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The Everyday Millionaire and Mindset Matters Podcast
TEDM – Dan Novaes – Standing at the Forefront of Innovation in Technology and Entrepreneurship (Episode 227)
01:02:56
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Foreign.
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Hi there and welcome to the Everyday Millionaire podcast. My name is Patrick Francie and I am your host. And I want to begin by saying thank you for listening. On this show I am having conversations with seemingly ordinary individuals who have achieved some amazing and extraordinary results in both their life and business. My intention is to inspire and help you learn and grow by having my guests share their journey of how they face and overcome their challenges, but also how they celebrate their many wins. And now let's get on with this show and have a conversation with today's guest. What if your phone didn't just cost you money, it paid you? My guest today, Dan Novay, has made that idea a reality. He is a tech visionary who's redefining what your smartphone can do for you, literally. Now, Dan is the CEO and co founder of Mode Mobile and the creator of the world's first EARN phone. And now that is a device that pays you to use it. Under Dan's leadership, mobile has taken EARN as you go from an idea to an actual global movement, a phenomena if you will, enabling millions of people to turn their daily phone habits into passive income. And the results are telling. A jaw dropping 32,481% revenue growth, growth between 2019 and 2022. It is the number one software spot on Deloitte's 2023 technology fast 500 list. And over 325 million earned and saved by users worldwide. With more than 2 million 5 star reviews and a mission to create 1 million everyday shareholders, Dan and his team are tackling a 1 trillion dollar market while flipping the script on who profits from our time. From bootstrapping beginnings to pioneering a crowdfunded ownership model. With 30,000 investors, actually more than 30,000 investors, Dan is proving that technology can be both profitable and empowering. So get ready. We're about to explore the story, the vision and the future with the man turning smartphones into income engines. Get ready, let's get started. Listen in. Enjoy. Dan Novares, welcome to the Everyday Millionaire podcast. I've been looking forward to this conversation. Welcome.
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Thank you for having me, Patrick. I appreciate it. Looking forward to it.
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So Mode Mobile, you know, it's a, you know, it's a thing, it's like blowing up. You're doing some amazing work over the past few years. So let's like, let's get into it right away and ask the question, you know, is Mode Mobile, is it a challenger brand? If that's the right question. Taking on some of the big mobiles, mobile kind of mobile businesses or Are you just creating a whole new category, which it sounds like to me, yeah.
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I would definitely say it's the latter. You know, our whole premise is really around this idea that, you know, people are spending anywhere from, you know, 40 to 50 hours a week on their smartphone. You know, that time is continuously going up, especially in younger generations, you know, and if you're sleeping eight hours a day, there's only 168 hours a week, you're sleeping hours a day, there's 112. And people are spending anywhere from one third to one half of their waking lives on their smartphone. And so you know who's making the money from that time and energy spent and it's big tech. And that's why these companies are worth trillions of dollars. And so our whole thesis is like, hey, if people are going to spend this much time on a smartphone, is it possible to make that an income generating activity? Is it possible to make the smartphone free? And you know, the vast majority of people that we service tend to be more budget conscious or they're in emerging markets. And so that audience base specifically like has a lot to gain, a lot of benefit to come from, from being able to have a free smartphone, you know, and so that's kind of like the general idea of like, you know, how you can earn from your smartphone. And the general thesis behind the business, unlike most people think like we're not necessarily a software or, sorry, a smartphone company. Like we're much more of a software company. Our business model is more akin to like a Roku where we're now starting to take our technology and starting to license it to carriers and other OEMs so they can launch EarnPhone. And that's where we really see EarnPhone as a category.
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As you said, is this a, an app that we're downloading onto our phones and then integrating that way?
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Yeah. There's two ways that, you know, you could essentially engage in with our product. It's like one, you could either download our app and turn your smartphone into an earned phone, or you can buy one of our devices or one of the partner devices that we have. And that's the general idea, but at the end of the day, it runs on top of the Android operating system and it's just something that people would download and then engage with and get rewarded for everything they do on their smartphone.
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Kind of an interesting and very innovative thought process. I think when you talk about phones to people, they're talking about the cost of phone, the monthly cost and the hit that they got to take and all of the things that, you know, go on with our phones in terms of a cost, not a money making. And what you've done is you've shifted that thought process. What kind of inspired you to do that? Because that is pretty innovative. Did you wake up with an epiphany or how did that evolve?
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Yeah, I mean, the general idea started out actually through a series of failures, I would say. You know, we initially had created a product that was really focused around. We had built an app builder initially. This is a very, this is like 12 years ago. And it was like kind of when everyone was just launching an app, like the bodega down the street was having an app. And then I was like, there's, you know, now too many apps. And then we basically were like, okay, let's create something that's going to bring together a bunch of apps and services. Saw people using it and really media was the people were using the most, like music specifically. And then we launched like the all in one music streaming service. And it wasn't really taking off. We had one type of user though that was using it a lot. And so we went to go interview them. We found like one commonality is that they did not pay for subscriptions either because they were financially challenged or they just refused to. And so we then were like, well, what if we paid you to listen to music? Like, would you be interested in that? And people were like, extremely ecstatic about that concept. And so we just threw up a landing page and we're like, hey, get paid to listen to media. You know, basically watch, play or whatever. And we literally had like 250,000 people sign up within like a month off of just a signup list, you know, at that time. And so, you know, there was clearly product market fit there. But then we actually went to go try and do it. And it was really difficult to make work that model because the music business is a really bad business to be like, it's extremely expensive and it happens in the background. And so generally it's hard to monetize. And so that's when we started moving into other things. We started moving into gaming, we started moving into shopping, we started moving into all these services. And over time what ended up happening is we, you know, the way I started thinking about it is like, man, like what we're really doing is we're kind of creating what we now call like an earning operating system. And people are basically taking all their mobile activities and earning rewards for them. And at the time it was just an app. And then I had this idea, it was like pre right before COVID it was like 2019. And I was like, you know, what if we launched a phone that paid you versus an app that paid you? And there's a lot more commitment to a phone. It's kind of like I use an expression, this expression a lot, where it's like if you go sit down at a restaurant and a waiter just brings you a tap water versus you ordering a bottle of like Pellegrino or something, you are more likely to finish that Pellegrino. You're committed to it, you paid for it, you know, and then you are going to drink it, right? Whereas the tap water, you might take a sip, but you're not really committed to it. And I kind of look at apps versus like, you know, buying a device whose premise is to pay you that there would be different usage and especially if we called it like the Earn phone. And so I flew to Hong Kong at the time and met with suppliers and figured out how to actually make 5,000 phones as like a trial. And at the time we had a few hundred thousand people using our products. So I was like, worst comes to worst, we will sell it to our people as like rewards that they can redeem their points and then they'll earn faster. And, you know, made it work somehow and, you know, sold out that first batch relatively quickly. And then what we saw on the usage was really interesting was like, you know, people were earning three times more, the retention was much better. And that's really where the idea of like, you know, EarnPhone came from. It was through a series of pivots. And it's not like we just sailed happily in the sunset after that. But it was definitely a really insane period of growth that we saw during that time from say 2019 when we had zero revenue, effectively, I think we did 100k that year. By 2022, the company had done over 25 million in revenue and ended up being ranked the number one fastest growing software company in America by Deloitte due to that hyperscale that we tired of advice like just work harder or fake.
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It till you make it.
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Same. On the unconventional wisdom about conventional wisdom podcast, I sit down with bold business leaders who get real about imposter syndrome, unlearning outdated advice and embracing what actually works. If leadership podcasts had a cool rebellious cousin, you found it. Subscribe to unconventional wisdom about conventional wisdom on your favorite podcast app. Saw from some of those initiatives.
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So give me a little bit of the background, Dan, you know, it's one thing to pay to use. What's the business model? So I see the front end, you know, consumers are going, holy cow, I'm going to get paid to, you know, use my phone and do what I do on it. But what's the back end? I mean, you got money going out. Where is the money flowing in?
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Yeah, so basically, a lot of the usage is being subsidized by advertisers. Right. Fundamentally, that's no different than when you're streaming through or scrolling through Instagram or Twitter or any of these platforms. I mean, you are getting surfaced with a bunch of advertising, and that's how those platforms are monetizing products. Free. It means you're the product. And so our whole thesis is like, okay, can you align that value equation a bit better for people? And so what we do is we go out to advertisers in various different niches and categories. You know, an example might be Robinhood, who's, you know, has been an advertiser. And Robinhood's goal is to have people open up brokerage accounts with a minimum deposit of $5. They may be willing to pay like a hundred or 125 for that action to be taken. And so what we will then show to the user is like, hey, if you open up a Robinhood brokerage account, deposit 5 bucks, we will give you $50. Right? Say it's half of whatever we get paid. And then on the other end, we will also incentivize Robinhood to maybe give $25 in free stocks. So the user gets 75 bucks and is now getting rewarded to trade stocks for free effectively. And then that's how we earn our money. And so we do that for gaming, we'll do that for news websites. We do that for charging your phone, we do that for unlocking your phone. So we're doing that for basically all these activities. And every advertiser kind of has its own business model associated to some sort of action that it wants you to take to align value across that equation. And so it's really, you know, kind of tied into that same idea that's moving into, like, this idea of universal basic income, where, like, you know, attention is the new oil. Your data, your attention together is quite, quite valuable. And so, you know, we're really capitalizing on that business model. And so advertising is a big component of it. And then most recently, over the past year, we've kind of taken a page out of the PE playbook, which is, you know, we started really thinking, hey, like we're really in the business of exposing people to new perhaps and services that they want to use. Why not go out and buy good cash flowing apps and services that we see that are really interesting and you know, expose those services to our users as well. Build a network effect and you know, we might buy a business at like a 3x multiple and you know, we get valued at much higher multiple and then we continue scaling that. So it's really kind of very similar to the rollout model. So now we kind of have a, a differentiated business model because we are also buying other apps and services and growing the portfolio of our underlying apps and services within the ecosystem.
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So you really are a technology company. Although it sounds like you're morphing a little bit into hardware, at least in the business of selling or providing phones. Is that an accurate statement?
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So we've made two different devices, have gotten them into stores like Walmart and Best Buy and Target and so on. We are phasing out of like making our own devices and really moving into the idea of like partnering with OEMs and hardware makers or carriers that basically would license our service. And then basically we just do a rev share with them where you know, say Motorola launches an earn phone, they're going to earn a rev share for having that earnedphone model out to their user base and we will earn a rusher for providing that software. But the device and all that stays with them. What we notice is essentially like, you know, in the era of COVID like when we did launch our first phones, interest rates were effectively zero. You know, it's like 2%. And so when you're making 1 to 2% margin on a $100 phone because that is actually literally the margin that these $100 devices make. It's like a pretty, it's a very difficult business for us. It was like a conduit to the software where, you know, margins are, you know, much, much larger. Right. You know, for us. And so at the end of the day, like the concept that we saw especially in today economy is like, hey, it really doesn't, it's not really our forte to be a hardware company in the first place. We did it because it made sense at the time. It was an experiment. We wanted to prove product market fit and then show that it was possible. But in today's capital environment, like it doesn't make sense to tie up like $500 million worth of, you know, dollars on devices that sit in a warehouse when you know, Samsung and These companies have literally been doing this for like 30 years and they're just going to be way better with way different economies of scale. And we can focus in on just improving our software and buying companies with that excess cash.
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I think I heard you say earlier that this is basically an Android platform. Is there an opportunity to get into that Apple ecosystem or not so much?
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Yeah, it hasn't been a primary focus in the past just because we've seen that the vast majority of people that were using our services were in the more kind of budget conscious, you know, category. And that tends to be more of an Android user base. And the operating system in itself lends itself to be a bit more open, which allows us to do more. Now a lot of that's actually kind of changing and starting to change in iOS. So we do. We will likely be making a foray into iOS sometime next year to expand the underlying business. And so that's why we started there, you know, on, on Android first. And that will continue to be, you know, a major focus area for the business. But we are now also seeing that, you know, one of the ways that we funded this business was through crowdfunding, for example. And we have over, you know, over 52,000 shareholders in this company. And you know, we're that, that user base. The people that are investing in our company, they aren't necessarily our target market. We see a lot of people that are in their 50s, 60s, 70s, like definitely not earned phone users, especially because you see, you know, what they might be investing in the business. Companies raise over $55 million through crowdfunding mechanism. And so we started really thinking like our, what, what is, what do they want to see? Like, what are the products that will help them earn and save? Because it doesn't matter like how wealthy you are. Everyone wants to earn and save money. Fundamentally, like we're in the business of is helping people earn and save, you know, and we're doing it through various different means. And so we've been thinking about like, what are product offerings that you know, are captivating to that user cohort? And that's also kind of like powering that decision to do things that may use, be utilized on iOS or Android, depending on who we're trying to service.
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So Dan, I mean, you've had some huge growth over the past five years. I mean, you've really taken it on, you've leaned into it, you've been creative, you've been innovative. But in the back end, how have you built your team? Like, have you, how have you surrounded yourself with key people. You know, what is. What does your kind of team look like now?
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Yeah, I mean, that's been one of the, I think, biggest lessons that I've learned over the last. The ups and downs of, like, Maybe the last 10 years I've been on this journey. But definitely in the last six, it's looked very different. Especially this past year, I've really been thinking about how to decentralize how the company grows, because, I mean, at every different stage, you know, the stage from 10 people to 30 people, 30 people to, I would say, like 60, and then 60 to 120, we made mistakes in the past. I mean, in 2022, we had a lot of. And this wasn't just because of people. You know, we ultimately, at the time, we had a lot of revenue coming from the financial services and crypto space. And there was a huge bust at that point in time, and we ultimately had to lay off our staff. Went from like 110 people down to like 55. I mean, there was a huge, like, gotcha. We just hired way too many people way too fast. We were using things like OKRs and so on, but it was just not working well. And so, you know, I didn't want to make the same mistake again now that the companies have started growing again. So I've really been thinking much more deeply about how do we decentralize ownership within the company so it scales. So when this company becomes 100, 200, 304, 400 people that it can scale. And I've been looking at other companies that have been able to do it successfully. One, an example of one that, like, now I'm not sure if you're familiar, is like, Constellation Software. It's like a. These guys, like, literally own like 25,000 businesses. It's like it's a $70 billion company. And there's this CEO, his name is Mark Lenort. He literally looks like Gandalf from Gold of the Rings. And there's only. There's only three videos on him online. So this is very elusive character. But he raised like 20 million bucks in 1990, something like that, and has never raised any more money and has grown to this $70 billion behemoth by acquiring these, like, you know, $1 to $4 million EBITDA businesses in the VMS space, which is vertical market software. Anyway, so I was just like, how does someone acquire literally 400 companies in a year? I think that's what they're acquiring. It's like something insane, like they're acquiring Literally two or three companies a day. And it has been this decentralized structure. So for us what that kind of looks like is as how I applied the model from the grand total, four interviews this guy has and everything I could read about online is a GM and business unit leader type model. So typically the way our company is structured is that we have various different GMs and different divisions in our company. So we have a media division, we have a mobile division. And then within those divisions there might be business unit leaders that effectively may own a core product. And now we start measuring things like net revenue per employee. And so that kind of allows us to be really effective. And at the end of the day people are owning different PNLs and it kind of rolls up to the executive side level of the team. I would say that this is still something that we only started about a year ago. But the leverage that I've gotten as a leader in the company is like we're doing the absolute most that we've ever done. But I feel that I have the most time that I've ever had where in the past it was definitely a lot more active controller. If you've ever done an enneagram or eq360, I know that that's part of my personality train. If I feel things are going sideways or down and I haven't really had to step in to micromanage things by just really kind of separating out the company and building out in this very kind of division style framework. And you know, we'll continue to, you know, iterate, I'm sure on that. But I think like, you know, hiring the right coaches, you know, I have I think three different business coaches that I work on and off with, getting exposure to different ways of thinking and how other people have done it in the past. And that's kind of how we've been able to, to really set up our team. And I try not to focus on things that I'm not good at like, like finance or people. Like we hired a chief people officer early on, a CFO early on. And so I really try and stick to my lane on like what I enjoy doing, you know, and do as little as I can on things that I really hate doing. Sometimes you have to though, you know, especially early on.
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Yeah. And of course sometimes we get to roll up our sleeves. But ultimately, you know, we're, we tend to gravitate and you know, be good at things we like doing. So I mean it's no surprise that and a great way to operate the Business. Let's go back a little bit. I mean, you're a young man. You have accomplished quite a lot in certainly the past several years in doing what you're doing. What was your journey into that? Were you. Was your background in software? What was your background to kind of get you engaged and even to come up with the idea?
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Yeah, I mean, I definitely would say that I naturally. I was naturally an entrepreneur, like, at an early age. You know, I just had that. I didn't know what the word was, you know, at the time, but I was, like, always kind of at the right on the brink of, like, mischievous and, you know, kind of trying to push the boundaries of things. So, like, examples was like, you know, I would notice arbitrages on things. Like, for example, I'm from Brazil originally, but I grew up in Southern Indiana, so very drastically different places to be, and in my entire life was like that. And I would notice, for example, that in Brazil, you could go to, like, you know, a cafe or, sorry, a newsstand, you know, in the middle of the city. And as long as you had money, you could buy anything you wanted, including, like, Playboys. And so, you know, in Indiana, that was, like, very hard to come by when you're, you know, this is like 1998, and I'm like, 10 years old. And so I would bring the Playboys back and I'd sell them per page to kids, you know what I mean, to the other kids in the school, until I got caught and got, you know, in extreme trouble from my parents. And so it's like those little things like that, you know, these. And I did the same to the Pokemon cards. And then there was always, like, some issue my parents had to deal with. And I wasn't, like, purposely trying to do this. I was just like. It was just kind of how I was wired. And it wasn't until about, like, 15 or 16 that I really started realizing what this skill was, I guess. You know, I had this job at Polo Ralph Lauren at the time, and I worked there for a grand total of, like, a week. There's a factory outlet mall by my house. And I got my first paycheck. And I was, like, so pumped because at the time I wanted to buy a sound system for my car. And my dad was like, I'm definitely not paying that for you, but, you know, you can get a job and do that. I was like, okay, fine, I will. And I got the paycheck. And it was like, after taxes, which I didn't really know the concept of how taxes worked. It was like 75 bucks and it was like back breaking work, right? And I'm at like the peak shape of my life in terms of like just folding his clothes. I'm like, dude, this is insane. I'm gonna have to work here for like two months to afford this sound system. And it was like right around that same weekend there was this, a Toyota plant that was being built by our house or by in my town. And this huge tour bus of Japanese tourists came. And it was a Sunday and it was me and one other guy and we literally handled this entire tour bus of people and they spent like 60k there, right? And I'm thinking, surely I am going to get a commission of some sort for this. And I was so pumped. And I got a $5 Arby's gift card the next week when my manager came in and realized. And that's what I got. And I remember like just being so deflated, you know, thinking, then I had this idea and I was like, man, if they just knew that I had a 40% discount and I gave them 20, I could have made 12K. And that's when I had this light bulb moment. And I remember thinking, that's a great idea. I'm going to go around the store. And then I had a Palm Trio, I don't know if I remember that, the Palm Pilot there. And I was literally going around taking pictures of the barcodes of all the different items there. And I found this really big arbitrage on this leather jacket. And it was like my effective cost was like 150 bucks. But on ebay they were selling all day for 380 bucks. So I just bought three that day, kept the receipt on my dad's emergency credit card and knew that I could return it within two weeks with no questions asked. And I just listed them that night and all three sold within 24 hours. And I made a thousand dollars. And I was like, wow. Like, you know that. And that whole like totally changed my, you know, perspective. And then for the next like three or four months, like I buy as much jackets I could. Had everyone in the store buying jackets for me. And eventually I heard I was gonna get fired. But I made about $30,000 in like five months doing this. And that was kind of my startup capital. And then I started an e commerce company doing kind of drop shipping stuff. And this is like 20 years ago, so it was before all this, like, you know, you know, become your own drop ship seller, you know, or Amazon seller. Like you see all over The Internet, and, And then I just ran a bunch of different companies from that. And I really knew in college, like, I ended up going to business school. I did a couple internships at places like Goldman and things like that. And I just knew after doing it, after the first week of like the whining and dining, that it just was not for me. And that's kind of how I just kept going into, you know, eventually I got into software. I can tell you that story and stuff. But that's kind of, you know, how I got into this world, you know, and, and have always just like, I, I truly enjoy entrepreneurship. You know, it's like the art of it.
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B
You know, I, I often ask the question, you know, of guests on the show, you know, this many years later, you know, who were into over eight years of doing this and having conversations like this. And one of the questions I often will go to is, you know, is entrepreneurship you. In doing what you're doing? Is it nature or is it nurture? In your case, it sounds like you just kind of came out of the chute that way. But along the way, as a young man, were your parents entrepreneurial? And how did they kind of react to your drive to be entrepreneurial, even if you didn't know what the word was?
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Yeah, I think that I credit my parents a lot for. My parents were non entrepreneurial. They had this in terms of their careers. But what they were was supportive in the sense of they would allow me to get away with a lot more so than like, I think I would with my own kids, for sure. And when I think back, I'm like, you know, like, yeah, they shouldn't have been that way, you know, and I'm happy they were. But like, there are certain stories I'm like, wow, like, I cannot believe I did that, you know, or I put them through that. And I think that that's a really important component of how I ended up the way, you know, I was, because I got those experiences early on and I didn't have, like, I have. Actually, I think it's really interesting saying like, nature or nurture, because a lot of my friends are entrepreneurs and not as many of my young childhood friends are. But the, There's a, There's a couple that I've. And especially one that I'm thinking of that I've stayed very close with is like one of my best friends probably, probably is my best friend, you know, from childhood. And his family was very like, you know, studious family. Like, you know, it's like, you Know, the traditional ending, like you're going to be a doctor or a lawyer and that's it. And like, when anything that he wanted to do outside of that specific playbook is not allowed. And, you know, it literally took him into his late 20s after doing a normal career, to then kind of nurture that. But then he ended up being this excellent operator and created an amazing company and exit and all this stuff. So I do think it's possible to get to. And he's. He. He took it in a very, like, different way. I think it's a certain type of personality. Like, I think my personality is like, I'm not the kind of like, operational, like, consultant, kind of like, you know, analyze the numbers. Every single aspect. It just comes at kind of more of a natural style for me. And then I have had to like, really invest myself into getting the coaches into getting. Building these other muscles that I think he. That people like that already have, like, operationally. And so I do think that there is a downside to being the nurturer type. And typically, I think the nurturers will settle for like shortcom, like short outcomes, or they won't. They'll be more like lifestyle entrepreneurs. I think that that's much more common as opposed to really being able to grow these huge companies. And so that's. That's at least what I've noticed, at least from a pattern and how I've thinked about the weaknesses that I've had over the years versus, like, friends of mine that come from maybe a more traditional path, went through all of their school and then suddenly realized, hey, I want to be an entrepreneur. And they're kind of taking more of a, kind of a logical corporate approach to be an entrepreneur. At the same time. I don't know if that makes sense, but that's kind of like, I think the differences between the two personality types.
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B
Well, I think it's always interesting because there is the entrepreneur who's the technician who literally gets in and, and ultimately builds themselves a job. I mean, you had some vision for scalability and to go, no, I don't want to be the guy who Dr. Owns, owns a job and, or has, you know, this business that I have to go into every day. I mean, you're, you're in the business every day. But having said that, you're obviously, you know, gained the skill set or the ability to delegate to, you know, come to the realization that I'm going to do what I love to do and not stay in the trenches of grinding it away. In your leadership journeys. You know, and having had my own experience in business over 40 years, you know, guys like you can occur to a team as a little tough to kind of ha. You know, we can buy into the vision or people can buy into the vision of that type of visionary, but they can be a little wild card, you know, were you more methodical, do you think, or were you a little bit wild card and then you had to get the team in there that operationalizes and kind of gives the actual team direction on a day to day kind of basis. You follow? What I'm saying here is that, you know, you're, you, you've created this big vision and you're executing on it, you know, and to your point, there's things you love to do, there's things you don't like, and, and being in the grind of the nitty gritty of operations is not that thing. But how does that land for the team if you don't surround yourself with the right people?
- [30:42]
A
Yeah, I mean, look, I've made a lot of hiring mistakes in my, especially over the years, and we have really adjusted and learned a lot more. And it's fortunate every year that you don't die as a company, I think is like your probability of success, like exponentially increases. And I think the amount of times this company has almost died is definitely more than my two hands can count, to give you context. But you know, also having the wherewithal of being able to eat all that and learn from it and not be, you know, bogged down by it. I think that in terms of, I definitely would describe myself more as a visionary leader. My ideas are generally pretty out there. I've always been able to be fortunate to find other people that can understand the idea and at the same time like question the idea. But we've always had like a, A, you know, disagree and commit approach. I think like, you know, early on we set a lot of core values into our business, some of which we ultimately, over the last like three years, completely changed. We were like, hey look, the company has grown out of these core values. I mean, these. And it sounds like kind of like when I first started thinking about core values, I was like, does this stuff even matter? Like, you know, or people just put this, they have a nice website. And then the more I really kind of dove into it, you know, over the years, my co and I sat down one day, especially when we had that very turbulent year where we had to cut half of the team. And it was like literally one of the hardest times in my professional life to get out of that and deal with that, we literally sat down, like, let's rethink, like everything, you know, just from square one. And the one thing that we really came to is like, you know, of all the people that we've had, and we've had hundreds of employees, team members that have come through this time, who are the people that were really stand out and what do we like about them? Like what, like, what was the amazing thing that came out of that? And then we came up with these like five core values that are really defined in our DNA. And then basically the prompt was for the team was like, hey, we only, like, are going to hire people that fit in this bucket. And it's ever since we went with that approach, our hit rate in terms of like, bringing on new team members that are like, down with that same type of thinking. And the company's growth has gone up and to the right. Right. So I think that, like, I've always tried to know as much as I can about the business in that context, but at some point in time, it literally, like, was holding me back. And even till this day, I know a lot about the business, but I'm really trying my best to release and let you know, the team, like work in the business, because people don't. The concept of working on the business versus in the business is very, very different. Right. And I think I'm much more inept to working like on the business as opposed to in and then coming up with those ideas and then executing on them. And that's where I'm going to create the most value for our shareholders. That's where I'm going to create the most value for the team, you know, and that's kind of generally how we've been thinking about it.
- [33:41]
B
No, I think that's. I mean, that really is a proven model. It's whether or not the CEO can actually do that, work on the business, be the visionary, then surround himself with the right people. I love the conversation around core values because I'm a really big, I believe or in values and core values, not just through business, but personally and professionally, et cetera. And then creating a culture for the business and for the team. And what is the culture? And if you don't have values, your culture goes off the rails and it's kind of gets a little messy because nobody really aligns. Can you give me, just for listeners, an idea of what core values are? And I don't need you to list all yours, but just an example of some of the core values that you adopted or your team and, or business, if you want to put it that way. Adopted.
- [34:25]
A
Yeah, you know, we, so I mean, for us, like something that's been helpful and you know, maybe it's a, it's a nugget that, you know, other operators can take here. So we made it into an acronym for us, it's act Right. And so AACCT and basically, you know, action driven. Curiosity, caring, thoroughness. And so for us it's been like, curiosity is something that I think is just, it's the best trait that a person can have. Like if you are generally curious, you generally won't make mistakes over time because you know, if something in the market changes, you're able to pivot because you're curious, you want to learn. If you're action driven, you're actually able to make, you know, changes. And you know, you always want to get better, like 1% better every day. And so again, like, for us, like we defined those values. And one of the mistakes that I made early on was defining values but never touching on the values. And so people would like basically have all of these values, but you never talk about them outside your little handbook that they come on in like day one. And so for us it was like, you know, we created like we're a fully remote company. And at our scale, like, you know, for you to have a great culture, fully remote is. It's not easy to do. And you know, we work very hard on that. Like, you know, I can give you some other things, what we do on that. But you know, for just to finish off this point, we have one all hands meeting approximately every four to six weeks that everyone gets. That's usually about an hour, hour, 15 minutes. And we're very transparent. It's a very transparent culture. People know our numbers, how things are going, how things are not going, the good, the bad, everything. And it's something that's very refreshing for a lot of people of, of how transparent is. The other component is on a weekly basis we do an ACT meeting. And that's literally what it's called. And so we put and embedded the acronym inside of that weekly meeting. And that weekly meeting allows people to get an update from all the various departments. This is more of a 25, 30 minute meeting, but it keeps people in the know of like, hey, here's what's going. Well, here's what's not. And then we show our Monday metrics, which is kind of like every Monday people see the metrics of the top company and is it going towards budget, is it not? And you know, we had to develop all these frameworks with okrs and so on and so forth. One thing that's interesting at the very end of the meeting is we use this tool called bonusly. And if you haven't checked this out, I would highly recommend it for any culture. And basically, you know, it's almost like decentralizing, like you know, ups that you're like giving people like, you know, respect that you're giving someone. Because like I can only give so many good positive comments. And it may just be in a, you know, kind of a zoom that you and I are doing or whatever, but there are things that are amazing interactions that happen every day in the company that I will never know. And what bonusly is we get everyone like an allowance. It's nothing insane. It's like 10 bucks, 20 bucks, but you get 200 points. And that could just be like, hey Patrick, here's 10 points for doing XYZ thing. And then you tag a core value. And then every week we recognized who was the number one highest recognized person in the company, who gave the most rewards and how many total recognitions are happening. And it actually is utilized for, you know, every quarter how you know who our top team members are. And you know, you see a lot of those names and people give those ups and it's like such a cheap way because like, you know, you have 70 people, 75 people giving 10 bucks each. It's like, dude, my entire cost is 750 bucks. But it's not about the money. It's like, it's about the fact that people are getting those things and then they can redeem those things for like an Amazon gift card. And so you're just like, you know, it's just like a nice little tool, very cheap. I have no affiliation with the company outside of being a user of it. Just you. I'm not trying to plug a product here, but so I definitely, you know, check that out and then. And so anyway, so that's. Those are the type of things that we build into our culture. And then we're also a very mission driven business at the end of the day. Like we're in the business of helping people earn and save money. And in many cases a lot of like people that are down on their luck for financial purposes and you know, need a little bit of extra cash. And so we started highlighting that, you know, like anonymous feedback that we get from people like that are really these amazing stories that keep the team motivated, they're like wow, like this person's like using this to pay for gas money to get their job or they couldn't afford Christmas presents. Like they're using this excess money to do that and then also improvements like you know, things that we can do to that. So we don't only just focus on the good, you know, focus on hey how like who gave good, great feedback to us to make this a better product. And so I think by being mission driven, tying in your core values. And then we also do anonymous surveys that we don't like. They're totally anonymous and they give a score and it's an MPS rating for our own team and we pro, we post that publicly every, every, every week. People know what it is and it's an OKR for my people team and we have a very high score. I mean it's like 88%. And so generally we see very little turnover that is not self induced, you know, within the business. And those things have been really helpful to retain good talent and also, you know, keep a good culture up for the team.
- [39:32]
B
It's so, so great. So I love what you just shared there by the way. Those are really, really great insights that you know, I align with and I just look at how I've operated over the years and, and it is interesting that you give your team more information. You are transparent. I share financials with some key people in my team. Like you know that we get really into the financials. I'll, I'll, I'll open up my balance sheet, I'll get into the top line profit and loss statements, you know, like I really open it up for them, it then inspires them because they got bonuses attached to some of that bottom line performance, etc. But it really does empower people to have the ownership of getting the results. And it's fun within the culture if you can make it competitive without making it, you know, win at all costs. So a little bit to your point, you know, it isn't about the 10 bucks, it isn't about necessarily the points. It's about the fact that it's a little competitive, makes it fun, you know, keeps the team kind of engaged with each other and I think that's really powerful and terms of how you operate in terms of how you create the culture. So I love that. So thanks for sharing that. So when you look into the future, you know, I don't, I mean you had, I'm trying to think about you paid out well over 300 million. I think is what I read. Give me some insights into where do you think that's going and where do you see it in the future. Is, is this something that, and I'm wondering in an economy like this, you know, given what's happening in North America overall. But let's just talk U.S. and Canada. These economies are pretty soft. There are some people that are really challenged the cost of living. So some additional revenues like a side hustle, but not, you know what I'm saying is that, so probably some great growth in that as well.
- [41:13]
A
Yeah, I mean I think the, well to your latter point here, right now we are at the highest amount of credit card debt that's ever been. Right. And the people that are feeling the pinch of, you know, the absolutely insane amounts of inflation that we've seen and also who's surviving on those credit card debts is literally our exact audience type. You know, it's, and it's everyday American or Canadian. The, the fundamental thing is like, you know, the, the middle class is slowly dissipating. There is a larger wealth gap in the upper classes versus the lower classes. And so I think that, you know, with that being the case, there is a inherent demand for services like ours and that are going to focus in on, you know, people that are feeling that pitch because you know, these are the exact same people that are living, you know, paycheck to paycheck. And you know what's, I read this like stat recently. It was like, it's like 40% of people that are earning north of $300,000 a year are also living paycheck to paycheck because you, you're also buying more stuff and you've also got used to a certain culture and then what basically what, you know, an 84k salary was five years ago is now the equivalent of like $150,000 salary. But the, you know, so it's, but the wages haven't gone to that level. So I think that there is inherently a big opportunity for what we're doing on, on the demand side. I think on the other end in terms of where we want to take the business is, you know, we are drastically expanding our underlying business and business model. You know, I mean, we will continue focusing on this kind of segment. But one of the things that we've seen that's just been really, really interesting is that kind of PE style roll up model where we can go after other great goods and services, expose them to our user base, also take those users and expand them into our services and continue growing the business and so the goal is to take our company public here over the next two years. That's kind of like our underlying timeline around it. And that's why we went down this path of crowdfunding. And it's really opened up also, like the way that we even talk to our consumer because we created things like the moat investor club. And the idea behind this was like, hey, people own shares and stuff, and it's great to own a share in something. But I had this concept, I was like, the best businesses in the world, they have really loyal followings. I mean, they have good finances. But if you look, there is a reason that people go all the way to Omaha, Nebraska, to the Berkshire Hathaway Conference every year. And it's because, you know, this guy has built a cult. He's been one of the best investors in the world. And not cult necessarily in a bad way, but he has this insane following, right? Or like, you know, Elon, whether you love him or you hate him, guy has a following as a great colt. And what if you can basically take the equation of great financials plus a people that like, really believe in what you believe. It basically is the best formula for working on the business. And for me, in this case, I'm on the business is effectively your share price, right? And what people are willing to value your company. So for us, I've always thought about, you know, are there ways that we can innovate on, you know, even our shareholders, like owning parts of Node. And so an example might be like, say Apple was like, hey, if you own a hundred thousand dollars worth of Apple, you get to get iPhones before everyone else or the new products. If you own a million bucks, you get to come to, you know, one infinite loop for the worldwide developer conference. If you own 10 million or more, you get to come to this gala dinner that Steve Jobs or that Tim Cook goes to every year, and you meet other $10 million holder, you know, so kind of like the mastermind concept. And so we started doing things like that, like unique content. We had Steve Wozniak for all of our investors, the co founder of Apple with all of the, you know, our shareholders. And he gave us all these insights of stuff that people would never know about Steve Jobs. And, you know, people really enjoyed that, right? We had thousands of people tune into that webinar. And so we're always looking at new ways to kind of like, you know, provide value that if you're a shareholder mode, it's. It's like, how can we add more value to your life beyond just being a shareholder. Like, if I could add more value to people's lives where them owning a share is as additional upside, then I think that you've won the game. Right. And so we're always kind of trying to think more innovatively of, like, what's possible. And that kind of is tied to my entrepreneurial style. You know, I don't really like to just do things by the book because it's always been done that way. I'm always like, well, is there a different way to do it? And like, you know, and sometimes there isn't. It doesn't mean that the old way doesn't work, but it's kind of blending those two schools of thought.
- [45:50]
B
I love that I get a couple of different questions. Don't know where, which one first? I'll go this one first. So we, you talked about crowdfunding shareholders. You're. I think you're in a are you always in crowdfunding boat or are you into a new initiative of crowdfunding? And then is there an entry point? You know, are you in for buck? Are you in for a hundred? You know, what is. What are the numbers around your crowdfunding? And. And we may as well talk about that a little bit. So if somebody's listening, go, I'm interested in this. You know, if I. If I say, okay, Well, I got 10 grand, I'm going to put it into this particular crowdfund. What do I get for my 10 grand? If that's the right question. Tell me a little bit about your crowdfunding.
- [46:25]
A
Yes. I mean, crowdfunding for us is like, we, we essentially treat it as like a product unit in the company. And, you know, people can, if they want to check it out, learn more about the company, they can go to invest.modemobile.com and so at the end of the day, like, what, they're buying shares in the business, right? And then there's various different kind of tiers, you know, depending on what your investment level is. It starts at $1,000 and, you know, can go up to, you know, $250,000. And, you know, we have people from all of those sizes within it. And if you don't have money to invest, you can actually download the app. And during the reggae period, which is kind of a format of crowdfunding, you can actually redeem your points that you earn in the app for shares. And we actually got qualified by the sec. We're like the first ever company to do something that, you know, you can take points and get shares out of it. Or you can also claim free shares when we're in a reg cf, which allows you just to be a user and then get a little small exposure. And that's an idea of how we can empower more people to take advantage of new types of ways of thinking, learning new industries. And for us, Covid was an interesting period of time because everyone kind of became an investor with the concept of fractional shares. And so we were seeing a lot more interest in that. But it was important for us that when we thought about the thesis of crowdfunding, it came out with the idea of like, hey, what if we could let our users own pieces of our company? Because that's the best ambassadorship, people believing what you believe. And so, you know, that was really important for us. Like even though we set the minimum, if you're actually going to put in a dollar in the company at a thousand bucks, which it's not too much money, but it's more than definitely a lot of our users can afford to do, we're like, well, how can we let them invest like a couple dollars worth of points that they just earn by downloading a game or something? And that's how we came up with it. And it's been a great success on both fronts.
- [48:16]
B
Love it. So when you consider that, you know, you, you mentioned an Elon Musk or Steve Jobs or Wozniak of, you know, some of the greatest in terms of what they do, it's like in their business model and creating community, they, they've actually created a movement. It's like, you know, it's, it's technology against the world. It's, you know, full self driving, it's robotics, it's, you know, Steve Jobs at the time standing on stage and talking about the mission, what this was, you know, the power of it. So it created this community of, you know, us against the world, whatever that it's us against whatever other world is out there. And so from a mode point of view, do you have that same kind of wave that you're trying to create, you know, where it's us against what? I mean, that seems to be the model that communities get behind and get passionate about.
- [49:08]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think that for us and it's, we've always been like retail first, you know, just kind of like the people, you know. And whether that's through the fact that, and we've raised the sum of capital that we have through primarily retail investors, I mean, we have, we have some venture funds that are Invested, but it's a, it's less than 10% like, you know, probably my total investments taken within the company. And I think that anytime like, you know, it's, it's really like looking at the everyday person, right. You know, and it's like usually like, like Wall street over Main street, you know, and nothing against Wall Street. I'm not saying that we won't ever work with institutions or we don't, but we at least have optionality, I think even the core of the business, you know, and this kind of goes back to nurture versus nature. For me personally, like my way of thinking, my brain, like, you know, I'm a very marketing centric. I speak very fast at times and that sometimes will. That doesn't always fit in the, you know, Stanford Ph.D. y Combinator, like, you know, framework that you're going to get from some of those, you know, Sequoia capitals of the world and nothing wrong with that. That's an amazing. We had a lot of team members like that and a lot of friends like that. But for me it's like, what am I really good at? You know, it's like, well, I know how to be. I know how to consumer market very well. And you know, for us, like, you know, it's really important that we're consumer first. And that also gives us optionality as a business. And so I know, I think that that's kind of like one component of like, you know, I think a reoccurring theme you'll see within our business. I think the second component is also just, you know, again being like, I've always been really inspired by companies that can add value, not the track value, but still be profitable at the same time. And I think that that's kind of what we're doing at Moat here is we're able to help a lot of people while still creating a, a good business for ourselves. And you know, that's something that, you know, like, I don't know, we're not selling like, you know, cancer sticks or something like that. Nothing wrong with that too. I mean, if that's a freer in the business of. But like, you know, that's my point.
- [51:16]
B
What I, I mean, what I love about the model and what you're doing, and especially because it speaks to more the common man or the common woman, which is to say that, you know, in a world where everybody's got their hand out, everybody's trying to figure out how to pay something for something in an inflationary world, you know, we're Supporting you and giving you an edge where it's not a direct cost, you can offset those costs. You can actually make a little bit of money doing something that you're doing anyways. And so it really kind of speaks to, I want to say a little bit, I don't want to use the term, but I don't know what other term to use right now. It kind of is that blue collar cohort of people that are, they work hard, they're trying to make money, they're trying to stay ahead, and you give them a little bit of an edge. It's something that's saying, okay, I'm not asking you to put your hand in your pocket. As a matter of fact, you put your hand in your pocket and pull money out that you've earned in a kind of a. I don't want to say an easy way, but in a way that doing something that you're doing anyway. So I love that concept. I think it's great. I love the innovation of it and what a great idea. So I, you know, I'm only going, man, I hope you rock this as you, as you continue forward. So, Dan, let's talk a little bit about you in terms of your, your own kind of journey. You know, as you step into this role, you're taking on more responsibility, numbers are getting bigger, whether that be dollars and cents, fundraising, the staff that you have you mentioned earlier that you've got some coaches. You know, was there some part of that, you know, in terms of leadership was the realization that you had is, holy shit, you know, I'm really going, I got to learn how to be a great leader. I need to really understand more about myself, more about my team, how to actually lead. And, and so you take that on. Was that a kind of a realization that you had that this is bigger than I thought it would be and I'm not equipped for it. So therefore I'm going to do this. Give me a little bit of your thought process around that leadership role that you play.
- [53:09]
A
Yeah, I think everything that I've, I've, I've really tried to grow over the years has been around what are my strengths and what are the things that I know that I'm not great at. Right. And over the last, like, three years, I would say that a lot of what I've been trying to really, like the first year of, kind of like when you're going through dark times in your business, like, and I would say that for us, like, 22, 23 were very difficult years. I'm Literally just in complete problem solving mode. Like, I don't even know like, what I'm like. I, I, where I, I. Where leadership shows up is the fact that, like, for example, when you're in problem solving mode, yeah, sure, I gotta figure out the business. But it was like sitting down with my co founder at the time. Like, we need to start from zero. Like, and, and like, we should. We, like, we, let's redo the core values. Like, you know, let's read like, like what got us here. Like, it was like literally thinking and taking a moment to do a retrospective of like, everything. Because sometimes you're so caught up in the minutia of doing that, you can't even take a step back and think more strategically, right? Because you're so bogged down with all that other nonsense, right? That's happening. And you have to take that time, you know? And so I think that, like, to me, that's like kind of like having the self awareness of that leadership is, or to do that is, was, is like a leadership characteristic that I want, I would want to see in my company. And then being able to just be honest with your people, it's like, look, like, this really sucks. I really, you know, I really am sorry that we're going through this period of time and here's how all the things are laid out. Like, here's how much money we have, here's how much Runway we have. Here's like this. I think the leadership is also being that transparent voice. And what's crazy is that when we went through that period of time of all the people like you, because you, we had to, I think we had, we ended up doing two cods, two riffs. But during that period of time, while it was very difficult for our business, morale is obviously low. And typically that's when you lose your best team members. We only lost one person out of 60, right. That left the company during that period of time. You know, it was something like that, right? And that person ended up coming back to our company about a year and a half ago. You know what I mean? Which is even crazy. It's like, you know, it's like left somewhere else, then ends up coming back. It's like actually really driven here. And so it was like, I think like the leadership side of things, of being leaders, it's like treating people like, with respect, listening to the, like that, hey, like, you know, you matter. You should know the things that are kind of how many. Obviously we're not going to like, say everything that we're doing to every single person in the company. Obviously there's timing associated to these things, but we tried to literally be as transparent as possible. And I've, I've. And I think that's been a really big kind of like not stepping stone, what's to say, like a core, like a core kind of component to kind of being viewed as a good leader, you know, in terms of the team. But that wasn't always like that. You know what I mean? I think that you mature every year as an entrepreneur and especially when you're dealing with higher scale things. So I think that that's, those are very like components of like really developing a leadership style. And then again, like any outside help that you can get, like coaches, mastermind seminars, like I'm very, I'm literally always trying to learn and take like something new every year that can expand my way of thinking and, and, and that's kind of like how I think about it.
- [56:39]
B
McKay. So there's a, there's an organization I'm part of called McKay CEO Forums. And McKay CEO Forums is literally about bringing CEO Forums together. So group have 10 to 14 CEOs of non competing businesses that do, you know, certainly the, the point of entry depending on what forum group you're in. So it's really a group of like minded individuals who are saying, okay, I got to put myself six times a year in with a group of others where I can be transparent, be authentic, share some of the problems and then have the experience of other CEOs and there's other CEOs in the room that have built business of 2, 3, 500 million, a billion. And so they have a lot of insights to share with somebody that says, hey, I got this issue, I'd like some kind of experience that you might have where I can solve this problem. I mean it's a game changer when you can surround yourself. But that means a little bit that the CEOs have to be those individuals that can park their ego and kind of really be again, honest and vulnerable around it. You know what I'm hearing in terms of what you've been saying in this all, Dan, is that at some point you've come to the conclusion where you own whatever the result is. The good, the bad, the ugly. You're the pointy end of the spear and you take responsibility. You know, I'm not hearing any blame of oh, I got a shitty team. So I mean that's a really important part of great leadership. Hence the fact that you're getting the Reviews that you're getting, you're not. You take responsibility for the results. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, the business is a reflection of your leadership and that includes the general managers you hire, the vice presidents, you hire, the presidents you put in place, whatever that might be. It all comes back to the hat that the CEO wears. And what is the responsibility that you take on when you realize you're not getting results? I mean, that's my view of it. Do you have anything you want to expand on that or how does that fit in with what you do?
- [58:31]
A
I mean, I think I would agree with you. I think that, you know, the people are only working there. You can, you can be frustrated, like things happen, you know, but it's suffering is a choice, you know, like if you decide to keep people that are non performing or people that you decided to hire, at the end of the day, who made the decision to hire them like you did, you're paying the paycheck. And honestly, it's a disservice. It's a disservice for you. It's a disservice for them because maybe they'll excel in something else, you know what I mean? And so I think that like, you know, the buckle at the end of the day always stops with, you know, the founder and CEO, you know, and I think like, you know, you're, if you have blind spots, your job is to do your best to find your blind spots, right. And to go hire people to help you bring them out and also develop a culture of candor. You know, hopefully you have a co, founder or a partner that can like that you feel comfortable talking with about these things. You know, I fortunately do, you know, in that sense. And we're very different, we're very different personalities. Like I'm way more risk tolerant and he's risk averse, but you know, it works like the, the you can yank. Yeah, that's the balance.
- [59:42]
B
Totally. So, you know, over the past few years, you've had some sleepless nights, a little bit of gut burn. No doubt about that. When you go through these highs and lows of being in business and when you consider, you know, your reflection of the years that you've gone through, sometimes you go through these periods of time and then, you know, a year later you kind of look back and go, oh, I see where I needed to go through that. And you learned a lot. You come out the other side of it and go, good thing that happened.
- [60:10]
A
I have a lot of those, both professionally and personally. I think that that's, that's life, you know, the worst things that I've ever had to go through in both my personal and professional life, I would not want to go through them again, to be clear. But I am really thankful I did because what I gained from that was in some cases, it was like a decade, I feel like, of learning, you know, that I had gotten from those things. And also they shape you in a way. So a perfect example is like when we went through that difficult time in 2022 on a business side, it's actually what got me into crowdfunding. The concept of that, which now I feel like is so powerful for so many different ways and what we do. But it was literally like, okay, our revenues are way down. Three of our advertisers just went bankrupt. They're not going to pay us. Our margins went down by half. How do we pay people less money without making them leave the product? And I was like, that's a really, these are really difficult problems to solve. And then I was like, I wonder if we could give people shares of our company to like make it up for them, like, you know, or supplement and that wouldn't cost me cash today. And then I was like, learned about crowdfunding and it took me a whole year to figure that out. Like I had to get audited financials on stuff. But pain, like your back against the wall, like creates opportunity if you embrace it correctly, if you don't let it crumble you, right? It creates excellent opportunity. And that's why diamonds are made, right? It's like pressure, like so much pressure. And you have to be able to like deal with that, you know, And I have a bunch of different things that I've done to kind of like level myself out in those periods of time and to also think and stuff, to not let that pressure, like, you know, make it so you don't have sleepless nights and night sweats and all these things that are going to just like create tons of cortisol. Because if you're not operating at your best and you don't feel good, you're not happy, like you're not going to be the leader you need to be too, you know what I mean? And being entrepreneurs mind, it's a lot of ups and downs. I mean, it's an emotional roller coaster, you know, And I think that going back to your forum comment, like being with other like minded people that are going through.
- [62:20]
B
So if you made it this far in the interview with Dan, you may be wondering, Patrick, why the sudden end to this conversation. Well you may have noticed maybe not. There was a clap of thunder about 60 or so seconds prior to Dan going away and ultimately mother nature said time to shut this down, hit the the power lines and it took Dan right out of the picture. We couldn't circle back but the good news was we had most of that interview done. I know there was a lot of great takeaways and who are we to argue with Mother Nature? Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening. If you found value in the podcast please take the time to rate and review and share with others. Share with your friends as it is my goal to always improve and to provide the highest, highest value for you, the listener. If you have any comments, suggestions or questions you'd like answered please email me@ceoraincanada.com that's ceorincanada.com I look forward to hearing from you and until next time. Patrick oh.