Test Your Idea with Dale Schaub

Test Your Idea with Dale Schaub

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 24 of the Business Development Podcast. On today's episode, we have an amazing guest, Dale Schaub. He is the lead entrepreneurial consultant with the NAIT Mawji Center. He is an entrepreneur. He's got a sales and business development background. He hosts Let's Do Coffee podcast, and he inspires the next generation of entrepreneur students at NAIT.

It's a pleasure to have him on with us today. 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 the Business Development Podcast. You are listening to episode 24 today. And today we have an excellent guest episode. I am so thankful to be joined today by Dale Schaub. I've been trying to get Dale on for a very long time. He's an incredibly busy man and I'm so thankful to have him today.

Dale has been such a help, not only in the start of of capital business development, cause I actually met with Dale, you know, years ago at this point actually when you were kind of still doing one punch consulting and we were kind of chatting back and forth about what your experience is like. I thought there might be some synergies between our companies at that time, but at that time I was very new and yeah, just made an excellent connection, Dale, and it's really great to have you on the show today.

Dale Schaub helps run NAIT's post-secondary business incubator at the MawjiCenter as the lead entrepreneurship consultant. Dale is an early stage business startup specialist with a broad range of experience working with various companies and industries. At NAIT, he works with students to help them start and grow a business through individual mentorship and develops and runs various entrepreneurship programs.

As a business consultant, Dale has worked with hundreds of clients, worked on a wide variety of companies, and has given presentations to audiences over 300 people. To date, two of his students' companies have reached evaluation of over a million dollars. Dale is a marketing graduate from NAIT, the same school that he now inspires the next generation of entrepreneurs and has worked over 15 years in sales and marketing, as well as launched his own successful business consulting firm in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Dale is also a podcast host of Lets Do Coffee, which has accomplished 61 successful episodes to date. Dale, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. How are you today? Awesome,

Dale Schaub: Kelly. Thanks so much for having me.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, it's such a pleasure to have you, man. I've been wanting to have you for a while, you know that I, I know how busy you've been and I really appreciate you taking the time to have this with me.

Dale Schaub: You ma you make it sound like I'm a busy guy, but, but in truth, I'm only busy some parts of the year being associated with post-secondary. You can imagine. Yeah, my September till March is, is usually pretty hopping.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, I, I, I can't imagine cuz I haven't spent any time in the educational side.

However my fiance works with NAIT as well in the ILM department. She runs all of the new product development, so totally, totally get it. She's swamped most of the time. So I imagine you're under the same boat.

Dale Schaub: Absolutely. And, and before anybody asks, I am not off in the summers, we're just shifting gears at that point.

Kelly Kennedy: So talk to me, Dale. What, what's, what's new, what's going on with you?

Dale Schaub: Oh my gosh. Where do I even begin? So, yeah I am actively working with a cohort of students. So, so tr traditionally they, they, a new group of students gets involved with me in September, and then I work with them in a formal program that I built to help them go from an idea all the way to launching their business.

And that, that program just wrapped at, at the end of March. Students are actively working on their final exams right now. So this gives me a slight breather as I, as I try to get, get caught up in all this stuff that I've kinda let fall by the wayside. And then, yeah we're, we're. I'm just actively getting the students right now into the next step of programming.

So, so the program goes from idea to to a launch for some of them, but for the more technological, the more advanced heavier business ideas they need further development. And so a lot of their stuff gets to a, a minimum viable product or a basic version of their product or service. And then now we just need to take them to the next level and scale up.

And so I'm really just kind of getting them more involved into that kind of s what I call summer programming.

Kelly Kennedy: I, you know what? I am so inspired by what you, you and Colin Christensen. I, you know, I mean, you introduced me to Colin Christensen, which is really cool. I think everybody listening to this podcast has heard that episode at this point and absolutely loves it.

And you know what I mean? You and him are so alike in so many ways. You know, you're entrepreneurs, you mentor essentially the future of entrepreneurs. You inspire a generation of people and you get to do this as a job. And it's so flipping cool. Dale, I, I am inspired and I do hope, I feel like at some point in my life, in my business career, that I get to do something similar cuz I just, I see that as being such a rewarding.

Opportunity.

Dale Schaub: You know, thanks. Honestly, I just feel so, so blessed to, to be able to do this type of stuff. Like I I'm assuming most of the audience for this are gonna be focused in the sales industry. I was you five years ago, and so, you know, if you ever wanna make a pivot into, into another industry you know, I, I did manage to make it happen, and, and maybe there's a template there for you as well.

And you know, I, I just wanted to make that switch outta sales after 15 years of doing it. And honestly, like I love getting outta bed every, every single day getting to work and help people fulfill their dreams. So can't go wrong.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. I, I, okay. So I'm so thankful to have you on the show specifically, because Dale, you have such a wide variety of experience, the experience that you have.

Is so broad that we could talk about a multitude of subjects today. And we are going to, by the way, that are going to help entrepreneurs, business development people, you name it. Because really a lot of these business development skills, these entrepreneurship skills, they all start at the beginning. They all started a foundation.

Can you take me back to the beginning of your career of, of your sales career? Cause you know, you're like me, you've been around in, in sales and marketing and business development for 15 years, same as me. And you know, in the beginning, what, what got you into sales and business development, and then maybe what are some of the key takeaways that you learned along the way?

Dale Schaub: Yeah, absolutely. So, I, you know, what, I guess I would say what all started at, at NAIT, I knew I wanted to be in business. The, the old joke was people, people used to ask me when I was a kid what I wanted to be when I grew up and my answer was a millionaire. So still life goals, but and so.

When they press further, a couple of them all thought that was a great idea, press further. And somebody at that point suggested business would be one of the ways to get into it. And so I ended up taking business at NAIT. And yeah first year at NAIT's general business, second year, you get to pick and choose which, which direction you want to go in.

And I ended up choosing marketing, just absolutely fell in love with it, wanted to be a marketer, wanted to get into advertising. But of course, being in Edmonton, there isn't a whole lot of agencies, especially not 25 years ago or so when I went to school. And so the, the easiest pathway to get into it at that point was, was in sales.

And I was always a little bit of an outgoing kid. You know, big family. I always attributed to the big family and it was a meaning that I can, I can speak to strangers and talk, talk loudly and enthusiastically. So yeah, ended up getting the only job that I, that I could, which was sliding into sales in those early days.

And yeah, just Learned a lot from that. Yeah, so my very first gig I was in Windows window renovations where I was doing the inside sales marketing. I, I got lured in because it was like a marketing advertised as a bit of a marketing and some inside sales, but it was more like a sales support style role.

Yeah. Did a few presentations for anybody who kind of walked in the door and said, you know what? I'm not terrible at this. And when that job ended I ended up going over to Leon's Furniture and Nice. That's where I got my first real, real full commission, full sales job. And yeah, lots and lots of lessons learned there.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh man. It actually takes me back to the beginning of my career. You know, we all start somewhere, right? I I grew up in Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada, you know, it's just outside of Edmonton, Alberta. At the time that I grew up here, it was much, much smaller than it is today. Today it's like doubled or tripled in size.

But back then it was a pretty small place. And Locally, we had the local car dealership was Grove Dodge. And when I was in high school I wanted to work there so bad and I went, I went over there and I got a job on the lot. And basically from like 17 to 19, I pretty much worked on the car lot, but I knew every single one of those cars inside and out.

I knew every feature cuz I was in them every single day, day in, day out. And I think it was when I turned 19, I reached out and I said, look, you know, like I want to move up in this place. How do I go about doing that? Well, you, you should probably get into the car sales side. And this is like, keep in mind, this is 2007, okay?

So this is like right before the economic downturn. But they said, sorry Kelly, we won't hire you without some type of sales experience. So at the time I went into Edmonton and I got a job at Visions Electronics. That's so different from you at Leon's. And I sold like TVs and electronics equipment and that really cut my teeth in sales in that.

But that was kind of what got me through the door. Eventually I did go back, I think it was about a year later, I went back to Grove Dodge, said, Hey, I'm got my sales experience. Gimme the job they did. And yeah, made some pretty fat money for about three months and 2008 hit and that was the end of my car sales career.

Which frankly, on the flip side of things, I'm thankful for because, you know, car sales isn't exactly the greatest sales job on planet Earth. There's a lot of things there that are questionable, that kind of rubbed against the grain of who Kelly Kennedy is. So but I still owe them. Essentially I owe them my sales career because I wouldn't have went into sales without that opportunity of being, being available.

And the rest is history. You know, I did that. I went to I worked at Gear Center in Edmonton for a while. Sold a lot of auto parts, sold a lot of like differentials and stuff.

Dale Schaub: Me too. That would Me too. Worked with those guys too.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. I worked at Gear Center for like, probably two, two or three years.

Kind of did my stints up in Fort Fort McMurray, did my time up there. Learned oil and gas. That was kind of my first foray into oil and gas. But it wasn't long after that that my sister kind of came in and was like, Kelly, what are you doing with your life? You should go to school for something. And at the time I'm like, well, what the heck would I go to school for?

Like, I guess business, cuz I don't know what else I'd go to school for. Like, that was literally what the thinking in my head, but, Yeah, went to business school, came out, got a job at Engrity Inspection in the city and helped found and, and build that company. And yeah, here we are today. I, I owe, I owe it all to that early beginnings at Grove Dodge.

Dale Schaub: Well, I mean, and I learned so much from, from Leon's just because like I was, you know, it was kind of a revelation for me just in terms of like a sales experience cuz there were good sales people, there were bad sales people and it was completely random draws. So unless you were literally thinking that, that you were unlucky in terms of the clients that you got, at a certain point you had to recognize that there were people literally making twice as much money as me doing the exact same job.

Yep. And, and that really, like, that was a big revelation for me, saying, okay, wow, there's a huge difference in the way that they're doing it or I'm doing it, or, and I don't. You know, and I really needed to figure out that puzzle. And so yeah, there were, there were, it was a huge, huge learning curve. Even like the salespeople, individual salespeople with totally different techniques and skills were approaching the exact same job, getting similar results, but being a hundred percent totally different people you know, and, and everybody really has to find their own pathway in sales, I thought.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Well, you know, let's take it, let's take it back to my time at Visions, cuz I had relatively the same experience as you where. You would see some of these salespeople just crushing it day in, day out. They just, they knew how to make all the money. They knew exactly what to say, what to do. But you know what it really came to is they were the ones who were getting out there and approaching every single person who came in that door.

They weren't waiting around, they weren't waiting for these, like they were, they were hungry. I think that's an easy way to put it. These salespeople were bloody hungry. And I, you know, it's funny now because I hate, I hate hungry salespeople when I'm the guy on the other side, just like, I know what you're doing.

You're great at this. But like, I just wanna chill and walk around the store and make my own choices. But it's like, I remember watching them Dale and. They were, they were sharks. I think that's like an easy way to put it. They were sharks. Sure. But it made them incredibly successful. And I talk about it a lot in the podcast today, that you need to go for what you want.

You need to ask for your meetings. You need to ask for anything you want. Because if you're not willing to go for it and ask for it, nobody's gonna give it to you.

Dale Schaub: And, and you know what one of my bigger revelations was? I went in being the nice guy. Oh yeah. You know, don't wanna be too pushy. Like, like that perception.

I want to sell to somebody the way I want to be sold to. And what absolutely rocked my world was when those pushy salespeople push and they push and they push, and occasionally they'd lose some folks. But those folks would always come back to them. And I'm like, I'm stunned by this. I, here are these folks who are getting pushed on and, and it doesn't make any sense to me.

And they're getting asked for when they came back. And meanwhile I was the opposite. I was letting them go easily and then they were, they were coming back and they weren't dealing with me. They weren't connected to me. Mm-hmm. And that was when I was like, you know, like being that that nice guy isn't, isn't going to close the sales, it isn't going to, you know, help pay for my condo fees.

It, you know, it's and so that's when I really started to kind of clamp down a little bit more and started trying to grill them, not let them go without a fight. And some people are better at it than others. Me not so much, but it was something that I was actively working on. I'm trying to do better when I was there.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah. No, I I think you're right, right? It's like, in all fairness though, you have to, in that type of sales atmosphere, like, you know, if you've listened to my show much or I think you know me pretty well, I, I have a relationship based company, right? Like we really Yeah. Focus on capital business development, on building relationships.

What those pushy people were able to do that maybe me and you struggled a little bit with, where they were able to create enough of a relationship and that 15 minute interaction that even if it wasn't great, they still built a relationship. It was enough that these people would come back and give them another opportunity to sell them.

And I think so much of business is about that. It's like, how do you, how do you in a, in a short period of time, you know, in the case of business development over a longer period of time, but in the case of like sales, a short period of time, Create enough of a rapport, enough of a trust enough trust with that person that they are going to give you a shot.

They're gonna say, you know what? This guy seems okay. We're gonna give him this opportunity to sell me this product or service. Right? And that's a skill. That is a skill. And let, like Dale's saying, it takes time to refine. And when you walk in and watch these people, sometimes it doesn't look like they're doing anything.

But the reality is they've honed that skill over the period of months, years, and who knows how long, maybe decades.

Dale Schaub: Absolutely. Yeah. And, and I think too, what's what's understated in the world of sales too is that there are different types of sales, right? There's different types of salesmen. That kind of person who goes and does extremely well in a retail environment where, where it's a hard closing environment, they, you know, and they then transition into something you know, like more of a account management style role where it's, where long-term relationships matter more.

And there are gonna be different sales and there're gonna be sales that are suited for different types of salespeople. And that was something that, that, that I learned like, you know, retail probably not for Dale, it's not, I'm not pushing enough, I'm not, you know, like, you know, and I, I, I just, I can't push past those objections at the same level that, that others can.

And maybe it was just my lack of experience. But, you know, more relationship sales were, were something that, that. Were something I was more successful at later on.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. And I wanna touch on that too because you know, I mean, I try to educate people all the time that business development and account management are two different things, and a lot of companies are trying to dual purpose the role, right?

They're trying to say like, Hey, yeah, my business development person, he can also manage all these accounts. The problem with that is if your business development person isn't out there hammering for new business for your company, creating new relationships and bringing them through the pipeline into an account management stage.

You at some point are going to struggle because if he's spending, let's say, 70 to 80% of his time doing account management, which is frankly what it takes, it takes that much time to manage accounts properly. But he's only spending 20% of his time or 30% of his time on the new business development. Your pipeline, the the amount of opportunities you have is going to dry up and you're going to blame him.

And I'm gonna tell you right now, it is not his fault. It's your fault for making him do account management and business development. Those need to be two separate positions within your company to be done effectively and efficiently. Absolutely. Yeah. What's like, what has been your experience, Dale?

Like, I know that you've probably been thrown into that, you know, I mean, I, I, I know you pretty well if you've spent 15 years in business development sales, you've probably done some account management too. Did you find that in the organizations that you were working with at that time, that was kind of the expectation was that not only did you handle all new sales and new business development, but you managed the accounts as well?

Dale Schaub: Yeah, it's you know, when you, when you work for a smaller organization those, you know, it's, it's becomes quite impossible to, to differentiate, right? You end up being, you know, the, the inside guy, the technical guy, the account manager guy, the guy who's going out there hunting for new sales. And heck, you even get your feet wet in, in marketing.

Yep. You know, and, and so it, it is what it is, right? Like it's you, you have to kinda roll with the punches. And I've always liked to think of myself as a bit of a utility guy. Now I'm way more than ever because I, I literally, Help people right across the spectrum when it comes to early stage entrepreneurship, right?

Like, I need to know how to do financing, I need to know how to do basic accounting marketing, sales obviously. But you know, like everything, everything under the sun. So I, I'm, I'm less opposed to, to that diversity, but I do think that, that what is rare is, is folks knowing what they're getting into when they go, when they join an organization that they need to know, Hey, you, you're gonna have to, you know, we're we, we're gonna need you to be flexible because we're new and we need somebody who's gonna be able to help out in.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. I think, okay. I, I'm gonna backtrack a little bit. I think what I'm getting at is, is I totally understand what you're saying and I think I'm speaking to a lot of newer entrepreneurs who are also trying to start their own businesses. They're doing business development, like, I totally get it.

I'm with you. I've done those things. Dale's done those things. We're with you, we're on your side. What I'm saying is the long-term goal needs to be, to separate those things. Why? Because it's going to be more effective for your business, right? I get it. In the beginning, you're running like a chicken with your head cut off.

You got a thousand different things, especially as a new entrepreneur, a new business owner, you got a lot of things on your mind. But what I'm saying is, is that if you are spread too thin in anything, things are gonna suffer and Oh yeah. You know, if, if it's your business development suffering, what that typically means is, yeah, you might have five or six great clients that you utilize all the time, but if for whatever reason they can't support you anymore, it's gonna take you a lot longer to find new clients than if you would spend a little bit more time on that new business development on a consistent basis.

Dale Schaub: Yeah, absolutely. I, I think I, I, I describe entrepreneurship this way, and I think sales in a lot of ways is it as well entrepreneurship is like driving, fixing and maintaining a car all at the same time. You know, it's, it, you're, if you do, you know, if you don't time things right or you don't do this thing at the expense of the other thing you know, that car's gonna break down or get you into an accident.

And yeah. It's, it's really just this delicate balancing act of making sure all your priorities

Kelly Kennedy: are being hit. Yeah, totally. You know what else I want to touch on so much about what you just said. You know, timing, timing, okay? Mm-hmm. As a new entrepreneur, things are going to come your way. Opportunities are going to come your way, and you need to be ready.

You need to be ready, and you need to be ready to say yes because they don't come your way every day. And you know what's made me successful Dale in my life is recognizing an opportunity and taking advantage of everyone that I can. It's not enough to just have opportunity. You also have to act on that opportunity, right?

Things can come your way, but if you are, if you're saying no, or I'm too busy, or I can't do this right now, You don't know when the next one's coming, so you need to take advantage of everything as it comes your way. The way that I wanna relate to this is, heck, this podcast, this specific podcast. I had no plans, Dale, to make this podcast.

This podcast came outta left field. I am not a public speaker. You know what I mean? You are a public speaker. I am not a public speaker. I, I have not done public speaking. I'm a business development person through and through a salesperson, a business development person through and through now an entrepreneur.

Cause I've been doing it for three years and I cut my teeth and I'm learning, but I'm still learning every day. But as I, as I started looking into equipment, because I knew this year I needed some new microphone equipment. I'm doing a lot more high level meetings. I wanted to sound more professional. I wanted to be more professional, look more professional through my cameras and stuff.

And as I started delving down this path of equipment, well suddenly podcast equipment started popping up because high level mics and stuff all run through mixers and stuff like that, right? And so next thing I realized was, holy cow, like, you know, by the time I buy all this mic set up, I'm pretty much gonna have a podcast.

And I love podcasts. Why don't I just try one? And that's exactly what happened. The opportunity came, I tried it. I, you know, I mean the business development podcast, somehow, just by some miraculous miracle, was available as a, as a name. And I was like, okay, well I'd be silly now. Like this is an opportunity.

I would be silly not to act on this. And that has been true, but it's, you have to act on the opportunities as they present themselves.

Dale Schaub: Yeah, absolutely. I I talk with my students. It's funny, like I was never a believer in, in serendipity, right. Like I'm, I'm a, I'm, oh, that's too wishy-washy for me. You know, I'm the son of a carpenter.

We don't, you know, we don't, we don't this non-practical stuff. And then I saw it in action. Like, I, I literally see it in my students. Mm-hmm. Where I have like one student who's, who's working on garments specifically for women, and she goes to an event and somehow or another comes out of it with like five contacts and somebody who's exactly what she needs at that point in time.

Yeah. And, and that then, and she's on a flow. Like everything is just, Cruising perfectly for her. Everything's clicking, click, click, click, click. Everything's just going, totally going gozo far her right. And it's, it's just serendipity. And you know, the way I kind of explained it so that it sounds less wishy-washy is that if you were gonna go to say a conference where everybody in the room could help you, or everybody in the room knows somebody, and you were, you actually took a different approach from your usual approach of sitting in the corner sipping on a, on a glass of water, and instead started going, you know, talking to people, learning about their business, letting them know what it is that you need, where you could use some help and just allowed people to help you.

Yeah. Just everything just changes for you right there.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. You know what, Dale, I'm not sure that there is a way to explain this serendipity. I, I am, you know what? Like, I, I, things have lined up for me. Since I started this business, since I started capital, you know, and things have lined up for me in my life a lot of the time.

And I don't mean this to be like pretentious or anything. I've just been fortunate I have truly been fortunate I didn't come from a wealthy background. I, I'm self-made, you know, and I'm self making myself every day. Like most of us, most of us young entrepreneurs, we're doing the best we can and we don't come from money.

And but the reality is it's like, like you said, you know what, Dale, I'm just gonna give an example, okay? I knew exactly what I was looking for when I was going to start hiring business development reps for capital. I knew what I wanted. I knew exactly what I wanted and I wasn't quite sure how to get it.

And I knew I was gonna have to root through a thousand resumes to do it. I kid you not Dale. So Cole listens this. I love Cole. He's my employee and he's great. And he, I kid you not, Cole is the perfect employee. He's exactly what I was looking for in, in a, in a new business employee for capital business development.

And I kid you not Dale, he came to my door. He's the only one who came. He came to my door, the perfect employee. I knew exactly what I needed. I wrote it down. This is what I need. This employee came to my door. How do you explain serendipity like that? It's, it's really hard to explain sometimes.

Dale Schaub: You, you, you know, and, and, and it, and it, I mean, if, if, for somebody who hasn't experienced it, I'm sure they're thinking we're out of our minds.

Totally. Now. But I, I'm, but I'm with you there, man. I'm with you. I, stuff has just kind of flown, like flowed the way, like I, if I, my description, like I, I you know, I look at it like. You know, like you're, it's almost like you just like feel the universe and you, you travel the direction it's pushing you Totally.

Instead of pushing against it. Yeah. Right. And, and so many things just kind of happen so well for you there. Yeah. Yeah. You know

Kelly Kennedy: what genuinely think it's like, it's like as a new entrepreneur, if you truly are doing something you're passionate about, if this is really your calling and I think, you know, like I am, no question Dale.

I'm in my calling. I was meant to be in business development. I was meant to start capital business development and I was meant to do this podcast for whatever reason you want to call it. For whatever reason. I'm somewhat good at it. And I just, I never, it was never planned. It just happened to be an opportunity that came my way that I didn't say no to.

Right. And I feel like as long as you are doing something that you're passionate about that comes to you, the universe lines things up. The universe is like, okay, you know what? You're doing what we want you to do. Here you go. Here's more opportunity. Keep doing it. Keep doing what you're doing cuz you're doing something that's going to matter somewhere down the line right.

Dale Schaub: No, it's, it's absolutely true. Yeah. All those times where I was like, oh, I should've, I should do this, I should do this. And then the, the times just weren't right. Right. Like the universe totally was trying to tell me it wasn't right to try to jump into something that you know, that, that I wasn't ready for or wasn't, wasn't my time yet.

Yeah. It's anyway, there so many examples. We could go on a book.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, there is, there is. You know what, and I think any entrepreneur listening to this, you know, especially if you're an experienced business owner, I guarantee you, you have a list of 15, 20 things that you're like, holy crap, I can't believe that happened.

I can't believe the universe lined up for me in that way. And those opportunities presented because they just seem to, if, if you start something, it's like the, the world or the universe, whatever you wanna call it, God lines things up for you to just say, you know what, here you go. You wanna do this?

Here's your opportunity. But it's up to you to take advantage of those opportunities. And I hope that one of the messages you get from this today is that when you, when you recognize the opportunity instead of passing it by, don't let it pass you by. Take advantage.

Dale Schaub: Yep. And, and do what Kelly says. Do what Kelly did.

Literally write it down. Write what you're looking for, describe it to yourself, think about it. And, and yeah, those, those things will start to kind of creep into your world. And it's gonna be your job to, to grab them and, and hop on the right, the white, the right water slide that'll take you where you need to go.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Get on the water slide. All right, Dale, I want to take us, you know, we talked about business development, we've talked about sales. You are also an entrepreneur. Tell us about your entrepreneurial journey, Dale.

Dale Schaub: Oh, it's, it's a, it's a little embarrassing, Kelly. I'll be honest with you. I I, I had lost my job.

I was working for a company and it was March, 2020 and I was the outside guy. I used to do presentations, and we all know what happens in, in, at the end of March, 2020. Mm-hmm. And so yeah, I found myself in a absolutely tragic job market. Well, maybe I should go way back in the beginning here. Sure.

Cause my very first job was actually working for a company called Old Dutch Potato Chips. Mm-hmm. And I was just familiar Old, yeah. Old Dutch spitz sunflower seeds and Cheez Hawkins cheeses and Yeah. You're not Canadian. You don't know what a delight those are. And yeah. So anyway, I ended up getting a job at, at Old Dutch working as Relief.

Basically my job was to ride around with the drivers and do holiday relief cuz they were all contract drivers. Anyway I did that for a little while and opportunity opened up and I ended up taking a route. So that was actually my first entrepreneurship journey. Nice. Was being the chip guy. And I, I had a territory and I used to go and deliver, take orders, do upsell on promotions and stock the shelves.

And so yeah, I did that for actually about six years. Wow. And it was a, it, you know, it was a decent little job. I ended up getting myself in trouble from an accounting perspective. Oh. And so this was just pure naivete. But you know how when you get a paycheck when you're working for somebody and they take off the taxes?

Yes. Well, yeah, I, it did not clue into me that, that I needed to set aside that money for taxes. Fair. Yeah. When I was starting a new business. And so within the first year, I owed like 10 grand to the government and I did not have that, like a, the oh no chip gig was not paying me that well, that I had, was able to set aside 10 grand and yeah.

From there it was just me sticking with it, trying to dig myself out of the hole that I had developed. And if, if nobody here listening has ever. Owed money to the cra, the Canadian Revenue Agency, our tax tax company here in Canada do not owe them money. They are awful to owe money too. They charge like a monthly interest.

I think they were charging like 5% every month on my stuff. And Wow. Yeah. Within a few years, I I had managed to amass about a hundred thousand dollars in, in, in tax, re debt. Holy. Just trying to dig myself outta all that. And so finally I just kind of hit that point where I was like, you know what I need, you know, like this, this has to stop.

This is just insane. You know, like my debit cards getting shut off, my credit cards were getting canceled, you know, I'm trying to fill in my gas tank without, without either of those. And Yeah. Anyway, so you know, I'm sitting at home just, just numb, like, just staring at the wall, like, you know, like, you know, how do you, how do you deal with that kind of adversity?

And so yeah, I, I just kind of reached the point where I was like, you know what? I am dying in this chip business. And so I ended up getting out of it and and yeah, selling the truck and, and getting myself a real job and working my way out of it. So definitely entrepreneurship has its pluses at its minuses.

That was one of my minuses for sure. Yeah. And so anyway, but back to the story I kind of started, which was March, 2020, and I was looking at this job market and it was awful, right? Everybody's getting laid off everywhere. And so the one thing that I had done was I was doing, I had done a bunch of presentations.

I, you know, I was doing some consulting work for a company called Business Link. And so I, I, you know, had some skills. I knew my stuff, I knew how to work with entrepreneurs. And so my, my big idea, and I, I use quotation marks for that was that I was gonna build some presentations. And the only reason that I set up a company was I wanted to lock in a name so that I could.

So I could use the name in my presentations so that I could deliver those presentations and get paid for them. Yeah. Now that's not how presentations work. Just so you guys know, you can't just build a deck and go and start, hit people up for payments so that you can deliver them. Most of those are actually free, like you deliver them for free, but when you deliver them, you're, you, you sell something at the end.

Sure. So you provide a lot of free value. So Kelly, for example, could build up sales presentation for an hour. He could go deliver it to the chambers of commerce around Alberta. And at the end, his closing slide would be all about hiring him to to go and do sales calls. Right. I see. That's how it would work.

Right? Okay. And so, whatever it is I'm looking to sell, maybe I'm, I built a course, I wanna sell that. Maybe I built a sold, I'm selling my book, you know, something, something along those lines. But, but the, you deliver the presentation for free until you reach a certain level where you've. Simply got so much demand that now people are willing to pay you to do some of the larger events.

So that's how you get into public speaking if anyone's curious as to how that works. Anyway, I did not know. I, I, I was all backwards about the whole thing. So I, anyway, I, I'd set it up and then I did this crazy thing and I announced it on LinkedIn that I had gone into business for myself. And oh, you know, here's a, here's a kooky logo.

My wife had made of a caricature of me with a, with a fist. And I called myself One Punch Consulting. So that, that was, that was how I got my business going, was under this terrible pre pretense. And literally one of my buddies who is a consultant, called me up and set me straight not too long after that. But, but after I put posted on LinkedIn people who were familiar with my work started reaching out.

And, and that's how I kind of got going was, was literally just like a few folks who said, Hey Dale you know, you're, we're looking for something. We got this contract and we're looking for somebody to execute it. You know, and, and can we meet and see if we can do this work together? And so I'll never forget that the Leduc Chamber of Commerce reached out.

They extended a hand and they were my first client. And I built a a job connector website for them. All on all the ways to the, the, their. Staff could, or not, not their staff, sorry, that their businesses that, that were part of the chamber could hire people. Some of the grants associated with that and how if you're looking for a job, you could, you could apply for one.

And it turned out to be this job connector website. Wow. That gave me work for a couple of months and, and got my feet under me. So shout out to Leduc Chamber. Fantastic organization.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Shout out to Chambers all around the world. Chambers of Commerce are great. And I literally just did a, my last, my last interview episode, the one before you, Dale, is with Ken Gee of the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce.

And nice. They have been so helpful. And you know, I mean, you were kind of, you were touching on networking events and stuff and like for, for the local Edmonton area, the Edmonton Chamber puts on this just absolutely massive networking event called Coffee With the Chamber. And I, I, I was at the last one.

I've been so busy I haven't been able to attend any of them, but I finally was able to attend one, I think it was two weeks ago. And there was like 300 people there, Dale. It was unbelievable how many people show up to that. So yeah, just shout out to Chambers around the world. You guys are amazing. Keep up the good work.

Dale Schaub: Yeah. They, they, they run some great events, honestly. And, and I think a lot of 'em are free usually. Yeah. I remember going to a bunch of them and you know, great folks, everybody looking to chat. Highly recommended for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you're, if you're a B2B and, and Oh yeah. And the market's pretty broad.

Get out there, go, go, make, go, sh go show your face.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. So, I, I wanna touch on that. You said you designed and built a website for Li. Was that your background? How did you get into that?

Dale Schaub: No, no, no. I, I actually didn't know anything about Website to Wow, okay. Okay. Yeah, I, I should correct myself.

I, I provided the content for the website. I see, okay. Is how it went. Yeah. So I ended up What did I end up doing with that? I, I kind of researched the, how it would lay out. I wrote like several posts for it. I talked to 20 different companies within the region who might be support organizations and they provide and got them to provide their content for the site.

So yeah, I, I, you know, I did it fair amount of work. It was only a couple months worth of work. You know, wasn't a crazy, crazy assignment, but yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, hey, we all need our first assignment. I was thankful enough that when I started Capital Business Development that the boss that I'd been working for for like almost a decade was like, Hey, you know what?

You're gonna need that first client anyway. We want you to stay for another six, eight months. Come on. And he just offered me a contract right off the bat. So shout out to Selva Nadar for just being an amazing man and giving me that opportunity. And yeah, the rest is history, but we all need our first client and sometimes it's just that pat on the back that we need.

So I'll tell you what, I don't know an entrepreneur yet who is an incredibly thankful for their very first client.

Dale Schaub: Absolutely. For sure, for sure. And I find it's amazing too, how many times it's, it's your network totally provides that right? And gets you a start and then suddenly you're, you're, you have a, an expertise that you can focus on, right?

Like, so suddenly all my contacts at Chambers and economic development groups started making a lot of sense and, and started opening the doors.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. Dale, tell me a little bit about some of the tactics that you used. I mean, obviously you've been in business development and sales a long time.

When you were trying to market your company, what, what were some of the tactics that you found were incredibly effective for you?

Dale Schaub: Honestly, for me it was just it was just that network. I ended up having a lot of coffee, dinner, you know, coffees and dinners and reaching out to folks. Right out of the gate.

I think I mass spammed everybody with with a big email. And, and just, yeah, just let them know that I was, I was open for business. And then, you know posting progress on, on social helped. But I mean, all of this is terrible advice if you don't have that, that network to begin with, and that you're not connected with people who are, who are that decision maker.

Right? Sure. So I, I feel like this is cheating a little bit, Kelly.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, no, it's not cheating cause No, because. What you're, what you're delivering right now is what you need, right? Mm-hmm. The reality is, I tell all of our listeners, you have a hundred LinkedIn invites you can send every week. You need to be sending them because they don't carry over.

They don't roll over into the next week, right? So the reality is, if you're a new entrepreneur, you need to be building your social network. The social network. I always recommend, especially if you're in B2B or anything that's business to business related, you wanna be on LinkedIn, you wanna be active on LinkedIn, you wanna have a good profile on LinkedIn.

Remember, it's your, it's your personal skyscraper is what I like to say. Dale, I like to say that LinkedIn is your personal skyscraper In the 21st century. It's, it's you. It's when people are trying to figure out who you are, they're looking on your LinkedIn. And so you need to make sure that your profile picture's good, that all of your content is up to date and high quality, that you're listing out your qualifications, your experience, because you need to build yourself up like we're building skyscrapers in the eighties.

Dale Schaub: Absolutely. And, and there's such, there's such techniques, like if we're gonna talk social media, right? You wanna be engaged with your audience, you wanna follow every single company you want to do business with you wanna focus anybody who's active within those companies who, who can, who are making announcements, those kinds of things.

Yes. Any associations, any groups I mean, that's what I tell my k my students to, to, you know, go out there, find the companies you wanna work for, find the, find the folks in those groups who are actually posting the jobs and, and they're doing it before they get to, you know, to the, to the classified section.

To use an antiquated term you know, before, before they post those jobs out there.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, totally. And and keep in mind too, the way that LinkedIn works, right? So you know what I mean? Like Dale's saying, you wanna connect with people within that organization. And the way that LinkedIn works is, is if that person you connect to then is connected to someplace, somebody higher level in that organization, you can then reach out to them too.

So the secret is to consistently be utilizing those 100 LinkedIn reach outs that you can send out on a weekly basis, so that you are expanding your network and therefore expanding the reach of the next steps in the ladder. The next people in the ladder you can then reach out to and next thing you know, you'll be able to connect to the CEOs, you'll be able to connect to people all over it, like influential people, people that can help you and your business.

And so the secret to social networking is you need to be active. Like Dale says, you need to participate, you need to comment on things, you need to add people. And if you are consistently doing that, you're gonna build this great network, which when at some point. You. You might not even recognize how it will help you, but like Dale said, you know, he started his business, made a quick post.

Next thing you know, people on his network were saying, Hey Dale, we have an opportunity for you.

Dale Schaub: Well, and, and I think it's a little more well, I mean, amazing advice, of course, Kelly, but I, I think a, a lot of it almost had an earlier origins. Cause I really feel like I was out there before getting these connections because I was able to offer something of value to the folks in my network.

Right? So, so the reason I have so many chamber and act dev folks is because I was out there in their communities delivering presentations, helping their clients Yes. Start businesses or helping their businesses be successful and grow. And so you know, it, it, it, yeah, it's great. You can reach out, you can ask for things, but, but if you're not providing value then, then, you know, you're, you're.

There's, you're not gonna be a great contact for them. Right?

Kelly Kennedy: True, true. You're right. I totally missed that part. Thank you so much for clarifying that. Yeah, 100%. Like, you know what I mean? Especially if you are a newer entrepreneur, you need to be able to kind of showcase why you would be a benefit to these people, or what I like to do, I like to just call it like a brief LinkedIn.

I call it my digital introductions. And I just, I always send just a brief introduction of myself. Hi, I'm Kelly Kennedy. I'm the owner of Capital Business Development. We do this, this, and this. I also operate the Business Development podcast. You can listen to it here, and if you love it, let me know. I'd love to hear about it.

Just be a human is the way that I like to say it, Dale. I like to say be a human in a, in a world of AI and robots. Be a human. And I advocated on this show, right, because I feel like we're. We live in a world of passive marketing, right? Where everyone's like, oh, I don't want, I don't wanna pick up a phone, I don't wanna make a phone call.

I don't wanna have a human to human interaction. But we are craving that. We are, we are social creatures. Humans are social creatures. And I don't care how much ai, how much, how much robotics or whatever you want to throw into it, or how much you hope that you could just throw out all these digital ads you still need to make a human connection to, to do well in business.

And Absolutely. So it's like if, if that's what you have to do, you have to start practicing it. And you, and there are ways to be a human, even though we are utilizing digital mediums.

Dale Schaub: Absolutely. And, and he, you, you hit the nail on the head, Kelly, and it's really a about making that human connection. And so a couple things that I, that I do just for tips if anybody's looking to try to add value to any of those connections is connecting people.

So that's gonna be just a natural for you guys if you see somebody working on something that's of interest to somebody else, make those connections. And then one of the ACEs in the hole that I happen to have is I work I just happen to be a grant expert, so I, I just picked it up at one of my jobs.

I know just whatever grant there is out there for small businesses. And so if, if I see somebody looking to hire, I can send them a half dozen different grants. I, if there's somebody's looking to innovate or develop something new, there's a bunch of grants for that. And so I'm, you know, I'm able to dig into my, my database and, and, and send some resources to folks.

It's usually, usually met positively.

Kelly Kennedy: Let's touch on that for a second. Cuz I haven't touched on anything grant related. I know very little about them. I've tried, I've done everything without grants. Like how did, how do you even find out what kind of grants are available to my new entrepreneurs or people who are looking to hire, kind of taking that steps?

Where do they even find that information? Dale? Do they hire an expert like you?

Dale Schaub: No. No. I, I fact, there's, there's free services company I worked for at Business Link. If you want to call them up, they, they should be able to direct you towards some. But let's, let's, maybe, let's just set the stage in terms we'll sa save everybody a whole lot of work.

So grants are, are typically for specific industries and a lot of the times they're for more advanced industries. So, okay, if you're just starting up a business in. I don't know, like a retail store. Are there grants available for you? Eh, probably not. Unless you're looking at hiring, hiring staff, then there might be something available for you.

But if you are maybe an existing company in agriculture, you know, suddenly the doors open up, there's gonna be some specific grants in agriculture for you. So broadly speaking, if you're looking for a grant to start a business like Kelly, if for, if you, for example, are looking for a grant unless you're looking to hire somebody who you know, has traditional barriers to employment you know, for example, somebody who's autistic or okay, or somebody from certain cultural groups who usually don't get the same opportunities then there, there probably isn't much for you outside of employment grants.

If you're developing something that's more technological, well then there are definitely some early stage technological grants that you can access. But you do need to have developed your, your product or your business idea quite a bit. And so what that, what that means, I'm, I'm going into a totally new world for everybody here, but, but what that usually means is that you, you have to have conducted a bunch of customer interviews in the right way.

You have to I've done a bunch of research on your business idea. You have to have developed a minimum viable product for it. That can be done in a cheap way. And I don't want people spending a lot of. Money to do this, and then at that stage you can, you can usually get some sort of funding. And I would highly recommend that folks get involved in some sort of a formal program.

If you're in Alberta, Alberta, catalyzer is a great option. Edmonton Unlimited has some great programs to help you develop a more technological idea and get you to a point where you might be able to access grants to, to help develop that.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Yeah. It's, it's such like an, I don't wanna say an uncharted territory, but it, like to most entrepreneurs it's, it might as well be a whole nother language.

Dale Schaub: Yeah. It's, it, it's k It's just kind of funny. I just kind of fell into this early stage entrepreneurship stuff. Got a, took a bunch of training on it and. It's, yeah, you're right. Like it's, yeah, I, I could go on and on about it. I don't wanna bore everybody.

Kelly Kennedy: No, no, that's ok. That's ok. I think you've already provided, like, I think, I guarantee you there's people who are like, okay, I think after this, this podcast, I need to go Google if there's some potential some potential opportunities for me because I don't, you know, I mean, we don't even know to look for them.

We don't even, we have no idea what to look for in grants or anything like that. So if you got one.

Dale Schaub: An easy answer. So I'll give you the, the short version. Alberta Innovates has a bunch of grants. They'll be mostly technological, but they're for earlier stage businesses. If you go to the federal government, usually something like Prairies can, or Anyway, federal government grants should be googleable enough for you to, to be able to pull up their resource center, and that's gonna be more for later stage businesses.

Okay. If you're involved in importing, exporting, agriculture tech you know, a few other categories like that than there, there might be something available for you. Or, you know, go vi visit my friends at business Link. Just send 'em an email or give 'em a phone call and they should be able to send you a list of grants.

And if you can't get them, there's usually funding. So something closer to a bank loan for specific folks in the ecosystem depending on your situation.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, that's awesome, Dale. Thank you so much. I wanna take us now we're, we're gonna, we're gonna take another step forward cuz when I first met you, you were relatively new at the Mawji Center.

I think you'd been there about six months when me and you first went for lunch the first time, and I remember finding that. So absolutely interesting. Can you tell us a little bit about the story, about how you ended up in the Mawji Center and what that experience has been like for you? Yeah, absolutely.

Dale Schaub: For sure. So, so at the time I was working on one Punch Consulting, taking a few odd jobs here and there, and then one of my contacts and just briefly wanna mention this because I think it's really, really important when you, when you're. Just getting your feet on the ground. The folks that you think will help you aren't usually the folks who end up helping you.

Sometimes it's that that person off in the sidelines who you have like a, a passing relationship too, and they end up stepping forward and make all the difference in the world. So, so cast your net wide when, when you are, you know, looking for help, looking for support. Anyway, that was this person. So, so my, my good friend Cecile Wendlandt is runs the Mawji Center and she reached out and she said, Dale, You should apply for this.

And she sent me this job posting and this thing was ridiculous. Like they, it was scrambled, it was a mess. They were looking for oh, I forget what they called it now. Some sort of post-secondary supports and they wanted somebody with a master's in bus in business and experience with machine learning and you know, 20 years.

Anyway, its just, it was an obscene ad and I looked at this thing and I'm Cecile, this isn't me at all. Like, I'm, you know, like, you know, I've got, Five years of consulting experience. Yeah. And a, and a diploma from NAIT. I mean, I'm not, I'm not qualified at all for this. She's like, no, no, no. Dale. Just apply.

Just apply. And, and I did. And, and it turns out that this job posting was what happens when you ask four different post-secondaries mm-hmm. What they want in a consultant. And each one of them has their own prerogatives in terms of what they're looking for. And they just combine everything into one super candidate.

Yeah. That they were, were looking for. And unsurprisingly, nobody had applied for this thing because nobody's qualified for it. And and, and anyway, the job was looking specifically for consultants to work 20 hours a week with post-secondaries at various post-secondary schools. And so anyway, I applied got the interview and all the post-secondaries were in the room and everybody's shooting questions at me virtually cuz it was still Covid.

And yeah. And so I'm answering questions and, and talking about my, you know, what my success is in consulting and working for BusinessLink, et cetera. And I ended up getting three job offers out of it. So you know NAIT wanted me, NorQuest wanted me, and then they wanted me to to administer the program is what, what I'd learned later.

And so I ended up cherry picking and decided to go with NAIT and NorQuest. That, that was my, my thing was, I'm like, can I take two? Because it's 20 hours a week. Yeah. And my consulting business wasn't super busy, and I'm like, I, I would, I will a hundred percent take two of these if, if if they can.

And they, they hummed and hot and said, yeah, why not? I don't see why we can't. Yeah. And so I ended up getting two contracts for Wow. 40 hours a week. And honestly like Fantastic. You must was great opportunity. That's amazing. Yeah, it was huge.

Kelly Kennedy: Man. Yes. That's so cool. So, okay, so run me through like right now just, just for those of you who aren't aware and the Mawji Center is, NAIT's like entrepreneurial center.

NAIT is the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. So they're a very, very big, is it a university college?

Dale Schaub: Technically a polytechnic poly

Kelly Kennedy: polytechnic. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Dale Schaub: So we're, we're, we're the Northern Alberta, MIT.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Like right. Anyone who lives in, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, or frankly anywhere in Alberta or probably Canada as a whole, has a pretty good idea who NAIT is.

It's a big deal. They're a big place. They, they are essentially training the future of, of most things from trades to business to you name it. They are, they are a big deal. So this was no small opportunity for Dale. This was a huge opportunity. And now he gets to, he gets to work in the Mawji Center. And can you just explain to the world what the Mawji Center is, Dale?

Dale Schaub: Yeah, absolutely. So little center with a, with an unusual name. It's, it's actually named after the guy who, who donated money to get the fu to get it going. So Ashif Mawji this is in the news so I can say it donated a million dollars to support to get the center running for 10 years.

And anyway, so, yeah, so and so that's why it gets the, the funny name, which still has some communication issues within, within NAIT itself in terms of what ah, Mawji is. Yeah. But yeah, great place. Literally when I joined the organization, Mawji Centre ran a ton of business events. In fact, if anybody's listening, you're welcome to attend any of our many sessions on starting a business virtually.

And yeah it's tons of those. And then Cecile didn't have a ton of experience. Actually helping people start businesses. When I, when I came on board and she was a sole employee, and so what she would do is anytime somebody would come in, she had created a list of experts and so she would connect those students specifically to experts.

Which, you know, honestly was fairly brilliant for, for, you know, for somebody who doesn't have the technical expertise to say, okay, you, you need someone in social media. Let me connect you to this person. Yeah, you need an accountant, lemme connect you to that person. And it worked really well. And I came on board and, and then that was all my experience was, was sales marketing.

And then, you know, at that point, about five, six years of consulting experience. And so I ended up taking over all the student meetings and then we said, you know what? I'm losing students, like I'm meeting with students and then they're running off and I, you know, I, it's hard to chase them. It's hard to follow up.

And so I said what we really need to do is build a, a, a structural program. I should give credit to my boss, who was his idea. We were trying to take advantage of an international program the Alberta government was putting out at the time where we they would create a pathway for international students for citizenship.

And so we built this program around really, I thought it was gonna be something like, oh, marketing, financing, you know, checking all the basic boxes. Yeah. And then right around that time, Big fan of continuous learning. I ended up teaching my going and taking some training in, in basically technolo tech, starting tech companies.

And it completely changed the approach of the, the project. Cuz tech has a very deliberate way of, of validating a business idea before you spend the money to launch it. Lean's startup would is, is the process it's called. And I loved it. I absolutely loved it for our students because students don't have any money to start businesses.

Sure. And so if we can. Instead, have somebody take a ga, you know, $30,000 gamble on a business idea that they have. Instead, we can work through a, a deliberate process where they're not spending any money and they can, they can you know, develop and, and validate that idea before. Before taking it forward and, and I just totally took it, adapted it for non-tech.

Yeah. And so I actually have technical and non-technical students working through, through the program now.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. So that's amazing. And I wanna stay on this just for a second with you because I have a ton of entrepreneurs on the fence listening to this podcast, Dale. They, they have a great idea. They have a great skill.

They're afraid to take that leap cuz they're thinking, well shit, what if I invest, you know, all my money into this and it totally bombs. You know, first off, I'm just gonna say that rarely happens. If you truly, truly have a passion for what you're doing and you, and you think it through, you're probably not going to fail like that.

I'm just going to like, I know that that's a fear in all of our heads. I think we blow it up and make it this monster when the reality is it's not as big of a monster as you think. First off, but second off, Dale, how can somebody test their idea? Before they necessarily quit their job and start their new entrepreneurship career, how, what are some ways people can test an idea cost effectively?

Dale Schaub: Absolutely. So one of the first things that, that I get students to do is actually talk to customers. And what everybody is, is listening is thinking now is I need to go up to customers and say, would you buy this? And that won't work. That, that won't work. Cuz customers potential customers will, will lie to you.

They're, they're, they're, or they, they dramatically misunderstand their own future intentions. So this is something that they've tested in entrepreneurship, we know think five years ago, Kelly if I had asked you, if you would own a car within five, an electric car within five years, five years ago, you probably would've been like, oh yeah, a hundred percent I'm gonna own an electric car.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure.

Dale Schaub: Do you own an electric car? No. So, and, and, and that's, you know, that's common. Like people think, oh yeah, you know, with the best of intentions, you would've said, oh yeah, for sure I would've owned an electric car. So it turns out that we are all really bad judges of our own future behavior. So the sure, last thing I want anyone to do is go out and say, would you buy this?

Because it won't work, Uhhuh. All right. So instead what we, what I get the students to do is find somebody who is, so, it's very problem focused. So if, if you're launching a business, you're solving a problem for somebody, hopefully it's a big, painful problem for them that they're willing to spend a lot of money to fix.

And if you can identify that, that problem, then you can then go and find somebody who solved that problem. Maybe it was the ideal solution, maybe it wasn't, but understand their process to how they went about solving it. You know, did they start Googling? When did they realize this was gonna be a problem?

Why was it a problem for them? And really understanding who your potential customer is. So that's, that's step one. And I apologize, I I go on too long about this.

Kelly Kennedy: No, no, it's good. It makes sense. Keep going.

Dale Schaub: And so what I would probably do at this point is, is formulate some sort of a test, all right?

And so if somebody is, is interested in so I'll just throw out a book out Testing Business Ideas. David Bland, Alexander Osterwalder, literally a, a giant book full of tests that you can do to test your business idea. What, so instead of saying, Hey, would you buy this? And somebody says something nice, what if instead you tried to sell it to them?

Right. So you had them pre-order what you, what before you've even built the product. You've pre-ordered it. You can do this online as well. You can set up a, a website cheaply and, and run some ads for 50 bucks worth of ads and have people come to your website and see if they're willing to put their money where their mouth is, right?

So, so lots of different ways to kind of test it before you launch it. If you're building something technological, you can actually use a website like Figma, f i g m a and, and you can build a, a skeleton of your app, for example. So you've got a million dollar app idea. Build a skeleton of your app and then actually get people to work through it and, and, and try out the progress so that, that would be qualified as actually a minimal viable product is having people see it and, and give you feedback on that idea, which is totally different from if somebody would actually buy it.

So anyway, I, I don't, I'm kind of blurting out a few of them here. But yeah, don't never ask if, if anybody would do it. Mm-hmm. Instead see through their actions how they interact with things and whether or not they would pay for something.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, for sure. I think the challenge that we can get into with this specific thing is that we're always looking for reasons not to do it.

Right. Dale? Like, yeah. The reality is a lot of this entrepreneurs. We are, we are intentionally sabotaging ourselves. We are, we are. Because there's a fear, right? It's one thing to test an idea. It's one thing to have somebody say, yeah, this is great, you should do it. But then to take that step, to take that next step and actually create a product, actually create a service, create a model for your business.

I think that we can sometimes put as many barriers in front of us as possible to make sure that frankly, that step is incredibly hard to take. How do you motivate your students? You know, let's say that they've done all this analysis and you know, they keep coming to you and saying like, I think we need to test more.

I think we need to test more. And you're like, nah, I think it's time to just move forward. How do you motivate them to take the next step and actually do it? Cause I think that is the challenge for most entrepreneurs.

Dale Schaub: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think Oh, couple different ways I could go with this, but we'll just say it, it may shock you, Kelly, like when I bring the students into my program and by the end I have a 50% dropout rate.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Shocking.

Dale Schaub: Yeah. And, and here's the catch. I pay them. I actually, we got a funder and they, we give them a thousand dollars for completing the program. But I still lose 50% of the students throughout the entire process and af after that initial shock, cuz I was also a little surprised by those numbers.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no kidding.

Dale Schaub: And it duplicated the next year. And so a, after seeing that I was like, You know, maybe this is a good thing. Maybe not everybody has that internal drive. Maybe it's just not time yet. Maybe they're not that, that professional development point. Sure. Where, where, where, where they can move forward with it.

There's no obligation to actually starting a business by taking my, my, my business program for, for NAIT's students. There's, you know, like I have not put them into a situation where I'm like, oh, you, you know, like, you know, now you have to do it. Right. You know? And not every, and even more students would, would drop out if that was the case.

Yeah. I really just want to teach them the skills to kind of get it there and then get it out there. Now I'm just thinking like, for your entre, for your, for your folks out there listening in the universe what stage If you, if you're, if you're reading that business Ideas book by David Bland there's a section in there called an Assumption map.

So it basically is an exercise that I absolutely love where you outline the key things that need to be true about your business idea for it to be successful, okay? And you, the idea is that you run a test on each one of those. So if there's four things that need to be true, maybe you need to prove that the, that people actually want the product, right?

So that would be one test. Maybe you need to prove that you can find the technical expertise to develop it. You have to prove that one, right? And so you'll individually identify the, each of these, these things that need to be true, and then you'll conduct a test on them. And so, I really think that, that the reason that people delayed taking that big leap is that it's, it's a big leap.

It's that big giant step that they really, it's scary. Have to stretch. It's terrifying. Right? And so if you've done all the work, like if you've gone through a process and you've worked through all the series of steps eventually you'll get to the point where that step is so small. It would, it would be silly for you not to take the step because you've already done all the other work to make the step smaller.

My metaphor is getting mixed here, but you know what I mean?

Kelly Kennedy: Sense It makes sense. Yeah. Make, make, make the leap as make the leap a little bunny hop instead of a cliff jump.

Dale Schaub: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like, like if, if you're scared to drive a car you know, but somebody talks you into sitting in the car changing, you know, changing all the mirrors.

Yeah. So that works well. Takes you to a parking lot and says, I'll tell you what, drive it 10 feet. You know, you're gonna be more likely to, to wanna drive after that.

Kelly Kennedy: Yo man, I totally hear you. Yeah, like, you know what? That, that relates so much to me Dale, because like the podcast, I told you, I had no plan on starting the podcast, but frankly, by the time I'd done the research, figured out what I needed, it was like a new, new, new, what the opportunity was in front of me with regards to like the availability of the domain name, the availability of the name of the podcast, the cost of the equipment.

I would've been like, it literally got to a point where it's like, okay, Kelly, you're silly not to do this. You would be silly to say no and not give it a try. And I feel like cuz starting a podcast was very much like starting a new business. It, it really was. I had no idea what I was doing. I just kind of took a leap and, and I'm loving it, by the way.

So to anyone listening, I, I do love doing this. I know I, it can seem sometimes a little bit jumbled and stuff. And I think a lot because I'm just not a podcaster. I'm a regular everyday business development guy doing my best. But I get better at it daily and I love doing the podcast. I couldn't imagine not doing this now Dale.

It's that much fun. I have that much fun doing this. And we're gonna touch on this briefly with you cause I know you are a podcaster too, so we're gonna get to that. But you do, you get to a point, if you do enough planning, if you prepare, if you have a great idea and you can kind of see it through in your head, you will get to a point where taking that leap, you'll be like, okay, I have to like, you just get to a point where you have to do it.

Dale Schaub: Yeah, absolutely. Kelly, can I tell you the worst business advice? And, and and this one's gonna hurt a lot of folks listening. Absolutely. The, the worst business advice is just do it. I, I, you know, I, that's probably like, I, I actually asked the question, any advice for new entrepreneurs on my podcast? And 50% of the time, just go out there and do it, man.

Just do it. You know, take that leap. And I hate that advice. And the reason I hate it is it's entitled, it's, it's like, yes, that makes sense. If you've got, you know, a million bucks in the bank and you know, like if you use, if you lose 20 K on this no big deal, yeah. Then, then suddenly that, that giant step I is, is not so insurmountable.

But when you've got nothing, like when you've, you know, when a hundred bucks is make or break for you. Mm-hmm. For, for every year. That is awful advice because you're risking a lot. A lot. And, and so that's why I'm like, you know what, like there, there's ways where you can take the risk off of things. Temper your risk when you, when you're doing these types of entrepreneurship activities.

And then when you're more advanced, when you're, then you can be like, oh yeah, I'll just take a $20,000 gamble on this and it won't affect you, it won't affect your life in any way, shape, or form. Yeah. And that, I think that that's just so, that's the difference. It's such a huge difference between people who have made it and not made it.

And it's always the advice from people who've made it, who are, who are throwing out that advice.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Well, okay. I, I wanna touch on that because you know what, we live in a time, frankly, inflation is through the bloody roof, at least in Alberta. I can't speak to United States cause I don't know what it's like for you guys, but I imagine you guys are probably in the same boat.

But if you live in Canada right now, Inflation. I don't know where we're at. We gotta be at 10, 12%. It's, it's absolutely nuts. The cost of the cost of groceries is pretty much doubled. You know, I have a family of five. I guarantee you our grocery cost has gone. It's doubled. There's no question. It's doubled.

It's just, it's astronomical. And not, and not just groceries, but like everything, the cost of vehicles, the cost of living, the cost of borrowing money, it's all up. So more than ever, you need to be cost conscious. You need to be cost conscious. And I'm an advocate that you don't necessarily need a lot of money to start a business, especially if your business is a service-based business.

You can really test that idea for not that much money. And, and I, you know, I mean, people always tell you, well, you gotta have so much money, you gotta have all this money to start a business. And that's just not true. Can you speak to that Dale a little bit?

Dale Schaub: Yeah, absolutely. There's, there's always, always a way to, to test it, right?

You can almost always drill things down. If you wanna, I don't know, like start a manufacturing facility in, in, you know, in Edmonton it costs you $20 million. Maybe just maybe you outsource a particular product that you're looking to build and sell it from there. Even before then, you could always, you know, create a mockup and, and, and show it to people and get feedback off of it.

There's been so many folks who students are, are notorious for wanting to open up a retail space. And retail is, is, is, is, is such a tough, tough, it's a tough market to get into. Yeah. Yeah. It is, it is not. Field of dreams, if you build that they will come, is not true in, in, in retail businesses. So you do need a strategy and a plan, but before you do that, why don't you run your business outta your house?

Mm-hmm. Right? And you offer those services before you take on all those different expenses of, of a, of a. You know, a commercial space that you have to sign a contract for for five years you know, and build up that audience. And, and, and I get it, like, it's such an ego thing. People are like, oh, I need an office.

That's how people will know I'm successful. And I'm like, well, what if instead you worked outta your house, but you made twice as much money? Wouldn't that be a better sign of success than, than having that retail space? So yeah. So there, there's. There's smaller versions of businesses that you can do.

You don't have to make it yourself. You can get someone else to make it. You can buy it in smaller quantities. You can even do, there's things like on demand services. I could start a t-shirt business or I never touch a t-shirt. There's companies out there that'll print those t-shirts for me. I don't even need to know, do the designing.

I can use AI to design the shirts now. Sure. Right. And, and you know, just, and all I have to do is, is concentrate on selling and marketing. So, so there's, there's small things that you can do, smaller businesses than what your dreams are that'll get you to your large business ideas, large dreams.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely.

And you know what I mean? Like some of the biggest businesses started out of a garage, right? Like, you know, we're local Edmonton. Oh yeah. Canada-wide. Greg Distributors, right? Greg Distributors started out of a garage in Edmonton. People, it is now one of the biggest parts warehouses in the, in the country.

Dale Schaub: Yeah. But I got another one, Raptor Mining. So a lot of folks might not know them. They basically build the big like the, the if you ever see any construction equipment, they build like the. How do you even describe the claws? The machine. Oh, like buckets, machines, machine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're international. They literally started in a garage where they were reselling products that they got from, from another country. Wow. Right. That's how they started. Now they're in multinational country with inter shipped, you know, with manufacturing. I mean, it's, yeah, there, there's millions of those examples of it.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. It's, it's organic growth, right? It's growing smart. It's growing smart. You know, like the reality is most of us don't have enough money to start this gigantic manufacturing building. You know, you're just not going to, you're not. And, and even if you did, maybe it, I, maybe that's a horrible idea in the first place.

Even if you could, even if you had all the money, you could build this gigantic manufacturing center. There's no guarantee that you haven't even tested your idea yet. You haven't even tested the idea. Why build this gigantic manufacturing center? Right? Like, start in your garage, start in your house, start with something small and see what happens.

And see if you even like it first off, right? Like, it's like whatever you start, you gotta like it cuz you're gonna be in it a while. So. I think, Dale, you're on point, man. You gotta start small, start small, test it out, see what you think, and then go from there. But if you start small, you fail small too. You fail, you fail quick and you fail small, which are all great things.

Dale Schaub: Absolutely. You know, and, and this is, it's different advice for folks who are experienced at it. But you know, remember my very first business, right? We're, we're little blip of the accounting ended up, you know, bank basically bankrupting me. I didn't, I didn't get that far, but, you know, and you know, that, that was very much a small business.

You can get started and, and learn the ropes on. There's nothing wrong with it. And if things are going well, expanded rapidly you, you know, you could still be a world beater with a small business that you grow for sure.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Dale, if you could give like, you know, I mean, I'm sure you see this over and over and over again with your students.

If you could only give them one piece of advice, what advice would that be into starting their businesses? The one that would be the same for all of them? What would that advice be?

Dale Schaub: Test it. I mean, you've heard it. I feel like I should come up with something different, but that's the advice, right?

Is like, that's good advice. I'm test it. Right. I mean, I wanna say something like, get a mentor, but, but it's, that's hard. Finding somebody, you know, experience in your field who's willing to give up some of their time, you can definitely reach out to folks. Believe it or not, like contrary to what TV and movies teach us entrepreneurs are honestly some of the nicest, most giving people totally, especially the more successful folks.

Totally. And so, you know, a lot of the times you can just reach out and say, and ask for some specific help. You call 'em up and say, I want you to be my mentor. They'll say no. But if you call them up and say, Hey I noticed that you, you know, you did this already and yeah, this is something I'm struggling with.

Do you have any advice for young entrepreneur? People are are amazing, just amazing.

Kelly Kennedy: You know what? And a mentor is anybody who helps you too. Like, keep that in mind, right? Like, you don't have to come up to somebody and be like, Hey dude, will you mentor me? When you were talking to an experienced entre entrepreneur, like I've been so fortunate Dale, to have had so many great lunches with so many great entrepreneurs at this point in my life.

You know, whether that be with, with capital business development, or with my previous business, or with this podcast, I get to meet people such as yourselves, which are just a wealth of knowledge. And frankly, I consider you all mentors. I really do, because I learned something from every single one of these conversations, and I want my listeners to keep that in mind too.

Mentors are anybody with a wealth of knowledge that can help you. It's that little piece of advice you take, you take from each and every one of them that builds into this gigantic va wall of advice or, or wealth of knowledge that you can pull from and, and not make those same mistakes. You know, like it's not just the guy that you ask to be your mentor.

It's literally everybody with good business advice that helps you and, and shares with you along the way.

Dale Schaub: Absolutely. And, and, and advice. I I, I should, we should put a little caveat in on this. Even if you've met the most successful guy in the world, it doesn't mean that they're giving you the right advice for your business at this point in time.

Too true. So everything with a grain of salt, a hundred percent. Even me, I tell the students, I'm like, look, you know, I don't, I don't know. I don't have all the answers. You're gonna want to go your own way. But there's definitely gonna be a lot of. Advice out there that Yeah. That you may not wanna listen to, but also you might wanna listen to.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, for sure. And, and I think, you know, I mean, I think to the, for the most part, people do, they, they listen to everything with a critical ear, I think for the most part, right? Because we're always like, okay, does that apply to me or that does that? But I think in general, most of the time, even on, like, even on an overarching idea, it does apply in one way or another to at least an aspect of your business, right?

If somebody tells you, yeah, I did all this stuff and this really didn't work for me, think about it. Okay, yeah. Maybe this ex isn't the exact scenario that I'm in right now, but could I be in a similar scenario or is there a similar way to apply this advice? Because I think most of the time, Dale, there is, there is a similar.

There's a way to apply the advice to your specific business where you're like, yeah, I think maybe if I did that, that wouldn't work. That is good advice.

Dale Schaub: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's I, I'm sorry. And it's sticking in my cra a little bit because I've, I've, I have, every year I have some students who come to me and they're like, Hey, Dale, I was talking to so-and-so, and they're a successful entrepreneur.

I know. And they tell me I need to incorporate my business. And I'm like, well, you're selling t-shirts online. I said, how much money did you make? And they're like, oh, about a thousand dollars. I'm like, okay, first. That's good. Second of all if you incorporate, you're looking at 2,500 to $3,500 in accounting fees alone, even if you made $0 in a year.

Sure, yeah. I said, and if you set up a corporation that would destroy your business, I said, meanwhile, you have a t-shirt business that has little, little, no liability, nobody's suing you for anything. And, and you know, it's just an additive. So why don't you stick with being a sole proprietor that'll, you know, cost you $200 a year in, in accounting fees rather than.

You know, a, a much significantly higher number. Right. Keep your, you know, and if they had listened to that advice, and normally they would, if they didn't have somebody like me around and they, they would be out of business within a year, right? Yeah. So there's definitely a lot of crappy ideas out there and started, this one's hitting close to home recently for fired up about it.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, a little bit of advice to that too is like, you're totally on point, because the reality is if you start a sole proprietorship, there's nothing that says you can't down the line if you start to get incredibly successful, incorporate your business, right? It's just, it's knowing where to start. And like you said, most people, they're an expert in whatever their service or product is.

They're not an expert in business and they're learning that journey along the way. And I, being one of them, I'm gonna say that right now, you know, like I thankfully got to work in a business and got to sit in a lot of meetings and start to understand how a business operates right out of right outta my college experience, which was really great because I got to learn a lot on someone else's dime.

But most people do not have that opportunity. So, You know what I mean? Like if, yeah. Just the simple choice of like, do I incorporate or do I have a sole proprietorship, or what do I do? That can be an incredibly hard decision for someone who's never had any experience in it.

Dale Schaub: Yeah, absolutely. And it's you know, it's one of those things, business is one of those things where everybody thinks they know something about it.

Just like marketing, just like sales everybody has an opinion because they've seen it, they've experienced it, but they don't necessarily know it. Right.

Kelly Kennedy: Totally. Totally. Well, hey, I want to. Thank you so much, Dale, first off, for coming on and, and talking business with us and, and bringing your knowledge, your wealth of knowledge after teaching so many students at the Mawji Center.

Just thank you so much for doing that, for inspiring a new generation of entrepreneurs. I'm, I am in awe of you. I think that that's such an amazing thing. I do hope with the podcast to do the same thing. I hope that what I'm doing with this is I'm inspiring a new generation of business development people, of salespeople and entrepreneurs to, to just do better, to just do better and have more success and, and hopefully put together some plans and some advice that allows them to be more successful than I was or that you were.

And I think over time we're going to do that and especially with, with advice like this. Something else I wanted to touch on because frankly, you are the first person, you are the very first person on this podcast who is also a podcaster. So, so thank you. And I wanted to just pick your brain with podcasting.

What has your experience been? I know you kind of got thrown into it as well. You came in, what was it? Is it episode 35 of of, of your podcast? Let's do coffee.

Dale Schaub: Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think around there, honestly, I I, I'm not a hundred percent sure it was the Bean Gill, Interview.

Kelly Kennedy: I'm, I'm almost a hundred percent, it's episode 35.

I did a little bit digging before this.

Dale Schaub: And interestingly, Bean actually has a CBC show right now, so, so that one's totally outta date, but it was real pleasure to interview her.

Kelly Kennedy: That's awesome. That's so crazy. What has your experience been as a podcaster? What's like, I, and, and I, the reason I wanna do this, because we have people listening, I guarantee you, Dale, we have people listening and I, they've reached out to me and they said, Hey Kelly, like, I see what you're doing with this.

I see that you come from a business development background. You're not a podcaster. You're not, you're not in this like media world. How the heck do you do this? And I, you know what, like, I don't really know how to answer them cuz I just did some Googling and tried my best and figured it out. And I think it's really great to have some words from another person who's in a very similar boat, which I know you are.

Dale Schaub: Yeah. Yeah. I, I o let's go real talk. Hey, Kelly, why not? Let's, let's keep this one real. Let's do it. Honestly, it's it's been a bit of a mixed bag for, for, for us. So, so just for folks listening let's do coffee is interviews with Edmonton or NAIT alumni. So specifically folks who have been successful after their careers at NAIT.

And we mix in a few student entrepreneurs as well. And so honestly, like the, the best reason for, for us to continue doing it is because it, it gives us a connection to the community. It puts me in a room where, where successful people are forced to talk to me for about an hour. And then we edit it down to about 35 minutes.

Yeah. And we're moving all my nonsense of course. And and so it gives me an opportunity to really kind of. Form connections with those folks because those folks are really important to, to our student population. Right, totally. Just in terms of the folks who, you know, if I'm looking for a mentor and an advisor and stuff like that just in terms of viewers, I, I mean, it certainly sounds like you've actually been more successful than, than me and I think surpassing my numbers, and we might have to talk about this off offline.

Yeah, totally. Basically it ebbs and flows depending on how popular the guest is. And so. You know, it you know I find that these, the, these interview segments are, are, you know, a little bit hit and miss depending on how popular the person we're interviewing is, and Sure how much they help to self promote it as well.

Not a lot of folks actually stick around week to week to listen to it which is always a bit of a shame and, and maybe frankly a, a product market fit issue on, on our end. But, you know, we, we've get, we definitely get some great folks on that I get to talk to and, and consistent audience even if it's not, you know, a runaway train or anything like that.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, I, I don't think it has to be a runaway train. I really don't. I think, I think it's great. By the way, I've listened to, I think four or five episodes of Let's Do Coffee and I really enjoy it. So if you guys enjoy this podcast and I'm just gonna give a shout out, you will, you will enjoy. Let's do coffee because.

It's very much entrepreneurial interviews, just like we're talking here just with Dale's audience. It happens to be more on the NAIT alumni, people that actually went to NAIT. However, no less valuable. These are all people that were experienced in business that have went on to start successful businesses and, and bring their wealth of knowledge.

So just, if you enjoy this podcast, you will enjoy. Let's do coffee and I'm just gonna give a shout out to Dale. Dale, go check him out. Let's do coffee. But with Thanks Kelly. Appreciate that. What I, what I want to talk about Dale though with Let's do coffee, is your background is not in podcasting, just like mine wasn't in podcasting.

What was it like with your first episode? What was it like getting on there and talking to, you know, whether that be someone you had to interview or just talking about your own experience. What has your experience been like as a podcaster, as a businessman turned into a podcaster?

Dale Schaub: You know, it wasn't, it wasn't a crazy, and, and, and this more speaks to my prior experience, cuz I, I, I, I did mention, I worked for a company called Business Link, and they used to do webinars.

Okay. And and so as an employee there, and as, as one of the few extroverted ones I ha I was not shy about hosting our experts, right? So I'd do an intro and then, you know, let the speakers talk occasionally, I, I very rarely would I actually interview. So that one's fairly, fairly new. A lot of the times I'd, I'd introduce folks and then just let them deliver their presentation in that environment.

So it wasn't, wasn't. I'll, maybe I'll go back to when I first started doing that, it was a little intimidating. I had a lot more buttons to push then because it was a more formal setup. Yeah. Whereas now it's like I can, I can move the mouse around. It'll be fine. And so my, my biggest concern too was continuity because I wasn't, I'm not the ho first host of let's Sure.

Yes. Right. And, and the first host was actually a pro, like, I don't know if you went back and listened to I did first stuff, but she, she's literally a professional instructor. Yeah. Teaches at the radio television and then just decided, you know what you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm done doing this. And then I took over and my clumsy delivery and my ooms and ahs were, were painful to listen to.

Like, it hurts. It hurts my soul. Yeah. You get it. Right. So it's oh, yeah. Yeah. So it was anyway, yeah, I it, it took a little doing and I'm a bit of a perfectionist too, and so I. I've tried to do a better job in my delivery and tried to clean it up. And then, then we, but our, one of our bigger challenges is actually we, we outsource the editing Okay.

To a student. And and, and, but we'd lose students all the time. Like we've probably gone through five editors Sure. In my time delivering this. And then there's a, there's a quality difference. So sometimes you'll, you'll get a podcast where it's like where I'm like, oof. Did, did they just lose audio there and then come back in and you know, we kept it in. I mean, like, yeah, there's a couple of those where I'm like, oh yeah, and then we get somebody awesome like, like we've got right now, and it makes me sound like such a professional.

Kelly Kennedy: So yeah, it really does. Like, you know, that was something that for me, I do all my own, I do all my own production, so I do my editing and all that, and I had zero experience.

I mean, zero. Like I knew nothing. And hopefully it doesn't show, but, but I definitely do my own, my own editing and stuff. And yeah, like it, it was a learning curve. But I think if you listen to, you know, episode one of the business development podcast and you listen to this episode, you're gonna see a huge increase in not only the production value, but like the quality of the content, the quality of the interview, everything is getting better day over day.

So my advice to you, If you were on the fence right now, you wanna start some type of video production, you wanna do YouTube videos, you wanna do a podcast? Just go for it guys. Just go for it. I had no experience. I went for it. It's been great. I'm loving it. Thank God you guys are loving it. I get reviews all the time and say I'm doing great.

So I appreciate each and every one of you. I got one yesterday that melted my heart. It was so nice, Dale. Some people are just so kind and you know, literally they came on and said, Kelly, you are an inspiration. And I'm like, no man. I'm just a regular dude doing my best. Everybody is just an inspiration because they're doing their best.

That's the truth, right? We're all on here just doing the best we can, trying to bring value to the world and. But I guess my point is, is that you all have that ability. Every single person listening to the show has the ability to bring value to the world. And I want you to, and I encourage you to, and if you are afraid to do this, just do it.

Just try it. And I think you're gonna find that, yeah, maybe episode one ain't so great, but by the time you're at episode 22, you know, we're coming on. This is episode 24. By the time you're on episode 24, you're gonna, you're gonna be in a cadence, you're gonna meet a flow, and I think you're going to find that you're doing considerably better than you thought you would.

Dale Schaub: And, and, and that, that's amazing. And Kelly, it, it totally contradicts my message of don't just do it. I had to a little bit, so, so let me, let me throw in the Dale angle on it, folks. If you do it on Zoom, With a $200 microphone and you put it out into the world and you get feedback on it you can try to find the right market fit for what people are looking for, refine your messaging, and later on when you're gonna stick with it and build up traction, you can upgrade to the nice gear and get things going.

Yes, but just do it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah. No, totally, totally. Like it does not have to be expensive for you to get a really great podcast set up. I just want to throw that out there. You can build yourself a pretty amazing setup for about 600 bucks. And I know that might sound like a lot to some of you, but to tho to most of you, I think that's probably in the re in the reality of Reasonable.

You can build yourself a nice podcast set up for about 600 bucks and you can sound just like me and Dale sound right now. You can do that, guaranteed. You can do that. And remember, the value to a podcast is you. It's you don't compare yourself to other shows. Don't compare yourself to other numbers. It's just you compare yourself to you.

As long as your numbers are growing week over week, as long as you are getting feedback that you're doing a great job or, or, or these are some things that people love about your show. You are doing great. Don't try not to compare yourself to the world. Compare yourself to you and, and don't worry about what other people are doing cuz nobody can do it the way that you can do it.

Dale Schaub: Absolutely be, be your own worst critic. Keep improving. I'll add that too,

Kelly Kennedy: but yes, absolutely. Exactly everything Kelly said. Yeah, I know, man. And, and just, just so you know, Dale, I wanna give you some feedback. Your show was great. You're doing an absolutely great job. So however you feel about it, I want you to know that.

Let's do coffee is awesome, and I wish that I was a NAIT alumni so I could be on your show.

Dale Schaub: I appreciate that. I, I wish, I wish I could have you on the show as well. Yeah, yeah. What, what are the barriers? But that's okay. And honestly, too, it's funny, like I, I don't know if the average listener would, would pick up on the difference between show one and, and our, our recent show.

But you know, to me there's, there's been a ton of micro changes on the back end to me. Totally. What I feel is a smoother podcast and, ugh, maybe, maybe, maybe a better host. Who knows?

Kelly Kennedy: No, you're, you're doing great. You're absolutely doing great and, and you're doing it right, like the key to any podcast guys, the only reason I'm being successful at this show is because I do it week over week.

And you know what? I'll be honest, and you know, you may or may not be able to tell. I'm feeling a little bit sick today. I'm struggling a little bit with the cold, but I'm still here because I see the value in this, and I wanted to talk to Dale more than anything. And so I'm here and I'm doing it even though I'm struggling a little bit with this cold.

Consistency is the secret to success in anything. I don't care if it's entrepreneurship, I don't care if it's in your job, your day-to-day, and I don't care if it's in your podcast or your video production. Showing up is the most important thing you can do, and the more you show up, the better you're going to get and the more likely you are going to be successful at what you do.

And the only reason this podcast has been successful is that I haven't missed a day. And I, I'm, I'm priding myself in that and I'm trying to make sure I don't, and I have a pretty hectic delivery schedule. I'm doing two shows a week, and that's a crazy schedule. I know it doesn't sound like crazy schedule, but when you work a full-time, I work full-time in my, in my every day-to-day business.

My capital business development, I, I manage an employee and I do this podcast and it can feel like a monster sometimes, but I'm trying to do it on a weekly basis. And I think that that is the secret. That is the secret to success is even when you're feeling like you don't want to do it, those are the days you need to do it the most.

Absolutely. All right, Dale, well that that concludes our interview. Do you have any questions for me before we close off the show?

Dale Schaub: Oh, wait, I, and I noticed that you asked this question and I was like, oh, I had something prepared for you. But now I totally blanking on it. No, it's okay. I have two questions.

Number one, why'd you decide on a twice a week delivery for the podcast?

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, okay. Because my favorite podcasts are twice a week. Okay. Okay. Fair, fair. Yeah, because, because frankly, I looked at it and I'm okay. So just so you guys know, I'm gonna shout out to my favorite podcasts. My favorite podcast.

I have two. And they're entertainment. They have nothing to do with business. I listen to the box of oddities, so Cat and Jethro are absolutely amazing. They, they kill it. And I also love a podcast called Scared to Death with Dan and Liz. And they're cra they're really great too. And They, they have a twice a week posting schedule.

And I just thought about it and I'm like, I always look forward to those, those podcasts. And I would, I would lose it if they were only one a week. So I wanted to have two. I thought two would, didn't sound so bad when I started. Let me tell you now. It's, it's tough. It's a tough posting schedule, but I think two, I also looked at it as if I did it under this schedule, I could have kind of two different segments.

And that's what I do with this show. I don't know if you've noticed Dale, but I, I tend to have a interview on Sunday and a business development advice slash entrepreneurial advice just from myself on Wednesdays. And I like that cadence. I like to be able to have like a one-on-one with my audience, but then I also like to have an interview process such as this one.

Dale Schaub: Nice. Nice. Okay. Got time for another one. Absolutely. Okay. I, I'm, this is one I wanted to ask you way back in the, in the beginning of our interview we talked about retail sales. Okay. What were some of the techniques that you remember seeing to close sales in, in retail?

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, goodness. The assumptive close was taken a lot, a lot.

So I remember watching some of those pros, some of those absolute pro TV salespeople, and they would come up and they'd be like, they'd be like, they just, they'd essentially, they'd, they'd, they'd talk this TV up and they'd be like, yeah, we got one in the back. Should I go grab it for you? I remember that being a very common assumptive close and people would just be like, yeah, go grab.

Like, I don't even think he gave them time to think about it like it was done so smoothly and so effectively. Like you, you guys, I know this sounds crazy cuz you know what, like nobody likes a salesperson. Like, not, not like that. And I, I'm sorry. Like I, I'm on this board. I struggle. I don't really like pushy salespeople in a TV store or at a car lot.

Those aren't my people. That is not my type of sales. I don't, I don't like that. Don't, if you're listening to this and you're from that, I love you. Best of luck to you. I'm not, I'm not hating on you for your career choice. I'm just saying like that's a very hard type of sale. It's tough to build a relationship with somebody in 15 minutes and then sell them something that's they're gonna pay for, for the next eight years of their life.

Right? It's a tough, it's a tough job and hats off to all of you. I've done it. I know exactly what, what you're going through. But it's not my choice. It's not the type of sales I would like to do. But the assumptive close was taken a lot and to great effect. So if you are in that business, I do find that most of the people I found that were successful would literally say, yeah, we got one in the back.

Do you want me to go grab it for you? And that's it. Like people just be like, yep, go grab it. And then it's done. Yeah, the sale is over. And but yeah, assumptive close was definitely the one that I saw the most. How about you?

Dale Schaub: I, I I had a couple of favorites that were used by the high performers.

One of them was the scarcity close. Look, I, I just had a short look at inventory. We've only got one of this couch. The next ones are coming in four to six weeks. So if you want this one now, we better put a down payment on it. Yeah, right. Something along those lines. And everyone had like, some, some different techniques around that, but even though there were 40 of them in the back Oh, yeah.

There was only one left. Was a classic. I I was wondering if, if you saw that in, in electronics.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh yeah, of course. Of course, of course. And I, I think. Oh, I struggle with, you know what? I am gonna touch on this sale before we close the show today. I don't like that kind of sales. I don't, there's a reason I went to,

Dale Schaub: I had a hard time doing it.

Like I, I, I, you have to kind of have a hook, a handle when you're doing retail sales. And I tried to do like a variation of it. Yes. Mine wasn't as strong, but mine was something along the lines of, you know, this one's really popular. We've got a hot sale on right now, and I, you know, I really encourage you guys to buy this now.

I don't want you guys to miss out this opportunity. Right? Mm-hmm. So, not directly lying, but still. Still putting some sort of scarcity pressure on folks for the close.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Yeah. I, I, I understand it. Okay. And I, I want you guys to understand this from two angles, okay? I, I understand this as a salesperson, and I understand this as a customer.

As a customer, we wanna just buy whatever we wanna buy, right? We wanna, we've probably already done, like we live in the days of the internet. When I did this, this was kind of like, yeah, sure the internet existed, but, you know, back in 2007, people, I don't think were relying on it as much to, for reviews and such before they go and make their choice, right?

Like they were relying a little more on a salesperson to come in and say, Hey, yeah, this is the new product. This is why you would want this new product. And then hopefully let them make their decision as to whether that's what they wanted or not, as opposed to push them into a sale. However, you gotta remember from the standpoint of your guy in the store, okay, the guy that you're going to that store for, He is mostly making commissions.

His day-to-day salary is not that much. He is making money off of what he sells. So his incentive is to sell you. It is as, as shitty as that sounds or as hard as that might be for you to understand the guy in the store, his incentive is to sell you something. It's how he makes his, his living. And I'm sorry.

Yeah. Some people make their living in a tough way, and that's the way it is. But you have to understand it from both angles that it, it is best as a consumer, especially if you're buying retail stuff, to have a good idea of what you want before you go into that sh go into that store, have a good knowledge because the person in that store, whether you like it or not, his incentive, he's got a family, he's got mouthes to feed at home and he's, he's, it's in his best interest that you leave that store with something that he sold you.

Dale Schaub: Kelly, I'm, I'm with all due respect, I'm gonna completely disagree with you. Okay. And I, and I, I, I, this your perception is my perception before I got into the retail sales environment. But what I saw was that when you push somebody into a sale, you're helping them make a decision. Okay. Otherwise they might be struggling to do it.

Sure. And this is, and, and, and I, on the surface, I a hundred percent agree with you, but what actually panned out, right? And this is just totally contrary to what we might think, is what actually panned out is not only were people grateful that that salesman talked them into, into buying something and help them make that decision, they came back to that salesperson over and over and over again.

Yeah. And so I, and, and I, I totally know where you're coming from, but I'm just saying this is what I've witnessed over and over and over again.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, absolutely. It's, it's two different views that are similar, but that have their difference. Yeah, for sure. I Yeah, I struggle with it Dale. I struggle with it now because I, I love relationships.

I really do. I'm a relationship advocate in every way, and I think the best, the best business I've ever done is with people that I truly loved to spend time with. You know, like, you know, if I look at, if I look at the accounts I managed with Engrity over the years, some of those people are some of the best people I've ever had the pleasure to work with and know and frankly spend time with, and they also happen to be my customers.

It just, it was, the relationship was came first and then once we had that relationship established and established over years of, of trust and good service that, you know, like. That to me is the best way to do business. But obviously I'm, I'm understanding that in a retail environment, it's such a different environment, it's very hard to build those relationships.

But all I'm saying is that I would never wanna do that again. I guess that's what I'm getting at.

Dale Schaub: Bottom line's. I wouldn't want to either.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. There's a better type, there's a better world. And now that I'm in business development, it's 100% relationship based. I just, God, I couldn't imagine doing anything else anymore, Dale.

Like I, I'm truly doing the thing I love to do. I hear you brother. I hear you. All right man, well, thank you so much. This has been Dale Schaub he is it's the NAIT Mawji Center. You were the lead entrepreneurial consultant. He is the, the head guy of the NAIT Maji Center. Just inspiring new minds and bringing these students up to rap and, and, and essentially creating the future of entrepreneurs.

And it has been an absolute pleasure, Dale, to have you on. Thank you so much for joining me on this show. And Dale, if people wanna get ahold of you, where can they find you?

Dale Schaub: Yeah. Best way, probably LinkedIn Dale Schaub. S c h a u b. Feel free to add follow, whatever you want to do. That's where I do most of my work.

And, and, and post most of my stuff. You're more than welcome to reach out to me, send me an email dschaub@nait.ca is my email address. Happy to help anybody. That's my philosophy. Happy to help you out if you're working on something, can connect you with some other resources. But yeah, my main focus is students, so, you know, one and done. Happy to help out in that way.

Kelly Kennedy: Awesome, awesome. If if there's any people in business listening that they, they would want some potentially paid consulting advice, is that something that you would look at anymore? Are you too busy to do that right now?

Dale Schaub: Not really doing that at this point in time. Yeah.

One Punch Consulting still lives, but I, I suspect I'll wanna pivot it into some sort of a business that kind of runs on the side. So we'll, we'll see. Still trying to figure that out at this point in time. But yeah, feel free to reach out. There's a lot of great consultants I know. I'm happy to connect you with.

Kelly Kennedy: Awesome. And if you love this show, if the Business Development podcast is doing it for you, go check out, let's do coffee. I think you will find it, even though it's a little bit more geared towards the NAIT alumni or or to younger, younger entrepreneurs, that sort of thing. It is really, really good advice and if you enjoyed this interview with Dale, He literally hosts a show where he gives this advice all the time.

So let's do coffee with Dale Schaub it's I think, I think it's hosted by the Mawji Center, is that correct?

Dale Schaub: Yeah, if you type in NAIT, let's do coffee. It'll probably come up. Let's do coffee's. A little bit of a common one. Okay.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. I don't know cuz I'm pretty sure I searched. Let's do coffee on Spotify and I'm pretty sure it was the first one.

Dale Schaub: Ok. Okay. Some, sometimes there's a couple other folks out there with something similar, so yeah. Awesome. Yeah, I find it help. It's helpful with NAIT.

Kelly Kennedy: Perfect. Well this has been episode 24 and if you were enjoying the business Development podcast what can you do to help us out? Well, hey, you can follow us.

You can like, subscribe, tell a friend, leave us a review, and if you wanna reach out to me directly, you can get me at podcast@capitalbd.ca . That's podcast@capitalbd.ca shoot me any business development questions, any entrepreneurial questions. Tell me that you love the show or you hate the show. I'd love to hear your advice.

I always love reviews, so feel free to leave us any kind of reviews. And if you want a full back catalog of our shows, I think you can find most of 'em on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, that sort of thing. But you can also get us at the business development podcast dot, or sorry, business development podcast.com or.ca.

That's business development podcast.com or ca and you can get a back catalog of all of our shows or anything on there if you wanna listen on the web. Thank you so much. This has been the Business Development Podcast, and until next time, we'll 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 at www.capitalbd.ca . See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.