← Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Ep. 428 - AccessSync COO, Brent MacDonald
00:48:16
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- [00:00]
Cameron Harold
I'm Cameron Harold, the founder of the Second in Command podcast. Really quick. Before we jump into today's episode, you need to know about two important ways that we can help you and your company grow. Number one, check out the COO Alliance. It's for COOs, presidents, VP ops, or whoever is your company's second in command to the CEO. The COO alliance is the world's leading community for the second in command, and it gives coos the tools and connections to grow themselves and the company. Head over to coolalliance.com to learn more about our members and the results, the program and our 10x guarantee. If you qualify for membership, you can set up a complimentary call with our team to discuss if it's right for you. I'll tell you about number two in a bit, but first, let's start this week's episode.
- [00:44]
Brent McDonald
I tend to be like, just uber disciplined and like, I do certain things at certain times every day. Ryan would be different than that. He tends to be really, really strong on production, really, really strong on tech, and like imagining like, solutions to really complicated problems for customers in the tech space. And none of that would be my strength at all. So he's very strong with respect to all of that stuff. You know, I would be probably a little stronger when it comes to sitting in the middle of, you know, a bunch of different aspects of the business. Customer success, product and engineering, sales and marketing, you know, finance and ops, and having done bits and pieces of those over the course of my career, which, you know, has spanned a bunch of different. Welcome to the Second in Command podcast, produced by the COO alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Harold. In the Second in Command podcast, we Talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies and tactics that made them the chief behind the chief. And now, here's your host, Cameron Harold.
- [01:57]
Cameron Harold
All right, our guest today is Access Sync's COO, Brent McDonald. He's Canadian, he is awesome, and he's a SaaS Academy member. Access Sync is a cutting edge SaaS company dedicated to streamlining the sales of complex products for life science companies and accelerating patient access to these solutions. With a track record of launching multiple software companies, Brent brings a wealth of entrepreneurial expertise and a deep understanding of innovative business models. Before stepping into the tech world, he owned his storytelling skills as a journalist and also played a pivotal role as an intrapreneur in launching North America's first carbon neutral consulting firm. His diverse career highlights a passion for problem solving, sustainability, and driving impactful change across industries. You're going to love this episode. He and his CEO, Ryan, have a very similar backstory to Brian, the CEO of 1-800-GOT Junk, and I do. We'll see on the inside. You can also share this episode with your friends and you can also watch us on our Second Command podcast YouTube channel. So, Brent, welcome to the Second in Command podcast.
- [03:00]
Brent McDonald
Thanks for having me, Cameron. It's great to be here.
- [03:03]
Cameron Harold
Yeah, I'm looking forward to this for a bunch of reasons. First off, you're Canadian and everybody. Well, maybe not everybody, but if you're listening, I am Canadian too. Proud of it. We're building some great companies out of Canada and bring them into the US Markets. I think we call ourselves the maple syrup mafia. And you're also part of a really great group called the SaaS Academy, which Matt and Johnny are running, part of Dan Martell's group of businesses. I want to ask about that. And then you have a really interesting backstory to you coming into the COO of a company with a really close personal friend of yours that we're going to get into in this episode, too. So thank you for being on the show.
- [03:38]
Brent McDonald
Thank you.
- [03:39]
Cameron Harold
So why don't we start by just telling us a little bit about what Access Sync is so people understand the lay of the land of the business that we're running. And then I want to go into some of the backstory of you getting involved with a great friend and building this out.
- [03:51]
Brent McDonald
Yeah, sure. So in a nutshell, we help pharma brands sell more of their complex drugs and we help their patients get them faster. So to break that down a little bit, we are a SaaS company, but about half of our revenue would be subscription revenue and the other half would be services revenue. So we got a pretty good sized services division as well. If you can imagine a pharma rep. Everybody knows what a pharma rep is in front of a doctor, you know, trying to make sure that a patient can get a drug prescribed. We produce the marketing collateral that that pharma rep might have in their hand or they might have in an iPad. But there's a difference between how we do it and how people in our competitive set might do it. So we tend to aggregate quite a bit of data and we would say we produce some of the most accurate marketing collateral that a pharma rep could have and the most useful and our product utilization would reflect that. So, you know, to compare us to maybe a competitor, we would be best in class when it comes to that stuff. I think part of the reason we're unique is that we have this fully integrated delivery model. So our customers don't see us as siloed into like a tech group and a services group. We present as one when we're in front of a customer, which is significantly different, I think, than a lot of people do in our market. So typically in our market you're talking to the data guy, or you're talking to the creative services person, or you're talking to, you know, a high powered consultant. In our, in our company, all of those people are on the phone with you, which drives really, really meaningful outcomes for, for some of our clients.
- [05:29]
Cameron Harold
Interesting. So when you were saying that you help, you know, pharma get the products into the hands of the customers, you're talking about because of the marketing that you're doing, you're not actually doing distribution of the physical drugs themselves or are you doing that as well?
- [05:41]
Brent McDonald
No, just because of the marketing. So it's, it's, it's about, our product's, about enabling what, what would be called the market access team in pharma. And so you don't have to know what that is. But really all that market access means in pharma is an insurance company will cover the drug. And if an insurance company doesn't cover the drug in the U.S. nobody's going to prescribe it because nobody can afford it. So we, we help these market access teams deal with what their mission is, which is, you know, they've got to sell products and they've got to make sure their patients get them faster.
- [06:11]
Cameron Harold
So. Well, my grandfather would love you and love your business. In 1960. Sorry, yeah, 19. Sorry, 1957, he flew from Massachusetts up to Toronto as the CEO of what was called Searle Pharmaceuticals. And he opened up the Canadian operation for Searle as their CEO. And he would every three months fly to Vancouver from Toronto, take the train back across the country, stopping in all of the cities and meeting with different pharmaceutical reps along the way and giving them material and teaching them how to actually explain it and meeting with doctors and literally set up the entire distribution system as CEO of the company. And then he would fly back and he'd go all the way out to Halifax. Then six months or three months later, he'd fly out to Vancouver and do it again. And he was doing that with six kids at home in Toronto. So the fact that you could have actually leveraged this on an iPad would kind of blow his mind. But sadly, he passed away, you know, 55 years ago. He wouldn't have even seen the light of day on this one. But it's kind of cool that you're doing it. So I get it. My. And my first wife was a pharmaceutical rep, too. So I love that. I love what you guys are working on.
- [07:13]
Brent McDonald
Cool.
- [07:14]
Cameron Harold
The backstory of this business. And was it the backstory or how did you get involved with your close friend? You've got a really good friend, Ryan, who is CEO of Access Sync. You're the CEO. How did you get involved with that? What's the story there?
- [07:27]
Brent McDonald
Yeah, so I was reflecting on that before the call. It's. It's really funny. So I'll tell you how I got involved. I was in a business group. This would be really similar, I mean, for anybody not on YouTube and people listening, like, you know, product placement for second in command. But it's similar to the. A story you told in the book about you having a personal relationship with Brian at 1, 800, got chunk. So Ryan and I have a pretty deep personal relationship. And it. It started in the basement of a fishing lodge in Miramichi. We were both in a business group. We're still in this business group, although we're in the same company now. We meet quarterly. Forever is the idea.
- [08:03]
Cameron Harold
What's the group called?
- [08:04]
Brent McDonald
Wallace McCain Institute. Wow.
- [08:06]
Cameron Harold
I've done. I've done two speaking events to the Wallace McCain Institute over the last 15 years, too. Sydney Ryan from Newfoundland is a member of the Wallace McCain Group, a former client. I coached her 10 years ago.
- [08:17]
Brent McDonald
Oh, funny. Well, so, you know, if you can imagine us in the basement of a fishing lodge. I'm going to describe two rooms and, like, how this worked out, but, like, I. I don't love going into a room with like, 15 or 20 or even a hundred people and trying to figure out how to socialize. Like, I'm. I'm pretty awkward when it comes to that. So there were two rooms. There were probably 20 people in one room. There's another room that's completely empty. Ryan's in the room with 20 people. He's probably as socially awkward as I am. Just. Just for the record. And I just couldn't deal with how to engage with everybody in that room. They were all entrepreneurs and CEOs. They had much bigger companies than me. So I went in the other room that had nobody in it, had a big stereo in it. I don't know if you're a music fan, but, like, let's keep this Canadian connection going. I put on down by the river by Neil Young, which, if you know the Song, it starts out slow and it builds and it builds and it builds and it goes on for like eight or nine minutes. It's a long song. And I'm, I, you know, I, I was curious, like, if I did this, who might walk in the room and join me, right? Because I figured if like people walked in the room, like those were going to be my people and we would have something to talk about. Right? And Ryan was one of the people that walked in the room when I turned that music on because he's a big music fan too. And if you. What is so funny, Cameron? Like, I, I was listening to the song before we started this.
- [09:35]
Cameron Harold
Awesome.
- [09:35]
Brent McDonald
And if you. It's a tragic song, but the lyrics are, I mean, this, this describes like a CEO COO relationship almost perfectly the way it starts out. And then forget all the lyrics about a baby. But, you know, be on my side, right? I'll be on your side. There's no reason for you to hide. It's so hard for me staying here all alone when you could be taking me for a ride so that, you know, these are the first things Ryan and I hear. Right. Anyway, I mean, we've been on a ride like for the last, you know, 10 years now. That's how it started.
- [10:10]
Cameron Harold
I love that story. I love the story for a lot of reasons. I mean, you definitely are by each other's side when you're building the story. I think that there is something pretty special about the CEO COO relationship where we are kind of the work spouse to each other. And, and then I even love the fishing lodge story because my other grandfather owned a hunting and fishing resort. So we got crazy, crazy ties going back in here. So over the 10 years that you guys have been building this business or over the 10 years you've been friends and then how many years have you been building the company together? About three.
- [10:39]
Brent McDonald
No, I've been in the business eight or nine years, but he, he was in the business 10 years prior. So, you know, you've got to understand that this, this was kind of a custom software development shop. Previously, Ryan had met somebody in the pharmaceutical space and they needed a system developed. At the time, I think it was for Arthur McNeil, now Johnson and Johnson, and they built that solution and over a period of time it became white labeled software for a couple of different clients. Now when I joined, they were just in the process of transforming sort of what they had into a SaaS product that could be commercialized and scaled. Because what they were doing was sort of like the old way of doing it. So that's when I joined. But he had had 10 years experience prior in the company. He's almost had within this one company. He's had like four or five iterations of a company which have been really interesting. And that subsequently it's meant there are some challenges when it comes to being a coo, right, because you've got some legacy stuff you've got to sort through to prepare the company for scale. But it's probably, it's, it's. It's the single greatest, like, professional opportunity you could have, you know, which is what Ryan served up for me. I mean, I, I'm just given, like, endless problems to deal with, which I love. And, you know, I get to, I get to figure out with, with the team how to scale the company, which, which, which thankfully, you know, growth isn't our issue. You know, we get to work with that together.
- [12:06]
Cameron Harold
It's interesting you touched on the fact that, you know, you walk into a room with, you know, 10 or 25 or 100 people and it's really uncomfortable and awkward for you. Most COOs don't like those kinds of rooms, and Many, many entrepreneurial CEOs don't like them either. Brian and I would rather be on a stage speaking to a thousand people than walking into a cocktail party of 20. You know, I hyperventilate walking into the cocktail party. So, yeah, it's interesting that you kind of find that. What are some of the other differences that you find between you and the CEO? Are you and Ryan and how do you kind of. It's almost like men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Right. Guys are not hairy versions of women, COOs are not lesser versions, or CEOs are not great or whatever versions of each other. There are real distinct differences. How do you guys see the business differently and how do you work through some of those differences?
- [12:57]
Brent McDonald
Yeah, so, I mean, we're very different people, first of all. I mean, I hope I'm going to remember the book, right? I think it's called Whim. We're productive at different times. I tend to be, like, just uber disciplined. And like, I do certain things at certain times every day. Ryan would be different than that. He tends to be really, really strong on product, really, really strong on tech, and, like, imagining, like, solutions to really complicated problems for customers in the tech space. And none of that would be my strength at all. So he's very strong with respect to all of that stuff. You know, I would be probably a little stronger when it comes to Sitting in the middle of, you know, a bunch of different aspects of the business. Customer success, product and engineering, sales and marketing, you know, finance and ops. And having done bits and pieces of those over the course of my career, which, you know, has spanned a bunch of different, I guess, roles and jobs over the years. I'm able to sit in the middle and I know enough about each piece of the business that, you know, I can be dangerous when it comes to trying to diagnose issues, you know, come up with solutions to problems, coach people through things that I've been through before. So I tend to play that role a little bit. And Ryan is thinking higher level about where the product needs to go. And, you know, he's also really good at peeling me back from, like, things I'm obsessing over that might not be a priority for the business. Like, I tend to. Look, if you give me 10 problems, I'm going to, I'm going to try and solve all 10, which is not the right thing to do.
- [14:30]
Cameron Harold
No. But it's interesting. You're similar to a podcast guest that I just had on recently, John Natchazel from the Mike Morris Law firm, who said that he needs to be the second strongest in every business area. Right. He doesn't want to be the strongest, but he needs to be conversationally strong enough to work with those, those leads for each business area. It sounds like you're, you know, very similar to that. So in the, in the whole Wallace McCain group, which is all these entrepreneurs in eastern Canada that meets and share business practices and resources and, you know, work on growing each other's confidence and connections. You're also a part of another group called SaaS Academy, and this is the group that Matt Verlacki and Johnny Meum run for Dan Martell. Can you walk us through what you get out of the SaaS Academy out of membership in that and why you're involved in that kind of a group as well? Because I think it's important for people to understand that's not an industry focused group, but it or group, but in some ways it is, right?
- [15:25]
Brent McDonald
Yeah, that's been really important to us, especially over the last six months. So we got involved with SAS Academy because I lived an hour away from where Dan Martel grew up. So, you know, of course, I'm sure many of your listeners would know Dan started SAS Academy and, you know, wrote buy back your time and it's done a lot of other things. But I cold emailed Dan one day because I thought we needed to be in different rooms. Like, I thought we needed to build a. A different network to get some help and some problem areas of the business. Now, that included me. Like, I viewed myself as a problem area. I didn't. I was the coo and I needed more training, I needed more development. I needed to be around people that were dealing with some of the same problems that I was dealing with. And I viewed SAS Academy as a way to, you know, kind of get there. So reached out to Dan. Dan connected us with John Estes at SaaS Academy. We were a fit. We got paired with Ryan Engley, an executive coach there who's been amazing. So Ryan and I share him as an executive coach, which is another interesting dynamic. I don't think that often happens. So we have a coach that sits in.
- [16:30]
Cameron Harold
Yeah.
- [16:31]
Brent McDonald
Between us and, yeah, the real win there. There's been a couple of them. So we'll get on coaching calls, we'll talk about some of our problems or some of our goals, things we want to accomplish. Our coach can match us with, like, playbooks, training videos. I mean, things that are very specific to the problem trying to solve. And so I just, like, it's like, problem, solution, problem solution. Like, it just keeps happening.
- [16:58]
Cameron Harold
Yeah.
- [16:58]
Brent McDonald
And I'm able to bring that into the business and adopt it and bring our leadership team along and say, I learned this. You know, how do you feel about this? Let's go this way. Let's do planning differently here. Let's think about customer success differently in this way. So that was one big win, but another huge, huge win. And I didn't know if it was going to work out, but I had hoped I could enter that program and build out a bit of a network, get to know people who Maybe are great CTOs, great founders, really good at running marketing agencies because we have a services business. And, you know, could I build partnerships and start working with those people for the benefit of the business? And so that's happened with probably four of their partners right now. And it's had a dramatic impact on our business, too. You know, so it, it's. It. I mean, we've leap. We just overnight, we've leapfrogged. We have CFOs who we've drawn from that group through Forecaster. You know, we're involved with Marcel at Parakeeto. We're involved with Etienne from 7ctos. I'm sure there's going to be other people we get involved with, but I. I can't speak to the value of those partnerships enough. Like, they've been really well Vetted. I never would have been able to find these people had I not come through SaaS Academy. And had they not validated that, yeah, these are good people to work with. So they've just shortcutted, like, a whole bunch of stuff that I had to do. Like, was. You know, it's. It's. It's happening overnight now because of that network. It's hugely valuable. I mean, I just can't. Can't say enough about it. And of course, now they've got this book, software as a science. Here's another product placement. But, yeah, yeah, it. I wish I had this, like, 15 years ago. I had my other company.
- [18:44]
Cameron Harold
It's the cheat sheets. It's the shortcuts for any SaaS company. It's incredible.
- [18:47]
Brent McDonald
Yeah. Yeah, it is. I mean, they're great and kind of.
- [18:50]
Cameron Harold
What you're just talking about. And by the way, we had Ben Zitlau, who is the CEO for Parakeeto. He was guest number 344 on our podcast about a year and a half or two years ago. So another great company that we've had on as a guest, what you're talking about is kind of the cheat sheets. It's almost like if you're playing a computer game and you get the cheats, you just can get to the next level really quickly, and sometimes you want to muscle through it and try it out and keep working hard, or you can't get through the level, and the cheats just get you there really quickly. It's almost like people talk about roi, right? What's the return on investment? But there's another concept that I heard of years ago in a mastermind that I'm a part of called Genius Network, and we talk about the coi, which is the cost of inaction.
- [19:31]
Brent McDonald
Right.
- [19:31]
Cameron Harold
What's it costing your company by not becoming a member of, you know, SaaS Academy or be not becoming a member of the CO alliance or not becoming a member of Wallace McCain. The cost of not doing that is way greater than the cost of being in it. But SaaS Academy is not inexpensive. So what do you pay approximately, for a membership? Just so people know, but then we can talk about kind of the ROI you get off of that, which is probably tenfold or 100 fold.
- [19:55]
Brent McDonald
Yeah, good question. I think we pay quarterly. I want to say. I want to say it's like a couple grand a month or something.
- [20:02]
Cameron Harold
Yeah, I thought it was about 50 grand a year. Maybe. Maybe.
- [20:05]
Brent McDonald
Yeah. Yeah. So there's different levels of the program. Like, there's a There's a sort of a scale level and then another level. Honestly, I'm going to be honest here. Like, I hope they don't do this to me, but they could say we're raising prices by 50%. And I would. And I would. I would just say, yeah, I say, who cares? Like, I've gotten so much. I got value. I got my year's worth of value within like a month or two.
- [20:27]
Cameron Harold
Yeah, yeah. I think you get a 10 to 100 times return on your investment in these groups. Right. Part of it, though, is by showing up. And it astounds me how people will join a group and then they miss the calls, they don't show up with the coaching. I'm like, it's like a lottery. You can't win if you don't have a ticket. Well, you're not going to get value from coaching or from being a part of a group like this unless you show up. But when you do show up, it is game changing. And then, as you mentioned, even some of those referrals that you get, potential partners that you get. And then also, I think, can you speak to the confidence boost and maybe shedding some of that imposter syndrome? Do you ever have any of that imposter syndrome as coo?
- [21:01]
Brent McDonald
Yeah, like, every day, you know, and again is, you know, in your book, you. You noted this, that, you know, sort of within the COO alliance, most people would enter, you know, enter a room within that group with imposter syndrome. And I, and I'm going to remember the words incorrectly, but you said something like, they're trying to accomplish the biggest thing they've ever tried to accomplish in their career. And like, you know, for me, I mean, that's true of what we're trying to do now. And just to add to the imposter syndrome a bit, well, tomorrow.
- [21:34]
Cameron Harold
And tomorrow it'll be bigger because you.
- [21:36]
Brent McDonald
Just grew it every single day. And I, and just so you know, like, our team is full of heavy hitters who are like 10 years my senior. Right. And which I'm very lucky. Like, they're, you know, they're, they're pseudo mentors and advisors as much as they are people that I work with. Right. Like, it's, it's the greatest training environment ever. But, you know, I'm sitting there, CEO, CEO, saying, like, all right, I've got to make some decisions here. I've got to bring the team together. This guy has a problem over here. I don't know if he's seeing it. I wonder how I go about raising that to a guy who's already exited a business for a lot of money and has grown a team to 50 and has like, who am I to tell him what to think? Right? Or how to get through this?
- [22:15]
Cameron Harold
But so how do you do that? How do you approach that? When you recognize that that is like, oh, what do I do? How do I do it? What do you do? What's your mindset shift? Or how do you approach those situations?
- [22:26]
Brent McDonald
Yeah, I ask for help. This is another good SaaS Academy example. It connects with. I mean, I'll give you a good example. So we're a small enough company, we're still wearing a lot of hats, and we're sort of getting out of that now, trying to, you know, get into more standardized roles. One of the things we've had to work through is like, most people in our company act like founders and it's, it's fantastic. I mean, there's, there's just such a high degree of ownership and like energy and like a bunch of good stuff that comes with that. But that means Everybody's got like 10 hats on, which isn't going to help as we try to scale. So one of the things we did, I pulled it out of Dan's book, Buy Back youk Time. It was called a drip matrix, which you've got some similar exercises in your book around time auditing and this kind of thing to try to get, get your energy and your time into a place where you're, you're most productive. Right. So we walked our whole leadership team through this drip matrix exercise to say, you know, in our production quadrant, you know, where, like, where are we doing our best work? Where, where should we be in our investment quadrant? Where do we get like energy to do these things in our roles? Like, you know, and that might be like time with family. I like to go to Jiu Jitsu.
- [23:42]
Cameron Harold
Hey there, Cameron here. Are you enjoying the show thus far? We're going to get right back to it in a sec, but just let me ask you a quick question. Are you a COO or a second in command tasked with helping the company hit and exceed its growth goals? Having spent many decades of my life dedicated to this role, I know one of the secrets of growth is to surround yourself with like minded people also pushing and striving to go where you want to go. It's why, as a listener to this podcast, I want to officially invite you to the CEO Alliance. It's for COOs, presidents, VPOps, or whoever is your company's second in command to the CEO. We're the world's leading community for the second in command and it gives COOs the tools and connections to grow themselves and the company. When you're a part of this peer group, you'll get access to unprecedented support, guidance and resources to grow your company's bottom line, improve your ability to streamline processes, connect with other top seconds in command to assist you, and bring out your greatest potential and so much more. Go to www.cooalliance.com to see if you qualify. It's where you can also see other members and the results of the program, as well as our 10x guarantee. If you qualify for membership, you can set up a complimentary call with our team to discuss if the group can be the right fit for you. Once again, it's www.coalliance.com use promo code podcast10 before the end of the month for 10% off. That is P O D C A S T. 10 before the end of the month for ten off. Now back to the show.
- [25:23]
Brent McDonald
I like to coach soccer, you know, that kind of stuff. What can we delegate? Which is kind of the easy one. Like, usually when you look at it, you're like, I can't believe I'm doing half the stuff I'm doing. I need to delegate this and what roles need to be replaced that I'm playing right now. But I use that as an example only to say the only reason I did that was I read the book for help. I talked to SaaS Academy people for help and I was like, I don't know how to go about reframing how we do our jobs as an executive team, you know, because I don't know what I'm doing right? Like, it's like, you know, so how do you do this? And so those tools we brought into the company and to everybody's credit, like, they're so good with me. They, they played ball. And now the results are we're moving into like different roles that have a real focus and that are going to grow the company, make us more productive, make us more money and give people back their time so that, you know, they can be with family, they can play sports, they can do the things that give them energy, like it's a.
- [26:20]
Cameron Harold
Or even work in the areas of the business that fire them up.
- [26:23]
Brent McDonald
Right?
- [26:23]
Cameron Harold
Like even the day to day projects really fire them up versus the day to day that are draining them. I want to speak to this whole, you know, working with team members that are, you know, 10 years your senior in A second. But talking about delegation for a sec, I was coaching a CEO and a CEO just the other day. $180 million company, 800 employees. And the COO said, look, there's all this stuff on my plate that I can't delegate to anybody yet. And I said, okay, here's the problem. You're going to. You're going to delegate 80% of those tasks. We're going to pick 80% of the tasks right now. You're going to delegate them to people that don't have the skills or the confidence to do it. And in the time that you used to spend doing the work, you're going to coach them on the skills and the confidence so they can do it. But you're not doing the work anymore because your to do list doesn't have your name on it. And they were a little bit shaken. Right. But that's that next level of. Because it's easy to delegate the stuff that is the minimum wage job. That's the easy. Which again, maybe it's not. It's hard for a lot of people to start with that. The stuff that's hard to delegate are the more senior projects, the season stuff, the stuff that is really good or we might be really good at, but we still don't get energized from. So do you use the drip matrix? Is that kind of your test? Do you do it kind of like every couple of months or every quarter? What's your. What's your system to continually get more and more off your plate as you bring in better and better people into your team or as you grow them?
- [27:39]
Brent McDonald
Yeah, so we're sort of returning to it right now because, of course we're doing budgeting for next year and trying to figure out like, you know, what bums do we need and what seats. And we've. We've got some easy wins. Um, like, there was some easy. Like we needed an ea. Um, that was an easy win. Right. And that took a ton. I mean, I. I can't even believe some of the stuff we were doing. Um, and, you know, looking back, we should have done that way sooner, but we tend to return to it sort of quarterly. Ish. And it's sort of rattling around in the back of everybody's brains. Like, you know, we know in six months our job roles are going to look dramatically different than they do today. And, you know, the work we've done in the drip matrix and returning to that quarterly is sort of, sort of the way we're managing that, partly because, you Know, like, I've done time auditing before and I've like it. That's a lot of work. So for me to say to somebody who's already working like crazy hours every week, hey, I want you to audit your time for two weeks. Most people aren't going to do it, but drip matrix thing, I mean, it's a quadrant. You can do it in five minutes and you've probably got 80% of what you need it done.
- [28:40]
Cameron Harold
Like, good enough. Right.
- [28:41]
Brent McDonald
It's a crazy shortcut to like trying to figure out what you need to get off your plate.
- [28:45]
Cameron Harold
Yeah, I love it. I talk about the activity inventory. I learned that from strategic coach with Dan Sullivan. So part of the role of the CEO is to be the. I call it the brakes, but not the parking brake.
- [28:56]
Brent McDonald
Right.
- [28:57]
Cameron Harold
Or the be the. To the CEO or it's to be the leash to their dragon, but we don't want to choke them with the leash. So how do you be the brakes to Ryan and how do you do that artfully without slamming on the brakes and kind of slop stopping everything?
- [29:10]
Brent McDonald
Or.
- [29:10]
Cameron Harold
Or is that a role that you find you. You play with him?
- [29:13]
Brent McDonald
I would say we probably play it for each other. And you know, our president, Aaron Van Vaultman, who's also a co founder, he used to say that he is the lead weight to Ryan's, you know, big shiny moon. Yeah. So. So, you know, Aaron has played that role over the years. I probably do, too. Ryan probably does it to me too. But I think, I think what, what is better than just me doing that for Ryan or Ryan doing that for me is we've got a really engaged, capable leadership team and we are like, we're very accountable to one another on that team. So if there's a lead weight, you know, that has to be tied to somebody's balloon, it's going to happen on Friday. Like, we meet every Friday religiously. 8:30 in the morning, it's an hour and a half meeting. We go over what went well in the business, what are we struggling with. Issues come out of that, that we use the balance of the time to work through, you know, and we measure everything relative to plans. You know, it's not rocket science. Right. But normally that group, because they're so experienced, as I noted, you know, previously, like, any lead balloons that need to be, or, sorry, any lead that needs to be tied to a balloon happens on those Friday calls with really experienced people who have, like, in many cases, like, made the mistakes maybe we're about to make or you Know, or give a different perspective on an issue that we've, you know, we've raised. And they say, guys, now you got to think about it this way. And, you know, that's been really, really helpful. And it's better than me saying no to Ryan. It's better than Ryan saying no to me. Right. It happens in plenary. Right? Yeah.
- [30:48]
Cameron Harold
With all of you. I love that you actually do your leadership team meetings on a Friday morning instead of a Monday morning. Monday is when everybody wants to hit the road and get going fast. Friday, you've kind of had a great week. You can almost debrief, you can sit down, you can be thoughtful, and then you kind of plan out your week. That's. It's a really interesting kind of meeting rhythm to do it on the Fridays instead. Where did you pick that one up?
- [31:09]
Brent McDonald
You know, I think, I think maybe Ryan started it years ago. We, like, he, he had implemented the traction eos.
- [31:17]
Cameron Harold
Yeah.
- [31:18]
Brent McDonald
And we, we use like, sort of versions of it. We have variations on it now, but I think he started it on Fridays years ago. But, you know, maybe two years into when I would say this is six years ago. And we've, we've continued that now, I, I typically, the way this has evolved, like, I typically make the agenda and facilitate the meeting just because that would be a strength of mine and maybe not of Ryan's, but it used to be that these meetings were only about the problems we were having. So I would. I'd be sitting in the middle of every department and sort of, you know, collating all the problems we're having, and then I bring it to the group and we'd be teeing problems up and trying to knock them off on these calls. That's evolved post SaaS Academy, to be honest with you, so that we actually learn about what's going well in the business, too.
- [32:03]
Cameron Harold
Yeah.
- [32:03]
Brent McDonald
I mean, this is. This is so obvious. Right. Like this. Of course, on those calls, we should have talked about what was going well. Traditionally, we didn't. So now we do talk about what's not going well. We deal with issues still, but we celebrate some of the successes and try to figure out what we can double down on so that we can, you know, keep. Keep doing the things well that we, you know, that we know, are going well. But the fri. The Friday mornings are interesting. Like, I mean, everybody's an Eastern time. I'm an Atlantic Standard time, so it's 8:30 my time, but it's often like 7:30, everybody else's time. It's a really nice time. Like, you get a glimpse into everybody's life. We all have kids, right? So like seven, seven 30s. Just. You got to get people on the bus. We're getting lunches out the door, Dogs are barking. This is all happening on our leadership team calls. And it's a, you know, it's a. It's a nuance of our business. Steve, who's an advisor and a coach of ours, who's on every single one of our leadership team calls, calls a campfire time. But, like, the first 10 minutes of these meetings, chaos. It's just like sort of chaos. And it's great. Like, you know, you really get to know what people are going through in their lives. Right. And so, yeah, I don't think it would be hard for me not to have a Friday morning meeting with a leadership team for the rest of my life. Like, any business I'm in, I'm gonna have to have Friday morning meetings.
- [33:13]
Cameron Harold
Can you speak to kind of the role that the COO often plays, which is the under. I don't think it's ever put on a job description. I think it's rarely talked about. But we often need to be the therapist to that CEO, that kind of really strong confidant, best friend, which you guys already were. But how do we play that kind of role with them? How do we make it comfortable enough and trustworthy enough for them to really open up and be vulnerable with us so that we can support them? Because they often don't have that. They can't tell the board everything. They can't tell the rest of the team everything. They often don't even tell their spouse the stuff that's scaring them. They need somebody, and we're often that somebody.
- [33:55]
Brent McDonald
Yeah, like you and Brian and 100 gut chunk. We had a head start because we had a personal relationship, so that's been helpful. Almost all of our calls start with something personal. And sometimes it's like, for better, for worse, right? It's like you've got something you're trying to get done, and I've had a bad day, or he's had a bad day, and I'm the first to hear about it, or he's the first to hear about it from me, and it affects business performance. If we don't deal with it, like, really, like, we're people and we have problems. We only have so much energy. And if he's not there for me to bounce stuff off of and if I'm not there for him to bounce stuff off of, that has measurable, like effects on the business?
- [34:36]
Cameron Harold
Oh yeah, for sure. Massive.
- [34:37]
Brent McDonald
You know, we, we tend to just be pretty unstructured about it. Like there are some days where you're, you're not having the call about, you know, how you want to reclass revenue and redo the chart of accounts, which was the plan. You're having a call about your kid that's sick or like you didn't sleep last night and you're worried about something. Right. Like that's, it's actually honestly reading your reading your book made me feel better about this. Like, I, I don't think I fully recognize that that's a big part of the job is that and doing that together because you're, you are in a bit of a dog fight. There's a lot of pressure on you. You've got other things happening in your life that need to be addressed so you can show up and perform at work. And we do it. I think we do it well. I also, like, I really care about him. He's given me like, he's given me the greatest professional opportunity of my, my whole life. So it's really easy to give him any time that he needs, like if it. And I think he'd probably say the same about me.
- [35:32]
Cameron Harold
Yeah. But I think, I think you probably do it with all of the team too. And I think that's one of the core roles as leaders, is to be there in a supportive role of the lives of our team. Because if we care more about them than anybody else does, they'll go through brick walls for us to build the company. I just got a new tattoo last week that says it's actually in Hindi, but it says walking each other home. It's the Ram Dass quote. And at the end of the day we are kind of just all walking each other home and we need to be there to support each other. And if we don't think that the people's personal lives is going to impact the business, we're kind of delusional. Can you speak to the fact that you guys are a Canadian company and my guess is that 90% of your revenue is in the US market. Can you speak to a Canadian company doing business in the US and how do you get or are we past this stage now? Was this a 20 year ago problem where the US didn't take us as seriously?
- [36:23]
Brent McDonald
So 100% of our revenues in the US and I just talked to you about some nuances about like we, we do have a Canadian corp and an American corp. It's a wholly owned US sub. Now the way we got this wholly owned US sub was we acquired a company a few years ago, which was the interesting experience. First time, you know, we'd ever done that, I'd ever helped lead something like that. The reason we bought the company was the guy that just started it had exited his company. His company that he exited used to be a sales partner of ours and he was, he was the mentor and advisor that ryan met like 20 years ago who got Ryan into pharma. And we, we all got together and we said we're going to be stronger together. Like before this guy grows his company too big, we should get together. And we had a thesis that like things were going to work out well and we're going to be able to produce growth together. And, and we did. So that's how we ended up with this US Corp. There are some complexities like with respect to tax, with respect, I'm less worried.
- [37:24]
Cameron Harold
About the kind of the tax complexities and repatriating and the exchange stuff. Less worried about that. I'm more thinking about how does a Canadian company with a Canadian team and a Canadian tech group sell to the US Companies? Or do they care that we're Canadian anymore? We used to be that cute plaid wearing Mounties up in Canada with maple syrup. Like do they, does that matter anymore or do they.
- [37:49]
Brent McDonald
Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't seem to. I mean, maybe, maybe, you know, I mean partly because we present as one team. We don't present as a Canadian company or an American company. We present as just a team of people. And from a contracting perspective, you're going to sign an agreement with me that's, you know, with, with our Canadian entity. And that's really all that's going to come up about us being Canadian potentially. Other than the fact that, you know, half our company lives on the east coast of Canada and it's, you know, just a funny nuance that comes up on call to customers. If anything, I think it kind of helps. I mean people think we're nice and we are, but you know, that that's become a bit of a, bit of a part of our culture and it doesn't, it, yeah, it doesn't seem to hurt us.
- [38:29]
Cameron Harold
I bet it's a 20, I'll bet it's a 20 year old problem. I bet that problem has just gone away. I mean there's certainly a beautiful arbitrage opportunity with 100% of your revenue being in the US dollars, 100% of your expenses being Canadians. Bob's your uncle on that one. Can you speak to how you guys are different from your competition or the competitors out there? Do you have competent competitors out there?
- [38:48]
Brent McDonald
Yeah, we do have a lot of competitors, most of them. God, I mean, pick a letter of the Alphabet and they're on that series of funding, right? Like well funded. We're, you know, bootstrap, profitable. We're very different than they are. We're different because of how we deliver our solution. I mean, I think I, I might have mentioned this earlier, but we tend to resist siloing any of our departments. Like in our market, the people we serve are really well educated. They are, they know their market really well when they talk to us. They need people who are really capable on the other end of the line who also know the market well. People who can speak to how tech can solve their problems, but also people who can speak to how data and creative services can solve their problems. So our fully integrated delivery model when it comes to our service and solution, like we do have a SaaS solution, we do have a services group. But if you're a customer and you're experiencing us for the first time, things are going to feel very different dealing with us as opposed to dealing with a competitor. And the outcomes you're going to get after you implement our software are going to be very, very different too. So that, you know, that's been a hallmark of our success that we can hang our hat on. Like, hey, I know you had this other software solution installed, now you've got ours. Just go ahead and compare the usage. I mean, we know we're going to win, right? Yeah, the usage is high because we've been in this market for 20 years. I mean, the collective experience of our leadership team and some of the people that work on our team is just hundreds and hundreds of years. We know this market well and we've built a solution which took. This is like a 20 year overnight success story, right? It's one of those, it took that long to build a great SaaS solution that can help market access people. A lot of our competitors built their solutions over the last five years. You know, there are different pieces of their businesses that are outsourced. They're not totally connected. Often data quality isn't where it should be. We like our team has an emotional reaction to service delivery because they've been in this business for so long, you know, which, which is, which is amazing. So when we're serving you, you know, I mean, things feel completely different than, than our competitors. I mean I. I say that with a tremendous amount of confidence because we've learned that over the last couple of years. I don't know we knew how different we were. I don't know that we knew how important this fully integrated service delivery model was, but it makes us very different. And our customers feel cared for, which should be normal, you know, but it's not always normal, and that's not always their experience. Right. And I think. I think every one of our customers would say that they. They really do feel cared for.
- [41:33]
Cameron Harold
I love this. I'm going to ask you in a second about one of your biggest personal successes or biggest personal, I guess, wins that you've had something that you had a decision that you made about a year or so ago that you've done really well with. But I want to ask you first about these, you know, the leadership team or the people that you're bringing in or the people that you have that are 10 years your senior. How do. And you're not that. You're not that young. I mean, you're not in your 20s. You're probably. What are you, early 40s?
- [41:57]
Brent McDonald
Yep. 42.
- [41:58]
Cameron Harold
42. So, God, you're the same age I was when I, when I left 1, 800. Got junk. That's crazy town. So 42 years old. You are leading people that are in their early 50s and mid-50s. How. How do you approach that? How do you show up with that? That's often an issue for certainly a lot of the Gen Y, you know, the. Which you are in the middle of. How do you show up as a leader when you have people older than you? Is it. Is it a mix of some humility or is it.
- [42:27]
Brent McDonald
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of humility. I mean, I like, you know, I alluded to this earlier, but I, like, I consider a lot of these people mentors, too. So you show up with a lot of humility. But I mean, to their credit, like, they're just like me. Like, they're still trying to learn how to do this. And we all believe that we are building a software company and a services company that's very different than what's in the market. And they're as humble as I am about this. Like, we don't all have the answers. Like, I've got some experience that they don't have. They've got some experience that I don't have. It's really not a relationship where we're a leadership team that, like, nobody outranks anybody. It's flat. We're all learning from one another. We all tend to gravitate towards, like, where we're strong and, you know, where we're not strong, we're honest about it and we ask for help. So it, it never feels to me like I'm having to show up as anybody other than who I am. Which, you know, that's, that's right, that's, that's pretty great. Right? Like, and, you know, I think, I think they would feel the same way too.
- [43:32]
Cameron Harold
It's such, such a difference from when the baby boomers and traditionalists were running companies where it's, you know, it's my way or the highway and it's the corner office and, you know, don't speak unless you're directly addressed to. Now that I think it's probably a very strong cultural norm as well of Access Inc. Which is great. So talk to me about the personal decision. You, you quit drinking a while ago and you said it's one of the biggest decisions or positive decisions of your life. Can you tell us about that? Because I quit a while ago too.
- [43:59]
Brent McDonald
Yeah, yeah, it's, you know, I got Dan to thank for that. Again, I'm looking to buy back your time, but, you know, Dan's content is so prolific. You know, if you want to know how that affected his life, just go online and, you know, listen to anything he talks about. But yeah, the decision for me, I mean, it had to do with my kids to some extent. If I'm being honest though, I want to tell you, it was all about the kids. It wasn't all about the kids. Like, my ability to show up in the business was affected by that. And being in this business right now, like, it's got huge potential, Huge, like life changing, transformative potential for everybody involved. And I just, I was looking at the opportunity thinking, like, there is no way I'm going to squander this. Like, I am not screwing this up. This is huge. And if I can't show up, you know, and be as good as I can possibly be, you know, on a Monday or a Tuesday or a Wednesday or whatever, like I'm doing the wrong thing. I have a friend of mine, he just sold two companies for nine figures. I mean, crazy exits. And he said to me, and this was a big part of this too, he's from Moncton, funny enough, all these people from Moncton having a big influence on me. But he said, if I'm on fire at work, Brent, and he's got like thousands of employees, he said everybody else is on fire. Yeah, he Said when I'm not on fire, nobody's on fire. And you know, I, I sort of internalized that and I was like, I gotta figure out how to be on fire, you know, and part of it was not doing that right. You know, I just. There were no benefits, you know, associated with drinking at this point. So we just said, oh, we'll park that. And you know, a good ways into it now, I mean, I feel great. You know, my performance at work is like significantly different than it was. And you know, I, I show up for the kids differently than I did. I'm definitely like a little more emotional than I was, which probably telling you something, you know, like, it does get.
- [45:53]
Cameron Harold
Strangely easy after a little bit though, right? Like after, after six, eight, nine months. I don't even think of it now. I, I'm in Italy right now and I've been over here for a couple weeks and I walk into restaurants and see people ordering wine and it's weird. Like, I don't even understand. I was a bottle of red wine every single day for seven years and I don't even understand what you would do with a bottle of like. It doesn't even make any sense to me now. It's weird. I just like my water and my espresso. All right, I want you to go back to the 21 or 22 year old Brent McDonald and give yourself some advice. What advice do you wish the younger you knew that maybe, you know, to be true today, but you wish you'd known when you were younger?
- [46:27]
Brent McDonald
Yeah, so I learned this early on and then I forgot about it for 10 years and feel like I, you know, squandered 10 years of opportunity because I forgot about it. But I had lunch with a friend the other day and we were talking about the fact that we can't believe how many people will like, pick up the phone if we call or how many people will respond to a cold email if we send it out and like, how those moments have changed our life like multiple times. And so I did that early on in my career. I mean, I would cold email anybody. I would pick up the phone and call anybody. And these things would happen in my life that would lead to, like, huge transformations. Right. I forgot the power of that. I've remembered over the last couple years. So, you know, if I was to give myself, you know, some advice, it would be to, like, make those cold calls sooner, send those emails, don't wait, you know, push that fear away. Like, oh my God, you know, if I send this email to this person, what's going to happen. Like for the most part, really great things happen every time you do that, right? So yeah, if I'm talking to like 22 year old Brent, it's like send more of those and do it sooner and don't overthink it. Like just go, go, go.
- [47:29]
Cameron Harold
I love it. Brent McDonald, the COO for Access Sync thanks so much for sharing with us on the Second Command podcast.
- [47:35]
Brent McDonald
Thanks Cameron, really appreciate it.
- [47:37]
Cameron Harold
That was great.
- [47:40]
Brent McDonald
You've been listening to Second in Command, brought to you by COO alliance founder Cameron Harold. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, share and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and our other podcast streaming platforms. For more best practices from industry leading COOs, visit coolalliance.com.