Cliff Skelliter is the CEO and Creative Director of Launchpad Creative. Following graduation at Laurentian he achieved a certificate in Cambrian College’s inaugural program - Broadcast New Media. Through the program he was able to secure an internship with CTV which led to his first media job.  Skelliter's career took approximately 3 years for it to run its course. It became time for entrepreneur Cliff to re-enter the picture.

Prior to completing his schooling Cliff worked as a salesperson at Future Shop. Most of his salesmanship and business acumen can be accredited to this position.  He was taught a lot of lessons about measuring results and how to influence peoples purchasing decisions on intangible products, like warranties. His first year with the company was spectacular, ranking as one of the top associates in his division across the country.

He had a lot of mentors growing up. His mom and sisters were instrumental in his growth. He also admired icons such as Bruce Lee, Muhammed Ali, Will Smith, and Michael Jordan to name a few. What did all these people have in common? Self belief and bravado. One of Cliff’s classic lines is “IF YOU CAN’T CONFIDENTLY TALK ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS THEN YOU’RE SCREWED”.

It was 2009, and Cliff was eager to start somewhere. He approached a nearly century old auto dealership named “Cambrian Ford” with an advertising concept that would generate user content and build the digital presence of the dealership. Initially, the owner and incredible entrepreneur, Steve McCulloch was weary to hire Cliff. His concern was largely due to Cliff’s lack of experience. Cliff did what he’s has now become known for, he found a clever way to build the relationship. His approach - showcase his work ethic and provide a solution for a problem. He heard through the grapevine that the building needed a fresh coat of paint. Cliff offered to paint it for a fraction of the cost of anyone else. It’s important to note that Cliff only ever painted one room in his entire life, and absolutely hated doing it. With the help of a few workers and a scissor lift, Cliff started doing one of the things he loathed…. Painting! He worked for hours, upon days, upon weeks, Cliff was rolling paint onto the building with very limited results. Thinking on his feet, Cliff decided to start spraying the paint onto the building instead of using traditional painting methods. It was a terrible idea, even one of the best idea guys in the business strikes out. Unfortunately, a big portion of the cars got covered in overspray. So, for the next two weeks, Cliff worked hard to remove paint from the vehicles while continuing to paint the building. One day, Steve McCulloch came outside, it was near the end of the paint project from hell and he looked at Cliff and said “If you work half as hard on the marketing campaign as you did on this paint job then we will be very successful”, aka, Cliff got hired. Steve was right, the “My Cambrian Ford” campaign was a big success and the slogan is still used 10 years later. 

As Cliff’s agency grew, so did the opportunities. During a drive home from Toronto, Cliff got a call from a producer at Entertainment Tonight. They wanted him to film and interview a couple of celebrities (Scott Speedman, ) on-set in Sault St. Marie. They believed it was just down the street from Sudbury. Cliff did not correct. Instead, he accepted the gig and drove right through Sudbury and continued for another 3.5 hours to the Soo. There was no major planning, there was no overthinking, there was just go there and do your job. This is the attitude that has continued to attract businesses to seek out Cliff and his agency.

Since 2009, some of the brands Cliff and his agency have worked with are: The New Sudbury Centre, Science North, Dead Celebrity Status (Canadian gold selling musical artists), UFC athlete Mitch Gagnon, the Sudbury Wolves, the True North Strong event centre campaign, and the branding for the FIRST professional basketball team in Sudbury. This is just a sliver of the brands and projects that company has worked with. The future is even brighter, Skelliter believes within the next 5 years the agency will become one of the most influential agencies’ in the world. His work ethic coupled with his attitude and his incredible ability to attract the most skilled people in the industry make him hard not to believe.

Connect with Cliff and LaunchPad Creative
Launchpad Creative
Twitter
Instagram
LinkedIn

Connect with KFE Solutions
KFE Solutions
KFE Blog
Instagram
LinkedIn
Facebook


Mike: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. This is in the trenches with Michael King where we talk with business owners, leaders, and executives about the lessons they've learned while fighting in the trenches of the business battlefield. I am Michael King. I don't know about you, but I know when I first started KFE four years ago.

[00:00:16] One of the biggest challenges that I came across was getting credibility for the company. So, I would go to an ideal client and I would make a great sales pitch, and they said, we'd love to do business with you. Can you give us some references of clients that are really similar to us that you've done business with before that maybe they could provide a reference or show some examples of your work?

[00:00:41] And in early days. There's not much in the portfolio. And so, it becomes a really tricky kind of thing to figure out how in the world to get your foot in the door with your ideal clients. So, for me, it was taking on business with clients that I didn't necessarily love or, having a scope of work that wasn't exactly in line with what I want to do.

[00:01:02] But, you've got to do it. You got to do to get some reps and get some, some industry experience. So today I'm going to have a conversation with cliff Skelliter. Cliff is the CEO of launchpad creative, and cliff and I are going to talk about an interesting story of how he got an important rep early on in his entrepreneurial endeavors.

[00:01:24] Cliff actually agreed to come. Paint a Ford dealership, and it's important to note that cliff isn't a painter. Cliff is a marketer, but cliff agreed to paint a Ford dealership in exchange for the chance to do a large marketing campaign for the largest Ford dealership in his area. Just a quick spoiler alert.

[00:01:45] It didn't go well. Cliff ended up doing over $1 million of damage to some of the vehicles on the lot, but clip's going to talk to us about why he did the paint job and how it worked out for him. And cliff and I are also going to talk about how complacency and comfortability in your business can be disastrous.

[00:02:05] So cliff is going to share a story about how he got a little bit too comfortable, a little bit too confident. With how things were going after two or three years into his business and how that ended up costing him his business partner and how he kind of slipped into a pretty dark place. So, we're also going to talk with you about how to avoid.

[00:02:26] Falling into some dark places when your business doesn't do as well as you hope it would. And also, if you do, find yourself in one of those places, how to pull yourself out of it. So, without further ado, here's my conversation with cliff Skelliter.

[00:02:51] cliff, thanks for joining today. 

[00:02:53] Cliff: [00:02:53] You're welcome. Thanks for having me. 

[00:02:54] Mike: [00:02:54] I'm excited to have you here. Before we started the interview, you were telling me about the time that you ended up painting a Ford dealership to get a client and you're not a painter, right? Cliff. 

[00:03:07] Cliff: [00:03:07] I most certainly am not; I can't even paint my bedroom.

[00:03:10] I mean, I could, I just don't want to. 

[00:03:13] Mike: [00:03:13] Okay, 

[00:03:14] Cliff: [00:03:14] so I wouldn't want to, 

[00:03:15] Mike: [00:03:15] you own a marketing agency in your painting, a Ford dealership to get a new client. So, we'll work up to that. Tell me in, in the listeners a little bit about your background, how did you get to the point that you're, you're willing to paint a Ford dealership to get a client.

[00:03:31] Cliff: [00:03:31] Geez. All right. So, I don't want to go too far back, but I want to give you a little bit of context to my, my character and my history, right? So, I was raised by a single mother. And when you're raised by a single mother, you learn a lot about making do with what you have. And making something out of nothing.

[00:03:50] Okay. And early on in my career, I mean, I won't get into all the like yet. I won't get into all the kind of educational ins and outs that I did, but eventually I opened up my own agency. And it was in my first year, I was looking for work. I was looking for people to hire me, and I was having a hard time.

[00:04:09] Like everybody. Right. It's really difficult to, when you're first starting out to convince somebody to give you money to market for them. Right. Especially when these companies. They, they're, they're doing it on their own, so they feel probably pretty comfortable with what they're doing sometimes. So, in my hometown, there is a Ford dealership that has been, here for a hundred plus years, and I decide to approach them.

[00:04:36] This is 2008, 2009 in and around that area. So, you've got to imagine Instagram doesn't exist yet. Facebook is still fairly new. Facebook pages still fairly new. And I approached them, and I pitched them this multi multichannel digital marketing campaign, right? So, there's multiple things happening from the digital side to some traditional, marketing assets.

[00:05:01] And I pitch it to them, and they look at me, they like the idea. And I remember Steve McCollough, he was the owner at the time, and he goes, this is a great idea, cliff. I really like this. I love the energy you bring to the table, but what have you done like this before? And again, anybody first starting out could probably relate to this.

[00:05:21] I had to look at him and say, nothing 

[00:05:25] Mike: [00:05:25] just lie. They're like, we did the Hyundai dealership down the 

[00:05:28] Cliff: [00:05:28] road. Well, there's a temptation to do that, but that's not the foot you want to start off on. And you just want to be a real, and you want to say, listen, I've done things that are similar, and maybe I just.

[00:05:42] I didn't have the necessarily the confidence at the time to go to look at them and say, I've done this, this, this, the best. They're not the same, but they are, all of these. things together give a little bit of evidence that maybe I could pull this off. I just didn't do enough at the time.

[00:06:00] And he looks at me and he goes, I can't realistically hire you, even though I like you. And I like this idea. It would be irresponsible of me to hire you at the time that bothered me. But looking back, it totally makes sense, right? Because he has a lot of people that he's responsible for and he has to make.

[00:06:16] Smart decisions, and what I've learned throughout the years is that a lot of these companies aren't just hiring you for what the, what you can do. They're putting the odds in their favor that you won't screw up. Right? That is the fear is that you're going to screw up. So, I knew at the time, I had heard through a friend of mine that they needed the outside of their building painted.

[00:06:38] Mike: [00:06:38] Hold on just for context.  I'm thinking back to 2008, a Ford dealership in middle sized town in Canadia, right? 

[00:06:48] Cliff: [00:06:48] That Canadia, just under 200,000 people. We're about three hours North of Toronto. 

[00:06:54] Mike: [00:06:54] Okay. So, a fairly small community.  it would have 200,000 people. So, in 2008 the big Ford dealership in town is probably marketing through, I'm guessing, radio, some TV, and maybe a lot of print ads.

[00:07:10] You got it. Were they doing any online presence at all, or was it strictly traditional marketing? 

[00:07:15] Cliff: [00:07:15] They didn't even have a Facebook page yet. Okay. So not only. Would they have to hire a company with basically zero experience? They would be entering into a new way of doing their advertising. 

[00:07:32] Mike: [00:07:32] Where were you trying to take them online and do the traditional take over their traditional channels as well?

[00:07:38] Or was it just online that you're a pitching. 

[00:07:40] Cliff: [00:07:40] Basically it was both. So, it was a multichannel marketing campaign, which basically means I was keeping the radio, the TV, all those things they were comfortable with. And I was supplementing in digital. So that would be their Facebook. That would be their Google, advertising as well.

[00:07:59] We were building them a landing page and just really quickly, because I won't do the entire. Concept of what it was is that they'd been around for a hundred years and we wanted people to share their Cambrian, therefore word experience. So, we wanted people to take little videos of themselves with their vehicle saying, this was my experience.

[00:08:21] By doing that, they would upload it to a website that we create them. And they were entered into a contest to win a one-year lease on a Ford Fiesta. So, the prize was pretty big. 

[00:08:32] Mike: [00:08:32] It was pretty good. The Ford Fiesta is a party on wheels. That's what I'm saying. It doesn't get any bigger. 

[00:08:37] Cliff: [00:08:37] It's a Fiesta. And, and so that, that was generally like this kind of cool, big bold concept in a mid-sized city in Northern Canada.

[00:08:50] Right. And that's not to say that like. It's not like what people think. People have this idea that, you go to certain places and maybe they're backwards or they don't think the same 

[00:09:00] Mike: [00:09:00] as others. Exactly. What I think about Canada, right? The whole place, 

[00:09:05] Cliff: [00:09:05] the whole place. Right? So, Michael King, just, shared his ignorance of Canada right here with, the entire audience.

[00:09:13] but that's not true. It's just not true. I mean, we, we were raised. On the exact same TV shows the same music, the same parks that you guys were. Right. The culture is so similar. That is so it's like to find the differences, you have to be trying very hard and so, . . . Again, coast to coast. I mean, we're a giant country.

[00:09:39] I mean, we're the second biggest country in the world, Canada. The difference if you go to the East coast versus the West coast versus the metal where I am, the difference. And even just the way people speak the things that they care about is drastic. And I know that works the same in the U S we have a lot of similarities is what I'm trying to say.

[00:09:59] And we're, we're not that far behind, but at the time, the whole market was behind. Right, right. not understanding fully what they could do with digital advertising, not getting it. Now, Steve. The president of Ford dear. He understood that something was happening, and he wanted to be a part of it. He just didn't know that I could pull it off.

[00:10:22] Mike: [00:10:22] So you come to Steve and you say, Hey, not only do we want to take over your traditional marketing strategies, we want to take over your print. We want to take over TV, we want to take over radio. But also, we think you should spend money on this Brandy new thing called the internet and we're, we're going to help you build a presence on there as well.

[00:10:43] And Oh, by the way, we think you should give away a lease for a year for a car to, to help promote the business. And then Steve says, it sounds great. Tell me about a couple of times you've successfully done this before in your life. You're like, well, in my head it was great, and say, definitely do it. And Steve, Steve says, I don't think so.

[00:11:05] Cliff: [00:11:05] You got it. Okay. That's it. That's straight up. No. I can't hire you to do this. This sounds awesome. But no. 

[00:11:14] Mike: [00:11:14] Okay. And so, you were, you heard through a friend that there's a paint job that needs to be done there and you get an aha moment. 

[00:11:21] Cliff: [00:11:21]. So, this is again, an old building that needs to be painted. And when I say an old building, an old big building, it's a very large building.

[00:11:30] I wish I could even explain, but I, I would, I would get the measurements off. I'm terrible with that sort of thing. Now. here through a friend, they need to be painted. And I look at, before he kind of assures me out the door, I say, Hey, Steve, this is kind of a side note, but I heard that you need the outside of your building painted music.

[00:11:48]. Why? And I said, how about this? I'll paint the outside of your building for half the cost anybody else will offer you for if you reconsider hiring me for this. Campaign and he stops, and he goes, listen, you just got laughs, right? Steve was such a cool guy, I guess he saw this like really Hun, hungry young entrepreneur, willing to paint outside of his building, and he kind of laughed about it and I swear to God, this guy must've just rolled the dice and said, , go for it.

[00:12:20] Because they didn't even ask me if I knew how to paint. Let's see what happens. Maybe in his mind he's like, if he screws it up, we could just have somebody paint over it. All right. How long is this going to take, cliff? Three weeks, Steve. I have this done in three weeks. Not a problem at all. We're just painting the outside of the building.

[00:12:37] Why don't you 

[00:12:37] Mike: [00:12:37] just, you just pulled that out of your ass, didn't you? 

[00:12:39] Cliff: [00:12:39] 100% how would I know how to, how many weeks? Three weeks? I said, it's so quickly. I must have. Really built his confidence in me. 

[00:12:48] Mike: [00:12:48] It's a life pro tip. If you say something fast enough and loud enough, people will assume what you're talking about and they won't even question it.

[00:12:54] They will just move on as though that's, that's the gospel. 

[00:12:57] Cliff: [00:12:57] Three weeks I was doing better at selling my, my painting services than I was at my marketing services. So, I learned from that. Now I get out there and let's just kind of skip ahead to the three week Mark, but the day that I'd be done, , and I am approximately 5%, then if I was going to give it a percent, I'm 5% on my way there because this is significantly harder.

[00:13:24] I go out and hire a few guys. I ran some scissor lists. I buy a bunch of paint. Have to go on YouTube and learn how to mix paints, make sure that it's the same shade of light. So, it's not just like changing shades throughout the whole process, which I think, ended up happening, three weeks ago is by four weeks.

[00:13:45] Five weeks goes by and I'm starting to get really, really, really desperate and I figure I go, what would make this a lot faster? If I sprayed the Pathon right. Cause at the time I'm rolling the paint on the rollers just on a roll. I keep having to switch from roller to paint brush. This isn't a smooth surface.

[00:14:04] So if you're picturing it as a smooth surface, I don't even know how to explain it. There's lots of bumps and grooves in this thing. So, it was this complicated. Now I think I'm five weeks in. I decide. A spray, paint this on. I'll wait for a day where there's no way ended; it'll be perfect. Now I start spraying it on and I'd say about four hours into the day, Mike, Steve, who's usually cool as a cucumber, comes running out just screaming, what are you doing?

[00:14:31] And I'm like, what is happening right now? And he's like, you're getting paint all over the vehicles. So, I come down my hearts, thumping. And I go and look at the vehicles and I'm telling you there's millions of dollars in damage, millions of dollars in like wrecked vehicles from the painting job I was doing.

[00:14:56] I am already thinking like, who has nonextradition laws? How do I get out of this country? I am done like unscrewed. Eventually I find a, this kind of clay that's able to remove paint. Off of the vehicle without effecting the vehicles paint. Right. Cause that was the trick here. Can't just put Barsol on it, right?

[00:15:19] I mean, just make things worse. I spend the next two weeks, 1213, 14 hours a day, fixing, getting the paint off the vehicles. I eventually get this project done. Now, can I tell you how many weeks? And I was. I don't know. I mean, eight, nine, 10 weeks, I'm working on 

[00:15:36] Mike: [00:15:36] this. Is it pretty much full time that you've spent for bucks, three months? 

[00:15:40] Cliff: [00:15:40] time, literally doing nothing else?

[00:15:42] There is no business happening. There's nothing except for me painting, but I'm a full-time painter at this point in my life and hating every moment of it because it's just not what I, enjoy doing. I finish it. And I remember being on the scissor lift, just kind of going around, fixing up some little spots, and Steve comes that are for memory, comes out, he had this box cut, right?

[00:16:07] Very, it’s kind of like one of those like almost like, like an army box cut, right? A very preppy guy comes out, looks at me hands on his hip. He goes, cliff, I'm like, Steve. He's like, so you're done. I'm like, yes. And I'm not even asking about the marketing gig at this point. And I'm like, that ship has sailed.

[00:16:28]   Right. And he goes, if you work half as hard on something you care about as you did about this thing that I could clearly tell you, do not like, this will be a massive success. And yes, I'd like to hire you for the marketing campaign. Awesome.  it was pretty amazing; it was pretty amazing.

[00:16:52] So we launched the campaign. It was fun putting it together. it was very successful. We had, I mean, a ton, like hundreds of submissions. People are recording videos onto their phones. I mean, I think the smartphone was like a year or two years old at the time. So like people even knowing how to use the technology was, what I mean?

[00:17:13] Like it was touch and go and, it was a big success. We ended up changing, their former slogan used to be a, it's not just a Ford, it's a Cambrian Ford. Cause this dealership was called Cambrian Ford. We switched to that from that to just like tighter my Cambrian Ford. And that's lasted, the last 10, 11 years.

[00:17:36] They've never changed that slogan we came up with for them. And, that was my first, my first big success. 

[00:17:44] What 

[00:17:45] Mike: [00:17:45] do you think the takeaway is? Cause obviously that that approach wouldn't scale, right? 

[00:17:50] Cliff: [00:17:50] Oh heck no. 

[00:17:51] Mike: [00:17:51] So what's, what's the, what's the takeaway there? 

[00:17:53] Cliff: [00:17:53] What a funny way, obviously that approach.

[00:17:56] Imagine that three months painting buildings to get any gig. Wow. That would be. A unique business model? Well, my takeaway is, again, it tied into something that had always bothered me in my other workplace setting. I've always been a person like, what do you need from me? How can I help? How can I do this? I want to jump in.

[00:18:15] I love teamwork and I love that. I love, I love being able to kind of make something come to life, right? And it would have been very easy for me to say, painting this building has beneath me. Right. I'm a marketer, right? I'm like, less than 12 months in, I could have acted as though I was above this thing and that I've moved on, kept pitching, and never got the opportunity.

[00:18:41] Who knows where I would be now. Right? And I, I, I genuinely believe when you're an entrepreneur or you're a professional, it doesn't matter your age. It doesn't matter your experience. If you're interested in getting a job done, everything's your job. Right? If you sit there and you're resentful towards other people because you don't believe they're pulling their weight and you're spending your time thinking about that and using that as an excuse not to do absolutely everything you can within your power to make a project successful.

[00:19:15] I don't think that overall, you're going to have a very, a high standard of life and job satisfaction. So that's what it was, man. It was just a matter of saying. Well, I'll do whatever it takes to get what I want and what I want is a successful career. 

[00:19:32] Mike: [00:19:32] Are you painting buildings today? 

[00:19:35] Cliff: [00:19:35] For the most part, no.

[00:19:36] I, I won't just do random things like painting a building at this point with the experience and the projects right there does come a point when you're like, well, I don't necessarily have to rely on this because I've entered into the space. I'm now existing in this space, but in my business, what I do, God, the most unique, weird things come up and, and so you find yourself thinking outside the box.

[00:20:03] In order to get projects. 

[00:20:06] Mike: [00:20:06] So cliff, let me ask you this. If, if there's a young entrepreneur out there that's, that's still kind of going through the grind to get started, how would you encourage them to think through whether or not they should take a particular gig. If they're just not getting paid enough for it at the time.

[00:20:23] So for example, you did weeks where the painting, you really weren't making very good money off of that. You weren't focused on your business at all. Why would you even do that? What's, what's the long-term? Is there a long-term play with something like that? If so, what? What is it? 

[00:20:38] Cliff: [00:20:38] 100% there's a long-term play.

[00:20:40] So I mean, 10 years later, I am running an agency that's a very successful, and I thought that through at the beginning, right? I realized very early on that this is something I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life. So, three months is really nothing in the big picture of things. I believe that for young people getting experience.

[00:21:04] Is the most important thing you could do and to not rush the financial side of things. That doesn't mean let people take advantage of you, but also don't spend too much time in that mindset of like, this person's taking advantage of me. If you're doing work in your field, you are one of like the luckiest people on the planet cause you're getting to do what you love to do.

[00:21:26] Now. I honestly believe that, that if you think in your first year that you should be making this ridiculous amount of money. Well, I'm sorry, that's not going to work for you. You're, you should spend years and years and years chasing experience. Half a decade at least just looking and saying, all I want is an experience, right?

[00:21:47] Because once you get good at the thing, the money is going to follow because at a certain point. You will build relationships and you will build your confidence to the point where you can look at that person and say, Hey, this, this is the value of this thing. From a financial point of view, are you interested, yes or no?

[00:22:09] And as you gain more experience, as you get better at the thing, you're going to get more yeses than though. 

[00:22:14] Mike: [00:22:14] So it's all about in those early years, getting the reps so that you have experience in, in the early years, it's all about the reps. 

[00:22:21] Cliff: [00:22:21] I love that you put it that way. I love that you put it that way.

[00:22:23] Because people could visualize that. They think that, you're in your first month of going to the gym, you're not going to be in like a bodybuilding show. Right? You're going into the gym and you’re; you're getting the experience of working out. You're paying to go to the gym to get in shape, right?

[00:22:42] So when you're in, for example, what I do, well, I mean, when you're in business in general, but when you're in a business that's services. Other businesses and, and people, they're paying you for your skillset, not just your product. You better be frigging get and you get good by doing. And so, you better have done a lot of things.

[00:23:04] And so if that means, listen, let me hang around your building where you're doing this thing that I want to do. I don't care if I'm mopping the floors, I don't care if I'm serving coffee, let me be within the atmosphere of the things that I want to do so that I could be exposed to it. They do whatever it takes to get there.

[00:23:24] Don't go in with this kind of privilege ideology that you went to school. So, coming out of school, I should be making this much. I looked it up on Google and the average pay for this thing is this, and I should be making this much. If that's what you're focused on, people aren't going to be that interested in hiring you.

[00:23:44] I 

[00:23:44] Mike: [00:23:44] like it. So, invest early on the opportunity to get reps and the gains will come 

[00:23:50] Cliff: [00:23:50] and PR and like lean into it. Be like, man, I want to suffer. I want to suffer. When you're going, like again, I'm going to keep going back to this reference. Of the gym, right? You go in there to like, it's not a comfortable, it shouldn't be a comfortable experience like people that go in the gym just to kind of flex and look good, like you're not going to see any real improvement.

[00:24:10] You go in there and you lean into the suck, right? How much this is just painful and brutal, and those are the people that get the biggest rewards. It's the same thing in business or your professional life. Whoever leans into the suckiness of it. They're the ones that get the biggest gains down the line.

[00:24:27] Mike: [00:24:27] One of the things that's been coming up in my life lately, one of the themes that I keep hearing that I thoroughly agree with, I'm about four years into business now, and , I'm like, boy, this is, this really rings true with me, is this idea that people that get into entrepreneurship for. The gains will probably not make it.

[00:24:48] You have to really love doing the reps. that has to be your drive is the reps. The gains, if you're, if you're in it just for because you think you're going to get rich, you will probably not make it. It's this idea that it's all about the journey, not death, not the destination that you've got to love doing.

[00:25:09] The rep's not. Not the gains at the end. Your why has to be more around the reps than it is around the gains because it's a hard, hard journey. I've interviewed now quite a few people for the show boy, not one of them, not one of them has said. I really don't have a story to share with you, Mike, because I started this thing up 10 years ago.

[00:25:32] We had a great idea and it hit the market and boy, nine figures later, the thing's still on cruise control.  not one of them have said anything close to that.  

[00:25:43] Cliff: [00:25:43] no. I think what ends up happening. As a lot of people, and nobody wants to hear what you just said, right? People want to hear, get in it for the money, folks on the money.

[00:25:51] Do the money. Money, money, money. Right? And I understand that because I understand all of the things that money solves in a person's life, so I get it as a goal, right? The trick of it all. Well, maybe it's the irony of it is that if you focus on it too much, you will not be satisfied with what you're doing regularly.

[00:26:12] And then when you face hard times, financially, you might want to give up jump ship and go to something else, right? If you really appreciate that the thing that you do, you will become really, really good at that and then the money becomes less important. And once the money becomes less important, getting the money becomes easier.

[00:26:31] Again. That's the trick of it all, and that's what I find kind of humorous and what I enjoy. About business, about being in business, 

[00:26:40] Mike: [00:26:40] and you've been around for about North of 10 years now, right?  have you seen any kind of pattern in your business or a trend where the first, I don't know, one to two years were really, really good?

[00:26:54] Right, right after you got the big contract with Ford and, didn't get sued for millions, but revenue was really good. And then something happened, we'll say at the end of year one, maybe it's the end of year two, two and a half years where the business may be crushed under its own success, or you got maybe lazy or complacent and you weren't doing the things that you knew needed to be done.

[00:27:16] that kind of caused. The business to, to take a negative turn. If so, what did that look like? What, what do you think led up to it and what did that look like for you? 

[00:27:27] Cliff: [00:27:27]. When you go into business are really naive because you don't really understand the inner workings of it, and you don't really fully realize how much attention it always needs.

[00:27:39] And so there's a, there is a desire to get comfortable. Which again, if anybody is listening, if you're aiming for comfort, man, that's a race to the bottom. My friend. Don't aim for comfort, right? Just aim to be challenged all the time. And so, when I first started off my year one, here I am, bragging a little bit, but.

[00:28:02], whatever. This is just the reality of what happened is I hit six figures in the first year, which I didn't even believe was possible. Like, listen, I come from a background where we didn't have a huge, amount of wealth. I mean, we were poor. We were very poor, right? And so being able to hit six figures in my first year was a big deal for me.

[00:28:23] I was like, but. I don't want to say it was easy because I had to paint the outside of a building, but it happens. Right. And I said, Hey, I could do this. And year two the same deal. Now I had a business partner when I first started off and everything that could go wrong with a business partner went wrong.

[00:28:41] I won't get into all of those details at this point because I don't know what I can and can't share. But. It went South really quick and I got comfortable. This was happening fairly easy, or at least I knew how to make it happen and I, I, this is so dumb. So, second year I ended up moving out of my apartment and I ended up leasing this giant mansion of a house.

[00:29:04] This place is like 6,000 square feet. There's an indoor pool like, what am I thinking? Year two. We're going to do this like entourage style. I start having these parties. I'm having people over to my place after the bar, these big pool parties. Like it was exciting, man. It was really fun. But my attention was averting from the business and my business partnership fell apart and my, I wasn't bringing in new clients and I was losing the clients that I had.

[00:29:35] And so by year three. I, my revenue dips to approximately. I don’t know one third of what I did in my first year. That's not a direction you want to move in right now. Like I didn't just plateau. I like nosedive. And again, all the people that were around during the good times, they, they dipped, which again, that's probably a pretty common story.

[00:30:02] And I was left with myself to have a real conversation with myself. Say, Hey, you could give up right now. Like you could quit. You did some stuff that's exciting. Go see if they could give you your job back at CTV or, or wherever you want to go, and this is your out. You have a note. And just the idea of going to work for somebody else was nauseating to me.

[00:30:25] I couldn't imagine it, and I didn't care how much this was. This suck. This moment sucked. I was going to rebuild it and I knew I could, and I needed to prove to myself that I could 

[00:30:36] Mike: [00:30:36] collect it. Did you have a moment of clarity when you're maybe sitting at home one day and the light bulb comes on and you said, shit, something has to change.

[00:30:45] This is really bad, and something has to change and it's probably me. 

[00:30:50] Cliff: [00:30:50]  

[00:30:54] Cause it's not like in TV where it's somebody has an aha moment, then it cuts to commercial break and they come back and everything's solved. It was like an extended over time, aha moment of these things coming to me where I'm looking at myself and I say, man, you have these people here that believe in you and that they trust in you.

[00:31:15] And even though I could sit, and I could blame outside circumstances, which is super easy to do, like I love, Oh God, like the instinct to blame others for your own problems. I get it. It's juicy. Oh man, I'm going to blame somebody else for this. I get why people want to do that, but it does nothing for them.

[00:31:34] And I just started looking at myself and I said, listen, how do I optimize my life in a way that ensures that I'm successful? What is it that makes me happy? And let's just chase that. And so. Was it like something that I could like tell a story around novel? I think it was just. Many moments of sitting there and having that inner dialogue with myself of saying, you could have so much more.

[00:31:59] You could build so much more. Let's get real about this. Let's roll up our sleeves and let's just commit to doing this every single day and not let anything get in the way. 

[00:32:10] Mike: [00:32:10] Did you have employees at this point? 

[00:32:12] Cliff: [00:32:12] I had employees. I had let them go all year three. I had no employees or no partner. I was on my own.

[00:32:20] Mike: [00:32:20] What was the highest number of employees you had, if any time prior 

[00:32:23] to 

[00:32:23] Cliff: [00:32:23] this? Prior to this? I believe 

[00:32:27] Mike: [00:32:27] so. There's you, your partner, and then like two other people. 

[00:32:30] Cliff: [00:32:30] Two other people plus freelancers. So, we had like multiple freelancers and then interns coming in and out of the place. 

[00:32:38] Mike: [00:32:38] So when the business tanked in year three, where you find that you're at a third of your revenue from year one, pretty much everybody jumped ship.

[00:32:46] Is that right or 

[00:32:48] Cliff: [00:32:48] well, not only, I mean, I couldn't afford to pay them anymore. I didn't have money. For them and then also the friendships or that quote unquote friendships. My party friends, I guess we could call them. Of course, they, they disappeared, right? They, they are looking for the next party to show up to.

[00:33:03] I had to, I had to leave my office that I had, put a lot of work into renovating it and making it look the way I wanted it to look 

[00:33:12] Mike: [00:33:12] and painted it really nice. 

[00:33:14] Cliff: [00:33:14] Oh my God, the paint job was incredible. , and that's how I had to leave all that stuff behind him that I felt proud of, that I was associating my identity with, and I had to like kind of grab some stuff, put it in storage.

[00:33:32] I’ll put all of the other things in my apartment. And then I was working from my apartment and I was just kind of sitting in the own filth of my shame. I felt so ashamed because the way I built my identity around.  this successful partying entrepreneur, right? Who's the character that Leonardo DiCaprio plays in that one movie?

[00:33:55] He always has those parties. 

[00:33:57] Mike: [00:33:57] I mean, to be honest, the only movie that I know with Leonardo DiCaprio is the Titanic, and there are no others. 

[00:34:03] Cliff: [00:34:03] Oh, it's because you're that big of a fan of that movie? 

[00:34:06] Mike: [00:34:06] Not really. That's just the first one that came to mind. How do you die? It sounds to me like you had, you had set the bar of success around revenue or profitability, whatever your take home money was, maybe so that you could afford the McMansion, which was just a rental, by the way.

[00:34:24] you probably, you've got a bougie office. You're, you're going out partying and, and, and having the after party at your house, and you've built this identity around this very surface level, short term success. And then everything for all intents and purposes, comes crumbling down around you. You lose, you leave the, the mansion, you leave the bougie office, and now you're in an apartment.

[00:34:49] And. You, it's, the word used was your just kind of covered in shame. How did you get out of that and how do you prevent that from happening again? 

[00:35:03] Cliff: [00:35:03] Well, you start to put some thought into how you identify yourself, right? And so, when you identify yourself as this. Surface level character caricature.

[00:35:15] It's really difficult to maintain that and it's not real. And so, what you're doing is at that point in your life, you're in service of your own ego. And that's why you feel the shame. And then when you kind of flip your mindset by, educating yourself. Through whatever means you have by talking to the right people.

[00:35:33], it's everything from reading the right books, to listening to the right podcasts, to reaching out to mentors and speaking to them and speaking frankly and listening to what they had to say. You start to realize that might sound like a cliché but moving from in service of your ego to in service of the people around you.

[00:35:56] It changes everything, right? Because that becomes your purpose is like, how do I help the people around me? How do I help my clients? How do I help my employees? How do I help my family? How do I help my friends? You're less focused on yourself, so you don't really carry around the same level of shame. You start to feel good about yourself and it really starts to kind of build up your confidence again and you realize where you fit in to that picture.

[00:36:24] How could I help you? People will tell you, and then you try to help them that way. If you can't. What 

[00:36:30] Mike: [00:36:30] books, what if somebody out there is kind of in this spot right now? And I think there's a lot of them out there. I've been in this spot before. Most of the people that I've talked to on the show have been in a very similar spot.

[00:36:41] Do you have a, a podcast or a book that you'd say, Hey, go check this out. If you're finding yourself, wrapped in this blanket of shame because of monetary disappointments. 

[00:36:53] Cliff: [00:36:53], well, it doesn't have to be just monetary disappointments. It could be whatever disappointments you're having, and instead of just books, what I'll do is I, I'll, I'll list you a list of people that I very much look up to.

[00:37:06] They write, they do podcasts and looking at any of their material be helpful to you. So, I'll start with Brene Brown. But, but for Nate Brown, 

[00:37:15] Mike: [00:37:15] I do.  I referenced, there's a few episodes where I've referenced her, talk, the, just the, the whole concept around how vulnerability breeds trust and, and how, when we look to trust somebody, the first thing that we look is for them to be vulnerable.

[00:37:30] Yet when we want to go and interact with other people, the last thing we're willing to show to people are our vulnerability, right? And that's been a recurring theme in this show now quite a few times. So, I love Berne Brown. I think she's awesome. 

[00:37:44] Cliff: [00:37:44]. It relieves a lot of the tension, a lot of the anxiety when you're willing to be vulnerable, you just, now you don't.

[00:37:50] It's kind of like, I'm fine now. Right. And then people, people are Jen. 99% of people are great? I don't know if that's the real math on it, but, and they want to make sure that. You're successful, so people will take care of you. I do a lot of public speaking, like a lot of public speaking, and I love doing it, but there was a point where I was avoiding it like the plague, and once I was willing to be vulnerable, it got rid of all of those anxieties.

[00:38:14] So Brene Brown, a great one. Malcolm Gladwell, a burly fellow Canadian. The tipping point is a great example. His podcast is amazing.  

[00:38:26] Mike: [00:38:26] history. For anybody that wants to know, I'd highly recommend you listen to revisionist history. 

[00:38:31] Cliff: [00:38:31] . An incredible storyteller. , so that, that's a good one. Simon Siddiq .

[00:38:37] You had, , referred earlier to like understanding your why. Well, his books, starting with why it's game changer, man. Read that. It'll, it'll blow your mind, but there's other people worth like. Looking at people through history that have just been these incredible entrepreneurs like PT Barnum, Dale Carnegie, , one of the best marketers of all time, David Ogilvy.

[00:39:00] These are people worth looking into and learning from because you'll realize really quickly, the through line or the skewer that goes through all of these stories is that it wasn't an easy road. It wasn't a straight line and that they had many opportunities to give up, but they didn't because they loved what they were doing.

[00:39:20] They weren't chasing money. They were chasing the experience and the ability to do the thing they love doing, and that's what kept them in the fight. 

[00:39:28] Mike: [00:39:28] They loved the reps. 

[00:39:29] Cliff: [00:39:29] They love the rats. 

[00:39:30] Mike: [00:39:30] I'll link to each of the people that we just mentioned in the show notes. So, if you want to see some of our favorite books or Ted talks or whatever, by some of these people, check out the show notes.

[00:39:40] Everybody, there'll be links there, to each of those. Cliff, this was super insightful. I really appreciate you coming by today and giving your time to help people kind of understand. Some of the lessons that you've learned, if somebody out there needs marketing help, do they need to be Canadian or can you help other people too?

[00:39:57] Nope. 

[00:39:58] Cliff: [00:39:58] Doesn't matter where they are. Right? The slogan, my company is called launchpad creative in our slogan as we speak, human right? And so, there's a lot of different agencies out there that are very niche focused. Like they do. Do I do marketing for, a construction companies or blah, blah, blah, or restaurants, right?

[00:40:15] And they're very focused like that. That's not my belief system. I'm very focused on the humanity of it all and that people on the are on the other side of all of your messages. And I believe in building communities. And so, working with my clients, I don't care where they are, I don't care what they do.

[00:40:30] We will work with you and we will help you connect with your target clients. That's what we'll do, and we'll have fun doing it. We'll build a great relationship and we'll have lots of fun. So, look up.  my company has launched bad creative, so you can go to the website, you could hit me up.

[00:40:46] There, or you can follow me on social. I spend most of my time, , in regards to social media on, on my Instagram. That's where I put a lot of work in. So, I somehow managed to get, the handle cliff notes, which. Works perfect for me. so, you can follow me a cliff notes and, I’m trying to inspire, I'm trying to share, trying to learn, trying to have some fun, have some laughs.

[00:41:11] So, check me out or Twitter at clip. Skelliter but, do Instagram, follow me on Instagram. 

[00:41:17] Mike: [00:41:17] Follow you on Instagram. Got it. Thanks again so much. We really appreciate it. Again, I'll, all of the links for, cliffs, a company launch pad creative will be in the show notes, and then I'll be sure to link to some books, some Ted talks from Brene Brown, Malcolm Gladwell, and Simon Sinek.

[00:41:33] So again, cliff, thanks very much. Have a great rest of your day. 

[00:41:36] Cliff: [00:41:36] Hey Mike, I appreciate it. You take care, brother

[00:41:47] Mike: [00:41:47] Thanks for joining us today. Please don't forget to subscribe to in the trenches with Michael King on your favorite podcast platform like Apple, Google, or Spotify. Once again, I'm Michael King with KFP solutions. We'll see you again next week.