Taking the Leap

Starting a New Business Mid-Career with Mark Ferrier - Co-Founder and Partner at AndCapital.ca

Dec 5, 2022

02:03:53

Show Notes:

Mark Ferrier is a graduate of the University of Waterloo and Harvard Business School. He is a serial entrepreneur, having started seven companies with his newest venture AndCapital.ca. He is also a Young President's Organization (YPO) member. Mark discusses his career, multiple pivots, and his latest leap.

(07:00) - Mark starts his first business at twenty-six and "tripped into being an entrepreneur" out of college.
"Urgency creates opportunities!"
(16:00) - Surround yourself with smart people and keep your emotions in check at all times.
"You don't want to be a dinosaur in a young person's game."
"If you are going to sell your business, you are better off selling it for less earlier and have time with your children and family."
(27:00) - Mark discovers a way to pivot his company. Instead of trying to stop turnover, they decided to be the agency known for the best people and training, and thus they have the most recruited staff. It changed everything.
(34:00) - Mark takes a year off to spend time with family and started studying other industries. What challenges are they facing? He has an entrepreneurial insight that is the birth of his next venture.
(39:00) - Mark reflects on his COVID experience and what he and his family learned and how it lead to a new chapter in his life.
- Advice to young people
- There is power in authenticity and transparency
- "Sometimes the paragraph is better than sentences...because it contains all the emotion."
(50:00) - Mark has an insight and pulls all his career insights and experience together to start www.AndCapital.ca
- "We are super founder friendly. We tell founders that we will help you grow and scale your business, help your customers and culture and give you a clear picture of that AND then tell you what to do with capital."
- What are the problems and challenges founders face in growing their businesses?
(1:05:00) - The differences between private equity firms.
(1:12:00) - Advice to his children and young people.
- Creativity, curiosity, and resiliency, are superpowers in life.
- Understand your life is a series of chapters...enjoy and maximize each one without worrying about the next.
- Ask questions and listen!
The process of helping companies start with alignment, empowerment, culture, value creation, then execution!
(1:18:00) How do you build resilient people and cultures?
- Lean into discomfort! This is where we grow.
- "Sometimes to be your happiest you need to be at your most uncomfortable first!"
- "At the moments of your greatest defeats are also the times where the seeds of your greatest victories are being planted!"
- Learn the power of reframing the situations you are going through in life.
- Advice to children = "Positive thoughts before actions."
- Learn the power of self-advocacy.
(1:37:00) - It's okay to move on to the next chapter! Advice from HBS professor Arthur C. Brooks.
(1:40:00) - Changes in the work environment.
(1:48:00) - The difference between alignment and agreement.
Follow Mark Ferrier at www.AndCapital.ca and Linkedin.
Books recommendations
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World - David Epstein.
"And yet a tech founder who is fifty years of age is nearly twice as likely to start a blockbuster company as one who is thirty, and the thirty-year-old has a better shot than a twenty-year-old. Research at Northwestern, MIT and the US Census Bureau studied new tech companies and showed that among the fastest growing start-ups, the average age of a founder was forty-five when the company was started."
Outliers: The Story of Success - Malcolm Gladwell.
(1:57:30) - If Mark could give a State of the Union Address to the American and Canadian people this is what he would say...