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Greg Clark started College Pro Painters out of desperation in 1971 when he was only 17 years old. He needed to pay for university and realized his summer job wasn’t going to cover his tuition, so he went door-to-door to sell his first painting job…without knowing how to paint!
Clark landed his first job, and learned quickly how to deliver on his promise to customers.
He went on to expand the business to 500 franchisees, and over 5,000 painters when he ultimately sold the business in 1990. In this episode, Clark uncovers how to overcome fear and doubt as a first-time entrepreneur, how to make the first sale, and how to set up the systems, processes, and cadence to grow your business.
The Ivey Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by Connie Clerici, QS ’08, and Closing the Gap Healthcare Group, Inc.
Transcript
You're listening to the Ivey entrepreneur podcast from the Pierre L. Morrissette Institute for entrepreneurship at the Ivey Business School. In this series, Ivey entrepreneur, and Ivey faculty member, Eric Janssen will anchor the session.
Eric Janssen
I'm here with Greig Clark, the founder of College Pro Painters, Greig, thanks for making the time and coming in for a conversation.
Greig Clark
Glad to be here.
Eric Johnson
So, in some of the prep for this, I came across a quote from you, I think you're quoting or paraphrasing somebody else that necessity is the mother of invention. And when I think about your story of starting College Pro, what was the necessity that got you to start this company in the first place?
Greig Clark
Yeah, good research that's from Thomas Alva Edison, on the great inventors in American history who said, "Necessity is the mother of invention". And there's got to be a reason why. And so the reason why for me for starting College Pro was that I had a summer job that would make me $2,000 a year. And school at that time a little while ago, was totally everything in tuition, everything in living was $3,000. So I had a $1,000 gap. And I had to close that gap, the six kids in my family and the eldest of six, I thought I got to close that gap myself. So I started looking around for ways to make 1000 bucks. So that was a gap for me.
Eric Johnson
So I just need I need 1000 bucks, what can I do? What are the tools at my disposal? Let's start a painting company.
Greig Clark
Yeah, that was one of the ones. I had a summer job already, a great summer job. But I say it was $2.50 an hour, 40 hours a week, 20 weeks maximum in the summer, that's two grand. So I needed to make the 1000 bucks, but I already had my regular days filled. So I did try a couple of things. But the one that I landed on, was to try to paint houses. Another buddy of mine, from the cottage area, had painted some houses the year before, and you know, it made nearly $1,000. So I thought we could do it. So we started up this partnership, to go out and try and paint some houses.
Eric Janssen
What I found was interesting about your founding story, so typically people will build a product, so have something to sell, and then they'll go out and sell it. Yours is a little bit of an interesting case and that you went out, and sold, and then figured it out afterwards. So can you tell us about those super early days of how did you actually get it going?
Greig Clark
Yeah, sure. I hadn't thought of it that way. But yes, yes, we did. I was hoping, of course that my partner because he painted houses before, he knew how to paint, I had a little bit of training and other stuff. So the whole partnership idea was that I was going to do the marketing, these fancy words selling land the job, he would hire somebody and he and the other people would paint the job, he would pay himself a wage, and then I would do all the accounting and we would divide the profits. So we had a handshake deal. So my job was to land the job so I tried a bunch of things to try to do that. So I tried these fancy marketing things like I put a lead in the local shopper newspaper, and I got some flyers and distributed those door to door and I got nothing, nothing came from that. So I fell back on that marvelous high tech method of marketing called cold calling, which was a very scary thing to do. And went through a lot of challenges. I was really you know, petrified the first time I went knocked on a door because as you said, I really didn't know pending all that well. But I did knock on enough doors that finally somebody said, yeah, we'd like an estimate. And so that had to get started.
Eric Janssen
That's so first customer came from, how many doors did you have to knock on before you got your first?
Greig Clark
Probably about 30, oh, it was pretty good ratio.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, I'm pretty good ratio. You talked about the squeegee toes feeling that feeling when you walk up, you're like willing yourself to go up to that front door, but you really don't want to go up to that front door. How did you get over that?
Greig Clark
Yeah, and I see it's a good thing to share actually, because a lot of people are hopefully you know, watching this, or they have started, or are about to start their own company. And it's that first in this case, literally knocking the door but it's that first cold call that first time where you're actually going to put yourself forward and say I can do a service for you. And you're just feeling they're gonna look at you and go, why can you do this Inside you're going I don't know if I can do it. But then I'm going to give it my best. So I call it the squeegee toes feeling, when you go to knock on the door and every bone in your body is saying go away. Go have a coffee, go back and play some hockey with the guys. It's easier. But there's a little party that says, I'm here, I'm gonna do it you know like the Nike ad, Just Do It. You knock on the door and you make your mouth work. Didn't work too well the first couple of calls but you make it work and gets you through it.
Eric Janssen
And so you went from, got your first customer, did everything you could to deliver a good service for that first customer. So you went, built the product, delivered a good service. How did College Pro grow? I think you tell the story a little bit about the early days and how it transition from, you know, one man operation with a few painters to really being an enterprise that you were tuning the machine on. But this was involved a lot more people. So what was the transition from? This is Greig's company trying to make 1000 bucks to, what was that a peak, hundreds of 5000 employees,
Greig Clark
Yeah, grew to let's say, 500 franchisees, and 4000 employees, one little piece in that transition is important, there is a transition from a partnership to a one person company, because when I did land that first job, my partner was going to paint the house and quit. So I had to go and hire some painters and get them to do that job, which is another one of those forks in the road when the whole idea for the business was a partnership is gone. And you persist to performance, you say, okay, we're still going to do this. So that was the first fork in the road for me, but I did carry on, did hire some painters and that first summer, made about $3,000, and then the next summer when I was also doing my other summer job that made $2,000. So the second summer, I came back and did pretty much just the painting, and made $7,000. In the third summer, just the painting in May, $12,000. That's when I was at Ivey the last two years, and felt pretty good about it. And I took off and travel around the world with some of the money that I've made. And got to thinking about this idea which actually we had written up in when I was in business school, which is the idea of taking this college for a microcosm of one outlet and expanding it across the country. Everybody always has this dream of go national, get a good idea. Go gotta go coast to coast gotta grow. So I grew up the, well when I was in business school but didn't really quite believe it, because you never really trust the sales number. But as I travel around the world, had spare time, and kept a little book and a little spiral notebook, and started to track things under the same chapters that learned I at business school: physical marketing, estimating, selling production, personnel, accounting, HR. And so I'd write all these things down. So I had the beginnings of a college manual, and I came back to Canada and started work at General Foods in marketing in Toronto. I then look to get one franchise started, wasn't a franchise a time it was a company owned operation which later switched to franchising, that's a different story. But he got one on one operation going in London, not a great success, but enough to keep going. The next summer I had two while I'm still holding my General Foods job down. Next summer, I had six, still holding how my General Foods job, getting harder and harder to do that. But I made a promise to my fiance, and between the second and third year that you get tired of all these weekends, living in intense while I went and worked with franchisees selling paint jobs. I said, listen, here's the deal. If I use my good operations management training from Western, you know, the decision tree kind of thing, where I said, okay, if five of the six succeed, I'll quit General Foods and do this full time. If three or four succeed, I will will continue to test for another year. And if less than that, I'll drop it. While work just for General Foods, I'll have a great marketing career and I'll take all my salary, and spend all my salary, which half of which have been going into College Pro, I think part of her was hoping for the third option. So that's how I made the decision to leave and do it full time. And then the following year, I actually expanded from the six to 20 operations, and then from 20 to 40. And then four days kind of doubled for a number of years, till we grew till 500 franchises and about 4000 painters.
Eric Janssen
And how did you balance in those early days? There's this perception that entrepreneurs are big risk takers. And that might be true to a certain extent. But often people do a good job of mitigating that risk, whether it's choosing the right partners or validating that there's a workable business there. So you know, the 32nd story of Greig Clark, founder of College Pro, quit his job and started this painting franchise and it exploded. As we peel back the layers, you actually did a pretty good job of mitigating that risk and keeping both going at the same time. How was that? How would working a full time job which wasn't an easy job, and starting a business on the side? How did you balance the two?
Greig Clark
That was a good question. But also I want to emphasize your point that because we often think of entrepreneurs or guys who go parachute jumping and jump off cliffs and stuff like good old Richard Branson, I'm not quite like that. So I did mitigate the risk both times for both forks in the road. Before I left my summer job. I continued on not just that first summer, but partway into the second summer before I quit and did College Pro full time. So that's mitigation number one, for me it was holding to doubt same time. Same thing at General Foods. I continue to hold that job until I was sure that the microcosm of working, so the challenge that leads you as you said, was your then doing two jobs at the same time, and your work life balance gets a little crazy. And I'm afraid there's not really any way to handle it, the only thing you have to do is be dead honest with the people who matter to you, and your family and your friends of what's going on I guess the only way I found to do it was, I call it put the rocks in the stream. So I put the rocks in the stream from my personal life into my schedule first, you know, for me, it was hockey, and dates with my fiance. You put those in and the other stuff has to swim around it. If you do it the other way. It'll always you know, and then make damn sure you keep those commitments if you do it the other way those those rocks will never show up. I'm sure if you talk to my family and friends at the time, they would say, yeah, Greig can make those appointments. But he wasn't always there, if you know what I mean. And that's true.
Eric Janssen
I saw a pattern that I'm seeing amongst our guests on the show is, there are periods where you just need to go, you know, put your head down and work. There's some commonalities and some differences between our guests. But one is, there's just a period of time, whether it's right in the beginning or growth phase, or whatever, they sort of do regain some semblance mostly of balance eventually, or whatever balance means to them and their life. But there typically is a period, could be a year, could be 10 years for some people depending on what they're working on. But they just have to make that thing the priority. And as long as they're clear with other people that that is the priority, not that you're forgetting about everything else. But this is one of my main priorities right now. Their life does seem to work around that. So you just sounds like you were clear with family and fiance and friends. Like right now I need to this is one of the big rocks.
Greig Clark
I'd like to think so. In retrospect, in hindsight, 2020, I hope I was. I think that the couple things I would add to that is, as I say my coping tactic was to put those things in the calendar first and then stick to them. And then obviously try to be present when you're there for those, I know that I failed at that sometimes. But the second thing is, you got to watch this. Don't worry, honey, it'll be better next year, it'll be better when I get to this milestone or this milestone, because there's always another milestone, and another milestone, and another level we got to get to, and I remember I read Ted Rogers biography. And I think that's one of the challenges he faced like right towards the very end. When they're coming to his hospital bed, he's asking about cell phone sales in British Columbia. And you go oh, my goodness, Ted, right. And I read that I went, whoa, am I doing the same thing? So one of the things I did when I sold College Pro is we took a year, and we lived in France for a year. And that helped allowed College Pro to flow into my veins, because I must tell you that sort of the day after I sold College Pro, what I wanted to do the next day was by another business, fast. I'm exaggerating a bit but very close, right. And one of my good friends who has been my boss at General Foods actually took me out for lunch. And he was in the mergers and acquisition business. And you know, I congratulated me on the sale, we're having our lunch, and I start asking him So Scott, what's in your book? What do you got for sale? And he starts talking about a bunch of them. He goes holders, Coleman's for sale, and I go, I used to camp, I like camping, tell me about that one. And he literally reached across the table and said slow down, buddy, slow down, said you know what I want you to do, I want you to go to France, you've always talked about going live in France or in England, go to France and live and just be for a year, don't do, just be. And given I'm a guy who always does what I'm told that's what I did.
Eric Janssen
There's a bunch of things to come back to but I have to keep going on this track. So what was the year after you sold new delivered France? What did you do for the year of just being, what did you do?
Greig Clark
Well, it's great, because it always sounds great in hindsight, but the first two or three months were agony, because it had this one thing I started to call it 17 sold I was 37. So, you know, I have some empathy for hockey players that retire at 37. Right? You're all of a sudden this thing that was the focus of my life is gone up for purpose is gone. You're there with your family in this beautiful place called France supposed to be haing a good time, you're going and I was waking up at two or three in the morning and walking around the streets of excellent pylons, and going, what am I doing? So, without going too much in it, all I can say is over a slow period of time, two to three months gradually the past seeped away. And I could live in the present before starting to think about the future. Two little parts that helped that one, is people from my past, including people from College Pro. One fellow by name of Steve Lawrence called me up in France and said can I come over for a visit? And that meant so much to me because I used to be his boss and I was important to him. Now he still wants to see me. Why? Because he values me as a person. Right? That was huge for me, lot of little things like that. The other thing, was I remember a day when I tried to sit down after three or four months there. And I took a great big piece of paper which I often do, all the you know, the quadruplets on, so I can make notes and stuff. I start at the top of the page and said, okay, when I go back, what's my goal? What I want to do, and I went, ha, ha, I couldn't do it. I thought, okay, that's all right, let's just live in the present, before you even start thinking about the future. And that was, it was a good transition here, for me.
Eric Janssen
Were there other tactics that you or habits that you develop that helped you be more present?
Greig Clark
Nothing like being in the south of France, where the wine is good, and that temperature is lovely, I wear a T-shirt every day, surrounded by a wonderful loving family. I really got involved in all the jobs of being a dad and dealing with my kids, we walked into school every day. And then my wife and I went to university, at the Exellent op house, and had to learn how to take courses in French, and then all of a sudden your mind gets focused, and a lot of other things right in the present, which is a bloody good thing to do.
Eric Janssen
That's great. So I want to come back to College Pro. So there's two topics I want to get into. One is the if you peel back the layers, you think about the systems and the processes that you and the team set up there. In my opinion, I think your SU is part of why a big part of why that company was successful. The sale on the surface can seem simple. It's selling paint to people who need paint jobs. There's actually many other elements of selling involved at College Pro. Would you mind touching on the different levels of sales that you've had to make sure we're working in order for that company to be successful?
Greig Clark
Yes, so the basic microcosm of sales, you know, identify it. Spoke of Ted Rogers before, I do love his line, an entrepreneur is somebody who finds a need and fills it. So perfect job of a Salesman is to find out the need, now they've called you for a paint job. So that's the need, but what are their what are their real needs? What do they care what their home? What do they want to have done? Then you show what you can do to fill it now a really good salesman, if what he has can't fill it should say, can't do it. You know, like that great story of the of the Kris Kringle at, you know, Miracle on 34th streets and under Bloomingdale's, even though he's at Macy's. So that's a really good salesman fans a true need and fills it. So we had to do that, there's a number of different areas where there was selling took place at College Pro, the first was, the company had to sell the managers of the franchisee on taking on this opportunity. So the value proposition there, here's what's in it for you, here's what's in it for us, there's a deal there, We had to learn how to sell paint jobs, teach those managers how to sell paint jobs to customers, we also had to teach managers how to sell, really, had to sell painters, that this would be a good job for them. So there was at least three levels of selling going on and acceptance going back and contracting made. Here's an offer an acceptance, here's what I'm gonna do for you, is you're gonna do for me?
Eric Janssen
And so what were the keys to success? For those? I think the first one being, even if I look at some of your core values, you know, revolves around finding the right people. So finding the right people for the job. So that first sell of convincing the managers to join College Pro for the summer? What were the keys to success for that first sale?
Greig Clark
Well, as an all sales, you have a very strong value proposition, which would be your product. And ours was the headline on our posters would be, at the time, make seven to $10,000 a summer it says when school costs you three, so you make two to three times but it'll cost you for a year and get a real world MBA, you're gonna get really good, good training here. So that was the that was the benefit, that was the promise. And then what was the proof of that promise, the best one we had after a while not the beginning was we got a lot of successful managers out there, who would either put their stories in the ads, or even better, if we did a presentation on campus, some of them would come and tell their stories, as you know, a case history is the best, you know, success story you can have.
Eric Janssen
Hmm, that's interesting. So the managers doing well themselves, and then bottling that up somehow either integrating that into the ads or actually having them come back with you as part of the pitch. And then what was the the next sell? How did you make sure that those managers then delivered on the promise of College Pro?
Greig Clark
Well, we had to teach them how to sell to land the job in the first place, of course. But then the next challenge is they actually got to do the paint job, to what they just promised. And actually the neat little thing that occurred to me early on, nothing earth shattering about it. But in the old days, I got these try copy forms, which was with the proposal form, you know, no carbon required, NCR paper. And the first layer was the white layer, and that went to the client. The second layer was the yellow layer, and that was went to the manager, and the third layer was a pink layer, went to the crew. So the point of it being, the promise is the same to everybody, and whatever you promised the customer that's what you're gonna collect on. And that's what the crews gonna deliver. I mean, it's simple little symbolic device. But then we had to put together a set of systems that helped teach the painters and the manager because they had to know how to do themselves how to do the painting. And so we had a system of doing that, all of that was, we had a manual, of course, with manuals like 10 cents, the next thing is active experimentation, we actually try it out and do it and then concrete experience, we would have a trainer come in, and for their first week on the job, we train them how to do all the different parts of painting. And one of the first painters was first trainers for me, was my brother, Tim, who now lives here, in London. And one of the great joys of the Canadian climate is he became the owner of the Thunder Bay Operation after I graduated. But one of the great joys of our climate is that because it's still winter in Thunder Bay in late April, early May, he would train for me, for my operations in London and Toronto. Without that there would be no College Pro.
Eric Janssen
That's great. So I've focused in when I'm teaching sales on sales process, and hard to do from just behind the desk. And I know that you didn't sit down, you know, in a cafe and say, what's the perfect process to go about doing sales? You actually did it on your own? Could you go a little bit deeper into how you built out that? The Bible, the book, the training manual for these managers?
Greig Clark
Sure. And as you said, it does actually start in a cafe, but I start with something in my hand in the cafe, and I'd be how did somebody else do it, I love to learn from others. So I looked at the Xerox method of selling, the IBM method of selling, you know, go and observe, I went to Hamburger You for McDonald's I wasn't able to attend it, but I could go and look at it, learn from others. So then start with your book, how you do it, and then you practice it, you're do it yourself. But the other thing that I think was one of the keys to success at College Pro was what I call CPI, continuous process improvement. You write down how you're going to do it, this is draft number one, you go and do it, you go and observe a lot of your managers doing it, you go on field trips, and you make lots of notes, and you improve it. So you improve it in the in the manual, you improve your training session, and you improve your your field sessions. So constantly, constantly gets better. And if you keep doing that, if you improve, pick a number, 1% a week, 52 weeks a year, you're going to get 50% better every year need.
Eric Janssen
So you started with something, which was a model of another company. Either a company in another industry who did it well. And then that was your starting point. And then you said you spent a lot of your time in those days actually, in the field, observing what people were doing that was already working today.
Greig Clark
Yeah, in the book In Search of Excellence, which was key at the time, they call it managing by wandering around, I used to call it hand in the can management, we got to get out and you got to see how things are actually working. And we all know the stories of business. I'm a big historian. You read a lot of history of other companies or businesses or armies, where the generals don't get out and see what's happened to the troops up front, they get way out of touch really fast. The other thing I found is when you go around and visit and you have lunches with the guys and the gals in the field, you establish those special relationships not with everybody, with just a couple of people, who they learned to trust you and you trust them. So when you go to put something new through, you can call them up and you say like, Joe, what do you think if I try this? Will it really work and he's got enough trust in you? Or enough self competency? You know what, boss? I think that sucks. That won't work right? Or try doing this right? And I'll bet you scratch all good leaders that have their Joe's out there that they can go to who will tell them the truth.
Eric Janssen
Yeah. So you kept in touch with the front lines. That's amazing. And then you said that when you were out there, you're looking for the one percenters? What were those?
Greig Clark
Well, unfortunately, there are the one percenters in terms of clients. That was what I was talking about is that, I said that reverse way 99% of the people you'll deal with the customers are really, really nice and really honest. They'll pay on time, they'll keep their end of the deal. There are those 1%, though, who want to get something for nothing, and they'll refuse to pay you until you do more work for them, and they're a real pain to deal with.
Eric Janssen
And the 1%, though, in your observations with the group, you said, you're looking to make little incremental improvements in the field, right. So what were those 1%? Like, what were the things that you were looking at that you could make 1% improvements?
Greig Clark
So yeah, that was what I referred to earlier, if you make 1% improvement a week, 15% a year. So for example, I would drop in on a job site. And I'd love to sort of pull up maybe a half a block away from the job site, and I wander over and watch them. I wasn't trying to catch somebody do something wrong, trying to catch someone doing right. Sometimes you would find them loafing around but if you could come up to when, let's say half a block and you sort of watch, and you watch somebody painting a window which is in your estimating center, this time you'd watch how we did it versus how we trained to do it. And quite often to see they had a different way of doing it, and it was faster. So you'd come up to and ask them to do another one, it's always a little bit nervous when you're watching them. So that would be catching people doing innovative things, things you hadn't thought of, going with a manager and watching how he or she spoke to the customer, how they how they close the customer, almost every time you pick up something new. And I would make a little note, put it in my expando file and take it home and then rewrite the manual in September. And if I could I put in the name of the person who gave that idea. So that the manual became a bit of a story.
Eric Janssen
That's neat. So capturing what people are already doing in the field. Literally writing it down, observing it, putting it in your file, and then that became the process. For the next year, that became part of the manual
Greig Clark
Continuous process improvement. I think it drove some of my managers crazy sometimes I remember one time, I didn't have a piece of paper. So I literally had to rip off the label on a pink hand, and write down the idea on the back. But it's just such a good idea. I didn't want to didn't want to lose it.
Eric Janssen
That's awesome. So then in terms of the measurements, aside from the guide, or the playbook that you put together. Did you have a name for it? Was there a name for the annual edition of the College Pro binder?
Greig Clark
It was just called pro manual. The other name could have been the Bible. But that was a bit too much.
Eric Janssen
So the College Pro guide, the guide book, what other things did you put in place to make sure that that was being followed? Like what systems or habits did you put in place to make sure that this was going to be done properly?
Greig Clark
Well, I've always hugely believed in that phrase I got from somebody, it can't manage what you can't measure. So I tried to put in measures for everything we had an excellent measures for the sales as we've discussed, sales is one thing that can be very much measured, not just the outcome, did you land the sale, but all the KPIs and indicators that lead up to that, so we measured the heck out of that. But the other challenging thing was to measure production, and you had to measure quality. The quality of really all the value propositions, are we living our value promises with the manager? we had one way of doing that, living with the customer, are you living with the painter? So we put in different ways, sometimes surveys, sometimes thoughts off things like we would have, I would have as I travel across the country, I would have things called franchisee advisory councils, where some of them have a town hall meeting basically, painter advisory councils, and I'd meet with customers. So it's always that constant radar sweep, both sometimes with quantitative measures, like surveys, and also qualitative measures, like in person meetings, to try and find out how to improve.
Eric Janssen
So you collected the figured of the data that was most important. You had your KPIs. And then how regularly did you review that data?
Greig Clark
Well, for sales it was, and it was every week, I think as if, as we've gotten into things like internet and social media, probably it's every day from them, some of them now,
Eric Janssen
And pros and cons of measuring that every week?
Greig Clark
Well, I find the week is a very good cadence for most business measures, because then you sit down on Sunday and you plan your next week, how can we do better? And if you let it go too much longer than that a problem can start to feel insurmountable, and you can't, especially when it's a 20 week, summer write for the College Pro is very, very tight. If you're behind by the end of June, you're in trouble. The other reason that we measured and published it, so that all their peers could see, on the one hand, it's spurred competition, which can be a good thing. It also inspired sharing, they would see that somebody else not too far away from the geographically had a very high closing ratio. So they would get in touch with them. There were lots of events where managers got together and had drinks or whatever and shared stories. And you'll see those two guy they're gonna go sort of start chatting over well, how do you do that? And then they're picking up stuff, often this stuff that's already in the manual, but it hasn't clicked for them. But when a manual tells you one thing, it's fine. When the boss tells you one thing, it's okay. But when a peer tells you that you go, huh, and when you see it's working that's always better feedback.
Eric Janssen
That's working, I see someone else doing it. This means that I will make more money or more time or whatever, so I'll to start using it. Something that stood out to my wife is a College Pro Alumni has amazing things to say about our experience there. Something that stood out from her days there, that I've adopted in some of my own businesses, the opportunity to make customers really happy. And so you'll have to correct me if this is not the right way that you did it, but it was something like every single customer when you were done, you would ask them on a scale from one to 10 how did I do? Anything less than a 10 was a fail, that it was how do I make it right, and in some cases that meant literally, you know, some things would come up that customers wouldn't normally share. So he'd say you know, you did an amazing job. He delivered on a promise but couple of the crew stepped on my wife flowers in the back. So she's a little upset about that. So she'd run to the flower shop, bring them new flowers, plant all new flowers in that garden bed. And those people became really, really happy.
Greig Clark
Your wife sounds over the top stellar.
Eric Janssen
Okay, that wasn't in the playbook?
Greig Clark
Well, it was but I also gotta watch it, right? Because I would say in our training sessions, that the customer is not always right, the contract is what's right. That's the deal, you stick to the deal, because there's some costumers will ask you to do stuff above and beyond. So don't think that because you know, cause for as a reputation going above and beyond that, you have to do that. If you do it for your own free choice, as your wife seemed to do, great. And if you did damage the flowers, and that's because in our thing, which he will leave your house where we found it, so that's fine. I think it's just dangerous when people get this feeling that no matter what the customer asks, especially when you're a 17, 18-year-old student, you think well whatever they say is right, that's not true. What is it? That's a deal, you stick to the deal, and you deliver to absolute best your ability. And then by the way, they're expected to keep that part of the deal, which is to pay you. But, you right. We called the business reply card, and we asked people to fill it out, and send it in. And we did also find, that I think the thing you may be saying there, is that when people did rate us down more low, and we did call them back and/or they made an actual formal complaint. If we got jumped on that and handled it well, because we should have because what we had done was not part of the deal. We got higher end ratings from those customers and customers, everything went smoothly, because they're just not used to that in the service business.
Eric Janssen
Yeah. So going above and beyond, you'd often get better raving fans, people that are actually going to tell a story about. Yeah, that's great. So you touched on it, a little bit, but I want to revisit it. So what ended up happening with College Pro,
Greig Clark
I sold it in 1989. I would say the the main reason reflecting back on it was that, you know, we talked about the growth curve, when we expanded, you know, first across Canada and the start expand across United States. And I would find that as I went to a new area, I was really just repeating what I'd done the time before, but which was fine, which is good. But nothing's quite as exciting as your first time, you go to that door, and knock on the door. It wasn't as much squeaky toys anymore. The second thing that was happening is, I'm now 37-years-old, I'm going to manage weekends, which were a key parts of our culture. And I'm 37, I've got a wife and four kids. And these managers are still 20 years old. And they have much different thoughts on their mind is what makes for a fun weekend. And I just felt that gap growing. So I felt it was time to move on and try something else. But it was very hard to leave it because it had been in my blood for a while since I was 17.
Eric Janssen
Do you think there's opportunities for businesses like this nowadays, to leverage, you know, students who want to be entrepreneurs to create student businesses?
Greig Clark
Well, it's interesting, because three or four people in your class came up to me afterwards, and told me some of the ideas they're working on, and some of them involve students. So I think the answer is absolutely, yes. I think that the products will be significantly different. I think there'll be some of those classic kind of service things, but so many more of them have to do with some of the technical services, that can be can be done, and students are in the right place to do that. So I believe so, yes. But I think that the providing of physical services will probably be less.
Eric Janssen
Last few things I want to touch on before we wrap up. We were speaking about habits earlier, and setting priorities. And it occurred to me that in our conversations, you do that really well. You have your own process for figuring out what's important and then putting time against those things. Would you mind sharing, like what do you do? How do you evaluate or decide what's important? And then how do you actually act on those?
Greig Clark
Glad to share that I will also say that I did attend the last part of your class and your whole lecture on that was superb. I guess I think it's super because mine similar. But I have developed a habit of I do set annual goals, a classic year's resolution, but I do them, I have sort of three main I call them the three P's of my life, what number one is people and number two is my profession. And number three is personal development. And there's sort of subsets on each one of those, I won't go through those, but I set sort of a year and where I'm at and all those things. What do I want to do over the year, but I always find those yearly targets are they're so far away and any week to week, you know, okay, I got next week to do it. The cut the real thing that makes it work, as you pointed out in the class today is what are you going to do next week. So every Sunday, ideally, I sit down and I would set out what I'm going to try to get done this week to move that goal, which move the yardsticks a little bit, maybe even just one of the goals. And I do, you know, sort of track daily on the on the top theme, it sounds all sort of mechanistic, and boy, it's all sort of organized and programmed. And there's a little bit of the habit beneath that. But at the end of the day, what you want that habit to do is to change your behavior in a way that moves you towards a goal that matters to you. I love that that formula that you put up today, it was priorities plus habits equals success. And I think that's a very good formula.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, I think trying to figure out what those priorities are is challenging, you know, even for me, from time to time, how did you get down to those three
Greig Clark
So the three peas are in the buckets, right? They aren't the priorities of what you said underneath them. I guess you used, you had a wheel with seven things on it. And I've looked at all those kinds of things. And over the time, I've just known that simplicity is better. I can three, as you know, some speakers say as the magic number, I like that I can keep three things in my mind. If you can't think about your priorities, when you're driving your car down the highway, there are priorities, because because there's too many of them. So that gives me three buckets. And then each one I have sort of three sort of subsets. So it sort of sort of works. But you're absolutely right, your priorities, the buckets will probably say the same, but your priorities in each one will change, certainly year by year. And so it makes you doing this sort of annual check in. So okay, what is important under people to me, this year, obviously, the year you get married, the wife of a guy goes right to the top of the list there, because it's the person who spend the most time with and have the most impact on your happiness when kids come along, same thing. And I have six kids. So there's a lot of prioritizing happens there.
Eric Janssen
And maybe as a transition to what you're working on now. What are your priorities nowadays? What are you up to be focused on,
Greig Clark
So priorities under people would be wife, you know, kids and friends. But under profession is now BifferKit has for about 15 years, I have the for profit side, and the not for profit side. On the for profit side, I have six entrepreneurial companies with whom I do advisory services, and generally the role I'm doing is set up set up for them and advisory board and I usually chair the board. And I meet on the months in between with the CEO. So and really, if you put an umbrella over the whole thing, the real goal is to help them set their strategic goals, and then hit them, easy words to say. But as you know, ridiculously hard to do, because the day I've just said this Dziedzic plan as Peter Drucker said it's out of date. So as he said, and I agree with him totally, business plans are useless. But business planning is essential. But what makes business make it work is the follow up. And that's what I see the role of the board is to help them follow up on what they said they were going to do, the philanthropic side, which is hugely rewarding as I tried to say to your class today, at this stage in my life, you take all those skills that you've learned and continue to learn, as I learned in your class today, take all those skills that you're been blessed with and worked on, and you're turning towards things which will help improve that, you know, that classic line what I call, I leave the world a little better, you know, because I lived. And I'm trying to take all those skills that I've that I've brought into to help some organizations that most of the areas I worked on has been trying to help break the cycle of poverty. Because if society does not maximize its value, if it doesn't get the value of all its citizens. I mean, the classic case was for years, women weren't able to contribute to society. So that increased our society by 50%. When that came in, there's also but 20% of people are in poverty, if they can get a better crack in the beginning of their potential that will raise the whole society and then themselves. And so that's where I've dedicated since I started working, when I sold my venture capital company in 2006. Since that time, I've probably spent like half my week in Philanthropic Ventures.
Eric Janssen
That's great. So this will eventually be listened to by 10s of 1000s of people. Is there anything that you want to end with today, or working on that people can help you with?
Greig Clark
Ah, good question. The biggest of Philanthropic Venture that I'm working on now is an organization called Trails for Youth. It's just north of Toronto, and I love it because just to give you a little background, I was chairman of the Christian Resource Center downtown Toronto for years, which works with people who are in poverty and is really just trying to help make their life a little better. But you're not really going to break the cycle there. My daughter Tara does a tremendous job with an organization called Building Up, which is helping people who have run into real problems either addiction problems, criminal problems, mental health problems, but they're in the sort of 20s to 40s they want to turn their life around and help them get and keep a job which is fantastic work. I tried it that CRC, was not successful. Trails is working with kids 12 to 16 from some of the difficulty areas of trial and helping them, by taking them out to the site, and they're still avail for one week and a month, and then two weeks in the summer, to help them develop the skills and confidence to become, you know, contributing members to society. So that, to me is very rewarding work because it helps break that cycle, right, the very beginning. And it's a fantastic organization, and they've had 500 graduates, and all of whom have become contributing members of society, and about 70% go on to university. So that's very rewarding work. So anyone who is attracted to that kind of work, give me a call.
Eric Janssen
That's amazing. Well, Greig, I think you've been incredibly generous with your time visiting my class and being on the podcast. And, you know, at the surface, it seemed like your legacy was going to be College Pro, you know, employing 1000s of students over time and really giving them a foundation that can allow them to go on and be very successful in business. But I'm seeing that there's a whole different layer, you know, this is like the second or third chapter of your life and it feels like your legacy might actually be not College Pro, it might be something on the, on the nonprofit, on the charity or on the giving backs.
Greig Clark
Well, take it I'm enjoying that and I enjoyed being here today because it was learning for me too. One of the most satisfying things to me to this day is well, like hearing the story of your wife when a College Pro manager, a College Pro painter comes to me and said, I learned a lot from that, if you want to go wild and crazy helped transform my life because transforming lives is changing lives. Helping lives, help people improve their lives, where it's all about the College Pro was a big way to doing it in the for profit world, Venture Capital is a good way to doing in also in the for profit world. Philanthropy, and I've met a number of the trails graduates, when you see them, and see how they've transformed their lives, and you've had a tiny bit to do with that. That's got to be the most gratifying thing as, I did refer to the Clayton Christensen YouTube clip from Harvard Business Review. And he does say at the end of the life, at the end of the day, it won't be you high acclaimed organization, how much money you made those those are fine, but it will be how many lives you touched and improved. It will be what really feels good and so I liked watching that video because I agree.
Eric Janssen
Yeah. And you've got a group of at least the alumni that I know, the two or three people in my wife's court when she did college pro attribute a lot of where they're at today to the experience. They have the College Pro,
Greig Clark
That feels good.
Eric Johnson
Thank you for coming, Appreciate it.
Introduction/Outro
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