The Ben Mulroney Show - New Segment -- Million Dollar Advice!

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

GUEST: Michael Hyatt/Entrepreneur and Business Analyst If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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entrepreneurs, we want to help entrepreneurs. And so we've brought somebody with a far bigger brain than me to help you, the small business owner, navigate the questions that you might have about the headwinds that you're facing, the challenges that you have, the opportunities that might be in front of you. So give us a call at 416-870-6400 or 1-8-2-2-2-2-2. 25 talking and also text at 416 870-6400 and I am very pleased to be joined now by our latest guest and he is uh well tell tell us Michael about your Michael Hyatt tell us about your your business yeah I'm listen I'm a I'm a serial entrepreneur

and investor I started and sold a number of companies and I also invest in a lot of companies so I spend my time with buddy young entrepreneurs and them building companies and me giving them advice and hopefully it's the right advice. And what was your, what was like the beginning of this journey for you? Were you a small business owner? I was. I started a software company in the 90s and then again in the 2000s and we built those to be very large companies and we sold them.

We were very fortunate. But I started from nothing and worked my way up and I'm a 20 year overnight success. Yeah. So entrepreneurs are one of, like they go two paths, right? They're either serial entrepreneurs or they get out of the game and they help the next generation. It's definitely harder to stop than it is. start. Yeah. I've noticed that. I've got friends who just can't stop. Yeah, you get sucked back in. You stop and then you can only lie on the beach for maybe two weeks. And it was like, well, you've done

so well, why don't you just take a vacation? Well, I did that and then when I'm like, want to do something. Yeah, I've got friends who they don't even want to be part of a company after, say, like the Series A investments. After that, it slows. It slows down. They want to be part of the beginning, the bootstrapping, the four people in a garage sort of thing. All the all the pivots and all the craziness. Yeah, it's very, it's a wild ride. All right, well, let's take our first, our first call. This is Miles Harrison.

Miles, welcome to the show. Glad to be here. Yeah. Thanks for having me. So tell us about your business. Yeah, so I'm Miles Harrison. I'm the founder and company principal of my independent boutique consulting practice and data and AI called Practichai, which is the Greek word for practicality.

and we help Canadian mid-market, small-mediam enterprises, optimize your business, whether it be with data analytics, understanding how their business works, or by applying AI or building AI product. All right. So at first blush, when you hear that pitch, that description, Michael, what do you think? Yeah, it's very on message for right now. So first off, everybody who comes out with a business today, nine out of ten of them are going to come at you with a, I'm the AI of.

Yeah. Right? A couple of years ago, it was I'm the Uber of. And then before that, it was I was the blockchain of. Right. Right. Now, AI is an incredible revolution. It's real. It's big. It's huge. It's changing everything. The interesting thing, and Miles, if I just want to hit this really, really quickly for you, if I'm sitting in a company, a medium company, large company, I don't sit around the board table and go, you know what? Somebody, somebody go get me a data AI consulting to make myself more efficient. It says nobody ever. People don't say that. I understand what your value proposition is, but it doesn't

resonate to be verticalized or specific enough to hit a budget. So every company needs to hit a budget and a line item on that budget. You're not competing against other AI companies. You're competing against everything that company has to spend that week. So instead of saying I'm a data AI consulting company, which sounds like with respect, you're like everyone else, get very, very specific and do one thing well and use it as a wedge to get into a company and then climb. So is that a messaging issue? It's a total messaging issue. He probably is better than than his messaging. So we don't have time to look at it,

but I bet you what he does and how he makes people more efficient is actually very good, right? But that's like saying, hey, trust me, we're just going to run up Mount Everest. But no, we've got to go to Base Camp 1 first because if we run up too fast, we die. We need to acclimate.

So what's Base Camp 1 for Miles? Miles is going to go in and make a pitch to do one very specific business thing, much better. He's going to give a demo, do something that's going to be profound and change people's budgets because people need you to solve problems for them

where they have a budgetary problem and they're getting bonked on the head by their boss for you to do something. So first of all, get away from being very generic, an AI data consulting company, because I guarantee if next year there's a AI bubble burst, you're going to run away from that word. So take AI out of that. Don't tell me about AI, because that's like saying, yes, I use Excel. I'm an accounting Excel company, right?

Because that's what we would have said in the 80s. I'm an Excel accounting company. I'm fluent in spreadsheets. I'm fluent in spreadsheets, right? So what? You have AI. Good for you because everybody does, and people use. large language models, that's okay. So now tell me what you do for me. Hi, we do this thing

really well. And listen, you're not huge. So just choose one thing you can do really well, solve it, and figure out who's the ideal client for you and rinse and repeat that. And once you've got your client, it's seven times easier to sell to a current client, then take on a new client. So then start to land and expand. Hey, it's really good what we've done in your county department. Hey, we can do this for your other department. They'll trust you and then you can expand. I think you probably are better than your messaging and you need to get specific and you need to burn down a problem. Miles, does any of that resonate with you? Yeah, it does. I mean, I've heard a lot of this feedback very often, but the business of consulting is fairly general. I mean, it's going to depend

on the client we actually work with. And I think part of working in consulting, which is a very high trust business, is developing a relationship with clients and then understanding, you know, what specific problems they actually have. Because I agree, like data and AI are just tools. We can apply them to help businesses operate more effectively. But the thing is that we don't specialize in a particular industry vertical or something like that. Yeah, but you're not E&Y, you're not an MMP, you're not a big firm that is allowed to come in and do that. So, hey, Miles, come on in, walk around my whole company, find a problem, and pick a seat and we'll just give you some money. That's not going to happen.

So you have to take a different door. Your door has to be high. Right now, we're going to solve this one problem for you to get a foot in the door. Once you have five clients foot in the door, then expand. eventually you could be more generic like you wanting to be but you don't have the right you haven't earned the right

like an Accenture to come on in and spread your legs your wings around a company right so you've got to figure out a better way to enter a company and it cannot be generic Miles how big is your company right now we have six people

okay and how long you've been in business we are very new I'm a new entrepreneur what did you do before this I mean I come from consulting it's the business I know I worked at Accenture PWC I worked in the agency I worked in the agency world for many years. And I started freelancing. And then we started the company last year in the winter and formally kind of started operating in January. So what did you want to do with

your company that you couldn't do at those other companies? Well, for me, like people talk a lot about the different dimensions that make job satisfaction. And for one that, for me, that I found at large consulting firms, which I see as being in opposition to, is authenticity, an actual meaning in the work and then also autonomy, right? So the way we're kind of differentiating ourselves is kind of more white glove. We're a small company. We care about the relationship. You're Jerry McGuire. You're fewer clients less money. Yeah, exactly. Let's go with that. Listen, what happens when you work at Accenture and you knock on a door, you know what they do? They take your call, right? There's this old saying in technology, which is no one gets fired for buying IBM, right? They'll take the call, right? Once you're

away from that brand, which you know uniquely even better than me, me, it's harder to get someone to pick up that call. So all I'm saying is that I bet what you do is fine and it's right. And I bet you it's better price and I think it's probably more efficient and you're good at it. What I'm saying is that you need to find a way to enter a company which is a little more, um, you know, cloak and dagger for something very specific because if you can get them to give you any revenue somewhere, I bet you can expand. Think about the concept. Miles, what are some of the headwinds you're facing? What are some of the challenges of starting a business in 2025?

Yeah, so, I mean, a headwind of challenge for starting any business is scaling. Obviously, we are also bootstrapping. I'm not seeking any kind of investment to help fund this endeavor. So obviously bootstrapping and running incredibly lean is a significant challenge. I think also just now, I'm not sure

if either people will disagree with me, but it's never a good time to start a business or get into a relationship, but this is an especially difficult time in Canada with the economy, I think. And, you know, obviously, the better your value proposition, the easier it is to do business. But it's a very tough time, as everyone knows. Lots of organizations are pulling back funding for a lot of things or even doing layoffs, which makes it tough.

Right. But some of the best companies ever, including Shopify, we started in a recession. And some of the best companies start in a recession because they're forced to exactly what you're pinpointing is to be laser specific on value and there's no kind of free ride there's no free money right so you're going to have to be laser good at what you do and by the way i love the bootstrapping because most entrepreneurs give away 40 50 60 percent of the company in the first series in the beginning and then they don't get anywhere so you know think about the feedback we've given you yeah thank you very much miles we appreciate the company's called practica i good luck my friend

all right we're going to take a break but more with michael hyatt taking your questions on to adapt in this challenging time for business. Don't go anywhere. The Ben Mulroney show continues. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've been following the news, like really following it, you know how exhausting it can be. Politics, conflict, uncertainty. It's a lot to carry.

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today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, help.com slash Mulruni. It's the matcha or the three ensemble Cadocephora of the FACET that I just need to denishe who energize? Mm, it's the ensemble.

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on link on C4C or a magazine. Welcome back to the BenMoll Rooney Show and welcome back to Michael Hyatt

he is currently a senior advisor at North Leaf Capital Partners one of Canada's largest private equity

firms. He knows what he's talking about when it comes to small business. He wants to help you,

he wants to hear your issues, your concerns, your questions and let's go to who do we have we've got mark mark welcome to the ben mulrooney show thanks so much for calling it hi how you doing good so you you are currently you don't have a business yet no i don't but i'm constantly think of you know i'd love to start my own business however what i struggle with is where's the growth in canada what's actually in demand you know i look around in my neighborhood what i see are significant duplications of pretty much everything what's

that unique idea or that problem in the marketplace that needs to be solved. Well, that's a good question. Occasionally you come across a really unique business or something that fault. Like what? Give me an example of a business that you said, wow, I can't believe this didn't exist. Yeah. So one would be that I came across recently was the whole body MRIs. I believe they operate at a Mississauga.

That, you know, solves a really significant need. We have. We have people that are in line for MRIs for, you know, three to six months and long. and someone, you know, solved that problem. So I continue thinking, you know, they always say the rule of business is be the first, be the first. Right, what, first mover advantage? Is that, Michael, is that a thing?

Is that like tried and true, absolutely first mover advantage is a thing? He says Facebook, they weren't the first. My space, right? So, I mean, yes and no, generally no, what we know it's best to execution is the winner. And look, let's back up for a second. People would come in, and I did a couple years in the Dragons Dan, people come down those stairs, walk into it, and then say, I've spent my whole life inventing

this new type of shovel and this is this. And what they do, they invent something and they run around the room trying to find the problem. Yeah. And what is amazing about people is they'll spend their money, their kids, you know, education money, their retirement money, because they have a gut, they have a feel that that shovel is going to be amazing or whatever it is, right? At the end of the day, at the end of the day, the winners did something very different and you're kind of alluding to it is they fall in love with the problem. first. Okay, so let's take Uber. When Travis got that company going, he took one Blackberry, gave it to one, because he couldn't get a ride. So he came back from Paris. He went to where he

was in San Francisco and he gave it to one limo driver. And then what was happening is his friends would text him and say, hey, you know that limo driver you have that Blackberry? Can I use him tonight? Can I use him? And people are asking him, demand was coming. So not only do you have to like fall in love with the problem, but you have to have demand coming to you or you're wrong. And demand is everything. Demand needs to outstrip your ability to actually execute if you have something that's going to be correct. And then the best companies start and then they pivot, pivot, pivot, the Facebook became Facebook. By the way, does anybody know YouTube? But what was YouTube in 2003? I can't remember. A video dating site. What? And then they loaded up

and uh yeah yeah yeah and it was pivoted right and then it loads they loaded up this one weird video and it went viral and that wasn't even the thing what's viral yeah everybody watched it it was some weird dog or something like that whatever it was but the thing was it pivoted all great business pivot so you start and you pivot pivot pivot pivot pivot until you hit the demand curve so you fall in love with a problem solve it for yourself and get and launch and and and a finished product's a dead product and you pivot pivot pivot until you hit gold and that is probably the most likely way to do a company I also want to comment on something else here about starting a business. Again, we romanticize entrepreneurship.

We tell everybody, start a business, whatever. It's never been cheaper to start a business. It's never been cheaper to fail. That's fine. You can open up on Shopify. You can do amazing things. At the end of the day, you've got to be, you've got to strap on for this because it can be very punishing to your personal life to start a business. You've got to be prepared for a very long hallway with not light necessarily in the tunnel.

Well, Mark, I want to thank you for the call. I wish you the very best, my friend. Thank you. All right, the next one is Andy Braithwaite, and he's got a company called Braithwaite Drilling Services. Where is Andy? Is he calling in? We have him? Is he on?

Do we have him? Is he line two? All right. Andy, you there? Yes, I am. Well, thank you for your patience. We appreciate it. Drill, baby, drill.

Yeah, tell us about your business. Okay. Well, my business is actually since 92. But I invented a tool over COVID that I have patents on, and I created this tool. And it was like your Mike said, is that you fix a problem. And it was a problem that we have with pipe, aging gas infrastructure and water infrastructure like lead pipe. So we have a way of pulling it without digging a trench and pulling a new service in. So we created this tool, like I said, during the COVID times,

I had some downtime in working because we're contractors. And I got patent, both a method and apparatus patent. But I was looking for support from the Canadian government because we just came back from a utility show in Kentucky a week ago and have all kinds of offers on, you know, help us manufacture in the U.S. and blah, blah, blah. They're willing to throw money at me to get that to go. But I'd like to, my sons are running a lot of the company now

and I want to keep the business in Canada. But I'll give you an example. We tried to get shred money, which is money for research and development that the government's supposed to support you. And we went through a painstaking process for about seven, eight months to deliver all of the paperwork

that they wanted to give us some tax credit, and then they refused us. At the end of the day, they said, no, and the company that we hired to do that shred program said that this was a short put. Shouldn't have even been a question. So what is exactly the issue here? Is it, are you been selling?

How old is the patent? Like, what is actually going on with the business today? The patent's brand new. We did a pilot project with, I'll leave the name out of it, but it's North America's largest gas company. So we did a pilot project with them, and it was successful, hugely successful. They're wanting to buy units from me. And I'm more than willing to sell. We're manufacturing.

We got to tighten it up, my friend. Let's get to the question. So your issue is you need capital, yes? Yes, yes. To make it as big as it needs to be, because we're talking billion-dollar, multi-billion-dollar opportunities in the U.S. market. But currently, to shift something into the U.S.,

you have to have all these, anyways. Yeah, I don't think you have to shift something to the U.S. at all. I just think that you probably need someone, an angel, something to believe in you to get it going. Your job solely as an entrepreneur is one thing, is to de-risk the deal. you de-risk the deal by landing a client by landing revenue to showing you have a purchase order

maybe is that company willing to buy it from you can you then factor that purchase order can you get payment up front can you get an investor if you can that will de-risk the deal and get you some money at front my big advice is relatively stay away from the government when you keep mentioning governments that's not your thing

great companies don't need governments at your level of what you're trying to do you should be able to get some money and get going but you really really need to show that the dogs eat the dog food the people drink the champagne and what What that means is that you have some customers and then you can get funded. Andy, thank you very much. Good luck to you.

And let's finish up with Max. Max, thanks so much for being patient waiting. You've got a company called Dog House Golf? That's correct. Yeah, you play too much golf. You end up in the dog house. So we've got home here with us. We only have about a minute and a half left.

So tell us about the business and then we're going to get the advice. Gotcha. I think it's short and quick. So we're a golf equipment business. So we sell new clubs, repair old ones, refinish, refurbish, customization, personalization, anything to do with golf clubs, we can do it for you. My biggest issue that I'm finding is that a lot of our customers are one-time customers. They repair their club once.

They buy big clubs once. They get the clubs personalized once, and then we don't really see them again. So consistency in cash flow and income and capital is an issue. And the second big thing is just a team to try and support that. It's really hard to find trained specialty people. And then when you do, it's really hard to find ones that are committed to growing a business. and sometimes making small little sacrifices to help get to an end goal, right? So that's where I'm finding my biggest issues are.

Yeah, like, either your market's not large enough because you should have enough one timers to keep your going, keep sustained, or you need to buy, you know, sell some fries with the Coke, meaning that there's got to be something else you can sell alongside or a maintenance program. You can sell alongside of it because if you're selling, that's good. That's a great sign. The question is, is what else can you do alongside it and build adjacent to it and use this as one product line, right? So you're obviously doing something right. The question I have, and I'd have to spend more time on it, is this just 2-2 niche, niche, niche? Like, is this a thing?

Is this just such a subset of golf that it's not something that everybody does? And, you know, you have to think very carefully about how big your market is and what else can you do alongside it, right? Max, thank you so much, my friend. We appreciate it. And Michael, really appreciate it. We hope you'll come back sometime because I will come back. This was really, really valuable for everybody. As a matter of fact, we got so many calls.

We want to do this again someday. So thank you. We really appreciate it. And we'll have you back on the show soon. I run to the chaos, and Survivor is chaos. As a mother of a four-year-old, this is vacation. Canada's number one reality show is back. This is when Survivor turns into a horror movie.

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