Trevor Botkin: 0:11

And welcome back to another episode of when Leaders Connect, a Corporate Connections podcast where we sit down with members of Corporate Connections Canada and talk about them, their life, their journey, their business. My name is Trevor Botkin, I am the National Director of Corporate Connections Canada and today it is my great pleasure to welcome Phil Prevost to our podcast. Phil is an accomplished entrepreneur, leader and connector who thrives at the intersection of innovation and meaningful relationships. With a proven track record of building successful businesses and fostering connections that drive growth, Phil has dedicated his career to empowering others to reach their full potential. Today, we're going to talk about Phil's journey, explore the lessons he's learned along the way and discuss how he continues to make an impact in the world of business and beyond. Let's get started Without further ado. Phil, welcome to the show.

Phil Prevost: 1:00

Well, thank you very much, Trevor. Nice to be here.

Trevor Botkin: 1:03

Yeah, it's great to have you. I know you just came back. You spent a couple of days out of the cold winter that is Montreal today and got some vacation time, so you're coming at this a bit fresh. You know, I think if I surveyed most of our members there's a whole bunch who know you or have heard of you, but there's a whole whack of others who have never met you. In some of the other chapters and I know you're working with members from across pretty much all our chapters here in Montreal. But maybe you just want to high level, kind of give us the Coles notes of your business One Plus One Consulting.

Phil Prevost: 1:35

Yeah, sure. Well, today our focus is on helping entrepreneurs accelerate in terms of reaching their objectives. So that takes many forms. We have three core vectors to help them achieve that. The first one is strategic planning and strategy in itself. Planning and strategy in itself it could be faced with a compelling event, or it could also be structural in terms of defining a company's and an entrepreneur's journey and building that story that's believable and backed by facts. The second is really centered around execution. Execution is the art of aligning your vision, your people and your culture of discipline and fact-based meritocracy to actually deliver on that strategic plan, that vision that you have. And the third axis is focused on capital. Whether it be financial or team design, or resources or partnerships, we facilitate the acquisition and allocation of capital within the global context of our clients' context. So those are the three vectors.

Trevor Botkin: 3:11

And I'm assuming all three could be applied to a business Just one of them could be applied to a business. Is there a specific business that makes the most sense for you to work with or that gets you the most excited?

Phil Prevost: 3:25

Well, we've been doing this for over 10 years and, really, if there was one key element or criteria that we have, is the quality of a leader that manages or, you know, leads the company, manages or leads the company. So it's the most determining factor of an organization's ability to surpass itself and to travel through or navigate the five company maturity phases, each one holding its own unique challenges and requiring its own unique set of resources and talent. So everything's centered about around the leader, and it's a it's a hard thing to find.

Trevor Botkin: 4:14

And internally between you and your partner, mark? Do you have a process to kind of identify the quality of a leader in terms of when you're talking to a potential? The quality of a leader in terms of when you're talking to a potential, because it sounds like it's just as important for you to want to work with that client is as it is for them to want to work with you and you're not. You're not just going to work with anyone. So how do you determine whether or not a leader in front of you has the right qualities for them to get the most benefit from from one plus one consulting?

Phil Prevost: 4:44

Well, it's a great question. Uh, it's a lot like, uh, in life, right? Who do you choose to be friends with or who do you uh, you know choose to spend the rest of your or a great part of your life with? Uh, it's uh. Who do you choose to connect with and to build, you know, stronger relationships with, except in this context, in the case of an enterprise, just like in sports, the stresses and the challenges and the competitive context pushes all those requirements to an extreme, pushes all those requirements to an extreme.

Phil Prevost: 5:31

So there's ego, and self-awareness is probably the first layer, and that criteria, or that state of affairs, really has an impact on the rest with respect to discipline, consistency, controlling one's emotions, knowing when to speak and to listen, and consistency and the ability to communicate not just with words but also with your actions and your choices. So it's a very you know, and this varies depending on the level of the company, its size, its complexity and the choices that a person makes when you know, not just building but owning a company, because companies are really like nature, it really is a human endeavor and there are all forms of companies and entrepreneurs and none of them are better or worse than the other, as long as really what you have as a project reflects what you as a person want out of this life. The challenge is knowing that, and a lot of people don't know that.

Trevor Botkin: 6:55

I mean, I listened to that list and it's so many of the soft skills that they don't teach you when you're going for an MBA. I mean, it's all the things that I think separates the great leaders from the mediocre leaders or from those who would aspire to be a leader but have no business being a leader.

Phil Prevost: 7:10

Yeah, we're chatting with one of our clients. I think now he's becoming a friend too. He had dinner two separate occasions with people that everybody would recognize. These are leaders in their industries, people that have left their mark and are still making it and are quite impressive and competitive internationally. And I asked them he had the opportunity to spend hours discussing with him and asked them what are the similarities between these two leaders, these two people, and he said, well, they really care about their teams, and the other one is they know how to count, and so I found that interesting to ask him the question and to have him correlate the essence.

Phil Prevost: 8:10

Obviously, everybody has their personality and their interests and passions and all that, but I just found interesting the first thing he said was caring and taking care of their teams, and that implies a lot of things in terms of, you know, not just being humble or humility which I invite people to read up on, because a lot of people have a different perception of the words or the terms and what they actually mean understanding that your job is not to to do, it's to to lead, to inspire and to gather people of great talent to a common cause and have that be authentic through time and the the more um, the higher quality people um that you that you want to surround yourself with to drive that vision, the more they become demanding, because they usually have a lot of self-respect. And so that's why the components of meritocracy, transparency, uh, consistency and others are so important to not just attract but keep this team together and and build synergies between these people that you've assembled and strong relationships. So it really is a tremendous effort.

Trevor Botkin: 9:34

And it feels like that's probably at least from my own experience. It's one of the hardest shifts to make, especially if you go from being an entrepreneur or a solopreneur or a smaller business, where the reality of the business is you're stuck doing and then, as you grow it, you have to find a way to transition from doing to leading, and it was. It was a conversation I had with with Fred Nantel a couple of weeks ago and it was the fruit of our conversation. That's a great example. Well, he seamlessly did it and and had and saw the vision and was able to use his mentors to help him achieve that. And for me it was profound to think, because I get stuck in the doing. I mean I'm like people, like I work on the business, work in the business, I'm like under the business, and so it always feels like that's the hardest transition for a leader to make is to go from the doing this to the, the, the leading and letting other people take over the role that they've kind of held on to all these years.

Phil Prevost: 10:33

I think it depends on where you're from and your character and and your, your desire to, to build. You know, being fed fed was really focused on, uh yeah, building a business, but also he put, he puts a lot of weight on his freedom. Right, that's how he expresses it. Um, this, this client I was telling you about, his focus is on transforming his industry, and so it's not, it's not about him, it's about it is about him in terms of what brings him satisfaction and his purpose, and I think that's the lesson there is. It has to be centered around a true and understood purpose. And again, I just want to reiterate there's no good and bad in this between you and yourself.

Phil Prevost: 11:21

In terms of who you want to be, what you want to achieve and what this dance that is life will be for you as a person.

Phil Prevost: 11:45

So there's no judgment in any of this people's journey who they are, what their challenges are, and then to have that rhyme with how you position and how you define your vision for this piece of art which is this company that you've built or that you've bought or you want to grow, and so it becomes a chain of things you need to define to be able to not just be differentiated but also to be able to attract like minded people that have a similar perspective on life and on purpose, and that in itself is a win. It's not about being the biggest or the best or whatever. It's really about being aligned, centered, consistent and having some joy in what you do and in the life beyond your company, but also for what all that procures for the people who choose to accompany you on this journey. So, without getting mushy, it's funny because it's all true in the context of this, and if you speak to anybody you consider as being successful in business, I think most of them you'll discover those core elements within them. So I find that very interesting.

Trevor Botkin: 13:06

We were. We were in a meeting a couple of months ago in the fall and I remember one of one of our guys was presenting his business and you had stopped him and you had said hey look, I want to introduce you to people but I don't, like I understand your process. I see how you think I see all this, but I want to know your why. And it kind of stopped him in his tracks just because of the way he thought. So I want to ask you the same question, because I think being a consultant is probably one of the hardest ways to make money out there, because you're driving the car from the trunk, you don't have your hand on the wheel, you don't have your foot on the gas and you're just kind of shouting instructions to the person who's supposed to be driving the car, and sometimes they're not always the greatest driver. So I would love to know, with all of this knowledge and all of this experience that you have scaling businesses, why you choose to make your business helping others scale their business.

Phil Prevost: 13:59

Well, I like to help people, and I like to, I mean, not do it for them, but act as a mirror so they can see themselves or their organizations and then and then describe and define a potential that I see.

Phil Prevost: 14:19

A lot of times people are stuck in the constraints of the reality they've created. And when you come from the outside, when you have the ability to read people and see them, see them for real and then be able to, I guess, draw in your head what all this could become, given who they are and the context of their business, and then you have the privilege of showing that to them. And then you know I've seen it so many times you know you have somebody who's been working really hard for many, many years and that have built something, and then you show them what you see, and then you're able to describe it in a way that they could see. And then you can show them where they could go if they choose to, while outlining what it'll take to get there. And then they just, uh, I don't know, they become alive. It's like, uh, you know, you read the newspaper and there's a headline. If you're on the street and you see something, it's just something you see on the street, but as soon as it's printed, it becomes legend. Right, it becomes bigger than than the act itself, because it evokes so many things in people and emotion. It's a little bit like that. So having the chance to show that is fun.

Phil Prevost: 15:41

The other element and this is what my partner Mark brings as well to the table is how okay you like this. How do you get it done? Now, you know, I think, based on statistics that I've seen over the years, I'd say there's about 20% of companies that are on the right path in terms of how they're managed and led. The rest is just look around you in your circle of friends or different parents, in the hockey teams and the stands or whatever this community you have around you, you'll see that 20-80 rules apply in a lot of contexts. So there's a lot of latent value in there.

Phil Prevost: 16:25

There's a lot of people that really don't have and you mentioned it either the background or training or the life experience, or they're discovering what it takes as they go along. So In the last 10 years we've helped maybe 70 to 80 companies. That exposure, that learning is really accumulated within us. Then we can help people leapfrog some challenges that otherwise they would have had to go through in real time, had to go through in real time. So, yeah, so execution part is key. And then that story, that vision, if it's authentic, then it allows you to attract investors, partners, talent. But then you have to follow through and really that encompasses what our mission is as a team, what our mission is as a team.

Trevor Botkin: 17:25

If there was something that you could instill in as many business leaders or business owners as possible, if there was just one thing that you wish everyone would work harder on, just as a blanket statement, what would it be? Themselves Themselves Invest more in themselves.

Phil Prevost: 17:39

Yeah, and be honest with yourself and don't be afraid. Uh. I mean, everybody's seen this, I'm pretty sure, in different situations, uh, in the media around them. But yeah, it really is about yourself, your, your humanity, um and uh, because if you, if you don't circumscribe or understand who you are, then how are you able to build a team that will complete you? Nothing gets achieved alone. It always takes a team. So it's key. Building a team is key, so it's the first step to be able to do that.

Trevor Botkin: 18:15

Are you a book reader or a listener? Are you into audiobooks or actual hardcover books?

Phil Prevost: 18:21

So my partner Mark reads books. Yeah, I listen to interviews.

Trevor Botkin: 18:30

Like podcasts or actual interviews.

Phil Prevost: 18:33

Yeah, podcasts and some videos. I like to listen to stuff on quantum physics a lot. I like to listen to the International Affairs, which is a periodical that has a podcast. There's a fantastic analysis of the different situations on that. Fantastic analysis of, uh, you know, the different situations on that, uh, there's, you know lex friedman is is interesting, depending on the guest. Um, and uh, yeah, I like those kind of things.

Phil Prevost: 19:08

In terms of the business part, uh, you know, we we've scoured a lot of material uh over the years to look at the models, the strategic models, stuff like that. Did my bit on that. The thing is on my end. A lot of these theories and these approaches that are driven out of universities and big consulting are super interesting for large companies that have very educated executive teams. Our focus is just sub-mid-market. It doesn't mean that there's not brilliant, well-educated people in that context, but their ability and capability to apply all these things is limited. Their core concerns or challenges are really linked to just really what I consider to be the basic. You know, having your, your personal, why decline to your company? Why build out your what and how and then define a mission and a vision that aligns with all that? It's a, it's a, it's a construct that we've mastered. And then how to define your business creation model, your value creation model and your acceleration flywheel to be able to just focus on what capabilities you need to build to be able to get to the next phase of your journey.

Phil Prevost: 20:36

Just doing that is very complex for an organization who's used to reacting to what's happening every day. So just getting teams out of the operational is a humongous challenge, right? Because it requires time. And time is money and and people are struggling with in efficiency, investing in digital transformation, whose success rates are criminally low. A digital transformation success rate is below, I say, 20, most people say 15% success rates, just like integrating and acquisition success rates are below 15 to 20. Are you serious? Yeah, so there's.

Phil Prevost: 21:23

The trick is that if you're going to expend capital or allocate capital, it's got to generate a return, right? So, uh, if you're not able to execute and if you're not aligned and effective and efficient um, then you will not achieve those returns and bridges, bridging gaps is what business really is all about. Um, so there's um. So for reading, I like to uh, just borrow concepts from different fields and apply it to. What I enjoy doing is, uh, defining all those elements for a company. And then, uh, the other challenge is is having the having that story, um, you know, be owned by the owner of the company. So it can't be my vision, because then it's just, you know, fantasy. So we evolved our approach of planning. So it's a collaborative, very collaborative effort. We become part of the team for the time we're there. It's a very important step, and then it has to the leader has to do part of the work and then making it accessible for their team. So it's an interesting process.

Trevor Botkin: 22:47

I'd be curious. I mean, we're only a couple of weeks into January and it already feels like it's the longest six months I've experienced. And it's literally two weeks since inauguration, six weeks since the beginning of the year, and all of that's well documented. But what to you, in your experience, what's the biggest opportunity in 2025? For I left it. I left it vague on purpose, like where do you, where do you see? Because we see, we look at things as risk. Right, we look at things and go.

Phil Prevost: 23:19

I don't think it's an opportunity as much as it is a necessity. It's AI.

Trevor Botkin: 23:31

Technology.

Phil Prevost: 23:32

Yeah, there's a formula for you know, I guess, production, you know output, and one of the components of that formula is labor. And you can't just, you know, by you know snapping your fingers, create more engineers. You have to hire them, you have to train them. It costs money. This will become the first technology since the industrial revolution that was laborers, less arms, more steam. This will have the same impact or effect, but but on you know engineers, you know finance guys, accountants, creatives, same thing, I mean that is value creation positions. Years, maybe 10 years, you'll come to see the first multi-billion dollar company that was founded and led and executed by one person. So the challenge with that is where is the collective left when the individual is so empowered? Left when the individual is so empowered? And I think that'll bring a great reflection and restructuring of society. You're seeing it now with.

Phil Prevost: 25:04

You know, I guess Musk loves velocity. Sure, he loves to delete. You know there's a really interesting interview with him at West Point where he states this quite clearly. He talks about his four steps, including optimizing and all that. His point was I identified, optimized, accelerated and all this, but at the end I had to delete. But at the end I had to delete. Yeah, because you know evolving something that is, you know, not passe but irrelevant, it's just, it's a waste of time. So he now starts with delete, which you saw with.

Trevor Botkin: 25:49

USAID right, we're seeing with Doge yeah, we're definitely seeing that now and USAID and all of those things, or USID, whatever it is the most interesting part of Musk is not what he does, is how he does it. The process is fascinating, and where I've always admired his process was his approach to SpaceX and his review of how NASA was just overspending. I mean, and again, anytime there's a government contract, everyone adds two zeros onto the end, and he said this is insane two zeros onto the end and he said this is insane.

Phil Prevost: 26:30

Yeah, in that interview he speaks about that and he points out it's the initial brief and delete 90% of the brief. There's a and again, if you look, if you read John Doerr's book on measure, what matters it's another angle on that is uh, and we do that when we implement it with KRs. You know, the biggest challenge as a team is thinking in terms of outcome versus thinking in terms of tasks. Right, and that mind shift is very difficult to do of the basics in order to get to the next layer of complexity or even being able to invest any sort of time on those components. So never mind the notion of capabilities within departments and resource allocation, which requires measurement, and in most companies, measurement is a function of the past. It's not used as a function of building the future. Ai will create larger and larger gaps between artisanal companies I call them and professionalized organizations, and it'll be hard to catch up.

Phil Prevost: 27:50

And I see that for the Quebec economy as being akin to maybe the Irish famine, with a potato disease there that happened. It's the low productivity, the low digital transformation or new media of companies, coupled with the unilingual aspect of our workforce and the very high digital illiteracy rate that we have is just a recipe for disaster. And plus, a lot of our SMEs survive on the exchange rate, which is really good right now, but that fluctuates, just like there's a lot of them that were and are profitable because of government credits or subsidies. And with those markets closing because I don't think Canada-US trade will ever be the same and with that international shift that's going towards more polarized and continental infrastructure or economic integration to mitigate the risk that we saw during COVID for one global and thin supply chain infrastructure will have tremendous impact and tremendous opportunity as well. We're in the midst of the largest wealth transfer in the history of the Western civilization and in Quebec, a lot of that wealth is in these SMEs.

Phil Prevost: 29:25

When you listen to experts who are in the field, the valuation of these assets is delusional in most cases because it rests on one person and then the multiples they're all made up. The multiples are really what the last person paid for a company similar to yours in your area. It depends on the buyer. There are a lot of challenges on that end. I would say that if you could provide your team or your company with a strong vision, if you could evolve your executive team, you can bring in people like us to bridge the time or the gap between an operational team and a strategic team, because we become fractional, strategic to give them time and the bandwidth to grow that team.

Phil Prevost: 30:17

And if you have, as a leader, the commitment and discipline to build something that's great, that starts with yourself, your team, your company and your customers and everything else that starts with yourself, your team, your company and your customers and everything else, then you'll be able to implement AI and everything that goes with it and not just define a sustainable competitive advantage but maintain and grow it. It doesn't matter if your focus is on improving the lives of children or of increasing the effectiveness of the vehicle industry, part manufacturing sector. It's irrelevant. That's just the context. What counts is all the rest.

Trevor Botkin: 31:01

That's beautiful. I don't think we need to belabor the point. I think I certainly got my wheels turning thinking about that. And then it comes back to what you said at the top, which was you're an accelerator, you're taking people who will get there anyway. It's just can I save you time, can I get you the capital to to maybe leap frog the the rough years and um, can we just make it less, less efforty to get you where you want to?

Phil Prevost: 31:26

go.

Phil Prevost: 31:27

We accelerate in different compelling events, situations right when you want to transfer your company or sell it, or prepare to sell it if you want to grow through acquisition, which is the way to go in an economic context or in whether it's you want to.

Phil Prevost: 31:45

You know you're a seeker looking to buy a company and you're looking for financing and backers to be able to acquire a business and become that entrepreneur and leader that you want to be company, or bought a company from your family and you're in it right now. Your company is leveraged and you need to get things done and take the legacy that your family was strong enough to build and lucky enough to give to you or pass on to you, and build on that so that next generation is just another layer of this legacy of building. Building wealth through entrepreneurship is core to our society, our democracy, the quality of life that we can offer everybody in our communities. It's what really elevates everybody. It's a, it's a very worthwhile endeavor and we're committed to making that into a not just a productive and profitable, but a pleasant and giving experience. Oh, that's beautiful.

Trevor Botkin: 33:07

If someone's listening to this and they're thinking, oh my gosh, I need to reach out and have a have a coffee with Phil. What's the best way to reach you? You can call me or you can email me. So let's, let's do.

Phil Prevost: 33:20

your website is 1p1.ca, so the number 1, p1.ca.

Trevor Botkin: 33:29

Yeah, I'll put that in the liner notes and then I will also add your email and your LinkedIn as well in there for people to take a look on that, phil, thank you so much.

Phil Prevost: 33:39

I just want to state in closing and I thank you very much, Trevor, for this opportunity but if you need to talk or you want to just, you know, bounce things off, there's no charge. We are first and foremost here to help people and then if we could connect and help you, you know, in an applied way, then you know we can talk about that too. But don't hesitate to reach out.

Trevor Botkin: 34:07

It's part of what we do and, uh, we take great, great joy in doing that and if you're listening to this in the warmer months and you're anywhere near the west island and you want to go hang out on a boat, that's a. That's another reason to reach out, phil, yeah there's a.

Phil Prevost: 34:22

There's a cost to that.

Trevor Botkin: 34:23

It's a, it's a beer, a ride. There you go there, there you go. It's a fair deal. Well, look again, I want to say thanks and I want to say it's funny how many times your name comes up in conversations with members from other chapters and even guests. I was talking to one yesterday who I ran into out in Ville Saint Laurent. He said, yeah, yeah, I'm working with Phil. It's going so great, really happy. So it's going so great, really happy. So, um, it's uh obviously you're doing something right.

Phil Prevost: 34:53

So, again, my partner mark has a lot to do with that. He's uh, he's a follow-through guy, he's a he's a very smart guy and, uh, you know, it's a very privileged to have you know. And then our, our newest uh partner lucy, who's an amazing finance strategist and businesswoman. I mean, she's owned 11 businesses in her career. Her biggest quality is loving to laugh. That's amazing I like people like that, because it's a great sign of intelligence and competence.

Trevor Botkin: 35:28

That's fantastic.

Phil Prevost: 35:30

That's fantastic.

Trevor Botkin: 35:30

I look forward to meeting Lucy. I like people like that because it's a great sign of intelligence and competence. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. I look forward to meeting Lucy.

Phil Prevost: 35:36

I've definitely met Mark on more than one occasion but, Lucy's the next one to meet. Yeah, I know she's wonderful. So is Mark, yeah. Well, thank you so much, trevor, and keep doing this podcast. I think it's really important and it's, you know, baby steps. Every episode contributes to building a library of humanity and help and connecting people to improve themselves and the world around us.

Trevor Botkin: 35:58

So congratulations on your podcast. Well, thank you, sir, I'm not going to add too much more to that. Thanks to all the members listening to this podcast and to participating in corporate connections around the world, but certainly to our Canadian members. And, as always, this is where leaders connect.