Zvi Shapiro

The full conversation with Zvi Shapiro, transcribed. Lightly formatted for reading.

What skill would you say that is for an entrepreneur to have? What would you call that? Don't panic. Gotta try to stay as calm as you can, because if you're calm, you can think properly.

If you're emotional and you're emotional wreck, your thought process— don't be scared to fail, you know. Failing is part of learning, you know. And the, uh, the diehards get up from it. It's lick your wounds, get over it as quickly as you can.

They emphasize too much on the failure. Analyze it, look at it, really try hard not to repeat it. And I think the ones that succeed get over it. We worn things far longer than we should.

You know, people dwell on things. I don't know, we like to dwell on the negative. And you know, I'd like to be as positive— it's a glass half full, half empty. You know, I get it, it hurts.

Cry over it, get it out of your— the faster you can get it out of your system and get back on the horse, the better it'll be. You can make this long and painful, you can make it short. There is emotion, I get it, but sometimes it's drawn on a little bit much longer than it needs to be. Just do it.

Just do it and go back and do it and do it again. It might take many times. There's no guarantee, but don't give up. Yeah.

Well, for those who don't know who you are, please introduce yourself. My name is Svee Shapiro. I've been an entrepreneur for— from day one. I'm the proud owner of New Look Office Solutions and a— another company called Supreme Paper Products.

That's a holding company for me that's involved in real estate that we got involved with. Um, just an average hardworking guy. Well, New Look has been around for about over 20 years now. 2000, started it in 2000 from a bedroom in my house.

Yeah, bedroom in my house. And we grew over the years. We were fortunate enough to have growth, which is nice, from starting a business with the unknown to evolve to now We occupy half of a 35,000-square-foot building that I own. Yeah.

But how did you get started with New Look? Were you— was that your first business? No, I, I was washing cars. I was— I did the— I, uh, on my own, I started probably my first business with a friend of mine was washing cars.

Okay. Washing cars. How old were you? I didn't have a driver's license.

I was probably 14 years old, maybe 14, 15, washing cars. And then it evolved to washing cars at a garment factory at a place called Howick Apparel. And then I was doing that on my own. And then with the same good friend of mine that we grew up together, we started an air conditioning business, a window air conditioning business called Be Cool Air Conditioning.

We did that for— through— oh boy, we did that through CEGEP. Through CEGEP, I think it was through CEGEP we did that. And maybe it might have been even during high school, the end of high school, and then going into CEGEP, we were servicing window air conditioners and, uh, If Montreal had warmth all year round, probably I probably would have been doing that business. I probably would have developed that business more.

And then I got involved in surplus office supplies and then I was doing that on my own. And then the market changed with free trade and I wasn't able to bring in this surplus office supplies anymore the way we're bringing it in into, into Canada. So I ended up, I ended up venturing off and going into joining my future— it was my father-in-law at that point. I just got married.

I just got married and I was out of a job. Okay. Yeah, it was an interesting start to a marriage. I didn't have a job, lost my— I had to close the business.

It was a rough start. It was a rough start. And I had a choice: join my brother-in-law who was doing, uh, who did very well on internet, and the internet was just starting. Okay.

And going that route. But I didn't— I didn't like electronics. I didn't like— I don't know, that part worried me. I grew up in furniture.

My dad, uh, we had— my father had a reupholstery business. He designed home furniture, and I grew up around furniture my father-in-law was doing furniture, office furniture, and I said, you know what, I'll give it a shot. Furniture. What do I got to lose?

Furniture it is. This way or that way. And I chose to go the furniture route and worked with him for about 7 years. And then I wanted to have ownership.

I was working with him as just a salesperson from there, and I want to have ownership, and we couldn't seem to come to any agreement on that. So I chose to leave and give it a shot on my own with a mortgage, 2 little kids, 2 little kids, a wife at home not working. And starting a business from point zero. Actually, it was probably less than zero.

Yeah, yeah, it is an interesting start. Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting start. And I said, so would you say that it's your, your dad that kind of instilled that desire in you to be an entrepreneur at a very young age? Yeah, yeah, he always wanted me to work for myself.

It was always something he always said, you know what, don't— he, he worked for himself for a bit but worked with somebody, had an opportunity to leave, and he was dedicated. And he always wanted that independence, but he loyal. He was loyal to the people he was working for and chose them over himself. And he had the ability to do it.

It was just— but you said, no, no, no, I'm not doing it. And he said, and he said to me, he goes, don't do what I did. Don't do— you can do it, you can do it. No, I can't.

You know, it was— you have those battles with yourself trying to, you know, to do something. And it always stuck in me. And it was like, if I didn't do it, I'd feel like I'd be disappointing him if I didn't do it. And that was probably a bit of a fire in the drive to, uh, to get me to do it.

But I always had the thing— I, I was— I had to do things on my own. I Everything I do, it's like, uh, it's like I got to do it. I, I'll do it on my own. So eventually, after you started, let's say, I don't know, a few years now, you have two babies, the business going a little bit, or what were some of the challenges you had to face right away?

Oh my God, everything, everything, everything. Office furniture is a large commodity, and, uh, I had a good client base. I had some big clients like Air Transat, that was my largest client. Yeah.

And they stuck with me, which was amazing. But as anything anything else, you have to have receivables, you have to have pay— you've got receivables, payables, you need a considerable amount of money, which is something I didn't have. And I wasn't even sure how I did it for the first year. And I guess they, they knew I could perform and sell, and they backed me.

They backed me, they gave me some credit that I needed, and I was able to have the cash flow going. Yes, exactly. Because enough to get it going, because there's— that's something when people start businesses, they don't analyze enough of the amount of money that they need. Most businesses fail not because it's not a good idea, it's because they run out of cash.

And that's a problem. That's a problem. And the amount of cash that you need for your own personal survival plus the business's survival is very much, I think, grossly underestimated in a lot of cases. What's your advice on that for people that are starting?

They want to make— they want to start their own. I would say, and you know, it's a turnoff to a lot of people because it even adds that much more pressure, you know. And you know, what's the right answer in that one? I, I would say minimum you need 6 months of your own personal survival money.

The right answer is probably a year. Nobody's going to accumulate that, or it's very hard to accumulate that, or be on, you know, good footing to get to go forward. And you're going to feel it as you, as you go forward and you need money. Everybody gets paid first.

That's the reality. That is the— you, you know, people, people think owning a business is all the, you know, they see people, fancy cars, a nice house, and it just doesn't come naturally. It's It's, it's from— it's sacrifice. It's work.

It's, it's a lot. And a lot of people, I think they want it. Do they have the ability? Exactly.

Do they have what it takes? And that's survival. I call it survival of the fittest. And the people that are able to really, you know what, live without sacrifice, sacrifice to eventually, hopefully you get there.

And there's no guarantee. There's absolutely no guarantee. Because you could make all the sacrifices. It doesn't turn out.

And it just doesn't work. It just— and it might just be a bad idea. Yes, there's that too. There's people that fall in love with their own product or service of what they're selling, and there just might not be a market for it.

And that's a reality. And, you know, and you could try and try and, you know, you'll get burnt out, get depressed, everything. Everything's thrown at you. It's really, it's all at once because not only you have to know the accounting because you just started the business and inventory in your case is a big part of it as well.

In my case, it became later on inventory on the used used market from that part. On the new market, it was everything to order. Okay. So there was nothing really— whatever anybody needed, you ordered it and then you ship it.

So that makes it that much easier. Well, it's a different way to manage, a different way to manage that versus having inventory and selling from inventory. That's even more expensive. Yes, it is.

That's even more expensive from there. Cash eats up fast. Nothing is, you know, you could look at it on a graph, you could put your numbers together, you could do your best guesstimates. Reality sets in.

But I believe part of survival for it, if you have sales skills, if there's sale— if there's— what's the word I'm looking for— where there's sales, if you have enough sales, you, you could weather a lot of storm. If there's no wind, there's no sail. I think that's what I was trying— if there's no wind, there's no sail, and the wind is you. And if you don't have sales, or sales stop, or you give up for a little bit, you're gonna feel it.

But if you continue to sell, you might even be selling and losing some money, but if you're you're making money and if you're selling enough, it has a way to correct itself. Whatever you screw up, for lack of a better— for whatever, whatever mistakes you make could be corrected if you're selling. If you're not selling, it stops. It's as simple as that.

I remember somebody said having that kind of skill to be able to sell to people, it's one of the greatest things that you could acquire because you'll never go hungry. You could sell anything. Yeah, exactly, exactly. It doesn't matter what they— it's, it's not— if you understand sales, it's not about the commodity.

The commodity It doesn't matter what it is. It's what you know and your knowledge or how you explain it that clients will believe in you and believe in the product. And hopefully, you know, I'm always one to sell with honesty, integrity, and that I'm trying to give the best value within a reasonable margin of profit. Some people just— they could sell you anything, but it might be garbage.

Yes, there's that too. Yeah, it might just actually be garbage. So, you know, there's a, there's a different— large difference I find between the two. And how long did it take you from— you said you started within— was it the basement, you said?

Where was it? It was in a bedroom, 100 square feet, 100 square feet. I love telling this story, but it's a— because I look at Amazon and I look at these other guys, the way they started, Microsoft, Amazon, you know, it was 100 square feet in a bedroom in my house. So how long did it take you to move out of the bedroom to be— It took me a year to move to the garage.

Oh, I moved to the garage. Okay, I expanded the house and I moved to the garage and I hired half an employee. Employee. Okay.

And they said, well, how could you hire half an employee? Well, it was my cousin and she only worked half time, so it was— you only work part-time, so it was half an employee. And then hiring the first employee was very stressful, unbelievably stressful. First employee, unbelievable how stressful that was.

It was— you didn't want to let go. What was it? You worry that you're not going to generate enough, like you're— again, you're in survival mode, right? It's survival mode.

And I was trying to run a business without overhead. So I said, this is going to be interesting. That was my goal— no overhead. And I should do okay because the first thing is I'm worried about feeding my family, feeding my kids, paying a mortgage, and, you know, everything else.

So your first worry is yourself. You hire somebody and now you're taking on another responsibility, and they have to get paid before you get paid. So will I generate enough to support that person? No matter what you're paying them, it's like, it's just an extra load on top of you.

So that first employee— hiring the first employee and firing the first employee, depending on your personality personality. You know, some people could do it, no problem. Wow. So wow, that's for you, it was hard?

Both. So having the tough— very difficult. Very, very— the first hire, the first fire. So very difficult to do.

Who fired the person for you then? Uh, well, it eventually it had to be me. The first time around it had to be me. Yeah.

Did that take a long time? Oh yeah, I should have fired a ridiculous amount of time. Oh no, it was ridiculous. It was— I couldn't do it.

A friend of mine wanted to do it. Let me do it. I've done it many times. It's no problem.

I could do it. I could do it right now if you want. I can walk over there and fire the person. Don't worry about it.

Don't worry about it. Sit over here. I'll be that. It'll be done like, like that.

I go, no, I have to do it. I have to. It took me, Kathy, it took me forever. It cost me a lot of money.

It took me forever. I understand how it took me forever. And then the way I did it might not have been the best way too. So I ended up with the norme de travail.

But that was— oh no. Yeah, yeah, it even got worse. But it was a great experience, I must say. It was a well— it was a It was a really good experience, so I don't recommend it.

I don't recommend it the way I might have done. It was really good. So I'm guessing today it's more therapeutic than anything else. It's definitely more therapeutic.

But now you learned your lesson. Oh yes, very much so. Yes. Who fired the second person?

Um, it was me. It was me. Was it better? Much easier.

Oh yeah, much, much easier. Next time around was much, much easier from there. But again, depending on the type of person, the circumstance of what was, what was going on at the time. And you know, I'm patient and I'll give people a chance, but at a certain point you get pushed to a limit.

And then I was able to, then it was no problem after that. I'm sure that was like, it was like kind of like, you know, getting into your first fight or something. You know, after that, you know what it's like to take a punch or give a punch. It's a little bit easier.

But you know, it was, yeah, it was definitely easier the second time. But fortunately I don't have to deal with it. Like we don't have these issues. We don't have these issues.

So it's all good. Yeah. So now from the basement, how long did it take after like you moved out? How long did it take you to have, uh, to get to an actual office.

Well, I was, uh, I hired that first employee. The half employee stayed. Um, at that point, uh, I wanted to buy my wife a different house and I wanted to stay in the house and she didn't want anybody from the office. And I had my own entrance at the house and everything, and it was all pretty good.

It was all pretty well set up except I still have to use the bathroom inside the house and she didn't like anybody going into the house. So she said, you have to move away from home. It's time for you to grow grow up and move away from home. And I go, but I don't want to leave, it's comfortable.

I would have been in a business center if there's actually business centers around at the time, but yes, around 2002 that didn't exist. 5 employees and me. I shared his office with him and he was manufacturing kitchens in the back and I had the front of the office. So that took about 3 years.

I guess that was about— I was in my house for 3 years. Yeah, I'm trying to see like where you were and where you're at today, like the amount of time, the amount of time that it took. In 23 years, we moved from the, from the bedroom to the garage to Hymas to the front of the office to Cote d'Ilias to the back of a building where I had the biggest sign on Cote d'Ilias but the smallest space in the building, to Darnley, Darnley 1, Darnley 2, a small place on Darnley, a big place on Darnley, and now to Morgan and Bader. So we went from 100 square feet to again, like now I have a building that's 35,000 square feet.

So it's pretty, pretty impressive, pretty good. And storage trailers and warehousing and staff. We have like a team of 8, 8 permanent plus expansion teams and everything. So it's been an interesting, yeah, growth journey.

Yes, it's definitely been— because a lot of people, they believe, you know, it's gonna, it's gonna happen overnight. You know, we have to have the— we must have the office right now, the big office is, you know, with the nice view. Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. The reality is a lot of— the reality is it's farming.

Yes, it's farming. It's exactly like farming. It's just cultivating, working, watering, digging. It's farming.

There's nothing— I mean, unless you got— you get lucky, you know. It's, it's almost, I guess, to refer to in today's age, it would be like, you know, something going viral. Yeah, you know how many people try why and how many things actually go viral. Well, yeah, somebody could have a great idea, or it could be, you know, something that works, but the percentage is very— a fraction.

It's a fraction. And you hear those stories because they're great stories, but you don't hear all the other stories of what goes on. And you know what works and doesn't. And you're never guaranteed, even when you think it works.

You know, if you give up— if you, if you give up, if you slow down and you take your foot off of the gas, sometimes it takes a while to to pick up the momentum. Yes. Yeah, it's a snowball. It's very, very much a snowball.

So in your case, you always go, go, go in order not to lose that momentum. The nature of my business, I don't have a choice because I don't sell a consumable. I sell something that is— that you have to keep looking. One, you have to take care of your existing clients.

Hopefully they're going to order some more furniture if their business grows. So I'm dependent on the growth of their businesses. Nobody's changing Nobody gets up in the morning and drives to work. And I realized that from advertising on radio and trying different markets at the time.

Didn't work. And I came to the conclusion that nobody's driving to work in the morning and saying, you know what, I'm going to change everybody's chairs this morning. I'm going to redo my office. I just feel like spending this crazy amount of money and I'm just going to redo my office and turn it upside down.

It just doesn't happen that way. And then eventually you realize, you know, there's a process, people. A knee-jerk reaction. That happens in my industry.

But we have to keep hunting all the time, all the time. We have to keep looking for new business. I can't rely on a customer base. Contacts, contacts that have built up over the 23 years, and people, uh, old customers that come back that might be moving, commercial real estate agents that have a new file or a client looking for something.

Pretty much how it exists in, in my world. There's nothing I can fall back on at any time. You always got to keep thinking about where, you know, because you're going to— you also use social media, especially LinkedIn, a lot. Yeah, I try to keep out there as much as I can on LinkedIn, any presence.

Um, I used to be more active with networking. I've been fortunate that, you know, I have clients and people, I guess, from doing it for so long that people know me. And I get these calls that come in. Thank God I get these calls that come in.

But I've got other, you know, other people that work for me that are in sales. And, you know, some I pass on to them, some we've cultivated different markets and specialized. One was private schools. Schools.

Okay. And we've have a great account manager that's been cultivating that for 5, 6 years. That's good. And building up a repertoire with private schools all through the province of Quebec.

That's so— that's been— that was our savior actually during COVID You know, that's a whole other story, surviving COVID in the office furniture industry. Yes. That's like, people have go, how did you— like, you know, that's— yeah, that was— talk about, talk about Andre. That's, that's a, that, that's a, that's a, that's something I thought, you know, we would be covering today even on that.

And that's, that's a unique situation. That really drives, brings out the entrepreneurial part in somebody that, let's say, that has it and knows it. And you know that, but when all of a sudden, you know, everybody goes home and people say, oh, you must be so busy, you know, doing home offices. And I'm going, no, we don't do any.

That's, people go to IKEA, they're going to IKEA, they're going to Bureau en Gros, they're going to Amazon. They're not coming in, you look for their chair or their desk or whatever, how they're operating. And this whole transition took place and I'm going, offices were like— So how did you— okay, now COVID hit, you realize everything is drying up. Two things I think that we survived, that helped us survive, and this is, this is, I'm so proud of this, that one, uh, our business actually during the first year of COVID our sales stayed the same, which was like, I tell people that in my industry and they're like, everybody went nosedive on that one.

And you've heard of the 80/20 rule. So we were cultivating, like I said before, I'm working with private schools and stuff and cultivating that market, but we were doing 80% office and 20% schools. All of a sudden COVID hits and it flips the other way around. Wow.

Private schools weren't affected by COVID. Schools weren't affected by COVID. They still kept operating and they still had budgets and they still had stuff. So all of a sudden, and, and all of a sudden, I don't know, there was just like all this cultivating and like it's a farm forming that we were doing all of a sudden came to attrition during COVID And we're going, oh my God, okay, we got this project, we got this, we got that, but nothing's happening on the office side.

Like, I mean, it just went 80/20. The margins flipped the other way too, because on the schools, with the volume, the margins are very tight that we have to work on because of the volume. Office, you had more. But our numbers stayed the same, and we were still operating, which was great, because spiritually, with the office, there was momentum.

There were things that were going on. You got to keep your employees. Yeah. The other thing was, uh, except for the mandatory shutdown, I made everybody come into the office.

We stayed in the office, we stayed together. And I go, you know what, we're, we're a small team, we have enough space, we practice all proper COVID, wore masks, this and that. People came to our showroom, we had the protocol, we followed all the protocol, but we kept it coming into work and it kept the team together. Why did you go that route?

I believed in it. I believe I'm a team player, and I felt that the individual part, you lose, you, you're losing on that. Everybody running, you know, running into their own direction or into their own protective zone. I didn't believe in it.

I didn't like it. And things are changing, and I was reading a lot about, you know, where are we going to go with this? I mean, this is like— it was a major mortgage on a building. Yeah, you know, there's my guy upstairs.

They all went remote, but they kept renting the place because they were stuck in leases. I had good tight leases that I learned about doing proper leases, and they were locked in. They couldn't break their leases. There was a lot of pressure that was going on.

I was optimistic that we were going to get through this. Okay. And then we're operating, we're coming into work, my truck's out on the road, guys are delivering, you know. The subsidies from the government helped, of course, that helped us a lot from that.

Then we go back to that next lockdown that they turned around in December— I think it was December, it was January after Christmas. Yes. So they turn around and, uh, the government says we're going back into another lockdown. And I had, I had— we were supplying some COVID clinics and stuff, so my trucks were able to be out on the road and we were able to move around because we had a letter saying that we were an essential service.

We have a meeting. I remember I'm optimistic and I'm going, okay, finally we're putting this behind us. The end of the year, new beginnings. We got through a hard year.

I'm all positive, we're coming through this and things are going to go back to normal. Enough. Some bang, the government hits us with that just before New Year's, I think it was. Yeah, or right after, I forget.

Or they were talking about— I forget how it was. And it was like, no, it's like, come on, you're trying to— like, it's like you're trying to hold everything up here with, you know, as much positivity energy, everything. You're putting it all out there to try to keep things going and keep everybody positive. And, uh, they say, no, we're going to another shutdown and stuff.

And I go, I have a staff meeting, call everybody in, we sit around, and I turn around and I go, look, you got a choice here. You're uncomfortable about the situation, I get it. The government's got a program and this and that, but this is, this is what I'm doing over here. I go, if you want to work from at home, collect UI, and when things go back to normal, we'll call you back.

If you come into work, come into work every day, you get paid, everything stays normal. What you guys want to do. And everybody stayed. Wow.

And I think that helped our business a lot, for sure. Huge amount versus competitors. They were working stagnant. We were still executing files, everything.

I mean, it was a bit slower, but we— everything— it— I tried to keep it as normal. It was so abnormal what we were experiencing. I got— I think the best way— and again, I had nobody, you know, saying, hey, do this and everything's going to be good. I mean, it was just an idea.

And going, if we kept it as normal as possible as we were normal, like before, everybody should stay positive through that. And we got through COVID. Those numbers stayed the same. We kind of come out of COVID It was like rocket fuel.

We doubled. The business doubled. Wow. That year.

That was last year. The business doubled. I said, okay, this is kind of like, is this real or is this like, you know, what's happening? Yeah.

Is this just like, you know, okay, because there was so much holdback all of a sudden. I go, well, if we do it 2 years in a row, it becomes real. Yes. If it just kind of happened, we could go back to there.

We— I think right now our year end is August 31st. If everything goes according to plan, I think we had 60% increase over last year's number. That's amazing. I know, I know.

It's like the business almost tripled in 2 years. Same amount of people. That's even better. Same amount of people.

But what I had to do, and this is something for entrepreneurs to think about, and I mean, this was a dramatic situation. You always have— again, you always have to think about different ways, right, for market. And I turn around, I go, okay, you know what, decommissioning. We're going to do decommissioning.

There's going to be a vacuum here, office space, this and that, decommissioning. I charge to do things, but we're going to do it environmentally friendly, no landfill. We're going to offer that as a service. We're going to offer move management, things we didn't do before.

Do the move management. I got moving bins, did this, I have the trucks, I have this, I have the people. I'm just trying to create work. Yes, I was literally just trying to create invoices.

Invoices do transactions. And whatever you want used, we got used. You want new, you want new. You want us to move you, we'll do it.

Decommission you, whatever. Whatever there is, you know, we're, we're not just about office furniture. Whatever you need us to do, we'll do. And it morphed and it worked.

So what skill would you say that is for an entrepreneur to have? What would you all that. Something happens. Thinking outside of the box.

I mean, it's really having to think outside of— don't panic, don't panic. You got to try to stay as calm as you can, because if you're calm, you can think properly. If you're emotional and you're emotional wreck, your thought process— and you have your employees as well. Yeah, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're the cat— I mean, as being the owner, you're the captain of the ship, right?

So if the captain's the first one to jump off, all right, good luck. Bye. Tell me how it goes. I mean, you know, you You go down with the ship type of thing.

And these are some of the, you know, some of the scars of battle that you got to go through as an entrepreneur. But it's really, uh, you know, emergency situations, calm, cool, collective, and try to figure it out. Take a deep breath, walk around, scream and yell, talk to somebody else, talk to other people, scream, do what you gotta do, you know. But be as calm, calm you can think.

That's, that would, that's what I learned from that. It's just really like the emotional part. Okay, this, oh no, oh my God, can't go Whoa, whoa. So you were able— you're not getting it by touching something, you know, you're not getting from here.

I'd walk into people's places, we're putting up panels, we're doing this. I mean, I said I did air conditioning before, I understood a little bit about that. Well, you see this recirculating air in here that's going through the ducts and this and that? I go, well, I don't think the screen is the answer.

It goes a little bit beyond that. Open up some windows. So it's very fascinating how you were able to turn the adversity that it wasn't unprecedented, you know, and unexpected, and turn that into something, trying to turn into something else. And this, you know, some people did.

I find that some entrepreneurs as well, when their back is against the wall, there is no Plan B, you know, we're all gonna die, you know, figuratively, right? Then they come up with new solutions and they take charge and you lead. Like something else comes out of them and you become a people. I mean, entrepreneurs are unique individuals.

Yeah, they are unique individuals. It's not for everybody. It's, it's a, it's a, maybe it's a, I don't know, it's a, it's a process. It's just, it's a personality, uh, you know.

You don't think it's for everybody? Oh, 100%. I, I challenge anybody, you know, people say, you know, oh, be careful what you say, don't teach somebody, you know, old school, oh, don't teach them, they'll become your competition. I'll teach you anything you want.

I challenge you to do it. I wish you the best. I will show you. You probably won't listen to me half the time.

You forgot the things I told you. I challenge you to do it. I'll show you how. I'm pointing in the right direction.

People listen, take a couple of notes. Some will, you know, might follow, and some other ones you feel like you're wasting your time and they're not going to do anything. That's a good point you just brought up. You said because some people are afraid if I teach my, my second in command or my workers good, then they're going to leave and become my competitors.

Yeah, absolutely. Treat your people great. Treat them with respect. Yes.

Pay them Well, I've seen from, you know, I've seen a lot of business in my business. I meet business people every day, every other day. I meet different types of businesses, meet ones I like the way they're doing things. I might suggest some things from what I've learned, you know, and just, you know.

But, uh, people have different ways of riding it, you know. I'd say driving a car, some people drive fast, some people are hard on the brake, you know. Some people are swearing at everybody on the road and they're like neurotic. You have different drivers that are there.

But treat people properly, treat people well. The, the people that work for you are so important that, uh, I think the gentleman that owns, um, Virgin said that worry— don't worry about your customers, or treat your employees well and they'll worry about your customers. They take care of them for you. They'll take care of them.

You take care of your, your employees, they'll take care of your customers. And there's, there's so many things. I mean, there's, there's micromanage— people micromanage too much. People don't— I saw here with having time for family and, you know, balance.

It's important to balance. Balance is huge, huge, where people get so involved and so much time that they put into things, and they're passionate about it. You have to be passionate. Yes, passion is the fuel.

Passion is the fuel. Money shouldn't be the motivator. If money is the motivator, then there's a good chance you're going to be overcharging people. If you're passionate about what you do and what you deliver deliver and you have, you have, you take pride in what you're doing, the money will follow.

Guaranteed it'll follow because people will want to do business with you. Not, you know, that it's— You were, you did this now for 23 years. There are so many other opportunities, you know, people bringing you this. Hey, Zvi, did you hear about this new thing?

Did you hear about that new thing? How were you able to stay in one industry for so long without being, oh, there's this new thing. Maybe the grass is greener on that side. Oh yeah, I did those.

That's probably one of the biggest problems that entrepreneurs have. Yes, that's one of the— yeah, you think you can do other things, you're good at what you're doing, and, uh, you branch off. Sometimes you branch off too early in the business, and the business ends up feeling the effects of it. I was guilty of that, definitely, definitely guilty of that with, uh, a real estate venture.

Cost me a fortune. Learned to— learned cost me a lot of money on that one thing, though. Okay, the grass is greener on the other side. I can do this and stay away from that and this.

And there is a time and a place. There is a time and a place, but I go, make sure your, your house is very much in order and you've got really good people running your business and you're overseeing, maybe, you know, not on a full-time basis, but overseeing things. But people end up doing that far, far too early when they're building a business. They take out a lot of money from the business that they really need be operating properly, and, uh, it ruptures and causes some hernias and could kill the whole thing.

Yes, could kill the whole thing. But as entrepreneurs, you just think, hey, there's that flair, a new thing. It's like a new car. I can try it and do it and this and that.

So what's your message? If you're going to do some things to venture out, ideally I think they should be complementary to your core business, not some something completely different. You know, if, uh, I don't know, if you're in construction, don't go open up a car dealership. If you're in office furniture, don't go into the construction business, you know, or, you know, it's completely different.

But if you're in my case, okay, if I'm doing office furniture, enough, I decided to explore or, or do a division of moving or commercial moving, not residential moving, commercial moving. It's complementary to my business. There are certain synergies that are from there that can work, that possibly can make it more profitable and more interesting from that, you know, with somebody managing it. People, you know, there's only 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week.

So I don't know, some people, I mean, I'm amazed. I could look at some owner or some people and, you know, think about like even here, the President of the United States, you think that's got to be like the hardest, like the biggest job in the world. And, you know, how do you, how do you sleep? How do you like information?

You know, there's so many things going on or people that have you know, a lot of businesses and stuff, but you got to have good people, you know, working with you. You can't do it alone. And some people think they could. We can't do it.

I guess sometimes we have to learn the hard way, then realize, oh, you know what? Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. And it could be a very, very hard way.

It could be by burnout, it could be by depression, it could be by losing everything, losing everything. Oh yeah, oh yeah, family included. Exactly. You think their tolerance— there's only so far you could push things.

It's only so far that, you know, how many, you know, working 100 hours, 120 hours a week, your family doesn't see you, this and that. I've seen some people, I see some people even right now, they can't even take a break. They can't even take a break. Hey, come up north, you know, you know, come north for the weekend, take a break.

Or, oh no, no, I gotta work Saturday. Oh no, I gotta work. Like, oh my God, I've been there, done that. I go, boy, you're like— it's terrible.

But it's really terrible. How does somebody— okay, somebody who's— how do you overcome that? Yes, hire. Typically people, there's two things that are gonna cause— I think there's two things that are going to cause that.

One, uh, you don't have enough, uh, enough good people around you, or you're not paying people enough for the people that you're selecting that are working with you. Another one is that you're a micromanager. You're a micromanager and you have to do everything, sign everything. You don't trust anybody and you have to do everything yourself.

And there's, you know, and people are going to make mistakes. The biggest thing to overcome that is accept the fact that people are going to make mistakes, and there's a pretty good chance they're not going to do it as well as you. But you can't do everything. Yeah.

So you have to rely on people. And if you rely on people and you hire the right people, your business should have growth. You should be able to support what you're paying people by the business growing. Yeah, just organically growing from there.

You should be able to give people cost of living increases if your business is growing. If you're managing your business properly, you should be able to do this. And how much does a person need not to be selfish of what they're taking versus what they're sharing from there? And the health factor will kick in from that because it'll give you more time.

And if you could overcome that Again, if you could remove the stresses, you can concentrate on how to grow things and that your phone's not ringing all the time and you're not responding to everything. I had to learn that. That was a huge thing for me to learn, to delegate it. Yeah, to delegate, to trust people.

I was that guy. I was that guy for the first half of my career. I was that guy. My phone didn't stop and I would try to answer the client.

And now I'm trained properly. I'm trained. I've got a great person I work with. She's trained me and like, no, you're gonna say, send me an email, ask for an email.

Where's the delivery? Uh, send me an email and I will forward to a person that will respond to you quickly. And that's the best route to go. And that's what I do.

And my phone doesn't ring anymore. Follow the process. I feel like I'm alone. I feel like I'm alone.

Nobody calls me anymore. It's great. It's really— it makes a huge difference, Kathy. Yeah, it frees up your time.

You have more time for friends, time friends, family, this. I mean, I go up north Thursday nights. I'm like out of the city. I'm working remotely from my cottage.

I'm like, you know, I didn't like, you know, everybody else was employed. I've now become an employee of my own company. I'm going, hey, you know what? People take vacations.

People take that time. I go, hey, how much, how much time do I get off after doing this for 23 years? And that person gets like 4 weeks or 5 weeks now. What do I get?

You know? So that's the importance of having somebody that that is like— she's like your opposite. She's my opposite from there, and so much so of rewarding somebody from there. And then as you get older, what people don't realize in businesses as well is that you plan— you got to plan down the road from that.

And I came to that transition point just not long ago, last year, and going, you know, I was, I was actually in a clear, clear time. I'm up north just working on my house, stating, and I'm thinking, you know what, this person's really good and this and that. I'm going, you know what, I should get them some type of incentives or something, or work something out with them ownership or succession part and this and that. And I put something together for that.

I, it worked out, worked out great from that. So there's a whole structure that I was able to put together with my accountants, my lawyers, and we put something together when I thought it was gonna go one way. And then my accountant comes to me, I tell him, hey, what do I wanna do? No, no, no, we could do it like this and like that.

Yes. And like this and this whole thing. And I'm going, oh my God, that's unbelievable. There's continuance.

God forbid something happens to me, the employees, I mean, stuff, God forbid something happened to me, that business is running. A lot of things that a lot entrepreneurs don't think about. They don't. And to me, the true meaning of the word business, which I learned afterward— like I said, not in the first half of my career, the second half, which I'm probably in year 3 of the second half of my career, of my different way of doing things.

Year 3, or actually I might be in year 5. It's when I bought the building. It's like it's another 5 years. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, it's got to be like 5 years. I did 25 years this way, and now, you know, let's say 5 years this way, and the 5 years this way has been amazing. But, um, the true definition to me of the word business is that a business can run without the owner having to be there 24/7, because that's a hobby.

That's not a business, that's a hobby. But if you're business and you have right people operating and you're not there— I'm just saying, you could hover in, answer some questions, do whatever you need to do, have people answer you properly, or, you know, if they're not answering you properly, you got to investigate it more, you don't like the response— but there's things that you can do and figure it out quickly. And if it is, that's a business. So we can take all of your— all of those years, you know, that you made all those mistakes.

If we apply them sooner in our businesses, then we can avoid all of those pitfalls and challenges. The faster you learn it, yeah, yeah, the faster you can achieve it. But everybody learns differently. I was a slow learner.

I had to— my father said, you know, don't hit your head on the wall, you know, it's going to hurt. You hit your head on the wall, it's going to hurt. I'd have to hit my head on the wall to know how badly it would hurt. You know, I had to know that question because you couldn't get that answer.

You just got, it's going to hurt, but how much is it going to hurt? That I had to see for myself. And some people will take the advice. Some people have to do the experiment.

Yeah, yeah, very much so. And what are some traits? Because you've met many good entrepreneurs by now. Like, what are some common traits that you find that they have in common?

Challenges. I think entrepreneurs like challenges. I think that's something that really— it's part of the fuel. Like someone says, you know, when do you stop?

You know, when's it— I met one time a guy asked me, he was working for a— he works for a company, a friend of mine, and he goes, when's enough enough? And he's like, you know, what, you're going to continue doing something? I go, oh, I think I can do it as long as I enjoy doing it. If I don't get— my new motto is, if I'm not stressed by it, I'm gonna do it.

If it starts stressing me out, I'm fortunate enough to say I don't have to to continue doing it. We have choices. You have a choice. You can continue or not to.

If it's going to stress me, I'm not doing it. And when's enough is enough? I go, I don't know. There's always a challenge.

It's like challenging yourself, you know. It's like moving that bar up. If you can jump higher, or the athlete going more and more, and if you can condition yourself mentally, physically, and you're able to do it, why stop, you know? Or if you choose, you could stop.

The beautiful thing about, you know, if you— again, if you're an entrepreneur, no No one's gonna— you're in control. You can choose to stop, you can choose to continue, you know. It's, uh, and if you could do, you know, if you can generate a business well enough, you have financial freedom to be able to do whatever you want from that too. That's another— if you had to go back and redo this again, like, what would you have done differently?

I think you kind of mentioned— oh, what would I do differently? What would I do differently from that? Try to learn quicker. I don't know, uh, it would have been great to learn quicker thing.

Um, what would I have done differently? Well, one thing I'd like to do, I'm sure a lot of people would love this, if you can buy back 10 years of a— keep the knowledge, yeah, buy back 10 years of time. And I'm sure most people would say, just how much would it cost? You know, but from learning, I wish I could— I wish I could have learned faster.

I wish, uh, you know, I didn't do different things, but it all builds character. You learn from that. What doesn't kill you makes stronger. If I didn't take things, maybe, you know, some things were more— you took more serious to heart.

But those are all part of the— those are all part of the— Would you say that's why you're confident like that today? Like, because your character has been, you know— Oh, completely. Oh, completely. I mean, it's great now because I have— one of my sons loves real estate, and he loves real estate, and he's looking at buying a property.

And I have— I've been fortunate enough to have Airbnbs. I own property. Properties. And my hobby is building houses now.

Okay. I have a hobby of building houses, cottages, country houses and stuff. And I've got a large piece of property. I'm going to build more houses.

How many are you gonna— How big? I don't know. I just built a nice size. I just built a nice home, but it was my own personal residence.

But I have one that's for, uh, we call it the White House. Uh, worked on it again during COVID That was great stress release and just kind of brought me to the Zen side of working with my hands and redoing a house from 1920 with a partner. I got involved in that. Now we have house that is for 14 people.

That's nice. Yeah, it's on a beautiful, beautiful property, waterfalls and this. Then I did another house, and this was part of the thing where I said I got involved in construction and it didn't go so well. But the knowledge of what I learned, unfortunately what it cost me monetarily was dear.

With every bad experience, there is knowledge that you could turn around, and any bad experience and say, okay. And right away, even at work, even we ran about Okay, I'm not going to scream at anybody. It's only money. It's not killing us.

But what did we learn from this? What did we learn from that experience? And what I learned from in the construction part that I ended up doing, I was able to apply here and learn things. And now with my son, where he's asking different things, okay, check this out, do your due diligence, go here, speak to an insurance guy, speak to there.

And there's so many things that, you know, that say saves him so much time from making a bad decision based on what I learned on bad decisions. So that speeds things up a lot. That's why part of that 10-year thing, if I can get back to 10 years' time, I can do, you know, it's like the clock, the runway gets shorter and, you know, and your risk, the amount that you also want to risk as you get older and, you know, wiser, you calculate things more too versus when you're young younger and what you could afford, that you have more time to make things up if you have bad mistakes. And what are your plans for the next, I don't know, 5 years or so?

What do you want to do? Stay healthy. Stay healthy. Continue, continue, continue watching New Look grow.

Get more involved in my hobby with houses, with these houses. Now it's going to be A-frame homes. I plan on doing 5 or 6 of them in different areas. And I got some other things with that, just playing around with that.

I figured that'll be a good— when I slow down, at least, you know, I'll meet people, collect collect rent, just cut some grass and deal with some houses. And, you know, it'll give me something, give me something to do. I don't— 10 years from now, I'm 59 now, so let's say call me 60, 70 years old, I think I'll still be doing the same thing. And I'll be coming back here and talking to you again with a bit more experience of what were the good, the bad, the ugly.

But yeah. And what— we're going to move on to the short answer questions. What books do you recommend that business owners should read? Um, there was one I saw that— there was one I saw, it's an old book that was actually from Donald Trump.

It was called The Art of the Deal. That's a book that was pretty, a pretty well-read book on real estate and stuff when he was coming into real estate and just monitoring everybody. What I got from it was everybody goes into things for how much they're going to make, and even buying any real estate or anything or business, everybody's always looking at the positive and nobody really wants to look at, okay, if things go bad? Yeah.

What am I going to lose on this? Nobody talks about that part from there. And in that book, what I got away from it is monitoring how much can you afford to lose if something changes on that? What's your threshold for pain?

So that was a really good book on that one. Kevin O'Leary as well has some very interesting books that, uh, there were two books. I don't remember the titles of both those books, but there were two of them that I bought and, uh, some very, very interesting things about saving, putting money away. People starting up, younger people, save, save, you know, put away as much, because now's the time to do it.

Save up as much money as you can when you're young and you don't have those expensive— you don't have those responsibilities, and it'll help you that much more for sure moving, moving forward. And how do you stay disciplined with your goal? Well, um, one, what I used to do, I haven't done in a while, but it was pretty interesting that I, at the end of every year around New Year's, I'd put down a goal list. And I had something that I actually brought in, that I just brought into work, or I had a picture of it.

And I had something I marked down, I think, oh, go back maybe about 15 years ago. Yeah, I think it was before. And I said, you know what, at this age, I wanna have acquired this much, have, let's say, this much net worth. And then at 60, this, at 65, or I think it was actually 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90, 95, 100.

$265,000 from that. And then I said, with New Look, I want to hit this amount in sales and stuff. And I go, this year— I mean, I'm late doing it, but this year, if all goes well, by August 31st, we would have hit this ridiculous number that I put down on a piece of Kleenex, the back of a Kleenex box that I just ripped it off and just posted it up on there. So, you know, I tell people, you know, you could dream big.

Dream. You turn a dream into reality. I did with the house I was just building right now. This was a crazy dream of mine to be able to do it.

And, uh, turning dreams into reality and putting things down— there's nothing wrong with setting the bar high. People say, you know, don't set it too high because you'll be disappointed, you're not going to do it, and this and that. And, you know, it's kind of like fair play with kids, and, you know, don't count the points and this. But I'm going, that's reality.

I mean, there was something where they said that— I think it was Bill Gates where we cuddle the kids too much. You know, they're cuddled, they're protected too much in this. And, you know, and then you go out into the business world and it's about competition, it's about bottom line, it's about succeeding, it's about the win. You don't get anything for second place, you know, you don't, unfortunately.

And for third place, you know, okay, you know, school, you get this and that, you know. And then all of a sudden, oh my God, you You can't talk to me that way. Yes, I can. I'm your boss.

I mean, politely, but you know, you got to get this, you know. So, but setting a bar up high, there's nothing wrong with that because even if you achieve a percentage or you're below that by 25%, it might be 200% higher than if you set the bar down here and little up. And there's nothing as long, you know, so set the bars high, dream high. Don't put limitations on anything.

You know, you limit the only thing I said this before in the public speaking. The only thing that's limiting you, that's it. It's as simple as that. It's like, you know, just go for it.

Just go for it. Good advice. That's the best I could say. I'm just an average guy.

Just an average guy trying to, you know, and give back. Yes, that's important. Give back. Whatever you can give back, give back in knowledge, give back in time.

You know, if you can make donations, whatever you can, it's important to give back and you'll pay it ahead. That's important. Very important. People forget to do that.

Since the podcast is named after the city, the Montreal Entrepreneur Podcast, what would you like— what would you say that you like about the city of Montreal? I love Montreal. Oh my God. Yeah, Montreal is a great city.

It's a great, great city. I'm a diehard Montrealer. I'm born here, bred here. I've watched exoduses run to Toronto and stuff.

Hate ditching Toronto, but I go, the only thing I like about Toronto is coming home. And, uh, I, I love Montreal. It's, uh, it's a great city. It's vibrant.

It's, it's got everything. It's got everything from there, and it's really a special city. One last sentence for you. Getting teary-eyed on that one.

Getting me all emotional. If you had one, like, I don't know, sentence, one last word you want to say to everybody listening, what would it be? One takeaway. Don't be scared to fail, you know.

Failing is part of learning, you know, and the, uh, the diehards get up from it. It's lick your wounds, get over it as quickly as you can. People emphasize too much. They, they emphasize too much on the failure.

They emphasize too much. I got analyze it, look at it, try not to repeat it, really try hard not to repeat it, you know. And sometimes people have to go back and do it again because they didn't get it. But really, uh, people are scared to do a second time.

And I think the ones that succeed get over it. We mourn things far longer than we should, you know. People dwell on things. I don't know, we like to dwell on the negative.

And, you know, I'd like to be as positive— it's the glass half full, half empty, you know. I get it, it hurts. Cry over it, get it out of your— the faster you can get it out of your system and get back on the horse, the better it'll be. You can make this long and painful, you can make it short.

There is a emotion. I get it, but sometimes it's drawn on a little bit much longer than it needs to be. That really separates an entrepreneur from, you know, from somebody that wants to be and somebody that can be and that is. And, you know, just do it.

Just do it and go back and do it and do it again. You know, it might take many times. There's no guarantee, but don't give up. Don't give up.

Well, it was a pleasure and an honor to have you on the show.