40 min
MPP008 – The power of tribes with Bruce Simpson The Mad Profit Podcast
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- Investing
https://youtu.be/pW8pne21PH8
Interview with Bruce Simpson founding partner at SwitchGear Consulting
In Episode 8 of the Mad Profit Podcast, I sit with Bruce Simpson, founding partner at SwitchGear Consulting (http://switchgear.ca/) which helps organizations implement strategic change to make them world class.
Bruce shares the importance of Tribes for an entrepreneur's success. Having been a part of Virtacore (https://www.virtacore.ca/) for decades, he speaks from first-hand experience on the value these networks provide to organization, and members.
Transcription
Intro: Welcome to the Mad Profit podcast, where we interview active investors, entrepreneurs and experts who left corporate jobs to buy or start successful ventures and live life on their own terms. Listen to their stories, learn from their experiences and heed their advice. So, you too can create mad profits and the life you've always wanted and now here's your host Laurent Truc everybody and welcome back. Laurent: This is Laurent true from the mad profit podcast and I am excited to have a special guest today with us Bruce Simpson, founder of switchgear consulting. Bruce how are you today? Bruce: I am fantastic. How are you? Laurent: Good thank you so much for making the time and joining us. I'm looking forward to this, you've spent a lot of time working with entrepreneurs and networking and all that. So I really want to learn a lot from you and pick your brain and see what comes from this conversation. Bruce: I humbly hope I can offer some value in the dialogue. Laurent: Ha-ha, I'm sure you will, great! So, Bruce can you give us a little bit of background about yourself, where you come from, what got you here... Bruce: mm-hmm well without revealing my full age, I have an honours degree in biology, which naturally leads to large-scale change and entrepreneurial adventures. I think what I would fast-forward to... when I was at Bell Canada, was probably my big ... and I ended up being part of the breakdown of long distance competition and I had joined the first wind back group at Bell Canada and you know going to customers to convince them the error of their ways and come back. We missed you and love you was by itself a big change initiative to get change to happen. I fell into some really great opportunities that nobody else wanted. Sometimes when they're dressed in overalls they scare people off and so one of them was the build out of Bell Canada's response to talking to customers that we hadn't talked to before. Laurent: Okay Bruce: So we ended up building a whole bunch of call centers and we proactively wanted to talk to customers and in many ways that was new for us and in doing so one of the projects I ended up was analyzing the third-party call center market okay and I ended up getting a gift because I was paid to really try and understand how Bell Canada might actually play in a space or how we might outsource and partner with other companies to help some of our call centers at that time, now customer contact. And so you know myself and one other fellow ended up doing a detailed analysis and we ended up putting together a business plan to be not only we would answer the 800 number with a human being, we would we would be Bell Canada's customer contact and they laughed at us because they were more focused on their core revenues that they were losing and they didn't want to go into business with their customers, and so myself and another individual entrepreneur threw caution to the wind and borrowed seven and half-million dollars and started a company that became Citel international and client logic, and is now the second largest third-party outsourcing company in the world.
https://youtu.be/pW8pne21PH8
Interview with Bruce Simpson founding partner at SwitchGear Consulting
In Episode 8 of the Mad Profit Podcast, I sit with Bruce Simpson, founding partner at SwitchGear Consulting (http://switchgear.ca/) which helps organizations implement strategic change to make them world class.
Bruce shares the importance of Tribes for an entrepreneur's success. Having been a part of Virtacore (https://www.virtacore.ca/) for decades, he speaks from first-hand experience on the value these networks provide to organization, and members.
Transcription
Intro: Welcome to the Mad Profit podcast, where we interview active investors, entrepreneurs and experts who left corporate jobs to buy or start successful ventures and live life on their own terms. Listen to their stories, learn from their experiences and heed their advice. So, you too can create mad profits and the life you've always wanted and now here's your host Laurent Truc everybody and welcome back. Laurent: This is Laurent true from the mad profit podcast and I am excited to have a special guest today with us Bruce Simpson, founder of switchgear consulting. Bruce how are you today? Bruce: I am fantastic. How are you? Laurent: Good thank you so much for making the time and joining us. I'm looking forward to this, you've spent a lot of time working with entrepreneurs and networking and all that. So I really want to learn a lot from you and pick your brain and see what comes from this conversation. Bruce: I humbly hope I can offer some value in the dialogue. Laurent: Ha-ha, I'm sure you will, great! So, Bruce can you give us a little bit of background about yourself, where you come from, what got you here... Bruce: mm-hmm well without revealing my full age, I have an honours degree in biology, which naturally leads to large-scale change and entrepreneurial adventures. I think what I would fast-forward to... when I was at Bell Canada, was probably my big ... and I ended up being part of the breakdown of long distance competition and I had joined the first wind back group at Bell Canada and you know going to customers to convince them the error of their ways and come back. We missed you and love you was by itself a big change initiative to get change to happen. I fell into some really great opportunities that nobody else wanted. Sometimes when they're dressed in overalls they scare people off and so one of them was the build out of Bell Canada's response to talking to customers that we hadn't talked to before. Laurent: Okay Bruce: So we ended up building a whole bunch of call centers and we proactively wanted to talk to customers and in many ways that was new for us and in doing so one of the projects I ended up was analyzing the third-party call center market okay and I ended up getting a gift because I was paid to really try and understand how Bell Canada might actually play in a space or how we might outsource and partner with other companies to help some of our call centers at that time, now customer contact. And so you know myself and one other fellow ended up doing a detailed analysis and we ended up putting together a business plan to be not only we would answer the 800 number with a human being, we would we would be Bell Canada's customer contact and they laughed at us because they were more focused on their core revenues that they were losing and they didn't want to go into business with their customers, and so myself and another individual entrepreneur threw caution to the wind and borrowed seven and half-million dollars and started a company that became Citel international and client logic, and is now the second largest third-party outsourcing company in the world.
40 min