How Your Path Becomes Your Foundation with Ross Huartt

How Your Path Becomes Your Foundation with Ross Huartt

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 52 of the Business Development Podcast and on today's episode, we have founder and CEO of MBC group and EcoClaim out of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Ross Huartt, stay tuned.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences. And you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs. And business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast.

And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 52 of the Business Development Podcast and today I have an absolutely amazing expert guest, President and CEO of MBC Group, Ross Huartt. Ross is the President and CEO of MBC Group, a multidisciplinary consulting firm with almost 20 years of experience, he is recognized for his energy, integrity and expertise.

Earning numerous awards and accolades, Ross is passionate about sustainability, innovation, and client centric solutions. He holds a Bachelor of Science with first class honours from the University of Northumbria in Newcastle, England, along with PQS, MRICS, and GSC designations. Ross is an active member of professional associations, including the Young Presidents Organization, the Canadian Institute of Quantity Surveyors, and Insurance Professionals of Calgary.

He is a captivating speaker and has appeared on podcasts like Uncaged and Knowledge Counts. Based in Calgary, Ross collaborates with experts often traveling to share his knowledge and provide specialized assistance in emergencies. He is committed to continuous improvement and making a positive impact in his field and beyond.

Ross, it's a pleasure to have you. How are you today?

Ross Huartt: I'm good. Thanks. Yep. Thank you for having me. I realized in hindsight that that may have been a rather long winded introduction of mine from the corporate bio but that I yeah so I'll remember that for next time.

Kelly Kennedy: No no not at all I you know what I say this all the time I'm always impressed by the level and caliber of guests, that we get on this show.

We have such like amazing entrepreneurs on this show and you guys all have such great stories and I don't mind heck if I mess it up, you know what I mean? All of our listeners probably know this already. If I mess it up, I typically go back and fix it. Cause I always love to give people a great introduction.

Cause there's, you know, the reality is you've earned it, you know, you guys have worked 20 years to get there so I will do my best not to screw it up.

Ross Huartt: No, no, I joke. I laugh because it was very, it's, it's very much the, it sounds very, very much the corporate version when you hear it back to yourself, you know, it's different when you read it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Oh, totally. Totally. But you know what? I don't think anybody is comfortable with their bios. I think it always feels a little bigger and bolder, but the reality is it's not. That's truly who you are. It's just us as people, like to hide a little bit sometimes we don't like to be that, that front facing.

Ross Huartt: Yeah. I think so. I think it's, there's a big difference, you know, like i, when I sort of started the business at 26 or what have you, you have to have the right balance of ego meets confidence, right, and so, yeah, but I've also been very cognizant of not to have been too sort of ego driven because it, it, it's not necessarily a good look.

Kelly Kennedy: No, no. But on the flip side, like you said, you hit on confidence. And confidence is absolutely critical in business, right? You can't go into any boardroom and pitch a product and do it unconfidently and win .

Ross Huartt: No. And I was, it's interesting because I always I always say to people, you know, I, part of my job is sales.

Any president's always representing that company, but I don't really sell because it's, it's going to sound corny and cliche, and, you know, whether it's MBC or whether it's ECO Claim. I'm genuinely passionate about those things I've built. And so I think that kind of comes out because I get, excited and then quite often it's infectious.

And then before, you know, the client's excited or the other side, and that's how things tend to go. Of course, sometimes you get people that just aren't excited and you're sat there clutching at straws, trying to find something but,

Kelly Kennedy: I've been in plenty of both of those meetings, and yeah, I'll take the first one any day of the week.

So Ross, you know, when we first, you know, I, first off. My kind of connection to you is we connected on LinkedIn and I've been following you now kind of probably for about a year actually just kind of off and on and I've absolutely loved your social game and I know at some point I'm like, you look, I got to get a hold of Ross.

I got to get him on the show. I want to have a conversation with him because you're always doing like you always look like you're having the best time. Like, I love seeing what's going on in your world. Like, and I feel like you're so good at it too. You've really nailed the kind of like your social media presence and like just a great mix of business and fun and who you are.

Like you really showcase who you are as a person. And I love that about you, but I, you know, I want to get into that further down the show and we definitely will cause I think you have an amazing strategy and I think it emulated by anybody would be a great idea. I want you to take me back to the beginning, because I know when we first kind of had our first conversation, you were giving me your background.

And you know, you came from the UK, and you were, your background was in quantity surveying. And I, you know, I mean, maybe just naive Kelly, but I'm like, what in the world? I've, I've been in construction here for years, and I've never come across that term. Can you maybe take us back to the beginning of your career?

And when you got into quantity surveying, maybe educate the public on what it is, and then bring us up, bring us to today.

Ross Huartt: Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting because I'll be honest when I when I picked my degree choice as everyone does when you're, I think it was year 18 and you're like, okay, now decide what you want to do for the rest of your life, which is a little bit again, I don't think you're in the best position to decide that at 18, but you do.

And so very much, I was looking at professions, it was two thousand and, was it two thousand and five or six, it was when I was looking and the construction was booming and you know, I'd always had a bit of a travel bug. My sister had moved to the U S sort of five years before this, this point. And it wasn't because she moved, but we'd always traveled and I just wanted to go see the world.

And so I was looking at professions that potentially aligned with that, that didn't require, you know, if you become an engineer, for example, you have to then be, you have to then get all the engineering bodies and affiliates are all country specific, state specific, and so freedom of movement is not as easy, shall we say?

Whereas there's an institution called the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has been around since 1650 ish, around there, so a long standing institution by Parliament in the UK. But the real reason is I was looking through courses, and I wanted to stay relatively close to home at this point because I knew I just wanted to head out into the world once I was done.

And Northumbria offered a Bachelor's in Quantity Surveying and I had no idea what that was either to be honest with you when I was 18. And, and so I did some research and it turned out there was, there was a lot of companies, it was in high demand. And so there's a lot of companies offering to sponsor university.

So in, and don't get me wrong in the UK, I was the first year it was free before if I was a year older, it would have been free. But the UK changed that in a big yet pay somewhat. So, I applied to it and then in conjunction with that, I got, I did get accepted, and then I applied to a few sponsored student programs.

And the idea behind that is they provide you like a bit of an allowance. They essentially pay for your university. And the expectation is you come work for them for a minimum period of time after university. And so I think it's a good way to capture talent and the also a great way to get work experience while you're at university, which is what I did the, so that was primarily the reason behind it, to be honest, was travel.

And I had no idea how much of a complex profession it was and how widespread it is. I mean, outside of North America, it's very, it's part of construction. You know, clients have quantity surveyors, contractors do subcontractors do, and it really is the commercial management of construction from both direct site, but also legalities of procurement and all that exciting stuff.

And so, yeah, I went to university in Northumbria to do that, which was around a four year degree. One of those was work experience, and it's a good point to know, cause actually I've never even thought of this connection until right now, but when you hindsight's wonderful, cause when you look back over the course of your life and your career, if certain, if you didn't, if this didn't happen, you don't think they're related.

But when you work it back, and so in 2008, I think it was, I went to work for Vinci, who is the company that sponsored me, and I went to work for them for a sort of a gap year, if you will, called a year in industry. And we, they were constructing, well actually it was Taylor Woodrow at the time who got acquired by Vinci, but they were building Whiston Hospital in the UK, so they were demolishing a Victorian hospital that was a few hundred years old, and essentially constructing one of the largest new hospitals in the UK at the time.

So, I think like a 10 year project or from start to finish. So I was placed on site there, part of the commercial management team, and, you know, as with, that's what I tell everyone as well. People think, you know, everyone does the crappy jobs when you first start. Right. Because that's how you learn, right?

And so a lot of times now there's like some people feel it's, I don't know beneath them, if you will, but you know, when you go there, you're essentially a glorified admin because you're at the bottom of the totem pole, but what I decided to do was use that as a learning opportunity, right, and just soak up as much as you could.

Incidentally, it was also where I met my boss at the time, who was the lead Quantity Surveyor, we got on very well, and he ultimately, while I was there, moved to New Zealand. Not, for any of the, just wanted to move across the world, got a visa and so he left towards the end of my year there. Then I went back to university.

Of course in 2000, towards the end of 2008, you can appreciate if everyone remembers that financial crisis and so as with, in construction is very, very much directly tied to the economy. And so my choice of quantity surveying wasn't looking too hot come to come the last year of university, because by 2009, the recession, it sort of was starting to really take a hold.

And so I was sat there being like, and then of course, in 2009, the Vinci then canceled all their sponsored students basically said, you don't have to give us anything back, but we're not taking anyone on, which again, you're going to understand they didn't have any work. So I started then looking for, I guess, initially jobs in the UK, because again, you're never going to be able to leave and go abroad with no experience first.

And so I was lucky enough to get what a big, it was like a thousand people showed up and it was essentially a graduate program with like 30 spots. And, for Barrett Developments, they were the UK's largest house builder, and so I actually got on their graduate program and it was quite unique because the first year you would spend.

You would spend three months in each of their departments. So you'd spend three months in your QSing, three months in sales, three months in finance, three months in land. So you got exposure to all their business units, which you wouldn't never normally do and then, then the last year you picked one and went into it.

And so that was that was really interesting and I think that's really where I got my really early understanding of what makes a business run. It wasn't just like, as a quantity surveyor, you're doing one small piece of the overall organization. However critical it may be, there's still a lot of other facets.

And so getting exposed to that was, I guess sparked my interest in, all of it, and I didn't really know I was an entrepreneur because again, I didn't have any exposure to what that was back then I mean, it's, I think it's a bit different now with social media. And so as I got accepted to that, got through the first year and I mentioned things tying together, well, out of the blue, I got, well, not out of the blue, but you'll remember in 2010, the, the Christ Church, Christ Church earthquake happened.

And so my, if you remember my previous boss, Vinci had moved out there. So he actually took the opportunity to start his own firm and provide consulting on damaged infrastructure properties as a result of the earthquake. And so he called me cause I guess he knew sort of what I what I was like, what, even though I was sort of relatively inexperienced still.

And so yeah, I got a, what's it called? There's a, I think it's IEC international experience. That one's Canada. So anyway, if you're under 35, you can essentially get two, two visas in Canada or Australia to go work there for a year or two. And so I did that for New Zealand. It took a few, a couple of months and then decided to go to New Zealand Christ Church.

And if you drill through the earth, you literally could not get somewhere further away from where I was born, and so it kind of worked out well, I guess I wanted to move. And we and so, yeah, packed up, went over there. I'd never even been that side of the world, never been to Australia. So, I knew the Queen was on the money, so I thought, you know, I'd probably feel alright.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They spoke English, that was critical.

Ross Huartt: Well, that's it, yeah, they spoke English, the Queen was there, there's some kind of connection, so I'm sure it'll be alright. And, yeah, I went out there and when I first landed, which was like a 42 hour journey. Right? It's, a good amount of time and I'd never seen an earthquake stricken city before.

And it was, it was quite like, but I still remember, but I can still, it was like, it's weird. You know, if you've ever been to Universal Studios and you know, like you know, that ride where the water comes rushing in the subway. I think everyone knows that if you've ever been, and it just really felt like a movie set because a lot of the buildings and areas were cordoned off still for safety, but you could look through the fences and you could see like coffees and sandwiches in the coffee shop still.

And so it was a bit, yeah, it just was very apocalypse esque it felt like.

Kelly Kennedy: Like, what was that like? Cause that would have been a fairly new experience. Like, obviously you've just come literally around the world. So you're still dealing with you know, the shock of that, and then you end up with a place that's, that the infrastructure is a mess, you know?

Ross Huartt: Yeah, you know, I've never looked at it like that because for me it was always like, it always seemed like an adventure. I mean, it's, and I only got diagnosed a couple of years ago, but I, so I have ADHD. Which explains a lot of my behavior from, like, from childhood to three years ago. And so I, right.

And so I believe one of the traits of ADHD is sort of, your risk compass, for lack of a better term, doesn't work quite the same as others. So I was like, oh, we're going to New Zealand on an adventure, it just never occurred to me that it was, like I never thought of it like that. Does that make sense?

Kelly Kennedy: No. Cause like, you know, you think about it and I feel like that, that trip. On its own on a regular day would have been challenging for most people, even though English speaking, it's a completely different country. You're literally going there to live. Like, it's not like you're on vacation, right? And then on top of that, you get there and it's, it's the infrastructure is a mess. You know, you're having to deal with a natural disaster and an incredibly bad one. I feel like, you know, that would have been incredibly hard for most people. Like, what, what were you feeling at that time?

Ross Huartt: Yeah, as I said, I mean, it's, it's quite a somber feeling, but it also, again, having worked in lots of catastrophes since due to the nature of the work we do, the resilience of people and communities never ceases to amaze you.

So we talk about it being a catastrophic event, which it was , and there was some loss of life in the second earthquake, which was tragic and could have been avoided, but all in all, on the backdrop of the significance and size of it, I think the casualties were fairly limited. Not that any casualties are accepted to be clear, acceptable rather but again, the resilience of the people within months, they'd set up a new downtown using shipping containers for stores.

And like, you can tell it's important for communities to have their centralized spots, you know, the center of towns, and so I think they did as much as they could to sort of bring some normality back now. I always say this to people and, you know, cause we're in the insurance world. It is a tragic catastrophe that you'd not want to go through anyone to go through losing their home, their business, loved ones, anything like that.

But when it's all said and done, mother nature did it, and so at the end of the day, I'm a, I'm a glass half full type of guy. I think you have to be as well as an entrepreneur. The city had the, New Zealand was in an economic boom. I don't know if it still is because I haven't checked on geopolitics in a while, but for a long time it was.

And the reason for that is you had around a city of about half a million people, not very big, like half the size of Calgary, had around 40 to 60 billion pumped into it from insurance companies, the government, and so the economic injection and benefit to the city was massive.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. That's a lot considering the size,

Ross Huartt: Right?

And so, I mean I don't know the GDP of New Zealand, but I'm hedging my bets. It's not that, or maybe not.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Wow.

Ross Huartt: And so the, and to me, that was the thing that was the main takeaway was people's resilience coming together and experiencing that, and also it's, to be honest with you, it's where I kind of had my first go at entrepreneurship and it didn't work, so, but we all have, I whilst I was working with the gentleman that had brought me over, what my fam, some of my family have a business in the UK.

And they essentially train people to do trades. So in the UK, plastering is a big thing because they plaster houses still. Tiling is painting. They're all in demand trades. And so they essentially have a bit of a trade school. Government funded it. And so I tried the same concept, you know, I was like, this is a earthquake damaged city.

There's lots of trade. Surely this would work. And so we kind of got it off the ground, had some classes go through, but it just wasn't. Again, I would say the little knowledge I had about business, I kind of cringe looking back, but you have to try somewhere. Yeah. You learn somewhere. Yeah, and so it was, it wasn't, it wasn't a super expensive endeavor, but it didn't work.

And, but it doesn't, didn't deter me per se. And then the, I think about a year and a bit into it, my, the gentleman that brought me over decided he just, he had, we had about five people at the time and he just hated it. He hated, he just, he wanted to just, he realized he didn't want other people to have to rely on him.

 So he basically said that he was going to, he's going to move to the North, take his selected clients and just do the work himself and just didn't want to have to,

Kelly Kennedy: To, to manage, to manage a team.

Ross Huartt: Yeah, and so I then, I was like, all right, well, I'm out in New Zealand here. So I was like, but luckily the, my skill set and profession was in high demand still.

So it wasn't really tough to get a another job. So at that time I'd got another job, but this was like a year and a half into it, and I was sort of. A city of half a million people in the middle of nowhere. Just, I never saw myself staying in New Zealand forever. Yeah, yeah. And with having a sister in North America, a couple of friends in North America, I'd sort of always wanted to move out this way and, started sort of looking at opportunities.

Now, I guess sharing something personal in 2013, about three weeks before I was due to travel to Canada, I had and I was very fit by then I was doing CrossFit. I was running. I actually had a stroke. Yeah, I had a mini stroke and I remember, going to the hospital, getting the, my roommate to take me to the hospital because I was kind of, I was like Googling what was wrong and it was like stroke.

So that was a weird feeling. And they did all these tests and never, and essentially said, you know, sometimes a bit of plaque can break off and cause an issue. But there was never anything identified and touch wood. Everything's been good since, but that was it. That would now talk about scary. Now that's probably the only time I've been scared.

I would say, cause you're when you're in, when you're 10, 000 miles away from your family and you're in hospital and you're supposed to be taking a flight in a few weeks and you can't. Like my ability to like text, for example, and like find words had gone. It comes back, but, but it's, it's a weird experience.

I remember being stood in a subway, trying to order a sandwich and I'm looking at these onions and my, I just cannot find the word, like, I'm like trying to say it and it's just not coming out.

Kelly Kennedy: Like, you're very aware that you can't, you can't find the word.

Ross Huartt: A hundred percent. You're like, you kind of know what it is.

It's so weird. You know what it is, but your brain's just not telling you. So, but luckily I was yeah, everything sort of was fine, and me being me, I think I was back working out in a couple of weeks. And then, packed up my bags and headed to Canada. Incidentally, I didn't, I had a job offer, I didn't have a visa because they had a pilot scheme in Alberta in 2013.

So if you're a construction estimator, which essentially acute, that's a function of quantity surveying. You could get a pilot visa to come in because there were, it was in demand. Of course it was never going to be that easy. So I showed up to Calgary airport, with my suitcases and you know, and I was, I was dreading this because I don't know if you've dealt with immigration consultants, it just depends on the person and personality type you get, not facts.

And I got in line and I'm standing in line and I can see all the immigration officers and I'm like, there was one, one that looked like Scully off, not Scully, you know, the, you know, the librarian on Monsters Inc. That's what she looked like and I was like, and I was standing there going, please, not her.

And obviously that was the one I got. And, it was a good start because she'd never heard of this visa I was talking about. So I was like, so I had to show her all the information for that. And then she notionally decided that I didn't have a piece of paper from the Canadian Institute of Quantity Surveyors to certify what I was.

You don't really need that, but you can't argue with them. Yeah. And so she actually gave me five days to get it and I was like, well, being British, you usually are about 90 days. But she was like, not today, you know, I was like, okay, fair enough. And then, so I got that piece of paper, I drove down to, Lethbridge, you know, do the crossing, went around the flagpole got an immigration officer, super friendly.

Didn't even look at the piece of paper that I'd had and said, yeah, you're good. There you go. And I was in Canada. That was, that was how I arrived. A bit of a, a bit of a land and tumble that I got here.

Kelly Kennedy: You went around the flagpole.

Ross Huartt: And funnily enough, not that I would come to know this later, but I pretty much, I pretty much met my wife to be like day one.

I mean, we weren't going to get, we weren't, we never, we weren't going to date for three years following, but it was interesting that almost day one I met my wife.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Where, where?

Ross Huartt: So she worked at a diner called Red's in Calgary. And downtown and I'd moved in around the corner just an apartment and yeah, that was the local breakfast hangouts.

So it was and then work for a company providing quantity surveying services here. It's really just the QS is more of a it's more project advisory, so advising on costs, bringing a budget, certifying payments and progress, those sorts of things. So I worked for, but honestly, that was not where my, my passion lies is doing estimates.

Like I've always been able to do them of course, but just wasn't for me sitting behind a computer eight, 10 hours a day. But I then luckily got headhunted by a consulting firm in the insurance industry here based on, again, based on the fact that I'd spent the last two years assessing earthquake damages.

So again, that what I, what I didn't realize going out in New Zealand would be that just that entire two year period was really laying the foundations for what was about to become MBC. And again, and you just, you just don't fathom it because I don't know, you just, you're not able to see those dots yet.

And so I was headhunted went to work for that company. Worked there for about a year and a half. Absolutely love the job, you know, for me, I think it's a little bit of the ADHD again, but in standard construction, you often get put on a Put in a project for a long time at the hospital, 10 year period.

So those QSs on that hospital for 10 years, that's a good part of your life. Right. And so with insurance, what would happen is you'd get an assignment every couple of weeks, just the help, but it would be totally different. So like someone's supermarket could have had a fire and they need to get back up in business and you're supporting it.

Someone's, homes tragically had a loss and you're going to get there and let them know how it's going to get reinstated and the timeline is so, yes, you're there to advise the insurance company on the facts, but you're also there to alleviate the insured and let them know that there's actually going to be an end in sight to this.

And so what I loved about it was just that it was very, very client facing, client facing in a time of need, which often brings it's either a positive or negative emotional connotations, which can make projects interesting, and so that client service side of it, I always loved and the variety of the work I always loved.

And so it was I found my sweet spot, I thought.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, what, what, like you said, you know, you didn't get stuck in the same project for 10 years. You, you get a very well rounded experience, exposure, right?

Ross Huartt: Yeah, because we've worked on hospitals, pipelines, schools, and it's all... tied to insurance, but it's those projects on the left, right?

Kelly Kennedy: That's right. You know, I've always found that very valuable in my career too, is that I've had a very wide range of companies that I've worked with in a lot of different industries. So same thing. It's, you learn something new at each and every one of them, and you don't get that experience unless you, unless you take on those, you know, those extra clients.

And yeah, unfortunately, if you get stuck somewhere for 10 years, you know, you might be really great at that one thing, but it's just that one thing.

Ross Huartt: Yeah, no, absolutely, and again, there's nothing wrong with specializing, it just really depends what you want to do, and for me, It was all construction, so it was all nuts and bolts, really, when you boil it down.

Sure, there's, it's, it's more complex, less complex, different building strategies, code, but at the end of the day, it's putting components together, right? And so that's how quantity, that's what quantity surveyors do, quantify construction.

Kelly Kennedy: It's, it's so weird that like, cause yeah, like you, you explained to me the various aspects of it, but it's like here, all of those aspects are an individual job.

Ross Huartt: In the UK, you essentially have two groups on site, the construction managers, which would be your project managers, then your commercial team, which is the quantity surveyors, the construction manager's job is to get the construct, get it constructed to the schedule ASAP, and often a total disregard for finance, the QS's job is to make sure that that is so held accountable.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, exactly.

Ross Huartt: Right. So you can see why it works because one wants to get it done, but one wants to be like, yes, but within these means, and it's your job to work that out. So rather than prevent overruns and sure, no, I mean, not that it does prevent it, of course, but good QSing can help a construction project do very well.

Kelly Kennedy: It's, it's a all encompassing management.

Ross Huartt: Yeah. I would say, yeah, I tell people it's really is the commercial management of construction. So that includes everything from the contracts, all the way through to overseeing the budget during construction, final accounting, and wrap up. Like, they have a big role to play.

Now, in Canada, quantity surveyors have been pigeon holed a little bit, it seems. Primarily as sort of providing services to banks to monitor loans. To protect banks interests. Which, again, is fine. But to me, it's just a very, it seems a very small part of what they can do.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes.

Ross Huartt: But Canada, whilst it has lots of British influence, equally has lots of U. S. influence, and I think construction here more deeply represents the U. S. model than it does the, the sort of U. K. model.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. Except for the Parliament.

Ross Huartt: Yeah, except for Parliament.

Parliament still wear, they still wear their wigs and all the rest of it.

Kelly Kennedy: We still, we still, we still shout nonsense at each other across the way.

Okay, so tell me, okay, so, You know, you got into that insurance aspect of it. Now take us into your, to MBC group. How did that happen?

Ross Huartt: Yeah, that's where the fun starts, I guess. The, yeah, I mean, I'll just, I, I don't mind being open about this. So I said, long story short, I was within a year at this company.

I was sort of the highest biller, like, the top producer. I had a client following. I loved what I was doing. I had a lot of the team in the office working with me, like on my things. Cause I, again, that's where I learned relationships, business development. Like I didn't call it that. I just did it, and it's like a natural thing.

And so, but I got to a point and it honestly all started with wanting to get a mortgage, I'll be honest. So the job had a commission element to it. So the, on your billable hours. So I was, I was paid fairly well, but I want, but of course, after such a killer first year and I wanted to get a mortgage and turns out at the time, companies didn't really care about your commission unless you had it for, I think it was like a two, three year period.

And so my base salary didn't look great. And so I went, I went to the company and said, you know, here's what I, again, Mr. Prepared, I don't just go in because too many people go in and say, well, I want more money because I've done well. But like, you've got to come with some metrics. And so I put all those metrics together, demonstrate, I even assessed, I even like guessed how profitable I'd be based on what I knew.

And and I said, I just asked, I wanted 10, 000 more. And they came back and they basically said, yes, but then it was kind of like taken it from here like lowering your commission and I'm like well, that's like, I just, I just had the best year of anyone. Anyway, so that kind of like, but I was like, you know what?

Fine. Okay. Okay. So I then went back and said, well, I, at the time that started this new division, That was handling sort of complex work and I sent you offered, I said, if you make me associate director, like your number two with no pay increase, I'll, show you what I can do. Like I'll earn that over the year because I love the job and they came back and just said no.

And I said, okay, well, fair enough. So, but at this point I'd been approached by lots of competitors and what have you, and I hadn't really bothered looking, but I'm like, okay, well, and then I talked to several of them, some big companies, and to be honest, the offers was, it was sort of a sideways move. I was like, well, it doesn't really make sense to me.

And so I was looking at my options. And I thought, well, why not just start, why not just do it myself? I was like, you know, I think I can. So I made the decision and I started a company at the time called P. A. C. E. Obviously representing speed, if you will. But it actually was an acronym, but for some reason that acronym completely has gone from my brain right now.

Because it was obviously that memorable a little while ago. Yeah. And so I was gonna tell my boss at the time, 'cause we'd work closely together and I know I, told someone who was a, I thought was a trusted client, like, close to me. Yeah. And I'd only told the one person. And so then I remember getting a call from our boss at the time, he'd be like, oh, we've heard this.

And I was like, oh. I was like, well, I won't say his name. I nearly did. I said, well, you know what I wanted to talk to you in person. I said, I didn't want to tell you over the phone when you're in Toronto. But this is, and then he actually was really angry. He told me I was short sighted and sort of hung up.

I got disconnected from the company stuff and, and then left in fire and brimstone. I distinctly remember, bear in mind, I was just a consultant in Calgary. I distinctly remember them sending an email out across the entire company. That I'd left and I was not to be talked to. And so I was like, yeah, so yeah, so like, so I, you wouldn't, I couldn't get a raise.

I couldn't get a promotion to earn the raise, but you're worried that I'm going to do something. So like. If you're worried, surely, would you not have, so I've always made sure in business to like, keep an eye on that.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, totally. It's, it's frankly just being aware of the big picture, right? And, right.

Yeah, yeah, it seems very true.

Ross Huartt: And some of our best leaders are our young ones, like I say young, because I'm only 35, they're 30, so young, and it's going to take them an pinch of salt. But, and don't get us wrong, it hasn't always worked, but a lot of times when you believe in people and you give them the tools and they've got, I hate to say it, but you do have to have a bit of killer instinct if you don't, you can't take that leap at that age.

Yeah. I mean, right. Cause people need to know you're serious, and sometimes under 30, you're not necessarily taken as seriously as you could be.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Me and you are the same age. I'm 34, just about 35. I got into business development when I was 23. And as you can imagine, being the young punk, 23 at the time I was, I don't know, that would have been around 2012.

And, you know, you're going into meetings with 65 year olds, you know, executives, and trying to convince them that the firm you're working for is a great firm that you should check out, and they're looking at you as an ass kid, what does he know, right? So I totally, you know, I mean, I totally get that. You had to learn it.

For me, I had to develop it young, because I was young. I was just given a good position young, and I had to figure it out.

Ross Huartt: Yeah, no, absolutely. And you know, again I like to think I'm good at public speaking. I enjoy giving seminars presentations because I get very animated and into it and it feels natural.

But it didn't just like, well, as I'd always had that confidence piece, I remember when I first started the business and one, again, there was no strategy behind it. It was, I needed to get in front of anyone that could give me work, like any, any client demographic and that's all I did. It wasn't strategic.

A lot of it was a waste of time, but a lot of that brute force work. And I remember giving seminars to like rooms of people and being like really nervous. Like I would get like, for some reason. And it happens sometimes it's not due to nerves, but I, my face just gets red or flushed and it's not because I'm nervous.

I think it's just a adrenaline response.

Kelly Kennedy: I talk about this a lot because like, even though like, you know, talking to me, I probably seem very extroverted. But I was a very introverted person. You know, I became extroverted in business development when that became my role, but it was a learned skill. I did not start this way.

I was not always extroverted. And so I still struggle with, you know, performance anxiety on occasion, right? Especially with speeches or like big pitches or stuff like that. There's still moments where. Even for me, I've done thousands of them, I still have that moment, and I, and I think, you know, I mean, I, I would venture to say there's a lot of introverted people that have become extroverted in order to accommodate the role that they have ended up in, but you know, it's funny, it's so funny.

You know, I was talking to you earlier, right before this, my, this week's guest is actually an organizational psychologist. And so we were literally just talking about this and how there's a lot of introverted people that are in extroverted positions. It's a very common thing these days. And,

Ross Huartt: I've always, I always thought I was an extrovert and, but, I'm not like, it's not that I'm, I give an example, an extrovert. This is how, this is how it works for me. An extrovert gets energy from being extroverted and with others. I don't like, I start with lots of energy, ADHD, and then it goes like this. And that's why, like, that's why I'm typically don't, unless I'm on the road, you'll not usually ever catch me at anything evening related in Calgary.

Kelly Kennedy: Yep. I would say, I think that that's normal, Ross. I think that by the time you get to the higher level executives in most companies, I bet you that that is the case for, I would say 80% of them, at least.

Ross Huartt: Yeah, absolutely. The biggest change for me, and I mean, we're not like a billion dollar company or anything. I think we've got about 130 people, but it is kind of interesting. Cause I, you know, you still feel like the guy that started in his basement a little bit. I'm not imposter syndrome, because again, I deal with lots of C suites, lots of C suites of multi billion dollar companies, and some of them I would class as friends now.

But it's interesting because you see. I remember meeting the CEO of Barrett

Developments, for example, and you're like, Whoa, it's the CEO and you've got this, it's like, and then I'm not saying that I don't ever feel like that, but then sometimes when I meet team members I've never met before, you can almost sense that, like, yes.

Not intimidation, but I'm trying to break that down because I'm just Ross and I get it's kind of a respect thing as well, but you don't want people to be cognizant of that. You can see that I remember talking to one of our team members in Vancouver maybe last year. And I feel like, I felt like he was petrified.

And I was like, and the nicer and calmer I was, the more scared he looked until I to leave you now.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. There, becomes this, like by the time, yeah. I totally understand that. Cause as a kid, I used to feel that way too. You know, my bosses would come around, but it's like now I've met, you know what I mean?

I've worked under enough CEOs that I realized we're all people, but it takes, it takes a while, I think, and I think if you haven't had that exposure multiple times, I can totally understand that.

Ross Huartt: Yeah, and it's just interesting to see that happen in your, in your own organization.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. No. And it's, sorry, go ahead.

No, no, go ahead. And I was going to say, like, you're quite young too. So I think, I think there's a bit of an approachability there that maybe you don't get if you were older. Like, I think maybe you might do a little better because you're a little younger.

Ross Huartt: Yeah, you know, I, yeah, hopefully, I mean, it's a, that's part of, when you talk about the LinkedIn strategy piece, there was, as I mentioned to you, it wasn't really a strategy.

It just started five years ago and I just started sharing things I was doing. And then it's really been the last, but it's the power of it, man, I go, we announced, we made an announcement last week and I've had six new customers see the announcement and want to be involved in this equal claim program and even, you know.

I have customers reaching out to me to, you know, mention Ross. Is it okay if I tag you on LinkedIn? I just want to share something. Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. But like. People I meet and networks are now starting to do the LinkedIn thing, but a lot of it's because they've seen mine now. I love it. I don't think it's copying whatsoever.

I think more people should share your story, share your journey. That's what it's about.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And I think, I think in 2023, it's becoming expected, right? Like we, it's not enough to just be an organization in 2023 and be behind the scenes. People want to know. The leaders of an organization, they want to see the executive group.

They want to, and I think that you've done an amazing job of that, and I know I'm not just blowing smoke up your butt. The reality is I've, you know, I've been following you myself for like at least a year at this point. And yeah, like I love, I love your posts. Your posts are always engaging. Like it's a great mix of business and who is Ross, right.

And I, and I love that aspect of it and I think you do a great job. And I think as we go forward, you know, in 2024, 2025. Organizations are going to have to shift a little bit. There's not, you know, this is a conversation I've had with many of my executive guests talking about the importance of socials, the importance of some type of forward face.

Like when I started this podcast, I didn't really know what was going to come of it. The reality is it's become a great podcast around the world, and you know, we're actually the only business development focused podcast in Canada at this time, which is still blows my mind. I had no idea when I started it, that that was the case.

And yeah, you could say, well, poor market research or whatever. But like, I was doing this for me initially just to try it and see if I could do it because introverted Kelly needed to have some type outward face. How can I share my knowledge with the world? How can I help other companies grow, but also showcase my expertise?

This was the way. And but I had to learn it. And, you know, I mean, in the beginning, you know, it always felt like I was just talking to the wall for the longest time, but it has become my platform. But I think that. You have done a great job on LinkedIn and showing people who Ross is. And I think if you were to keep that up, you know, you could, you could branch that off into a podcast of your own or into YouTube of your own.

I think you're really that type of person.

Ross Huartt: Yeah. You know, it's one of those, like my, I would argue, I've never really used social media that much. Like on the, like on the Instagram, Facebook, sure I'm on it, but it's never been like a thing, and so the LinkedIn was a little bit different for me cause it felt more attached to the business.

And, but it really honestly, there's no, I, and I told you this when we chatted before the show that I, I've still got all the podcast equipment in boxes in my office from February, cause I fully planned on getting it set up, but just with how the last two quarters have gone and the, how busy we've been with lots of corporate initiatives, new businesses.

And I just haven't had time, but now what I'm trying to do is sort of pull myself a little bit out more out operationally, so I can work on the bigger picture vision, but then also fit things in such as a podcast. So whilst it might seem, and this is, I think this is where the clash comes a bit. If you're an older executive, You don't necessarily doing a podcast seems like a weird thing to do, but, but you've just said it yourself whilst you want interesting guests on, you want an audience, it becomes your platform to, share what you know and what type of person you are.

Right. People like, I think after our first call, I was like, Oh, how do we work together? Cause you just know when you get along with someone.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Like, and it really is like, you get to see who they are. Right. Like, I feel like I, you know, from our conversations and from this podcast, I feel like I have a really good idea of who Ross, Huartt is.

And, and I'm sure you feel the same way about who Kelly Kennedy is and, and that's, that's the same connection you get with every one of your listeners. And you get it because it's such a personal form, right? Like voice is such a personal form of interaction. I like, you know, I feel like my favorite podcast and I have plenty of them that I love.

I feel connected to those people. Like if something happened to them, I would genuinely feel bad about it. Cause I genuinely, like, I love their shows. I look forward to it every week. And it's, it's, I don't know them. I have no personal connection to them, but that's the level of connection you build with any type of interaction like this.

Ross Huartt: What I love about podcasts honestly, when you really look at it is it became radio for everyone, right? It's brilliant. So radios, it was an archaic form and who, who listens to radio and TV exists, literally would be caught. We've come full circle. People want to listen to other people.

Kelly Kennedy: And I think for executives too, the reason a podcast is so compelling is that, you know, we're on the road all the time.

We're traveling, we're doing, you know. Whether we're doing reports or tedious work, and it's something that we can listen to and so the reason that I often, you know, people ask me, Kelly, why don't you have video? Like, why don't you have video on this? Well, because my listeners are high level executives or entrepreneurs, and they're probably listening to me on a car ride to work or on a plane, or, you know, entering data on their computer.

They're not, they're not looking at me. They're listening to me.

Ross Huartt: Yes. That's a good observation. You're right. Cause I was thinking back and I'm like, even when the podcast has a video. I don't watch it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Right. You just play it, right? I think you might. You might have your favorite YouTube show that you like to watch, but I imagine it's probably not a podcast.

Ross Huartt: Right, right. Yeah. I'm just thinking of like, if you listen to Joe Rogan, for example, they always have the videos of the guests, but again, it's just, you put it on and you're doing other stuff while you listen to it, like you said.

Kelly Kennedy: Totally, totally. You know, a lot of the feedback we get from the show is people reach out and they're like, Oh, I love listening to you when we're on a car ride or when we're going to bed or when I'm doing housework, right?

But the secret is they love listening to me when they're doing something else. And an audio podcast allows people to do that while a video does not.

Ross Huartt: But I think that you said it's the, again, you could, not that, not that I'm remotely, putting anyone and myself in this bracket, of course, but compare it on a, on a micro scale to celebrity.

People think they know them because they see them so much, and that's why, and I'm not saying that that happens, but believe it or not, it. It's amazing, even LinkedIn, right? Again, I'm not a celebrity by any means. Does my LinkedIn get around a million interactions a year so far? Yes, which is phenomenal. But what I'm seeing at the minute is it precedes me often now, which it never did before.

And I'm just talking in the last few months. But the amount of people have been like, Oh, Ross, I've seen you, do, do, do, do, do. And that's the value for me. Because I'm telling a story, and people I've never met are already briefed to a degree on the story.

Kelly Kennedy: That's right.

That's right. interest before they've even met you.

It's almost, it's like it's like a warmup.

Ross Huartt: Yes. No, absolutely. It is. Yeah. It'll warm up. Yeah. A hundred percent. So there's a little bit more familiar, right? And, and I think that adds, and in business, trust is the first thing you need to build, and if you lay the foundation for familiarity, you lay the foundation for trust.

Now it's not deceitful because it's just like, when I say my LinkedIn strategy, honestly. I get up in the morning and I'm an early riser and I'll have my coffee and often I'll just, I might have saved something to share or I might not have anything to share and I'll just think of something that's on my mind that specific day.

There's no content calendar, there's no schedule releases, if you will. It's all just what, how am I feeling on the day and some days I'm more optimistic and happy than others as all humans are, and some days like today, I just didn't because I'd, I'd shared quite a bit this week and it got a lot of traction.

And honestly, I was like, again, the ADHD piece, sometimes my brain just doesn't let me do things like someone else sent me an email and, I should respond to that, but it's like, the brain just doesn't let you, yeah. And so today was one of those on my LinkedIn posts.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. No, that happens to all of us.

I totally get that. Yeah. There's just some days that are for responding and some that are just for, that's for tomorrow. So, okay. So, you know, you were talking about, so have you been with MBC group since they were in the basement?

Ross Huartt: So I go back. So MBC, so how MBC group formed. So I started pace in my basement and my he's still actually a shareholder of MBC, but Sandys was the first person to then join me.

And so we essentially were providing building consulting services, project advisory services to insurers. In competition with the, the company I'd mentioned. Yeah. Now we, started doing, well, we got started to get business clients started to give us work and I'd known of a, there was a gentleman out east who, a big insurer.

Do you remember in, I can't, oh God, it would've been 2015. There was a big explosion in Canmore.

Kelly Kennedy: I don't remember that. When I, when I think of like around that time, what I'm thinking of is that gigantic flood in Calgary.

Ross Huartt: Yeah. So it was just after those, and it was there was a gas line exploded and damaged lots of houses.

And it was a big event, and I remember that a large insurer had flown this person, this gentleman Mark Bray out from Quebec all the way to, to the Rockies to, to basically do what we could do, and I was like, why would they do that? That seems like a weird thing to spend, but again, so I then reached out.

Because why not? I was curious who he was and and so when we just, when we met a couple of weeks after that, so I actually called a client who knew him to get his number again, proactivity, it didn't just happen. And I went to meet him. I remember, I actually still remember this day by the airport.

And I got there and so he'd obviously done his research on me and I, and so he was on a big insurer's list. Bearing in mind, he only had six, I can't remember now, maybe nine people in the East. So it wasn't a big company by any means at that point. And I said, she said, well, why don't we join forces, come together?

Because, you know, you've got a big national contract with a big insurer and I've got a very good relationships with with adjusters across Alberta and BC and we're picking up work. And so really that was the, that was the long and short of it was should we do this and we decided to and then got off the ground.

And so the first, what I love about this bit though, is like, so I started in November. Like, I'd started the business a bit before, I think, was it, yeah, around November, we'd started. And so, of course, weirdly, in the first half of 2016, the insurance industry was dead. As in, there was, there was just very few claims.

It's again, it's cyclical, of course.

Kelly Kennedy: We were in the middle of a pretty big oil downturn at that point too.

Ross Huartt: Yeah, but usually it doesn't matter because just because the oil's downturn doesn't mean a condo doesn't flood, right? So, so yeah, there is, there is obviously a correlation between economic growth and activity and claims, but it tends to be recession resistant, if you will.

But anyway, whatever was going on, we had adjusted clients being like, we don't know what's happening here, and so I'm like, for the first six months, I'm like, what have I done here? Like, right. I'm like, is it me? Is this not going to work? And, and, but again, I'm Mr. Perseverance. Right, and so I just kept pounding the pavement, doing what I did, got a nice little lawsuit from my previous company, which incidentally just, just ended like a week ago.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Wow.

Ross Huartt: And, they were wrong, but the only people that went to the lawyers and I look back now and I don't hold any grudges. It was corporate warfare. Could he have made better choices and kept me? Yes. But I'm glad he didn't because this wouldn't have happened. Right. So that's the way I always look at it.

And so yeah, six months of hard work, some work, but like, this is not going how I anticipated, and then all of a sudden Fort McMurray catches fire. And I'm looking at this and you know, again, it's tragic, but when you're in the business of responding to that and helping it. And so all that groundwork I'd put in with people started to come to fruition because they were like, they'd remembered me.

And all of a sudden this big influx of work came in. And so in that. From that, I think it was May, it happened. And so from like May to July, I went from me to 10 people and I West anyway, and we responded to Fort Mac with, this is where we kind of, I say burst onto the scene because unlike our competitors who got them, got a bigger majority of the work admittedly, but they were the incumbent, but we were the new kids on the block and, there was really only one company that sort of had a monopoly ish.

Kelly Kennedy: It sounds very specialized.

Ross Huartt: It is. And it's, it's under the radar. You know, everyone, everyone knows about the banking sector because you have Wolf of Wall Street and you have all these sexy movies about banking. Tell me a sexy movie about insurance. Right. But I can tell you now that it is very much just as sexy as banking is when you get down to it.

And so. Fort Mac. So we actually got some really large ones like the airport claim, for example. So our team was responsible for facilitating getting the airport up and operational as soon as possible, being critical infrastructure, and we actually got in there first because of that. And it was, yeah, it was, it was an excellent experience.

I was boots on the ground with the team and, you know, I was, It was sort of the first, and I still remember to this day. So we were, we had work coming in. We had team members up there. I was sat in a Fort McMurray condo in the middle of town. Still had a little insurance adjusters book. They don't issue them anymore.

Probably because people like me pestered everyone, but I literally would get up in the morning and sit with my book and I would email everyone in that personally and so again, I'm not saying there was strategy. It was just sales can be a numbers game, and you got to reach out to 10 to get one.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

And so, you know, you hit on something that I talk about on the show all the time, because we live in a time where people want to sit back and they just want the phone to ring, but what they don't recognize is, is that we still require active marketing. You got to be proactive, not reactive, and if you're sitting around waiting for someone to call you because you put out an ad, you know, the problem is you got to get them on their worst day. They got to be actively looking for you.

If you do what Ross is doing, he's getting ahead of them. He's introducing himself before there's a problem so that when the problem happens, they already know who to call. It's Ross's brochure that's on the desk, right? Is that yeah,

Ross Huartt: And you do both, you do it before, and then when it happens, you remind me, are you there?

Kelly Kennedy: Like you don't wait, right? And we live in a time where so many people want to sit and wait for their phone to ring, but it's just the wrong approach.

Ross Huartt: It is. And you know, I go back to, the amount of times sales opportunities have arisen through non traditional sales opportunity avenues, you know, I'm a big believer in passive forward.

And so I will always try and help people if I can, like from. From I'll give you an example. We had a guy come around to knocked on my door and he was like, Oh, you know, I'm here. Would you like your windows cleaned or booking? And funnily enough, I was like, the wife had just been saying she wanted that done because we'd lived here two years.

It hadn't been done. And I was like, I was like, look, he did. Yes. I'll take it. And he was like, given is given as a sales pitch. I was like, stop, stop, stop. And he got talking and I asked about the business, of course, and he said, Oh yeah, I started it like six months ago. This and the other, I was like, Oh, I didn't realize it was yours.

I was, I said, you should have started with that because I still wanted it. But you, and then, like I said, I was happy to help, and you ran us through what he was doing. And I was happy to make some introductions to some bigger people, bigger companies that might utilize them. And again, there's no benefit.

There's no like immediate benefit to me. You know, should, should you expect one? But again, I've become a bit of a hippie thanks to my wife a little bit in terms of call it karma, call it whatever you want, but I feel like you get what you put out.

Kelly Kennedy: I agree.

Ross Huartt: And it's, you're willing to help. I don't know. You never know five years down the line, he might turn around, come back and be like, Oh, by the way, I remember you, you know, you just never know.

And so that's how I always. Try to act,

Kelly Kennedy: You know, like being in oil and gas, like I've been in industrial oil and gas for a lot of years and it's small, you know, like you, it looks like this gigantic industry, but really you end up dealing with the same people over and over and over again. You know, like industry is a lot smaller when you take it down to the individual connections.

And yeah, a hundred percent, you know, you want to leave, you want to leave good vibes wherever you go, because they do come back around.

Ross Huartt: The biggest thing. Honestly, the biggest, what I've found interesting. And it's, it's, I guess the weirdest, the hardest bit is, and I'm again, celebrities have it much worse, but you have found like.

There's an element, I don't know if it's jealousy, but I seem to have like, there's a, I seem to have created enemies in certain areas and I, and I don't truly believe warranted. Like, I don't have any animosity towards them, but I feel as though there's been some disproportionate, like, I don't know if it's because of the public, the public facing side of what I'm pushing and, you know, I'm always sharing positivity, but it's definitely gone.

People are odd like that, and so, I mean, because I'm the type of person, and again, back to an ADHD thing, the desire, the desire to be liked, like I can live with not being liked, but I, but my brain needs to know why, right? Like if you don't, I'm okay if you don't like me, but what is it you don't like?

And a lot of the times I find myself in this feels like a bit of Narnia sometimes.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, I, you know what? That happens to everybody though, Ross. Like, the reality is, it's like you're a, you're a C E O . Yeah, of course. People are gonna hate you just because you're a C E O. They don't have to know why.

Ross Huartt: That's fair. Fair right's. Fair, fair point.

Kelly Kennedy: Like, you know, unfortunately, we live in a time where people's instead of pointing at themselves, which is where the finger needs to be pointing, you know, like the reality is, if you're unhappy with where you're at in your life, yeah. Maybe some external circumstances got you there.

You can make choices that get you out. Only you, you know, if you're waiting for other people to make those choices for you, you're going to be waiting a long time, you know, like you have to, you have to look at yourself if you want change in your life. And, you know, the fact that Ross is a CEO and he, he has, he has pointed the finger at himself, took responsibility and, and did that for himself.

Right. And you can do that too. But unfortunately, Ross, there's a lot of people that. You know, they don't know that or they don't see that, or it's easier to blame other people than it is to make that change in their life. Right. And you can't control it.

Ross Huartt: For sure.

I mean, one of my YPO colleagues, friends, connections, you know, I remember said to me, well, I was called the man, it's a, I think it's a poem or sonnet called the man in the arena.

And if you ever look it up, but essentially the story behind it is very much that it's easy to, to criticize and throw stones at the man in the arena, the one doing the fight, but if you're not in the arena. You don't get to say that really.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. It's really hard. Yeah, totally. It just comes down to accountability, right?

The reality is that there's a lot of people that it's, you know, for whatever reason in their life, they didn't learn accountability, and so it's easier to blame other people when things aren't going right in their life than it is to look at the choices they've made to get there. Right. And I've made a lot of shit choices.

I will be the first to say I've made a lot of poor choices. But at one point in my life, I realized that I need to be accountable to myself and I turned it around. And you know, you can too, if that's you.

Ross Huartt: Agreed. And like I said to you before this. This is the beauty. This is the one thing I, that's why I tried to be a bit, a little bit vulnerable, call it on LinkedIn, because I'm very cognizant of like on Instagram feed, everyone's always just showing the best bits of life.

And like, whether you know that or not, it's just a false bar. And so that's why I do like to share, like, whether it be struggles, whether it be, you know, just like, cause life is not perfect with roses all the time. And now, sure, you're going to go on LinkedIn and moan about your bad day. No, but like, I don't want people, you want people to understand the humanity side of it all that, like, just my job is to be positive and glass half full.

But just like every human, some days you're like, you just don't have the energy for that. So I like to share that though, because I want people to know that I'm not always like this.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. No, totally. Totally. Like the reality is, you know, if all you're looking at is LinkedIn and seeing the beautiful what I forget, I think I had a guest called Tash Jefferies and she's, she's a rock star.

Like emotional intelligence, and I think she called it beautiful, happy people syndrome or something like that is the way it's in post. But it's, yeah, it's so fake. Right. And the reality is, is like, that's not people's lives, but that's, that's what you see. And so you start to believe that that's their life.

But the reality is we're all, we all have struggles. We all have bad days. We all have days. We don't want to get out of bed and we all have rockstar days. Right. And it's just. You have to understand it's not, what you're seeing online is not the full picture.

Ross Huartt: Correct. Correct. Absolutely. I mean, it's like my, like, I always get comments on, you know, traveling seems glamorous if you don't do it, but it's really not.

Like it becomes like, going through the airport is systematic. It's just, it becomes part of your, like, and to be honest, in a weird, in a weird way, the four hour flight to Toronto has become like a little, like I use it as like a little haven. Right now you can call me, I've got four hours to myself uninterrupted.

Like it's, it's like, you don't get that anywhere else. So I don't know if that's sad or a tip, but no.

Kelly Kennedy: It's a great time to catch up on your favorite podcasts.

Ross Huartt: No, for sure. That's it for me. I'm going to see this podcast moving forward now, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. No, we you know, with one of my clients I work with, one of the executives there did 90, 000 hours last year of flights, or sorry, not 90, 000 hours, 90, 000 kilometers.

And I was like, Oh my gosh, like,

Ross Huartt: Yeah, I, I mean, I don't, I, cause I'm, cause I'm trying to be Mr. Sustainable, but I was over a hundred thousand last year. Wow.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. That like, it sounds glamorous, but that's bloody exhausting.

Ross Huartt: That's a lot. That's huge. That's like, on average, two flights a week. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Now, I'll admit that my travel hasn't been as much this summer because I've done a lot of Alberta focus and with EcoClaim, a lot of it's been virtual because of the London connections and U. S. But I've quite enjoyed that really. But it's allowed me to actually give more attention to Alberta, if you will, because you sometimes forget your, your home turf a little bit with all the travel.

Kelly Kennedy: So, okay. So I want to, I want to stick on, I want to get into ecoclaims. Let's get back to MBC group quickly. So, you know, you've had amazing growth, seven locations in seven years, right? Like that's crazy. Like, what has it been like to be part of a company growing that, but not just be part of it, to be head of a company growing at that rate.

What has that been like for you?

Ross Huartt: A whirlwind.

Yeah, you don't the beauty of it for the first five years as I didn't have time to take stock and be aware of it. It was just happening. And that's a new record. I say just, I mean, there's a lot of work goes into that. So just happening is the wrong word in terms of the effort.

But what I mean is you weren't really thinking, oh, this is a lot, this is happening. You're just so focused on achieving whatever target or goal it is that you've had to do that specific time. And so we essentially grew, organically to around 50, 50 consultants in the, in our QS group and you know, at the start of the journey, I think I was driven by, and again, I was a driven person to begin with, but then when you get that, when you get slapped with a lawsuit that is disingenuous, it sort of lit another fire and, and I used that as energy and sort of went off, well, just went after their customers really.

And it worked. We just made sure, I just made sure I provided brilliant service and client care. It sounds so simple, but the one thing service firms don't do very well often is service. What a concept, right? It's true. You know this. You're in business development.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Well, the relationship gets neglected is what it is.

Ross Huartt: Correct. That's what I mean. Client service.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. And the main reason behind that is, is that most organizations are having their account managers do other jobs. Like they're doing multiple jobs within the organization right up to operations. And so when you take, when you have too many people wearing too many hats.

Something's got to give and you don't want that something to be your account management.

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I interrupted you.

Ross Huartt: Oh, no, not at all. So yeah, we grew organically and then I looked and, you know, The, well, there's actually a funny story behind this one as well. How, I'm not saying it's why it started, but it's already given me the push to go ahead. So we'd, we'd grown to around 50 people and we had interest from , a U S firm that wanted to enter Canada.

And, you know, I distinctly remember meeting. And you know, Americans have a different style of business. I'll be, you know, being British, you can see it. They're not, and again, they're a bit more brash than Canadians as a population, if you will. And so anyway, I met with these and, you know, they essentially, I liked what they said.

I understand that their business model was selling more services that customers needed, so more services to the same customers and, but they were pretty brash. They essentially said if I didn't sell to them, they would buy the competitor and run me out of business. And so again, the fierce, the competitive and protective side of me sort of came out and I'd already thought about expanding.

But I came out that meeting being like, okay, well we, I've got about a year before the, by the competitor, which turned out to be almost one hundred percent on. And I left that meeting and decided, identified several firms people I'd worked with, sort of older gentlemen that didn't have exits beginning with a DF technical and environmental firm in Alberta, and I essentially decided I was going to introduce engineering and environmental services to our insurance clients because those are used regularly. And, I'd worked on enough losses where we were managing those professionals. And I thought to myself, well, I'm managing them so why not bring them under our banner and provide a, try and provide a better service with more accountability.

And so that's really, it sounds, what's funny is it sounds in it, it doesn't sound innovative, but it was at the time in insurance, like there was firms somewhat doing it, but I was the, I think I was one of the first in Canada to bring that together and so I went out my way and over from 2018 till 2022, we acquired five different companies across Canada.

So we are, so we ended up offices in Vancouver Calgary, Edmonton, Regina Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa. And then we have satellites in the Atlantic region.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Like, you know, it's so funny because you know, when I asked you, what is it like to be part of that? And you say, you know, a whirlwind, I remember having a conversation with another guest and same thing that, you know, he, he was running a billion dollar mortgage firm and it became a billion dollar mortgage firm in just a number of years, like five years type thing.

Yeah. I remember asking him like, like, what was that like? How do you even keep up? He's like, just one step at a time. You just like, it's, it, it feels like unbelievable when you're in it. I imagine this, this is about the same.

Ross Huartt: Yeah, you know, there's no yes, it's like false peaks. Like I said, you know, there's no, and I think that's actually inherent.

I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs and more heavy, and I think it's a, it's a good and a bad thing, so it provides the drive. But being, and maybe take it with a pinch of salt, the word, but there's lack of satisfaction. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you've got this, like,

Kelly Kennedy: It's happening so quickly, you don't even have the ability to appreciate it.

Ross Huartt: No, no, no. It's more like, what keeps you, what keeps Elon Musk going? Why would Elon Musk create... A try and go to Mars, try and create a company that goes underground to solve traffic problems, create the, the world's largest electric vehicle company. Like the list goes on. He doesn't need to do any of those.

He's he's the richest man in the world, but it's got nothing to do with monetary drive. It's like, there's just something that doesn't like you have to, there's something you have to do. You, there needs to be more, you need to build something more and there's no rationale behind it, and that's what drives me is that, that's why we've launched EcoClaim because we're building some, it's an offshoot of MBC and, and it's I'm invigorated by the building component of it.

And so that's really what becomes the drive, but it's also a bit of a sickness because like you said, I'm only 35 and we've built a company in seven years of this size. And like, But whoop dee do.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, what's next?

Ross Huartt: Right? That's what I the sickness. Like I'm totally, I'm so appreciative.

Kelly Kennedy: I have the same sickness.

I feel, I totally get it. I totally get it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think once you've built one and you've built one successfully, you look at it as like, well, I could do this again, or I could do something different. And you're right. It does become about just something that you feel like you need to do. And I think too, once you've hit a, like, you know, you talked about Elon Musk, once you have a certain level of success.

It doesn't make sense to quit like just internally you're you're not like quitting like even if even if you just stopped and you're like, yeah, I've made 250 billion dollars or whatever, right? But then it's like, well, what am I going to do with my time?

Ross Huartt: Purpose.

Kelly Kennedy: You need purpose.

Ross Huartt: Yeah, and that's what really it boils down to, I think.

So whilst I say unsatisfied, it's getting up in the morning and having a purpose and whether, and, if that purpose can make the world a better place, even in a microcosm of 150 people, but that to me is worthwhile. And so, you know, that's, that's why we do what we do. And so we, so yeah, we grew, I mean, again, that's the shorter version, but essentially integrated those companies.

No, there was no external investment. This was done through having an excellent executive team to help me navigate it again, bringing an experienced people in our chairman and COO gentlemen that have been in the executive hot seat longer than I've been alive. So, whilst I've got the, for lack of a better term, the piss and vinegar and drive that you need.

I was five years ago, I was very rough around the edges, shall we say, and I'd say, thanks to ensuring good mentorship, I think those edges of slowly, and maybe they not quite agree with this when they listen to it, but I like to think some of those, some of those edges have been worn down a little bit now.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, I've had some great mentors in my life too. And I totally, I totally get that. Right. It's like, you need someone to level you out a little bit.

Ross Huartt: Yeah, you do. Absolutely. And I've been so appreciative. And again, I look back when, when so our chairman was my original business partners, brother, I acquired the shares of my business partner a few years ago.

So, but our chairman stayed on now he'd been an executive with, with some very large companies and had been around the block and really I think saw something in me and wanted to help support me do this. So I owe him a lot, a lot of credit for that. But I look back at some of the first board meetings we had versus the board meetings that we have now.

And I asked myself, how the hell did he sit through those meetings? Like with like, cause I don't think even now in my capacity, I could have sat and had a productive board meeting with the me of seven years ago, nevermind my business partner, and so it's interesting. I've, so when you appreciate someone who has always been at this level when it started bringing you with them or like bringing, helping you get to sort of the same understanding as them.

And it's that mentorship, the patience required of it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. And you know what though, but you're conscious of it.

Ross Huartt: Now we look hindsight, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Well, I know, but like the reality is the job has been done. Cause you were aware, you're very aware of who you were then versus who you are now, what those changes are and what the effective efficiency increases have been right.

Ross Huartt: Yes, absolutely.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. I'd say, I'd say he did his job well,

Ross Huartt: He's still with us. So it's, It's

Kelly Kennedy: And you're open, right? There's a lot of, there's a lot of, you know, founders and presidents and stuff who are very closed minded, right? I know the right way of doing this.

I've recognized very early on. I know nothing. I, you know, I look at it as I was an expert until yesterday, right? I'm an expert in business development until yesterday. The reality is if I stop learning today, I'm going to be screwed tomorrow. So I always go into everything thinking like, yeah, I have a good idea, but there's always more to learn and that doesn't matter whether that's in like client facing stuff or whether that's running my own organization or whether that's just me as a parent.

Like . Yes, I recognize that I know a lot, but I, you know, I have to always keep learning or I'm gonna end up behind.

Ross Huartt: Correct. And, that's what I, it's always questions and asking. I do lots of that 'cause I genuinely want to understand like, again, what I'm very thankful of through the YPO, through MBCs, Customers, and the Business Council of Alberta, I get, I say access, but I do access and exposure to these individuals that have achieved far more than I have even at similar ages.

And so again, not that you're judging per se, but learning from them and hearing what they've done and yeah, that's, that's because it goes back to what you said, all the challenges, so I, I don't think I can say the name, but anyway, one of the, it's either an institutional house builder in Alberta and I met with one of the, current president, who I guess , goes back generations.

And then he was telling us the story of what happened in the seventies and eighties with the recession and what have you and bank low and, and debt loads and, and the stories he was telling, I was like, it was like just repeating what I was going through. And I'm thinking to myself, so it didn't matter, you know, 50 years ago, businesses had the same challenges and people had to come up, overcome the same adversity in business to be successful.

So whilst the playing fields changed, generally the rules haven't. And so that again, but it, but it, but it gives you a little bit of, I'm not going to, I'm not sure if hope's the right word, but you know, when you've got business problems and sometimes things can seem overwhelming or insurmountable, and then when you hear people haven't gone through those challenges for longer periods of time, because you just see them now as the successful person they are, you don't see the trials and tribulations they had to go through.

So when you hear it, It just gives you that extra humanity side,

Right?

Kelly Kennedy: That's right. Yeah, no, totally. And I think, I think you, you're absolutely right. I think that a lot of the problems we're facing are problems that most business owners have faced throughout time, right? Like for the most part. Yeah. While the service offerings have changed while the people, you know, are a little different.

The reality is, is we're all overcoming the same problems to keep operations moving forward.

Ross Huartt: But the difference is, a lot of businesses, and it depends, again, if you meet someone and you say, how's business? Oh yeah, it's good. It's good. Standard answer. And it's like, you know, when you have a connection or you have a level of trust, people will tell you what's really going on.

And because they're not, cause like whenever anyone tells me business is good, I mean, you're lying. Because there's always like business is literally solving problems as an executive. Your job is not to blame. It's situations arise. And your first question is, what are we doing to solve this? Yeah. And the best people are the ones that learn to solve those.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

No, absolutely. Well, it just goes right back to the accountability thing. Right.

Ross Huartt: What I mean, the solving piece is really where I've always been one to my chairman says, I like to build mousetraps and sell them, so it just depends what type of mice you're trying to catch, but I'll build one.

And so in 2000, again, I go back to the chain link connection thing here. So I got, I submitted to speak at the 2020 AGM for the CIQS. The Canadian Institute of Quantity Surveyors, and so I wanted to do a unique topic. And so I didn't really know, I knew about sustainability. It was, you know, university.

I understood all the terminology, but didn't really understand it in practice. And so I decided to do a propose a seminar on sustainability within insurance because insurance restoration in Canada is, you know, is a 15 billion market and just restoration work and ensure the insurance companies have played a huge part in our lives.

It's one of the only industries, like everything, if you look around everything in your room there in your home office is insurance. So insurance literally touches everything and people forget this, right?

And the, so I decided to give it on that because it was a bit unique, different perspective, but of course, me being me, I didn't want to waste an opportunity to, you know, can make a connection with a client.

And so one of our biggest customers at the time, Aviva had publicly announced both out of London that they had ambitions to be net zero by 2050, but as with all the ambitions that get announced by executives, that executive is not going to be there in 2050 when it has to come to pass. And so, but don't get me wrong.

It's meaningful change, good for them for, for being the instigators because the top of the food chain have to care about sustainability and climate change and reducing our carbon footprint because if they don't, none of the below will. And so they'd announced this net zero by 2050 and so I saw that and I said, well, I'm giving a seminar on this exact topic to a group of construction professionals.

So there's, there's, a reason for, for Aviva to be interested in presenting. So me being me again, little old Ross reached out to the CEO of Aviva. I knew he was British, so I leveraged that a little bit, and to his credit, he got back to me. But again, often people, people just won't make that jump because, and I'm sure they get lots of useless stuff.

So you've got to try and be a little bit unique with, and short with your approach, make it valuable, right? The amount of LinkedIn reach out. So I get it that are like, well I said that to you when you reached out. 'cause my usual is they say, oh, can we speak with you? And then it's, by the way, it's $2,000 to come on

And I'm like...

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I don't, I don't understand that side of it to be honest. You know, the reality is it's like, you know, I'm happy that you have come on my show why in the world would I charge you for it?

Ross Huartt: Well, that's, yeah, no agree. And I'm happy to come on because it's a good forum for, you know, to speak and, and tell stories and,

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely right.

You know, the reality is there's benefit to both of us from this show. Like, I don't see why there has to be a charge for it too.

Ross Huartt: No, no, agreed. And yeah, so I invited them on. Now he couldn't make it. So he actually sent his his senior vice president along, who again happened to be another Brit. And so we got, we got connected, started chatting.

He presented for five minutes during that on what they were doing. And I didn't think anything of it. And so a few months passed and then all of a sudden I got an invite from, from Procurement to be involved in essentially, we're looking to benchmark their, their supply chains, carbon emissions, because that was step one.

And we were the only service firm invited to that, but that was because of me having invited Paul, the SVP at the time onto this call. So if I hadn't done that. Again, the sequence and hindsight piece, right? And so we're going, and I'm on this call and most of it's contractors, right? And a lot of restoration, restoration is quite fragmented.

So there's some large companies, but then there's a lot of smaller ones. And again, it's no secret that the sophistication level with construction, there's definitely a curve. The bigger you are the more sophisticated you have to be with any business. And so a lot of these contractors and some of them have said this to me, so it's not me being derogatory by any means, but they'd said that they could barely spell ESG, right?

Nevermind provide data to insurance company on what it is and so I'm on this call and I'm just, my light bulb was just going off because quantity survey is one of the things we can do and there's international measurement standards for it is quantify carbon in construction, so the embodied carbon of a project, the carbon release of a project, the carbon footprint.

So there's, there's international status. So we do that as a service. And so I'm on this call and I said to myself, well, we've, we've done sustainability consulting on a government project. Very expensive, much larger, but the government. So, but I looked at it and I said, well, we attend, we appraise your, we appraise your claims.

So we go and we say, this is damaged, here's the market value. We're quantifying the damage and the cost. So I emailed the executive saying, well, we've done this before and I've got a system here. We could just essentially quantify the carbon footprint of your claims, your scope, there's scope three. If you understand greenhouse gas emissions and, how that's tracked.

And they loved it. And so I said, well, you know, we, as a service, we'll do our regular work, but we'll also do this. And so that's the short one. And then the BC floods happened. You may remember, I think it was December, 2021. The Vancouver had the one in 500 year flood. Not everyone in 500 years now, as you've seen on the news regularly, but that's what they call it.

And we got a call from the executive, and they were like, well, there's no better time to do it than now. Cause if their exact words were, and I'll always remember, I think it's very brave for an executive at a billion dollar company to do this. But he, said that there's a tendency in big corporations.

We'll talk about it. We'll talk about it. And everyone's afraid to do any action because of potential consequences. And he's like, if we don't do it now, we're never going to do it. And so he pulled the trigger. And so before you knew it, EcoClaim was born? And we did a pilot and it was hugely successful, even with all the challenges, like the recycling facility in Vancouver shut down.

So how are we going to mitigate waste when there's no way to send it? So we, anyway, we worked out that all worked out, and we, I think we had like a 69% of the waste on a hundred claims avoided landfill. Now the average recycling of a construction project or renovation demolition in Canada is 16%.

Kelly Kennedy: I believe it.

Yeah.

Ross Huartt: But that's atrocious because it's just laziness.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Ross Huartt: And so, but what I learned through that process was, was it was successful. Insurance companies didn't really want another thing, another expense on a claim. They already pay for engineers. They already pay for forensic accountants. They already pay for adjusters.

They didn't, they didn't want to have to pay for another sustainability service, irrespective of, especially because it wasn't regulated yet. It's about to be thankfully, but not then it wasn't. Yeah. And they, and so I sat back and so whilst the pilot was a success, it just didn't stick as well as I was hoping it would.

And so I sat back and I said to myself, well, how, what, how do we bring this to market and solve these problems? How do we solve, the problem for the insurers of the, so what, like, why should they care? And we also need to make sure it doesn't cost more in terms of the actual work, but also in terms of the services on it.

And so we created a training certification body that will train restoration contract or contractors. We've just aimed this at restoration for now because it's our core market. Essentially train them on our eco claim process, which is minimizes what they have to do because we understand construction and restoration.

So we've structured in such a way that it's minimal extra effort doesn't cost more, and we've proven this time and time again, and is independently verified by a third party waste collector. So they essentially sort of put the waste into certain bins. They're trained through all this. This is waste management.

There's lots of modules to it. So I'm oversimplifying, but in essence, and essentially that data is then fed into a software that we've developed, EcoClaim tracks, as it's called, and so we've essentially created a full dashboard that tracks all the waste on a specific project. Insurers can see it by region, by contractor, by branch.

And because the process is going through ISO certification. We ultimately are looking, all the carbon reduced or avoided, we are looking to capture voluntary credits as a result of those activities.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Okay.

Ross Huartt: Not only do we have a training certification group, because you have to have that for the supply chain, because in order for insurers to track their supply chain, the supply chain has to be actively involved.

And so we've created that a dashboard that they can essentially seal the data in one place. We've introduced AI into that so we can see so it can analyze trends, analyze infrastructure in the region and determine what's sufficient and what isn't. And then the carbon exchange for us, not only do we get to track and inventorize what they're doing, but we can then essentially monetize the efforts that are down the line.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Yeah. It. Is there, is there like with the carbon credits that you guys are like able to identify then it does that, does that equal cash back for your customers essentially?

Ross Huartt: Yeah. So the voluntary carbon markets, like last year in North America, around 2. 5 billion voluntary credits were exchanged.

Now we have something called complying credits, complying or complying credits are essentially government certified processes and those are worth real tax credits. Voluntary carbon credits are essentially companies have captured it under, there's lots of different standards and that's the problem. So there's a few reputable companies like ISO and gold standard that, that are generally good, but of course there's hundreds of others that, so the issue with them becomes the, is it greenwashed?

How would you, how would you support that? The voluntary carbon credit is real and the value of them is largely based on the story behind them as well. And so that, that piece is in its infancy because we, we've got it off the ground, but we have to do the training and roll out the software. And we've just launched with Gore Mutual National Insurance Canada.

They are the first launch partner and we have several others in the works. And so we're really creating a bit of a wave here. And the government have come out and said by 2025, financial institutions, banks, and insurers have to report their scope three emissions, which is their supply chain and claims.

So we started out doing this because our customers said they wanted it, but it's going to become now legislative changes two, three years away, which I mean, it's excellent for us because now, whether you want it or not, do it or not. The government is saying you're going to have to, so our products a bit, you know, you're going to need it, whether you like it.

Kelly Kennedy: No, it's very forward thinking.

Ross Huartt: And that was just serendipitous. Like I said, the but the insurance industry as a whole, I've got to say, I've talked to lots of insurers and, and the insurance industry really is getting ahead of sustainability and doing what they can, like the, and quite rightly though, cause they respond to the, the events behind it.

So when there's increased fires everywhere, increased floods due to climate change, they're paying the bill. So they'd be silly not to be at the forefront of trying to prevent it getting worse.

Kelly Kennedy: True. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, I don't think they make a whole lot of money when an entire city burns down.

Ross Huartt: No, not at all. Well, and the consumer pays because rates go up. They're businesses, right? Yeah. And so for us, that's the next big one is essentially scaling a software training and carbon exchange. And that's, that's, that's what's in the horizon here.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, that's amazing, dude. Yeah. That's really cool.

That's really cool. I'm excited to see kind of what's coming next from you guys. Yeah, absolutely. So if like if someone wanted to get a hold of you, you know, they want to engage your services, who are your target clients and then how would they reach you?

Ross Huartt: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so 60% of our business ties to insurance companies.

So we were. Respond to loss events. And so it's quite a niche market with a niche customer base. So, I mean, they know how to contact us through our website. But of course, our other 40% of our business is we work for developers providing civil engineering. We work for large institutions everything from oil and gas to cement.

Designing industrial facilities. I always like to, I always like to use this one. So yeah, you may know the cement factory in Canmore as you drive out. Well, we acquired a company called Studez Engineering. Last just over a year and a half ago and so that is one of their designs. They did that. So I wasn't born when that was designed, but that is one of one of our projects.

And so every, so essentially everything from your bog standard condo buildings, all the way up to large industrial facilities.

Kelly Kennedy: Very cool. And so, so any type of of, of engineering and design, you guys can basically handle. Correct. Yeah. All right. Well, man, this has been a heck of an interview. Really appreciate it, Ross.

Thank you so much. Yeah, this is it.

Ross Huartt: And I'll make sure you're my first guest on my new podcast when it gets released.

Kelly Kennedy: I would be honored to be on your podcast and I would love to chat business development with you on it.

Ross Huartt: Absolutely. That's what I want to talk about.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. This has been episode 52 of the business development podcast.

We've been graced today by Ross Huartt , President CEO of MBC group. It's been absolutely amazing to have you Ross. Thanks so much for coming on and until next time. We will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization. Is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.