EW 013 – How To Build A Multi-Million Dollar Software Business – How Founder Dan MacDonald And His Team Are Winning At BIS Safety Software

Gordon Sheppard (00:01.449)
Dan, welcome to the show.

Dan MacDonald (00:03.982)
Thanks Gordon, good to be here.

Gordon Sheppard (00:05.833)
Well, it's really lucky for our audience to have you here because I think what we're going to hear is something like a 20 year overnight success story if it makes it sound simple after you've put in the decades, but we get lucky to benefit from your experience here today as you share, you know, your sort of cumulative win. I think that you're going to be describing here coming up, but there's a lot of people maybe that don't know you and your company. If you had to describe yourself at a party, what would you say?

Dan MacDonald (00:32.206)
Tough one. Tough, regular guy. know, I couldn't put too much to it. been with the same woman for 30 years, two kids, two grandkids. Love what I do, love work, love business, love reading about successes and entrepreneurs and yeah, I got lucky. You know, just happened to...

fall into the business, so I'm very thankful for where we are today.

Gordon Sheppard (01:06.453)
It's such a humble response that we get from good Canadians so often in this sort of moment. And I really do mean to help the audience learn a little bit more about you, because certainly we spent a little bit of time in the pre-interview. There's some pedigree there. The business that you've been running for sort of a couple of decades, how'd you get kind of started in this business? And take me through the evolution of the business itself and maybe add in the points where you were a bit influential along the way. Go ahead.

Dan MacDonald (01:29.634)
Yeah, yeah, of course. So I have a background with the brick. So the brick's a big billion dollar retailer in Canada. There's hundreds of stores at 5,000, I think, salespeople at one point or another. And started by a guy here, Bill Comrie, right here in Edmonton. So again, another, like he is, you know, like incredible.

status like you know the guy i think going five private jets at one point in time and you know just uh... was an incredible business owner incredibly uh... successful and and man oh man i could tell stories all day long like just the most incredible experiences working with him so i was there for about fourteen years uh... got an opportunity to take on uh... an external uh... client of theirs cash store financial gordon rectal and uh... was just helping them with

some add-on insurance for one of their products and the brick actually owned an insurance company, Tri Global Insurance, that was a legitimate insurance company that covered all their extended warranties and insurance policies for their furniture coast to coast. when I was helping them out, I got promoted to take on sales manager for the, I think it was for the

for the West for franchise. And at that time I had to let these external clients know that I couldn't help them anymore. one of them, Gord Rectal and his son Barrett, they said, well, we can't afford to lose you, but we can't hire you either. What are you thinking here? And I said, well, I've always had this dream of starting my own business, BIS, and developing leadership training. Because everything that I've done,

to date is thanks to what I've read from great leaders, the Sam Walters of Walmart and Inver Camp Rats of Ikea and stuff. So I'd love to teach that stuff full time and develop programs and training on that. So they said, OK, come back next week. Bring a one page document with the idea, cost, and we'll go for lunch. And I came back a week later and they looked at it. And I thought, shoot high.

Dan MacDonald (03:51.95)
So I came back with this number, two days a week or four days a week or whatever it was, and they just looked at it and looked at me and signed it and shot it back to me and said, don't have time for lunch, see you next month. And so I quit my job after 14 years. And funny aside story, we watched fun with Dick and Jane where Jim Carrey loses his job and they are so broke that they're stealing grass from the neighbors and putting little patches of grass.

and holding up their neighbors at the ATM machine with a hoodie and a fake gun and me and my wife looked at each other and we thought, is that, did we just do that? Is that our future? So anyway, we started BizTraining. It was just leadership training. We did workshops. We landed a bunch of big clients, internet like Rona, Home Depot, Hagen Petfoods, Nate.

like some big, big international names and the business just took off. So I was like, you know, just running, doing training, probably at one point or another on a flight going somewhere 23 days a month I was on the road. And my wife's like, hey, you've got two young kids, you're never gonna see them grow up. And she said, you know, this is not gonna work out. And that's when we decided to make the change and we moved from.

leadership training in class leadership training to online leadership training because everything i did was theory so i presented it to the clients and said hey here's what it would cost to build the courses here's what it would cost to build the systems to deliver you know here's what i'm charging you now and here's the hotel bills travel bills gas bills food bills and it was i think it was for one client one point three eight million dollar savings a year and they're like where do i sign

So we moved into online and then in 2008, 2009 we were helping a couple of companies in safety get into the online business with their products. And 2008, 2009 we had companies that were literally laying off 800 of 900 people and they're like, Dan, we can't do leadership training anymore. Like, it's gone. Like we can't afford to do anything. And I'm like, I don't blame you.

Dan MacDonald (06:14.049)
But safety shot off like a rocket ship. went 400 % growth. in discussions with some of the other companies that are in the same vein, they experienced that same growth, Danatech and e-compliance and stuff, from what I've heard from those guys, experienced that exact same growth in that same time period. So we decided, if we're going to do this, you can't be two things. You can't be pizza and Chinese food, too. We've got to be one thing.

So we're either leadership or safety. Can't be both. So we decided to go leadership and we decided to go safety, let's go world class and we dropped leadership. Never did another class.

Gordon Sheppard (06:55.881)
These are big inflection points. mean, you you're at the brick. You probably could have led a nice life there. There was an opportunity. came up. There's something super entrepreneurial about you, but showing up with one sheet and getting people to sign things. And then you're on the road and you're 23 days. And then you got to go negotiate with your wife because you got two young kids. And so there's some moments there. And then you, again, you've got this moment and you just made this big drop. saying, wait a second, we're to focus on the safety. This is where the puck is going. It sounds like you've figured out.

where the puck is going at certain major points all along the way in the growth of your business now. Is that fair?

Dan MacDonald (07:33.133)
yeah i i don't know like i i don't know if i can answer that accurately like give me more on that like what do you what do you think

Gordon Sheppard (07:41.876)
I'm, well, what I mean to say is you're at a moment where you're saying, we can go leadership or we can go safety. We've seen the growth in safety. We're going to make that choice. It's hard to let go of your babies. Like, you know, when you've grown up that other part of your business. So that's a big deal. And then you knew you were going to kind of walk down that path at that point. I mean, these are, this is sort of takes a, it's not, it's not just numbers that drive those types of decisions. Is what I mean to say.

Dan MacDonald (08:01.739)
Yeah, no, and I hear you, and to be fair and honest, it's the books. Like if you read a thousand, you know, I've probably read hundreds and hundreds, I don't know if I hit a thousand, but I'm sure I've come close or exceeded it over the last 30, 40 years. But if you read enough of those books, it becomes so clear. I try to describe it, you know, if you've ever taken a penny, put it under a piece of paper and a pencil, and went back and forth, every time you read a book,

it's like a scribble and after a while you'll get this clear picture of what's underneath that penny and and that's that's what i see so james dyson right there dyson vacuums and you know the hairdryers and he made an electric car and you know just an incredible incredible entrepreneur like so successful eight billion i'm sure is you know is is net worth by now but you know started off with the wheelbarrow dominated the wheelbarrow market but

it's super small and he's like wow i was number one in wheelbarrows and there's nothing here so so got into the vacuums and it was just you know but his thing was you can't you know it's gotta be one thing like that you know and you hear it again and again and again you try to throw somebody one tennis ball they'll catch it good good odds but you try to throw them three or four tennis balls the odds of them catching it now go down substantially the odds of them catching one go down

substantially. So in the messaging, in what you do, in everything about you, you know, there's a ton of books on this where retailers try to get into so many things. And again, I watched it at the brick, you know, he tried lawnmowers, he tried jewelry counters, he tried this. And then one day, you know, he just got so focused and, know, anybody, you know, you can imagine how many people would come to him with these ideas. And a lot of them great ideas, probably.

and he would just have the same phrase, I'm just a simple sofa sales guy just trying to sell a few sofas and that's his phrase in my mind from my experience that he would say to keep it simple to keep it on track because you can get lured away and it probably cost him a fortune like furniture 2000 in the US probably cost him a fortune the jewelry stores I think we're blowing them out at 99 % off watches and rings and stuff for six months trying to clear up that jewelry store

Dan MacDonald (10:27.831)
disassembling that but after he learned his lesson the hard way and I thought I don't want to be that guy to have to go through those pains I'd rather just learn from James and Bill and these guys and say you know let's and all those those decisions you're talking about I had enough pain from you know reading those stories or seeing what those guys did to say my god I don't want to do that would have broken us like we would have been dead

Gordon Sheppard (10:54.451)
Incredible, how wonderful. Well, I think we could just sort of bring you on as a book reviewer to give us the short versions of all the thousand books that you've read, because you're being eloquent about all these lessons. You can see you're a terrific teacher in there too, because you got those great analogies and they're very fast. We've got a good sense of who you are, where you took the business at that inflection point 0809, got into the safety training thing hard in the online safety training thing. And then here we are 2025. And so,

How would you describe, just give me a few sentences on how you would describe the current state of your business so that we just locate us for where we got to.

Dan MacDonald (11:29.227)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now we're, this year, I think we're pretty well close to 200 people. So, you know, hundreds of team members on the team. The online system, like the velocity. So we sell online courses. People will do an hour to our online course. We'll do in excess of, I think, 30 to 40,000 every seven days. Like it's just the volume is insane.

digital forms and paperwork that people fill out again probably thirty to forty thousand each week you know there's probably a half a million people get added just organically to the system new new people get added to the system every year like the numbers are just staggering and so we're about you know we just exceeded you know probably twenty one million last year in sales you know some sizable

infrastructure in place to manage all the systems, a sizable team now to manage all of the customers. And we're on that journey from the 20, 30 million to the 50, 100 million, which is the next jump. And it's actually, if you look up on ChatGBT or other places, I'm sure it got it from somewhere, but there's actually a half a dozen stages of growth for software companies like ours, which was interesting to me because it just nailed it. says, hey,

first million dollars product market fit and and i think i shared the story with you but it's our first year we did a hundred thousand dollars silly me stood up i stood up on a chair at the christmas party at a restaurant now in the restaurant i stood up on a chair and i said hey guys if we hit a million dollars next year i'm all you to why everybody's gonna all three going to why

10 years later, 10 years later we get $1 million in sales. And then the next year we did three, and then we did five. And then we did, and like I think we did a million bucks in the last couple of weeks, the last 10 days. So it's interesting to see the thinking, right? So product market fits a small pros. So right now going from the 30, 2030 to 50, 100.

Dan MacDonald (13:56.014)
It's building the executive team, so we've got to start over the next few years finding like a CMO, a chief marketing officer, a sales manager, like a CRO, chief revenue officer. We'll probably start needing, so we'll probably have to build out like a team of VPs, a team of managers, a team of whatever it is, but we've got to start finding where those gaps are and start building that. That's part one.

We're rolling out business operating system like EOS and Metronomics and all those different great systems. We chose for us scaling up. So we've got a coach and we've got the team members trained on it. So we're really excited about building that up. That's kind of another part of this growth phase. But building out the structure and really we're just in the final stage of moving.

from a lot of generalists, like we had a person that used to do six different jobs. Now we have one person dedicated to just one screenshot. So a single person dedicated to just designing this. A single person just for instruction pages or whatever. So we went from generalists to specialists in a big way, and that's where the jump was, where we went from like 30, 40 people to 100 and some people, right? And we're continuing to do that, building out those specialists.

Gordon Sheppard (15:13.159)
It's interesting to hear you talk. There's somehow listening to you. There's no doubt that you're about to do what you're saying you're going to do. What a remarkable thing. And you know what it's like at six figures. You know what it's like at seven figures. You know what you're in the eight figures and you're going to keep moving those figures up as you kind of go forward and you're putting the pieces in place at your different levels of development. And it sounds like you've just been a lifelong student of business to be able to absorb not only the people that you've worked with, but also the literature and distill that in a way to help guide. I'm sure you're.

growth throughout this time. That's just wonderful. So now we know a little bit about you and what it takes and some of those inflection points. We know a little bit about kind of where the company is at right now and just the volume that you're doing to help people in the safety online space every week at that high level of volume. I always like to jump in here and say, if you had to describe your biggest win in this whole venture, how would you describe it?

Dan MacDonald (16:08.225)
Tough, you know, I'm a big believer that pushes on a flywheel. It's a lot of little, you know, pushes to get it up to speed. So there's not one big win. But for us, if there is one big area, it's the team, right? Finding the right people. I, you know, and I don't want to kind of say I'm good at this because, you know, it's like, you know, there's, there's, there's good. And then there's like professional level mastery, you know.

There's no comparison, but I'm pretty good. Better than a lot. Finding good people. So I can't spell, color, write, draw, graphics, know, nothing. I don't have any skill set, but I do have a reasonably good nose for talent. you know, at the BRIC when I was there, I would hire an assistant buyer in my buying category. And within weeks, within weeks, they'd be promoted to some other department. And sometimes...

It got to a point where I'd hire somebody. And before they even sat in the chair, I'd get the manager knocking on my door and say, hey, that guy, we're going to put him over here, a category that really makes money for the company. Dan, electronics, it's cute, but there's no margin. This girl, this guy, they're really good. Good job on getting them on the team, man. And every time I had, and the last guy I hired,

You know, we found him in, I think, accounting, and it took me six months, you know, I gave, got him, you know, got him tickets to the Oilers games, box seats, got him box seats for, you know, the great, and it finally got him over, and it was, it didn't last a day, and now he's my boss's boss's boss. He runs all of the merchandising for the entire company at the Brick there, still there to this day, and doing an extraordinary job, but, you know, would he have made that jump from cost accounting to...

product merchandising, being a global traveler, I don't know, right?

Gordon Sheppard (18:09.545)
Well, so you've got a nose for talent, which is probably a good sign, and you've got these, the wind that I heard in there, I'm just gonna say is all those spins on the flywheel combined. Is that about, is that the way to describe it?

Dan MacDonald (18:18.989)
Yeah, yeah, and a team, I mean, just yeah, they did all the work, right?

Gordon Sheppard (18:25.395)
And they did all the work. again, it's fun for me to explore this. Often people will have sort of one moment or one thing they're describing. What we're hearing now, I think the win here is the cumulative 20 plus years of work that you've put in to kind of get this to happen. And I love it because there's so much to explore in there. And if we had to go back then and look at this win and what it takes, I like to introduce what I call the anatomy of a win, to have a structured conversation about this. And that is, what is the strategy, the work plan, the people, the operations and the results?

behind the wind. So I guess I'm gonna take us back to maybe that 2008, 2009 time. And if you had to think about the strategy back then, cause I'm sure the strategy obviously has evolved as you scale, what was, was there a vision? Was there values that made this happen? What a goal, like what would you say if you had to describe the strategy at that point?

Dan MacDonald (19:18.413)
I think survival was probably because 2008-2009 like I mean you know for the first seven six years we were running off of debt like we had no money no investors no people helping us out we were paying our mortgage with our mortgage we had no money for anything like we couldn't I kid you not I was not allowed to call Calgary for a sales call because we couldn't afford the three cents a minute

Like there's just no way. And if I had to take a client for lunch, it's like, well, let's not do the keg. Let's see if they're okay with Wendy's. Right? Like it was that bad. I shouldn't say bad because I mean, it was an exciting time. You're fighting through it. So for us, it was just pure, pure survival in that 208 time. And then when you saw the markets collapse, the banks, like, you know, who's heard of a bank?

going out of business like it's like your money is gone like it just evaporated i can't even tell you how many billions of dollars were you know just gone in a day when that that happened so and then the aftermath so we were in just survival mode i think at that time and and it just we saw we looked at the the cold hard numbers we saw leadership i think and i'm just guessing at a number here just for for the effect but i think it took a

50-60 % drop. And I'm pretty sure the online safety stuff, which was small, because you only make maybe a dollar per course completion, where you can make five or $10,000 on a speaking engagement, the online course stuff shot up 400%. So we just looked at those two and it was just so obvious. It's like, where's the future? And safety is, I love this Thomas Stanley, Millionaire Next Door and The Millionaire Mind and all those books. He's like,

One of the most successful entrepreneurial businesses are always in the non-sexy industries. You don't want to be in night clubs, you don't want to be in restaurants, you want to be in garbage contracting and paving and plumbing, and there's just so much runway, there's so little competition, not everybody's fighting to get into those businesses, so your chances of success go up by a multiple. So with that knowledge...

Dan MacDonald (21:42.689)
the knowledge of we can only pick one thing from know Dyson and Bill from the knowledge of you know we've got to survive we just looked at those two numbers and said well there's there's the future how do we do it great

Gordon Sheppard (21:54.292)
Wonderful. So very focused with that strategy and fun. I wish we were here for hours and hours and hours, because I think there are strategy leveling up moments along the way. would describe, we could do it by dollars sort of thing in the way that you eloquently said, well, we were here, then we were here. And there are these stages of growth that simply you've run the playbook on. I'm going to say not easily, because that first 10 years to your million was its own journey. And I imagine sleeping at night would have been its own toss and turn as you kind of got through those stages. Every strategy needs a work plan.

we've got to be able to go, you know, execute on what that looks like. So you said we've got the survivalist mode, but we've also got that focus element as well. If we had to draw out the timeline in these last years, what are the highlights along the work plan, inflection points? Now we talked about scaling up the staff at certain points. You've already mentioned that along the way. Any other kind of highlights that you would say with the work plan that kind of made certain moments go?

Gordon Sheppard (22:49.267)
investments in software, investments in specialists, moments that really made a big difference.

Dan MacDonald (22:58.185)
nothing really stands out because the growth itself, if you look at it on a chart, it's outside of COVID, it's pretty flat. Like it just, it's, you know, it's the same growth for 20, 19 years now. The investment in technology was always there. We poured every possible cent we had into building the technology and some. So it was always a reinvestment there.

And every month there was just new customers coming in, new customers signing up at a very steady rate. I mean, even though, like you said, challenging, troubling, right? Like I'm sure my wife had a few many, many sleepless nights when you're paying your mortgage with your mortgage. But I always saw the customers coming in. I always saw that I got the calls, customers like, hey, we're going with you. We're so excited.

We can't wait, here's a deposit. And I saw that side of it where she's in the back, you know, looking at the accounting, looking at the bills and bless her heart, like probably didn't share those feelings with me because, you know, it's like it would have ruined my spirit and crushed, you know, maybe taken away because I was so excited. I'm like, man, business is growing. Look at it grow. Everything's great. I'm always happy. And she's like, if he only knew the truth, you know.

It's like, I don't know where payroll's coming from next week.

Gordon Sheppard (24:26.997)
Oh my goodness, what a time, what a time. it's amazing. And thanks for sharing those moments. Cause it's not like it's a, it's not like you're here today where you've gotten to, it's well earned along the way in terms of making those jumps and making those things happen. I remember in the pre-interview, there was a key guy that you got in that you mentioned some genius people along the way and maybe not just one, maybe you can just, but take me through at least one or two of those examples, I think along the timeline.

Dan MacDonald (24:44.491)
Yeah, yeah, a few.

Yeah, no, absolutely. So there's quite a few, but a couple of highlights. So the first one was our first salesperson, 10 years. It's his 10 year, I can probably turn the camera a little bit, but you can see today is his 10 year anniversary. So 10 years ago he started and he came in, we had a 900 square foot office, maybe a block from here. was just this little, you know, now we're in 25,000 square feet.

of open space, but 900 square feet. came in and the back wall was painted green because it was we used as his green screen and I had this clear glass desk and we sat down for an interview and right away I'm like, my god, my god, I'm calling my wife. Gotta get in here, get in here right now, get in here, we gotta hire this. And he didn't even have, he quit his job in Calgary, just drove up because his girlfriend was moving up here, drove up here and just, you know, just wasn't even worth it. He's like,

I'll be able to find a job in a harpy and he had like four or five offers and we gave him an offer right away and he came back and you know negotiated a little bit for for this or that and the most incredible sales guy like he learned the software takes sometimes three months for new salespeople to learn the software the first two weeks or three weeks he was at a trade show in BC and I did the presentation of the software a few times and I did it the first couple of

times that morning and then I listened to him for the rest of the day and every time he nailed it, not one thing wrong and I'm like, boom. And then I think it was two, three months later and I was working to get an agreement with these three big unions, associations, these big contracts and he comes in, like walks in the office, like nothing, you know, just after lunch and he goes, hey, by the way, those three big, you know, the Alberta Construction Safety Association, the Clack Union, this is a...

Dan MacDonald (26:45.067)
the manufacturer, I signed them all up. And I'm like, BS, there's no, he goes, yeah, yeah, here's the signed contracts. And I'm like, I've been working on them for years. Like I'm going for dinners and lunches and drinks and nothing. And he comes in, it's like one day he's like the pied piper, hey, sign this, okay. So anyway, and not only that, extraordinary, like we had a reseller program where they would get commission, not him. So he would get zero commission.

and he is a commission salesperson. And he would jump in his car and drive to Calgary on his own dime to help them sell a client. And I'm like, you know you make no sales on that. You make no commission on that. And he goes, yeah, yeah, but Dan, Dan, it's good for the company, right? And if it's good for the company, it's good for everybody. And I said, yeah. He goes, perfect. It's good for the company. And he did that all the time. And it just blew me away. He just would help out of the goodness of his heart.

and and just unbelievable too we had a company we deal with they've got about three or four hundred software programmers in southern india and trivandrum and and and the cto over there fifteen years ago you know just this genius level you know programmer like just an insane you know we used to joke and call him yoda and like he's just so good like he would

you know i remember i went to india and i said hey your boss chanis it's really good right she goes uh... you have no idea he walks around and we deal with hundreds of companies all over the world and he'll walk and look at a little wall of code on tvs and they've been struggling for you know days trying to figure out this problem you'll look at it know fix it and they're like oh my god and he does that all day just boom boom boom boom and he's just that kind of guy

And when we wanted to hire a manager for our technology team here, we called and said, hey, we want to make sure you're part of the process. We want you in the interviews. And the owner, one of the owners over there, he says, hey, how about our CTO? And I'm like, yeah. He's looking to move to Canada. I'd rather work for you than somebody different. And I'm like, yeah. So anyway, he gave me a number. said, there's no way I can come close to that number. I can give you you know.

Dan MacDonald (29:09.099)
half of that, and goes, I trust you, I know you'll make it right. Let's do it. And he came over, and my God. But just an incredible, and we've had a lot, like I could go on for hours, but those are two examples.

Gordon Sheppard (29:22.001)
Isn't that lucky? So we've heard again, the strategy, the work plan, a few moments in there. We're getting into the people side of things. And one of the pieces you can hear clearly when I talk about the people, what are their roles, what are their responsibilities, but also what are their attitudes? And you can hear in spades that simply your sales guy showed up with the right attitude, one that you couldn't interview for. You know what mean? You see that demonstrated over and over again. You can hear your excitement through this as well.

Dan MacDonald (29:37.805)
Mm.

Gordon Sheppard (29:50.998)
the customers are coming in, this is working. You can hear your wife managing to not go crazy, right? Do you know what mean? In early days, right? And then you get this other, highly motivated person who just happens to be, and talk about good timing, like just, oh, we're gonna switch countries and happen to be Johnny on the spot for that one there. That's remarkable. And how lucky to be surrounded with these good people. And I'm sure in the hundreds of others that you have involved, we'd go through a big long list of everybody that's contributing, including what I would describe

from having visited your facility and being aware of part of your success story, your customer service people are just, and it's funny, I don't know a ton about your business other than I've had other people, they'll know a little bit about what I do in my work and they'll say, I've got an app. I just spent six months, I developed an app. I'm like, do you have an onboarding team that's gonna go handhold people to make sure that your app goes out in the world? And then they're not successful, but they've got that excitement because they love building something.

But you folks are way beyond that with your customer service team. How would you describe your customer service team throughout this journey, just as a group?

Dan MacDonald (30:56.653)
Yeah, yeah, really good. So we made a decision, a conscious decision to keep it in-house. So we didn't want to offshore to save some money. We wanted like they're all right here. You know, seven days a week, you know, they're here, you know, six in the morning till probably eight at night. They're here. And, and we've got we found a somebody and people in culture that's just got a great nose for talent, especially cultural fit. And we've just had a slew.

of extraordinary over and above like every week. And I'm not in touch with the customers that much anymore, but every week I feel like I get at least an email or a phone call just to say, hey, I know you're busy, but I just wanted to say your team is extraordinary. Like they just go above and beyond. you know, it's, you know, I'd like to say it's a core value, but that just does not cut it.

It's got to be something that's ingrained in the heart and the DNA and going over and above. We do our best. We probably don't do a good job, a great job, but we do our best to reward that, to talk about that, to focus on that, to give the team the ability to say, don't care what Menara says. If a customer calls and complains and you feel that they're in the right, give them their money back.

if that's what they want, them their money back. And I don't care if I have to personally cut a check and drive over to their house to get their money back because Monaris or the payment gateway can't do it. Let's make that happen and make that right no matter what. And again, I'd like to take a molecule of credit but can't. That's hundreds of books with Bernie Marcus from Home Depot educating his team or Bill Comrie. I'll tell you one story about Bill. I don't know if I can tell this right but...

There was one time somebody was yelling at one of his customer service reps in the old store downtown in the brick, and they're screaming at the customer service rep. And it was like six o'clock at night and on a Saturday and Bill was in the very back office and he came out and he jumped on a desk and there's 20 rows of desks and he starts running on top of the desk and paper and staplers are flying and he's coming and the customer is behind the counter and he sees this guy and the customer goes back into this couch in the waiting area.

Dan MacDonald (33:22.089)
And Bill jumps down in front of him like Spider-Man. goes, don't you ever talk to my people like that again or I will come after you. I'm going to give you all your money back and I want you to promise me never to spend a dime in my stores again. I don't want your money. And the customer service, two people are like, tell me how fast that story got around. But when you grow up in that, how can you not be a huge fan of that? And I tell you, it's...

To me, it's just part of being successful in business.

Gordon Sheppard (33:54.164)
Well, and how lucky in, especially in your software development thing, I think I got a whiff of there's just always new things that you're learning from your customers that you can then implement. And that list sort of becomes unlimited in software development for how far you can go and scale. And you know, of course, more about it than I do, but the idea of the fact that you've invested in this area, it's not ship it here that it's adjust over six months or, you know what I mean? It's this iterative process. So I think that's just remarkable. And you can hear again,

Dan MacDonald (34:03.725)
Mmm.

Gordon Sheppard (34:22.247)
in the people section, the attitudes coming out in spades from everybody, which is just wonderful. And it really does speak to, again, just the plain way that you're speaking. yeah, well, you know, we're here and then now we're gonna be here. Like that's pretty remarkable, but you've taken the time to build in those right team members. The four step is operational, if you had to describe it. And you said you've always been consistently investing in the software itself. There might be, I'm gonna say safety standards, legal, operational elements,

you you've said you've scaled up your location, this kind of thing. Are there any sort of highlights or moments when you talk about this sort of win over 20 years in a sense, that you would say might stand out operationally?

Dan MacDonald (35:04.161)
honestly it's it's probably more my wife carmen she's extraordinary at that side and we've built a big team you know to help support her so we've got an in-house lawyer we've got you know general manager that you know helps out we've got a you know operations person that helps out and you know they've they've they've there's quite a a structure that they built and i honestly i don't know if you ever read shoe dog

you know with phil night from nike but you know in in that that autobiography you know he'll tell stories where he would you know be daydreaming drive to the store walk around the grocery store come back home still drake daydreaming and not pick up any of the groceries his wife just sent him out for and then one time he was daydreaming so much he drove his car right into a tree and then he just left it there walked home like nothing happened he's just got his mind on business i'm not night phil night but i would

I would describe myself as being more towards that, always heading the clouds, always thinking about the future. And then the operations side, mean, you know, Carmen and the team here is extraordinary. Couldn't do anything without them. Like I would, I remember one time I came back, it was about 12 years ago, and I said, hey, we should do a magazine. And I literally drew a stick man on a napkin. And then I drew a little line around the stick man and I drew.

three lines underneath that to be copy text and I gave them the napkin. And then I kid you not, was like, you know, a month later they come back with a 60 page color brochure with interviews and write ups and ads and, and I'm like, that's great. That's exactly what I was thinking with that stick man. And it's like, how do you turn that into, you know, a real magazine, right? So incredibly blessed that side. just don't.

I don't have the wherewithal of what happens after I come up with an idea. The one thing I did learn that I think I'd love to share is that in my mind, like in some programs, you'll hear visionary over top of the integrator and they come up with the vision. I don't think it's this relationship. I think it's side by side. Like you really got to fight it out in a good way, a healthy way to say, here's my idea. And then they're like, here's reality. Here's what's possible. Here's what's not.

Dan MacDonald (37:29.357)
and somehow meet somewhere in there. But it can't be just here's what I'm thinking, go do it, or here's what our limits are, go do it. Because Bill was the best for that. Like he didn't have the money for his Home Depot idea, or his Home, sorry, Home Show idea. And it was like, and I can't even remember, 500,000 square foot showroom. But he went out and sold it. He sold, you know, Sony. He says, okay, I'm gonna make a shrine for Sony.

you guys pay me a hundred grand for this one room and it's gonna be sony everything it's gonna highlight sony on the wall sony tvs sony this or that and then he goes to nutuzzi and he sells a big nutuzzi section it's gonna feel like a piece of italy it's gonna have a little you know cappuccino maker it's gonna have this and he would sell that to get enough money to pay for the whole store before he even broke ground but that's like he just like he he could think like like nobody i've ever met

Do you know what I'm saying?

Gordon Sheppard (38:26.869)
But in the meantime, you've been lucky to be married to your wife who can balance you out in pre-biz, it sounds like there's a pre-biz world, then there's a biz world and there's growing together. There's a whole other episode that we could do about marriage and entrepreneurship that I'm sure would be its own, its own. I don't know if you've read all the books for that one, but there you go. And so we've got through the strategy, the work plan, the people, the operations. Finally, there's the results, qualitative and quantitative. What are the highlights in the results that you like to talk about for this 20 year win?

Dan MacDonald (38:57.165)
You know what, I'm very proud to be a part of the team here. Like can't take much credit for, you know, because like I said, it's almost 200 people doing all the work. You know, I put in my hours, but it doesn't even come close to the total sum of hours everybody else puts in. But just extraordinarily proud to be in this. And I really truly believe this could be a, you know, a billion dollar...

know organization in the next 10 to 15 summers pretty easily and I just want to be that great place that really makes a difference in workplace safety right it's there's a lot of garbage out there we fight against you know people trying to make a quick buck you know helicopter safety a five-minute course for 95 bucks and you know we fought those battles to say you know because people would say online it's bad

And it's like, well, the truth is there's good, bad, and ugly in everything, right? There's good, bad, and ugly in instructors. There's good, bad, and ugly in training providers. There's good, bad, and ugly in online courses. And we said, OK, if we're going to win, we've to be great. We can't even let them hold a candle to us on that side.

Gordon Sheppard (40:09.877)
Clear vision, clear process all the way through. It sounds like you're gonna be on the way to scaling it all the way up there. I really appreciate that you took the time to share your win here on the show here today. If you had to describe, of sum this all up for the win. You know, just said the win is, and maybe give maybe your one suggestion on leadership for the leaders that are listening. Go ahead and just sort of wrap it up for us.

Dan MacDonald (40:31.917)
Yeah, yeah, the win is just people. Like I've literally done a thousand interviews to find one person and you you read Elon Musk, you know, literally same thing. Like he interviewed 3000 people at Tesla before, you know, he stopped interviewing and he still was interviewing his, you know, so great people, you know, but here's the thing. A lot of entrepreneurs will hear that. Oh yeah, great people. I've heard that before. That's like reading a book.

and thinking you're gonna play like Tiger Woods the next day, there's reading it, understanding it, applying it, and then 10 years of work to get to a fraction of mastery before you're good at finding great people. Because most people, when I meet them and it's like, yeah, Tom's a jam, you know, I hire them and I was like, my God, they're not a jam. The opposite of a jam. you know, people would be the second one. And then your second question was.

Gordon Sheppard (41:29.289)
Well, just sort of, that sort of people is the driving factor to this win in terms of what you're thinking about. And then if you had a lesson for a leader, like what do you like to pass along for any leader that might be listening to this, that if you had to give them one or two nuggets, what would they be on the way out?

Dan MacDonald (41:37.772)
Right.

Dan MacDonald (41:42.573)
Yeah, no, the one, just reading. Reading, reading, reading. I'd take an hour day, hour power, whatever it is, but literally, and I'd read the people who have done it. Not the, haven't built a Popsicle stand, but here's five pillars of leadership. I would read about leaders who have accomplished great things, whatever it is, Home Depots, whatever, but all those lessons can be applied. That reading was by far, it became so clear.

what we needed to do from that. So that's the biggest blessing I've ever had is just that desire to learn.

Gordon Sheppard (42:17.929)
Your library card must be worn out. Dan, thank you so much for being on the show.

Dan MacDonald (42:24.009)
Awesome. Thank you, Gordon. Appreciate it.

Gordon Sheppard (42:30.432)
gonna stop record.