all about emotion.”

Too many brands use their social media presence to broadcast one-size-fits-all clichés and product-promoting hype. But Ehm says you should leave message pushing to broadcast ads and traditional media. “It’s social media where you have an amazing opportunity to engage with your clients one-on-one, create a relationship and make them fans for life,” she says.

The organizers of the Boots and Hearts country music festival were facing an enviable problem: their product was too popular. The annual camping concert event had been held at MoSport Speedway for three years, but could only sell 30,000 tickets per day of the festival because of capacity restrictions.

So Boots and Hearts bought a home, purchasing the Burl’s Creek Event Grounds in Oro-Medonte, Ont. Burl’s Creek is a multi-use facility, which in addition to concerts and other large happenings will also host “small events like farmers’ markets, soccer leagues, high school groups, pow wows, family reunions, and weddings,” according to Vice-President of Venue Operations and Business Development Ryan Howes. But the venue’s main events are the new WayHome Music & Arts festival on July 24–26 and the expanded Boots and Hearts on August 6–9.

Howes has plenty of experience in the music business, having begun his career at a very young age at the Molson Park festival career in Barrie. He’s also worked for promoter Live Nation Canada, and managed major facilities like Echo Beach and the Molson Canadian Amphitheatre.

Festival venues are a seasonal business, with months of preparations required to pull off a single three-day event. Here’s how the 700-acre Burl’s Creek is building a viable business.

Vertically integrate

Capacity issues may have forced Boots and Hearts out of it’s last venue, but there’s no danger of that happening here. “There’s very few pieces of land like Burl’s Creek that exist in Ontario, so the owner of Boots and Hearts made a good offer and purchased it,” says Howes, who was brought on after the venue acquisition.

As with many other businesses, location is crucial. “A lot of people think big and think they can go out and buy 300 acres somewhere and set up shop and sell a lot of tickets,” Howes suggests. But without access to the music-loving Toronto market, Burl’s Creek would have a hard time selling tickets for one big-budget festival, let alone two.

To ensure the site can accommodate it’s users, the business also purchased an additional 350 acres of neighbouring property. “We’re currently in the process of re-zoning and re-developing the lands,” explains Howes. “Basically 80% of the grounds are under construction and they have been since late October, so it’s been a huge undertaking.”

Get the community on board

Not everyone is thrilled at the idea of living near a festival site, and Howes says noise and traffic are the chief concerns raised. “There’s ways you can be a fly-by-night promoter, where you just set up shop, make a whack of money, and then you leave town,” he notes. “Or you can do it the proper way.”

The proper way for Burl’s Creek involves working with sound engineers to position speakers and the PA system appropriately and with bylaw enforcement teams to ensure sound levels meet regulations. The venue also works with big-event traffic experts to manage the influx of attendee vehicles. “Congestion is an issue in these small townships,” Howes admits. “They have farm roads, which were never built to handle 40,000–50,000 people and 12,000–15,000 cars coming in and out in a short amount of time.”

Recruit locally

When a big festival comes to a small town, the population of the area triples or quadruples overnight. Putting up temporary infrastructure to accommodate the influx and serve attendees takes a lot of planning, and a lot of people. “When you do these massive festivals for 40,000–60,000 people, you’re building small cities within these very small townships,” Howes says.

The venue has 30–40 full-time staffers, including contractors, who work year-round. The actual festivals themselves cause the workforce to grow by an additional 350–400 jobs. “We’d be hiring [in the] Oro-Medonte, Orillia, Barrie areas; everyone from college students to high school students to retired residents of the area,” Howes says.

If you operate in an industry where work is cyclical or your business executes projects requiring specific skillsets, retaining a full-time permanent staff can be a crippling cost. To fix this problem, increasing numbers of these kinds of businesses are turning to a just-in-time model of staffing according to Hermie Abraham, a Toronto-based employment law lawyer.

“Labour costs tends to be the largest business expense,” Abraham says. “A just-in-time model reduces labour costs by hiring a contingent workforce.” The practice of hiring when the need arises rather than having a full-time permanent staff has grown particularly quickly since the global economic recession in 2008, she says.

The benefits of just-in-time staffing extend beyond cost savings. Not being tied to permanent employees means you can use the best possible talent for a particular task or project, and the ubiquity of the Internet allows you to access that talent regardless of where it is. “You can find a contract worker who might be based in Bouctouche, New Brunswick who might be able to supply services in another part of Canada,” says Abraham. “It’s not at all based in the big centres, it’s based on need.”

But running a business without a permanent staff does carry risks. Here are three questions you need to be asking about your just-in-time workforce.

Can you meet your needs?

Knowing when your business will require a large headcount and when you can afford to shrink down to the bare minimum is crucial to making a contingent staffing system work. “The biggest risk is having a need and not having the workforce to be able to accompany that need,” says Abraham.

Closely track the amount of work your business has coming through the door at various times of year or in different industry cycles and adjust your workforce accordingly, suggests Abraham. “Understand the demands of your business, and when you need to scale up or scale down,” she advises. “Ensure that you have an available pool of skilled workers who will be able to meet these ebbs and flows in the business.”

What does the future hold?

Contingent staffing systems are by their nature low commitment for both employer and employee. While a steady paycheque doesn’t buy loyalty on it’s own, permanent employees tend to have a greater affinity with their employer than temporary workers. “When you have a contingent workforce who comes and goes and has many other employers who they’re working with, you’re not going to get that same level of loyalty,” Abraham says.

Loyalty is set to become even more important as competition for skilled talent intensifies in the near future. The number of people about to enter the labour pool is set to drop below the number about to exit it over the next decade according to Statistics Canada, meaning every business will have a harder time finding the right people to fulfill their clients’ needs. “You need to have a strong employee base, so that when there is a shortage of labour, you will have a good complement in your workforce that is committed and will be able to help you move forward with your goals,” Abraham says.

That employee base will also likely be less up to the task than their predecessors because young workers don’t have the stability necessary to expand their skill set. “The millennial generation are really having a hard time finding that permanent job that can grow and develop in,” Abraham says.

Are you properly characterizing the legal relationship?

A new type of workforce requires a new compliance regimen, and you need to take the time to review employment regulations and legal requirements around contingent employment.

“Ahead of time, make sure you have a contract that clearly articulates the relationship that you have,” Abraham says. That contract should cover how this contingent staffer is going to work, when they’re going to work, what they’re going to be paid, and what the task or job includes and excludes.

There’s a lot of water out there now in the marketplace—all the soft drink companies have moved to water as the new cash-cow. But Nicholas Reichenbach believes there’s still room for a truly disruptive company to shake up the packaged water business and give consumers what they want.

“When I ask to book a meeting about water, [people say], ‘Not another guy talking about water!’’ he admits. But experienced hydration executives who have taken the time to hear Reichenbach out—including the the ex-COOs of Fiji Water and Canadian Springs—have been impressed by his idea.

Flow Water, the company Reichenbach founded, is marketing a product that comes from a place very dear to the serial entrepreneur. “The water coming out of the aquifer has been in my family for over 30 years, and I’ve been drinking it since I was 10 years old,” he explains.

Companies big and small offer ethically-sourced, nutrient-enriched bottled water. What sets Reichenbach’s product apart is everything but the water—Flow Water’s packaging, logistics, supply chain and retail strategy are all unlike anything the industry has seen so far.

Flow Water is packaged in 70% recycled tetra packs instead of the plastic bottles that have become ubiquitous in urban centres. While the product will be available in retail outlets, the company also offers crates of its water via a subscription service run on electric delivery machines. “I wanted to collapse the supply chain and deliver a product as directly to consumers as possible that would be better for the environment and better for the people that are drinking it,” explains Reichenbach.

This isn’t Reichenbach’s first time disrupting a vital industry, but he thinks the word is overused. “It’s a buzzword,” he says. “Most business ventures and startup are…innovating or they’re inventing. The disruption really comes when you’re changing an industry in a way in which it’s not operating today.”

Here’s what Reichenbach says you need to do to avoid being a want-to-be-disruptor:

Find the white space

Reichenbach says many of his business ideas come from his own experiences as a consumer, or from examining an industry’s history and where it is headed in search of gaps that he could fill.

“The first thing I look for is: Do consumers want to buy this?” he says. Identifying consumer intent isn’t about conducting marketing research or polling friends and family. Instead, follow the trajectory of a particular sector or product and try to be the one to advance it.

That’s what another of Reichback’s startups, the San Francisco-based Rabbit, is doing. The company offers high-quality video chat capabilities. Reichenbach sees it as the next step in a communications evolution that includes landlines, mobile, and Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VOIP). “You look at that migration and you ask what is the next level of video chat?” he asks.

Disruption requires that your company advances a sector or field, rather than churning out another me-to product or service. “What we aim to do is intercept a growing consumer base with a very innovative product that’s in the trajectory of their usage pattern,” Reichenbach says.

Tear it apart

Once he’s got a concept in mind, Reichenbach enlists the help of others to evaluate if it’s worth pursuing. “I basically run a warroom session,” he explains. The idea is tested against a battery of questions: “Does it work pricing-wise? Are there consumers? What are other related products? What are the competitive metrics? Where are other people developing?”

Once he’s verified that the opportunity is truly viable in this fashion, Reichenbach can draw up a business plan and start building his startup.

Entertainment is a lot like entrepreneurship. Making a career in either field means a life fraught with risk and competition, and very few will make much money doing it. But the secret to succeeding as an entertainer or entrepreneur is also similar: passion, dedication, and a willingness to keep going despite the odds.

“There’s lots of talented people out there, and they’re doing the same things that I am,” admits Kate Todd. “Being an entrepreneur in anything that you’re doing, you just have to eat, sleep and breath whatever it is that you are involved in.”

You may remember Todd from her roles on the children’s TV shows Radio Free Rosco, Life with Derek, and My Babysitter’s a Vampire. The life of a singer-songwriter, actress and spokesperson is full of trial and rejection, just like that of an entrepreneur. But Todd says she’s learned to keep going. “I have been very fortunate in my career, and I guess that is a motivating factor,” she admits. “But there have been times where my family has been really there for me, and really encouraged me to stay in the arts and continue on this journey.”

Todd’s latest venture is one that many startup founders will easily identify with: she’s crowdfunding for an album produced by Peter Liseman of Music Mentor Productions (who also produces this podcast). And like many brands looking to collect funds from the public at large, Todd and Liseman need to make sure their campaign for Anywhere With You stands out.

The focus is on delivering “experiences,” not just tokens and notes of appreciation. “For example, we have a really cool experience where Gibson has endorsed me and given us some electric and acoustic guitars and opened up their showroom for a lesson, and somebody can bid on that—they can buy that experience,” Todd explains.

Crowdfunding is just one of the technologies changing the way the music industry works, says Liseman. Others include social media and online distribution models. The proliferation of platforms has allowed many musicians to abandon traditional industry structures, but also added to the variety of roles that an entertainer takes on—another similarity with entrepreneurs. “How many hats you have to wear at all times is just staggering—I’m fascinated by it,” says Liseman.

Liseman says the key to success in any business—creative or otherwise—is the same. “Don’t invest more than you’re prepared to lose,” he advises.“It’s a volatile industry. You just need to be wise about where you spend your money, time, and your own resources.”

Where you choose to locate your business could make all the difference to it’s success. But too many business owners and executives find the right place to open their doors, only to pay far too much for the privilege of doing so.

Controlling your lease costs starts with understanding the advantages of your position says Dale Willerton. “Remember, the tenant is the customer to the landlord, and the customer has a lot of control; tenant’s just don’t realize that,” says Willerton, the founder of The Lease Coach and co-author of Negotiating Commercial Leases & Renewals for Dummies.

Willerton learned the leasing trade while working for commercial landlords, and that experience attuned him to the problem with the rental process “When I was sitting on the landlord’s side of this desk, I could see tenants come in and leave a lot on the table,” he recalls. “They did not know what they were doing.”

A favourable rent deal is a cost control measure available to all businesses, not just ones that are opening a new location or shifting into a new space. “Every year, approximately 100,000 new leases get negotiated [in North America], but 2 million lease renewals get negotiated,” says Willerton. Many business owners would balk at the prospect of shifting their office, retail outlet, restaurant or warehouse. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use the the threat of moving out of your space to force some concessions from the landlord.

Here are three ways Willerton says you can reduce your rent costs, whether you’re leasing a new space or renewing your existing agreement:

Be wary

Most listings and leases still go through old-fashioned real estate agents. Having someone to identify potential new homes for your business can reduce your own time commitment to location-hunting, but don’t rely on that person or firm to get you the best rate possible.

“Don’t assume the real estate agent is in your corner trying to get you a good deal,” cautions Willerton. “Even when both landlord and potential tenant have different agents, Even if there’s two real estate agents—the landlord’s agent and the tenant’s agent—typically, they are splitting a commission paid by the landlord.”

Make sure that you’re not following your agent’s advice blindly. While they may be acting perfectly ethically, an independent third-party perspective can help you confirm that you really are getting the best deal possible.

Location, alternate location, alternate location

Sometimes, you just fall in love with a place. The space is just right the side, it’s conveniently situated, and you can see where all your fixtures and equipment will go—you’re ready to sign on the dotted line.

But don’t let the landlord know how enthusiastic you are about the location. “The way to really improve your position when you’re negotiating on commercial real estate is to find and negotiate with multiple landlords simultaneously,” says Willerton.

Even if you’ve committed to a location in your mind, you have to make it look like you have alternatives. “We can use other locations as decoys to get [your] favourite location’s landlord to give them a better deal,” he says. “You need to negotiate on multiple sites simultaneously.”

Slowly does it

You can’t simply sign the lease and then call the movers to pick up your furniture and equipment. “It takes a lot longer to go through the leasing process than most tenants realize,” cautions Willerton.

The Lease Coach says he regularly hears from business owners whose renting situation has gone bad after the deal was agreed and signed. “His rent kicked in before his front doors were even open for business, because he didn’t think it would take a month for the landlord to send back the lease document, or it would take nine weeks to get building permits,” Willerton says.

Matthew Castel should know. The Head of Strategy and Global Macros at Logos LP has been on both sides of the financing table. Castel cautions that attracting capital requires patience. “No matter how good your business or investor pitch is, securing investment often takes months and sometimes even years,” he notes.

To get investors to buy in, you have to sell them on your business. “Attracting investment capital is a social practice—it’s about a telling good story,” Castel says.

But if you’re not careful, you can forfeit any chance to securing financing even before you make it into the room to give your pitch. Here are three mistakes that many startups make when seeking investor capital, and how to avoid them:

Don’t be hasty

Castel points out that taking on capital runs counter to one of the most important goals of launching a startup. “Ask most entrepreneurs why they started company, and I think most would actually say ‘freedom,’” he suggests. “So the question is, why are entrepreneurs often in such a rush to give away that freedom to an investor who will have goals of his own?”

Trying to raise capital is an important way to evaluate the value of your startup, of course. Convincing an investor to back your business with their dollars validates your idea and shows the world that your concept is worth paying attention to. But it can also hold you back. “Fast-tracking your way to raising money often can strip away your ability to learn and make mistakes,” Castel cautions. “And with larger sums of other people’s money on the line, your decision making is going to be influenced.”

Castel suggests taking a more patient approach. “I’d say bootstrap for as long as possible,” he suggests.

Watch your words

It’s a small world after all—most major Canadian investors are connected, and word travels fast in startup circles. That means it’s much harder to hide a flawed business plan, or worse, an entrepreneur with a bad attitude. “It’s kind of amazing how small the startup community can be in a city like Toronto, and so a good reputation can go a long way,” warns Castel.

“I find that founders and capital-raisers don’t stay humble and they don’t guard their reputation enough,” Castel says. “If you build a reputation for rudeness and unreliability, you actually end up shooting yourself in the foot.”

That extends beyond the pitch room. Your dealings with customers, suppliers, investors and competitors will shape the business community’s perception of your startup, so exercise caution at all times. “You’re a representative of your company, so you should always be aware of the image you’re trying to project,” Castel suggests.

Be social

Social media may seem like the preserve of consumer-facing companies and technology firms that want to hype their new offering. But Castel says too many startups underestimate the value that being social can have on their valuation. “If a company can implement a well-executed social media strategy, then can actually grow their business and eventually increase their valuation,” he says.

The well-known benefits to using these platforms are worth reiterating. “Social media allows you to raise brand awareness, helps you grow sales and enhance your company’s industry reputation, and improves your customer service and satisfaction,” Castel says. “But more importantly, it can help you to broadcast your company’s success story.”

You need to use social media to communicate not just to promote your products or engage with consumers, but to sell your brand as a whole. “Let people know about the milestones that you’re hitting, or the PR that you’re generating,” Castel suggests. “Investors want a window into the soul of your business.”

Jeremy Miller’s company needed a reboot. Faced with a declining market for its services and with no clear differentiating factor, Miller and Associates had to choose between two difficult options: “We could either reinvent ourselves and find a new path to success, or we could wind up the business,” Miller remembers.

The company chose to go on, and Miller went looking for resources to help guide the reinvention effort. “I was reading all the marketing literature I could get my hands on, but all the stories were about Apple and Nike and Starbucks,” he recalls. The lessons from the turnarounds effected by those corporate giants didn’t apply to a small IT staffing firm like Miller and Associates, founded in 1989.

Miller joined the family business in 2004. His timing couldn’t have been worse. “We had the dotcom bubble burst along with the end of Y2K,” remembers Miller, now the president of the Sticky Branding agency and author of a book by the same name. “What that meant for me was I came into the business as director of business development but found myself down in the trenches with my sales team dialling for dollars just to keep the business going.”

The company simply didn’t stand out in a swiftly-shrinking IT staffing market. “Our customers couldn’t distinguish us from anyone else,” Miller admits. The solution was a total rebrand. The company became LEAPJob and shifted it’s services to sales and marketing recruiting.

But rebranding isn’t simply a case of putting a new sign on the door and slapping a new logo on your company tchotchkes. “Much of it happens internally—it’s about deciding your strategy of where to play, how to win and what it means to grow a successful company,” Miller explains. “Once you build the strategy it’s about executing on it.”

So while the family hired a design firm to help with the branding transformation, they had to handle the internal transitioning themselves. “It was a total reinvention of how we managed our database, the way we trained our recruiters and our salespeople, and the way people operated,” Miller says. “Not everyone survived that process.”

The reinvention attempt proved successful, and Miller ultimately sold LEAPJob to another family-run firm in 2013. His new endeavour is to spread awareness about the importance of branding to businesses of all sizes.

Establishing what your company stands for in the public eye is vital to it’s continued success, according to Miller. “You are defending your brand and defending your business by having a brand today,” he contends.

Claudia Harvey had a major order to fill, the spring quota of a big-box retailer. But when the co-founder of Dig It Apparel examined the inventory delivered by the outsourcer manufacturing her merchandise, she realized she had a major problem. “I opened the boxes, and the quality of our product was horrific,” she recalls.

Dig It’s signature product is a gardening glove designed to protect the wearer’s hands and nails from damage. Many of the mitts in this particular batch were unusable. “We had 10,000 units—20,000 gloves—and I had to go through and check what could be sellable and what couldn’t be sellable,” Harvey remembers.

It took Harvey a month to sort through all the inventory and work out what she could salvage. “We had to discard what we couldn’t [sell], but we had already paid for it,” she said. “That really killed our cash flow that year.”

The write-down left the company perilously close to the edge. “We were very close that season to failing as a business—it was probably a thousand dollars away from closing up shop,” estimates Harvey.

No one would blame the Dig It team for quitting at that point, having seen their investment and effort destroyed by somebody else’s shoddy work. But Harvey saw it as a gauntlet thrown down, an opportunity to improve. The company decided to abandon their outsourcing strategy and relocate their production process closer to home.

“We just squeezed by, but that [turned out to be] a good thing,” Harvey asserts. “It allowed us to take control and go to a manufacturing partner that could meet our needs.”

Understanding the logistics of manufacturing is key to the success of a product-producing business, according to Harvey. “You make ensure that all the pieces in the logistics pipeline meet what your profitability needs are,” she advises. “You have to walk a very fine line to do all that.”

Harvey was speaking at a special Voice of Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs panel alongside Phil Hogg, President of the Toronto chapter of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals, and Derek Szeto, co-founder of Dossiya and CEO of Wirk’n. This stellar line up came together to mark the launch of CPA Canada’s new book, Business Insights, which Andrew Brown and I co-authored based on our conversations with BusinessCast guests.

Your company may be the best at what it does, but that doesn’t mean anything unless you can get your products to market and service your customers. “You may have for example some of the best programmers in Kitchener-Waterloo but if they don’t know how to distribute that particular product, it’s really all for naught,” observes Phil Hogg.

The solution to this problem? Partner with another business that excels in the areas your company is lacking. “I look at alliance and partner management as a gap fulfillment strategy,” explains Hogg, President of the Toronto chapter of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals. Hogg was speaking at a special Voice of Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs panel to mark the launch of CPA Canada’s new book, Business Insights, which Andrew Brown and I co-authored.

There are three ways to grow a company: build, buy or ally. The first involves organic growth, while the second covers mergers and acquisitions. Hogg says the alliance route has the quickest line to market, since in removes the delays and complexities of finding investment and developing new products or integrating new acquisitions into your business.

A partnership effectively allows you to borrow the resources and expertise you need from another company. “You’re borrowing somebody’s capital, or intellectual property,” says Hogg, who is also Vice-President for Partner Channels at Pivotal Payments. “[Or] you could be borrowing their talent.”

There’s also the opportunity to learn from the experiences of your new partner. “You’re also going to be borrowing their baggage, because when you start working in an alliance fashion you partner will certainly let you know what they’ve tried in the past and what’s been successful and what hasn’t been successful,” notes Hogg. “You will learn from their baggage and dirty laundry.”

While an alliance means sharing some of the spoils of a given venture, it also allows you to spread the risk. That makes it a relatively safe way to grow your company while minimizing the possibility of losing everything on an unsuccessful move.

The panel also featured Claudia Harvey, co-founder of Dig It Apparel Inc, who explained how taking control of your own manufacturing empowers your company to grow, and Derek Szeto, co-founder of Dossiya and CEO of Wirk’n, who discussed growth through product innovation.