EW 010 – How To Build A Cutting-Edge Software Solution To Disrupt The Recruitment Industry – How CEO Terri Davis Is Winning with Profound Talent

Gordon Sheppard (00:01.49)
Terri, welcome to the show.

Terri Davis (00:03.63)
Thank you, Gord. I'm grateful to be here.

Gordon Sheppard (00:06.758)
Well, I'm really grateful to have you on because we're gonna hear some of the pedigree behind the business that you started along with one of your big wins. And I think what's gonna come out here because I've seen you as a speaker. I think what we're gonna hear about is these words like authentic and do it differently and do it better. Like that is sort of soaked in from what I've been able to learn about your approach to the work that you do. But a lot of people haven't met you before. So.

you if you're at a party and you had to introduce yourself you know what would you say and and please let them know who you are

Terri Davis (00:40.206)
Okay, fantastic. Well, who am I? That's a big loaded question. I guess first I'm gonna say that I'm a mom. And in fact, I'm even gonna go one step further to say I'm a single mom. I've actually raised two children that are now 25 and 23 from the ages of five and seven. So I've done it pretty much on my own as well as being an entrepreneur along the way. And I would like to say that I'm courageous and resilient. I've had a lot of challenges along the way.

as well that I've had to deal with as many people have, I'm sure, in their lives as well. I'm extremely compassionate and caring and really I've honed in over my last number of years of kind of my purpose on this earth is really meant to help believe, help people to believe in themselves and inspire themselves and to really kind of go out of their way to be bigger than what they think they can be.

So to dream big, I always say be extraordinary and be profound.

Gordon Sheppard (01:41.875)
Well, that is just more than I expected for getting started in there. And when I hear great words like courageous and you're able to sort of like, what's nice is you own it. You know what I mean? You're not sort of, you're not sort of making that up at all. You can hear that there's a good deep sort of story underneath there. My guys are 23 and 21. So when I think about like what it takes to sort of get folks to that level, congratulations on what you've done. Somewhere in there in terms of setting the stage for the story that you're going to tell here today about your win.

Terri Davis (01:45.294)
Thank

Terri Davis (01:50.957)
Mm-hmm.

Terri Davis (02:03.962)
Thank you.

Gordon Sheppard (02:11.526)
You had some experience in, I'm gonna say the recruiting game, and then something switched where you wanted to go independent. So help us, get us there from maybe a bit of that backstory and then get us to where we are now.

Terri Davis (02:14.478)
Mm-hmm.

Terri Davis (02:23.678)
No, absolutely. Well, maybe I'll just kind of take you back just a bit. started out, and I don't want to take you back to my days back when I was waitressing, but I started out actually working with Alberta Government Telephones as their first sales team that they ever had. That's where I gained my training from. And then I went from that over to Pfizer Pharmaceuticals.

And I was part of the heyday when all the big blockbuster drugs like Viagra were launched as part of that. So it's another big win that I've had in my career. But from that, I was not feeling joy. And I decided to go to a search firm, a recruiting company. I always thought at the time, well, recruitment companies, they find people jobs. I really didn't know what they did. That was kind of my impression. And from that, I soon learned that they don't find people jobs. They actually find companies people. Big difference. And so...

With that, it really opened up to intrigue me, because I was like, why do I not love these big companies I'm working for? And I started out with a smaller company, and I was there for 10 years. And I started to realize it was because they're entrepreneurial. And I loved the entrepreneurial aspect of work. So I did that for 10 years. I worked with one search firm in the mid-market, what we call contingency search. And it was very transactional.

It was very high pressure, very sales focused, high, you know, it commission driven. And from that, and for a number of reasons, a group of people left and we were going to go start our own firm. We ended up going into an executive search firm. So when we joined that executive search firm, I became a partner and it was just an Alberta based firm at the time. And I was excited to be a part of the growth of that organization to a national firm. We acquired some companies, we divested some companies.

And I was leading out the executive search private sector practice here in Edmonton. So that was kind of where I got a lot of my experience through those two organizations. And I kept watching our industry. I wanted to do better. Our industry lacks communication. Our industry is not great at getting back to candidates and clients. Our industry is, there's not a lot of loyalty in it.

Terri Davis (04:34.86)
And so I, and I was watching the workforce change and I was watching a lot of women particularly leave the workforce and want to do things differently. And, but yet at that time, this was all pre-COVID. was Monday to Friday, eight to 4.30. So I decided, you know what? I want to go out on my own and I want to do it differently. And that's one of our core values is to do things differently. And that's when I decided, and it took a bit, took a couple of years to get the courage to actually walk out the door.

from what felt like a stable organization that was doing well and had a lot of experience behind it to go start something from scratch. And that's when Profound Talent came to be in 2016. Started on my own, had six months of a non-compete, no income coming in. Don't forget as a single mom, lived off lines of credit and lived off a little faith and hope that I was gonna have a strong enough personal brand to go and get work in the market. And as soon as my six month non-compete lifted,

I was blessed with many people coming forward to help me out. And from that, we started to take off and I thought, can't get any harder than this. It was a bad economy at the time. Nobody was really doing a lot of hiring and we were kind of growing and then COVID hit. So I was like, wow, COVID hits great. up that, push that ball up that hill again. So we ended up doing that and just kept being resilient along the way.

back to the work differently when I started the company. We were in a work share space and I wanted to hire people that could work differently. So I started the nine to three working hours. And so who knew I was ahead of the game of COVID. So COVID hits and that just kind of opened it up to do things differently for the world. And then from that, I've just always continued to innovate and to look forward and say, how can I do things differently? And that's kind of been the theme of my career.

Gordon Sheppard (06:30.226)
courageous, innovate, do it differently. So many people have that sort of, I'm gonna say, worked here for a while, didn't like the vibe. Most people don't have the bundle, in a sense, to do what you did. So there's some resiliency in there too. And you're reacting to the industry from a very authentic place. You can hear your core values kind of screaming through in that moment and then you make that shift.

Terri Davis (06:31.406)
Mm-hmm.

Terri Davis (06:40.598)
no.

Terri Davis (06:51.852)
Yeah, absolutely.

Terri Davis (06:56.248)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (06:59.462)
You then set up your own search scenario since 2016 now, know, for that time. And it has been able to reflect your values. I really enjoyed, by the way, reading your values on your website. See if you can remember them. It's so funny. Believe and inspire. Treat people as they want to be treated. Communicate authentically. I mean, there's another bunch in there, including the profound promise. A lot of, you would have had a lot of influence on making that copy get written. Is that fair?

Terri Davis (07:10.489)
Thank you.

Terri Davis (07:15.0)
Yeah.

Terri Davis (07:28.962)
Yeah, absolutely. You know what? Quite honestly, when I wrote that, I wrote it when I had no employees because I was like, you know what? I'm going to grow this and I want, like, who am I and what do I want to exude to the world? And so I wanted to put out what my personal values are and that is something that we live to every day in our company. And an example of that is we touch so many people with recruiting. We talk to so many individuals and I don't care if it's an executive or an individual contributor.

You know people lose their jobs and we forget that you know a lot of search firms You know becomes a transactions like well We got a company that needs to hire somebody we're gonna put somebody into that job And and then you kind of forget about it all the other you know candidates that didn't get moving forward They often don't get communicated with they're left wondering you know and and they're kind of left in the dark And I was hearing that all the time and I thought you know I just I you know there is a human respect about all this and

you know, at the end of the day, how would I want to be treated, right? I would want somebody to call me back. And we forget, and I've talked to so many executives, that at the end of the day, they are, you know, they may have been a CEO of a company, but they have the same worries that when they lose a job, how am gonna put food on the table? You know, who, you know, what does my reputation in the market look like? And I don't care, you know, they have the same worries, concerns, and so part of, you know, again, what I work with our team is about

adding value to anybody we talk to. Be human, put yourself in their shoes. How hard is it to make a simple phone call? And if we can't actually add value to them with giving them a job, then what can we do to help uplift them? What can we do to help inspire them? What can we do to add value to help them along their way so that they can find a job? So that's the values I bring forward to our team and to our community.

Gordon Sheppard (09:18.514)
You must sleep like a baby.

Terri Davis (09:20.47)
I do. well, I actually do. I know a lot of people don't sleep, but I actually do. yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (09:26.568)
Right, when you're able to go there, do you know what I mean? Because then you would know somebody that wasn't aligned with your values. And I work as an advisor and coach, and I've worked with senior leadership teams. And I know the awful side of recruitment's worst reputation. I'm overcharged. They sent me the wrong person. Waste of time. Da-da-da-da-da. And they're very frustrated, right? So almost immediately, it's antagonistic. And I've also then, over the years, worked with recruiters.

Terri Davis (09:38.542)
And yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (09:55.353)
Some of them, that transactional one is such a turnoff. I have a friend of mine in Toronto who's just getting crushed in his area where he just, hangs up the phones on recruiters now. Like it's gotten that, that bad. Now he's in, he's in sort of that lower wage band. So again, there's just, it's all like movement quickly. And again, he doesn't feel respected. So how nice to know that you were able to set things up, be successful. And now for what? Hundreds of people over that time or more, you've been able to then help them.

Terri Davis (10:04.024)
Yeah.

Terri Davis (10:12.6)
Yep.

Terri Davis (10:17.308)
huh

Gordon Sheppard (10:24.55)
you know, feel respected and really experience the way you wanted them to experience. Is that fair?

Terri Davis (10:30.169)
Absolutely. mean, you know, I'm in my ninth year of business as profound. I've been in this industry for, you know, 25 plus years. So, and that's again, it's just coming back to who you are and what you want people to feel and what you want to leave as a legacy on this earth. And that truly is what I, you know, and I've appreciated people who've done that for me because I, you know, I've had moments where I've been down. I've had challenges, right? And, and so, you know what? It's the people that lift you up. I had a, dad passed away of pancreatic cancer.

a number of years ago and I used to feel so guilty when people wanted to help me because I was in my lowest of lows when he was passing and I'd always want to give him a gift card to something and he's like, Terri, he goes, you're on your high and you're doing well, lift people up and when you're on your low, allow others to lift you up. And so it's just been something that's happened with me all the time. like we're here to help lift each other up and we're all at different phases all the time. So how do we do it? This is how.

Gordon Sheppard (11:27.218)
You don't sound like a transactional recruiter. You sound like an authentic human being who's got words like legacy, courage, do it differently in mind. How lucky, how lucky for the people that work for you. And again, I wish we were here for about three hours. We would dig into all these different things, but the point of the podcast here is to actually get an opportunity to say, if you had to describe one of your biggest wins in business in the last couple of years, what would it be and how would you describe it?

Terri Davis (11:36.494)
people that work for you. Yeah.

Terri Davis (11:45.614)
you

Terri Davis (11:52.546)
Okay, well, I thought about that and I've had a lot of wins and I've had a few losses too, but the one that I'm gonna talk about today, because it's pretty exciting to me, is and I'm actually, you're almost kind of the first to probably know about this, so consider this exclusive. We are actually in process and as part of our work differently of launching a new technology this summer that is gonna be...

quite innovative and going to be very disrupting of the marketplace. Took me a few years with the vision in my mind to get to the point of where we are today. We're under development, we're halfway through our development. We have a strong team that's getting it ready. We're getting ready with all our marketing collateral to start launching into market. We've already started a little bit and it's coming and it's going to be big.

Gordon Sheppard (12:41.872)
Okay, so I just need to understand, and you can tell me how much you can tell me in terms of what we're gonna reveal here. Is it software? Is that what's going on? Okay, so is it an AI driven solution in your marketplace? Perfect, so you, yeah, perfect. And do we have a working title that we can give it? You don't even have to give me the real one, but can we have a working title at least?

Terri Davis (12:48.024)
Mm-hmm. Yes, it is. Yes, it's a...

Terri Davis (12:55.096)
Yes it is, yes, I'm happy to share it, yeah.

Terri Davis (13:03.202)
Yeah, so I'll tell you the brand name. We've come up with it, we've trademarked it, or we're down the journey of trademarking it in Canada and the US. And the company is called Ooloo, O-O-L-U. And we've already got Ooloo.ai is our web domain. If you were to go on today, it's a landing page right at the moment. It's very basic. To join our wait list, to go on our journey with us.

But there is a lot of amazing things coming out in the marketplace soon. So we'd love for you to join us.

Gordon Sheppard (13:35.539)
Well, you've just given me a good gift because the rest of this conversation is going to be fascinating because I'm going to dig into what I call the anatomy of a win, where when I hear what the win is and I work with leaders, you know, we get into what is the strategy, the work plan, the people, operations and results behind the win that you're describing. So you're launching your groundbreaking app in the recruitment space. You're going to disrupt the recruitment space. Congratulations. I that's outstanding. What was the strategy as in the vision?

Terri Davis (13:58.222)
Thank you.

Gordon Sheppard (14:03.996)
mission, the values, the goals behind getting into the AI SaaS game, which is a big game and it's a lot. I mean, it doesn't take a day. That's a big commitment. What was the strategy from profound or your point of view to get into this game?

Terri Davis (14:06.36)
Yeah.

Terri Davis (14:10.07)
I'm gonna go now.

Terri Davis (14:14.702)
Mm-hmm.

Terri Davis (14:20.174)
Well, it started with, frankly, again, remember I shared back with you when I was talking to candidates and they wanted to work differently and do the nine to three? Well, I started to see that way back and being a single mom, was, you know, kind of recognizing all the ways that the workforce is changing. so I, because I'm at the forefront of it, I'm always watching the workforce and what's happening with it. And there's a few changes that are happening. We have an aging workforce. So 20 % of the marketplace is aged 55 years and older.

So we are going to be having a brain drain in our communities and in our business world over the next 10 years. So we are going to have knowledge gaps within organizations. And we don't have the people yet ready yet to move up into those roles. So there's gonna be this gap that we need to fill. That's the first part. The second part is with the aging marketplace. We have, you know, again, individuals that are not yet ready to retire. They want to kind of

maybe move on, but they want to still keep their toe in the water and work a little bit for sometimes financial reasons. Sometimes it's just they love to share their knowledge. So we see that there's a marketplace where people want to stay in it even past the age of 65, but they want to work differently. And then post-COVID, we also have the COVID era and workforce that is saying, you know what, this, you know.

I like hybrid, I don't want to work in an office anymore and I want to work differently and life has now become very important and you know, back when you know, pre-COVID, not that life wasn't important but we just had our head in the game differently for working, right? So for all these reasons, I was kind of watching this over the years and I was like, you know what? The market's changing, the workforce is changing, how do we now bring something together that helps facilitate this workforce that's changing?

to meet the needs of business and how do business grasp onto this new workforce. we, and you'll probably have heard the term, because it's kind of common, it's called the fractional workforce or the fractional employee. And really fractional means part-time. So fractional in its simplest form is part-time. You have also interim management solutions where that's been around forever and it's like a CEO leads and we need an interim CEO while we're looking for the permanent person.

Terri Davis (16:41.442)
So that has been a term around a long time. All search firms have done fractional work. We've done, you know, in term management solutions, but we do it manually. And the challenge is, that most search firms are generally doing permanent work only. And then when a client happens to call and says, hey, we need a fractional CFO, you kind of go, huh, who do I know in my back pocket that might not be working right now that wants to do this? So nobody's been doing it well. And we've got all this people that can't find the companies. We have the companies that can't find the people.

And so as the market's changing, we're starting to see more demand on the client side to hire Fractional. And we're seeing more interest on the candidate side to move into that space. So for all these reasons, I was like, how do we bring forward and disrupt our market in the recruiting space, which is highly manual, and do it differently? And so we chose to go down the path of a defined market segment being the Fractional Marketplace.

And also to service, for example, smaller medium-sized scaling companies don't always have the, well, the need to hire somebody, let's say a CFO, for 40 hours a week. They may only need it 10 hours. Sometimes they don't even know they need it until they get it and then they can't believe they didn't have it. So that's kind of one I also kind of area. And then other times as well, these businesses also don't have the dollars to pay a $300,000.

salary for a fractional CFO. So then they just lose out and then they don't have the fee dollars to pay a recruitment firm to go find it.

Gordon Sheppard (18:14.152)
So you've jumped in and Oulu was born, sorry, this is the second inflection in your success story. So you said, I wanted to do it differently in 2016. You jumped and you leapt well and you set up your organization, you've been doing it for that length of time. Now you're at another inflection point where you're seeing things, you're on trend in the marketplace and you're also not putting your head in the sand and saying, well, we'll just kind of keep doing it the same way as long as that sort of gravy train rides along. You're actually trying to get out in front of what looks like

Terri Davis (18:17.858)
Yeah.

Terri Davis (18:25.134)
and

Terri Davis (18:31.47)
I'm here.

Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (18:43.72)
happening. You're acknowledging these aging knowledge gaps and then this fractional piece which you're really going to address. So I'm going say the problem or the strategy in a sense is you're going to solve this fractional problem for those small and medium-sized businesses who are scaling. I'm sure it does more than that but that sort of gets us right in the zone of exactly what it's going to do. Is that fair?

Terri Davis (18:43.832)
Yeah.

Terri Davis (18:56.962)
Yeah? Yeah? Yeah?

Absolutely, yeah. And there's bigger companies that will use this as well. Like you might have somebody leaving and they are needing to fill that knowledge gap and bring somebody in so that they can help mentor the succession of somebody up and you got it.

Gordon Sheppard (19:14.696)
So you're gonna go through your validation steps anyway. You know you've got a target right now. You know you've got your current base that you can translate from analog into this world anyway. So you've already got sort of a stepping off point in terms of that's gonna go. So the strategy really is that thing of like being on trend, getting out in front of what the current sort of scenario is, using all of your backstory and intelligence. This is really interesting because you would have been obviously, it gets us really well into the next question. We've got our strategy and we understand it.

Terri Davis (19:21.75)
Mm-hmm.

Love you.

Terri Davis (19:34.965)
in Florida.

Gordon Sheppard (19:41.193)
be on trend, build this cool thing, acknowledge what the marketplace and what problems they need to solve today and we're going to solve that. That's wonderful. The second step in the anatomy of a win is if we have a strategy, we need a work plan. So you don't sort of wake up one morning and say, oh, I'm just going to build some software, right? If we got the timeline out on the whiteboard, what was the sort of starting month and year when this kind of got going and how long has it taken? Because you said you're on the verge of launch.

Terri Davis (19:47.191)
If you are.

Terri Davis (19:52.674)
Mm-hmm.

Terri Davis (19:57.876)
Yeah.

It's a wrap.

Terri Davis (20:07.95)
We'll have you again.

Gordon Sheppard (20:08.634)
What was that starting month and what was the process up to now?

Terri Davis (20:12.012)
Yeah, so I'm going to step back one bit on this too because I probably had this idea about two years ago and I was trying to figure it out on the side of my desk, like how do I do this? And then I happened to come across a chief technology officer and was like, hey, could you help me with this? And so he's like, sure, I'd love to help you. And so he was doing it off the side of his desk. So we were kind of both and not the specific, it's been much more refined. It was very different back then, but we were kind of talking about technology disruption.

And quite frankly, neither of us were doing it well. Nothing was happening with it because we were both doing it off the side of our desks. So it kind of fell flat. I ended up, I'm a big opportunistic individual where we're lucky in the recruitment industry because I always like to say I get the cream of the crop because I get to meet all sorts of amazing people. And when I find somebody amazing, I try to bring them onto my team. And so I happened to come in to play with somebody who I thought was amazing and I hadn't really thought of them to actually

do this technology or help me with this, it was really come onto my team and help take some of the operations piece off so that I can continue to build profound, but I have some other ideas and I want to kind of take off that path as well. Well, it turns out this person I brought onto my team has actually worked in the technology space before, not in development, but was connected in that space and had a bit of a understanding, not knowing everything about it, but had a way to navigate it. So when I started to figure this out, I was like, you know what?

you take this and you run with this and you go help navigate this and help me get this launched. And so she ended up taking this and through her connections and you know it's interesting when you're trying to launch a technology it's not as easy. There's so many you're trying to navigate what do you need first who do you need to go to and what have you and some of it I'll tell you we ended up it started with a sponsorship in for a tech tech association.

Through that, we ended up having two companies that we had to choose to give an award to. And so we read through the bios on the background of it and we just decided we're gonna give it to this one company that happened to be a product management company. Not really thinking much of this other than we're giving this award away and wow, look at us, we're getting to sponsor this. After that, like into our, we had some business advisors that we were talking to and those business advisors said, you need a product manager. We're like, huh.

Terri Davis (22:31.438)
So we, you know, call up the person we gave the award to and we're like, hey, could you help us with this? And I'm gonna throw out a bit of mention on them because they're amazing. And it's a company called Tasset Edge and they're out of Calgary and it's Christa Hill and Renee Matsula. And so they are the founders and they actually train and teach product managers how to be amazing product managers. So through that, she understood what we were doing and she said, I wanna be on your team. I wanna be the one that.

to do this and normally she doesn't jump in on things like this so we were quite like wow we're lucky. So she actually, this is probably about a year ago, year and a half ago, she came on board and she started to test our idea and really go into market and say do we have like product validate, do we have an actual product, do we have a marketplace for this, is this valid, what are people saying about it, what does it look like. Again through this journey we end up, my colleague,

She ends up saying, hey, you I know this software developer person through my network. Let's talk to him. We talked to a few different people and we ended up bringing him on board and saying, he's like, I want to be on your team. And so let me help you with this. So he started building out all of our Figma, that is all of our literally product and what it's going to look like because you build this out before you actually go into development because you want to ensure. And then we product test along the way with wire frames.

So we were doing all of that in the last year. And then from that, we get to the point and we're like, okay, now the big step, we've invested some money, of course, but the big step is when you gotta really invest the dollars. And that is like the big, like, okay, now we're really in because there's some big money that has to happen and that's Profound Talent's been helping to pay for this development. so, and we've had a little bit of grants, which we've been trying to navigate as well.

So through all of this, we did get some small grants and we're now going for a bigger grant. And then Profound's helping to fund this venture. And in January, we said, okay, let's go, let's make this happen. And so January is when we actually officially started going full storm on building this software and our developers are working it super hard.

Terri Davis (24:55.018)
We actually plan to have it completed by end of April, but we want to leave a couple months where we're going to have some testing, obviously to make sure all the bugs are out, and then our official launch plans. And they're probably going to kill me for saying this, our intention is June, but you know, we're supposed to say summer, because you never know what happens. But so far it's on.

Gordon Sheppard (25:16.966)
Well, we're lucky that you're just loaded for bear and a wonderful speaker, because it's just, I'm lucky to not even have a chance to sort of jump in here. So you're just telling a great story, and I'm just sort of going to unpack some of the highlights in terms of what we're doing here. So the win is you get Ulu. You get the idea two years ago. Then a year and a half ago gets a bit more serious. And there's a bit of sort of happenstance.

Terri Davis (25:24.568)
this day.

Gordon Sheppard (25:39.017)
but also some serendipity, but also then it's mixed in with your vision for changing things and then you have the understanding. And you could, as an entrepreneur, pull the levers. So could hear that thing of like, oh, wait a minute, I'm not good at that. I've got this new person. I thought they were gonna be this, but now we're gonna do this. Oh, I was in this circumstance and then I put that piece in place. My guess is that what is a big part of what makes you a successful entrepreneur anyway, like in terms of no matter what you're kind of dealing with, then you're into this sort of looking for...

Terri Davis (25:42.785)
And then...

Terri Davis (25:47.982)
you

Terri Davis (26:01.55)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (26:06.886)
testing your minimum viable ideas, you're getting product market fit, you get sort of past that step of like, yeah, we think we can validate along the way to kind of do that. You look at non-dilutive funding sources on the grant side, and then you've got your own skin in the game. I'm just gonna say hundreds of thousands, not knowing how far you've gone. I'm just gonna say that's the reality of, like from the outside looking in, and that's a big commitment for a company, any company to make, especially when you gotta go out and, the hard work, funny enough,

Terri Davis (26:14.679)
It's not.

Terri Davis (26:21.282)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That would be a bonus. Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (26:36.69)
building it you understand is difficult, the harder part is going to be getting your user adoption and hitting those different hockey stick moments that you are on the way to doing, which is pretty, pretty neat. So how wonderful that we got, again, we've got the strategy that got you, got your ability to guide the situation. That's pretty neat. You know what mean? It's not, you're not sort of uni-focused. You're allowed, you've got this sort of malleability to sort of take on opportunities as they come up. You're moving in at the time of trend when you know that that's very important to shift your business into, as you know, make this part of your business.

Terri Davis (26:40.834)
Thank

Terri Davis (26:52.78)
Mmhmm.

Terri Davis (27:00.12)
Yeah.

Terri Davis (27:03.873)
Thank you.

Gordon Sheppard (27:06.066)
We got through the strategy, we talked about the work plan, some of those big ideas. The third step is people, but you've described some of the people. You know, you have a product development person, you've got a person internally, you've got kind of yourself, you've got a CTO in the background you mentioned. So again, if we did the...

Terri Davis (27:12.91)
It's me.

Terri Davis (27:17.134)
No, CTOs, well, yeah, so the CTO from two years ago is not there anymore. We have an, but yeah, yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (27:23.248)
Right, no, but part of the journey is that if we actually laid out all the stakeholders that have been involved and had a touch on this at some point, and there's gonna be even more, because you've got your programming issues and then you're gonna get into a marketing scenario as you kind of go forward and do these different things along with all the testers. And I don't mean to belabor the people one, because you've just described it so well, that step as the third step in what we talked about, but how would you describe underneath that for one or two of the key players,

Terri Davis (27:29.464)
Yeah

Gordon Sheppard (27:52.725)
We know their roles and responsibilities so far. How would you describe the attitudes? Like how would you describe your attitude? Like are you smiling every day or do you get down in the dumps or how do you keep being resilient? Because getting software up and running is tough.

Terri Davis (28:04.494)
Yeah, so you know it's interesting because, first I want to you know put a shout out to my profound team. So we have a profound team that is still doing our executive and mid-professional level search. They are doing our day-to-day, keeping that rolling. I'm still out you know driving sales and market with that and keeping connected in that marketplace and then we have Ulu over here doing you know it's and so anybody that we hire into our team generally speaking on the profound actual hired employees

In essence, wear multiple hats. Because we're entrepreneurial, it is like you, we have a lane that we stay in probably 90 % of the time, but you know what? When you gotta get out of your lane, because you gotta jump over here, because we're needing your support over here, they're jumping over there. And so we have this resilience within our team, and so when we hire, it's like, hey, you know what? This is, we've got processes, we've got systems, but let me tell you, we're entrepreneurial.

things are gonna change and you have to be ready to wear that, you multiple hats. So that is one big piece of our people. And then, so we have our core profound team, but then, speaking of Fractional, we do have a Fractional product officer, we have a Fractional chief marketing officer, we have a Fractional chief technology or software development officer, and we actually have a Fractional individual who does all of our grant writing and business plan writing and all that kind of stuff. So we are living, you know, the world of Fractional.

And we have the permanent as well. So there is a place for both in an organization and profound talent is that permanent side and Ulu will be the fractional side.

Gordon Sheppard (29:37.139)
You built the foundation, the people base, are obviously starting right from you as that solo person, just getting things set up. You had the values and the vision so that when you onboard somebody, they're coming into that culture that you've built. And that's the culture that allows the agility to have two things going on at the same time. We have our core business. Of course we have to do our core business, but we also have to innovate because you know that you need to sort of move this thing forward. And you look like you're trying to hit one out of the park, which is pretty neat. it's funny, it'd be...

Terri Davis (29:40.11)
and

And

Terri Davis (29:50.924)
Mmhmm.

Terri Davis (29:57.976)
you

and

Terri Davis (30:04.802)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (30:06.45)
Great to do this follow-up interview in whatever that is, a year from now, just to see, because there's so much work that goes into this. Well, this is just remarkable. So I said strategy. We talked about the work plan. So many good insights into the people and you, and we've learned a lot about that. The fourth step in there of the five steps is to talk about operationally what's in play. In this case, there are privacy issues. There are...

Terri Davis (30:08.002)
Yeah. Yeah.

Terri Davis (30:19.244)
Thank you.

Terri Davis (30:25.525)
Uh-huh.

Gordon Sheppard (30:32.264)
regulatory issues if you're crossing borders. There are software development, wireframe, all the technical issues that are going along. Operationally, there's, you know, things and people to track down. And I don't mean for you to describe the minutiae of everything, but operational highlights. How would you describe some of those so that we can understand what was contributing in that way to get this win?

Terri Davis (30:35.064)
from you.

Terri Davis (30:40.43)
I

Terri Davis (30:48.558)
yeah.

Terri Davis (30:53.326)
Well, and you know what and I as I listed out all my fractional individuals that are working with us I neglected to say we have a fractional CFO as well and She has been amazing. She's been with me for over six seven years now and she has done all the financial modeling which are to the tee like we have done some major insights as to Where are we today? Where are we going? How are we getting there? What's our five-year, you know, performa looking like?

She's like built tables to allow us to manipulate to say if we change the price here what happens here We've had to look at because our intention is that we are launching in Alberta And then we are going across Canada, and then we're going right into the US and I know that may cause some you know some You know disruption right now as far as that goes, but that was our intention before everything happened And so ultimately you know there is a lot of complication around that we're

working in multiple markets, have all your tax differences, how do you handle that? So we are still learning through some of that and we're getting tax experts on and we are getting individuals on and what kind of insurance do we need? And we are actually working with the financials. So our platform will actually do all the financial of taking money from the company's account, putting it into the fractional employee's account. It's going to be a

start from finished matching, background checks all online, billing all online, contract all negotiated online. So it is going to be a very easy platform. And so all of that, like when you're looking at the financial piece too, you've got to make sure, like do we have partners? So we're working with some financial partners in the backend to make sure that there's authentication and verification and that you're getting, again,

you're dealing with people's money. So you gotta have, you know, again, a lot of rigor behind that, right? To make sure.

Gordon Sheppard (32:46.908)
the assurances that go along with it so you can hear and you're also still sounding enthusiastic as a learn as you go type person. these are daunting moments. There's certain moments. ran into a technology company recently where they thought the regulations were gonna break their way in the construction industry and it took another three years. And so they had to go and find other global markets for their products where the regulations were different.

Terri Davis (32:52.706)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Terri Davis (33:06.488)
Mm-hmm.

Terri Davis (33:11.499)
Thank you.

Gordon Sheppard (33:12.056)
So those things are the peaks and valleys that you have kind of going along the way and you're in learn as you go, but you sound undaunted. Is that fair?

Terri Davis (33:20.674)
You know what, I will tell you I've had a lot of points in my life where I've had very big challenges and I've been, you know, tried to control everything. I've, you know, had anxiety in the past, you know, where I've had anxiety challenges. And to be truthful, I am very faith-based now and I let go and I go, okay, guide me on my journey here. Look after us, close the doors that need to be closed and open the doors that need to be opened.

And when that happens, quite frankly, I just let go. I let go and I let it happen and it is working. I lean on people that are smarter than me, like my CFO and like our product development and like our software developers. then you know what, we have blips but we don't have blips because we iterate as we go. And when we have moments where we're fearful on something and questioning it, we go, okay, well then.

I just actually got off a call with our product manager and said, okay, so are we sure we validated this? And she's like, Terri, we validated it and here's this and here's remember what we're, and here's how we're gonna do it. So she inspires me too when I start to have fear. So we all lean on each other and the beauty in all of this is, we have a team that I sometimes sit there and I actually said this to her, said, they are putting so many hours in and not because, know, again, I'm just paying them and it's a job.

It is actually because they are passionate about this and they want to see it happen. Like they're so enthused, almost as enthused as I am. yeah, and I sit there and go, wow, like how are you on board and so excited about this? And they just are. And they see the vision and they believe in it and they're part of it and they're on for the journey. So I'm for it.

Gordon Sheppard (35:02.152)
Let it go. I think if people just stop listening right there, there are senior leaders that listen to this podcast that if they could just get that. And I'm gonna say as much as the words that you're saying is there's the tone in your voice, which really reflects how earned that is. You know what I mean? No one's born with that. You gotta go through some life, but to get to that wise, again, succinct way to express during a roller coaster, right? And whether it's COVID or new product development or...

Terri Davis (35:09.102)
Mm-hmm.

Terri Davis (35:16.686)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Terri Davis (35:26.936)
Thank you.

Gordon Sheppard (35:30.33)
upset in your personal life. We don't mean there's these things, but to get to that moment and then thank you for gifting that out in again, letting us hear really again, a lesson that all of us can use. know that, but you're living it and living it at a time when how nice for your team that you're not in the panic mode, right from, from that, can, that leaders can let get out of control. You're in that mode of like, no, we're doing it. And there's a faith aspect to other things have worked out for you. can hear it.

Terri Davis (35:36.696)
We are coming.

Terri Davis (35:43.747)
Yeah.

Terri Davis (35:47.428)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Terri Davis (35:53.858)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (35:59.783)
and you know this one's gonna work out for you too. I mean, that's just, we could talk about that one for another four hours. So that's just wonderful to hear the way that you've put that together. We talked about the strategy, we talked about the work plan, we talked about the people and how the interactive part, the not just bosses, but everybody's learning from each other and you're supporting each other. We talked about the operational components, we started to touch on what that looks like. The final step in the anatomy of a WAN is to talk about the results. So.

Terri Davis (36:04.088)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You're not?

Terri Davis (36:13.26)
Yeah.

Terri Davis (36:21.88)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (36:27.816)
We've got this moment you described, hey, we got it this far, we're launching in the summer, right? But that will occur. But if we had to describe sort of the qualitative and quantitative results at this point for your win, how would you describe them?

Terri Davis (36:31.864)
Yeah.

Terri Davis (36:40.59)
How do I describe it on the quantitative side? You know, we're on budget. So we have a team, we have a project team that's keeping us on budget for what we built in our performance. We have gone out solicited grants, we've got some bank funding that has helped us a little bit as well. And of course we have our own funding.

So, you know, everything is on par right now to where we need it to be. We are on schedule for our project. We have not had any challenges yet with it. So, I mean, who knows? There could be. And maybe my software developer isn't telling me about them. He's just fixing them along the way. But so far, so far it is going fantastic. So, you know, we have an amazing marketer who is fractional with us, who is actually building out our ads and starting to get ready and getting our website.

done so we are on target for everything that we put in our business plan it's going like clockwork so you know at this point could something throw us off absolutely you never know but we're so determined that you know one of the things that I lead by as well as grit and at the end of the day it's like you know I used to be described when I went to leave my last search firm

I said, you think I can do it? And I asked a couple people and they're like, Terri, if I know you, you're like a dog on a bone. You will not let something die. You will figure it out. You'll get over it and you'll make it happen. And that's just what I do. And it's just in my DNA. So there's nothing that's gonna take this down. It's not gonna be either a win or a fail.

It is, and even my product manager will say that, hey, software is, you get it out, but there's always gonna be learnings along the way and iterations, and that's just what software is when it goes into the market. And we have a product roadmap already built out, so what we're launching is the start, but we have a lot of amazing stuff and some pretty big vision for this, and we're excited to see it continue fruition.

Gordon Sheppard (38:32.678)
The result is the business plan is on track and this is not, this is a complicated business plan. Like this is not a straightforward, you know, setting up something simple. You hit your targets, call them KPIs or whatever along the way. You know that you're on track for what you've committed to. You've also got that right attitude from what I hear in the software game where you don't know that it's going to happen for sure. Cause you still got to get it out to market and, and prove those things out. But you've been doing your diligence along the way.

Terri Davis (38:38.35)
I'm ready.

Mm-hmm.

Terri Davis (38:46.828)
you

Terri Davis (38:50.744)
Mm-hmm.

Good morning.

Terri Davis (38:57.697)
you.

Gordon Sheppard (39:01.34)
to get the results that you have so far. Sounds like your people are excited, motivated, and that summertime will hit a specific date at some point. It sounds like by the summer, whenever that day is, there will be a launch day and you'll be ready to get it out to the world. And then the tough work begins. Like right.

Terri Davis (39:01.39)
you

Terri Davis (39:05.565)
Okay.

you

Terri Davis (39:18.316)
No, the tough work's already now. We're right in the crux of the tough work, actually. I mean, as much as there's lots that happens along the way. as much as the software development team is building the software, we are launching in summer. And it's not an if it's going to launch. It's not a how it is going out. And it will be. Our intention is June. But again, we want to just buffer it a little bit in case you have some bugs along the way you got to work through. But we've built that into our plan as well.

Gordon Sheppard (39:44.605)
Well, and from what I can hear, you're the right person to be steering the whole thing. You put yourself in the steer it position from a values based approach. You've got the people around you that are like minded because you've been able to onboard them. Not over like a week, like over years, you've built out these relationships to have that going along. It sounds like you've got just the savviness in every aspect of your business that you touch. So whether you are informed or not, you're getting that right smarter person in their area, but you're still able to be the glue.

Terri Davis (39:47.914)
in the law.

Terri Davis (39:55.086)
Yeah.

Terri Davis (40:05.442)
You know, yeah.

Terri Davis (40:12.942)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (40:13.042)
to the whole thing. If you had to put a bow on this wind, just sort of a little summary of how far you've gotten up to this point, how would you sort of summarize that for us as we get towards the end of the interview here?

Terri Davis (40:24.138)
Well, I'm going to go back to my mantra when I started Profound was dream big, be extraordinary, be profound. And I'm going to say dream big, know, anything is possible. There's always going to be things that get in your way. Have courage, have resilience. Don't let fear drive you because we all have fears. It's about getting the information. When you get the information, that information helps allow you to get over the fear because you're

now guided by knowledge. And so if you have that knowledge, then you can make decisions off of it. And so that even our financial forecasting and performer, we're looking at it weekly, daily to go, okay, what's happening here on this side and what's happening over here and has anything changed? And so we are just staying abreast of it. So dream big, be extraordinary, be profound and be Ulu.

Gordon Sheppard (41:13.968)
And be Oulu, I love it. It's an overnight success, 30 years in the making. I can hear when you got that dialed in, in terms of where you've gotten it to. Super pleasure to have you on. I think any leader that listens to this is going to gain a lot of courage from hearing your approach to things. Terri, if people need to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that?

Terri Davis (41:33.186)
Yeah, so they can always find me on LinkedIn and you're also always welcome to reach out to me. I have two emails. I have T Davis at Profound Talent.com and T Davis at Oulu again, which is O L U dot AI. So either way.

Gordon Sheppard (41:48.646)
I can't let you get out of here without saying why, where's the name? What's the name from? Why, why Ulu?

Terri Davis (41:52.642)
that's a journey. I, you know, I wish I had something really profound to say about Ulu, but we actually, interestingly enough, we had a couple of different names that we wanted and we wanted to get trademarked in Canada and trademark in the US. And it's amazing how many trademark challenges you have when you have a defined alphabet of A to Z and different ways you can make a word. so quite frankly, we said, OK, we finally got to the point of where it will.

What is a short, snappy word that we can put together that actually is not, is trademarkable and kind of catchy and OOLU and it was due to our chief marketing officer. He came up with it.

Gordon Sheppard (42:35.336)
And you're able to pull that off because that whole search in and of itself, again, I remember you just reminded me now when the kids, you know, before the kids are born and my wife had the 10,000 name book out and I was the no guy. I was like, nope, nope, nope. And then Jack was there and Roddy was there and anybody that's named kids knows that kind of process, but you had that really pragmatic approach. I could keep talking to you all day long. Terri, thank you so much for being on the show.

Terri Davis (42:46.626)
It was so fun.

Terri Davis (43:00.802)
Well thank you, I'm grateful for the opportunity and I appreciate you learning about our win and our story and I look forward to staying in touch and I look forward to you watching us on our journey and I'm happy to come back next year and tell you how it's going.