The Biz Dojo

S2E18 - Reaching The Peak w/Brett Chang

May 18, 2021 Brett Chang Season 2 Episode 18
The Biz Dojo
🔒 S2E18 - Reaching The Peak w/Brett Chang
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This week in The Biz Dojo, brought to you by Airdrie DQ, we're joined by Brett Chang, Co-Founder of The Peak, a daily newsletter covering Canadian and global business, finance and tech news in 5 minutes or less. 

Brett has had an exciting career journey, and we explore his time as one of the first 15 employees of Uber Canada, his time at the forefront of the cannabis industry, and stepping into a new business with The Peak. He'll talk about sharing the story of Canadian businesses, and how writing a daily newsletter was a lofty goal that has taken the country by storm.

Then on the Podium - brought to you by Beyond a Beaten Path - Seth and JP talk through some of their favourite "publications".

Sign up to The Peak today at readthepeak.com, and start your morning with a quick read while you sip your Biz Dojo Coffee (Masters Medium - OR - Dojo Dark) .

Don't forget to visit us at the links below, and follow us on social media for exclusive content:
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Seth Anderson:

Welcome to The Biz Dojo was Seth and JP season two episode 18. Today, I almost can't count that Hi, my brain kind of stopped for a brief pause. Someone asked me the other day why we're doing seasons. And I don't really know why you're just kind of decided that's what we wanted to do.

JP Gaston:

Because in a couple of seasons, we'll be on episode 436. And that just sounds weird. It is a thing. And it makes it easier for us to curate some of the content which I think you did a beautiful job of the other day.

Seth Anderson:

Well, thank you. Yeah,

JP Gaston:

that was on Sunday with superhero. And the whole curated like this is, if you're looking for this. This is where you find it episode, whatever.

Seth Anderson:

Yeah, I had some fun with that. And I think it's some of the posts we've got the most feedback on. It's the most viewed posts we've ever had on LinkedIn. So that was exciting. Yeah.

JP Gaston:

That skyrocketed to it wasn't. It wasn't like, you know, built up over time. I mean, it's Tuesday. It's like 4000.

Seth Anderson:

I got a random message today from our friend, our good friend Alan with the City of Calgary, the Calgary business podcast. And he said he really liked it. So Oh, nice. And honestly, I was kind of inspired by today's guest, Mr. Brett Chang, co founder of the peak, read the peak calm, which is a daily newsletter that I know I'm subscribed to you. I believe you've also subscribed. I have also subscribed and what a wonderful little morning surprise that is every day. But what actually inspired me to do the superhero post was what Brad and his team had posted about their their funding, they'd gone after some funding, and they posted a deck, which I'd never seen before on the LinkedIn. But it had like the different pages and I was like, Oh, I didn't know you could do that. So anyway, that's that's why I ended up posting that. I thought you did it just because it gave you that Cyborg guy. That was pretty that was the last one I did. So

Unknown:

you got really excited. You're like, this is a great idea. And then at the end, you're like, wow, this is the best idea I

Seth Anderson:

have ever had. At first, I was gonna go back and change it. And then I was like, You know what? This is pretty cool, man. Cool. And I love that you've got like the Jedi. I don't know, like soft white light. Like you're the good guy. And I've got the cyborg and like the dark, folks. That's fine. That's, yeah, that's accurate. Anyway, this week, like we said, joined by Brent. And you know, it was a lot of fun getting to hear his story. We had affectionately dubbed him the innovator, and didn't run that by him. Just based on all of our conversations. I felt like that was an apt superhero title for Brett.

JP Gaston:

Yeah, he's been through. He's been through a few innovative upstarts that have, I would say, taking the country by storm.

Seth Anderson:

I mean, anytime you're involved, you're one of the first 20 or I guess the first 15 employees for Canada. You know, he spent some time in government before that. So he got to learn all the policies and procedures and, and all the red tape involved there. And then to get to jump straight out of Uber and into the cannabis sector, as that was sort of bubbling up and first launching here in Canada. He's He's definitely been on the innovative side of what's happening in our economy,

JP Gaston:

while and now trailblazing on the newsletter front. Like to go from where they were with the newsletter, which was non existent

Seth Anderson:

to friends and family, man, that's pretty sad.

JP Gaston:

Yeah, very much like this podcast. However, we do not currently get 30,000 subscriptions and, and 15,000 unique opens every day. No.

Seth Anderson:

Very impressive what they've done. Yeah. When I saw they started in August, which is only a couple months really, before we started, we had we had two months, different platforms, though. You know, like, yeah, each are unique pieces of art. But even he talked about, it's pretty tough on the podcast game, to expect someone to come and listen to you talk for an hour. Like that's, that's a limited market at best. My wife doesn't even want to listen to my wife. I don't know. I think she she stopped listening A while ago. She loves what, you know, good job, honey, but like, she can't listen every thing. That's fine. But it's all love. She's not our target market. So that's one of the cool things I think about read the peak is the target market, which I fall nicely into you happen to be on the fringes, I think, Hey,

Unknown:

hey, you are also on the fringes. I'm on the upper when you when you select a drop down for age, you're selecting the next one up now. I'm gonna have to do that.

Seth Anderson:

But for those of you who are tuning in the peak is targeted towards Canadian, particularly millennials sort of 25 to 35 working professionals. Like that's how Brett described it. And I love the Canadian content. Like I did not know that there was so many tech startups and unicorns and just all this exciting stuff happening in the Canadian landscape before I started The big I like

Unknown:

the Canadian content, I what I love about it is the little bit of personality that's written into each of the summaries of edit, you got your links to go and actually, you know, check out more information on the Quick Hits that you get. But I love just the little bit of personality that's interjected here and there just to make it feel real. Totally, totally.

Seth Anderson:

I think that's part of the magic of what we do as well. It's not, it's not Walter Cronkite knows. It's, it's a little more personal. It's written by people from our demographic, and it resonates. And yeah, that's one of the things that we kind of set out to do as well. Like, we want this to be fun. We don't want to be candid interviews, we want to genuine, real normal people conversations. And I feel like in that vein, the the peak is very similar. Yeah. And we had, I mean, we had one of those conversations with Brett. Well, why don't we get into it though? That sounds like a great idea. Here we go.

Voiceover:

Let's go there with Earl in the steadies. Powered by dq, this is The Biz Dojo. Here are your hosts, Seth Anderson, and JP Gaston.

Seth Anderson:

Welcome to The Biz Dojo with Seth and JP. This week, we're joined by Brett Chang. Brett is the co founder of the peak newsletter, which is my new favorite morning read. Welcome to the dojo. Brett. Thanks so much for having me on. I'm really excited about it. Yeah, no, we're, we're super excited to have you on and we're gonna definitely gonna get into the peek and what you're doing there. But maybe we'll just jump in. I was reading on your LinkedIn bio a little bit. And you and you were actually one of the first 15 employees at Uber Canada. Tell us a little bit about that part of your journey.

Brett Chang:

Yeah, you know, it was, it was funny on the you know, how I got the job was a bit interesting. I think in about 2014, we launched something called line six in Toronto. And there's this neighborhood in Toronto called Liberty village. And it's kind of concentration of condos. But it's a bit separated from the rest of the city has only two entry and exit points. And so the big issue at the time was that people wanted wanted to get out of liberty village, they'd have to walk all the way up to King Street and they'd have to wait there for a streetcar. But the streetcars at the time were much smaller. And they're always huge lines to get a streetcar. And so there'd be people waiting in the middle of winter for you know, 3040 minutes is multiple streetcars past them that were full until they could finally get one themselves. And so what we ended up doing was, we started chartering a bus from Liberty village to Union Station in downtown Toronto. And that got a bunch of media and a bunch of attention. And it kind of blew up and went a bit viral. Before becoming viral, it was really a thing. But it was a novel concept that people thought it was interesting. And so we got a bunch of media that the challenge for us was, you know, one, the union economics were really bad, it's expensive to charter a bus. And you know, the price, we'd have to charge people to make it worthwhile. And the capacity, we'd have to fill that bus was very challenging. The second thing was by the letter of the law, it was illegal. Now, it didn't faze me too much when I was, you know, 23. But I think when you're actually working to build a real business, it became a bigger issue. And so eventually, we shut that down. But through that process, Uber x, was launching in Toronto, the ride sharing service we know today. And so I just got to know some of the guys who were watching, explore doing similar stuff. And then, you know, when I was unemployed, after line six, I asked Ian Black, who was the GM in Canada, if he was hiring, and eventually got a job there on the marketing team. Very cool.

Seth Anderson:

So have you always sort of been that way? I mean, if I rewind that back a little bit, you saw a problem, you came up with a solution, you know, innovation at its finest, is that just sort of who you are, and how you kind of came up?

Brett Chang:

I don't think so, you know, growing up, I was, you know, my, my passion at the time was politics. Even in university, I was, you know, very much involved in campus politics and politics, generally. And I did a bunch of internships at the provincial legislature here. You know, I never thought I was going to be an entrepreneur. By the time I graduated, I was a bit confused about what I wanted to do. All my friends were going to grad school or law school, and they had kind of clear paths. And I just didn't didn't know and I, I didn't wanna stay in politics forever, even though that was the most successful opportunity for me. So, you know, what I kind of picked up on was the tech was becoming a thing, I would get these emails about all these companies raising, you know, millions and millions of dollars for something that I knew or thought would be good to get involved with. And, you know, I think I just kind of convinced myself that doing entrepreneurial things was the best way to move forward in my career, you know, doing interesting things, people respect that you'll build your network, and through that other opportunities will come. And that's definitely been true throughout my entire career.

JP Gaston:

It's interesting that, you know, I think a few of the guests that we've had that are kind of in that entrepreneurial space, had these people around them who had those very clear paths, and you're kind of standing there not seeing a path and you have a machete in your hand and you're trying to figure out where you're going to carve, carve your own way.

Brett Chang:

Yeah, you know, it was I do have to say And I tell a lot of people that who are in politics that there are a lot of very transferable skills from politics and entrepreneurship. So I did have a taste of it without even knowing that I had a taste of entrepreneurship and that, you know, I would go out there and I would launch these local campaigns. And you basically start with nothing similar to how you'd start a business, you have to get a campaign office, you have to go raise money, you have to find volunteers, you have to train your candidate you feel all these things that I think are very transferable skills, that I liked that a lot, I enjoyed the process of building a campaign and seeing it through to the election. And regardless of win or loss, you learned a lot, and you made a lot of interesting people. And I do think there's a lot of parallels there with with entrepreneurship. So that kind of gave me a taste. So I wasn't coming in completely cold, I think I actually did have some prior training, even if I didn't realize it, but that was very helpful in taking that leap. And ultimately, you know, I just didn't have a lot going for me at the time, if I'm being honest, like I could have worked in politics, or I could have been a lobbyist. And that was kind of it. So I thought anyway, that I could get out of that would be good. And originally I just started, I wanted to get a tech job. And so I work as sales at this mobile app development shop in Toronto called stream labs. And, you know, the day I was hired, they got acquired, and so I was only I was there for seven months, and then got laid off. But that was a good kind of entry point as well.

Seth Anderson:

So if we pivot back to Uber, he started Hoover, a relatively, you know, new to the workforce. And in a lot of ways, and it looks like a pretty accelerated journey, did some work helping to get legislation passed. And across Canada, you got seconded to Australia, helped launch the town of innisfail, which was recognized as one of the, you know, out of the box ride sharing transformations in the world. Looking back on it, what did what did you learn about yourself on that journey that helped you as you move forward into launching your own thing,

Brett Chang:

I was very fortunate to join Uber when I did, you know, it was obviously a very new company, a very exciting company, they were moving extremely quickly, and there was a lot of leeway for you to do whatever you wanted. And so, if I had an idea of something I wanted to do to help business, I usually had permission to do that. And that was great. It was also very intense at the time, I transitioned to the policy team. And there were a number of different, you know, regulatory battles underway throughout the country. And so that was a very intense period of my life, you know, I felt like every city council that we had was an existential threat to our business and our jobs. And so it was a lot of work. And it was very intense. But I think, you know, what I saw there was how far just raw hustle can get you, where, you know, I really saw Uber from the point that they were doing things that don't scale, these little things that Uber would never consider doing today. But I saw how that gave them the foundation that let them build up to the point they are today, which is, you know, I don't know, I haven't checked in a while, but 60 $70 billion company, whatever it is, it started with just kind of raw hustle, like just doing things to get the word out and to grow. And I think that and the whole team was centered on that idea. And seeing that through from those early stages to where it is today, I think informed a lot of how you know, I operate today. I

JP Gaston:

think the like the hustle is one thing. The other interesting thing about Uber is a lot of businesses when you start them up, you're just starting up a business in an existing space, right? Like most people who are operating in that space, what started taxi service, you're actually doing a startup of something that challenges that space. What did you take away from that side of the experience?

Brett Chang:

I wouldn't recommend it. As my, it's, you know, it's funny, I've done and I'm sure we'll get to this, but I you know, I prior to the business I'm doing now, I was always kind of working in these spaces that were new territory, new ground, and were a bit controversial. And it was really tough, you know, you, you had a lot of headwinds against you. And I actually do think it's real credit to Travis Kalanick, and the Uber team for pushing through those, because it would have been way easier to just say, you know, we're closing up shop, or we're going into like a taxi dispatching app or something like that. But to push through all the resistance in the build this business was very, very challenging. You know, it was tough at the time, I couldn't get meetings to do partnerships with, for example, we would do a stunt maybe with a celebrity, and it would be controversial, like the celebrity might back out at the last minute because Uber was a very controversial business at the time, they didn't want to be associated with that. It was difficult to operate. And, you know, I have a lot of respect for people who do have that worldview and that vision where they can see the future that they want and actually achieve it. I don't have that I was lucky to be along for the ride with people that do, but I couldn't do it. And I think it takes a very, very special person to be able to build a business in a totally new space.

Seth Anderson:

I think it's fascinating because I think JP and I have probably heard the term Uber eyes within our business. I'm gonna say it's a buzzword right, like how do we Uber eyes, and I'm sure when you were going through it at that time, nobody was kind of saying I remember seeing the news articles and particularly like I remember Vancouver and Calgary like it was a, it was a big deal. And I guess I'm curious, like when you're transforming when you're in that totally new innovation, is that resistance and pushback, isn't that a sign that you're on the right path,

Brett Chang:

I think the kind of resistance that you ever get was getting was fine, because it was regulatory resistance. It was regulatory resistance. But there is enough of success on the consumer and business side, that the regulatory pressure you were getting, you can drive through and have confidence that this thing will work out because the fundamentals of the business and this is debatable, but at least the people like the product, people are using the product at scale. And so you knew that it was a thing that people wanted, that's very helpful. If you're getting headwinds on the on the business side, it's probably not a good sign. So I think it really depends what kind of resistance you're getting. If it's, you know, and there's a lot of people talking about this now, because I do think that the business culture has shifted away from doing these big bold things to now doing much more manageable and achievable businesses. But there is something to be said. And again, I now having worked in a few of these spaces that were a bit controversial, and there was resistance towards at the time, having not worked in something where there's little to no resistance, it's a lot easier, you know, it's like, and you do really have to ask yourself, if and I think this is an important question that I've heard other people ask or say to ask themselves before, which is that if you are doing something that's really tough, you need to take a step back and say, if I could do anything in the world, would I still be doing this? And if you can't answer yes to that question emphatically, then you're probably doing the wrong thing. And that's a good way to tell if the resistances and the headwinds are good for you, or are problematic. So politics is easier than trying to operate. And I wouldn't say easier, I wouldn't say easier. I would say that, I would say that if you have a good business, and you're getting and the only barrier to you really scaling is regulatory resistance. That is something that you can get through. Now, you know, if you have a bad business, or if you're a business that is entirely dependent on that regulatory environment, that's very problematic, Uber, Airbnb, these sorts of businesses, they were lucky that they could operate because they were so new and so innovative, that they could that there were no regulations to really capture them at the time. So they found loopholes and ways to operate outside of the regulatory framework that existed. And that gave them confidence in the business itself, but also gave them a moment where it was really hard for cities to take away Uber because they had grown to such scale. I was here in Toronto, and we were doing 300 400 500,000 trips a week, that city council had banded at that point, it would have been very disruptive to the city, it would have been very angry. And so because Uber was able to do that they knew the business was sounder at least people wanted the product. And it was a regulatory pressure, you can always get around that like you can push through that. But there's lots people I know who build businesses that are dependent upon regulations changing that they can't do anything until those regulations change. That's really hard. Uber is an exception to the rule. You know, I think another one that we're seeing now is sports, betting, sports betting, now the rules have changed. Cannabis was another one, when the rules change and opens up the floodgates. But if you were trying to do a sports betting business in Canada, two years ago, you would have been you would have gotten a business, you have been hitting your head against the wall talking to these politicians, nothing would have happened. And then you would have had to shut down x, you would have spent all your money. So there's kind of two ways to look at it.

Seth Anderson:

Speaking of cannabis, so that sort of you're in between step between Uber and the peak, you went into the cannabis space. What What was that experience like?

Brett Chang:

Well, I was a lot informed by my time at Uber, which is, you know, I saw the power of regulatory change where, you know, once a policy changes, it opens up an entirely new ecosystem that creates lots of different opportunities. And cannabis was one of those. I remember, in 2015, when Justin Trudeau was running, you know, he made this commitment that he was going to legalize cannabis. After he won. He kind of saw the government slowly take steps towards actually doing that which, you know, gave myself and my co founders confidence that this was going to happen. At the time, we were trying to figure out where was our place in this industry, we saw the opportunity and if you just looked at, you know, the equities market around cannabis, you saw a companies like canopy growth Corp go from, you know, two bucks a share to 15 bucks a share in a few weeks, and you saw their market caps, you know, quadruple and whatever, which was exciting to see. And he just knew that there was lots more space to be had in the industry. And but we couldn't ourselves figure out exactly what we wanted to do. And so the short term solution was that we were going to build a community. And we started hosting meetups in Toronto where we would just get people in the cannabis industry together, they would come we'd have a guest speaker. We talked about different issues relating to the industry. We eventually kind of grew that out and we started hosting them across the country. And so we'd have one in Vancouver or quarterly we'd have one in Calgary every month, and we do one in Halifax quarterly, Montreal quarterly, and that Great, and we really built out our network there. And we got a really good grasp of what was going on the industry and what kind of opportunities existed, you know, eventually, we wanted to capture some of the upside of that. And so we went out. And we raised a small proof of concept venture capital fund, about a million dollars, we were investing in super early stage cannabis startups. And I think, you know, our thesis at the time was that once legalization happened, and there would be this explosion, entrepreneurial activity of people who were all going to start and create brands, and new product formats, and retail and all this different stuff. And, you know, we made some, we made I think about one or two good bets out of the six or seven companies that we invested in. But importantly, our thesis around the industry was incorrect. There was never that explosion of entrepreneurial activity, the regulatory environment didn't allow it. And there was no way for people to work around those restrictions. And so we were just, I think, fundamentally wrong with our assessment of the industry and where it was going. So we gave back most of the money to our investors, and we closed up the fund. In the summer, it was a great experience. And, you know, I think we're very responsible and how we steward the capital, in that we made, we had some returns, and then we also gave back most of the money. And so I think, you know, it was a net neutral for everyone, which was great, I think the best possible outcome considering the cannabis industry ended up going. And yeah, we just thought that it'd be good to move on from that. But it was a very interesting time in my career. And I think we learned a lot about, again, these types of what I call the hype cycle industries, where, you know, when we started looking forward, and we were hosting these events, you know, we had 2030 people out to our meetups. And then at the peak of it, we were having 200 in Toronto. And so we saw, and then by the end of it, we were having another, you know, went down to 100. Again, and so we really saw the full gambit of it. And I think there were a lot of good takeaways from that.

JP Gaston:

How important is that tension, the regulatory tension to that pipe piece, because like, before cannabis was legalized. It was front page every day almost. And everyone's talking about and you see stores start going up and neuroscience changing, not open yet, but will be open soon. And then like, it seemed like all the sudden, there was, you know, not a day after maybe a month after, but there was a quick cliff, that the publicity just kind of stopped along with the legalization. So how, how important is that in that industry?

Brett Chang:

Well, I think the way it works is that there's a it's one, it's impossible to time, which is a big problem. And you know, you've seen this now with crypto, you've seen it with cannabis, there's a couple of these emerging industry is where you see bubble like, like cycles. Yeah, I you know, in the cannabis, what was interesting, and then there were a lot of unanswered questions. Prior to when legalization actually came into effect. Questions like, How important are brands? How will consumers select product? How will consumers buy product? And as those questions became answered, by consumers, the hype around the industry went into decline, because then he started to see some real numbers and indicators that many of the assumptions that were being made around these businesses, were not becoming true. And that shifted sentiment towards it. And now noticing now it's kind of on the back way back up. You know, now people are looking at the US, and they're seeing positive signs. They're, they're seeing a more mature Canadian market. And so there's more interest in cannabis now. And so it truly has gone through its cycle. But yeah, at the peak of it, it was wild. It was people were it was Canvas mania, and people were raising lots of money and insane valuations for businesses that probably shouldn't have raised that much money, or anywhere near that much money or shouldn't have raised at all. It's very hard to time, though. Because you just don't know how things gonna shake out a lot of question marks around it, so we can beat ourselves up about it. But if you put yourself back into 2017 18, it was really hard at the time to predict what was going to happen.

Seth Anderson:

Knowing what you know, now and going through that experience. Brett is there, you know, as these emerging industries continue? Is there any foundational things that you're going to look for look at differently if you're going to, you know, get involved with an investment or some emerging industry?

Brett Chang:

Yeah, I think you have to ignore the hype as much as you can. And you've got to stick to the fundamentals. And it's very challenging to do that. Because if you are a, if you were a cannabis business, a good cannabis business, in 2017, there is a lot of pressure on you to go out and raise a massive round a huge valuation, because lots of other companies were doing it. And he would look around and he would see these companies raising all this money and getting so much publicity and attention. And I think there are a lot of very smart people thinking None of this makes sense at all. If the numbers don't back it up. Even in the best case scenario three years from now, this could never this company can't break even they can turn a profit all this stuff. But it's really tough to be someone especially an entrepreneur who ignores all that and says, I'm just gonna stick to the building a good business with great fundamentals that can be profitable very soon or is profitable already. And that in itself requires a discipline that I don't think Many people have. But you're seeing now as the cannabis industry shakes out, that discipline being rewarded. And I think probably the best example of that was, there's a company in Ontario called Ace Valley. And they're owned by a company called Ace Hill, which is a local beer company in Toronto, and East Valley built a cannabis brand. They bought the product from a producer that was growing it and they put their brand on it. And they focused on greater distribution, and leveraging their existing brand presence in Ontario to build a bit of a following around it. And it's not a massive business, but they just sold the canopy. And I'm sure they sold the campaign at a great return for them and their investors. And they didn't get caught up in the hype cycle and go public, you know, they didn't raise a billion dollars, they focused on the fundamentals, they built a really good business, and they were rewarded for it. And that discipline, I really do respect, because I know how hard it is the time. And it was I think we got caught in that too, which is we were sitting there, and we probably should just build up the community and build a nice little business around that. But we got caught up in it ourselves. And I would I would really avoid that I would really focus on just building a good business.

Seth Anderson:

Awesome, great advice. So that all leads to your current venture at the peak. What was the genesis or inspiration for getting that going? Yeah, I

Brett Chang:

think, you know, the one observation. So we closed the fund in the summer. And one of the observations that we had was that there are a lot of people our age, and around us, we call it kind of the emerging business leader. And we just were thinking about where they get their information from. And a lot of it is from these us sources. And not only any us sources, but these newsletters like the hustle and the skim and morning brew. And we couldn't find a Canadian equivalent to that. And it's not because there's not Canadian business stories to write. There's lots of pain business stories to write. It's that nobody took those stories, and wrote them in a digestible, easy to understand and fun to read format. And we saw the success of these us outlets. And we just had a really strong feeling like there is the need for a very similar product and market here. So you know, that was really the genesis of it, you had Taylor on our team, thankfully, is very talented. And he's a bit of a designer, and he's a bit of a developer. And so he kind of put it all together. And we made an email template and Campaign Monitor, and he built a bit of a back end to do our CMS. And we got everything set up. And yeah, we started writing it ourselves. And so we just took turns, and it was in the middle of a pandemic. And so we had lots of time on our hands. And so we would sit there and we'd read it every day. And then we start sharing it with friends and family. We started putting some money behind it to do acquisition and seeing how that performed. And slowly but surely sold some ads. And slowly but surely, we got more and more indicators, that this was a viable business that we could build something off of the newsletter. And you know, I think fundamentally for us is people liked it, people were reading it every day. And that was the most important metric for us. And that continues to be the most important metric for us. And so yeah, we double down on it. And I think we all just kind of shifted our attention to the peak. And we've been working on it now for about, I think, almost 910 months,

Seth Anderson:

when I think about it, like what attracted me was, again, you know, lots of great Canadian content, which is amazing. And obviously with the podcast, we're looking for great Canadian business stories. So selfishly, it has actually already helped us I think, get at least one guest well to including you. So thank you. But like every morning, it's really relevant, really interesting content. Like there's not an article that I've skimmed by and I mean, that's just being at that millennial, I think I'm right, right, and your demographic of who it's for. But I think back to JP, remember this, we used to do a newsletter for our team, and it was weekly Friday fax, and we did 100 straight weeks of it. And that's like once a week, and that was hard. Like it was a lot of work to pull that together. Yes. Yeah. And like when we stopped it was it was hard to get get back going. And I never did get back going. So I'm just thinking like, the come up with this content daily is beyond impressive. How do you how do you guys do it?

Brett Chang:

Well, like I said, we were very fortunate to start with this during the pandemic, you know, we really, were able to each take a day and write it. And so yeah, the bat probably took us about three, four hours a day to do. And I think it probably still takes around that much to produce every day in terms of both finding the stories and then kind of summarizing them and coming up take on them. But, you know, we never have missed today. And we've also never had to pass it to someone else. So it's never been a case where I was like, Hey, you know, Alex, can you take today I've got something to do. And again, we're very fortunate because that was the pandemic we just couldn't we weren't going to dinners weren't going to parties. And so we can sit there and we could write this thing every day, which was great. Yeah, look, I'm surprised myself be honest with you. This is the most discipline I've had on anything in a really long time. And I think it's obviously paying off which is great. But it was it's I can't explain how we did it. I think we got a bit lucky by the timing. And the other thing too, is I think we just kind of got the hang of it, which was great. And there's lots of other stuff that I really struggled doing. I'll give an example like Twitter. I'm not great on Twitter. I would love to be better at Twitter, but it's It's really hard and the discipline is the problem. So that's that's kind of where we ended up. And then now we hired a writer video on our team who's fantastic and has really taken a lot most of the writing off of our plate. So that's been super helpful.

Seth Anderson:

Just in reading a bit, one of the things looks like about three months ago, so that's sort of kick the year off, you guys went and raised some money. And and their first sentence in there is that we weren't expecting to do this. And what kind of led to that? I mean, just, I also really love that you guys posted the deck that he is that's, that's amazing. 4000 unique daily opens like that. That's probably grown since then. But how did you know like, what was the point where you're like, Okay, yeah, we need to get some investors and we need to scale this thing. How did you know that? You were ready. Yeah, well, first,

Brett Chang:

I think we're at 10,000. Delay unique opens now. Which is great. Yeah, you know, at that around, I guess it was the beginning of the winter, late fall, you know, we realized that this thing really could work. And, you know, we obviously saw some activity in the US with mourning for getting bought by Business Insider. And we also saw some of the revenue numbers and our US contemporaries. And so we wanted to focus more on this, the challenge was that, you know, we can bootstrap it ourselves and put our own money into it, that would have grown it and but it would have taken a lot longer. And by the time it took for us to get to a scale where we could actually make it profitable, we probably would have gotten jobs by then. It was just unsustainable for us to do for that long, seven, eight months of no salary, all focused on the newsletter, and putting all like most of our money into acquisition was was a challenging proposition. But yeah, we really did believe in the model, we do believe that there is a it's not going to be, you know, a 20x venture backed business, but we thought that there was a very realistic exit to be had, with a very profitable, cashflow, positive business. And so we thought there's an interesting investment opportunity available. And you know, fortunately for me, having, I've got a network of people who were kind of interested in investing anyways. And so it all kind of lined up. And so we just raised a bit of money, we have no intention of doing so we thought it was gonna be a bit of a side project. But it just became more and more of a focus, and we wanted to really invest in it and grow it quickly, and get it to a place where it can be profitable and a great business. Yeah, nine months to get from family and friends to 10,000 unique reads a day is that's a that's a straight up trajectory. But the jaykar Yeah, you know, it's, it's good, you know, it's funny, like I, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves on the growth side. And when you operate in isolation, it gets kind of challenging, because you get frustrated that you're not growing fast enough, you know, I love to be where 21 20,000 subscribers now and we get to 50%, open rate every day, I would love to be at 30,000, I would I would kill to be at 50,000. But it's, it's and so it's I know, it's a it's a big accomplishment, and we're really proud of it. But I still think we've got just tons of room to grow. And there's just a number of indicators, I can tell you a few of them, like, you know, if I search our list, I can obviously search by domain. And so I could look at like, you know, TD COMM And we have maybe 2030, TD employees on the list. And I sit back and I'm like, Well, come on, they employ five to 6000 people in the country. And I'm sure a good chunk of them would love to read the newsletter. And so I do think there's a lot of room for growth for us. And it's just a matter of how do we capture that. It's interesting for when you're measuring the kind of that read rate versus your subscriber rate? is one metric more important than the other? Like, would you rather have 20,000 people 100% opening? Or would you rather have, you know, 100,000 people 20%. Opening, the open rate is the most important metric. And I actually, I don't know this, for sure. But I, I feel very confident that we have probably the best open rate of any newsletter in the country. And the reason why that's so important is that, you know, we want to build a relationship with our readers, we want to build a relationship with our readers, because that makes the product stickier that helps our brand that increases referrals, if people are reading it every day, and they're gonna tell their friends about it, they're gonna post about it on LinkedIn. And on the business side, you know, what's the use for an advertiser, if you've got 100,000 subscribers and only 10% are opening it. One, it shows that your product doesn't command the attention, or yet, or that you don't have the relationship with your readers that has them or that that's getting them to open it consistently. And that's not useful to advertisers at all those 10% that are opening on the 100,000 list. One they're not really engaging with email into they're definitely engaging with your ad. And I think this is, you know, email marketing or email newsletters right now are a bit hot and in Vogue, and I think the reason why is because advertisers are realizing that the relationship that brands like ours are building with their readers is is real, and that there are two classes of newsletters that there are ones that have that and there are ones that don't, and I think the value is really in those that haven't so I'd much prefer to have a high open rate. The highest subscriber count, I think that's something we've realized on the business side is that originally, we thought that we had to have, you know, 100 200,000 readers, for us to get to profitability. And I don't think that's where we need to have a lot less. In fact, I think we're pretty close right now. And it's just because we've got such a great community of readers who really appreciate and value our content, that that is super helpful on the business side. And I think advertisers are coming around to realize that as well,

JP Gaston:

we've just started exploring the idea of a little update newsletter just on what we're up to. And I'm proud to say we have 100%, open rate on the two people, Seth, that are the start,

Seth Anderson:

start somewhere, everything start small.

Unknown:

I don't I do not expect to maintain that open rate set. So we're not gonna we're not gonna set the bar there.

Seth Anderson:

50% open rate is very impressive. I know, on some of the stuff we've done just in our day job like 20 30%. And that's like, relevant to the people who are doing the work. So they get 50%. That's amazing. What, what do you think the ceiling for this thing is?

Brett Chang:

That's a good question, you know, the daily newsletter in its current incarnation? I don't really know, I would, I would guess, and I could be dead wrong. I would guess around 100,000 people, I, you know, it's not, it's accessible. But it's still niche in that, you know, you have to be kind of a 25 to 35 year old, urban, young professional to appreciate and value the content. That's not true. We obviously have people on the margins of that, who also value it. But I think that's kind of our target demographic, I would probably say 100,000, I could be dead wrong. And then I think for us, it's, you know, we're starting to look at it now we're, we're saying, Well, how many subscribers do we have? Or how many, you know, how many community members we have in our entire network? And so we're looking at, you know, are there other products that help us access different audiences that we can create, that are still within? And I think this is a bit of a shift in terms of how we think about the business. But, you know, we still want to have that 25 to 35 year old, urban, young, professional market, it's what else can we deliver to that audience that they would find valuable and helpful? And how can we become? How can the peak and the peak different properties just become one of their primary media sources?

JP Gaston:

Does that include exploring stuff outside of Canada? Or are you setting the kind of niche market with exploring Canadian content for Canadians? Since that's where you started? And there's, like you're yet in Canada Really? Right now?

Brett Chang:

Yeah, I think that's very, I think we're very fortunate to I think Canada is always at least two to three years behind the US and a bunch of stuff. And I think media is is one of them. And that's kind of what we've caught, which is, there's obviously a number of different users just like ours in the US that you can subscribe to. I don't deny that. And I think we've taken inspiration, very, a lot of inspiration from some of them. I in Canada, you write the newsletter market here is very nascent. I think there are I would say, there's probably five, I think, very legitimate scaled newsletters in this country, that that do a good job that come in strong open rates. And I think we're one of them. And so yeah, I would I would I like Canada, I like our focus on Canada, I think there's a need for products like this here, I think that there's a big opportunity, now, you know, convincing advertisers to shift some of their budget to this new channel that they're unfamiliar with, that's a bit of a steeper hill to climb, if you're operating in the US or market, like the US that already has penetration of podcasts and newsletters and these alternative advertising channels, then it's a lot easier to sell, because advertisers in many cases are familiar with them understand the value, they've allocated budget to them. But in Canada, that's probably the bigger hill to climb is on the advertiser side more so than the audience side. And I just think, you know, there's enough opportunity in Canada, I think we need to go anywhere else. And we don't we don't know anywhere else, like I think we do, but I don't actually know it. Like I think one of the things, if you were an American trying to read the peak, it'd be very challenging. So it's okay. There's nuance here that you have to get you know it from reading the newsletters that are the other countries. Exactly. Yeah.

Seth Anderson:

I think you hit on an interesting point that JP and I've been talking about a lot, which is content, who's it for? community, I think is a big thing. So obviously, we've started out as a podcast, we've been dabbling with a few other things. But also notice that you've got into podcasting as well. I think within a couple of weeks of us, we're kind of a same timeframe. What have you. What have you learned from podcasting? What do you enjoy about it? And where do you see that going?

Unknown:

podcasts are so hard. I have a lot of respect for you guys. podcasts are really tough. They're not so tough. Sorry, I don't mean to they're the recording and the finding the guests because there's so few and it's still still so new. It doesn't feel new, but it's still so new, especially in Canada. It's just not many podcasts in Canada, like at scale. I you know, the challenge with podcast is growing them. It's tough. You know, one, you have to convince someone to spend, you know, 4045 minutes an hour listening to an interview with someone which I think is a really high bar. You know, we you try to convince people it's been five just reading our newsletter, and that's hard, and to the platforms that the podcasts are on, to capture that audience, also tough to get someone to subscribe and listen consistently, is not easy. And so podcasts have been really tough for us. We haven't found a secret sauce to growing it. I think I like our format. It's very similar your format. And that's why we also worry about two, which is there are a bunch of people doing really great podcasts very similar to ours, like you got this, and I don't, I think it's a bit of a crowded space. And so I don't know what we're gonna do with podcasts. I like podcasts. I think there's a lot of value there. And I think a lot about especially recently, I just listened to this podcast today about someone who's doing this podcast in the UK called Smart seven, I think it's called, which is they do the Daily News in seven minutes. And it's like the daily and they get 5 million, they've had 5 million listens in the UK in one year. That's interesting. There's probably a format like that for Canada that you can do, which is like a quick news podcast. But yeah, I'm I'm confused. I'm just confused about podcast, I think you guys are way farther ahead in terms of your thinking about it, and how to grow it than we are. And I'm just trying to wrap my head around what the future of it looks like. But I'm very interested in the medium. I think it's a great channel. And it's one that we'd like to get bigger

JP Gaston:

and like our challenges. Seven minutes. Like, I feel like either Seth or I could just talk for straight like that. I think the challenge has always been trying to pare it down because there's so many, like even in this conversation that we're having right now there's there's so many paths that we could explore. And that would be interesting to us. But we need to figure out how to curate that for the listeners and exploring what's going to be relevant and timely for them

Seth Anderson:

one digestible, I think that's the magic sauce. Or at least some of the magic sauce of the peak is it's very digestible, like I don't feel overwhelmed when I read it. And we are trying to figure that out. Because when you have an hour of content with some of the amazing people that we've had on the show, you know, it's not realistic to expect much more than let's say, 50 to 100 people to listen to the podcast, at least on what we're seeing. So how do you take that content and curate it for people I think is our next challenge that we're trying to figure out.

Brett Chang:

Yeah, I'm experimenting a lot with that right now. Tick tock, I'm spending a ton of time on. And tic tocs. Fascinating. Yeah, I think it's worth you guys experimenting with it, too. You can grow exceptionally quickly on Tick tock, because it's all based on the algorithm. And so if you get a video, if you put together a video that clicks, you can go from zero to 30,000. I just did, you know, a day and a half ago, I made a video, it's got 30,000 hits on it and 3000 likes or whatever. And it took you know, less than 48 hours. It's incredible the growth you can get to tick tock tick tock is really about that curation. And those sound bites because you only have a minute. And so you have to be really thoughtful about how you structure your stories and the information that you want to communicate. Somebody, there's a piece in The Wall Street Journal, or I'm sorry about the washington post about these Tick Tock news channels. And they were saying you have to think like you're a middle school student, like what do they want to see? What keeps their attention? And I think that's the same for these podcasts where, you know, if I'm a commuter, and I want to get all my information in seven minutes, it's like, what do you include? Even in the peak? We take a lot of stuff out. I you know, I because you have to parse it down. It's tough. It's really hard. Awesome. Well,

Seth Anderson:

it's been a great soundboard. This last little bit. Love it. So good ideas. I know, we've been thinking about where do we want to play? I think we found LinkedIn to be effective. You know, just because it's a business. It's a leadership entrepreneurial type vibe that we have going. But then there's certain things that work well on Instagram. So we're kind of trying to find that balance. We haven't dabbled into tik tok yet. But I think JP, as we get to our offseason in here, I think that that's

JP Gaston:

still figuring out the math on the LinkedIn algorithm. There's a lot of x's and y's and squares and routes and I don't know what they do. But But when

Seth Anderson:

you hit that crazy jet stream, though, like I had a post yesterday was like 2000 views and like two hours and yeah, I don't even know why.

Brett Chang:

Wait is incredible. You're right like that. We built this business on LinkedIn, that peaks number one organic channel has been LinkedIn. And you know, this is one of the this is actually you know, you guys can try this too. One of the things that worked really well for us early on, was I just made a list of everybody that was in my network, who I worked with in the past, my friends, my family, everyone, and I pushed them all to post the peak on LinkedIn. And on average, they would get between 20 some people will get 5060 subscribers off of one post. And that gave us enter knowing not any subscribers are high quality subscribers, people have been, you know, personally referred based on a recommendation by a friend or a colleague. That's very powerful. So that was a really easy growth channel for us to get. And then yeah, I think you know, the building public stuff to the reason why I post the deck and I post you know, how we do we get to $10,000 a monthly revenue and all this stuff is because you get great reach on that stuff. And so that the deck posts you mentioned I got 30,000 views on it. You get an incredible reach on LinkedIn. And it makes sense. Because if you like that post, then their network, that person's network gets it. And there's so little content on LinkedIn, that the content sticks around for a while to like it pops up on other people's feeds. So anyways, I think you're absolutely right, LinkedIn is the place to play. Now, I think we're kind of now teetering out on LinkedIn and been like, you know, we were trying to figure out how we can supercharge that again, but it's, it's it's tough.

Seth Anderson:

What, what's next for you, Brent, what do you got coming up here? As you look down the horizon? Yeah, like I said, I

Brett Chang:

think, you know, we want to come up with more products, newsletter products, that will either help people at their job, or deliver content that our existing readers mamora have, and that allows us to access new audiences. And so I think that's a real focus for us in the next few months, obviously, we're still really focused on the peak. And when making the the best possible products, we're almost at 25,000 subscribers. And so that's a bit of a milestone. And so we're hoping to revamp the newsletter a little bit, make it look a little bit different. kind of make it easier to read product. So that's a real focus for us. And then yeah, it's it's how do we access new audiences? And how do we keep growing our existing product? And then how do we sell more? These are, you know, it's it's growing and selling are the only two things I think that any any business owner should really care about. And so the that's always what's on my mind,

Seth Anderson:

what are you doing for personal development right now reading listening to I mean, other than the peak?

Brett Chang:

Yeah, you know, it's a i. So we've brought on vindhya on our team, who's our newsletter writer now. And she's great. It's been, you know, it's the first I've ever managed someone. Prior to this, I've just been kind of running my own show, even at Uber was carrying my own show. And so I've been learning a lot about or thinking a lot about management, team building culture, and trying to be pretty thoughtful about that. You know, it is interesting, I think, for first time managers, you're very much informed by the experiences that you had in past work environments. And I worked in politics, which I think is the worst possible work environment in the country. And so I saw the worst side of things. I also worked at this extreme labs, which they're, they're no longer a company. And so I'll say there's also a terrible work environment. And so you I saw those two, and then I saw Uber, which was teetering on bad at any given point. It just intense and intense can be, but like, very, obviously, can be bad. And so I saw that. And then, but I also saw, you know, good parts of Uber too. So I'm trying to take the good parts of Uber I saw, keep the intensity, but also just be like a very welcoming and friendly and diverse work environment. So that's something I've been thinking a lot about. And then I'm always listening to every podcast about newsletters and podcasting that I can. I've listened to every interview with the morning brew guys, one, because we obviously took a lot of the work that they've done and applied it to Canada, but to they've got interesting stuff to say about how they grew and what they're trying and where they're going. And I think that's very helpful in terms of how we think about our business. So yeah, that professional development on that is, that's mostly what I listen to these guys.

Seth Anderson:

Awesome. And I think we've said it a couple of times. But where's the best place for people to find out more about the peak?

Brett Chang:

Yeah, read the peak calm, you can subscribe. It's trusted now by 21,000. Canadians. We got some cool people on the list. I think that's probably the most one of the most fun parts of the job is the seeing all the new people that subscribe people who, you know, obviously I'd never had the chance to talk to otherwise and the negative read an email that we put together every day, which is great. And then yeah, I'm Brad at the P Comm. You can follow me on twitter at beaching you follow me on tik tok at read the peak putting in a lot of content there. And yeah, pretty easy to find. A lot of Tick Tock dances Yeah, I you know, it's funny i in the in the depth of the quarantine early quarantine, I did a tick tock dads and that is a private video now. 30,000 views not to knock it. Look, I was lucky to add 10 on our one that is no longer available, unfortunately.

Seth Anderson:

Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming by today. Brett. We really appreciate it. Thanks, Brad. No problem. Thanks much, guys.

Voiceover:

Thanks to Brett Shea. From the peak newsletter. Visit read the peak calm to subscribe today. Now stay tuned for the podium. Brought to you by beyond the beaten path visit beyond the beaten path.ca.

Seth Anderson:

All right, well, that was a blast JP hanging out with Brett from the peak.

JP Gaston:

Brett's awesome. Like, he just he has such a cool story about where he came from how he got like, even the story about starting that little coach service in Toronto, and before he got connected with Uber, like that was awesome.

Seth Anderson:

Yeah. And he didn't beat around the bush. You know, what I loved is like, we asked questions and he just gave us a straight answer. And that's what you look for in a great guest. I think it's just people in general conversation, right? Awesome. No, so that was great move. on to this week's beyond the beaten path podium insert laser sounds while locking, why do you do this to me? We are we're actually going to build on on the episode. So are one of our new favorite, if not favorite publications is read the peak, read the peak calm for those of you haven't signed up. There's a link in the post. So go there now check it out. Go ahead. Good morning. And we're back. Don't hit pause, just keep playing and go there. Yeah. So we are going to share our top three publications. And we have a lot of debate about what constitutes a publication, especially

JP Gaston:

in this day and age. Yeah, I mean, most of what would traditionally be publications, it's closed and been turned into strip malls.

Seth Anderson:

And I really wanted to include Twitter, but JP tells me that is not a publication. And I don't know, man. I don't know. I mean, people make stuff public there. But that doesn't make it public, Asian. There's not like a Twitter scrapbook every year where they put together all the best pieces of news

JP Gaston:

and somebody somebody prints out tweets and then cuts them and puts them in a scrapbook.

Seth Anderson:

That would be some kind of scrapbook. 8000 page scrapbook. All right. Did I go first last week, or did you I can't remember. I don't know if it matters what week it is. Well, you know what? I know what my list is. Let me let me dive in. I haven't runner up, because I don't I haven't read one because that's I mean, I felt like the stall logic. ness. That's where Mr. algea stalled. Yeah, that's the one. Sports Illustrated. I have a whole bunch of them in a tote. Somewhere in the garage that I've carried with me from house to house. I have no idea. Every time I'm like, I should just throw these out. But I just keep hanging on to them. And you can't even like you can't even use them as like Firestarter. And you know and like they would have been like Matt Lionheart Vince Young, like those are the guys that are on the cover like this is this is a while back. But yeah, I just have a certain nostalgia for Sports Illustrated. You bought a collection off of e 1975. Volume 14. So there's that. And then coming in at number three, something of a sports enthusiast. And I've had I've been humming a lot today, I apologize. I'm not taking any. That's fine. That's fine. If people need to hear it if people need to hear it. All the album's and ahhs and all of that. So number three for me is the athletic. I've been happily subscribed to them for a few years now subscription to be able to read their stuff. And I haven't been as into sports since COVID, to be honest, but because there hasn't really been sports since. I mean, there has but I definitely like in that six month window where there was no sports. My like all Innes, if you will, went down a notch and it's never really climbed back up and become much more of a passive van. Because to be honest, I've got other stuff to do. There's a podcast to record dammit podcasts to record jobs to do workouts to have kids to raise. And like kids realized. The list keeps going. That's not the entire okay. Number two for me, I'm actually going to go with HBr Harvard Business Review. I have not subscribed, I feel like every other day I click on a link and it's like you have one of two articles left remaining.

JP Gaston:

Yesterday, I read four articles. And all of them said I had two out of two.

Seth Anderson:

Yeah. So I love that I've got a few of the books. I don't know, I just find it. The best publication going. Also, if you work at Harvard Business Review, and you're listening to this, I never said the whole to like it to continue. Hopefully you don't forget all of this. So HBr. I quite like that. This TED Talk is a publication while I'm in there, huh?

JP Gaston:

I don't think so.

Seth Anderson:

Okay, that's fine.

JP Gaston:

I think it's, and I have one that's a bit controversial, too, but I think it's more media.

Seth Anderson:

Yeah. All right. I wasn't going there. Anyway, I just kind of thought of it. My number one publication and again, I've kind of waned away from it a little bit but honestly, it was probably the biggest inspiration for us even doing this because the only podcast that I listened to really with any regularity prior to doing this was the bill Simon shell. And he has his is basically network of podcasts and media and articles and everything on the ringer. And I quite like the ringer. Got a lot Different topical pop culture stuff. It's got a ton of sports stuff. And I'm just, I'm a big fan of it. And honestly, it inspired the show. I remember one day, you know, not long before the walk where I thought of I wanted to do this podcast, I remember listening to one where he was talking about his first couple podcasts that he did and how terrible they were. And, you know, he went back and listened to them one day, and he's like, That was awful. But, you know, he just started doing and he's kind of the godfather of podcasting in a lot of ways, you know, kind of pod, the God of pod. And so, shout out to Mr. Bill Simmons. And I mean, I've been reading bill stuff, since I was in general studies taking Greek mythology, some 20 years ago, or whatever that was. And he was the sports guy on zeven, before ESPN, when he just had his website and he was on ESPN. So big shout out to Bill, because without his inspiration, I don't think this podcast would exist.

JP Gaston:

All right, well, I guess I'll get into mind, there you go. What do you got my runner up his TED talk? No, just number three for me. And actually something that got me into being a bit more consistent with my reading, which I don't I don't do now. So you're probably laughing on the inside over there stuff. But for a long time, I was quite into reading. And but what got me started was actually Mad Magazine. And, you know, it was just a thing that I was the right age at the right, time to get into that. So I quite enjoyed it. My second one, and might be a little biased here now. But even before I was written into an article, Forbes, I do quite like Forbes. Now, I do think the problem with Forbes is that they have a bunch of articles that are just written by random single contributors who will never write for Forbes again. But they also do have a ton of people who are staff writers and regular contributors and senior editors and whatnot, who give some really good content that's very similar to HBr. A lot of the stuff in in HBr, and Forbes is the same, I think, you know, HBr just has a little more consistency and delivery of content, I would say. And then my number one, and this was this is actually the slightly more controversial one. I do quite like CBC, and I read the stuff on the website, I read some of the newsletters that they send out. I do also listen daily every morning to the CBC News. When I get up, I asked Google to tell me what the news of the day is. And it gives me the weather and then immediately tells me what's on CBC. And I enjoy the content. I know that some people aren't as happy with CBC, but I really enjoy the content. There's a ton of shows and podcasts that I listened to like one of my favorite is the under the influence with Terry O'Reilly just marvelous podcast about marketing and life in general. So yeah, CBC would be my, my number one growing up.

Seth Anderson:

Well, my dad used to always listen to CBC Radio. And it was like every other thing that he ever talked about, was, oh, I heard that on CBC Radio, to the point where that became like a family punchline. So that's, that's

JP Gaston:

great. Like, it's, I don't know, I like that I can get content from anywhere too. And it's catered to that specific area, like having grown up in Ontario, I like to check back in on some of the news in the area. And just the job I do every day. I like to check out news from around the country. So it's nice to have something where you can actually go and get news written by people who are living in that area about stuff that's happening in that area.

Seth Anderson:

I like it. No, that's fair. And I don't frequent CBC but for the better part of half my life that was basically the only outlet I had for anything so I share the story for TBC

JP Gaston:

and if you're if if none of that helps, then you know on the weekends they've got the debaters which is like one of my favorite shows of all time where they have to comedians argue over ridiculous topics and

Seth Anderson:

I've thought at times we should have a debate club show as part of the well not the you know, the ringer has a rare universe but we've got The Biz Dojo universe. dojo verse, ah, now we're on to something dojo verse powered by beyond the beaten path. Check them out the beaten path.ca for all your laser engraving means you probably don't even know you need something laser, but go to their website. Check it out, and I'm sure you'll be inspired. They haven't been sent any ghosts yet from our last episode. So if you've got one, please send us their way. Alright guys, have a great week and we'll talk to you next week. Yeah.