Patience & Perseverance with Justin LaRocque

Patience & Percevierence with Justin LaRocque

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 12 of the Business Development Podcast. On today's episode, we are interviewing the CEO of ROC Advisors, Justin LaRocque who is a seasoned entrepreneur, also a chartered accountant, and is going to provide you an absolute ton of financial advice for growing your business. 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 The Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello. Welcome back to the Business Development Podcast. You were listening to episode 12. And on today's episode, we have the CEO of Rock Advisors with us, Justin La Rock. Justin developed a passion for driving change and helping people and organizations reach their goals and objectives.

His education and early career background is in finance with a chartered accountant designation from PwC and several senior finance positions in both public and private companies with revenues ranging from 5 million all the way to 3 billion. He has led finance teams with over 250 million in cost transformation over three years.

Led a company that doubled its revenues in a four year period, started and sold a successful condo management company, and did financial reporting for a public company during a hostile takeover. He has recently founded ROC Advisors in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Justin, how are you today?

Justin LaRocque: I'm good. I, I didn't realize it was such a mouthful.

That piece there. I gotta cut down and streamline.

Kelly Kennedy: Holy . Well, it, it's hard to be that successful, Justin. You gotta, you gotta take it back a notch.

Justin LaRocque: Well, thank you. Yeah, no, I, I'm doing great and excited to be on the podcast. Thanks for having me.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh man, it's absolutely great to have you here. You know, I've been following, I've been following you for a little bit.

You know, you reached out to me what was it, two, three weeks ago, kind of just made an introduction, let me know that you were kind of getting into the video space and you'd actually reached out just asking me for some tips, and I was like, dude, I'm new . I'll help you with with what I can help you with.

But, you know, I'm learning too. We're both kind of on this on this journey together. But kind of in our discussions, there's been a lot of great discussions and I just wanna say thank you so much for your early support of the podcast, Justin, and for reaching out and, and showing up as a guest. You know, at this point, you're my third guest and I know that that can always be a little bit of a risk.

And I appreciate you trusting me today to to do my best.

Justin LaRocque: Yeah, no, I'm excited to be here. Yeah, and I, I mean, I reached out and I think the, the biggest thing I've learned is you learn by doing, right? So even if you are only a week or two ahead of me, you've already learned what you know, you know, things I haven't learned.

So that's why I reached out and yeah, no, thanks for having me.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, absolutely. So , can you tell me a little bit about ROC Advisors? I think this one's kind of cool. I'm really happy to have you here today because, you know, as a business owner we know we know what we know. We know that we need money.

We know our best, we think we understand how to manage the money, but then things will come up. And one of the videos that you, you talk about a lot, and frankly I watched your poll on LinkedIn and frankly got like, what? Like it was like 80 to one people wanted to learn about working capital, right?

Justin LaRocque: Absolutely. That's the lifeblood.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Right. Because most of us business owners, like, it's like, oh, we don't wanna know. We don't necessarily wanna know the balance sheet. We don't necessarily, you know, we understand that we need a profit loss and we need to be making profit most of the time. Right? But when it comes down to working capital, you know what I mean?

I even tell my clients this is, this is a risk. This is a risk of business development service. And I let my clients know that there's a potential that we could be so successful that we kill you. , that's, that's truly a risk of good business development if they're not being smart with their money, and specifically not being smart with working capital, because it doesn't take long to win this really great contract when suddenly you're over your head.

Your expenses for employee costs and, and who knows, just the cost of product go through the roof and next thing you know, your money's not coming in for, like you said, 90, 120 days in some cases with oil and gas in Alberta. And yeah, we're in trouble real quick. So I would love to just maybe take a a minute and chat with you about working capital.

Justin LaRocque: Yeah, for sure. So I think the thing about working capital, particularly in, in Western Canada and, and specifically in Alberta, you know, a lot of companies work with the large businesses in the oil and gas sector or, or a trickle down company that that works for them. And the big thing that you find is a company will work for them.

They'll have early success, and inevitably that oil and gas company will say, Hey, you know, I know you're a $2 million business. Would you like to be a $10 million business? You know, Hey, I've got these three contracts and you've really crushed it. And, and so they'll reach out kind of say, Hey, you know, here's the three projects.

Do you wanna do them? And there's not a business owner that I've met yet that can say, well, you know, , , I, I don't think I want that work. So, so inevitably, and, and this is the exciting part of entrepreneurship, right? You, you, you live for this moment where you've done such a great job that your customer comes to you and says, Hey, , I want you to do more for me.

So now what happens though is inevitably that business, you know, they were used to a 2 million business where when they had a receivable that maybe came in a little bit later, it wasn't the end of the world. But now when you take that and you have a large project, the working capital really needs to be considered because previously, you know, you might have had to float a hundred K or 200 k a payroll while that cash came in from that big project.

But now if that's a 2 million payroll, that, that's where you really start to get into issues. So, so that's where we've really seen a lot of.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, for sure. You know what, yeah, I've, I've seen this plenty of times, man. Like I, you know, I've been in, I was in service-based industry for a long time. You know that me and you've kind of had that conversation.

My background is very much in we used to sell, you know, quality inspectors. In this case with Solace, I work with Solace and we do safety personnel and payment is always a challenge, you know, like it would just be great if companies would, would pay on time, but that just is not, it's never really the case.

And I think one of the questions that I had for you today, which I think would be incredibly valuable for my listeners, is what do you do when you have payment terms with a client and say like, you know, you got net 60 days, or net net, net 90 days, or whatever, but they're pushing you out to like one twenty or one fifty.

 God knows how long. And you know, like you said, you're a smaller company, you're running on tight ca tight tight cash flow, and you're hoping that your receivables are gonna come in and suddenly you're in trouble. Do you have any advice for those companies? What, what should they be doing?

Justin LaRocque: Yeah, so, so I think there's, there's three things that, that I would definitely recommend and they come at three stages of the journey.

So the first one is, if you have far enough line of sight on that, is really looking to engage your bank and say, Hey, I have this project, I am looking for some bulge or bridge loans, which basically is a, a short term loan intended to be that 90, 180 days. And you gotta be very specific in that application though, right?

Because the bank's gonna want to say, okay, I'm not just giving this to you for any old reason. You gotta be able to say, well, here's Project A, here's the payroll that I expect to go out the door. Here's maybe the inventory I gotta purchase for it. And so, and this is when my payment terms are, and so here's what I'm expecting to close it off.

So, so that's probably the most prudent methodology to do is, is to be able to look a little bit further out. Now, as we know in business , that's not always the case. Yeah. So a secondary option that you do have and this one you do have to check with the customer a little bit or at least fuel the discussion is to factor that invoice.

So, so that is a service where you can, basically, as soon as that invoice is produced, you can engage a company that will basically take the invoice. Front you the cash on that invoice. And then in turn, when the, when the cash is actually received, they'll take a cut of it and, and that's how the transaction essentially works.

Now, the nuance there that you gotta be careful with is with a factoring company. Some companies don't want you to do that. It's seen as a little bit less credible. I think it's becoming a little bit more accepted in the world. But, but that definitely is something to look at. And then the third one, and I actually didn't talk about this in, in the videos that you referenced, there Kelly, but one of the big things that I would tell people is specifically for large clients and specifically in the oil and gas sector, so I'm getting, you know, a little bit targeted in this comment, but the big companies, they have such large accounts receivable and payable teams that they are actually pretty good about paying on their payment terms.

The nuance though is you've gotta make sure that that invoice is a hundred percent correct. Mm-hmm. and that it's been received. Because I can't tell you the number of times that I went and revisited an invoice and said, well, how did I get to 80 days? Like their payment terms are 45. Yeah. And inevitably when you go and look, you're like, oh, geez.

Like I sent the invoice in late. Or the big one that these guys will do is if you got a 45 day payment, they'll wait till day 40 . They'll say, oh hey, you know what? The address is wrong. You're gonna have to resubmit. And now we're at day 90. So, so those would be the three things is really looking at those, those bridge loans.

There is the ability to kind of factor if you do need to. And then also just making sure that when you do actually get ready to send that invoice, it's a hundred percent correct and submitted timely.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, thanks Justin. That's, that's really helpful. Cause I know you don't mean a heck. I, I know I have current clients that have struggled with payment terms and you know, where they have locked in payment terms, but you know how it is, man, Alberta Oil and gas that unfortunately if you're working for some big players, yeah, you're right.

Sometimes they're good but some are not. And sometimes you're getting paid when you're getting paid and I know that that can be a really scary place for a lot of businesses and they didn't expect to get there cuz they thought, well shit, I have the payment terms, why can't I get paid on time and. . It just doesn't always work out that way.

So it's good to know that there are other options. I definitely like that. You touched on factoring. I know that's starting to become a lot more popular. It wasn't for a long time, but it's definitely becoming more popular over time. But I like also that you touched on the fact that it can be a risk. I I wasn't aware that you had to declare that you were doing it.

Is that, or you, is that just a business best practice?

Justin LaRocque: So what would happen technically in that process and there, there are some nuances to this, but in the standard process you would actually assign the receivable to the factoring company. Okay. And so your customer would typically have that

disclosed to them.

Kelly Kennedy: I see. I see. Okay. Yeah, I'd never done it, so I wasn't aware of how it worked, but that actually makes a lot of sense.

Justin LaRocque: Yeah. The other factor that you're gonna have to consider there and again, we're getting into kind of some of the detail, but, but that's, you know, hopefully what the listeners get value out of is when you do that, you would also have to notify any of your financing arms.

Okay. Because they would be able to claim the receivable. And so typically when you sign up for your loans, you're signing a general security agreement, which includes the receivable. So that is another nuance is that you do have to involve the banks. And so I guess probably the biggest thing, you know, is a, is a quick tip for everybody is it's not like you would just turn that arrangement on in one day.

It's definitely gonna take you, you know, 15, 30, 45 days to get that sort of arrangement in place.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Okay. So so just to reiterate kind of what Justin was saying, you know, I mean, if you are going to utilize factoring to cover your receivables, remember it's not an instant fix. Okay? So I, you know what I mean?

You need to be planning for this ahead of time and, and it, it's, that's kind of, that's kind of crappy just from the fact that I think a lot of companies. , by the time they realize that they might need some factoring, they're already incredibly late on that payment term, right? Yeah. So lesson, word for the wise.

Justin's kind of provided you guys a real valuable piece of information here. If you have any concern or you think that you might have a company that may be paying slow or you've heard maybe in the industry that potentially they don't always pay their bills on time and you know that your receivables is gonna be a big deal, that cash flow, keeping up to date is going to be a big issue.

Get ahead of it guys. Get ahead of it. Find some other options whether, you know, Justin, you talk about getting shareholder loans, you talk about potentially liquidating some of your old inventory to try to generate revenue. But if you can get ahead of this, it's going to save you some real headaches, especially if suddenly you find yourself 90 days without payment and you're starting to get yourself in some trouble.

One of the other things, Justin, that you talked about which I also think is very important, and we started implementing cuz I, you know, mean as you know, You've been in operations, you've been a coo. I've also been a, an operations and business development manager for many, many years. And in that case, I, I was also involved in signing plenty of the large contracts for companies and kind of reviewing payment terms and, and doing stuff like that.

So you talked about rejecting offers, and I know for a lot of companies or you know, they're looking at this and they, they just got this great offer from gigantic oil and gas company, gigantic manufacturing company, but the payment terms are garbage. They're like net 90 days and you don't necessarily think about it at the time, but guys, 90 days is a really, really long time to wait to get paid, and that's assuming you're getting paid on time.

Can you talk about when you might wanna reject a job Justin?

Justin LaRocque: Yeah, so I'll, I'll probably interlace two ideas here. So the first one is, you know, when I go into the businesses that I do, the very first tool that I will prepare for them is a cash flow management tool and it's a very simple tool that I'd encourage every owner to do.

And what I want you to do is you take a piece of paper or ideally excel if you're handy with it, and you go week by week and just look out 30 days or 45 days. Okay? So you look out four to six weeks and every week I want you to write in, here's when I roughly should get paid based on the, the revenue that I had in the terms.

So here's the money that should come in my door and here's the money that has to go out the door. So whether it's payroll or paying a loan or a lease. And, and I think that's a really important tool. I, you know, I do it for longer route with a little bit more advanced methodology here in Excel, but any business owner can do that.

And I, and I think it's so critical and that's really gonna set you up so you don't have to factor, you don't have to talk to your banks. And the reason I bring that up is it, it ties back to this question, Kelly, about talking with these customers that have net 90 terms is when you do have that model.

That's gonna allow you to see, Hey, do I have the cash to support this client who's not gonna pay me for 90 days? Because a big flag is the longer some of these payment terms are, is a general construct, the more financially unstable that company may be. That that's just a, a general correlation. You have to think about.

If you have a Net 30 payer, they're probably pretty stable. Mm-hmm. . If you have a net 90 payer, you might want to be paying attention to what that company is doing. And so one of the things, and, and, sorry, I'll just finish the thought there, Kelly. One of the things is when you go into your seasons, particularly if you're a seasonal business where you might only be working for three or four months, really intensely, you can't afford to have that client, that's not gonna pay you to the end of the season because you just won't have the cash.

And by the time you go to factor or bring out that loan or discount your receivables, you'll find you gave away most of the margin on that job.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh man. Yeah, that's , that's, you know, that sucks for a lot of people. I, I really hate to say that cuz you know, I mean, we're dealing with a lot of companies, especially here in Alberta, especially after 2015, you know, like I was in the middle of that mess too, and where, you know what I mean?

Companies kept hitting people up to increase those payment terms. And, you know, people's payment terms went from like net 30 to net 90 overnight and a lot of these companies ended up in a lot of trouble. And I'll tell you, Justin, they're not here anymore. A lot of them aren't here anymore. I watched, I watched Nisku I don't know, you know what I mean?

For most of our listeners are in Canada, but if you're not familiar, Nisku is like the manufacturing hub for Edmonton. We have Edmonton, which is like big downtown city center. And then when you just leave town, there's another kind of city next door called Leduc. And inside of Leduc, there's kind of little sub area called Nisku.

And that's where all the fabrication facilities, manufacturing centers, you know, really industry, that's where industry was. And in 2015 when Canada kind of had a big economic downturn, especially in Alberta, Alberta really got hammered. And that place went from like full occupancy, gigantic manufacturing centers to like I kid you not in about 25, 30 days, it was a ghost town.

There was like half of the business or more was decimated or closed shops. . It was brutal. And yeah, just I remember that time well, Justin, and I know for a fact that I, I was, I was seeing what was happening and what was happening was people's payment terms were getting just like, destroyed. And, and in the case of those big manufacturing centers we're talking millions and millions and millions of dollars not coming in on time.

And it killed a lot of jobs. And it's it can definitely be decimating if your payment terms start to get messed.

Justin LaRocque: Yeah, it's something that, again, like that's where you really wanna be talking with your customers, because again, if they have a blanket policy where they're just changing the terms and you know, back in 15, that, that was just the, the name of the game with the price of oil.

Mm-hmm. There's not much you can do about it. But having said that, I mean, the old adage is true. Squeaky wheel gets the grease. And I would encourage you, again, just as best working capital process, as soon as you're getting close to your payment terms, make sure you reach out to that customer because the number of times that you'll reach out to that customer and they'll say, oh, you know, I was just sending a check out the door. You know, I'll make sure yours is in there. Right. is, is is invaluable. So

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. You know, I mean, it's, it's so funny. I, I was working in, in 15 I was working for a company who, same thing, we had been waiting on this gigantic check, like for the company. It was huge. It, you know what I mean? In the real world, it wasn't too much.

I think it was about half a million dollars, but it was, it was a lot for the size of the company that I was working at the time. And we were waiting and waiting and waiting on this check. And I remember we got the call saying like, Hey, it's ready. We'll put it in the mail. And I remember my boss at the time just looking at me and saying, Kelly, nope.

You're driving to Calgary and we are getting that check . So I hopped in a vehicle, I was in Calgary that afternoon. I came back with half a million dollar check from Calgary. It was, but it was, it was so tight. Everybody was terrified, you know, there, nobody knew quite what to do or what was gonna happen.

And I remember that being a, a pretty triumphant day. . Awesome. So Justin, you know, you have ROC Advisors, it's a, it's a relatively new company you incorporated in January of this year, I believe. 2023. Tell me, what do you wanna do with ROC? What what, what are the services that you guys provide? You're, you're based in Edmonton, Alberta.

You are a Metis certified business. Congratulations. I saw that you got your certification. Was it just yesterday?

Justin LaRocque: Yeah, it was just yesterday.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, well, congratulations. That's awesome Justin. And yeah, I just, I wanna know more about it. I want to know more about customized finance teams. I wanna know more about kind of what your approach is to, to finance and how you might be able to help some of these businesses.

Justin LaRocque: Yeah, for sure. So, so yeah, it's actually been what do we got here? Just under a month that I've been unincorporated actually. So it, it's been a little bit of a wild ride. And, and basically, so my background is actually as a charter to accountant. So I got that at pwc. And then over the last five years, I kind of left that as I was helping the family business work towards an exit of the business and kind of shifted into operational roles of COO and CEO.

But having said that, when Covid came around, it really, a lot of the individuals that were thinking about retiring, you know, it really pushed them more towards that decision. And in the CPA world that, that really became a factor. And so when we looked at it. A lot of the senior professionals that have that high-end financial advice for businesses are leaving the industry.

And then conversely, about 10 years ago, we merged in our designations. So there used to be the ca, the cga, and the cma. And that's been consolidated now to the cpa. And one of the ramifications there is just kind of the training and the recruitment. And this is also a generational thing as well, but there's just less people getting it.

And so when you look at that and you say, okay, so supply is dwindling and demand is staying the same, if not increasing, you know what's gonna happen in that market? And inevitably the price is gonna go up. And so there's two ways of dealing with that. One is you say, okay, well the price is gonna go up and it's gonna cost me more.

You get good financial advice in this world. The other thing that I'm looking at, and this is really where ROC Advisors comes in, is, is utilizing a customized finance team. So what we do is we take on that traditional controller role that companies are hiring, and we say, instead of one individual that can kind of do a little bit of everything, what we're gonna do is deploy a team of fractional CFOs, controllers and junior accountants that are gonna allocate time to the file.

It'll be about the same cost as that one individual, but you're gonna have much more specific knowledge. And this is really grounded in what I believe is Edmonton and is Alberta, and that is that small medium business. So what you traditionally see is, you know, somebody has some success, they're good at what they do, they start a business.

Their, their partner helps 'em do the books and then they say, Hey, this is getting pretty complex. We're to bring somebody in here. And so they go from having almost no cost allocated to accounting and now they go out and hire and you know, they gotta spend 80 or a hundred grand on this controller.

Mm-hmm. . And the truth of that is, though that role. Really is still probably 70%, 80% manageable by that kind of junior level individual. What you're gonna benefit from though is that kind of 10 or 20% of the, the high end CPA knowledge. And so that's really, you know, I, I saw a need where I do think it's gonna be harder to get CPAs.

We're already seeing that. If you go on Indeed right now and, and you look at controller roles, 10 years ago when I got my designation, if you get left and, and got your first role and you made 80, 90 grand, you're like, Hey, I'm, you know, I'm feeling pretty good about life right now. As the market's getting more compressed, you're already seeing that number drift up to a hundred, 110 and, and I think it's gonna get worse.

And, and so as a small, medium sized business, it's really hard, if not possible to, to kind of spend that kind of money just on the finance side, which really is just a support arm for, for your business. Mm-hmm. . So, so that's really where we're looking to play, is being able to say to business, you know, you don't need a full-time resource.

You do need that high-end knowledge though to make a couple critical decisions. So we'll give you some junior staffing that allow you to process the books, and then we'll come in from time to time and give you that high level.

That's a really, really great idea. Justin, I just wanna congratulate you kind of ahead of time.

That's, that's incredibly smart and forward thinking and I think you're really on to something there. You know, I mean, with capital, I kind of did something relatively similar because what I recognized was is that typically a business does not need a business development rep for five days a week. You know, we're doing, if you do your work and you do heavy work, you can essentially get five days a week done in two or three days a week.

And that's kind of the model that I've taken with capital and we're able to crush it out and, and we're still, we're still pumping, you know, typically in a contract we're still pumping out between 35, 40 meetings in a six month term. And we're doing it on half the time just with a, a much better plan.

And I think that's kind of what you're doing as well. And it's, it's incredibly smart and forward thinking and I do think that that's the way of the world moving forward. I think we're kind of getting away from the idea that you need somebody all the time. There's other options available, so great job.

Yeah. It's, it, it, yeah. So, thank you. And, and you know, we've had early success, you know, we've been around for, for less than a month, like I said, here, or just over we've already brought on two full-time clients. And, and so yeah, we're seeing the need on the client side and then, you know, you, you allude to a little bit there, but on the employee side, you know, it's also really exciting, right?

I, I've had numerous individuals reach out to me and say, Hey, you know, maybe I'm a stay-at-home parent. Or, or maybe I'm just looking for a side hustle to get engaged. Yeah. And so when they have the ability to come into this ecosystem and grab 10, 20 hours, but where they're really helping a small business or medium sized business make critical decisions, that's really rewarding work as well.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And same thing with capital. We utilize a hybrid work program as well. And you know, I mean, I wouldn't want it any other way. The reality is we need to be more accommodating to our employees and to our lives. And if there's one good thing that came outta Covid, it was a realization that people, people are capable, willing, and if you just give them the room to do it, they can do some really great work from home.

So we're utilizing a really similar model with capital. I do like to spend at least one day a week at the client office. I do think it's good just for, you need to be able to kind of understand how it works for them There. . I don't think most, most companies, especially service companies like me, and you need to be there all the time.

And utilizing that model has, has worked incredibly well for me on capital over time. Wanted to just, you know what I mean? It's so funny cuz you know, you just talked about, you literally just launched, you already have two clients. Like you're, you're rocking it. I think, I know I have a lot of entrepreneurs listening right now who are incredibly envious of you, Justin , . Cause sometimes you're lucky. Yeah. most of us are not that successful right off the bat. But yeah. That's awesome man. Good for you. I was literally gonna say the next question that I had for you. What are some of the challenges that you face getting your business off the ground, but you know, you, I'll let you talk to it.

Have you had many challenges or is it just, is it just working out for you?

Justin LaRocque: Well, you know, I don't want to jinx it . So far, so, so good. But no, I, I mean, there, there's definitely challenges, right? I, I, I think, you know, for me, probably the, the two things that I would look at is, is one kind of that, that family work balance, right?

I mean, yes, you're, when you go on the entrepreneurial journey, now this is your baby. So you know, it's eight o'clock at night. When you have a traditional job, maybe you're pretty comfortable, you kinda say, oh, I can turn my brain off and I'm gonna focus on the family . Once you start the business, you know, it, it's, it's like your, your other child, right?

Absolutely. And so I think that's the big thing that I'm really looking at is, you know, how do you create those boundaries early and often? So that's something I did with my wife's kind, has kind of said, Hey, before we do this journey, You know, let's kind of etch out some boundaries of what can I do, what can I not do?

When do you want me fully engaged with the family? And so I think that's probably one of the big challenges that, that most entrepreneurs would run into is, is how do you strike that balance? And then I think the other one, and , I, I'm, I'm grateful that I have this problem after one month of operation, but just like everybody else in the market is, you can't find people, you know?

Yeah. We, we actually posted a, a director role here to help me out. And, and yeah, it's just, you know, there, there's not people out there that, that are, are looking to move where they want significant capital to do so. And, and so as a result, actually I, I am likely to pivot to that kind of hybrid model I talked about where I'm using more of a fractional workforce right away.

I was thinking I'd have to do the full-time to kind of start to scale the business and then introduce that ecosystem. Mm-hmm. . I think just the way of the world right now is, you know, I'm not seeing the talent right there. So I'd say those are the two biggest challenges I have is, is A, making sure that we have that balance and then b, hiring.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah. No, I know, like for instance, like I, I also was in the middle of like a small hiring phase there a little bit ago, and hired, hired a young man named Cole and . So sounds super funny. You know, obviously in this day, you know, you put out an ad, you had an absolute ton of resumes, and Cole, you know, if you're listening to this, congratulations, you were the only person who literally went out of his way.

He's he's actually from the next town from where I live, and he just, he literally called, he's like, Hey, I'm just out. I literally, I'm a new marketing grad. I just graduated and I just wanted to drop my resume by your house. , you know what I can't think of a better way to like, to market for a business development job is to show me that you are willing to come to me and make that connection.

So, congratulations, Cole. That's why you got hired. You're a rockstar and really looking forward to the next steps with you, , but you know what I mean?

Justin LaRocque: Well, and, and it is the small touches, right? So it really is also when I, when I won the first client what I actually did is I, I found the posting on Indeed.

And instead of going through Indeed, I actually found their personal email and, and reached out to them directly and said, Hey, I saw this. You know, I think this is a different way of doing the business. And, you know, we, we met for a beer and a week later they were a client. So,

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, just, just speaking to that I talk about it all the time in my podcast that there's no replacement for in-person meetings.

There's no replacement for person ability. You know what I mean? We live in a time where people either don't want to meet or they want to try and find a way around that, or, you know what I mean? In, in the best case, people wanna have a Zoom meeting and you know what I mean, they're great, but nothing is a replacement for going and sitting in front of somebody and seeing who they are as a person.

While you enjoy a beer together, you enjoy, you know, a face-to-face interaction. , there's nothing, there's zero replacement for it. What is your kind of take on that? .

Justin LaRocque: Yeah, no, I, I a hundred percent agree. You know, so we actually, the, the two clients that I have, the one I go into their office and the one is a fully remote customer, and, and so, but they do a really good job of this is they make sure that at least once a week we're meeting for that coffee or meeting for that lunch to get that face-to-face.

So, yeah, I, I couldn't agree with you more. I, I do think that, you know, COVID, we were all on virtual and it just really emphasized that, hey, we we're still humans, right? We need to have that, that physical touch and presence. Yes. So yeah, I a hundred percent advocate that whenever I can. I think the one thing that virtual's done a great job of is almost setting a, a filter for the meeting, right?

Like, there, there was nothing worse than you're like, Hey, we should meet for a coffee . You, you get together for a coffee and you know, you're done the conversation in 10 minutes. You're like, okay, why did we do this? Yeah. So, so I do think it's, it's gotten really good at kind of setting the table for those in-person meetings.

Sure. But yeah, you, you can never get away from those.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And, and especially with your customers you know what I mean, at the end of the day, I was never looking to make customers. I was always looking to make friends. And if you go into your meeting, you know, if you go back to like, you know, I'm sure with you with your safety background, that you made an absolute ton of friends in the safety director backgrounds, that sort of thing.

Cause you've went to been into tons of meetings with them. I'm sure that you have some that still call you today. And that's my background with the quality side is that like, I've made so many friends in a decade of quality sales, marketing and account management that like, even though I'm not in that quality space anymore, I still talk with these people on a regular basis.

I have them on my Facebook, I have them on my LinkedIn, you know, they call me for advice. Some of them are actually moving into their own marketing and sales roles cause they're starting their own companies. And it's just, it's so funny how if you do a good job at, at creating great relationships with your clients, how far that'll follow you and how far that'll carry you in your career, even outside of that industry.

Justin LaRocque: Yeah, a absolutely, and, and it's just so powerful relationships. So as an example, the the second client that we were able to get, how that happened is it was a Sunday night. And my, my coach and a good friend of mine says, Hey, you know, I saw this posting. I know this guy really well. Do you want an introduction?

And I was like, yeah. Like, thanks for thinking about me. And so he, it connects me with that individual and two days later, they're a client . And there is no way that happens with ha without having built that relationship. So I'll throw a special shout out to Mike Mack at X five Management. He was the guy that connected me, so he's, he's a really good guy.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Same thing, same things happened to me, especially when I was getting capital off the ground. I had, you know, like in the case my old boss had kind of recommended me to a company and same thing, like in no time flat, we were, we were a client. And heck, you know, if I look at, if I look at all of my current main client relationships, they all came from a referral of some type.

They all came from a past relationship or someone that I knew real closely and just kind of dropped a line and helped you out. So yeah, don't underestimate the power of a referral guys. It's huge. It's in some cases it can be everything. Yeah. Well,

Justin LaRocque: and, and I think, you know, on that, and I, I don't wanna take us all the way into the segue there, but you know, when you look at it, like, for any business to be successful, it's offering has to be competitive or very quickly it won't have clients and, and it'll go away.

And so I think as a general construct, when you look into an industry, most of the businesses have somewhat of a similar offering. And so if you're at that point, that's where I think the relationship is so critical, right? Because people wanna do business with people they like, you know? And so if you're able to have a price point and an offering that, that's close to the competitor, really the relationship is what differentiates it.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . No, for sure. For sure. So Justin, can you tell me a little bit about what motivated you to start rock? Like obviously your background has kind of been in accounting and management, but you know, you've done a lot of different things. What kind of moti motivated you? What, what was the catalyst that you decided that, you know what, today's the day, I'm gonna take that leap because I have a lot of entrepreneurs who listen to the show, Justin and You know, they might have a really great idea, or they might have this really great technical background, but they are just, they haven't took that leap yet and they're on the fence.

What kind of advice can you give to those people? I, I know it's like when we've already done it, it's sometimes it can be hard to look back and remember what that was like in that moment, but we all need that kick in the ass justin, what, what's the kick in the ass? What got you going?

Justin LaRocque: Yeah, you know, I, I think I look at it, I, I believe, I believe it's Jeff Bezos, that, that kind of introduced this methodology or made it popular at least.

But I'm a big fan of thinking about, you know, when I'm 80 years old, when I'm 90 years old, and I look back on life. , you know, what are those big regrets and how do I minimize them? You know, and, and I think I'm in a little bit of a unique situation, maybe because I am a cpa, and so it is somewhat of a, an easier to find job in that.

Like, I know the title of the job I would go after, I know the qualifications, I know I likely have them. And so if ROC Advisors crashed and burned tomorrow, I would still be clear on the job I need to get. Mm-hmm. , having said that, you know, if you're in a trade or, or again, even if you're in a sales role, like I think most people know where they would go if it didn't work.

And so for me, how I looked at it is I said, you know, if I don't try to start a company and actually be able to say when I'm 80 that hey, it worked really well or it didn't, I just wouldn't be happy with myself. Mm-hmm. You know? Mm-hmm. I always knew I wanted to do it. I think the big thing for me was the timing and making sure that I had the timing right.

And I, I feel like I do. But, but that's what I'd say is when you look at that risk, you know, if you're having to put a ton of capital to start that business up, , then I think that's something that you gotta look at and consider the risk mitigation and, you know, how could I get out of this investment if, if it doesn't go well?

Mm-hmm. . But particularly if you're offering a service business or something with that low upfront capital, I, I would strongly encourage people to do it. I, I think the way the world right now is we are moving more to this kind of gig economy, freelance economy. And so I, I think for me, what prompted me to do it is it's, it's easy to sit on the sidelines and say, well, you know, this is what I would've done.

And so I always said to myself, well, one day I gotta get out there and just say, yeah, this is, this is, this is a hundred percent me and if it doesn't work, that's on me. And if it does great and then I get to build my team and, and it's gonna be great. So I, I think that's what really kind of prompted me to do it is assessing the risk and saying, you know, it's relatively minimal at this point. Or as minimal as it's gonna get. Right. It's never gonna be zero . Exactly. But, but, and, and, and then just kind of going out there and, and doing it. Right. And I think the, the other thing that maybe holds people back, or, or is probably the biggest thing on my radar was, and this goes back to the, the fears and challenges we talked about, is kinda that fear of rejection, right?

Mm-hmm. that fear that, oh, hey, I finally do it, and then, you know, nobody shows up, right? Yeah. You know, I ask people to help me out and they don't, and, and, and I think, you know, there, there's nothing you can do about that, that that's like, that's like jumping out of a plane or going down a scary ride. Yeah.

You just gotta say, okay, well I'm doing it and I'm gonna fully commit, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

Kelly Kennedy: No, no, you totally nailed it to you. I literally, in my last episode, I was talking about confidence. I, I just took a minute and I talked about confidence. Because you have to have the confidence to ask for business.

You have to have the confidence to ask for an RFP or an RFQ or, and in some cases you have to have the confidence to take that leap to start your business because you know what? I think you'll find that in your head it's a lot worse than the reality. The, the things that you cook up in your mind about what could happen are typically considerably worse than what, what could really happen to you.

What I've found, what I've found personally, in starting both Capital Business Development and in starting this podcast is both exceeded my expectations. Both, you know, I mean, in my mind I thought were gonna be hard to get off the ground. I thought was going to be an incredible challenge. And I don't know if I is, I, I'm, I'm up for it.

It's like I have a lot of confidence in myself. I always have. But it's like, when you're going to take that jump, I remember it being incredibly scary for me, thinking like, oh crap. Like, is anyone even gonna listen to this? Like, does anyone even care? And heck, like it's been overwhelming on both, you know, people love capital.

People love the Business Development Podcast. And yeah, in my mind I was like, oh, no one's gonna like this. No one's gonna need this service. And I was completely, that was just, that was just my negative side. That was just my, my, my fear side, trying to hold me back. And what I found is that if you just, you acknowledge it, you say, yeah, I hear you, but we're gonna do this anyway.

I think you're gonna be pleasantly surprised. And you're like like Justin said, you're not getting any younger. Okay? So regardless of whether you're in your twenties, thirties, forties, maybe early fifties, whatever, There's no better time to do it than right now, because frankly, you're in the you're, you're in the best part of your life to do it.

The sooner that you can start your business, the sooner that you can take that risk, and even if you crash and burn, recover from that risk, the better.

Justin LaRocque: I, I think another thing that people maybe discount when they think about doing it is there's a ton of experience that you get, even if it's not successful, you know, and, and in this world where you're always looking to differentiate yourself.

Even being able to say that, Hey, I tried a business, I ran it for three months or six months and it didn't work. Like, those are critical experiences that for employers. , they look at, you know, I, I wouldn't run outta my way to say it was an absolute failure, . But, but I mean, those are critical experiences that a lot of small and medium sized businesses say, Hey, like this person, you know, they did take on the risk.

They did try to do it, you know, maybe it didn't work for whatever reason, but, but those are key attributes for hiring as well, right? So, so almost, you know, I, I would even encourage people, and, and again, this is another framing I put to mind is, Hey, if this doesn't work in six months, this is something I I can talk about with a future employer.

You know? Mm-hmm. , you, you can almost look at it as a, as a job, right? It's a, it's a little bit of a cold way of looking at it, but again, I'm, you know, I'm an accountant, so that's, that's what we do is, is kind of really crunch the numbers and, and talk about it from a quantitative, qualitative. So that's another thing I think people might discount is even just taking the leap is gonna give you an experience that employers would find attractive even in your absolute downside of failure.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, I, I'd agree because it definitely shows, it shows self-starter ship. It shows confidence, it shows the ability to think on your feet and think critically. No question. It's, it's a great thing to have on your resume, however, you know what I mean. I would also say, Justin, that most entrepreneurs that I've met, you know, I haven't met, frankly, you know, maybe I'm just lucky or, or just, I don't know an anomaly, but most of the business owners that I've talked to have been successful.

You know, like I, I feel like it's almost like the universe converges to help them because it's like, if you're willing to take that leap, put yourself out there, you probably already have a skillset that you, that you know how to use. You probably thought it through. You have experience, and if you go out and you do that well, which most business owners do, because they're very committed to their company and their own success, they typically do what they do quite well.

It's, it can almost be hard to fail, if that makes sense. If, if you're coming across it correctly, you're coming at it from the right place. It's your passion. You really love doing that work. Like in my case, capital is my passion. I love business development. I literally still do the work. Like I, I, I enjoy going to work and doing business development every day, even though it's like it's my company and I operate an employee and I'm doing this podcast.

I still enjoy doing the business development side of it, which has always made me very effective. But I feel like if you are willing to do that, take that leap, you're probably going to be good at it. I think you have higher chance of succeeding than failing.

Justin LaRocque: Yeah. Well, and I agree, and I think what that is, I mean, again, there's a million books that do a better job than you and I will have explained it.

Sure. . But, but you know, like Jim Collins talks about the flywheel effect. Right. And what he, in his book, good to Great. And you know, really he's talking about like, pick what you're really good at and start turning the wheel right now when you first start a business, you, you might not know what you're really good at.

Right. You have an idea and you put it out to the world. But that flywheel effect where like the first turn around the wheel is the hardest and then it gets easier and easier. Mm-hmm. , I think that really comes into play with what you said there, which is kind of, once you put that intent out into the world and say, Hey, I'm doing this, like I am committing.

That's when you do have that like magical moments where you're like, oh wow. And now people are helping me and this opportunity came that I never thought would, and but the thing is you have to commit and you have to, you know, vocalize it and put it out to the world so that the world can help you. Right?

Because nobody can help you if you don't ask or put it out to them, right? And so I think that's like a really big part of the commitment is if you're sitting there and you're 50 50 on the decision and you're not committing it you know nobody's gonna be able to help you cuz they don't know what you need.

Right? And, and I put that on somebody's LinkedIn post there, which is when you commit, that's when people can help you and give feedback. And if you don't, you're never gonna get there. So even just pushing yourself to the 51% of I'm gonna do this is, is like monumental versus 50 50 because at 50 50 you gain no momentum. At 51 at least you do .

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. At some point you gotta take yourself off the fence. .

Justin LaRocque: Yeah, a hundred percent.

Kelly Kennedy: So Justin, you know, obviously rock advisors is relatively new but you know, I mean, you haven't, this isn't your first rodeo. You know, you've, you've founded multiple businesses now. If you could go back to kind of the beginning and just give yourself one piece of advice that you know now that you didn't know at the beginning of those times, what would it be?

Justin LaRocque: If I could go back to the beginning. Yeah. So, we'll the, so the first business that I founded was with a couple other guys and we founded a condo management company. It's actually still existence. It's, it's doing great. Converge condo management. And I think the thing that I would say at the time and my, one of my really good friends Mark Donnelly, he, he talked about this cuz he was one of the partners he said, Hey, we just have to be patient, you know, and I think, you know, Mark's a couple years older than I, and, and smarter than I am

So, so he said, Hey, when we grow this business, the work will come. if we do a good job at it, you know, and I, and I think I'm finding that on, on this business as well. If you do a good job, the work will come, but you gotta do a good job. And so that's something that when we started the first business, I think I was really a eager to run out and grab every opportunity that we could and just, you know, start shooting towards the moon.

Mm-hmm. And Mark had a lot of foresight where he said, Hey, look, let's, let's invest in the process. Let's invest in our strategy. Let's be really clear on what a good client and a bad client is. And, and then this thing's gonna take off in scale. You know, and, and I think that's something that I've really used intentionally when I go here, which is, Hey, you know, we've grabbed two clients and we're still looking for more.

But at the same time, I'm like, how do I take a breath now? How do I make sure that I hire the employees, make sure we have good communication, make sure we have standard processes. And I, and I think that's something that, you know, I, I would tell that to myself from when we started the first business. Yeah.

And, and now I'm trying to utilize it as I start the second one.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. And I wanna talk to that for a minute cuz you know, I understand that like me and you are both utilizing essentially hybrid work models with our business and we both operate them. So, you know, I mean, you're, you're providing the actual service as well as I am.

You know what, like, you know, maybe you're kind of just starting this journey, but I'm definitely finding one of the challenges with this model is definitely in being able to train your employees as well as you would like to and give them the amount of time that you would like to give them. And the way that I'm kind of doing it with Cole is ultimately we're doing as much job shadowing as we can.

We're doing kind of work over Zoom. We're sharing our information and kind of communicating as best as we can. But there's definitely some challenges in trying to train in, in our situation. Have you thought much about that?

Justin LaRocque: Yeah, I've, I've thought a lot about it actually because it, we're at a spot in our model where I've posted for more of a high, a higher end individual.

Mm-hmm. But naturally we are gonna need more junior accountants. And so I have thought about the merits of. , you know, with a higher end individual, they, they come with a certain skillset, but they also have their own methodologies. Yeah. Whereas with more junior, you have a chance to kind of sculpt and mold and, and really kind of make them more of, Hey, this is, this is how I think.

Yeah. There's pros and cons to both, right? You do want diversity of thought. You don't, you don't want group think everywhere. But yes, I, I've definitely thought about it. I, I think the big thing that we'll be looking to utilize, and I'm already starting to carve this out. Is every time you have that discussion with a client or that you run into an operational issue, I'm jotting it down and I'm looking to build a process around it so that when I do go to train, I'm not using anecdotal information, kinda saying like, well I think in this one time I did this and then the other time I did that.

Yeah, you figure it out, you know, let me know, know how it goes. So I think that would be something that we're gonna really look to utilize is making sure that as I bump into them, I'm jotting it down and I'm saying, okay, look, this is how you do this. So like as an example already, you know, with the first two clients, I realized, hey, The first three discussions I had with them were A, B, C mm-hmm.

And so I'm starting to build that out so that when I do onboard the, the first employee that we hire, I can be like, Hey, so when we go into the customer that, you know, here's A, here's B, here's C. Right? And, and so I think that's what we're really looking to do is how do you make it replicable via process. So, yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. And I'm actually doing the exact same thing. So as, as I'm figuring it out and figuring out the best ways to go about doing this, I'm also putting together the process and how to do it because I, I do have a certain way of work that I want it done because the way that I've done it has kind of worked incredibly well for capital.

It's like, it's a really great business model that we utilize for growing business, and it is replicatable very easily if you follow a process. So I do like, I do like the fact that I can kind of work with him and train him on my process, but he also brings a lot of outside experience as well to, to help our business with things that I'm missing my blind spots.

Right. But we're kind of charting new ground here. We really are because. , I don't think before in history we've had to try to train people from home. It's, it's, it's a completely different model than our, than our parents went, went, went with it. Right. So we're, we are charting new ground is a way that I like to say it.

And there's definitely gonna be trial and error, but I think we'll figure it out.

Justin LaRocque: Yeah. Well, and, and I think, you know, one of the things that I've noticed in the virtual setting is, Your focus is, is typically good because you're, you're engaging in a, in a super direct manner. Virtually, you're looking at each other like very directly and that you're very conscious of it.

But I think it's also a little bit more draining, right? I think people saw this for sure through the pandemic is being on a screen for eight hours is, is pretty trying. And so I think probably the difference for me at least, is when I would do in-person training, you know, you'd have like an eight hour training day and, you know, you'd go to the coffee machine together and, and you'd have lunch together and so on, so forth, and kind of have more of a slow drip on the training itself.

Whereas I think in the virtual setting it's, it's a little bit more digestible to say, Hey, for the next 30 minutes we're gonna really be training, like really getting some good information. Kind of feed you with the fire hose. And then we're gonna take a half hour off or an hour off and like reset our brains kind of step away from the computer. Let's go out and actually meet in person and lunch if possible. Right? Absolutely. So I think that's the big thing I've noticed with the training is in person you can kind of have more of that slow drip methodology and, and just kind of have soak time.

Whereas I think when it's virtual, that's actually much more draining than it's worth. And, and you really gotta be prescriptive in getting the, the information across.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, like especially when you're trying to grow your business and you're doing your marketing and sales and stuff and, and your own business development.

The ability to just kind of take a bit of a break from everything. Like, I highly encourage people to just get out and just take a half hour, go for a walk, get some fresh air, have a coffee, just have a moment to yourself to get yourself back into a proper head space before you start making calls and stuff again, because yeah, it can, it can be incredibly challenging.

And I definitely encourage that with my employees, that if, like, if you're hitting a point where you know, you're starting to feel the stress, you're starting to feel overwhelmed, you know, that's a great time to just take a minute and you know, I'm, I'm never gonna hate on you for it. If you need a minute to just chill out and relax because it's gonna make you more effective when you sit back down and get to it.

Absolutely. Wanted to kind of just touch on your business development strategy. I know with ROC, you know, you're kind of just, you're figuring it out as you go at the moment, but you have a, you have a background in sales. You've you've won some pretty big bids in our conversations. And tell me a little bit about what, what what programs and procedures you guys are utilizing to grow ROC at the moment.

Yeah,

Justin LaRocque: so we utilized the, the HubSpot crm. So basically we used the free platform. I mean, there's lots of them out there. They're all, you know, pr probably similar. And but for me, HubSpot was just what we used when we were over at Impact and Proveo sure. And, and so I've utilized it here. I, I can't say enough about CRMs.

I know you had a podcast on it as well. I listened to it and, and yeah. It's just, I mean, it's so critical to mm-hmm. to driving new. Because it just gives you that prompt, right? It's not that it's doing anything revolutionary, but it's keeping all your thoughts and process in, in one spot. So I think utilizing a CRM is, is something that I found really critical.

And then the second piece is having some, whether it's a brochure, a pamphlet, a pdf, you know, most of it's digital these days. But having a piece of material that you can consistently point the customer to, to be able to have the dialogue. I think those are kind of the two biggest things that I would say ha have driven the BD process.

I is being able to have something that tracks the activity and then something to constantly reference during the customer journey and dialogue.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. No, you nailed it man. You nailed it. The, so the first thing that I do when I go into a company is I look, well, you know, even before typically, like if I know I have a meeting with the company, I check out their website, see kinda what's going on.

By the way, I've been to your website, Justin. It's it's getting started, but it's really good so far. Just wanted to give you a little thumbs awesome. Thank you. I also I also really like the background in your videos, so just for those of you who have been chatting today and you were interested in checking out any of those working capital videos, you can find them right on Justin's website and they're incredibly well done.

I just wanted to give you a little pat on the back. Those videos are well done and I appreciate them and I know lots of people will as well. Awesome, thank you. We were kind of just chatting briefly about CRMs. Yeah, CRMs and marketing material are critical. I'm not gonna talk to you too much on this, Justin, cause I literally have like multiple, multiple podcasts on it at this point.

But visual appeal especially nowadays is almost more critical than the content. I've said that multiple times. The content doesn't matter if people won't even open up your, your brochure, right? Yeah. So having something that like is a little bit eye-catching on that front cover, I definitely like to have, like I feel less is more, less is more on that front cover.

You know, have your company name, have maybe a little blurb, a one or two liner about kind of who you are, what you do type thing, but more so what, what they're seeing for an image, what type of picture you have on that front cover. And colors is almost more important than what's in the brochure. You need 'em to open it.

Justin LaRocque: The, the other thing that I would say and again, this is kind of leaning into the new virtual world, so I'm half decent at PowerPoint, but you know, I'm not spectacular. So I went on a platform called upwork.com and, and basically it's a freelance community. And so for 150 bucks I had somebody probably spent eight to 10 hours overseas and they completely revamped my PowerPoint.

So it's much more aesthetically pleasing. So that's another thing that I'd say to people is, you know, you don't necessarily have to develop it, right? You, you have to, what I would say is you have to have the key selling points to be able to give those people. But if, if you're sitting there at home and you're like, ah, geez, this sounds great, but I have no idea how to use, you know, PDF converter and Photoshop and all this jazz.

In this day and age, you don't have to, you, you have to know what you want to communicate to your client, but honestly, for a hundred dollars, $200, you can have like a top level develop development done so that you have something pretty fancy to put in front of the client.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I definitely second this.

I've, I've utilized Fiver on multiple occasions, same, relatively the same thing. And you know, what I've found too, I found it to be incredibly effective. I've found even communicating with people, even though they're overseas, to be very easy, very easy and accommodating. And I was also incredibly happy with, with the final product and would definitely recommend it for any type of like, graphical work or, or if you just need something quick and you need something revamped for you uplift or fiver.

Great, great options. Justin, just wanted to kind of chat with you. Take us kind of back to back to the business development side. I'd like to kind of bring us back there a little bit. In your experience, what has been the most effective? You know, I, I hammer, I hammer calls, I hammer physical touch, you know what I mean?

I'm an active marketing guy. I, I back it up immensely. There's a place for passive marketing. I like to say it's for brand awareness. You know, you need passive marketing on your socials and stuff so that people can start to know who ROC advisors is. Know who capital business development is. , but the reality, the selling, the actual growth of your business, in my mind is in the active marketing.

What's your take on that?

Justin LaRocque: Yeah, I, I a hundred percent agree. So in the last year that I was with Proveo I did help more on the enterprise sales and so, you know, couple little anecdotes that I would just kind of distill down into those tips. You know, what I really found was keeping in constant contact with the customer obviously a fine balance.

You don't want to be annoying but absolutely staying engaged with them, and probably the, the two biggest things that I found is a, every morning, and you could do it the afternoon, but I, I just did it in the morning every morning having my hit list, sitting down and, and making that phone. Or, or sending that email.

You know, again, I typically recommend phone calls though because in this day and age, emails are so easy to just delete, you know, they get caught in spam and you're sitting there being like, I've sent 10 emails. It's like, they probably haven't seen any of them. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So, for sure. So, so really making sure that you get those phone calls.

But then the other thing, and my customers found this really useful, is when you do finally get in touch with them calendarizing, when you're gonna touch base with them next, right? Yes. So, if they're willing to commit to a meeting, then getting that in their calendars. And even if they aren't putting it mentally on the radar that, Hey, I'm gonna call you in a week.

It's gonna be in the morning, and I'm gonna try to get a hold of you. Right? Because even if that individual's not willing to accept a meeting, now they've mentally said to themselves, okay, Justin's probably gonna call me in a week. It's probably gonna be in the morning. And so now when I see his phone call, I know that I'm expecting it, right?

And so I would say that it's absolutely important to keep that, that personal connection. And, and that's where I had a lot of success is just kind of the dogged and determination of I'm gonna reach out to this cus customer early and often. And I'm gonna make sure that I calendarize so that I keep building momentum on the relationship.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. No, you nailed it. You nailed it. Like, remember, you, you likely are not getting this customer on the first call. You're, you might not even get them on the eighth call, right? Like the reality is, is that it can take multiple, what we call touches, which is any type of interaction with a client. It can take multiple touches to get to that meeting.

And Justin, I've had some that took me 20, like I kid you not, I, I, I left them 20 voicemails or I, and then when I finally got them on the phone, they're like, holy crap. I, I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to you. I I've just been so busy. But hey, I appreciate the kindness in your email, in your voicemails and yeah, let's, let's get together for lunch. So don't get discouraged.

Justin LaRocque: I kid you not, so, so I have three different stories all within the last eight months where I had reached out to a customer, I had 10 to 20 touch points. They went cold for three months and I kid you not the last one actually called me yesterday. I'm not even there anymore. . And they called me and, and so I funneled them back into the business and they said, oh, hey Justin, I know you were reaching out incessantly.

I'm finally ready to do business. And I'm like, oh, well, it's actually been so long. I'm not even there anymore. . Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh man. Me too, me too. I totally have those two I, the, the best one that I have, Justin is I, I was marketing with, with one of my previous businesses for many, many, many years. So we dropped for like thousands of brochures over that time.

I kid you not thousands. And we ended up getting this call once from a company that I'd marketed to plenty of times and just never ever got any traction. They, they called me and they said, Kelly, had your brochure on my desk for literally like two or three years at this point, but now's the time. Are you ready?

And it's like, so what I want you guys to remember with business development is you are planting seeds, okay? You're planting seeds. I think people like to look at business development thinking like, oh, well you hire business development and you know, you'll be working in, in a month or two months, and maybe, maybe you will.

But the reality is, is that there's no guarantees that it's an immediate right. Some of these things can pay off months and years down the down the line. And I think Justin's given a couple examples now where it's, it's been months or years down the line. And I, I have too, where that's when the call comes.

But you have to be planting all these seeds. You have to be marketing in order for those seeds to come to fruition at some point. So don't get discouraged if it's not immediate.

Justin LaRocque: Yeah, no, I, I definitely agree. And I think that was the hard thing, you know, on our five year journey there with, with impact that became preveo is, is really understanding that, you know, I came into the business as an accountant kind of left it as kind of CEO and helping out on and COO help helping out on sales.

And I think that was the biggest disconnect for me as, as an accountant, you're kinda like, well, you know, I put this number in the spreadsheet of revenue I'm gonna get and it should be okay, you know, , and I think you, you, you start to realize it's like, you know, probably a better way to think about that is, well, how many of these seeds and discussions have I put out into the world?

Right? And, and what's the probability that those are gonna convert over a period of time? Right. And I, but I think the big thing too, there, and this goes back to like keeping frequent contact is. For me, planting the seed is reaching out and making that initial contact. But I do think the watering of the, you know, of that opportunity and just keeping in constant contact is just as important, if not more so.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes. Well, you, you know, you talked to it, you talked to the CRM and you talked to the follow up. So what Justin was kind of saying by scheduling that next call, why I'm always hammering the CRM for you guys, because in the CRM you can schedule the next call and it'll send you an email reminder to say, Hey, have you called John at ABC company today?

Because today's the day, right? And having that, that list, that call list to work from, especially with those reminders that you get from a CRM, they truly make you infinitely more effective. And they, they streamline essentially what you need to do for that day with regards to your sales process, with regards to your call list and email list or whatever you got going on.

So, yeah, thanks for touching on that, Justin. It, it is, it's, it's the repeated contact that makes you effective. It's not the first call it, it, it may not even be when you send them your email of your brochure and everything after you've talked to them. It'll be that repeated follow up to go for the meeting, right.

Because you ultimately, all the work we're doing in business development is to get you face-to-face with that client because that's where you're gonna be the most effective. So we need to be consistently working to get that face-to-face interaction. Absolutely. I, I wanna kind of lead off the show Justin today with just chatting about.

What do you think is the most important thing you can do to increase revenues? The reason I wanna ask you this is because you've actually seen the most effective things people can do to increase revenues by being on both the sales and the financial side of things. So in your experience with all the companies you've worked with, what has been the most important thing a company can do to start to get that revenue up?

Justin LaRocque: Yeah, I, I think the biggest thing, and it, and it's really what we just discussed, Kelly, is putting in the time every day, every week, you know, and, and so that's something like, as an example, you know, I've been pretty fortunate. I've had some really success at Rock advisors, but even with that, I'm still ensuring that at least once a day I'm reaching out to a brand new client just to start the conversation.

Right? And, and I think that's the thing is it's the daily discipl. to keep doing that because it's so easy to be like, oh, hey, we've got work. You know, we, we don't need to do that. But before you know it, you don't have work. And the problem is you weren't putting in the time and, and now, you know, have no new prospects.

And like we talked about, depending on the industry you're in, it takes time to get those prospects up to speed. So a hundred percent the biggest thing that you gotta do is put the daily discipline in, whether it's raining or shining, you gotta get up and you gotta put the work in.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. Justin, are there any questions that I can answer for you today? I like to I like to put myself on the line here for some of my guests. And is there anything that you would like to ask me?

Justin LaRocque: Yeah, well you, you've said you've really enjoyed the podcast and you know, I've, I've enjoyed listening to it.

I guess if you, you know, and again, just like me, it's been a short while for you on the podcasting side. What has been your favorite part about podcasting?

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, man. Okay. Okay. The best part about podcasting has definitely been the feedback. Guys, you know, for those of you who have reached out to me on LinkedIn, you guys know I'm fairly active on LinkedIn and for the most part, if you shoot me a message on LinkedIn right now, I have a little bit of time.

If I can, I'll get back to you and the feedback and comments that I've gotten on the podcast, Justin, of people just saying like, Hey, I've started implementing the processes you spoke about. I've started you know, we've started to see progress in our business and thank you so much for the efforts that you've put in to kind of put this out there.

That's the most rewarding thing. There's no question there's nothing more rewarding than realizing that this work that I'm doing is ultimately helping people and that's what I'm here for, right? Like at the end of the day, the reality is, Justin, your services are expensive. My services are also expensive, and if there's a way that we can help people, I think we have an obligation to try to do that.

And with the podcast, I'm able to do that as best as I can without physically being there to do it for them. And. Yeah, just to hear that the, the work we're doing is appreciated and that it's helping people. No question. That's the most rewarding thing about this.

Justin LaRocque: Awesome. And then my last question is, you know, I said on the podcast I'm a big fan of like, verbalizing and getting commitment and then it kind of turns a flywheel.

So if your podcast had tremendous success this year, within the year, who is one guest that you would absolutely love to have on the show?

Kelly Kennedy: Oh my gosh, that's a really hard question. Do you know what? I'm gonna be honest with you, Justin. I'm quite happy with our local Edmonton guests. I don't necessarily need a rockstar guest.

And my reason being is that we talked about this, you learn most sometimes from people who are in the middle of it. And since most of the people we're marketing to are new entrepreneurs, having that new entrepreneur story is a great, great story to have. I, you know, I'm anticipating to have some pretty great guests coming on.

I ha I have kind of a list that I'm creating with some pretty high level presidents with some peop, with some experts in the marketing side, which I think will be incredibly helpful for our listeners. But ultimately, I think we get the most value from people like you, Justin, who are, you know, you have lots of experience in industry and you're kind of at the beginning of a new company and you're, you're relearning.

Cause every time you start a new company, there's something new to learn or there's, there's something that worked for your last company that doesn't necessarily work in this one, and you're kind of, you're in the middle of it. So being able to have these conversations with new entrepreneurs, which has really been the case of, of all my guests so far, has been incredibly valuable and in my mind, a better story in some cases.

Awesome. Awesome. All right, well that that concludes episode 12. Our guest today has been Justin LaRocque of ROC Advisors here in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Justin, can you just plug your, your contact details for people who have found this interesting and maybe want to bring on ROC Advisors to help them with their financial situation at their business?

Justin LaRocque: Yeah, absolutely. You can get us at www.rocadvisors.ca, so that's rocadvisors.ca and then we're also pretty active on LinkedIn, so we're, we're hoping to break through hundred followers here pretty soon. So you can find us again at ROC Advisors on LinkedIn. So .

Kelly Kennedy: All right, so for those of you who are listening, it's ROC Advisors on LinkedIn.

Get over there, smash the like button. Let's get Justin some attention. I think he's got a really great product. He's an awesome person and really, really looking forward to see what comes of this for you, Justin. And for those of you who are listening today, if you've if you've enjoyed the show or you are currently enjoying the show, please head over to either my website or Spotify or Apple Podcast.

Please drop us a review, a rating. And like I said, feel free if you got any questions for the show or you'd like me to answer anything for you, you can always get me at podcast@capitalbd.ca. So that's podcast@capitalbd.ca and we will see you on the flip side. Thank you for tuning in. Take care.