Speaker 1 0:01

When you can predict what's gonna happen, you can plan accordingly, and you can create a sense of calm in the company. Where chaos gets created is when we don't know what tomorrow holds, it becomes much more difficult to do anything well when you're always reacting.

Speaker 0:21

Founders and leaders across Manitoba are building meaningful things, often quietly and without much attention. I'm Nathan Maertins. On the Building Manitoba podcast, I sit down with local founders and leaders to go beyond the surface. We talk about the values that drove them, the decisions that mattered, and the lessons they learned along the way. This podcast is for people who care about building something meaningful in Manitoba. Welcome back to the Building Manitoba podcast. I'm your host, Nathan Maertins. My guest today is Matthew Hibbert, co-founder of Maka Power, an electrical services business, serving manufacturers, food processors, and institutions across Western Canada. In this episode, we talk about building a company from the ground up, how to think about growth, creating the systems and culture that support scale, and why planning, discipline, and long-term thinking matter more than most founders realize. Here's my conversation with Matthew Hibbert. Matt, welcome to the Building Manitoba podcast. It's great to have you here.

Speaker 1 1:28

Thanks, Nathan. Yeah, very excited to be a part of it. Looking forward to the uh conversation that's to come here.

Speaker 1:35

Well, let's start with some of the basics. Can you tell us about Maka Power and what do you do and who do you do it for?

Speaker 1 1:41

So Maka Power is a Western Canadian power reliability company. We manage the full life cycle of facilities' electrical infrastructure. So that includes electrical engineering, electrical brake fix support, electrical apparatus testing, emergency response type situations, and then uh controls and instrumentation. And we work with some of Western Canada's largest agricultural processing companies, manufacturing companies as well. And then also quite a bit of work with large institutions, so universities, colleges, government buildings, health labs, so very much agricultural manufacturing, and then larger institutions.

Speaker 2:26

That's very cool. So can you take us back to the start, like before you were involved in starting Maka? Like what were you doing and what made you realize that there was a need for a company like Maka Power? And and how do you realize that there was a business that was worth building here?

Speaker 1 2:42

So when we started the company, like my background was out of high school, I actually started my electrical apprenticeship. And then uh just being an 18-year-old, I wanted to see what else life had to offer. So I went and got my Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Manitoba. And then once I graduated, I worked for a sales consultancy company for a couple years where I learned a ton. I worked really hard, but the the knowledge I got there was in strategic planning, in go-to-market initiatives, in selling products and services. And so then after that, we wanted to change, and then my ambition was always I wanted to start a company. I was never quite sure what what it would look like, but since I was probably 10 years old, that's something I wanted to do. And so my my very good friend that I went to school with him from kindergarten right through grade 12, he also was an electrical apprentice with me at the time when we both started. I didn't finish. So I said to him, I said, would you ever be interested in starting a company? And I said, if you can execute on the work, I'm confident that I can bring it to market and sell it. And so that's how Maka Power was started was just in a quick conversation like that, and kind of us both being very young, too, like 25 or 26 at the time, just both willing to take that leap of faith into that entrepreneurship journey.

Speaker 4:17

So the company goes back like almost a decade now. Like, what did that first version look like? You're out there selling and Kasey's doing some of the work, but like how did you win your first client and kind of what did that first few projects look like for you?

Speaker 1 4:31

One thing that we've we've always done, I think, very well is we've always been like very thoughtful, strategic, and methodical about how we approached everything. So even from the beginning, we started by writing a strategic plan, a business plan, and then moved to implement it with discipline. Because that's where my past experience was, and I knew that to be successful is you need a plan. You you cannot just shoot at the hip and hope things stick. So in the beginning, it was very much I was working on the business side of things, on the go-to-market and getting our first customers while Kasey was very, very busy executing on the work. And so our our first customer actually was like a large steel foundry in Manitoba. And we got the opportunity because they had had a fire and they needed a bunch of equipment replaced, and and their current provider couldn't do it in the timeline that they required it to be done in. And so we were a very young company at the time, but we jumped on the opportunity and we made it happen. Just in that, we also learned a very valuable lesson that your reputation in the industry and your ability to fundamentally just do what you say you're gonna do is so important because when we look at, say, working with customers, it's we don't want to just do one job for a customer. We look at the customer lifetime value is we want to become a partner with our customers for the next 20, 30 years, and we want to bring real value and help them solve problems. So in the beginning, it was very much we both did a little bit of everything, but it was always done intentionally with like the the end in mind being what is our strategic plan for this year, for the second year, the third year, and the fifth year? We always had a an end goal in mind and a vision that we wanted to achieve.

Speaker 6:24

So having that vision planned out in advance, can you talk a little bit about how closely has your growth, or let's talk about maybe the first five years? Like you laid out kind of the first, you know, one, three, five years of where you want to go and the importance of having that vision, but was there kind of a grand plan that you just went out and executed on, or was it really an iterative process of each year you're kind of resetting to where things have gone and uh changing track and adjusting course? Like you set the plan, but how closely could you execute on versus things just change and you couldn't expect where they were going to go?

Speaker 1 6:59

In the beginning, we set our company purpose and our company values. So, like the the Maka Power purpose is we're on the road to be the best, beat the best, beat the rest, and employ the best by providing best in class power services in the Western Canadian market. And so that was always our North Star in terms of what we're working towards. Now, what we had to do each year to get there, that was more variable because the market changes, COVID happened, which presented challenges to us as a newer company in that time. And so the the north star never changed, but definitely the tactics to achieve it, especially in the beginning, changed almost daily. As we've grown, it becomes much more predictable. You have more resources available to you, you have the right people in the right seats uh to help you execute on the work that you need to do. And so that we've always had that direction, but yeah, like I said, the more tactical strategy behind it, that changes. But the end in mind is always the same, if that makes sense.

Speaker 8:06

Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned resources, and I know financing is one of those resources that's often a challenge for new companies to access. So I'm I'm curious, you know, how did you get funded early on? And, you know, were there any lessons that you took away about dealing with lenders or or things that others who are kind of early on in their business journey could apply as far as accessing funding?

Speaker 1 8:29

Um in the beginning, when myself and then a gentleman named Kasey Russell, who started Maka Power, and when we started it, we both literally just walked to the bank and both put $100 into a shared bank account and said, okay, let's do this. And so with that, we quickly learned that banking institutions don't back ambition, they back a strong balance sheet and like a well-thought-out strategic plan. But with that, is why we always lean back to our strategic plan, is because by having a plan in place with financial data, cash flow projections, is then your ability to go to, say, like BDC or future pruner is there's resources out there for younger companies that can unlock that initial set of capital that's required to be able to pay employees, to pay vendors on time, especially in a cash-intensive industry where things are incredibly expensive, is it can be really challenging. But really, so having that plan in place in the beginning allowed us to get the first little bit of money to hire the first people and to pay our first bills. And then that allowed us to build our balance sheet to then go to a bank and actually get like uh operating capital. So it wasn't like a day-in, day out type cash crunch situation. It was we had the money and we were comfortable in our balance sheet, and then we could then make better, intelligent decisions to grow the company.

Speaker 10:05

How long did that take to go from that kind of figuring it out to that stability and kind of having that reliable source of capital in your operating line or things set up that you could kind of have more predictability on the finances?

Speaker 1 10:21

I would say that like looking back, it took at least a year because a bank, they won't even have a conversation with you until you have at least what like a financial statement for one fiscal year. And in the beginning, it's it's easy to be frustrated with them because you're like, no, we're gonna do it, we're gonna win. Like, this is gonna be great. But like I said, they don't back ambition. So it definitely took a full fiscal year to prove that we can do what we say we were going to do, to build our balance sheet, to have receivables that they can then back and then to then give us access to the monies that we needed to grow the company. And so, yeah, I would say probably between 12 to 18 months is really like where we just had to grit our teeth, put our head down and work as hard as we could for next to nothing to allow us to kind of unlock that next stage.

Speaker 11:16

What role did relationships play in that? Because I know you're talking about like going out and executing on what doing what you said you're gonna do. Was there was there an element of kind of building trust and relationships to make that happen where you're they're not saying yes, but then they're seeing, oh, you're going out and doing what you say you're gonna do, and then that gives them more confidence, or or was it really just you know timing and opportunity for who you're you're working with and the banking partner side?

Speaker 1 11:40

I think it's a mix of both. With large like institutions like the big banks, in my experience, they looked at your balance sheet, they looked at like the financial integrity of your company. That's what mattered to them. Whereas if you looked at a credit union, they were more willing to look at you and to look at the plan you have and then to more so back the individual. And so with that, relationships definitely played a part and just having that trust with them and them trusting you and them really believing in the plan that you have. But even say with a credit union, is you still need financial discipline in the company because if your balance sheet doesn't allow for funding, they have certain caveats that you have to meet for them to give you access to capital. So it's a combination of both with some banks, it's a lot more on the financial strength of the company, and then with say smaller credit unions, they're more willing to look at the individual. That said, they still have.

Speaker 12:43

Yeah, absolutely. You've talked before about paying for advice and you know how you're a fan of paying for advice to solve problems faster. Can you talk and maybe tell us about what the most you've paid for advice is or maybe a critical moment when you paid for advice and what it was worth?

Speaker 1 13:01

Yeah, I think an important lesson that we've learned in building back a power is that it's important to leave your ego at the door and to acknowledge to know what you don't know. Because in the beginning, the cost of making a bad decision is significantly more than the cost of paying for help to make the right decision. And I have tons of examples of that of is you just you have to know what you don't know, whether that's on how you structure the company corporately, which accounting firm you use, which legal team you use, how you implement a safety program properly to be compliant with provincial and federal standards, and also to so your safety program is compliant with like the individual companies that we work with because it's it's all different. And so, really, like in terms of a dollar figure, it's tough to put dollar figure to it, where I look more at like what was the return of say that money we spent. And I would say like the difference of investing in strategic advice for us, especially in the beginning, was the difference between us being successful and not being successful. That's what allowed us to grow quickly. And the idea that we had somebody on our team that told us when to turn left when we were about to turn right, right? They kept us from hitting that that pothole in the middle of the road that we didn't see, but for them it was so visible because they've done it 20 times before this. They know the pitfalls and they helped just guide us in that decision making uh in the beginning, and even today, too. Like it's I've already said it, but you don't know what you don't know, and you need to acknowledge the fact that uh it's impossible for any one individual to know everything, and that's why there are so many people out there that's specialized in the fields they're in, and so to make sure that you engage them at the right time, to make sure that you make the right decision. Because I always think like it if you're one degree off in the beginning, by the time you're done, you're gonna be a thousand miles off course because it all it amplifies every bad decision amplifies on the next one. And so that's why it's so important to stay on course and to get the right people to help you so you can stay at the right direction and also execute on the plan and hit the goal that you're trying to achieve.

Speaker 15:35

So some of that leads into like sequencing and like making sure you're doing things kind of in the right order at the beginning, too. Like, can you talk about kind of early on in the company? Like, what did you have to learn around sequencing and like what things did you have to prioritize first? And how do you know what things to leave until you know later when you're scaling and more established?

Speaker 1 15:57

Yeah, it in terms of sequencing, like in the beginning, say the first two to three years, we're very focused on operational excellence. And like for us, what that means is our ability to solve a problem in the marketplace on a repeatable basis. So, like I said previously, we want to work with with companies for 20 years, not just do one job and and for that to be done. Because that's where like the long-term value is created. And so, yeah, the the focus in the beginning was operational excellence is to do what we said we're gonna do in a timely manner and to make sure it's done well uh and that we're truly helping solve a problem. From there, once we we had the systems in place to be able to do that on an ongoing basis and it was easy, then we more looked at in terms of sequencing like commercial excellence. So your your go-to-market, the actual scaling and growth plan behind the company, because you can go out and sell as much as you want, but if you can't execute on that work properly and you don't have, say, the financial systems and the operational systems behind it to do it repeatably, well, you're just gonna end up onboarding new customers only to not fulfill on the deliverables that you have to, just to lose them. And so it was very much, yeah, operational excellence into then commercial excellence because we're kind of you're you're building that pyramid of success is like you you need your foundation first to be able to properly grow and scale a winning company.

Speaker 17:37

Yeah, that almost speaks to like bringing in more of the systems and processes coming in as that growth is uh is there to support it. Like you're around 60 employees now. Like, how many employees did you have when you started to have to bring in more of the systems and processes to support the growth that you had?

Speaker 1 17:55

We brought in systems very early on. And why we did that is like in terms of like our planning and and how we do things, is we're always looking two to three years ahead, even even for five years ahead, is like, is what we have today gonna be good enough for tomorrow? Because we don't want to be in a situation where every year we're having to change systems, change softwares. And so we implemented, say, like a field service system probably when we had five employees. We could have gotten away without having that probably till we had 30. But what allowed us to get from five to 30 was having that system in place early on. They can be very challenging to implement because we always look at it's like you have um an evolution and then a revolution. So, like as you're growing, say from 10 employees to get to 20, is there some sort of like major revolution in the company that has to happen? And that can be a bunch of different things. That can be changing out your ERP system, changing out your CRM system. Maybe you need a new safety program, but it's like some sort of large change in the company that's gonna take a ton of work to implement, but you're gonna need it to get to that next level. And so in saying that, it's if we can always be looking 10 steps ahead and we know what we're gonna need next week, next year, in three years, then everything can become much more predictable and we can be proactive in our approach as opposed to just always being reactive and just trying to solve today's problem. And I think that's really what's thread clarity into into Maka Power is the fact that we always take the time to sit down and to plan for what's to come.

Speaker 19:43

Oh, that's awesome. Can you can you talk about the people side too? Like as you're growing and like so we touched on the systems and processes, but how did the culture shift as you grew? And what changed, you know, you normally can't be in every conversation when you've got a team of 60 people, whereas when you only have five, it's easy to just kind of have a huddle and everybody knows everything. But how does that culture shift? And how do you mold the culture and keep it to be a culture that you want or that you aspire to?

Speaker 1 20:13

Yeah, it in the beginning, you are a part of every decision that's made because you can be. And as you grow and you shift, at times it can be hard to let go of that because you like because, like, say for me, I liked being in the trenches, right? Being a part of every decision. Like I I really did enjoy that, but it it's just not scalable when it when it comes down to it. And so it really for us, it comes down to making sure that you put the right people in the right seats and that you give them the resources that they need and give them the authority that they need to make decisions on your behalf. And then it also all comes back to the company values. So like Maka stands for masterful workmanship, accurate execution, known results, and achieve excellence. So in everything we do, whether that's on the finance and accounting team, the operational team, the sales and marketing team, is we apply those values and we reward on them, we provide feedback on them, and so everything goes back to that. And then that's also what we push anyone like in a strategic seat at Maka Power to do as well, is to always fall back to those values and to what our purpose is. Well, we're on the road to be the best, employ the best, and beat the rest. And so it in the beginning, it seems almost silly when you think of we're creating company values and our purpose, but it's so important because, like I said previously, that that that's your North Star, and that's what you always fall back to. And so when you create a culture that is built on values and everyone is rowing in the boat in the same direction, then you can then enable people to make decisions for you, and you can go to bed at night knowing that. That they've made the right decisions because they truly believe in the mission and and in the values.

Speaker 22:07

Yeah, and you're arming them then with kind of the right uh foundation to make the right decisions versus having to kind of coach and say, well, that was a good decision or a bad decision. It's more, well, here's the context of you know what our values are, and now make a decision in light of that. And then yeah, that that frees you up from having to uh you know direct each decision then because everyone knows kind of what direction you're headed in.

Speaker 1 22:32

Absolutely. And and with that said, it what's so important too is to have a cadence with your team and with your departmental leaders, like whether that's weekly tactical meetings, monthly business reviews, quarterly strategy sessions, annual strategy sessions, is to always go to them, ask them, say, like, do you have everything you need? What else can what can I do that would help you be successful in a seat? And and if you're having an issue, how can I help get rid of that issue for you? Like, what do we need to do to help solve that problem? And the only way to do that is to make sure that you have a weekly cadence, to make sure you're giving every manager or whoever might be the resources and also just to show people that you care too, right? And that you're not checked out that like you're also in the trenches with them. Yeah, just to make sure they have the resources that they need to be successful in their season.

Speaker 23:29

As you're scaling, and I know you're you're still in growth mode now too, but you know, what were some of your your scaling bottlenecks that you ran into? Was it more on the sales side, the delivery side, or could you give us a sense of maybe where you you faced some bottlenecks through growth and then how did you break through them or or address them to kind of move to the next level?

Speaker 1 23:47

I would say it's at different stages, you have both constraints. Like when we first started Maka Power, when you start any company wall, you don't have any customers. So what's the bottleneck? Well, you need to go, you need to go close in business and you need you need some customers. But then you go and you you you onboard 10 new customers that you've made commitments to. Uh and now you need to make sure you can deliver on the promises that you've made. So then all of a sudden the the bottleneck becomes your your delivery system. So then you you create that delivery system to then be able to fulfill on that. And and while doing that, you're also onboarding new customers. And so it definitely goes back and forth, but it always comes back to your planning, your sales forecasting. So then if your forecast is accurate from like a revenue side, your operations team can make they can make good decisions into the future because they know what they have to fulfill on, not only for the next week, but say for the next 12 months. And so then that creates clarity for them. They can act accordingly, they can buy the right tools at the right time, spend the money, spend money on the right things at the right time, as opposed to not having that clarity and just waking up every morning and just dealing with whatever gets thrown at you that day. And that's not a fun way to live. And that's something we've we've always done a good job at getting ahead of is just planning, planning, planning. It sounds so boring when I say it out loud. Um, but it's what it comes down to. It's the disciplined execution of a strategic plan daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly.

Speaker 25:29

Yeah, and it comes down to just like the mindset I'm hearing behind a lot of what you're saying, too, is it's that proactive versus reactive mindset towards things and you know putting in the work and you know, kind of not falling to the default or the mentally lazy position of just kind of facing what's in front of you today, but but really planning ahead and and taking a proactive approach to to make those deliberate decisions based on what you know is coming, based on where you're going.

Speaker 1 25:55

Absolutely. When you can predict what's gonna happen, you can plan accordingly, and you can create a sense of calm in the company. Where chaos gets created is when we don't know what tomorrow holds, it becomes much more difficult to do anything well when you're always reacting. And that's why uh it like you said, it comes down to sitting down and and making your plan and then getting the right people in the right seats, making sure they get it, they want it, and they have the capacity to do it, and then you're set.

Speaker 26:32

I want to touch on technology a little bit. Any particular tools or technology that you've found to be crucial to scaling and that you've would suggest to others who are scaling a b a business as well, too? Or are there ones that are more like just nice to have and maybe looked good at the start, but weren't as critical once you actually dug into it more?

Speaker 1 26:55

I would say like in in terms of like technology systems, that would be critical when I think of that is um you need a solid financial system in your company. And it that looks different depending on the size of the company and what they do. Like for us, is we have like a fairly robust ERP system where all of our financials are tracked, job performance, work orders, all our reporting is driven through. And that for us is critical because it keeps everything organized. We can see the amount of work we have, we can provide reporting to whoever might require it, and it gives like instant feedback to the team on how well we're performing. And so that's like fundamental, I think. And you don't like some companies, they wouldn't need an ERP system, they would be fine on something like QuickBooks. But I would also say that uh you always want to look ahead to what you're gonna need. Don't plan for tomorrow, plan for for five years from now. Because a huge pain that I see some companies having is if they're always transitioning systems, you never master anything and you never get the true value out of it. It just becomes like a burden on the company to use it. And then I would say once you have that, then for us, what's been great and and helped us would be a CRM system. So you you always know what's going on in all your customers, you know what the market looks like, and then you can go out and onboard new customers in a predictable way. And then having those two also talk. So the integration of both, so then you can see like the full customer buying journey from the first call you have with an account to you can you can see right through, say you've been working with it for five years and you can see every touch point and you can look back on all that data and leverage it moving forward. But fundamentally, for anyone, it would be your financial software. Is that that has to be clean, so critically important.

Speaker 28:58

Yeah, and that feeds into your budgeting and planning process too. So I can see a lot of the themes connected here in the conversation where if you don't have the right systems, you're not gonna have an easy way to pull in your quarterly reviews, your monthly reviews, and forecast ahead to see where's cash flow is headed, how do you invest and plan ahead based on what's coming? So it's all connected.

Speaker 1 29:22

Absolutely.

Speaker 29:23

Everyone's talking a lot about AI the last few years, and I'm just curious where have you implemented AI in your business? And is there anything that you've learned about it that you think other people are getting wrong in terms of how they're trying to integrate it?

Speaker 1 29:39

I very much see it as like a tool to help you move faster, to help you take care of some of the more administrative processes in the company, uh, whether that's research, meeting summaries, creating like first drafts of procedures or proposals or like organizing documents. But really, I see it as it can help you get things to say 70, 80% complete. What it can't do, at least from my experience yet, is to get it to that 100% completion date. And then and also it you cannot rely on it to make decisions for you. Like something that I always see is you know right away, I know right away if someone's created something with AI, whether that's an email response or a deliverable they've sent me. And I'm quick to to throw it back at them and say, I need you to do this again because I know this wasn't this wasn't your decision making. Like this, these aren't even your thoughts. Like you need to apply your knowledge to what it's given you. But I think more and more as it grows, it it's going to be more and more intertwined into just giving you better access to information and and to move quicker. But as far as I see it, it's not there yet in terms of like replacing human decision making and taking care of like critical tasks in a company.

Speaker 31:00

Yeah, absolutely. I want to ask too, like you've kind of have an interesting background where you started down the trades path and then you switched to university and now you run a trades business. So what would you tell a young person today about university or trades? I know it's a bit of a, you know, there's a lot more talk about trades and building careers in trades, but if someone were starting out at 17, 18 and looking at a career ahead, do you recommend taking one path or the other, university versus trades?

Speaker 1 31:28

I would say to someone that's say just graduating high school or whatever it might be, they're trying to make a decision, is to pursue something that you truly care about and that you're truly interested in and that you're you're passionate about. Because when I when I look at it, you're gonna end up being way more successful when you're working in a field that you're genuinely interested in and that you genuinely care about. Like as I got my commerce degree, the amount of people that say we're becoming a CPA, and there's nothing I have nothing against CPAs, but they would say, I'm doing it because my dad told me to. Okay. Like that for me is like that that would scare me. Like you're you're gonna spend your whole life pursuing something that you're not even interested in, but just because you think it's a nice safe place to be. And so in making your decision, whether it's you're pursuing a trade or a degree, is I would say that they're both the right direction as long as it's a genuine fit for you and that you can see yourself being there for the next 40 years. Because that's also the thing is once you start working for a living, you better make sure you like it because it's a long road ahead and you want to make sure that you're happy. Because if if you're not happy and like you're not content in where you are, I think that could make for a very like not painful life, but you it wouldn't be very fulfilling. And so you have to pursue pursue what you want to pursue.

Speaker 32:59

Yeah, absolutely. How do you think about apprenticeships when it comes to your your organization? Do you focus on taking people in that are early in their career and growing talent internally, or do you seek out and and hire experienced people and kind of what's your rationale either way on that?

Speaker 1 33:16

We hire like many, many apprentices every year, and it it plays a key role in like our ability to execute work. And and it plays, I think, in a very important role like in the Canadian economy, is we have to train competent workers in skilled trades. And so, yeah, they play a critical part within our company. And then in terms of like hiring external people at times is absolutely we do that too, because you can't substitute experience, right? Bringing in someone who's done it for 20 years, they can bring instant value in decision making and in your ability to execute on work. And so there's definitely a fit for that. And they both play in together because then the the person that you bring in with 20 years experience, they play uh a critical part in training apprentices and helping them learn and helping them get through the apprenticeship program to become a journeyman electrician as their end goal. And so they they definitely they work together and there's a place for for both at Maka Power. They just played different roles.

Speaker 34:23

Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. You mentioned early on that the vision and part of your North Star is like really Western Canada as a region is is kind of part of that vision. I'm just curious, how do you think about like geography and where you're delivering services and when is it the right time to expand? And just what have you learned so far about expanding and doing business in other cities and provinces?

Speaker 1 34:46

For us, we're always focused on how can we truly help a manufacturing or or food processing company? Like we want to truly help them and bring value to them. So it's not as much about working in Saskatchewan and Alberta or Manitoba, but we only want to work places where we can truly bring value to those teams. Our purpose is on the road to be the best, beat the rest, employ the best. And so, how can we do that? Well, it has to be a genuine fit with the companies we work with. We truly want to help them. And so, right now, like we probably work in over 70 facilities in Manitoba and then some of Saskatchewan and Alberta. And there's lots of room for us to grow in Manitoba still. And so that's really where we're focused. But also, Saskatchewan and Alberta present great opportunities as well. And so with that said, yeah, it all comes down to where can we really help and where can we solve a fundamental problem that these companies are facing? And as long as we stay focused on solving that problem, the geographical expansion, like that, that'll all fall into place. Because if if we're solving a legitimate problem in the marketplace, is they'll just be a market pull and people will want to work with us.

Speaker 36:08

Are you finding that the expansion is really driven because your customers that you're working with in Manitoba are also in other areas too, and they're just wanting you to work with them too, or it's more of people seeking you out from other areas and seeing kind of, hey, you're doing something interesting in Manitoba, can you come and help us here with that?

Speaker 1 36:25

Lots of it is because lots of these facilities have Western Canadian presence. They have facilities across Canada, across North America, some across the world. And so yeah, you hit the nail on the head. Is if in some examples, we've done a great job in Manitoba, and they say, Can you help us in Saskatchewan? Can you help us in Alberta? For us, that's how that's happened, is not necessarily from any go-to-market effort in Saskatchewan and Alberta, but more of just like an organic growth into those locations because we've been able to help them and they trust us and we have that relationship with them.

Speaker 37:02

That's great. A business like Maka, like you could probably run you know a business like this in a lot of places. Like I know you're from here locally, but why Manitoba and what makes Manitoba a good place to grow a trades company right now?

Speaker 1 37:16

I'm always the first person to say that uh Winnipeg is the best city in Canada. I've been born and raised here, and I truly believe that. Like I love Winnipeg and I love Manitoba. And when I think of growing a company in Manitoba, everything is still much more accessible and affordable than say doing what we've done, but we had to start out in Vancouver. Like when you're starting a company, is like you don't have any resources available to you, like in terms of paying for your cost of living. Like you have to be willing to rough it for a little bit. And I think that's much harder done in a city like Vancouver or Toronto than it is Winnipeg. And I'd also say that in my experience, that people in Manitoba are very trusting, very loyal, and they genuinely like to see people do good. And so for us, that's been great, is because we've been able to create long-term relationships with facilities and people where it's we're a part of their company. We're an extension of their team, and there's a loyalty from us to them and from them to us, and that's really played a critical part in just having that base of business that we have that'll continue to enable us to grow.

Speaker 38:40

Yeah, that's awesome. That's that's something else I love about Manitoba, is just the relationships that can compound over time. And the longer that you're investing in those relationships, the more that those relationships come back around and you know, cross-pollinate and create, you know, unexpected benefits kind of down the road where you just, you know, whether you're working with somebody and they just are have that loyalty and keep working with you, or whether you, you know, you're just a good person and you know have a good interaction that kind of comes back a few years later and you know it's it's that right size of environment I find where it's just you you can have that that trust carries you a long ways, even years down the road.

Speaker 1 39:21

Absolutely. It Winnipeg is growing, but it's still very much you have that uh like small city atmosphere, like everybody knows knows somebody who knows somebody. And and everyone's connected in one way or another, and so it comes back to like your your reputation is so important, and to always make sure you do good by everyone you come by because you never know when you're gonna run into that person again.

Speaker 39:46

Yeah, 100%. Just closing out, Matt, like you know, if there's a founder who's listening who's where you were 10 years ago, like what's your biggest piece of advice that you'd tell them that that you wish you knew 10 years ago as you were starting Maka Power?

Speaker 1 40:02

I would tell them just to be deliberate and intentional in everything they do. Because when you're growing a company and you're you're going at 110 miles an hour, it's easy for things to fall off and you just want to keep going. But if there's one thing that's true, is that uh anything you miss along the way, you're gonna have to turn around and pick up and do it. And so how you how can you avoid that? Well, take the time to be thoughtful and intentional on everything you do, think things through, make a plan, and then go execute on it. Don't just shoot at the hip and hope things stick because you might be successful short term in doing that, but looking long term is that that's not a winning formula, is you have to be thoughtful and intentional and create a plan and stick to that plan and and update it as required.

Speaker 41:03

That's great advice. And I think that adds some nuance too to where I think like oftentimes founders are given the advice of like move fast and break things. But what you're saying, it's a bit of a counterbalance to that too, of you know, it can't be random movement and activity. It needs to be, you know, always thought through a strategic lens and and focused effort and making sure that you know it's it's not just movement for movement's sake.

Speaker 1 41:27

Exactly. We only have so much time in each day and in each week. And you want to make sure you get the most out of every working hour you have. And if you're wasting that time on something that's not going to help you achieve your goals, you might think in that moment it's gonna help you, but if you haven't put any kind of intelligent thought into why you're doing things a certain way, it will inevitably catch up to you. And so it's just, yeah, take a breath, everything's gonna be okay. Create a plan and then go.

Speaker 42:00

No, great advice. Thanks, Matt, for coming on the Building Manitoba podcast. I've really enjoyed our conversation here today.

Speaker 1 42:06

Yeah, thank you very much.

Speaker 42:08

Thanks for listening to the Building Manitoba podcast, and thanks to everyone who's been sharing the show. If something here stuck with you, send this episode to one person who'd want to hear it too. See you next time.