072: Knowing and Being About Your WHY Rather Than Your WHAT or Your HOW with James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas

In fashion, it really starts with the first of our six value elements which is empathy, it just really comes down to if we can embed this concept of empathy from the beginning, and to all employees, that the things we do will ultimately serve, our why and our customers’ why at the same time. And those things become the same thing, that the brand feels the same way whether you are a customer or an employee.

#00:01:03-2# Neil : Hello its Neil Ball, thank you so much for joining me today on the entrepreneur way. The entrepreneur way is about the entrepreneur’s journey, the vision, the mind-set, the commitment, the sacrifice, failures and successes. I am so excited to bring you our special guest today, James Quigley, but before I introduce you to him, I have a quote for you. Amin Malouf said, ‘you can’t say history teaches us this or that, it gives us more questions than answers, and many answers to every question.’ The entrepreneur way asks the questions, so we all get the insight, inspiration, and ideas to apply in our businesses. James, welcome to the show, are you ready to share your version of the entrepreneur way with us?

#00:01:59-1# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Absolutely, looking forward to it Neil.

#00:02:01-8# Neil : Thank you for coming on the show James, I really appreciate it. James Quigley is the CEO and co-founder of CANVAS, a Virginia-based company that is revolutionising the way data is submitted and collected through mobile. James has a long history of building successful wireless companies, prior to CANVAS, he was vice-president and managing director at In-code wireless which was later acquired by Very sign. Other successful start-ups that James has been involved in, include Ather Systems, Orb.com and Peak Technologies which was formally a division of R.R. Donnelly. James has also won numerous awards, for corporate leadership, including being named one of 2012’s top 50 CEO’s by the centre for innovation technology. One of the Top 20 Global Executives in his field, by CLO magazine and the world supply chain forum, and one of the top 15 DC Start-up CEO’s to follow on TWITTER. In 2007, his team designed and delivered a mobile solution that was used for tracking deadly global pandemics. An application that ultimately won the Motorola Wireless Solution of the year award. James, can you provide us with some more insight in to your business and personal life to allow us to get to know more about what you do and who you are?

#00:03:34-8# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Sure, I will start with what we do, I will frame up the rest of it. So I am CEO and founder of CANVAS as you probably heard already, but basically what we do is all summarised in our belief statement, what we believe in, and we believe that if organisations, groups could more dynamically collect and share information, it changes how we connect, it changes how we connect internally, it changes how we connect with our customers and it changes how we learn about what we learned about our businesses, so we created a platform that allows organisations to automate their work processes and you can sort of read that in a really simple personification is that we typically started by replacing paper forms. So an organisation that might have paper forms that they start with and collect information that way. For us, that’s a visual cue, that our platform which is a mobile first platform that we could come in and ultimately help them automate those processes themselves and a do-it-yourself platform without the software developer, so probably the simplest sort of example that everybody gets is that if a plumber comes to your house and he is repairing something and fixing something, and typically at the end of that process, he would rip off a three-part form, typically hand you a yellow copy, right? and then you shove it in a drawer and then he brings back two copies, and someone types in the computer, it is hard to believe but that most remote processes today that happen through disconnected workforce is still moving information predominantly in that way.

#00:05:25-7# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : And to personify again, the plumber coming to your house, someone coming to fix something, you go to a doctor’s office, you go register a child for school, all of these processes, typically, you go ‘oh my gosh, they do, they start with paper.’ So our whole idea was wouldn’t it be cool if we could help those organisations to be able to automate those processes using their smart phone. Collect information in ways and places that were not possible before so instead of just fixing something, you can take a picture of the things you have fixed. Grab the location in which you fixed it, bar code scanner product, and have it come back with the price, and then for you to share that information in ways you could not share before too. So that you could share this information back to your customers, in a digital way but also in a dynamic way so no longer are you getting a yellowed copy, shoved in a drawer. You would get back a digital conversation, ‘hey by the way, I fixed your dishwasher today, here is a picture of the work we did, here is a link to the digital operating manual for your dishwasher, here is a video on how to best maintain that dishwasher, hey would you mind leaving us for review on this popular review site? Here is our Facebook page, here is a blog entry on three things you can do on how to clean your dishwasher.’ So it completely changes that conversation. And for our customers, they get the information back real time, they are able to collect this information, they are able to put it in to the systems that are important to them. Or they can leave all the data in our … so its this entire trip round trip of collect, share and learn where in typical cases if you wanted to do this, you would need a lot of money and a lot of time and an IT Department, but with our platform, if you could use something like PowerPoint, you could go create your own work process on Canvas.

#00:07:18-2# Neil : Mmm that sounds awesome, so your software does your software integrate with other software? or does it have all the functionality it needs built in to it?

#00:07:30-9# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Yeh no its a good question, so obviously a big part of the sharing part right and learning about your business, is that you have got to get the information to where it is most important, so we have got ways in which in a bi-directional can you know, the data can move in two directions, fashion you can move your information to pretty much everything. We have got a number of partners who offer off-the-shelf plug-ins, from everything to Quick books to different types of electronic medical record systems. On top of that, we provide platforms and tools which you can plug this in to anything from SAP to JD Edwards, on top of that we integrate with Zapier, so Zapier is a great tool set that allows you to plug canvas in to hundreds and thousands of different types of platforms. So you want to go and take the data from Canvas and have it automatically fill in an email list and Mailchimp that they get a newsletter, you can do that. You want to plug it in to salesforce.com you can do that too.

#00:08:37-1# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : So absolutely there’s part of our whole sharing model is to make sure that you can as easily and elegantly as you can use our entire platform that you can go get the data to where you need it to be most important for you.

#00:08:50-4# Neil : So is it just on hand held devices, or does it actually work on a PC as well? #00:0

#00:08:58-3# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Yeh it does, we have a desk top version, for collection and then you can use the web to go create the experiences, so you do not need to download any software to go create these applications, you log on to the web. The company’s CANVAS but the website is GoCanvas.com and then you can create the experiences using a browser, and then when you publish it out, it goes out under an application under the CANVAS platform, so you download just one app, CANVAS, works on every major device, including PCs. And then you can, once you log on there, you get the applications that you have built in that framework and you can have as many as you want. A typical customer has somewhere between 7-20 different applications that they are using within the first year becoming a subscriber of ours.

#00:09:53-8# Neil : You know, when I had my quite a large business, one of my pet hates was having to re-enter data on different pieces of software, and the concept of what you have just said there just gets me excited just thinking about it, that’s just awesome. So its definable by the person who uses it, and it integrates with all these pieces of software, and it saves people having to re-enter data, that sounds fantastic. So how do you actually charge for your product?

#00:10:20-9# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Its a subscription based service, that is by the mobile subscriber, so if you have got ten inspectors who are inspecting pot holes in roads, and they have got mobile devices and they have got mobile devices, they log on, they would be ten subscribers and its per user per month or per year and we have a usage based model as well, but in those cases, anywhere from $15 dollars to $35 dollars a user a month.

#00:10:51-Neil : Ok, it sounds very impressive, so what do you enjoy most about what you do James?

# #00:10:54-4# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : You know, I always love this question, or I love this question to you entrepreneur and I am by the sheer fact that I am passionate about solving problems in front of me, I am not necessarily passionate about starting, I got to start a business, I have always been passionate about seeing and opening a problem, you know someone struggling or someone seeing that it could be just so much different, they just do not know it, what technology can do, as a tool against that, and hopefully to delight you, not just to say ‘I am going to make it better’ but to delight you and surprise you. And I think, what I love most is, that our platform and talking to our customers and our partners, and seeing the percentage of them that write us back, we have a slack channel, just for these types of stories and they get filled up definitely many stories a day, where someone is blown away by something our platform does for them. Or surprises them, delights them, and I think hearing those stories which is why we built this in the first place, why you build anything in the first place right?

#00:12:12-7# Neil : Mmm hmm

#00:12:13-7# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Is to serve, is that hopefully someone else will find value in it too, and that we are seeing this in massive volume, we have got customers now in 70 countries which is great seeing that most of our business is completely inbound, people learning about it themselves and signing up for our free trial.

#00:12:35-1# Neil : Yeh do you have any examples of the stories that you talked about there? where people have been absolutely blown away with what you are doing with an example of your application of your software?

#00:12:46-9# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : You know what, I have a couple that are really sexy you know, big name brands like the Olympics or Pepsi, but you know what? Probably the times that and those certainly feel good when companies like that and other brand names are using your product and that’s probably from my own element of my ego right? but probably times when it has been most impactful for me, is when a business that has told us and remember one from fairly recently, and it was something that sounds kind of ridiculous now to get excited about, but there were like this part of my job and it was actually something as simple as at the end of every year, someone in this small company had to go locate all of this information, all of these bills, all of these purchase orders from working with these customers and gather this together, and get their taxes done. And what they told us was that it was such a painful part of their business that sometimes it would not happen, or sometimes it would just be the last person to have to do this and it would be the bain of the end of their year, right they even hate it. And it caused such distress in their company, its not what they do, companies don’t unless you are a tax provider obviously. But you know, this company did not do that and yet they had to make it their job to do this. And so this thing that became wildly painful, at the end of the year, they literally just logged on and had all the information. And it went from 3, 4 days of pain and suffering to an hour or two. And it was so cool, it was so cool to hear those types of stories where someone would say ‘you have no idea’ this just took the suck out of my business right? Ha you know? Which is not a good contact for his training company but we have considered it, CANVAS we take the suck out of your business. But that’s really what we end up hearing, is in many cases that if there is an element of wild delight and listen there is not much there’s some changing about this part of people’s businesses, 90/92% of all businesses still collect disconnected information, information from disconnected workers, predominantly on paper which is hard to believe, so not much has changed about this business since you know, stuff was Cuniform was knocked in to tablets, and so for a business who makes this type of change and then they suddenly see all the other supplemental benefits that they did not expect.

#00:15:24-3# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : That’s when people go ‘this is not just about me getting my data back, now I am actually sharing a digital receipt where my brand is getting out there and I can share a digital coupon, or I got my Facebook likes up.’ or other goals that they just did not expect that they could achieve by changing how they look at automating their business now, and that they can do it themselves. They do not need to hire an IT group. Those sort of stories are really, that’s what keeps me excited and passionate and having a great time, doing what we are doing here at CANVAS.

#00:15:57-0# Neil : Mmm hmm I think that must be a universal hate amongst most businesses really being the unpaid tax collector, mustn’t it?

#00:16:04-0# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : I like that.

#00:16:04-0# Neil : So to take away that pain must be an awesome thing,

#00:16:06-9# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Thats right. Yeh.

#00:16:08-8# Neil : So what is it that drives you James?

# #00:16:14-1# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : You know probably a number of things, everyone has got their own personal drive, so I guess if I am authentic, I am always driven towards those elements of our larger story right? And sort of a larger mission and probably for me the word that probably personifies it best is empathy, right? I try to honour, I think its probably everyone’s ongoing journey when they say something like, ’empathy is never a complete process’ but this idea of thinking outside in and so many of us, so many companies too, think inside out, hey we are going to build this thing, I hope people want it, versus, hey there is this problem, technology could solve that problem, it actually could do a lot of other things and I think that is what drives me is this idea that there are so many of these universal problems out there and certainly this was our big one, is that so many businesses were experiencing this globally, that we could make an impact and so I love being in a position where if we are thinking empathetically, and we can put ourselves in a position to solve these problems for so many companies, and make it really easy for them, that’s what drives me, though is this ability to bridge that gap for people who just did not know that this was possible, and it is.

#00:17:53-8# Neil : Mmm

#00:17:53-8# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : And I think you have seen that with so much technology today. People just did not know what’s possible and especially B to B business to business applications. People just don’t know what’s possible. And once you get out there and start communicating these things, its amazing to see that the level of innovation that even small companies are able to see now.

#00:18:15-4# Neil : You have just used one of my phrases there that I will use that is this concept of inside out, or outside in. So how do you know what people are looking for from the outside in, because its obviously a difficult transition to make that isn’t it? For a lot of business owners or businesses.

#00:18:31-6# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Right.

#0 #00:18:32-6# Neil : Because you always see it from your perspective and its difficult to see it from the customer’s perspective, which is obviously the best way to create a product, the best way to market a product. So, how do you do that?

#00:18:42-9# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Well its a great question, and I am actually going to use sort of the example, sort of a product like Pinterest right? Is that you could, the people who created Pinterest, lets say the first employees, something like Pinterest, had amazing empathy for what Pinterest could do because they were customers of Pinterest. They used Pinterest right? They were passionate about Pinterest, they loved what it did, they used it and so they had amazing empathy to understand what those customers wanted right? Now in typically in any founding company, there is a level of that empathy, that exists in the founders for solving that problem. Maybe they experienced it themselves or they have been working with customers like that, they have been hearing the consistent problem over and over again, so that the initial founders have a certain level of empathy that caused them to go do something crazy like start a company. Right? But how do you keep a culture moving forward especially with Business to Business software, I mean we hire probably a good 50/60% of our company, this is the first or second job they have ever had. And what we find is that you know is that the customers that we serve, Pest control, Agent Inspectors, School Teachers, Doctors, the people that might use our product. Our employees have never worked in those occupations, and so how do we instil with them this outside in view and part of it is to help them flex their empathy muscle and that’s not something that is taught in school, its not something that is really even talked about that much and yet, if we are going to keep an outside in view, we call it, you know, living our why is constantly be asking why. How do you do that? Is that we actually have tried some experimental things that some of them are pretty wacky, one of them which is what we call any up, we allow our employees to gift our solution, each employee can gift our solution, to a not for profit of that employees choice, and then if that not for profit uses the product aggressively, you use it, they are actually, its creating real impact within their business for more than two quarters will actually pay for their time off and their travel to go work with that not-for-profit once a year. No matter where it is, we have sent people to Philippines and Africa and Australia, we have had people travel around to go do this and why do we do that, well not only to believe in corporate karma, but equally as interesting to us is that suddenly, all of our employees have the opportunity to empathetically see how something that they are passionate about, how a charity that collects baby goods and re-cycles those for mothers that don’t have anything or a group that’s tracking rhino poachers that and gamers that are holding some of the last black rhinos on the planet, and they are using our application in really cool ways. And those employees are seeing this first hand and helping them implement our solution.

#00:22:09-2# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : What happens is they come back, and what we find is those use cases are no different than a teacher, a plumber, the doctor. They are collecting, they are inspecting, they are servicing, they are witnessing some information. They are sharing and collecting and they are learning about their business. And what happens is our employees start flexing their ability to be empathetic, by doing something they are really passionate about and seeing someone use our product first hand in the field. So that’s one example, we try to do other things to get our team to flex their empathy muscle. I don’t think it is a one-size fits all, you know type of solution or strategy but it is I think it is one which if you don’t have a strategy for as an organisation, the larger you get, the harder it will be to stay an outside-in thinking company.

#00:23:02-3# Neil : Mmm, it just applies to so many things doesn’t it? when you think about it? It applies to the product, it applies to sales, it applies to marketing. It applies to the way your own staff talk to the customer. Its just everything isn’t it?

#00:23:16-2# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Absolutely, we actually have conversations at all hands meetings about each groups’ way that they embody this idea of our culture, which is that we ask why and we also make sure that our why is at the heart of the things we do. The things that we choose to do, are sort of guided by that and if it does not serve our why then we don’t do it.

#00:23:43-3# Neil : And James, how do you relax when you are not working in your business?

#00:23:48-3# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Which is that’s always a challenge, as an entrepreneur that you passionately, you know is it a job? is it a hobby? is it and truly that is part of the case. Now I am blessed that our organisation has customers in different locations and we have customers in some different offices and different locations, we have an office in Sydney, Australia that covers Asia Pac for us, we have an office in London and Singapore and so I get a chance to sit one-on-one with partners, employees and different locations. That takes some time, certainly being very passionate you know, our employees and team here in headquarters. But quietly I am an audio book fan, I am a podcast listener, which in today’s world of moving around and I can do those things while I am doing some rapidly changing things. I am also a closet gamer, which is always awesome when our teams are having game night here, and the CEO says ‘let me try a hand and at least I don’t finish last.’

#00:25:08-9# Neil : Ha ha ha

#00:25:08-9# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : So I have been following the gaming industry since I was a kid too and I have been an advisor and an investor in some gaming companies for behind the scenes and part of that I think its a very cool industry, one which I have been fascinated with for years.

#00:25:27-7# Neil : Do you have any entrepreneurial role models?

#00:25:28-9# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : I do and some of them are going to seem pretty cliché, so I will start with the non-cliché ones, I love some of the elements of what Gabe Noel does at Valve, Gabe Noel is the founder of Valve, it was at the time may still be certainly one of the most profitable or the highest revenue per employee company. Sort of company that is actually having significant revenue too. Gaming Company, out of the Pacific Northwest, known for a number of games but probably most now for steam, you know the network for delivering gaming properties. But I love, beyond all that, what I love about Gabe’s story too is some of the very innovative and wild ways in which he looks at running his organisation, you actually can download it online, very cool the HR book on how they hire the Valve way, you know what’s important to them, and ultimately no one has a boss, its very experimental and very cool. Elements of which we openly steal for our own organisation. I am a Jobs fan, but I am a Jobs fan that started, I am a kid that was pounding out keys on an Apple 2 years ago, and was fascinated with the Bill Gates / Steve Jobs era, early era. And follow that story probably less so that when he moved to Nexus and then the second coming, but what I loved about that and what we embody about that, now I actually use at part of our new employee training is a couple of key elements. One. Design being at the heart of everything you do and I think you are starting to see a lot of technology companies suddenly learning that. Its not just about what your product does but why but also how people feel when they use that product and that Nexus that intersection happens somewhere between science and art. And I think Jobs was way ahead of his time at understanding that, right that liberal arts degrees and that ‘you are not just a software developer’ some of their best designs came from people who were also artists and poets and musicians. Versus ‘hey can you know how to code’ and I think we tried to embody that in our outside in approach but thinking really heavily about our user interface, our user experience and how people feel when they use our product, its something we debate and talk about internally. Those are two, I certainly have lots of others but those are two that we passionately talk about and not just because hey they were wildly successful, but its the back stories and what they felt, and how they communicated that, that fascinated myself and certainly our organisation as a whole.

#00:28:40-5# Neil : Thanks for sharing that. James, can we talk about the time before you were an entrepreneur? what difficulties did you have to overcome when you started your business?

#00:28:50-5# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Yeh well actually I am going to start at the very beginning of the story of our company, because I actually think there is a really interesting story there to share, so we got started as an organisation we convinced some friends and colleagues to quit their job, to start CANVAS, at the end of 2008. Approximately three weeks before the economy tanked, which by the way, for all those listening, lesson 101 of starting your own business, don’t start it three weeks before the economy is about to tank. So hire psychics, I don’t know, get palm readings, maybe you want to buy a crystal ball. Just don’t do that, and what was supposed to be starting your business with cash in the bank from investors, on day one, became a couple of weeks, a month and two months, it was approximately six and a half months later after, in a very tough economy, when we were certainly nervous about whether cash would ever come in. Because when it delays that long, you start to worry is it ever going to happen? And I had convinced everyone to quit high paying jobs to do this. Nothing ends great friendships than that, right? if that does not play out, but it took us quite a while, during that time period too and I remember this period really, it was just a couple of us and an idea to do CANVAS. And some wild passion and that right in the beginning of that story too, still had not raised the cash, quit the job, you know the economy was getting tight and I learned that my youngest daughter who was two at the time, was incredibly sick. And when I say incredibly sick, it she had brain cancer, so truly the incredibly sick, its the one you don’t want to hear, the good news is, she is doing great today. She has actually been many, many years now, cancer free, it has been something that we continue to watch. But during that time, literally had to sort of put some of this on hold to go and deal with the anxiety and really focusing thoughts and energy toward my youngest.

#00:31:34-4# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : There were lots of other stories at the very beginning, we nearly ran out of cash several times, it was sort of I like some of these stories now, especially now the company has lots of employees and locations all over the world, is that those experiences there, especially for our early employees, we have not lost anyone, we did lose a co-founder early, early on in the experience, who took an awesome job at Amazon. By the way, if Amazon ever offers you a job where you help run part of kindle, all of kindle, go take that job, that’s awesome right?

#00:32:14-9# Neil : Ha ha ha ha

#00:32:16-8# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Especially economy’s crashing, you know in your start-up world and you have got kids yourself and so he made a choice and moved on but beyond that, all the people who took that journey with the original ten employees, everyone is still here and wildly passionate and part of it is, I think they all lived elements of this story early on, they felt that the early early founders, the first three of us, were really forged in fire. We had to sort of go and in my case, zero out every bit of cash we had, we had to worry about whether it would be any money, we had to worry about there’s other things much larger than us and this company that we had to go worry about, and I think when that happens, it puts a lot of things in perspective. It also forges you, right in fire, which is a great thing when you do come out of a bad economy is that so few companies come out, and when they do, they all have different stories and what you typically see is those companies that do come out have the greater chance of being successful. So yeh that’s the stories that I remember most about the adversity prior to this really being a big entity.

#00:33:48-5# Neil : Yeh. It sounds like it started at the best time for you James, not the worst time.

#00:33:54-5# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Yeh could be though, that could be too.

# #00:33:56-3# Neil : Because if you think about it, at that point in time, everyone else was trying to cut costs and trying to survive. Whilst you were trying to survive, you did not have all that baggage that they had to deal with, and a result, you are much leaner and you have started out at the best time at that point.

#00:34:15-3# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Right, no that’s a good way of putting it, I like that Neil.

#00:34:16-6# Neil : You don’t know anything else do you, when you start at that time? if you think about it, if everyone else is complaining about it, and you are just glad of every bit of business you can get at that time, because you have never seen the good times. So that is just normal for you.

#00:34:31-0# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Right and you get the other thing is everybody goes, ‘you started a company now? what are you crazy?’ so you definitely feel that and then when people see you come out, and then coming out with an ongoing trajectory that’s up unto the right, it certainly adds not only the story but it does those people remember ‘wow I do remember questioning this’ and now look what you have done. So yeh you definitely see and I would agree with you, it probably was the best time when you are in it, it is certainly hard to view that until when you get to the other side, you go ‘oh wow it probably was the best time’ it certainly did not feel that way at the time.

#00:35:24-4# Neil : I think after the wall street crash in 1929, I seem to remember that more money was made after that, than for a long time before it and its happened with other recessions hasn’t it I think? so its a good time. Did you have any doubts that delayed you starting your business?

#00:35:45-1# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Yeh I think there were certainly early indications the economy was maybe going to stumble or was stumbling, I certainly had to convince some team mates and myself and family members that I got a great idea, by the way, this is always a good story, ‘hey remember last year’s pay cheque, it was very good, running a big group within a large company, and remember that cheque had bunch of zeros in it, we were doing really well, and it was stable and growing. How about, we throw all that away, and I have got this great idea, no I have not built it yet but its an idea and I have got some great people and it won’t make money for years, don’t worry about that, yes I’ll be.’ Well there’s no salary, ha ha for maybe six months, may be a year, but at that point don’t worry, it will be half or may be a quarter of the salary I am used to but this is a sort of story you sort of think afterwards, how the hell do you ever sell that to anyone right? even to yourself. So, I think it is I have seen the entrepreneurs and the people who are considering starting something and I sort of explain it two ways, you are either the type of personality when you jump of a cliff, or start this, I should say, you either believe you are on a rollercoaster ride and that the downward ride is unrailed and you are going to find a way to pull it up. Or you are jumping off of a cliff, and you are just going to crash in to nothingness right, and because truly starting something, especially from ground zero, you will have the highest highs, you will ever have because you have built it yourself and anyone and any win or anything that smells like it is going to be bigger is going to feel like euphoric, but you are also going to have some of the lowest lows because you are not surrounded by thousands of people sharing in these things and any downward movement again gets you to be confused that you are not on a rollercoaster ride or in an aeroplane that you are actually in a free fall with no parachute right? And nobody wants to be in a freefall with no parachute, because they know what happens at the end.

#00:38:14-5# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : So I think you have certainly seen doubts and I have seen this in other people too, but I typically try to continue to believe with a massive quantity with intentionality that if we work our butts off, and are passionate towards what we are doing for our customers, that we are always going to be heading in the right direction and certainly its proven out, it takes a while to beginning to feel that way, that’s for sure, sometimes.

#00:38:54-1# Neil : Mmm and what mistakes did you make that slowed your journey?

#00:39:00-9# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : You know its so fascinating when you think about ‘well I wouldn’t have done that.’ and sometimes its, now its some of them are ridiculous, like ‘why did we spend that money on that now?’ and now as a company we have developed a culture of thinking of the company’s money like our own, but even small things we did early on and we lose time and I go ‘ah shoot, why did we do that?’ and I probably have a personality type that could sometimes fret about those. I think I look at it more, that there are probably some things that I did not expect, didn’t plan about the business, under expected that later on I was like ‘oh wow I guess if we had looked at that part sooner we could have maybe grown faster, I will give one example. We started this business for small medium businesses, and no matter what any other entrepreneur tells you, most that have some element of small medium business started that way right? They started ‘I am going to build this product and small companies will buy it’ and then when big companies buy it, they will say, ‘oh it was always part of my plan’ and I could tell you, I read stories from big companies like salesforce.com and knowing the real story to you I go ‘come on, I know how this goes’ and we felt the same way, we built this for one community, and what we found was though, we were pleasantly surprised, kind of shocked, that big companies were signing up to try it, we were like ‘what is this company doing signing up for this product? What is Target doing signing up for this? Don’t they, they can do this themselves’, we expected that they would.

#00:40:46-8# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : And what we found looking back, was like actually no, they have the same problems everybody has, everybody has this problem and actually our platform has developed and matured over time and then resonated really well with all companies, and so I would say I mean early on, not noticing that our product could serve the needs of certain types of customers and not recognising that, and adjusting to that probably cost us at times, yeh that would probably be one of them I would say.

#00:41:31-4# Neil : Mmm hmm I think the thing is that you have got to focus on somebody at the beginning haven’t you? Because

#00:41:36-1# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : That is true

#00:41:36-1# Neil : You always run the danger of trying to fulfil everybody and when you try to do that then ultimately you fulfil nobody potentially.

#00:41:43-2# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Yeh that’s fair, yeh.

#00:41:46-1# Neil : So what are some of the things you did before you started your business that would be helpful tips to some of the listeners who have not yet taken the first step on the entrepreneur way?

#00:41:57-3# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : You know I am a big believer that in what we call t-shape skill sets, and I think that companies used to start themselves or would look at employees like snipers, get this one job, do it really well, and then they put their weapon away when something else is a foot. And we really believe in t-shape skill sets and why that’s important when we talk about what I did beforehand, and what I would recommend is when we say t-shape skill sets, we like to hire generalists who bring a skill set in a particular area that is really complimentary and needed by our group. And so for example, with sales people we love people who are great at communication and that can empathise with people, that can start conversations, that are problem solvers, and yet when we look at our generalists, and some of those we expect of all employees here, right? we expect people to be good communicators at CANVAS, does not mean they have to be good public speakers, but that they can adequately communicate a position, and advocate for themselves or an idea, and there are other t-shape skill sets that we look for you know throughout the company. But I am a big believer in today to as being pretty well rounded, and that you can bring not just one very specific thing but that you have got general skills to be able to do a bunch of things, because that is the reality, when you start a company, you are going to have to do everything, and then as you grow, there is ways in which, that capability of all your employees becomes a major asset. I would say too is, going and getting mentors and being vulnerable enough to do a lot of listening too, share your ideas, ask a ton of questions, and get people passionate about you, and your ideas so that you can get feedback from that.

#00:44:18-3# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : I think the combination of those two things you help a lot, certainly other things, very specific things you could do, but I always find those two things, you need those in the tool chest at all times.

#00:44:35-3# Neil : Can we now talk about your entrepreneurial journey a little bit more James? Do you think culture is important from the beginning in a business?

#00:44:43-7# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Yeh. So actually I am probably going to steal a question from your future with this too, that we have got written on our wall, right near the entrance of my favourite quotes, which is Culture is strategy for breakfast. It is a Peter Drucker quote, and what I love about that and something that we have lived since day one, is that we live in a world now and I will even go backwards. We used to live in a world where you had a great idea, you go build a product, 20 years later a newer company would come along, disrupt you, and so on and so forth. And so you could build something, one thing, and go from there, your whole thing could be around your what and your how. And the problem is today, the opportunity today is start-ups are disrupting start-ups, which is just wow we have never been in a time period like this. You know we are talking about GOOGLE being an old company now, its in the life of companies, its barely been on the planet. FACEBOOK is being disrupted. Companies that are still considered in their infancy, what we used to consider their infancy are now being disrupted themselves. And that process is only happening faster and faster and faster.

#00:46:21-0# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : With that being the case, you can no longer be about your what and your how. You can’t, you have to be about your why and then if you truly are that way, you disrupt yourself and in order to do that though you have to be for your strategy, for what you do, you have to have a culture that is going to be able to support that and a culture which you are proud of and its not just about creating a vision and a mission statement and putting that on a boardroom wall, more so than ever before, I think culture is wildly important, it is one of the reasons why you are hearing about it more and more. You never would have heard in a quote, ten years ago in a business, very infrequently I will say, in a business interview, so much talk about culture and yet why are people talking about it today, because it has a real capitalistic value, that if you do not have the right culture, you won’t hire the right people, and you won’t put yourself in a position to disrupt yourself. And on that understanding its not about what you do right? It’s about why you do it, so we believe that, we believe that from the very beginning. We definitely pray at the temple of Simon Sinec if you know him, the great guy who sort of talks about the golden circle. And we make that at the heart of everything we do.

#00:47:46-7# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : So we don’t just give lip service to culture, we have really bicced it in to the DNA of our organisation and without it, I would expect that someone will come over and steamroll us someday right? Or our customers will get rid of us, and in today’s world, they can do that. You know, software is a service world you know your customers can disrupt you by getting rid of you.

#00:48:12-5# Neil : So the culture in your business, is that something that you have designed? and if it is, how have you actually created the culture within your organisation?

# #00:48:21-9# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Yeh I mean it is, and how we created it was an understanding that it certainly has to be embodied by the top of the company. But that it has to be something that everyone can live, and not just because it is on a boardroom wall again in a framed plaque or in a frame that is sitting there you know that nobody ever looks about or thinks about. So we embed elements to what we do, that help people live this culture. We train to it, all our new employees, even before they take a job here are learning about it, they are seeing it, they read articles before they start for me elements of the pieces of the pieces of our culture. And by the way, not everybody fits in our culture, there are elements of our culture that might be scary for some people, or might make them feel so different from what they are used to that it is not going to make them feel safe at feeling that they are going to be successful. For some people though, its incredibly liberating. And they are going to do the best work ever. So we design this in a fashion really starts with the first of our six value elements which is empathy. It just comes down to if we can embed this concept of empathy from the beginning, and in to all employees, that the things we do will ultimately serve our why and our customers’ why at the same time, and those things become the same thing, that the brand feels the same way.

#00:50:04-2# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Whether you are a customer, or an employee. I think we all see this today that there is some brands we go, you see a tv commercial about that brand, you talk to employees of that brand, you see customers, you walk in to a store, and all of those experiences feel very different right? and because the culture of that organisation is not the same for customers and employees and it feels different and now they are marketing it that way. So its one of the reasons why our head of culture and head of HR sit in our marketing group and near our product group, is that our hope was that those groups authentically stay connected and that it feels the same way for employees as it does customers.

#00:50:52-8# Neil : So you have got did you say you have got 6 core values? is that what you said? did I hear rightly there?

#00:51:00-0# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : That’s correct yeh.

#00:51:02-2# Neil : So the decisions you make in your business you measure against your core values in essence, I think that’s what you said?

#00:51:06-2# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Absolutely, that’s absolutely correct right.

#00:51:11-0# Neil : So everybody knows the core values, so then they can make decisions that fit with those core values.

#00:51:16-3# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : That’s correct.

#00:51:19-1# Neil : How, I am just thinking on the fly here but how do you create innovation in your employees? Because obviously you need innovation don’t you?

#00:51:28-0# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : No I think, so what we say is empathy is the currency of innovation. Is that without your ability to think from someone else’s perspective versus thinking outside about how someone might feel. But can you put yourself in someone else’s shoes, can you practise that? And if you can, that becomes the thing that allows you to ‘buy more innovation’ right? And it opens up the door for more innovation, I will give you a quick example of that is a sympathetic view versus an empathetic view, a sympathetic view is ‘boy I can see your business is suffering, I see that and I want to sell you something.’ right? To solve that right? versus ‘hey you do this now in your business, why do you do it that way?’ and then asking ten more questions beyond that and suddenly you start finding out, the real problems, the real why of that organisation and suddenly what you are positioning to them sounds like more like you are an employee of their company. Than someone trying to pitch a product right? and I think when you do that, what comes back is amazing not only empathy but what comes back it empowers all of our staff to think innovatively and they come back with amazing ideas, our slack channel for example on product development and product development innovation, is one of our most active channels on Slack right now.

#00:53:09-1# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Constantly, our team is feeding ideas, and when I say ideas too, its not just customer led ideas like hey I love the Henry Ford quote, ‘If I just listen to my customers, I would give them faster horses right?’ another quote, I got two now, that we sort of quote internally, we say ‘deliver Teslas not faster horses’ we don’t even deliver a car, we deliver something that delights them wildly, right? its ‘hey we know your problem, you want to go faster’, and you think, if you told us this you would tell us just give me the thing I am doing now, we will make it faster. And what we said is, ‘how about we give you something you did not expect? But that’s going to meet that problem and the only way to do that is we have to listen to you.

#00:54:00-5# Neil : Mmm that’s amazing. So knowing what you know now, is there anything that if you had known it when you started out would have helped you to short cut the learning curve?

#00:54:11-1# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Yeh I would probably second guess myself on elements of our product direction at certain times, ‘hey why did we do this then or why didn’t we head in a certain direction faster?’ so I think there’s probably been times when, I will say this, probably almost always if I have ever second guessed my gut, on hiring someone or in a certain direction and I got convinced away from them, I always found afterwards I am like let’s say 99.9% of the time I am like ‘oh shoot I should have listened to myself’ so I sort of give that as the advice to is that there are going to come sometimes you go, ‘I really respect that person, they are saying this even though my guts telling me that, but I really respect this idea’ or maybe there’s three or four people telling you that. And almost to the letter every time, I have made a decision like that, I have always gone, ‘shoot I just wasted time and resources and energy, I should not have done that, I should have trusted my gut.’ and I think people have to listen to their gut more often.

#00:55:24-8# Neil : Yeh well you led me very nicely in to my next question there, and how much does gut feeling influence your decisions in your business then?

#00:55:34-0# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Yeh I mean it certainly has to be a measured thing, right? and we say if we are going to treat everyone like employees, which is one of the elements of our organisation, is empowering people to feel like owners and not employees. That you have to then not just offer up ideas, right that you have to be able to offer up a prediction of what you think is going to come from that. So its the measured back half of gut, right is that I am going to trust my gut but I am going to do the back half of this equation which is ‘I wonder if I go in this direction, I am predicting and I am going to analyse where I think that will take me, and then how will I measure that?’ and so as much as possible, we try to do this with everybody, we try to offer people not just to offer ideas but to be willing to product manage an idea forward and lead it. And you don’t just come with an idea, or even just the energy but that you come with the predictive components of ‘I think if we do this, this will come out of it right?’ So we trust our gut a lot and we are allowed to fail fast, and in fact one of our sub core values is we beg forgiveness versus ask permission. How many CEO’s tell you that? I would rather you beg forgiveness and take a chance, as long as you don’t do it in a vacuum, so we try to empower other people to listen to their gut, but not do it in a vacuum. Is that you go and balance not just the idea but the prediction of where that idea is going to take you, and you feel against that right?

#00:57:26-4# Neil : Life is made of constant change whether we like it or not, and many people say the only constant in life is change, James how do you try to keep up with change?

#0 #00:57:40-1# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : That’s a good question, I think I try to force myself to put myself in uncomfortable positions, often and positions I have not been in before or positions I would not normally know, this does not smell like me, I would never normally do that but I am going to try that experience, so I open myself up to try a lot of different experiences, I love to travel, I think that is really important in today’s world, especially today’s world of delivering technology. It used to be opening up something I am going to sell to the United States and 10 years later I will go to Europe, and then ten years later go to Asia. When you launch a product today, you are global pretty much. Most things we do, not everything, certainly CANVAS, the day we turned it on, we were getting people signing up for the product all over the world. And unfortunately, Americans they have certain cultures that have a very introverted view, and I find cultural components keep me thinking about change and thinking about elements of new. I also listen to a lot of our youngest and newest employees, and to allow them to have a voice in to things and to be open to not thinking because they have had the least amount of time here with the youngest that their ideas don’t have some element of merit.

#00:59:13-6# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : So I love, one of my favourite interview questions is ‘teach me something’ and no matter how old or young someone is, in their life experiences that I really try to get people to teach me something and its awesome from that perspective, so I think being in a constant position to learn and being in an open position to learn helps me as well.

#00:59:40-9# Neil : What is your favourite book on entrepreneurialism, business, personal development, leadership, or motivation and can you tell us why you have chosen it?

#00:59:46-7# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Well just one now, that’s hard because I had a few,

#00:59:58-9# Neil : You can give me more than one if you want to.

#00:59:58-9# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Yeh there has been a couple, one I am going to give is a crazy one I used to give this book to everyone, its John Crackard’s book ‘In to thin air’ which is the story of I think it was the date range, it was the 90’s or late 80’s that the year of when the people climbing mount Everest, there was just a huge number of storms and there was a lot of disaster surrounding that. Why I love reading that and I am someone who loves metaphors too, but the story of personal struggle against all odds, in a very human way, I mean there are lots of great business books, I am going to give you a few certainly. But what I love about that is that people love stories right? You can tell, you can convince people of a lot of things and if you can tell a story around it, its far more human, people can create connections to a story and what I loved about that was its a great metaphor for when all else is down, you can just through human spirit and divine will you know, your own will to survive, that humanity can do a lot of amazing things, so I love that story. I certainly love some of the biographies, I love Tearing Down Things the Jobs biography by Walter Isaacs and I love actually, I will pick some ones because even looking back at some people and from your past experiences to not to give the same stories.

#01:01:40-1# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : There are two other books I would love to share, one is Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking, and what I love about that story too and her story, Amanda Palmer has been and I think she still is was known for a number of other things, famous musician, fantastic musician, but had the largest kick starter for a musician ever. And sort of surprised the music world by sort of taking up the middle man and publishing in the music industry. But her story is really about empathy, and about putting yourself in a vulnerable position, and the art of being open to asking people for things right? And its a great story of her personal story through some of that, which she tells, but I love that story because again, I think it opens up people’s ability to think empathetically. I also love Dev Patnek’s book Wired to Care, which is building organisations where they are thinking outside themselves, not just thinking about ‘hey what’s my role in the to my shareholders? And to my employees? But what’s your larger role?’ I like that book as well.

#01:03:01-0# Neil : Thank you for that, everyone when you have a busy life, listening to audio books is a great way to expand your knowledge in the time when you may be doing other things, such as driving or when you are at the gym. We have a special offer for you of a free audio book of your choosing. To choose your free audio book, go to www.freeaudiobookoffer.com. As long as you have not already signed up, then you will qualify, James what I would like to do with you now is speculate with you about the future a little bit. What one thing would you do with your business if you knew that you could not fail?

#01:03:39-0# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Right, well I think if we look at this, when we started this business, we wanted to address the needs of as many companies as possible. I mean it is a pretty brazen, bold vision that we wanted this problem to go away for businesses of all shapes and sizes. I would love a way to find a way to more dynamically, not just in the United States but we are actually seeing this in countries like China, India, the Philippines, I will use the Philippines for example, 97% of all small medium businesses in the Philippines have no automation at all. Which is amazing, and yet in 5 years’ time, 80% will hold a Smart phone in their pocket. So, one of the great things I would love to do, is to continue to invest more aggressively, globally, especially in some of these economies where I think you are going to see massive disruption because of Cloud base software.

#01:05:00-7# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : I think under the order of what you saw, happen in Japan and in the East, when cell phones first came out, there are certain countries especially Japan, where we figured the West would deploy cell phones faster than you know, certain parts of the world. And come to find out, parts of the East, deployed cell phones far faster. And part of it was, in the United States, everyone already had a phone. It was not very expensive to have a landline, but in certain countries it was quite a process to have a landline, it was expensive, they need to be registered, they took time. And so not everyone had a phone. And so when cell phones came out, for what looked like in the United States was wildly expensive. And yeh ok I can talk wherever I am but its still expensive for some countries and locations, this was ‘I can have a phone now.’ And it is actually not that much more expensive because land lines. So what you saw was this leap frogging of technology, and therefore happened was escalation of Smart phones and happened very fast in the East, and you are starting to see this happen with software in certain parts of the world. So what I would love to do is certainly continue to do the things we are doing now and some of the bigger western based countries, but for us to really heavily invest, in some of that wild disruption that I thinks going to happen especially in the East, places like India, Pakistan, China and parts of South East Asia, that I think are really going to start embracing this type of technology in a big way.

#01:06:39-7# Neil : And what skill if you were excellent at it would help you the most to double your business?

#01:06:49-4# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Well the skill that will help me double my business? I would say right now its the continued patience of measured execution. If I have to say anything here right now, its about its interesting, and I will say this, I just left a CEO from one of our BC companies, and they had four BC’s on a panel, all of which have had successful exits between half a billion to 1.3 billion dollars. And all of them, it was very fascinating, to quote, when they told their story, they told how it took them to start the company and get to ten million dollars of revenue and then exit. And then you go, ‘well there was 15 years in between, what happened?’ And they go, ‘more of the same’ so it was very fascinating, all their pain, their torment, the things they learned, what they needed to do, was figure it out between zero and ten million dollars of annualised revenue. And that’s when they learned so much and what to do and then it was just executing on that, and we are on that phase now of going, we are at that beautiful phase now of going, ‘we have just got to do this, and we have got to keep doing it at a higher order bid.’ We have got to do it at a higher level, but keep doing this right?

#01:08:11-2# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : And I think that’s part of it is, this ongoing patience to continue to be measured, in that process going forward right now.

#01:08:20-2# Neil : In five years from now, if a well-known business publication was publishing an article on your business, after talking to your customers and suppliers, what would you like it to say?

#01:08:32-7# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Just wow! Probably just wow! I am hoping that back then as well as that people are blown away by what’s possible when they complete this type of automation and I think that in five years, which I think is the right time period, this industry becomes as prevalent as cloud based data storage right? That everyone knows about cloud based data storage now right? The likes of Box and you know organisations like that. Five years ago, unless you were in the know, you talked to most businesses, they had no idea, we think this type of business automation, do-it-yourself business automation on a platform like CANVAS will be like that, and I would hope that actually CANVAS as a verb almost right, I need to go put this on CANVAS you know people don’t say cloud based data storage, they say, ‘hey can we get this in the box?’ Right? And I hope we have honoured this vision and mission of ours and deserved that customers would put us in a position where authors and customers would say that of us as well.

#01:09:42-5# Neil : Yeh I think that is the ultimate aim of any product category isn’t it? To have your brand as the verb for that product. For that category sorry yeh, we are now at the part of the show where you share three golden nuggets with us, so James, what is your favourite quote and how have you applied it? Now you have mentioned one or two, so I am just wondering what your favourite one was?

#01:10:04-6# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Yeh I would definitely would use the Peter Drucker quote that ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’ that is if I were to wrap up all three in to one, that would be, that would really be it. Is that your investment and culture from day one, where people might think it is a luxury, is going to come back and pay off for you in a big way, when you get to the place where you want to be right? Which is all businesses need to start operating and thinking and acting like the company they want to be, not the company they are, otherwise they will never become the company they want to be and culture is at the heart of that, not your strategy.

#01:10:52-2# Neil : Yeh, do you have any favourite online resources that you can share with us?

#01:10:58-6# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : I love audio books, I actually your audio book component as well, I would love to go and check that out, but I think your building to continue to learn, I am a huge podcaster, I think locations like yours too, and jamming up your ipad your iphone with these resources so that you can listen to them, I think those are awesome. Thats what I would recommend.

#01:11:28-5# Neil : And what is your best advice to other entrepreneurs?

#01:11:32-0# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Stay passionate.

#01:11:37-0# Neil : Ok its sometimes difficult that isn’t it? Ha ha ha

#0 #01:11:40-1# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : It is, it can be.

#01:11:40-8# Neil : Because you can start off passionate, but when you actually get in to what you are doing, you find that that passion might sort of wilt a little bit if its not quite how you thought it was going to turn out, because the passion that you had was about a product or a sector but when you are running the business, it is not always the same is it?

#01:11:58-9# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : That’s right, its about staying passionate about your customers, about what you are doing, the changes you can make, you can put a lot of things after stay passionate. But I think it really comes down to that if you lose that you will stop thinking outside in, you will stop especially most start-ups, they were trying to convince someone to do something very different, if you cannot convince yourself of that and stay passionate, how are you ever going to convince someone else that you are heading in the right path or get someone to buy your product right? Or to invest in you or to join your company.

#01:12:38-1# Neil : Yeh I think your passion has got to be about the right thing isn’t it? That’s the key to that, isn’t it? If your focus is you like a particular product but its not about satisfying the need of the customer, then they are not the same.

#01:12:55-5# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Right, and that’s what happens after stay passionate, those languages, you have got to stay passionate about a number of things including the reason why you started hopefully if you started out from an outside in view that you have to stay passionate about that view.

#01:13:12-7# Neil : Mmm, everyone if you did not manage to get a note of James’ favourite resource or his favourite books, then you can find the links on James’ show notes page, just go to theentrepreneurway.com and search for James or James Quigley in the search box. James, is there anything else that you would like to add about your business?

#0 #01:13:36-8# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : No other than I hope everyone will give it a try, gocanvas.com its a 30-day free trial and let us know, I would love to hear your feedback.

#01:13:46-0# Neil : Thank you James, James its been an honour having you on the show, you have shared your highs and the lows of what’s its like to be an entrepreneur and you have shared some great wisdom and knowledge with us so thank you so much for coming on the show.

#01:13:58-7# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Thank you Neil, its been a pleasure.

# #01:13:59-9# Neil : You are welcome. Thank you.

#01:14:01-1# James Quigley CEO & Co-Founder of Canvas : Bye bye.