Disrupting the Finance Industry with Robert Gauvreau

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DN ten, you're giving back ona global scale. Hello all, my

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entrepreneurs and business leaders, and welcometo the Michael Esposito Show, where I
interview titans of industry in order toinform, educate and inspire you to be
great. My guest today is anaward winning FCPA who works exclusively with entrepreneurs
to help them make more money andgain financial clarity in their businesses. As

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a financial expert and author, heshares insight and wisdom as a public speaker,
is often cited in major business journalsrelated to money, finances and entrepreneurship,
and works directly with more than fivehundred bigs businesses across North America,
helping them build a better business andgenerate greater financial performance. He founded go

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Vro Accounting Tax Law Advisory in twothousand and eight and is now one of
Canada's fastest growing businesses, as recognizedby the Globe and Mail, Maclean's and
Financial Times. He's been featured onFox News, NBC, Yahoo Finance,
Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, the Garyv Podcast, and now The Michael Esposito

(01:34):
Show. Please welcome CEO and founderRobert Govreau, welcome. A great to
be here. Wow, that introit's like one of those time to go
that sounded too good. We gotto carry on. But I'm really excited
to be here, Michael. Youknow. But here's the thing with that

(01:56):
intro is what I love is justthe experience that you have in all the
different communication formats of meeting with people, whether it's on a newscast of like
a Fox News or a podcast ora public speaker, you bring this dimension
of being able to explain what youdo and how you do it in all

(02:20):
these different formats. And that's whyI want to highlight that for our audience
because it just means the amount ofvalue that you're going to be able to
bring today. Just showcases how you'reable to sometimes. I'm sure on Yahoo
Finance it's like very direct, it'slike here are the numbers, here's what
we got. And then like ona Gary Vee, I know that how
he's high energy and he asks quickquestions and you got to fire him off

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quick. And then here we're moreconversationals. So it's like a mix of
everything together. And then also justall of those credits. Two things.
One, you know, it's importantsometimes to pat ourselves on the back,
so please give yourself one. Butit's also important for our audience to know
who they're learning from of an expertin the field, an expert communicator,

(03:01):
an expert who's been doing this fora very long time. And so it's
just adds such tremendous value to ourshow and to our audience. So I
appreciate you coming on today, no, and thank you for that, you
know, And I think one ofmy personal passions right now is celebrating success
of others because you know, sometimeswe get in the entrepreneurial space, we

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get a little afraid to celebrate ourwins because other people feel like, you
know, we're boasting about ourselves orwe're bragging. But it's you know,
sometimes in that entrepreneurial world, weneed to actually stop and celebrate success and
momentum. And it's a good thing. It shouldn't be it shouldn't be thought
of that it's something we need tobe afraid of sharing, So thank you

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for sharing that for me. Yeah, for sure, And I'll stay on
that for like one more second,because actually I do ah. I do
an Instagram live every morning, andyesterday marked my one month anniversary of going
live every single day, even includingthe weekends, and I took a moment
to celebrate, and I was sharingthat, and I would love your feedback
on this as well, in thathow important it is to celebrate the small

(04:06):
milestones along the way to the majorgoal. Yeah, and I don't think
that's a small milestone either, Michael, Like I can never as much as
you know, people like you andI talk about it, and we know
that that's what we need to do, right because you know our goal.
And I don't want to speak foryou because we are just kind of hanging
out for the first time, butI can tell you that both of us

(04:29):
are aligned with this passion to helpas many people as we can in doing
what we do. And we know, you know, if we want to
be supporting and influencing or positively havingan impact on the most amount of people,
those are the things we have todo, getting on and doing those
lives every single day. But it'sso easy to say it. So the
fact that you've done it, goodfor you, my friend, Like that's

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It's something I've never been able todo consistently because I feel like my life
has so many things that I'm justin time. So and that's an awesome,
awesome celebration. Thank you, thankyou. Yeah, And I appreciate
that. And it is it certainlyis juggling, you know what it is.
I don't make it too much ofa big deal. The girls interrupt,
My daughters interrupt, and and theythey're they're a part of it,

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which is which is really cool Ithink for them as well, since you
know, they're so involved in seeingstuff on on social media and you know,
watching YouTube videos and seeing all thesemoms do their own little shows.
So these my daughters are now kindof like creating their own. So share
with us a little bit more aboutabout yourself. So this is really cool.

(05:36):
You know you're you're in Canada.I love it when I have a
guest from from another country. Itjust feels amazing. We've been in India,
now we're in Canada. On mylives, I have somebody who joins
me regularly from Australia, So it'sso cool. To like kind of be
global. But tell me about,like what it was like growing up in
Canada and what what brought you tothe financial industry. Yeah, I know

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I was. I was pretty soas a good Canadian, many of us
played hockey, and you know,I celebrate my son playing hockey as well,
just our national treasure really, butspent a lot of time as a
kid, as an athlete, asa high performer, always striving to you
know, compete, compete on teams, compete individually, and push myself to

(06:26):
be, you know, the bestversion of myself. And I you know,
one of the things I love aboutkids and being in sports or on
teams is learning how to work togetherto create something bigger than you, right.
And I think for me it wasalways a passion of mine to always
just be that high performer. Playedhockey at a at a fairly high level,

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ended up playing a little bit oftime in junior a hockey, which
was which was fun, and thenrealized in late high school, man,
I got to figure out what I'mgoing to do because I'm not going to
be a professional athlete. I'm notGod's gift genetically to be that person.
So so started focusing on on educationand probably not still eat high school,

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you know, and at that pointtrying to figure out what it is I
wanted to do, and Michael wouldbe probably surprised. I actually wanted to
be a teacher, which is youknow, circle around. Now I do
a lot of teaching, but it'syou know, about my passion and about
you know, what we can doto influence people. But back to education.
I because I had sort of focusedon my athletics through high school,

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my marks were okay, they were, you know, just right around that
eighty mark, and I didn't getinto teachers college and so that was an
interesting thing. I was like alittle bit of a setback for me,
and I was like, okay,I'm going to just jump in. I
you know, I have this passionfor wanting to take business or to teach

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business at high school was really whatI wanted to do. And then I
engulfed myself into the business program atTrent University, which is in Peterborough,
Ontario, and I fell in loveand I felt this connection that I'd never
had before to my purpose and I'vejust felt like I had this greater purpose

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to help make the world a betterplace through entrepreneurship and that was super exciting
for me. But you know,at the same time, I'm sitting there
with you know, thousands of peoplegraduating in the same class as me.
We're all leaving the same institution.Everybody's going out looking for likely the same

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jobs. At that point, Iwas like, how do I differentiate myself
from everybody else? And that's whereaccounting came in and finance came in.
For me. It was an older, you know, generation of accountants that
kind of had this boring lack ofpersonality sort of identity, and it came

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naturally to me in university. SoI thought, well, why don't I
why don't I put together, youknow, this boring sort of industry where
I'm I seem to be naturally goodat it, you know, put that
together with entrepreneurship, and what ifwe just disrupted an entire industry? How
cool would that be? And thatwas really the start for me. Michael.

(09:24):
You know, it's funny. I'drecently just had I'm trying I'm drawn
a blank on his last name,but it recently just had a former hockey
player as well on the show fromCanada, So it's so funny. Blocking
or maybe I'm assuming he's from Canada. I might be making an assumption there,
Sorry, justin, but he wason he's also a ten x or
with yourself, and he worked inthe National Hockey League. So it's just

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kind of like interesting the correlation betweenbeing a high performer in sports. Sports
plays such a great role in bringingout that competitive spirit, but also like
you know, even people who aren'tcompetitive but also just driving ourselves for excellence.
What got you? I mean,I know that you're in Canada and
you said national treasure and everything,but was there any family members that also

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helped bring out this competitive nature inyou outside of just hockey? Good question?
Yeah, you know, let's mentorssay. Yeah, you know,
I feel like a lot of thetime, you know, when we enter
into sports, especially if we enterinto sports at a young age, it's
more based on the fact that ourparents think it's something we'd enjoy, right

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right, And I would say,you know, my dad played hockey.
I feel like maybe he missed theopportunity to play hockey at a competitive level
as a younger person because his parentsweren't necessarily willing to invest the time.
And my dad invested the time andwanted to be there and was there for

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me. I don't even know ifyou missed a game in my entire life
while I was playing, you know, at a competitive level. So for
sure he instilled that in me.And I would say, you know a
lot of values came out of thatand that relationship with my dad. You
know, one, show up everyday for yourself and those that you're playing
with, you know, and that'sa value that we have in our business

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as well. Show up every dayand be there for yourself and for other
people. Always work hard, likealways give it one hundred percent, no
regrets, no holding anything back,and truthfully, as part of that,
be a good human. You know, be a good human. And doesn't

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mean you can't be competitive and wantto me kick somebody's butt, you know,
in the way that the game ismeant to be played, or that
you just want to be the bestversion of yourself, maybe even celebrating people
on the journey with you that arebeating you, you know, like that's
okay. It's okay to have somebodywho's better than you, but to aspire

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to be the best is okay,right, And I would say that those
were values that likely my dad instilledin me at a young age. Yeah,
And I love the I love howI love bringing sports into business and
into our regular world. And westarted off with celebration and and and like
I was saying about the live yesterdaythat I did about celebrating, I was

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thinking about I'm an I'm more ofa basketball fan and NBA fan, and
I was just thinking about, youknow, in any season, in any
sports season, there is a championship, there is an Olympics for for you
know, our our athletes like runnersand things, or maybe the US World
or whatever it's called. But whatI'm getting at here is there's a there
has to be this break the celebrationin all of it. And I think

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sports teaches us that and this correlationwith celebration. But then the values that
you bring into your business, andwe're definitely gonna talk about that. And
I love how you talk about howevery employee, and you have over just
under a hundred employees, from myunderstanding, right, every single one of
them knows the values. And againjust relating it back to sports, it's

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the same thing with a championship team, with any high performing team, is
everybody on the team needs to knowwhat are we working towards are we taught
working towards rebuilding? Are we workingtowards a championship? What are our values?
What's our core beliefs? Right?One percent? And I would say
to you know that that's something thatwe have on our wall. But it's

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not just something that's on the wall. You know, we we recently went
through a transition where we brought somenew people on in a group to join
our team. And you know,bo both sets of individuals really high strong
values. One talked about them andone lived them. And there's a difference,

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right, living those values versus justtalking about them. It's not just
the cool thing to do, it'sjust it's a way of life, right,
and living those values. If youwant to be part of something,
if you really want to be partof something that's special, you find a
group of people who believe in whatyou believe, and you engulf yourself in

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it and you live those values.That's where you'll find That's where you'll find
your true passion, and you'll findthat it's exciting to go to work every
day. I listening to Simon Sinekthe other day and he had this one
clip where he said you know,think of your work, your business,

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your job, like your kids.You essentially want to find the passion,
the why, the purpose so thatyou love what you do. Doesn't mean
you're gonna like it every day.Just like your kids. You love them.
There may be days that they ruinyour day or you know, they
make it really difficult for you,but you still love them, so you're
going to be back the next day. And we want the like. But

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the love is really the connection thatwe have to our purpose, to our
mission, to our why we exist. How do you you know, you
just talked about living those core valuesand I got to stay here with this
because this is this is awesome stuffhere. How do you draw out that
love? Because you know someone someoneapplying for, you know, to a

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job at a tax advisory. Alot of times are just applying for a
job. It could be their firstjob in the field. It could be
that they have a long tenure andthey're coming there for maybe a financial upswing
in their in their career. Sohow do we get them to shed where
where they're coming from and fall inlove with with your firm. Yeah,
it's a it's a great question.What I do want to say is that

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we're constantly trying to make that bettertoo. In fact, we had a
strategic meeting with our leadership team yesterdayredefining and evolving our core values to be
like the two point zero iteration ofit, right, Like, let's continue
to evolve with this. Let's let'stake our values and our mission to the

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next level. And one of thecool things as we were reflecting, you
know, we work with about Iknow in the intro it's had five hundred
clients. We're about a thousand clientsnow, which is super cool because we're
constantly growing and investing in growth.And you know, thinking of those thousand
clients, if those thousand businesses thatwe work with all impact and touch one

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thousand people throughout a year, that'sa million people. So our influence and
our reach by essentially empowering business ownersto have the courage to make decisions and
the courage to invest in helping morepeople, then we're indirectly positively influencing the

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world by a million people a year. That's pretty powerful. So and that's
something that lights me up. Youknow, I want to be part of
an organized that has the ability topositively influence a million lives a year.
In fact, I want that tobe ten million lives a year. That's
our goal. And you know,even just yesterday saying this is now going

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to be part of our recruitment process, I said, I said this yesterday,
and I don't know if my team'sgonna agree with me or not,
but I said, wouldn't it begreat that every new offer we have for
a new employee, we send themthe offer and inside the offer it's going
to be password protected, and inorder to get access to that password,

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they have to watch a video andsign off on our core values to say
that this resonates with us. Ifthis resonates with you, you're all in
on this mission, in this purpose, and these are the core values that
you can resonate with. If not, you don't bother coming, right,
Like, we're building a long termplay here. So if these just so

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you know when you get here,this is going to be something that we
expect you're fully aligned with and ifyou sign off on that, like take
the blue pill. Right, ifyou take the blue pill, here's the
password for the job offer and beingpart of this because we're on a mission
to positively change ten million lives.I love that it's part of the recruitment

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process. And I know it's justkind of like in theory right now,
but when you're saying it to me, what's coming to mind is a couple
of things, and they're sort ofquestions but statements as well, in that
you're already We're talked about priming earlyon, before we even hit the air,
you're already priming them that these arethis is it like, we're not

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you have to be this person.And what I'm learning from this, and
I hope our audience is learning fromthis, is that it feels And here's
where the question comes in. Itfeels like what you believe is I can't
force you to fall in love withthese core values you sign on you become
an employee. Here, I can'tget you to fall in love with these
core values. They have to bealmost like a part of who you are,

(19:04):
part of your identity, right,one hundred percent. But what we
can get people to fall in lovewith is our why, our purpose.
Right, So here's our purpose.These are the values you got to buy
in, right. It's part ofwho you are, which is why you're
probably already attracted to the opportunity ofworking with us. That's why we're here.

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But you might be attracted based onthe fact that we want to positively
influence ten million lives this year,and that might be something you know,
which is a little bit different wethink of the accounting space, right.
You don't really think of the accountingworld as oh, wow, look at
the impact you're having on all thelives of all these people. But this

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is something that we genuinely know andbelieve and live, right. We know
the work we do is having apositive impact on these people, which is
why we're excited about it. Wewant everybody to be excited about accounting of
all things, right Michael, It'slike we want you to be inspired.
If you're inspired about it, andyou you're excited about your knowledge and your

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expertise actually changing people's lives, right, come join us. We're going to
do it better than anyone in theworld, which is you know, for
for someone like me. So I'mnot I'm not a financially savvy person or
or numbers type of person. I'mI'm I would say the story I tell
myself, as my coach would correctme, the story I tell myself is

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that I'm not good at numbers.So for me, it's nice to have
a partner who is excited about thenumbers because I need somebody who's like P
and L Report, Yes, let'slet's go, let's watch, let's look
at it, let's see the numbers. I need somebody like that on my
team, you know, So thatthat's very important to me totally, And

(20:52):
I think you know, and Ithink it even goes deeper than that,
But I completely appreciate that relationship.But it's like, Okay, here's the
P and L Report. What isit saying? What is it showing you,
Michael? How do we use thisto give you confidence to know exactly
what's going on so that when opportunitiesarise, you can capitalize on it right
now, right Like that's for me. It's that empowerment of the business owner

(21:17):
because you know, we all knowthe statistics and they're in our face all
the time about failure and businesses fail. Why do they fail well predominantly,
and I think it's ninety two percentof the time, is because people run
out of money. It's not becausethey don't have a good business idea or
a great business. It's because theyjust run out of cash. Well just
imagine the confidence that you could haveknowing that your cash position is good,

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the number one reason people fail.We have the confidence to give that to
you. To be like, thatis not going to be your problem,
Michael. You're empowered to go outand take these risks because you know you're
informed of what's going on in yourbusiness. You can go out there and
conquer exactly what you're looking to accomplish. And you know that's the powerful partner

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and that powerful support that empowers businessowners to change the world. And that's
what we're excited about. So ifninety two percent of businesses fail because they
run out of capital or if somesome reason according to that, then I
would assume you have a lot ofclients who join on that are pretty pretty
strapped. And my question that liesthere is how do you help get them

(22:27):
out of that position? You know, and I can't remember the statistic,
but it's over eighty percent. Overeighty percent of business owners are on a
week to week cash flow basis,meaning that they're likely and god, Michael,
we've all been there, right Like, we've all had to transfer from
our personal account to our business accountto make payroll or to cover a bill.

(22:51):
Right, So I'm doing it rightnow. Well, that's it right,
and I've done it this year too, right, because you know,
sometimes unexpected things come up up andwe need to we're all in on this
investment. We need to make thosechanges now to get away from that.
Think of how much time and energysucks us in on worrying about our cash

(23:12):
balance and covering those bills instead offocusing on strategy. So, yes,
eighty percent of businesses are all inthat position, and there's fairly, you
know, fairly simple tools that wecan put in place to eliminate that risk.
And that's you know, the powerof good partnerships is being able to

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go in and say, like youjust did, Michael, this is not
my area of expertise, which iswhy I have a partner that we bring
in because that's essentially how we seeit. We're a business owner's partner in
helping them financially succeed. We havea partner who comes in and brings that
expertise so I can focus on whatI'm good at, right, and ultimately

(23:56):
it eliminates that risk of failure.It doesn't completely get rid of it,
because you know there's other circumstances thatcome up that are outside of maybe business
owners control, like politics and legislationthat or maybe things that we can't even
predict. But you know, whenit comes to ninety two percent of the
failed businesses is because of cash,we can actually proactively plan that and eliminate

(24:22):
that risk. Yeah, and Iwant to highlight something before I go back
on something else that you had mentionedearlier on and what you were saying is
I want to highlight we were justtalking about employees and just having a higher
purpose. So what you were talkingabout is I had asked you about how
do you get them to fall inlove? And I just want to make

(24:44):
sure that our audience hears this,is that everything we just talked about is
you share with your team and youremployees and even your partners we work with,
is that you have this higher purposeand that's what you're all working towards
together. And that higher purpose iswhat they fall in love with. Is
what it came across as to me, I want to go I want to
go back a little bit because Ifeel like what we're talking about right now

(25:06):
in terms of helping businesses, whetherit's being proactive of avoiding any type of
financial issues, or if they're currentlyexperiencing financial issues, helping them get back
on their feet. And you hadmentioned earlier on that when you got into
the accounting space and started working inthere and seeing like the old heads there,
and you're like, you know whatyou said, I want to disrupt

(25:29):
this space or I want to createsomething that disrupts this space. And because
it's such a buzzword, because it'ssuch a word that is overused quite honestly
today, I'm interested in your definitionof disrupting the space and what that sounds
like or looks like for you.Yeah, I love that question, Michael,
First and foremost were the fastest growingCPA accounting firm in the country.

(25:53):
So if anything, we're doing somethingthat's different than everybody else in an industry
that's actually thanking. You know,we were our growth rate over the last
three years, I think we justsubmitted it for some application was two hundred
and seventy nine percent. Yes,you know, we are changing in attracting

(26:14):
people in some of the focus.So some of the reason that we're disrupting
it. If you think of traditionalCPA firms, you've got very high level
experts, right, which may bethe highest level experts in the world sit
in an office and they do administrativefunctions, they file documentation. There's so

(26:36):
much knowledge in those experts minds thatcould be proactively benefiting small business owners,
but yet they're sitting in their processingpaperwork. So one of the things that
we've done is we say and wedo that very well. Like I should
say that we are very good attax filing all across North America. We're
very good at financial reporting. Butwhat we do is we draw out the

(27:00):
expert knowledge and we get it intothe business owners to say, listen,
if you want to have a conversationwith us about how you get ahead of
this and build the best business youcan. These are the pieces of knowledge
that we have. By working witha thousand business owners, we can proactively
help you grow be successful. Sothat's, you know, that's one element

(27:22):
of it. The second is theuse of technology. So we we just
actually acquired a cloud based accounting businessas well in November, which you know,
as far as utilizing a tech stack, you know, everything being a
cloud based solution, quick books,online integrations with multiple app stacks to be

(27:45):
able to make every business owner's lifeone up to date so that you can
see numbers up to date, buttwo making it as efficient as possible.
So we're utilizing some of these softwareso as far as disruption goes, getting
out of the room, being thatproactive advisor, and then utilizing the best

(28:08):
technology that's available to us in theworld. Putting those together is a pretty
powerful, pretty powerful position for ourclients. The other piece that we've just
kind of added in here is thatwe don't just offer traditional services either.
So yes, we have the bookkeepingright which is with our tech stacks.

(28:30):
It's live bookkeeping, live reporting,so that business owners can see this,
you know, on a live basis, which is so important. We have
the tax we have the accounting.We also opened a law firm inside our
business. Why because business owners needthe legal advice a lot of time.
They're acquiring real estate or they're lookingat business structure planning, and it's like

(28:55):
you've got multiple parties in place.So we've gone and we've pulled those together.
Never thought I would be the ownerof a law firm, but it's
happened, and that allows for completecollaboration amongst professionals, so almost a one
stop shop sort of idea. Andthen on top of the on top of

(29:17):
the legal side, we opened upa coaching arm as well. So it's
like, how do we maximize thefinancial literacy of our entrepreneurial community. How
can we help support those business ownerscontinue to grow and maximize their impact.
So we've pulled all of these differentresources in and said, business owners,

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we have this really cool offering thatI don't know that anybody in the world
has. That's offering coaching, law, accounting, tax all across North America
just for business owners. And that'sa pretty unique space that we've created.
And that's one of the ways we'redisrupting our entire industry multiple ways that you're

(30:00):
doing. Yeah, right, Yeah, let's not hit them once, let's
hit them in ten different areas.I think that's really cool. Yeah,
And you know, it's and likeI said, you know, it's a
word that's definitely used a lot.And from what I drew from what you
just shared there is it's offering let'ssay, financial services in a different way

(30:22):
than it's been traditionally done. AndI think the next piece to that is
that you're also then challenging your competitorsto also change and adapt, because if
they want to keep up with youand what you're doing at your firm.
They need to offer services that areeither up to par or similar than what
you're currently doing. Right totally,And you know it's funny, so you

(30:47):
talked about having a business coach.We do business coaching, but all coaches
should have a coach, right,You need to see the value in having
coaching services. So my very firstcoach told me specific even in the accounting
industry, if you have a specializedservice or offering that's unique that nobody else

(31:08):
is doing, you can shout itfrom the rooftops and nobody is going to
do it because it's such a traditionalindustry right where it's like evoking change in
that industry. To create a newoffer and then to roll it out and
get it out to all the clientsis a big undertaking one that is probably

(31:29):
not going to happen because the industryis just busy. And you know,
I look at that as a competitiveadvantage. And when we talk about core
values, you know there were twotwo that as we've been talking, have
really stuck out that you know,have have really resonated with our team.
One is an integrity. Integrity meaningthat will never will always do the right

(31:52):
thing. We will never compromise ourvalues for anyone, but that we will
always show up and be there forour clients no matter what. Even if
we're busy, we'll stay late,We'll do whatever it takes to get the
job done for our clients from anintegrity standpoint, But even thinking of the
disruption, even if it's over anoverused word, one of the core values

(32:15):
that resonated with our team was innovation. So always looking for the next solution
that we can add that will helpour clients get to the next level.
And so although we have a bigoffering with a multitude of different things,
we know we're not done with thatyet. We know there's more services and
more offerings coming. As soon aswe can identify that there's a market need

(32:38):
from our clients, we'll find away to bring that service to them.
Yeah, and I think it's agood word. I mean, I think
it's very important to disrupt. Ithink, you know, I always often
think about the word entrepreneur and theword business business owner, and sometimes I
look at it and excuse me ifanybody takes offense to this. And I

(33:01):
don't mean to do it in thatway, but I think of a business
owner as somebody who goes into thebusiness as a traditional business owner, and
that's fantastic. You know, youwant to own a tax accounting firm and
you strap your name on the door, and you open it up, and
you follow the traditional tax accounting firmprocedures and processes, and you do that

(33:21):
for fifty years, pass it onto your family and kids, whatever it
is, and it's tremendous and itpays for everything. There's nothing wrong with
that. That's fantastic. But Ithink the difference with an entrepreneur is that
they seek to disrupt, they seekto change. They I actually heard this
on another podcast from recently. Theguy said, I can't remember what his
name is, but he said,entrepreneurs are actually lazy. We actually are

(33:44):
looking for the easiest way to solvea problem. And through our search,
our quest to be lazy, throughour quest to find the solution, we're
finding the easiest ways to get there. And that's what you offer to our
clients is the easiest way to getthere. So I think that that speaks

(34:06):
to you know, the technology thatthat you offer, the services that you
offer, it's like, what's theeasiest way we can solve this problem.
What's the most effective way is probablythe better word that we can solve this
problem, right right, Like,how can we get you the result the
fastest, Like if you can instantaneouslyhave access to what's going on in your
business from a financial outcome standpoint,I don't care. I don't care,

(34:30):
call me lazy, call me whatever, but I we're going to find the
way that can get you that accessto that data as fast as possible so
that you're the most informed you canbe to go out and make those changes
and make those decisions. And Ilove that. So the shortest way we
can get that result possible, I'mgame. And yeah, and like you
said, fact because that time,you know, we talk, we hear

(34:52):
so much about this these days aboutwhat is what is a business owner's greatest
asset? Right? It's time,it's what is it's our greatest asset?
You know, we're fortunate in thisday and age where credit is available and
angel investors are out there and somoney is there, so capital, which
probably was one of the biggest hurdlesback in the day. Now it's really

(35:15):
time. It's how do I maximizemy time because I can't spend an hour
trying to figure out from going fromone tax form to another bank account to
whatever, to figure out what mycash flow is. I need to know
it now, right. I actuallyhave been in those situations. I need
to know cashflow right now so Ican figure out how to pay this bill,
how to take care of this,how to go about this, because

(35:36):
if you if you don't have accessto that info, there's missed opportunities.
Yeah, right, like we missout because someone's going to get to that
information faster than you. Yes,right, yeah, So we need to
figure out those those pathways. Yeah. And I love the use of technology
too. There's there's a lot oftechnology out there, but when you bring
it all together and sink it,like you were saying about the apps and

(35:58):
getting them all to work, whenthey work together, it's amazing. And
we're all experiencing that today. Iwant to go to your core values because
this again relates back to your employeesand your team, your culture and this
this love that we talked about earlyon for the business and it's so important.
And I'm trying to think of thebook that I read this in about

(36:21):
I think it had to do withI want to say it was it was
Steve jobs book about Apple, aboutbringing the team together to create their core
values, and how by rather thanyou as the founder, just sitting in
a room by yourself, isolated andwriting these out, you're involving everybody else
into this. And so the questionthat I have for you is, you

(36:44):
know, having an organization as highlevel as it is, having a number
of employees in the organization, howdo you get everybody together? And I
know it's not all one hundred ofthem, but how do you get everybody
to get your executive team probably togetherto be able to come up with these

(37:05):
core values to where they really feellike they've been a part of the process
while and this is my last pieceto it, while you as the founder,
are not letting go of your owncore values for somebody else's one hundred
percent. And I guess, Michael, the immediate response for me is,
I guess it depends on how importantyou, as a business owner, feel

(37:30):
these core values are in building thefuture. Because and it's funny because you
said, well, I know itmight not be bringing everybody together. We
actually flew everybody in. Wow,right before the holiday season. We flew
them all in and we had aday session talking about you know, what
it is that from a value standpointthat we think is imperative that we have

(37:54):
within the organization. And we hada full day on this, and then
we had votes on what are themost relatable values for everyone, and you
know, there were some very clearwinners. And then from there, you
know, we've kind of let itsit and resonate a little bit so that

(38:15):
we could you know, reflect onit and say, okay, well,
how do these values really impact outcomesand behaviors that we want for the team?
You know, how do we maybetweak these in a certain way.
And then we had our leadership teamcome together yesterday and spend a full day
on values and mission and purpose andidentifying that and articulating that very clearly.

(38:37):
And you know, it was funnybecause my COEO, Derek and I chat
about this very often, and it'sso important that we don't just as business
owners and as leaders, that wedon't just push down what we expect everybody
to believe and what is valuable tothem, but that we let them be

(39:00):
the owners over those ideas. Becausewhen people are owning those ideas, which
actually drives a core value that wehave in the business. But when people
own those ideas, they're way morepassionate and excited to see them completed.
Right. And one of the corevalues that came out of this for us

(39:22):
was critical thinking. And it's like, Okay, one of the ways that
we're just going to this is justthe way that we're going to operate now,
is that you're not just coming askingfor answers to problems. Make sure
in every relationship that we're if wehave a problem, we're identifying three solutions
and one recommended action to clear upthat solution. One, it empowers everybody

(39:47):
to make those decisions. And two, if it's their idea and they're the
ones seeing it through, man,they want to see that through. You
know. They don't want to seetheir ideas just kind of pitter away.
They want to see, oh wow, I came up with this. Let's
make sure that this is the ideathat's going to solve it, and they
have that ownership over it, andit's it's super powerful. And I you

(40:08):
know, same with the values.I don't want to say you need to
be a good person, right,I want you to say integrity is important
and overwhelming, which is amazing whenyou bring when you bring the right group
of people together, you already havealigned values, right, so them articulating

(40:29):
what those values are, we're alreadyconnected by them, but now we're just
a little bit more clear as towhy we're connected. And integrity was,
you know, by far the biggestcommonality amongst everybody. It was like everybody
was wanting to be part of anorganization that acted with integrity and professionalism.

(40:50):
And that was there was no waveringon that we had. Obviously, I
said innovation as well, because peoplewhen we're thinking of of that innovative side,
that disruptive side, people want tobe part of change. You know,
they might not like changing, butthey want to be part of something
that's having an impact. Right.So you know, all of these things

(41:12):
they came together. We brought everybodytogether because we know how important it is
that everybody's connected and aligned on thesevalues. Because if we're all working together
for the same mission, the sameoutcome, everybody has to believe in it
and everybody has to be on board. Yeah, and I think you're you're
touching on what I what I kindof want to follow with this and that.

(41:34):
First of all, I just wantto say how impressed I am on
your commitment to your to your entireorganization to fly them out and to do
this. It was obviously unexpected ofI did not expect how that I made
an assumption, but it's it's amazingto see the value you put around that.
And that's kind of where this questioncomes from, because the question I

(41:59):
have is if you can share It'sreally not a question about you, because
we see the value you put onon investing in your employees and in your
company and in your mission. Ifyou can share with others how that maybe
the ROI on that and you youjust kind of like started saying a little
bit about that just now, aboutthe happiness of the employees and the impact

(42:20):
that it has. But if youcould share a little bit about that impact
of why that investment is so importantto you and your team. And you
know, again, we're going throughthis process because we knew it needed a
revitalization with bringing on a massive amountof new people. Right when you had,
when we had our lived values inplace and new people were coming on,

(42:45):
it was just starting to get alittle loose, right and and we
you know, not that our valueshave changed, but have we evolved from
being a company that started out withtwo people to now getting up to that
one hundred. You know, havethe values evolved? Are we more sophisticated?

(43:05):
Has our You know? If Ithink of this, and we were
talking about this yesterday, my missionis to influence the lives of ten million
people. My team was going,is that big enough? Wow? Right?
Because at some point we're going toinfluence the ten million people. Right,
We're going to have that positive impacton people, which I'm so excited

(43:27):
about. But we're going to getto the point where is that big enough?
Like we want to help more people? So you know, there's a
bit of an evolution that needed tohappen in this. But it is so
so important for alignment because if peopleare thinking that, you know, different
things are valued than what actually are, it will it'll actually drive their behaviors.

(43:54):
So if people aren't understanding or fullyaligned that integrity is not number one,
they may cut a corner. Andso the ROI on this one is
that the employee is very clear ofwhat it is that's expected of them too.
It's that core value is driving theirperformance as well. So when we're

(44:15):
reflecting, you know, a performanceevaluation, and we're saying we can't believe
how well you acted with integrity,Like you have the most integrity of any
human I've ever met. They knowthat that's going to be part of that
conversation and that's them doing a goodjob. So alignment is huge, and
it helps with creating outcomes for thebusiness as well. You know, we're

(44:40):
thinking of values, we're thinking ofcritical thinking, you know, critical thinking,
coming up with solutions to answers andsolving problems. Like the more we
can solve problems for our business,for our clients, you know, the
increase our reputation is the better resultswe're getting for our client, which means

(45:00):
more referrals. Right, Like it'swhen everybody's working on the same page,
the ROI on that is going tobe you know, an infinite level and
it's you know, it's really it'sreally the stepping stone to creating something that's
way bigger than yourself. And youknow that's again in the conversations I had

(45:22):
yesterday with our team, is whenI first started this, you know,
the idea of impacting or influencing amillion lives was not even on the table.
Now we're talking about ten million lives. You know, this is way
bigger than one person. We allneed to be on the same page and
on the road and the path toaccomplishing the same goals. You're you're when

(45:43):
you're saying the ten million, isthat even enough? You're reminding me about
the conversations I have about setting eitherattainable goals, which are which are good,
or audacious goals. And this,this idea was instilled in me by
Tony Robbins. And and you hadmentioned in your boy that you worked with
Tony Robbins in one of the accountingfirms that you previously worked at. I'm

(46:05):
just wondering on the impact that hehad on you. I mean, I
can obviously see it and feel itfrom you, but I'd be remiss if
you know somebody who was one ofmy first mentors through audio tapes, that
is, somebody who was one ofmy first mentors, if I could learn
a little bit from you right nowfrom working with him firsthand. Yeah,
oh, so you were audio tapes? You were you were back in the
day, Tony Robbins. It wasI said audiotapes. I meant to say

(46:28):
CDs, which which yeah, itwas when he was first it was he
was first coming out with his app, and I bought the app first,
and it just was wonky. Itwasn't really ready yet for launch, I
guess at the time, and soI returned it and I and I purchased
the CDs and I downloaded them toMP three's and I got to tell you,
man, I literally listened, andI did it like a workshop,

(46:52):
like I listened with my notebook inhand, and I was taking notes and
I was writing down and I waspausing it when he told me to pause
it. It was just a tremendousexperience. And you know, I'm forever
grateful to that moment in my lifetotally. And so just maybe a quick
backstory. I remember, and itwould have been some somewhere in the twenty

(47:13):
sixteen range, and it was ourexisting firm. It was the firm that
we we had created. We gota call from Tony's CFO and they,
you know, my administrator had comein and said, We've got Tony Robins
CFO on the phone for you,and I'm like, what do they want?

(47:35):
Like, I don't know, hewouldn't say, but he's excited to
connect with you. And I'm like, okay, this is really weird.
So of course I'm excited and alittle bit nervous, and I'm like,
why is you know, a billiondollar guy like Tony Robbins having his number
one executive reach out to me Andthey said, honestly, we are searching
for partners to represent different countries andcome in and work with Tony at his

(48:01):
business Mastery event. His business Masteryevent has about two thousand business owners across
the world. There were, youknow, hundreds of Canadians, which was
where they wanted me to come into represent Canada. And they said,
essentially, we did our research andyou know people who are changing the industry

(48:22):
and offering advice and really care aboutthe outcomes they can get for their clients.
Your name is top of our list. And I'm like, how the
hell did that happen? Like thisis ridiculous, Like this is a big
country. We've got, you know, not as big as the United States,
but we've got thirty eight million people. And I'm like, why was
why? Why? Why was itme? And they ultimately said that they've

(48:45):
they hired some of the best accountingcoaches in the world and said give us
your top names after some research,and mine was there, which was super
super cool. So for a fewyears I attended Tony's business Mastery events,
did a lot of planning with histeam, met him a few times,

(49:06):
but worked with closely with people likeKeith Cunningham behind the scenes, which was
super amazing. Keith Cunningham is anabsolute gem and that was amazing. So
we were behind the scenes doing this, but we would go in at the
events. Tony would say, youwant to meet with the best accountants in
the world. I've brought them inthe room. Here's Bob and his team,

(49:30):
and here's the other partners that werein there. So it was a
really amazing experience. And one ofthe things I would say about it Tony
Robbins, aside from the fact thathe's like he's Krem delacram right, like
he is the best of the best, is his genuine care for changing people's
lives. Like I remember the firsttime I shook Tony's hand, it was

(49:52):
just there was some different feeling aboutshaking his hand and the connection that he
had, the genuinest that he hadthat was just nothing like I've ever experienced
before. And you know, Tony, Tony isn't necessarily sharing a lot of
information that's record breaking right, Like, it's not a lot of new information.

(50:15):
He's just putting it together and gettingpeople in the right mindset to take
action on it. And I loveit. Like, you know, when
I would go to these three eventsa year in across the US and even
in Europe, he would say thesame thing, and every time I'd be
completely inspired and be like, ohmy god, I need to change my

(50:36):
life. I need to do theseincredible things. And you know that,
if anything, that experience over threeor four years of working with Tony and
his team inspired me to think bigger. You know, it was like,
stop thinking small and start thinking abouthow you can truly have an impact on
the world and do so out ofa place of care and offer more value

(51:00):
than anybody else. And you know, truthfully, our journey on the last
five years or so since that experiencehas been exactly that. It's like,
how can we continue to come froma really great place of care integrity,
but also just just do more,give more, be more than anyone else

(51:21):
can be. Yeah, I feelthat. I feel that so much,
And it's and it's kind of youknow what you just shared about Tony Robbins
not not sharing break record breaking informationit's what's inspired me to do what I
do in terms of the podcast,the lives, the different growth coaching that
I that I do, and everythingin that. What I've understood that these
are concepts that have been there sincesince the Stoics. Right Like when you

(51:44):
start studying Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism andyou read meditations and all these different books
that are just tremendous, you learnthat it's been around forever and it's just
different interpretations, it's different ways ofsharing it. It's who resonates with me
more. And that inspires me becauseI'm like, Okay, I don't have
to reinvent the wheel. I justhave to do it as Michael does it.

(52:06):
And you know, it's like Bob'sgonna come on and share his story
how Bob does it. And ifthis resonates with one person that they learn
something from it. It's not thatyou're sharing anything different in terms of disruption,
let's say, than somebody else mighthave on the show. But the
way that you might have shared itmight have resonated with a business owner out
there that goes, hey, youknow what, I want to disrupt the
deli industry and we're gonna change howdelis are operating today because of this podcast

(52:29):
right one hundred percent. And Michael, I think, you know, I
think we've nailed it in one area. And I think this is where Tony
is is the best in the world. Where he pulls these teachings together,
which again have been there. He'sdone his research, he's brought us this
information, but he puts us andhe talks a lot about this getting in

(52:50):
the right state. Yeah, takeaction, and you know why, you
know why you're having the success thatyou're having because you did it the action
right, just like me. Arethere going to be smarter people out there
doing accounting and tax work than me? Sure, I try and hire them
every day, Like I try andhire all the smartest people in the world,

(53:12):
and I'm pretty successful at it,which is so cool that they're way
smarter than me. But here's thething, I'm doing it right. Nobody
wants to do it. And that'sthe thing that Tony, that's the piece
that Tony brings together. He getspeople in a position to take the action
and like, no regret, livewith no regret. Just go and do

(53:36):
it. Start the podcast, startthe business, you know, go out
and do the marketing, go tothe conference, go learn whatever it is,
do it, because if you don'tdo it, and I think that's
the definition of insanity, right,you keep doing the same thing over and
over and you expect a different result, You're insane. Right. We have
to change our behaviors and our actionsif we want it for an outcome.

(54:00):
And I think Tony does that betterthan anybody in the world. I love
that. And so while we're onthis topic of that, I have this
this this beautiful image from your websitethat I printed out of of you,
of you coaching and sore. Whilewe're on this topic, I just I
got to bring this up. Imean, your your mastermind program, and

(54:22):
I need to understand it a littlebit more. You know. Again,
I go back to the old booksthat I that I read. Napoleon Hill
talks about masterminds and and we starthearing a lot about masterminds as we start
digging more into professional development. Butso I'm interested in your mastermind and what
you do differently there. How you'redisrupting the mastermind space right in million dollar

(54:44):
year totally. Yeah. So milliondollar year is our program. And again,
you know why did the million dollaryear happen. Why did we write
a book. We wrote a bookbecause we wanted to be able to touch
more people positively that it was alow cost investment for people to get access.
Right, We got that on there. Maybe we could chat about that

(55:05):
too, But the book was essentiallythe foundation for the coaching program, where
it was like, okay, financialliteracy of business owners is low. Right.
Business owners don't get their finances andthey don't really care to except to
know that everything's going to be okay. They want to know, you know,
what decisions can I make if Ihave two options, which one's going
to be financially better for me?They want to know that. And and

(55:29):
there was there's a big void inthis world for financial and and outcomes based
coaching. So we created a milliondollar year in essence for business owners to
understand how they can earn their firstmillion dollars or if they're at a million
dollars, let's say it's revenue,how to get to two, how to

(55:50):
build the team. You know,we were now an eight figure company,
and I've failed in every way possible, whether it's from hiring the wrong person
or selling the wrong product, orgetting our price wrong or not having our
core values in place, like we'vedone it all. We've screwed up in
every single way possible, and ourcoaching program shares that journey and says,

(56:14):
Okay, here's all the ways we'vemessed up, and here's the ways that
we've either corrected it or here's thereally cool things that we've done that have
worked really well. Here's all thetools. So our million dollar year program
has been in existence for two years. We've got hundreds of business owners that
are in there. We meet weekly, we do a weekly training. We

(56:35):
bring in incredible people like actually DanMartel. I don't know if you know
Dan Martel at all, but WallStreet Journal bestseller. Here's a little plug
for my boy, Dan. Yourtime. Yeah, you know, you
were talking about the most valuable thingin your life being time. Check out
Dan. We bring in guest expertslike Dan Martel to talk about buying back

(56:57):
your time as an entrepreneur. Wehave culture coaches who are in. We
have marketing experts that come in totalk about how to generate leads. We
talk about retention strategies, we talkabout recruitment strategies, you know, everything
that a business needs to get tothe next level. That's what the million
dollar year is and it's all foundedon the financial confidence to be empowered to

(57:22):
really grow and impact more lives.So that's our coaching program. We also
have. You know, there's alwaysthis piece and I know I've seen a
few come in this morning already FAQFriday. For Bob, it's like,
ask me anything, is there,what financial questions you have? What strategy
questions you have? And we recordand share videos for every single member in

(57:46):
there, and they learn off it, they add videos in and they continue
to support and make each other better. In essence, we've created a small
business community that is guided by agrip, a team who've been there,
done that, and is also supportedby community members going through that same journey

(58:06):
together. And it's a pretty magicalspace. I'm not gonna lie, Michael.
It's truly the area that I lovespending my most time is going out
and connecting with those entrepreneurs and providingthose insights and those values and solving the
problems. It's an incredible and incrediblepiece. And also, you know,
fifteen years in for us, prettyinvolved in the coaching world myself with my

(58:31):
own coaches, the access we haveto resources, to bring in to support
our community as well. Like we'reable to bring in the best coaches in
the world to come in because they'recolleagues of mine and we support each other,
and then they come in and helpsupport our community too. So it's
a pretty amazing spot. It's somethingI'm really really proud of. And our

(58:57):
success rate for getting people to achievinga million dollar a year or achieving financial
successes, you know, ninety percent, and that's because people show up and
do the work, and it's prettypretty cool. That is really cool,
and there's got to be something aboutjust getting all the like minded people in
the room that energy. I wasjust speaking about it with Katie, who

(59:19):
does Who's I call her my directorof marketing. She doesn't have that official
title because she's actually a contractor andhas her own business. But we talk
about my events, which are actuallycalled take action events, which would I
would let you have an open invitation, sir, you know, we have
we have these events, and wewere just talking about the event, and
we were actually talking about Tony Robbins, of course, you know, go
figure, And what I was sayingto her was, we've done a few

(59:44):
already and we're trying to plan outour next one, which will probably take
place in the summer. And Isaid, you know, there's no difference
in the information that we're sharing.It's it's you know, we're going to
share information that they can get online, that they can you know, download
a Tony Robbins's video or something andlearn from it. But by getting them
in a room together, it's theenergy that we're creating. It's the energy

(01:00:06):
of bringing these like minded individuals togetherthat I'm trying to create at my events.
And that's what you know, whatyou experience at Tony's and I'm sure
you experienced at your events. Andso where I'm going with this is this
Mastermind club that you have the milliondollar a year. I'm just interested in
the energy in the room and whatit feels like for you, the creator

(01:00:27):
of this. Oh dude, thisis this is my baby, you know,
like it's it's funny. And Italked about this at the beginning of
really what our intention was, orwhat my intention was when I started this
was to be different and use theexpertise that we have as accountants, like
as accountants across the world, whetherthey're complete introverts and you can't have a

(01:00:50):
conversation with them or not. Youknow, there is so much knowledge in
here about what works and what doesn'twork because that's what they do their reviewing
and working with business owners every singleday. It may just be trapped in
their brain and they never share that. But we wanted, like I wanted
that to be different. I wantedto be able to share that and empower

(01:01:12):
that information with other people. Soyou know, when I come in and
we have you know, a sessionwhere people are sharing their wins right and
the energy of people just taking actionis just you know, for me,
I get emotional. I'm not gonnalie like I get. I get choked
up when I see people having thesuccess that they have and it changes their

(01:01:37):
their lives, their families' lives,you know, like people getting time back
that they didn't think they had becausenow they've they've known, they have the
confidence to know they can go hiresomebody to help get them out of the
weeds. Like, oh man,it is. You know, it's so
fulfilling for me. And when again, when I think of our our purpose,

(01:01:59):
our wise influence the lives of millionsof people, you know, this
is by far the biggest way thatI can influence people is getting in there
and just sharing with them, helpingthem solve problems and sharing our knowledge that
they just don't have in the financialexpertise space. And I'm like a proud

(01:02:19):
dad. Yeah, And I thinkthat energy, you know, it then
translates to everybody else in the room, especially when you know, when people
are sharing their wins, other peoplewho start thinking about their wins and everything.
Something that you mentioned about your mastermindthat I think that I at least
think is different because I haven't heardabout this in the masterminds. Is this
support team that you have built inthere? And I would assume obviously,

(01:02:43):
well, it's definitely there to teachand strategize and support wins and all that,
but I would also assume that it'sthere to support the challenges and potentially
the failures that are happening for someof the business owners in the group.
And I'm just wondering how you kindof help in terms of that. How
do how does the group come togetherto support that that business owner in those

(01:03:05):
challenging times. Yeah, no,that's a great question. And this is,
you know, again something that wewant to create inside our own business,
probably because we see the power ofit is the candid conversations and candid
feedback. So let's be real andhonest and open in all our conversations with

(01:03:28):
our team, with our clients.So what's working for them and what's not
right? Where are they struggling?Because I guarantee you, with the hundreds
of members that are in there,including me, one of us has has
had that fail, has gone throughthere and done that before, and we've
figured out how to get around itor to get through it. And it's
that support. And you know,we kind of kick this off today talking

(01:03:52):
about, you know, celebrating success, and I think sometimes celebrating the success
is continuing on this journey and perseveringbecause we're talking about the difference between business
owners and entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs takeon more risk to make more change.

(01:04:13):
They need perseverance because it's not aneasy world. And everybody thinks business owners
have it made. Oh you can, you can take Friday off and go
golfing where you can you know,attend your your kid's soccer game, and
oh must be nice and we go, Yeah, after the one hundred hours
this week that we put in puttingout fires, dealing with you know,

(01:04:34):
challenging time. One of our clientscouldn't pay, so we're out money.
You know, all of those things. We need resilience to get through that.
And as part of this community,it's an open space to share your
wins but your losses and have thatsupport for each other. And I truthfully,
you know, I think of beinga business owner and move away from

(01:04:56):
the community for a moment. Youcan't share these conversations openly with your friends
and family. They don't get itright. They just don't understand. You
know, any win is a brag. You know, life is great.
Oh poor you you had to workextra, but you got to go to
your kids game, or you havea nice car or whatever. People just
don't understand what goes into this andthe challenges and roadblocks. To have a

(01:05:23):
community where wins and losses can beshared openly and we celebrate each other for
them and help support each other throughit or past it, you know,
it's a pretty powerful community to bepart of. M Yeah, and surrounding
yourself with with people who want togrow and who are at a high level

(01:05:44):
is just tremendous. I've I've learnednot just by doing this podcast, by
meeting people like yourself bye bye.By getting the opportunity to interview people who
are levels above where I, youknow, levels to where I strive to
be. Let's put you know.And so I I learned so much from
from meeting people like yourself. AndI'm you know that being in a room
with other entrepreneurs where one you canhelp bring them up, like you said,

(01:06:08):
in their losses, but then alsolearn from somebody's win is tremendous.
You said the mastermind came from thebook, and that is the wealthy entrepreneur.
And so you're an author, whichis something I aspire to become one
day. Just tell us a littlebit about this book here. Oh well,
writing a book is not the easiestthing, Michael. I'm not gonna

(01:06:30):
lie. You know. I doquite a bit of a writing and you
know, I write for Entrepreneur onand off, Forbes on and off,
Canadian Business on and off. Butto actually sit down and write hundreds of
pages, You're like, man,this is this is this is a challenge.
Now. The reason again, thereason that I persevered through that wasn't

(01:06:55):
because I wanted to be an author. Truthfully, I was like, I
couldn't care less like, In fact, I'm sure outside of my community,
people are going, oh, whodoes he think he is? Being an
author? Right? Like that's thethat's the reality of being a business owner.
When we go do something different,it's always oh, who do they
think they are? But the reasonthat I wrote it was that I know

(01:07:18):
that book in the hands of somebodywho otherwise wouldn't be able to connect with
me or my team, that wecan have that positive impact on those people.
And you know, one of thecool things, whether my publisher liked
it or not, I'm gonna saynot, was that as soon as we
finished the book and we started wedid the sale or whatever, we got

(01:07:41):
the Amazon bestseller position, And assoon as that was over, I was
like, Okay, well that's underwhelming. We sold thousands of copies in a
short period of time. But whatif it was hundreds of thousands, Like
and what if we got this tohundreds of thousands of people so that they
could take one piece from this bookand it changes their life. What if

(01:08:03):
we just give it away? Andso we started giving it away online,
we started marketing it and just sayinghere's a free copy, and we gave
away hundreds of thousands of downloads ofour book. Now, I don't know
how many people read it. Youknow, I think it was a nice
idea, But you know, Michael, to your point, it's like take

(01:08:25):
action. If you take action andlearn one thing from this book and it
takes you one step closer to financialsuccess in your life, that changes it
for me. So my purpose ofthis was to try and positively impact the
most amount of people with some ofthe knowledge I have, and writing a
book was the easiest medium to getthat out to the most amount of people.

(01:08:47):
Mmmm. I love that. That'sreally that's a really great way to
put it, because I struggle.It's been probably three years since I have
been inspired to write a book,and I think that's probably the missing piece
for me because I, like you, I don't identify with needing to be
an author. You know, it'sa cool little thing you could put on

(01:09:08):
LinkedIn, right, But that's notwhat I identify with as like my purpose
to writing a book, and I'mtrying to figure out what it is.
And it's nice to hear from somebodylike yourself that's accomplished in that space to
say, you know, that wasn'tmy purpose either. So it's kind of
like, oh, okay, soI don't need to care whether I'm an
author or not. It's really moreof like, why do I want to
write this book? What is itabout the book? And I would say

(01:09:32):
if I could just jump in forone second on this, like I would
say, already in connecting with youtoday, I can see your purpose for
writing the book, and that isto help more people take action in their
lives, right, Like if yourevents are focused on people actually doing something
with the information, and I'm guessingyou're a big impact and influenced guy as

(01:09:58):
well, which is why you're doingwhat you're doing. The fact of writing
a book isn't to be the author. Yes, does it help when you
think of yourself as an authority orpeople look at you and say you're an
authority because you've written a book onthis, or you've been featured here or
you've got this event. Yes,it certainly helps, But that's not going

(01:10:19):
to push you through the pain ofwriting one of these things because it's not
an easy experience. But knowing thatyou can actually get in the hands of
people you wouldn't otherwise meet and youcan you can enable them to make that
change and to take that action whenthey otherwise wouldn't. Your book could change

(01:10:42):
the lives of millions of people,and I think that's super cool, and
I would love to know more aboutyour events too, So make sure you
send those to me after, becauseI would love to see how I can
support you on that massage. Ohmy goodness, one hundred percent, we're
gonna be We're gonna be hooking upon that. And thank you for giving
me my purpose to my book.I wrote that down, I made I
made notes on that. So Ilove this higher purpose of impacting millions of

(01:11:06):
people. And you know, I'vebeen blessed in meeting Summer from ten X
Stages and getting hooked up with withpeople like yourself and so many others who
come from ten X Stages and GrantCardon and Pete Vargas's UH program here,
and I hear so often this thiswanting to impact millions of lives and and

(01:11:28):
it's really starting to resonate with me. And I need to, you know,
rewrite my mission statement. And andyou're doing that in a lot of
the philanthropic work that you're already doing, and in one of them, it's
the junior Achievement program, And Iwould love if you could just share a
little bit more about the Junior Achievementprogram and how you're impacting their lives.
This damn Junior Achievement program they've gotto like, like, I wish they

(01:11:49):
could monetize the amount of times Iendorsed them and this would get them more
funding for what they do, becauseit's really incredible. Right, So,
Junior Achievement. You know, oneof my missions, one of my expertise
levels, is on financial literacy,and Junior Achievement aligns with that in so
many ways. And they've got organizationsI think all over the world. We

(01:12:13):
obviously focus on working with the onethat's in the closest proximity to us,
but they go into schools and youknow, again, I take it back
influencing people. And typically it's beensolely focused on business owners, but business
owners making it an influence in theirlives is sometimes also influencing the next generation

(01:12:35):
of business owners, and Junior Achievementgoes into schools and helps them focus on
financial literacy. Whether you're in theUS or you're in Canada, the financial
literacy education is embarrassing in our schoolsystems. It's just not significant enough.
Nobody talks about how to budget yourlife. You know, nobody talks about

(01:12:58):
debt and how how debt works andhow you have to repay it or interest
rates. And I always love thistime of year. I always get these
damn memes sent to me that's like, oh, thank God. And high
school I got taught about a parallelogram. It really helps me when I go
to FI all my taxes right,because it's true, nobody talks about taxes
and how they work. And youknow, we're so uneducated as as countries

(01:13:25):
as North America, as you know, arguably the most sophisticated area in the
world, and our financial literacy isso low. So junior achievement goes in
to our next generation. They gointo elementary schools and high schools and they
teach them financial literacy. They andour team is actively involved. I know

(01:13:46):
my team. Sometimes although it costsa lot to have these guys on salary,
these one hundred people, sometimes theydisappear and they all end up out
into high schools and they're teaching kidsand they're walking them through case studies of
how to build a business and howthe financial impacts of those decisions will actually
influence the outcome of the success ofthe business, and like, it's amazing

(01:14:11):
that we're able to share that expertise. But I don't even want to say
that our influence on that program isanything. That organization. The fact that
they are, you know, pushingthemselves into the education system to bring this
financial literacy to kids is such animportant mission of work and I can't advocate

(01:14:31):
for them high enough. Yeah,and I appreciate that, yet it's I'm
a bit interested in how you makea child understand or how you help a
child understand expenses and debt and allthat stuff, because I mean, even
as an adult, even as anentrepreneur myself, sometimes it's very challenging to

(01:14:51):
understand money and money out and allthose other things that are happening in a
P and L report. And myassumption would be that you don't go as
ground is that, but it's gotto be challenging. Is there is there
any type of techniques that you guysuse or that you are aware of for
kids? So for them and Iwon't necessarily speak to this, so check
them out. Junior Achievement Junior AchievementCanada. I don't know what the organization

(01:15:16):
is in the US, but I'msure that there's a sister organization there.
I do remember researching this a whileago, Michael, because I was a
couple of years ago they changed theeducation regulations in Canada where they were introducing
more financial literacy into the education system, and I was like, yes,

(01:15:38):
our advocacy for this is now happening. And then I looked at it and
I was like, oh, youknow, you can't add two days of
financial literacy into a ten year educationprogram and think that that's sufficient enough.
So I was looking at junior achievement, and they do have different trainings and

(01:15:59):
funnyancial literacy guidelines for different age groups, so they start younger. Their intention
is to start in essentially the elementaryschool level and then continue to bring that
up. So even just having theconversations about money, right, you know,
what is what is money? Whatdoes it do at a younger age?
Right? Like, you know,I think of my kids, my

(01:16:20):
damn kids. My wife would callthem spoiled. I don't think that they're
spoiled. Their incredible humans, butyou know, they don't under they don't
necessarily understand what comes into the factthat my son eats five hundred dollars worth
of groceries a week because he's he'sa high performance athlete, and you know,

(01:16:41):
he he just eats all the time. He doesn't understand the financial consequence
of that. You know, wetalk to him about it, right,
But our kids, because they're notnecessarily having to be financially responsible for the
household, they don't get that.So that financial literacy and understanding of we're
trying to grow you up to bea responsible adult, to have to not

(01:17:03):
get yourself in financial trouble like somany people get into. Here's some basic
concepts that you'll go, oh,yeah, you know, debt is a
problem in our economy when interest ratesgo up, when inflation is going up,
and interest rates are forced up bythe Bank of America and the Bank
of Canada, and all of asudden, your mortgage payment changes because you've

(01:17:28):
got a variable rate mortgage, andnow, oh my goodness, you're cash
strapped. You know what, maybeI now know the difference between fixed and
variable rate mortgages. I know thatI probably shouldn't get myself into a position
of a variable rate mortgage if I'mthat close to the line, because that
variability could cause me to have financialhardship. And I think there's just small

(01:17:50):
little pieces of information that if weall knew these things as kids, we
could maybe avoid making some of thefinancial mistakes that our parents did. And
I think, you know, statistically, again, I like numbers, of
course, I believe as at apresentation the other day, and sixty percent

(01:18:11):
of the Canadian mortgages were in variablerate mortgages prior to to twenty twenty three,
I think mid twenty twenty two,and now it's eighty twenty eighty percent
fixed versus twenty percent variable. Sopeople are switching. But the cost of
being in that variable position, it'sa risk factor, right, And you

(01:18:34):
and I as business owners, weare more likely to be in that variable
rate market because we're more adapt totaking on different types of risks, and
we understand that. But the fixedincome individual who has no other means to
go out and sell another product orservice or grow their business. Their income

(01:18:57):
is one thousand dollars a week,they can change that easily, so when
their mortgage payment goes up, ithurts. And you know, I think
those are just if we break themdown to you know, what is money?
What can it be used for howdo we make it? You know,
how do we spend it? Whatare the things that you know,

(01:19:18):
what are luxury items, what arenecessities? How does finances protect our security
and our comfort as individuals? Likeeven those concepts being trained for kids and
how to budget for them, Ithink is you know, that could change
a generation and I wish, wish, wish that more organizations like Junior Achievement

(01:19:41):
were being able to infiltrate our nextgeneration because I think that's just knowledge we
need to to live a happy,secure life without always worrying about financial strain.
I like the way that you brokethat down that was that was incredible
because you really, when you talkabout your son in the five hundred dollars

(01:20:02):
a week, helps helps understand thatit's it's because it's he's not it's not
his money yet, and and goinginto the whole mortgage thing, it's like,
but the lessons that you're teaching himnow, And I think this is
you know, something that needs tobe talked about in terms of patients when
we're teaching, and you know you'rea teacher, you're a coach, and
it's about having patients with the personthat we're working with in that you're planting

(01:20:26):
the seed. So to my questionthat I had of like, how do
you get them to understand all this? And and what I got from you
is like, we don't try toget them to understand at all. Just
plant the seed so that when yourson goes out to buy the house,
he goes, oh, this iswhy we needed to cut back on the
protein shakes that week. Yeah,totally. Yeah, And here is how
we set up, you know,ten percent of our paycheck to put it

(01:20:48):
aside for savings. Like I thinkit was atomic habits. I don't know
if you've read oh yeah, ok, yeah, clearly, so it's you
know, looking at those small incrementalchain. I think it's you know,
the one percent a day was likeone hundred and forty percent change or something
like that in a year, gettingin the habit of this is just what

(01:21:10):
you need to do to put somesavings away, or this is what you
need to do to help make sureyou don't spend all your money. And
here's here's a trick about credit cards, so you don't get yourself in a
position that you owe and there you'recharging you twenty one percent interest annually and
you can't even keep up with that. So like getting in those small,

(01:21:30):
tiny habits of this is just howyou can do things to position yourself better
financially for your life, getting thosehabits at a young age, because it's
harder to train us older folk ongetting those habits in place later on.
Yeah. Yeah, I remember sittingwith my advisors, my financial advisors,
and explaining to me a P andL report while I'm in it. While

(01:21:54):
I'm in it, you know,the SBA loan is there, everything's on
the table, and it's like,this is live and I'm learning right now
how to do a P and OURreport. I mean the anxiety that was
running through me at the time,which I'm much different now, but I
mean, yeah, that that wasthe first time that I really had it.
A little funny story as we startconcluding here in terms of kids and
money, is I remember my wifegoes up to the ATM. The bank's

(01:22:16):
ATM, and my daughters are rightnow, they're five and eight, they
were probably this probably was about ayear or two ago, and and so
my wife gets money out of ATM, whatever, does her daily thing,
whatever, And a day or twolater, the girls wanted something and we
said, well, you know,we have to pay for that, and
my daughter just turns around, shegoes, that's okay, We'll just go

(01:22:36):
to the money store and get money. That's exactly it. Yeah, tell
those kids, money doesn't grow ontrees. It just comes out of a
machine whenever you want it. Ohmy goodness. Yeah, we had to
explain, well, mommy goes towork to put the money in the bank
to get it out, just goto the money store and just go go
pull it out. In your bio, I had asked about a mantra or

(01:23:00):
an inspirational quote, and I thoughtthis was an interesting one, and it
really brings the conversation that we've beenhaving about your core values about hockey,
about life kind of brings it allfull circle. So I really love that
that you chose this one, andit's go the extra mile. There is
no one on it, Grant cardone. And if you could just share a

(01:23:21):
little bit more about how that means, what that means to you. Yeah,
And you know, I like GrantCardon a lot. He's not for
everybody, and I don't necessarily agreewith everything Grant says. His his teachings
are simple and effective, and youknow, even even connecting back to your

(01:23:46):
take action and getting people to takeaction, you know, with him saying
that go the extra mile because there'snobody there is that when you go above
and beyond and you add more valuethan anybody else, which is a Tony
Robbins line. And when you continueto take action, at some point there's
not going to be anybody else aroundyou because you've persevered and you've you've made

(01:24:11):
decisions, and you've actually implemented toolsand tactics more than anybody else will.
Because even you know, during ourconversation today, knowing that you know,
writing the book or doing the podcastor starting the business, you're already the
point one of one percent that wouldnever do it because of the fear or

(01:24:32):
the inaction. When we take thosethose action items, when we pursue our
dreams, when we follow through andwe're persisted, if we can continue on
that pathway, we will win inso many ways. And it might not
necessarily be financial in a short term, but we will win in so many

(01:24:53):
ways because nobody will be there withus and when we're the last man standing
or the last woman's because we've pushedand made so many positive choices and negative
choices and wins and losses. You'regoing to end up out there in a
land where no one else is willingto do it. And you know,

(01:25:15):
I think there's other individuals who talkabout you know, work ethic and just
continuing to show up. And Ithink for any business owner, if you
keep pushing forward, you keep takingaction, the value of your worth at
the end of the day, whenyou're standing alone, everyone will want to
work with you. I love thatyou articulated that so beautifully, and I'll

(01:25:40):
just add a little tangibility to thatfor everyone because you just said this percentage
of one percent of people. Ijust recently learned that this podcast, my
show is we're just approaching a thousanddownloads, and the executives here at iHeart
shared with me that that puts mein the time five percent of podcasters out

(01:26:01):
there. And that's incredible, rightthat that's amazing to hear. But what
that tells you is that's not alot of downloads. Like you know,
you there's hundreds of there's other podcasters, hundreds of thousands of downloads, tens
of thousands of downloads. That's nota lot of downloads. But what it
means is like what you just talkedabout is there's so many people who start
but don't finish, so many peoplewho start but aren't consistent, and that

(01:26:26):
passion disappears and fades, and tothe point to where by just having just
getting close to a thousand downloads putsyou in the top five percent. You
know, I just want to giveeverybody that little bit of tangibility of how
many people drop off, and sojust going that extra mile, like you
said, and then the disparagy betweenfive percent and one percent of podcasters is

(01:26:47):
huge, Like it's it's incredible.So I love how you articulated that,
and I'm really really appreciative for that. And congratulations Michael. That's awesome.
Top five percent of podcast Let's seeif we can't get you in the top
one percent. Right, Oh yeah, well, I mean that's the goal,
right, I mean, and it'sinteresting that you say that. And
while you were just saying that tooabout the about the road less traveled is

(01:27:11):
you know that I did an episodethis morning about about starting a podcast because
today's podcast Day, I call iton my IG's and and I said,
you got to do it because you'repassionate about it, because you're not going
to get the rewards right away andthey and they might never come in the
way that you, you or societysay they need to come. And so

(01:27:32):
it has to be something internal.It has to be passionate. It has
to be passion if you're going togo out and do this, whatever it
is that you choose to do,open up an advisory firm like you did,
coaching, mastermind, the insurance company, all the different things that it
has to be passion because if you'rewaiting, if you're you're hoping or expecting
a reward or some sort you're it'sit's going to be hard to get to

(01:27:54):
that extra mile, and it's goingto be really hard and challenging to get
there. So anyway, that's allinspiration keeps you going, right when the
cause is bigger than you, whenthere's something bigger than you that you're trying
to accomplish, Yeah, you knowthat will keep you inspired, and that
will keep you and the people aroundyou inspired to deliver on that mission too.

(01:28:18):
And you know, back to youknow the love and like situation.
You might not like doing every podcastright, but you love the mission of
what it is that it's accomplishing.And that's what keeps you coming back even
on those tough days. And that'sfor every business out there. That's that's

(01:28:40):
what we have to find. Wehave to find the love, otherwise we're
going to peter out and we're notgoing to follow through, like you said.
And it's a damn shame because there'sso many good ideas and there's so
many great initiatives out there, butif they're doing it for the wrong reason,
we're not for the reason that peoplewon't get inspired by, then they'll
fall off. So for everyone outthere, focus on understanding your purpose and

(01:29:05):
something that's bigger than you and getbehind it and other people will join you.
I love that. I love that, So I am so appreciative for
you coming on. For anybody listening, of course, this will be in
the show notes as always, butjust for our audio listeners, if you
could share, how could they getin contact with you, follow you or

(01:29:26):
find you? Right now? Yeah, there's a few different ways, so
challenging last name right, that's thespelling of it. But our company is
go ro CPA, which is gA u v R e au CPA,
So that's on any of the socialmedia channels including YouTube, myself, it's

(01:29:46):
Robert govro or my social media handles, you can check out our website GOVROCPA
dot ca A. And for anybodywho's who's listening who feels like we can
you know, you could be oneof those people that we could positively influence
to get over the top. Wewould love to connect and see how we

(01:30:08):
can support you. Awesome, awesome, and of course that spelling. All
of that will be in the shownotes, so you can always reference back
to those I do want to know. I love so I put in the
form pronunciation just in case I needit. And whether it was your team
or you, I love how youguys were like like, go pro but
with a V. And I waslike, oh my goodness, that's so
easy. I got it. Yeah, they like to put that in there.

(01:30:32):
My wife I remember that, youknow, when we very early on
in our marriage, she was like, can we like get rid of some
vowels in this name or the story, honey of that's just not how it
works. Oh man, it wasbrilliant. I really loved it. I
gotta tell you, this was thiswas really really a pleasure and an honor
to have the opportunity to interview youand learn from you. I I whenever

(01:30:55):
I think about an interview like thiswhere somebody has had so many acomplishments,
so much success in their career andin their business, there certainly is an
intimidation factor that goes into having theopportunity to interview somebody like you. But
what gets me into the frame ofmind of being able to come here and
give my best self to you iswhat do I want to learn from this

(01:31:18):
person? And I come in withan inquisitive mind, and I got to
tell you mission accomplished from your end. I learned a tremendous amount from you
today and I look forward to thisrelationship. This was awesome. Thank you,
Thank you, Michael. Pleasure tobe here, cool Cool. Thank
you for listening to The Michael EspositoShow. For show notes, video clips,
and more episodes, go to MichaelEsposito Inc. Dot com backslash podcast.

(01:31:44):
Thank you again to our sponsor dten Insurance Services helping businesses get the
right insurance for all their insurance needs. Visit dent ten dot io to get
a quote that's d N t Ndot io and remember, when you buy
an insurance policy from Danen, you'regiving back on a global scale. This
episode was produced by Uncle Mike atthe iHeart Studios in Poughkeepsie. Special thanks

(01:32:10):
to Lara Rodrian for the opportunity andmy team at mike Lesposito in

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