Trevor Botkin: 0:11

And welcome back to another episode of when Leaders Connect, the Corporate Connections podcast, where we sit down with business owners and leaders and talk about their journey, where they've come and where they want to go. My name is Trevor Botkin. I am the National Director for Corporate Connections, canada Today. I'm excited to have a very special guest here with me today Mr Paul Macko. He's a director at Leighton and he's bringing with him a wealth of knowledge in helping businesses grow and thrive. And he has a deep expertise in tax credits, innovation, business strategy and he's a sought after leader in this field. In today's episode, we're going to dive into his unique career journey and I say that very carefully because it is incredibly unique and we'll be discussing how he's helped companies unlock their full potential, exploring his views on leadership, innovation, creating meaningful change in today's dynamic business world. So hopefully you stick around and hear our full conversation and this insightful conversation with Mr Paul Macko. Paul, welcome to the show. Thanks, thanks, trevor.

Paul Maco: 1:07

Happy to be here.

Trevor Botkin: 1:09

So, and I think unique is the right word for you, because if we look back on everything you've done from and we can talk about this, because when I first met you we geeked out a little bit on your marketing days with doing jingles, and you know we've we've talked about the strawberry farm and and you've done a lot of different things so maybe maybe just bring everybody up to speed on kind of where you started and then what you're sure for sure.

Paul Maco: 1:37

So my, my, uh, adolescence dream was to own a studio, I guess. And um, I was very passionate about that and so I was focused and that gave me the edge. So at like 14, 15, started to gather gear and met a guy that was super good with the technology and so forth. Of course it was a long time ago, it was even before we could record on computers. But I started basically trying to get into the TV or jingle business for advertising when I was like 19. And so we built our own studio in the basement, the apartment that we were renting, and then we finally got our first gig, like I did a like a motorbike show on tv and I did the team song for that. And after that I was playing in improv theater and so I was the house band there and there was some creatives that were working in ad agencies, that were players and um kind of. They knew me through there and then they gave me my first chance and so I started doing radio jingles and from there got TV jingles and then some were good, made a little hit and got me a little bit more popular, and so at that time all the jingle guys were mostly old rock guys, like guys that used to be in, you know, april Wine or that used to be in the Luba Luba's band and Art the Box. So they were the guys and they were making jingle out of their basement and doing quite well, but it was kind of a small operation and they never really think about it as a business. So I had a lot of friends studying music, so I was in, of course, bands, so I had a big network of players that were barely surviving.

Paul Maco: 3:39

So I said, maybe that's an opportunity. So I said, okay, ad agencies. They work in deep right. There's like a copywriter and then there's a art director and there's a creative director and he has multiple teams under him. And then he briefed them and look at the different ideas. And I said, since I'm catering to these guys, why don't I do like a similar setup where I could become creative director and I have multiple teams under me and then I could deliver quite quickly at least one decent song?

Paul Maco: 4:12

So I've set up a shop that was more set up like a workshop, like the Edison model, where you know I would come in with a brief, where you know I would come in with a brief. Okay, we have this ad for this telecom company and then we need to cater to kids that are, you know, to get a pager and whatever, and, and so I would brief them in the morning at 9, 930. And at noon would listen, like you know, give me the chord progression, then the melodies. Okay, we're going to produce this, this and this. And because they were all players, then they could all regroup and play the two songs live that we chose, and so it was our live feel. We had real musicians, so it was good songs and they were produced super fast. So by tuning that model I was able to deliver like 10 options in like 24 to 48 hours, wow.

Paul Maco: 5:07

So we kind of modified an apartment on the plateau in Montreal where every room became like a studio writing room, and then the first studio that we had built became the main recording room. And so by structuring ourselves like that, we kind of took over the Quebec market. So I was doing all the major beers, all the major telecom, you know, mcdonald's, everybody and so I was like at 400 jingles a year, it was like big. And then I was able to move and take over a little bit of Canada and then, you know, open in Paris and get like the big brands from over there.

Paul Maco: 5:48

And there was a lot of opportunities because accessing youth was often done, you know, through music.

Paul Maco: 5:59

It was one way to take the culture of a you know of a trend and then match it with the brand, or, or or take you know the, the following of a of a song or a style and then move it to your brand. So I was able to work on the rebranding of perrier like that and perrier was struggling. It was only like really old folks that were drinking perrier and they were losing humongous market share. Nobody wanted to have like a gin and Perrier whatever. So I worked greatly on that, created like a band for Perrier that went on tour and we did the first YouTube interactive video. So the more views that that Perrier clip was getting, the more it was changing and it was like a temper. The temperature was was was rising, so there were more and more extras and more and more shit happening in the clip and so within like a day we were at 10 million views, wow, and that that was like that became like a super big viral sensation and that's early days of youtube too.

Paul Maco: 7:03

It's not yeah it was the beginning of youtube, so you know it was before facebook and everything, and so that was a big one. And another big one that I've done and I'm really proud of is louis vuitton. I bought all the rights to mohammed ali's speech and they, they haven't nothing really worked and it was a tough match. And so I'm talking with the creative director in Paris and they're like we want to do like a hip hop song with the Mohamed Ali, and it was difficult for me to see like the crossover it was.

Paul Maco: 7:37

You know, the Louis Vuitton was super high end and it was before like all the big guys were investing into champagne and so forth. So I said we should do spoken word. It's going to be more tasty, right? And so they had to find a graph artist that was tagging with China Inc and it was super tasty, and so I suggested a couple of names, and my number one was Mos Def, and Mos Def had just changed his name to usin bay, so nobody wanted to hire him under that name, right, and he need to create kind of a new or reinvent himself.

Paul Maco: 8:15

So I saw an opportunity, so he accepted to do it, not too expensive, because there was just a leftover budget for the agency. It was ogilvy and they were losing the account, so they didn't want to invest too much. So I was able to put that together fly most def. And then we created that uh, that spot where most def recites muhammad ali, right, a speech in a ring, and it went bow and so the tag. So it was a campaign with like words, like word, dream and keywords, and that became the backdrop for the collection of the Louis Vuitton stores. Well, basically it was a small thing that really took over all of Louis Vuitton communication.

Trevor Botkin: 8:57

But it sounds like through all of that story, the one constant is your ability to see things that others don't like, your ability to, from whether it's up front or 10 000 feet, be like wow, there's an opportunity here. And then kind of get the right people in the right room and just and tweak it until it's something you know that works as opposed yeah and, and it's for me.

Paul Maco: 9:24

There was giant similarities between a hook in a song, and and um. A slogan right Cause, no pain, no gain would make an amazing chorus for limb biscuits, right, for example. Right and so I always, I was always working with that and and like. There was a big advertiser in Quebec, the milk producers of Quebec. Right and um and so their, their slogan was and so I took that and made a song out out of that slogan and it got 60,000 downloads and once in a while it still still plays on the radio. But that song and they even paid for a video clip that became the first like full branded, like it was a milk commercial of three minutes.

Paul Maco: 10:21

And I also did that with lotto quebec. Like, uh, we did no, no, young people wanted to to buy, like how you call gratter in english, the scratch, the scratch cards. Yeah, there's no. Like it wasn't popular with, you know, from 18 to 30. Nobody would do that. So I said why don't we do like a bling, bling, scratch? And then we did like a song like bling, bling and like it was a Loto Quebec production, and then there was like a couple of hundred thousand download of that clip. So people were actually downloading advertising. It was so successful and so I was. I always like we call that stunts like I was watching a way to create like a big impact with no media spend and it would just become like culture would take it over and appropriate it and and then it would do wonders for the, for the brand.

Trevor Botkin: 11:19

Of course, they never sold as much scratch card as during that operation but I think it's interesting because what you're doing inherently is you're tapping into people's emotional center when you're using music that way, of course, and and people don't realize how music manipulates us. And I don't mean manipulate in a negative sense, like I'm not using it, uh, in a way that's pejorative. I'm saying, you know, if you've, if you've ever watched somebody cut a movie like an editor before the music comes in. It's a totally different experience than when the composer comes in, and a good example of that was Rogue One.

Trevor Botkin: 12:02

With Rogue One it was the first Star Wars that didn't use John Williams on the soundtrack. It was somebody else and it kind of felt like a poor man's John Williams some of the sequences. And I remember somebody in YouTube recut one of the scenes using John Williams music from one of the Star Wars movies and it was radically different, the experience of watching it with the other composer and with John Williams, just because it instantly pulls you in, because for you, but for me, being a kid who grew up on star wars, I identify. It's a time, a moment, I'm attached to it.

Paul Maco: 12:40

Yeah, it's, it's the um, how do you call it? It's the, not the memorabilia, but it's. It's the nostalgia that got that wakes up in you and nobody could could get a higher feeling than that because of the emotion that you felt when you watched the first step it's like.

Trevor Botkin: 12:58

It's like top gun maverick. I mean, they nailed that first five minutes of top gun maverick. It pulls you in. You're like I'm back to the 80s again. I'm back to the original top gun, and it was. It was a.

Paul Maco: 13:09

It was an ode to middle-aged, you know america of where we're all like, yes, that was, that was us 20 years ago or 30 years ago, as the case might be, but so when we when we were talking to brands and then we can move on, but we had like worked a lot on and we called it cultural, cultural currency and our whole speech was around. That is is you're going to use music as a cultural correct seat to do an exchange right to, to get, to get your brand and that culture to mix through the music. And that's the music is going to create the exchange and that's how you can access different type of uh of of crowd like uh, you know, from from uh soap to uh whatever high end, uh, high heel shoes, you know.

Trevor Botkin: 14:05

But it sounds like you also were able to identify the audience and then understand the vehicle that was going to tap into that audience. Like you, you understood intrinsically that if you're trying to go after 18 to 25 year olds, this is the medium that's going to access it.

Paul Maco: 14:18

Yeah, and then you, but you always have the, the, the liberty to to to use an, a comedian or an artist or or like a, a trend to to to access the right crowd, right. So I remember I was, I was doing something for the 4th july and all the version, all I thought, like all the version of the national us anthem were like overproduced and too big and not nice. So I called uh, ingrid mickelson and I asked her to do like a super fragile version for a campaign for iart radio.

Trevor Botkin: 14:53

um, and I still think it's one of the best rendition of the the us anthem I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to put like liner notes on this episode of all these, all these different things, so people can go and look at it, because now I want to look that up on youtube, which which I won't right now, but, um, to try to find some of these things because it's it's, it captures that was a great campaign.

Paul Maco: 15:15

It was because they they also own a lot of billboards in the us and they had launch interactive billboards. So what we've done is we've put um a film together. So prior to the 4th of j I was talking with the directors at that company so they could broadcast in the US the words to the US anthem, but just for a flash, and we had used all the iArt rep to go rent a 5D Canon camera to go film and then they had a draw box where they would put all the footage. And then we created that film with Ingrid Mikkelsen and on the 4th of July we released it in all the morning shows and people could download that and put their own version and use the song and it was quite good and it really for advertisers. They saw the potential of using that tool where you could program a billboard.

Trevor Botkin: 16:15

Wow, that's amazing. So now, obviously because of the intro, we know that you're not doing this today. What was the shift that took you away from this marketing?

Paul Maco: 16:25

Yeah, so right, I'm at the end of the golden era of TV. I mean, in the States it's still surviving because the market is so big. But in Canada TV I mean in the States it's still surviving because the market is so big. But in Canada, like you know, they used to make in Quebec, they used to make I don't know 20 original TV series per year and now there's two.

Paul Maco: 16:43

So, like the entire TV model was is collapsing and I saw that coming and I was like I don't want to transform this Right. So if they were launching a brazilian beer, I would bring in 20 brazilian and cut live music and, you know, like a big samba beat and so rich, and maybe, yeah, let's put a mornin twist on it, but it was super interesting as a producer to to be able to do that and jazz with real brass big band next day, and I even cut for volkswagen like a 54 piece, you know, classic orchestra and. But it was moving towards music in banks and and even before ai it was just like music in a can and and so the the tv budget went for 500k for 30 seconds to 50k, for 500k for 30 seconds to 50k, and there was no more place for artists or artistry right?

Trevor Botkin: 17:42

it was just like pre-done footage and stock music, stock shots.

Paul Maco: 17:44

It was the race to the bottom of of what they were going to pay correct, yeah, and and so I didn't want to transform my company into like a sausage factory, and and so I, I put a plan together to sell it and I was able to sell it quite well at a pretty good timing. Maybe I was off, I could have tough, maybe another three, four years, and some of my right hand kept going and he did a hybrid model and he's thriving right now. But I didn't see that I, I didn't see that. I didn't see that I, I thought it would be too much change and, um, now you gotta, you gotta diversify a lot like it's.

Trevor Botkin: 18:26

it's different so that's why I called it, yeah, but I think what's interesting, and and again it takes us kind of into the next phase of your career, where you start looking at more, uh, entrepreneurial and and I remember you were telling me about how you launched, um, one of the, the, the, the alcohol brands, yeah, and that you, you completely went away from marketing it to just putting it in the hands of the end user, yeah, and using them. Maybe you could talk a little bit about some of that, since it's it's it was the rum campaign.

Paul Maco: 18:58

So so we, we targeted that new trend of mix-a-lug. Right, it was not even it was more than a bartender. They were starting to have like decent competition organized like you know world championship, que, quebec championship, canadian championship, and so it was for the vodka, sorry.

Trevor Botkin: 19:18

It was the vodka.

Paul Maco: 19:19

Yeah, it was the vodka Cause it. It was amazing. Our vodka was was made with maple sap water that has been retrieved of all the sugar. So once you put back sugar it it doesn't create layers, it makes perfect. So it had good mixologist attributes and so we went and just went after the mixologist and then asked them to create recipes and all are, and then no, nothing else, and they popularized it and they would put it on menu, because they get hired to do the cocktail menu in restaurant and then suggest and that's how we got in- Is that why the label on the lines?

Trevor Botkin: 20:04

was that because it layered so well. Was that the idea?

Paul Maco: 20:07

No, the lines was a piano roll because we had done a team for White Keys and it was the song. It was the piano roll. So that was the layer with the different stripes. Okay, you could actually play it and we had built an actual machine that would play roles. So we would invite, uh, pat watson and and do his song in a church and play the machine and do stuff I didn't know that yeah, we still have the machine somewhere, so music.

Trevor Botkin: 20:36

Music has been integral to everything you've done over all these years.

Paul Maco: 20:41

I mean, but it was surely a place that I could go to and I could, you know, do good, good ideas and and and and create things that were interesting. And then again it was all about that cultural currency, right. Once, I remember, I put Pat Watson on an orange juice commercial. That song was so good, everybody loved it, and so we created a stunt. We're going to do a sun in the north, like where there's no light for like 12 hours, and so we're going to create a fake sun and serve orange juice and put In the middle of winter, in Yellow knife yeah, no sun, correct?

Paul Maco: 21:29

and so we create a like a, you know, helium balloon with a ginormous light in it, and then we light up the sun and at the moment of the breakfast, and put a amazing song to it, and the movie, movie, just poof, gets so much better. And it won in Cannes. Yeah, that's astounding.

Trevor Botkin: 21:48

So take us up to today, take us up to what you're doing.

Paul Maco: 21:52

So, of course, I had some good marketing ideas and I had worked with the best creative director in the world and I had done some amazing, good stunts. So I said I'm going to keep doing that and help companies. But I wanted to do a bit more business. An action consulting company already done that in the States and they were quite successful. So I'll do the same. And I partnered up with good creative people and and my buddy, alan brisbois, who had, just you know, built all the the buying central machine for kushtar metro and and rona reno depot, so a big operation guy in quebec with amazing experience.

Paul Maco: 22:36

So say, together I'll work on the communication, like intern communication, outside communication, positioning, positioning, strata, market, sales, marketing, and then you'll make sure that the operation will follow. And we got you know fast. We got good contracts with helping brands. But COVID happened and because we were working on getting that extra 5% profit or whatever when the crisis arrived, we haven't got into the retainer model. So it wasn't like regular business and everybody was calling us like listen, paul, I'm putting fiberglass everywhere in the factory. I don't have time for this. And one of our venture that we had help it was Winter Farm.

Trevor Botkin: 23:20

And.

Paul Maco: 23:20

Winter Farm was growing fast. We had put together the first round, now it's time for second round. And it was was winter farm, and winter farm was growing fast. We had put together the first round, now it's time for second round, and it was growing fast. So I said, alain, they really need help. And I think, uh, it's better take over the ceo position. Uh.

Trevor Botkin: 23:36

And then I had an offer at at layton and I went there so you to today, you're you're an independent, you're a director with with Leighton, and you're doing so at Leighton.

Paul Maco: 23:49

I'm fully employed there. It's just that when I moved to Leighton they, they kind of gave me a lot of leeway and so I was able to keep working at Winter Farm with the marketing, the positioning and everything and and got it to a good point where I could let it go. But they always they were super flexible, so I was able to either work on the alcohol for a couple of days or work on the Winter Farm or work on other things, but being full time at Leighton, working on the partnerships and helping Leighton grow, it moved from from six, eight people to 200.

Trevor Botkin: 24:28

That's crazy, crazy growth so what do you love most about the work you're doing right now?

Paul Maco: 24:34

well, I, I love, I love the, the entrepreneur stories. That's, that's my main job, right? So, at latin, what I do is I meet a company and then, because I work in advertising with so much different brands from big, small and and same thing, at moon, my consulting firm with la after, so I can assess quite rapidly what's, what's your challenge or what's happening, and then identify programs that that match and then explain what is available, because it's always a bit cryptic and all the companies know that there's incentive but are not sure how to get them and they're open, closed, so you got to synchronize everything, sure?

Paul Maco: 25:16

I was just helping companies get, like interest-free loan or get subsidies and grants for you know tech product or or buy new machinery and and it sometimes they make it makes a huge difference, huge difference. But I get to know a lot of entrepreneur and then they tell me their story and how did they get that? And I was always a little bit passionate, yes, by music, but also by business. Like I love the business hacks, I love them that's amazing.

Trevor Botkin: 25:47

What, what do you know today that you wish you knew 25 years ago?

Paul Maco: 25:52

oh my god, so many things I. I think one of the if, if I could change something, it would be to have a better economic class in school Interesting.

Paul Maco: 26:13

You kind of go over it real fast. But how credit card could be a humongous useful tool if you respect the rules. Oh, they don't teach that. And and you know, one dollar that you spend now equals 65 at your retirement when you retire. You know. So if you go too much to the restaurant right now, it's like every restaurant is actually costing you like $1,500 if you think about it. And so those kind of small setups like using the proper way, the proper way, life insurance, the proper way, you know, and then a bit more than that because that's still not available, is I learned so much economic or fiscal stuff through mistakes. First time I sold a company, I I hadn't prepared it well, I didn't, I didn't crystallize, I was not able to to benefit from the, the, the tax exemption. It's a million two now. So you know you learned that the hard way, where you're sending a check for 400k to the government and it could have been yours yep, um, but they don't.

Trevor Botkin: 27:30

no one teaches that. And even as simple as like when you pay off your credit card, how you pay off your credit card every month, making two payments a month as opposed to paying one. You know, the system is not set up for. It's rigged by companies that obviously want people to be financially illiterate, because everyone makes more money and I don't mean everyone. The corporations make more money off people in debt than they do off people like working the system, like working the system and as an entrepreneur, as you learn pretty quickly that you know, if you, just if you just pay your taxes and and you do your gst, pst and and all of that qst here, uh, and that you're, you're missing the opportunity of government grants, of tax subsidies, of structuring your business, of structuring yourself, your holdco, your, your op co and all these pieces. It's not, you know.

Paul Maco: 28:27

There's so many small details that you learn over time. Like I, meet entrepreneurs that already are at 10 million in gross sales and making decent profit and they still are in line at the regular bank and they haven't gone into private banking, they haven't set up like an executive retiring plan Insurance.

Trevor Botkin: 28:51

If you're 30 and you take whole life insurance, you're set for life Like you, just, it's just. It's a no brainer.

Paul Maco: 28:58

Yeah, like our buddy Mark Berube would say, it's let the income tax pay your retirement, you know company and keep it, because it's a rocket ride for her.

Trevor Botkin: 29:08

And then and she doesn't even know what questions to ask on setting herself up as the CEO, because it was she's an accidental CEO. This was not her, her path that she took and um, she's, she's got a, she's got a rocket right on her hands. But it was one of those things of until you met her, you know where do you ask those questions? Whom do you ask those questions to? Of like, hey, am I set up even to be successful here, or is this a liability that I don't even see coming?

Paul Maco: 30:05

works right, the growth is going to be fast, especially at the beginning. And because you're growing fast, the back office, or the admin it's getting super challenged and so you're compensating. So because you're managing crisis and putting out fires all the time, your head becomes in the water. It's a classic, everybody goes through this.

Paul Maco: 30:21

Because your head's in the water, you can't see the big picture and therefore you let go of the long-term planning and the organizing and you know you don't see all the legal stuff that that could happen and and and then now it's changing so fast with ai that we were talking about that, uh, last night with Nancy. It's like okay, so I'm in this company and I'm bringing my chat GPT $20 per month thing and I'm dumping into chat GPT a lot of let's say, I'm a lawyer a lot of work that is from the office, but now it's in somebody else's hand. That is from the office, but now it's in somebody else's hand, and then it's rewriting my opening speech and it's helping me find the you know precedence or whatever, and then the info is is now shared on the platform.

Trevor Botkin: 31:12

Whether chat gpt is super secure or not, you know, you never know until you know, and so you can't be complacent, and that I think that's the point of whether it's AI or HR, or you know, your banking, your insurance, because it's overwhelming Many of us kind of put our head in the sand and we just get complacent.

Paul Maco: 31:35

Well, yeah, because otherwise it's, you're not functional. Because you know, let's Zoe, you know she gets this high growth company. Because you know, let's Zoe, you know she gets this high growth company she has to make sure that the product are getting produced, that the quality control is fine, that she finds new buyers, that she has the right distribution. There's so many things on her list but your website is not, you know, complying and there's whatever. And then your co-packer is starting to produce your recipe for someone else and I mean there's parts are, and then there's a company that has the same name as you and in a bigger territory and it's too much, right, yeah, and then think about, like life insurance there, or doing the proper fiscal structure where you're just always, you know, trying to put out fire is hard. So that's why, a lot of the times when I meet entrepreneurs, there's a lot of things that were mistakes that I've done, that I could identify and now like correct in just like a couple of hours of work.

Trevor Botkin: 32:45

But it sounds like you just bring such a value to entrepreneurs and it may not be business for Leighton, but just even that experience and I know you've got an incredible network, not just within our community but outside of our community, of people over the last 30 years that you've worked with that you can introduce people. So I know how generous you are with your time and with mentoring. But even just saying, hey, it's not business for me, but I would encourage you to talk to so-and-so.

Paul Maco: 33:13

But then again the business of Leighton is always there because company at any point in time will become qual uh qualifiable for for government incentives. They change all the time.

Trevor Botkin: 33:27

It's almost impossible not to.

Paul Maco: 33:28

Yes, what I, what I tell all my clients, is like okay, this year you're maybe entitled to nothing because your revenue are not high enough or you're not investing, or who cares. But what I'm telling you, all of them, is like, on a 10 years spray spread, for sure I'm going to get you a million, because overall, what I've witnessed is up and down. You can average it to 100k per year. Wow, it's just that one year you'll get 300k, you know. But if you look at it on a 10 year spread, for sure it's it's close to a million, because there's incentive for client acquisition, for sales, for marketing, for new machinery, for new software, for new servers, for security, for you know but also there's I think there's incentives that you can look at and go I.

Trevor Botkin: 34:21

I know that you don't as a company, this isn't where your interest or where your focus lies, but there's an opportunity here, by shifting your focus, and it could be in terms of, um, even like a marketing spend, of saying I know you're not marketing in this province, but there is a grant to be bringing business into our province. So if you just start spending money outside of the province as a marketing spend, there's a grant there for that and so it's an opportunity to for you to sit with the business owner and strategically say I know it's not your strategy today, but if you shift your strategy to include this, it's free money.

Paul Maco: 35:02

Correct. It's actually, it's real what you're saying, and it's actually half of the acquisition cost. So basically I'm saying you want to go and grab Toronto or you want to grab Ottawa? Well, you can try, and it's going to be half of the acquisition cost. So sometimes you know, let's say you're in Gatineau, I'm like, come on, it's across the bridge, it's a no brainer, yeah.

Trevor Botkin: 35:25

So sometimes You're spending the money anyway.

Paul Maco: 35:29

Or, for example, you're in an industry where you know Canadian dollar is low and your product is really competitioning the US because you're less expensive. So you want to cross into the US. Well, let's work on it. Your cost of acquisition is going to be half and you have a super high competitive product because you're coming in cheaper and you're like far away of truck for four hours of Boston. So you have like a market that is… Massive advantage?

Trevor Botkin: 36:01

Yeah, especially like an aluminum or steel where we're highly, highly competitive, but it doesn't exist.

Paul Maco: 36:09

Yeah, because four hours of truck you get to Riviera San Franco and there's 20, 20,000 people.

Trevor Botkin: 36:15

That's amazing. Well, look, I we're. We're almost out of time, but, uh, I really appreciate man. I appreciate you so much, paul, um, for for more than just what you do business wise, but also, I think, for how you show up and, um, I I know, for people who haven't met you, this is Paul like this, this kind of easygoing excitement and very few people get as excited about things than you do, and I know we'll talk about something You're like oh yeah, I love that. And we didn't even touch on your kite surfing, your skiing, your any of the other extracurricular activity. I mean, you just live life as if you know it owes you money, like you're just you, just you're. So I try to yeah, you're engaged. Let's just say you put it that way, you're, you're living life in that and you're a great family man. Uh, happily married. You're married 20, 30 years 22 years we're not married.

Paul Maco: 37:16

I think we're married 15.

Trevor Botkin: 37:18

It's a Quebec, it's perfect, um, but that's amazing. Kids and uh, and and and. I think you found a great balance. The way you live your life, um, there's a couple of powder days that you've. You're like, yeah, I'm not working today, I'm taking the sun, we're hitting the powder and I'm like it's just a. Really. I think it's inspiring to watch the way you live and work, and so I just want to thank you for that.

Paul Maco: 37:40

Oh, hey, thank you. Thank you for the praise and thanks for having me.

Trevor Botkin: 37:46

It was great, it's absolutely my pleasure and to everyone listening today. Thanks for taking the time to spend with Paul and I. To all the Canadian members, I appreciate everything you do in terms of your leadership and your engagement across the country and I would encourage you to continue pushing us, pushing each other and living with a strong purpose towards engagement and towards creating meaningful relationships and, as always, this is where leaders connect.