AQ's Blog & Grill

Uvaro: Helping professionals have more fulfilling careers In this episode, Donna talks about the ‘Why Not’ approach that has led her through much of her entrepreneurial career. Taking advantage of opportunities as they come and following your interests to see where they might lead. With Uvaro, Donna and her co-founders saw a hole within the tech industry and came up with a brilliant way to fill it. Learn all about Uvaro, their platform, what they do, and how they got to where they are today.

In this episode, Mallorie talks about the $24M CAD Series B funding that the company has just secured as well as the importance of maintaining the mindset of a start-up. To always be innovating and looking for opportunities within the industry is a crucial component to growing and scaling any business. More on Bridgit Solutions: || https://www.bridgitsolutions.com/ || https://twitter.com/bridgitsoftware || https://www.facebook.com/bridgitsolutions/ || https://www.linkedin.com/company/bridgit/ || https://www.instagram.com/bridgitsolutions/ About Our Guest Mallorie Brodie is the CEO and Co-founder of Bridgit. Along with Lauren Lake, Mallorie co-founded Bridgit in 2014 with a simple mission: to help the construction industry maximize profits and reduce risk by taking a people-first approach. Under her leadership, the team at Bridgit has established Bridgit Bench, the company’s flagship product, as the leading workforce intelligence solution built exclusively for the construction industry. Along with being named

“We can honestly say that every assumption we made about how we thought it was going to work was wrong.” Iain Klugman has spent the last 16 years bringing together government organizations, businesses, and talent to make Communitech an integral part of the Waterloo Region ecosystem. In this episode, he joins AQ to reminisce on his career of building Communitech to the intentionally collaborative and ambitious environment it is today. Iain shares how his team worked to keep talent in the region when RIM went through a massive downfall, and how Communitech reviews their strategies yearly to adjust to this ever-changing community. They discuss the comparison of Waterloo Region to Silicon Valley, the Future of X Initiative, the experiment that became the Corporate Innovation Program, and how the Waterloo Region has the potential to become a healthcare innovation hub.   Time Stamps: 0:21 Background of Iain Klugman and his role at Communitech 3:08 Last 16 Years at Communitech - Focus on Ecosystem 4:13 Comparison –

In this week’s episode, Alan sits down with Dani Bazely, Director of Marketing for Driverseat, as they discuss the innovative, award-winning business. Driverseat’s franchise-based business model focuses on chauffeur and shuttle assistance, with opportunities for specialized services from accessible transport to tours across wine regions. With low start-up costs, franchise owners range from young professionals and entrepreneurs to business owners looking to diversify their profile and add another income stream. The entrepreneurial opportunities that come from being a Driverseat franchisee are vast, as the business is scalable and has the potential to grow and expand in an ever-changing industry. Dani discusses some of the marketing strategies coming into play for Driverseat in 2020. She also discusses the hurdles Driverseat has faced with their expansion from Kitchener, Ontario, to across Canada and the United States.   Time Stamps: 0:45 What is Driverseat? 2:43 Who might be interested in this type of franchis

What does successfully breaking into an untapped market actually look like? How do you do it? How do you bring a product to market that the market is ready to adopt right away? You ask the market. What sets Bridgit apart from so many other companies, and what has made them so successful, is that they went to their customers first. Before they ever had a business plan or a product - before they ever wrote a single line of code - they hit the pavement. Lauren Lake (Bridgit COO) and Mallorie Brodie (Bridgit CEO) would pop by construction sites early in the morning all over the city, with coffee and donuts and they talked to the people that would be consumers of their product. They spent their first 6 months in business “understanding the needs, building simple prototypes and validating those with people before actually investing and building the real product“. And that became Bridgit’s methodology - step by step, one piece at a time, following the research and the needs of those they were serving.   In this epis

"Innovation Factory Accelerates Success" - who doesn't want that!? Incubators and accelerators, like Hamilton's Innovation Factory, are the not so hidden gem that entrepreneurs need to know. In this week's episode, David Carter and Alan Quarry discuss the difference between an accelerator and an incubator, why Canada isn't producing enough "mythical unicorns," and how regional innovation centers need to work together to increase the success rates of startups. The City of Hamilton, often known for its Life Sciences presence, has a significant amount of innovation coming through that stream. But often, when academics and entrepreneurs come up with a brilliant new business idea, they end up thinking one of two ways: "I have this amazing product, so I'll post about it and everyone will buy it. #success"; OR "I have this amazing product, but there are about 85 overwhelming steps between this point and having a viable go to market strategy. I don't know where to start." Whether it's help with marketing strategies,

The world is currently going through the strangest thing that any of us will likely face in our lives. And there's a ton of fear and anxiety and doom and gloom that comes along with a worldwide pandemic, of course. But in this episode, happiness expert and author Jennifer Moss gives us incredible, tangible advice on how to navigate through this uncertainty with less guilt. But also to accept the many stages of grief that we may be moving through right now, no matter what form the emotion may be taking.  It's ok to not be thriving right now, but we don't have to completely sink either.  *This episode was adapted from a Facebook LIVE that was recorded on March 26th, 2020 (if you want to see the video, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6uLz2hRdqo) List of Resource Suggestions from this episode: HERO GEN – https://hero-generation.com/covid19/ Global Happiness Council Access here: http://www.happinesscouncil.org/ The Global Happiness Council (GHC) produces the Global Happiness and Well-Being Policy Repo

90% of B2B purchases are influenced by word of mouth. Fewer than 1% of companies have an actual “word of mouth” strategy. Jay Baer knows that one of the best ways to grow a business is for your customers to do it for you. In this episode of AQ’s Blog & Grill, Jay shares where to start when building your “word of mouth” strategy. We all know word of mouth is important, but we don’t realize how important or how to accomplish this. Jay gives us direct examples businesses are using today to get the word out, and explains the five types of Talk Triggers: Talkable Generosity, Talkable Speed, Talkable Usefulness, Talkable Empathy and Talkable Attitude. Jay dives into why he allows event organizers to pick the suits he wears for keynotes - and the funny story of when this has backfired. They discuss the difference between Influencer Marketing and Talk Triggers, as Jay suggests that it's wise to not do one without the other. “The idea here ultimately is for your current customers to recruit the next generation of

From her demanding and successful career in sports marketing as the VP of Business Development for the KW Titans to balancing being a single mom to three busy children, Melissa Melnychuk has mastered the art of balancing it all. And it’s not all spreadsheets and Pinterest and spreading yourself so thin that you can barely function, like you may think. Instead Melissa takes the approach that “sometimes it’s ok to float” A certified life coach, Joga instructor, personal trainer, holistic nutritionist as well as a social media influencer, accomplished sales manager at RIM (when BlackBerry was known as such) and “endless buckets of passion” for her community, Melissa knows a thing or two about juggling many balls and wearing many hats. And her advice, to herself and to her clients, who often struggle with the elusive ‘balance’ that everyone seems to be striving for has always been “It’s ok if you float. You don’t need to sink, you can just float. Sometimes it’s about surviving and being ok in the moment of where

“I wanted to do something global and make an impact” - Peter Whitby What started as a leisurely trip in China has become a global product and a growing team. With intensive research, O2 Canada has truly innovated the face mask - creating a product with top notch functionality and unprecedented aesthetic ability.  From airline travel and city pollution, to natural disasters and global epidemics - O2 Canada’s mandate is to help people breathe clean air. As CEO of the company, Peter Whitby makes sure this mandate is at the forefront of everything they do - including giving away their very first stock during the Alberta/BC wildfires. In this interview, Peter discusses the O2 line of products, what sets their premium face masks apart, and how they’ve grown with the help of the Accelerator Centre and Ontario Government. He shares how they are keeping up with demand as the COVID-19 Virus continues to spread, and how this global epidemic has both helped and challenged their business.    Get to know more about O2 Cana

You may just have the best content in the world, but if your user experience isn’t top notch, the content may as well have been written by a seahorse. In this episode of AQ’s Blog & Grill, Randy Frisch describes the key difference between content marketing and content experience. He explains how we can get stuck in this loop of pumping out amazing content – content that is actually attracting our ideal customer and demographic – and yet we’re not seeing the sales and conversions one would expect. The assumption then, pump out more great content, right?! Wrong. The content isn’t the issue. The content was likely never the issue. Listen in to hear how your user experience may be the key to getting those customer relationships, increasing demand and bringing in the revenue that you’ve been fumbling for. There’s so much more that went down in this episode, and some awesome examples and tangible takeaways. You don’t want to miss it.   Randy Frisch is the CMO and cofounder of UberFlip as well as an author of a

Jennifer Moss has many accolades – she’s an author, an international speaker, a columnist for the CBC, a contributor to Harvard Business Review and a member of the UN Global Happiness Council committee, just to name a few. When the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that ‘Burnout’ was a workplace issue, and that it was our own problem to ‘treat’ and solve, they didn’t quite get it right. Sure, doing more yoga, making time for self care, implementing breathing techniques and generally ‘finding your zen’ are all great tools to deal with your burnout – the idea that WE, as employees, need to manage this at all is pretty backwards. Hearing Jennifer and Alan talk about Happiness, and what that word really means might surprise you. Spoiler alert: Happiness isn’t about being happy all the time, or putting on a fake smile until we eventually ‘feel happy’. So what does it mean? Listen in as Jennifer explains what Happiness actually means, and how it’s translated into the workplace. And as a leader, how importan

Entrepreneur and professional artist, Jennifer Gough, speaks with Alan about finding her purpose in her art and how she completely changed her career to follow her passion. Jennifer's mission is to inspire people to follow their dreams and make their passions happen. She talks about growing her art business by saying yes to opportunities, taking chances, finding the right balance when she first launched Minds Eye Studio Art, and how she uses social media to keep her business thriving. http://mindseyestudioart.com/ https://twitter.com/Mindseyestudio https://www.facebook.com/MY.M.E.S.A/ https://www.instagram.com/thegallery.yoga/ https://www.instagram.com/mindseyestudioart/ About our Guest Jennifer Gough is a self-taught, multidisciplinary, visual and conceptual artist and entrepreneur. In 2010, Jennifer was named one of Waterloo Regional Record’s 40 Under 40, as well as being nominated for Woman of the Year, Arts & Culture at Kitchener Oktoberfest. Jennifer inspires many with her story of success, going

He didn’t get lucky. He isn’t an investment psychic. And he doesn’t possess any fancy or magical ability to predict which businesses are going to take off, and which won’t. He tries things. He jumps at opportunities and he FAILS. Over and over, he’s failed. He fails, and he’s learned how to fall in loves with failing. And with each missed opportunity though, he’s perfected his formula for failure – fail often, fail fast, fail cheap. Jim Estill has had his hand in the business world, crushing it as an entrepreneur, for as long as most people in the business world can remember. Jim is an engineer, a philanthropist, the president and CEO of not one but TWO companies currently, a humanitarian, an author, a creator, an innovator and he’s showing no signs of slowing down. In fact, this new idea of the ‘mature entrepreneur’ is something that Jim and Alan touch on in the second half of this episode. Alan and Jim cover so much ground in this informative episode. From working dinners with Steve Jobs, sitting on the RIM

“What kind of human do you feel like being in the future?” So often, in life, we think of success a certain way. What career we end up in, what home we own, what cars we drive all seem rather important when someone asks you to think about your future. But Lindsay took us down a very different road in this episode. Join us as Lindsay and Alan sit down and discuss…well…everything, basically! From owning a Yoga business in university to struggling to find a co-op placement as a geographer. Learning how to work her network and trusting herself enough to head down an entirely new career path. Lindsay tells us how she found herself in photography (somewhere she never thought she’d be), some of the most inspiring people in her life, and even Roger (the bulldog!) gets a bit of spotlight. Lindsay is an Entrepreneur Extraordinaire, as Alan so eloquently deems her, and her life experience in fascinating. She is a person who takes things as they come, runs with the things she loves and that work, and let’s the failures b

Changing the world through traffic innovations. Kurtis McBride sits down with Alan and discusses how the innovation of Miovision in traffic stops, can globally impact fuel emissions and climate change as a whole. From a university engineering degree to a well respected and internationally respected entrepreneur, McBride is changing the landscape for startup companies in Waterloo Region. 

Positioning. And cake pops!

Listen in as Michael Brenner and Alan Quarry chat about everything from Champion Leadership to the LEGO brand, the kindness rule to the Pelaton scandal before the holidays.  And the underlying theme that ties all of these things together - empathy. If you can think and feel like the customer, you win.

Charlene will always tell you to “begin with the end in mind” but what does that mean? In her new book, The Disruption Mindset: Why Some Organizations Transform While Others Fail, explains just that.  In this week's episode, Charlene and Alan discuss company culture and the movement of creating DISRUPTIVE LEADERS within organizations, so they will go out and create exponential change.

In today’s episode, Alan chat’s with Lee Odden on the emerging concept of Influence Marketing in the B2B sector. Lee is a B2B marketing strategist, author, internationally known keynote speaker, and CEO of a digital marketing organization called TopRank Marketing.