Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Welcome to the Victory show where seven figure founders, entrepreneurs and executives reveal the real playbook behind scaling past that million dollars in annual revenue. We go beyond the highlight reel into the hard lessons, the costly mistakes, the key growth inflection points and the human decisions that shape the numbers. And here's the twist. Every conversation we have becomes a chapter in the Victory book series so the next generation of builders doesn't have to start from scratch.
Today I'm sitting down with Connor McGowan Smith. Or is it Smyth? I just should ask you that before we chatted.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Smith.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Smith or the Way is a seasoned CEO leading large scale transformation across telecommunications, managed services and digital infrastructure in the U.S. caribbean and global markets. He's driven multi million dollar growth, built high performing teams in complex environments and helped organizations evolve from traditional techno telco models into modern tech driven platforms across cloud connectivity and data centers. Now at the same time Connor is building in the performance space. He's developed an AI powered coaching platform that's designed to help individuals and teams achieve clarity, ownership and elite execution. His philosophy blends business strategy with performance psychology, what he likes to call the sport of business. And I think that is such a fantastic phrase for what it's like being in the business world. Connor, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to be here.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Thank you Travis, so much for, for having me. As we caught up briefly before we came on air here, just the concept and the conversations we've had so far. I love it, I love the idea of it being part of the chapter of a, of a, of a book, of one of your many books.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: So you've obviously operated at a large scale in the C suite in international corporations. You're in Ireland, you're in the Caribbean, you're in Miami. Let's just talk a little bit about what it's like to be part of a company that it's that big. What are some of the benefits and what are some of the challenges, especially as a leader?
[00:02:16] Speaker A: Great question.
The benefits when you're in a, an organization where kind of the parent company and part of ATN is we're about 750 million in revenue, 1 billion dollar market cap across eight different markets, about 15, 1600 people. So we're very big for the markets we operate in. We're relatively small in the US perspective. We consider ourselves big for where we operate in. So the benefits of being big is obviously our access to cash.
We're generally a fairly dominant position in our markets. We're able to look at strategy from A three to five year perspective. When we look at our competition, they're probably worrying about next month, the following quarter, having big spikes on how they achieve things and then quickly running out of room to scale, having operational issues. That's the benefits probably on the flip side of that is because we're big, because we've been in operating in some of our markets for 40, 50 years, there's a huge amount of legacy business lines that we need to manage and keep and operate while building the new world with new technologies, new solutions, new people, new skill sets. And then there's the explosion of AI thrown into the mix over the last last couple of years, which has just meant that it's, it's even the playing field a bit. But I would say answer your question directly. Is big benefits are, we've, we've, we're in a pretty good position all of our markets negatives are when your organization is that big, sometimes you lose a bit of your agility and you need to think and execute long term rather than being able to say let's get this done next week, yeah.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: And then especially right now with the fastest things are moving that can be, can be definitely a challenge. Are you seeing that many of your legacy clients are they are most of them receptive to the idea of updating and modernizing or do you have a few companies that are kind of like, this is just the way we've been doing it for 30 years and that's the way we want to keep doing it?
[00:04:26] Speaker A: Yeah, it's so we, we operate all the way from Guyana in South America up to Alaska and quite a few places in between.
And despite them being very different macroeconomic jurisdictions, very different culturally, what you just outlined there is our biggest challenge.
One is all of the answer your question directly. All of our customers want cloud solutions, cybersecurity solutions, AI to be embedded in their strategy.
Most of our customers don't want to pay any more than they're paying today for that reality. So that's the biggest challenge in the world of telecoms is people need more bandwidth, they need faster, more reliable Internet, but they want to pay less. And then they want all of these new solutions embedded in that same price point. So it's a huge opportunity for us. That's what it meant at the start. We have an opportunity to be the dominant player in providing these services.
The big balancing act for us is how do we balance funding the new, making a market for the new, while respecting our commitment to the old.
But a fascinating challenge. Not complaining. It's it's a great position to be in.
Wow.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: So for you personally, what have been some of the challenges that you've faced as a leader of some of these big teams?
[00:05:45] Speaker A: Let me, as a, as a leader of the, of the say I look at the bigger operations, the pace you can implement that is sometimes what the leader wants to do versus what the team wants to do is very different. And if there's not good candor in the team, you can find that out six months too late. So that's one challenge.
The one, the second challenges have in our organization is, and it's also an opportunity because it makes us very diverse and multicultural. But eight different markets, different languages, different currencies, different cultures can just slow you down enormously with procurement processes, legal processes.
So that, that's one of the big learnings. But probably the biggest thing as a leader, particularly in a world that has the unified collaboration and virtual meeting tools that we have now, nothing beats spending time in market with the in market teams to build trust, to build relationships. And I'm very old school in that regard. It's the biggest leadership lessons I've had is if you haven't spent real time with the people you're expecting to run through a wall for you, why would they run through a for you is the probably the biggest learning.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: You know, last year I was working with, he has his own hedge fund, he's a venture capital guy. We were working on his book and he happened to have a meeting with a guy in Japan who was his mentor, was the CEO. I'm going to get this wrong, but it's like the Triad Group or something. It's like, you know, a trillion dollar company.
And so my client was asking him like, oh my God, like you're mentored by like, what is the thing that that guy has taught you? And he said the biggest lesson that he got from that person was whenever you're going to invest in a company, you need to spend at least 20 hours in person with the, the, the founder in like a variety of different scenarios. He's like, obviously the first one is you're going to have dinner. He's like, but then you want to invite them to like, hey, do you want to go get drinks? And then like, hey, I'm going downtown. You want to jump in a cab with me to like, oh hey, I got tickets to this ball game. Because he said until you've spent 20 hours with someone, you don't really have a good sense of who they actually are. He's like, anyone can put a good face on for a pitch or a dinner.
And I just thought that was so interesting that like, you know, here's a guy running a trillion dollar company going like yeah, boots on the ground, face to face. Time is the biggest indicator of how he divests money.
[00:08:25] Speaker A: So true. We're social creatures. Like it's, it's like I, I've. That has been genuinely the biggest learning I've had in all of our markets and not just for myself but for the whole leadership group is we've had that exact example where we've hired someone on paper who is 1 million percent capable of delivering what we need them to deliver.
But they haven't been able to achieve the buy in of the markets either just by not spending adequate time there or not being ultimately respectful of that legacy and heritage that the market or business may have. But to your point, I think more importantly is there's, there's so much in that I agree with it. So much is it's, I, I do a lot of board meetings, a lot of pitch decks and it is easy to get into a two hour session and get out of that unscathed with promising the world when you spend a longer day together and questions get answered and it gets a bit stressful and the over and back that's when you find out what you're really dealing with.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: So at what point in your career did you realize that, that, that having a coach in your corner was a smart decision, business decision?
[00:09:33] Speaker A: Yeah, it happened, it happened relatively early. So I was in a head of kind of B2B partnerships and channel role. So it was my first head role, my first senior management role and I was having a conversation with a, with a, with someone I met actually to rugby. I used to play a lot of rugby and I was just explaining to him stuff about time management, stress like articulating what you want to do, imposter syndrome. All the usual stuff that pops up where he introduced this brilliant concept to me that I never heard of before is hey, I'm going to introduce you. I'm gonna, I actually I'm gonna send you to a webinar of someone who I think I would like you to meet the guy doing the webinar, a guy called Dave Cribbin. He's actually based out of Ireland.
I listened to this webinar and I was blown away by all this material help Messag the so many people going through the same thing that I was just compelled to reach out to him. And that was about six, seven years ago now. And we've been meeting every six weeks since.
And what I found in the early days of it, it was around that, around time management, around showing up, around building confidence, around just proving yourself as a leader. As the years have gone on, we've got, we've gone from everything to writing your own obituary to spirituality, to sessions where we've tears, sessions where we've anger. So and then I've worked with other coaches since then that are more mentor and I've got really into the space of different coaches for different things. But ultimately what I found about it is it's a safe space for me. Initially it was a safe space where I could go and just say what I really felt, say what I really meant, say what I was really thinking about in an environment that was stress free and I didn't have to put on a false pretense.
And it also changed my leadership style and management tile completely.
This is where this whole sport of business concept came out is I think so many businesses are really, really well run, structured really well. But just teaching and coaching is not something people spend a whole time thinking of. I've spent 300 grand on this executive but I haven't thought of how I'm going to empower them, enable them.
So that's been, that's been a big, a big learning for me and become a bit of a passion since.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: That makes sense. I worked with someone a couple of years ago where she was, she made it to the VP level in a Fortune 100 company and she lasted about 16 months and then they fired her.
And, and when after she got fired she got in this group and she's found out that like in the Fortune 500 companies the average length of a C suite employee was 18 months.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: And it was precisely because the companies were hiring the people and then were not giving them any of the support that they needed to into the role. Usually it was the company's got a problem, they need to get it fixed. They hire somebody going, you fix the problem.
But you know, it takes them a year to kind of get a handle on what's going on anyway. And then they start working on it. They're like, you're taking too long and they fire them and they get another one. And I just. To your point, right, she was talking, her book was talking about how many, just hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars are spent in these companies every year.
Hiring and training and hiring and training. If they would just take 10% of that and put it into coaching, like a lot, like 90% of their problems will probably be fixed.
[00:13:12] Speaker A: Yeah, big time. And it's a general I've also found is that particularly recruitment of big roles, often big particularly big companies like Fortune 100, Fortune 500 companies, they hire by the resume and experience or they try and replace what they. They've just had. They don't actually look at what are we trying to accomplish for the next five to 10 years and do we need something totally different to what we've had before. But I like I spent the day at our commercial director in the Miami office today. We spent the WHO looking at the output of our QBR yesterday and rather than the the traditional relationship would be here's all of the actions. Send the actions out to each of these owners and by June they all need to report it back. We have a very different approach. We reviewed the actions, we reviewed who the actions are going to. We then ask can they, can they do that? Have they the skill set to do that? Have they the time to do that? And then we've in we the actions are the actions and the goals are the goals. But we've said in between, let's get them a development plan, let's get them a support aid, let's get them a coach.
And it seems really simple.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: It's.
[00:14:24] Speaker A: The big challenge is making time to do it.
And but it's. Yeah, I've. In our current organization, about 200 people, of 200, I'd say at least 30 have had direct executive or business coaching.
And you can clearly see a step up in not even in just capability and skill sets, but confidence and how people carry themselves after they've been, after they've been coached.
[00:14:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, it's from my own perspective. The Western culture is very interesting in that, you know, you, we celebrate failure as kids.
Right. I mean just look at what happens when, when you, when you're learning how to walk.
Oh, you fell down. Go again, go again. You know, our whole life until we're about 13 or 14 is try again, try again. And then somewhere in the teenage years it's like, then you're in school and it's like if you get it wrong, the first door mark it off and suddenly you're like, oh my God, I can't mess up the first time or I could fail.
Right? And so like you have this we. Now you go into business and it's like, oh, I don't want to. If I, if I do this thing and do it wrong, I'm going to get the red check mark. And I could Fail. Right. And so there's this weird where instead of like you were saying, you bring in a coach and going like this, try this. Oh, it didn't work. Great. What did we learn from that? Okay, great, let's apply that. And now you're moving forward.
I've always just found that an interesting part of the, the culture and specifically I apply that to myself with a lot of things. So where did your idea for the AI powered coaching platform come from?
[00:16:00] Speaker A: What?
[00:16:01] Speaker B: Where was there a specific experience that you had that you want? Man, there's an opportunity for me to take obviously the experience you've had with, with multiple years of being coached and applying that into an online platform.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I think because I, because the success I experienced from coaching and having people coached, despite being a relatively young man, I've always had an idea on what I'd like to do when I grow up after corporate. And one of the things that's always appealed to me was coaching like working, like giving back, showing people how I've got to where I've got to or how other people have got to where they've got to, who I've worked with and just given some of those, those lessons. So I went away and did a coaching course, an ICF course through a company called ipec, fairly intensive two year program where we spent weekends together.
A group of 25 of us trained out to be executive coaches, spent all the time in between coaching each other.
And what I found in that was enormously rewarding, very powerful work. But I noticed in me try, I was very different too than a lot of the people coaches there. I was there to kind of learn how to be a coach, to apply it to my own career and potentially become a coach in the future. I was blown away by the amount of people there who were, who had left corporate jobs, particularly people, leadership roles, had become a coach and thinking that this would give them everything that they wanted to have. But in reality they hadn't thought through how they market themselves, how they sell themselves, how they find work, what their style of coaching is, what that, this whole gambit. So I, I coined this, this business idea and I named it Galores, which comes from the old Irish word galore, which means many, it means plentiful.
So in, in doing that I said look, there's, I don't have the time to do this, but I had this concept, I set up a little website, I do a bit of coaching with individuals and kind of said when I have time to do this, I'd love to do It So last summer I got re outreach from a guy, Barnes Lamb, based out of Toronto and Canada, similar to when we started chatting, said would I be interested in coming on his podcast? And we had a conversation on his podcast about what was supposed to be the very B2B orientated tech discussion. And we ended up getting stuck into this coaching platform where he called me after the podcast and said, hey, I'm so bought into this.
Do you want someone to help you build out the tech platform here? So suddenly I had this vision and this operational plan with no time or person to execute it, where I did a deal with Barnes, where he's done an incredible amount of work, where we're all fast forward to where we are today. We're in UAT. The site's going live this month. The phase two is then to get out the 100 coaches on board by July.
And then the really exciting portion is we built this B2B kind of mission strategy framework around the sport of business, which is taking those coaches that will be on the site, enabling people to come on and select these coaches to work with them. Then those top tier coaches can also do some of our accredited B2B funding consulting work. But most importantly is creating a community.
And all of this is powered on a platform that AI is looking at the interactions, it's looking at some of the coaching sentiment. And where we think we can take this long term is make business coaching, life coaching, executive coaching affordable. One of the big limitations on coaches at the moment, the best coaches are 500 bucks, 600 bucks an hour. You really want to be doing six to 10 sessions to make that worthwhile. Not a lot of people can afford to make that investment.
Part of what we're trying to do in Galoris with the use of AI is have an AI avatar version of that coach where you can just look at your day to day, your week to week, month to month. And then maybe twice a year you need to get on with that top tier executive coach to review the data and inputs.
So it's been a phenomenally fun project. But to answer your question, and probably an idea three or four years ago that started out as a little LLC where I do a bit of consulting through which has now blossomed into a company with four or five people looking to expand into the millions by 2028 with some significant funding coming on board.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: You've got, you've got your retirement plan already built out.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: I do. You know what's really funny about it is the is I spend, I don't have Time during the week. So I spend a lot of my weekends. So, you know, you have this idea what could I do to. Gives me enormous free time and for when I retire. But in reality I'm doing more work than I've ever done, but I'm happier than I've ever been by doing that work.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: So there's something, I worked with somebody last year where he was, he was a very successful attorney, but he grew up in a family where his parents were real estate investors. And so, you know, he was doing really well as an attorney, but his whole career he was investing in real estate. So by the time he retired after 25 years, you know, phenomenal income. Didn't have to worry about anything. They said he lasted about six months and then he was just like, sounds like I'm so bored. And so he started a new business.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: And now this is like just exploding, going crazy. And, and you know, my first mentor, I've shared this story before, but my first mentor when I, he was 65 when I met him, he worked all the time. He was, he was one of the old school, like guys in the 60s, went door too, selling vacuum cleaners. Like, you know, hard, hard, hard, old school, hardcore, direct, face to face selling. Right.
And, and he just loved it. It was just his thing, he was really good with people. And I remember he used, we used to go to these business networking events and, and when people ask him what he did, he always said he was retired.
And, and I, you know, I never said anything. I'm just young kid thinking that's kind of weird where these networking things, he's saying he's retired. And I know he's not retired because we're working like 80 hours a week. And so finally he said that one day and somebody across the room was like, ah, that's bull crap. You work harder than anyone I know. And so this is the thing he said that I never forgotten where he said, oh, I'm sorry. He's like, when I was 8 years old, he's like, my dad used to, he hated his job. He used to come home and he'd throw his boots in the corner and his toolkit down and he'd just be swearing and cussing. And he used to say, oh, when I'm retired I'm gonna do this, and when I'm retired I'm gonna do that. And so as an 8 year old, I'm like, God, this retirement thing must be amazing. And my dad's talking about it all the time and so he's One day he's like, I'm like, dad, what does it mean when you retired? And he just looked at me and he said, son, when you're retired, you get to do what you love to do whenever you want to with no clock.
And then he just sat there for a minute, he smiled and he's like, I've been retired since the day I turned 21.
Because he built a business that he loved, right? And so I always think of like, again, right, with western culture, we have, oh, when you retire, you. And I'm like, you know, I think Warren Buffett, what is he, 96? And he finally, it was like, I don't even know if he wanted to retire. But everybody's like, Warren, like, you're 96, like, you gotta get out of the office. And he's like, I guess I'll step down.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: And it's amazing because, yeah, it's nothing to do with the financial reward at that stage. It is the, the joy of the, the hunt. You know what it reminds me of? And I've been doing this with people I've been coaching and some of the kind of the value prop building and the market research for galores. It's also a mindset thing. I see a lot of people, particularly coaches, who leave a corporate job to get out of this in their head. This situation where they've, they've got a boss telling them what to do, they don't have any free time, they have all this work to do and they don't have enough time to get it done. With this idea that becoming a coach or a consultant, working with companies that when you're doing that work for a company, it's somehow different to an employer. You still have the deadline to get it done. You still have limited budget, you still have limited scope. So there is a.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: Now the pressure. Your paycheck is 100% on you.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: 1 million percent.
It is about, it's about mindset. It's about look how, how you look at it sometimes.
[00:24:21] Speaker B: So in your years of coaching, has there been sort of.
I don't know, maybe I'm making this too simplified, but is there like kind of three things that are kind of universal to, to everybody that you work with or in terms of coaching, like three things that, if, if a person masters them, like they kind of level up their game as either a business employee or as a, as a leader?
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I'd say folks that categorize it in three things. A start. Just so many people talk about starting. I'll do this when I have my degree. I'll do this when I have my certificate. I'll do this when I retire. I'll do this when my kids are older. Just start. Even if you do an hour a week, starting will compound. And that's for anything. It can be as small as I want to be.
I want to get a promotion and work to. I want to be a better dad to. I want to be the President of the United States. Anything just needs to. To start. The second one, I'd say, is that the notion of an unteachable lesson.
As a coach, often I can, I know sometimes within five minutes exactly what this person should do or what they're not seeing and not doing. But there's no. A really bad coach will tell. You've just got to ask questions prompt. But what I mean by the unteachable lesson, sometimes, particularly the coachee, the person being coached just needs to make the mistakes themselves. They need to get through the thought process themselves. They need to have the aha moment themselves.
So that's one of the biggest lessons, particularly in coaching. It's asking questions. It's never telling. And the big difference between coaching and probably psychology is psychology. You're trying to fix something in someone coaching. You're trying to optimize or improve something so you have more scope. You're not trying to get to the root of an issue.
And then the, the last lesson that I've. I've learned is as a coach, you've got to be very selective about who you coach.
It can become a bit of a slog if you let it.
Again, this concept of if I, if I enjoy, if I enjoy doing this once, I'll enjoy doing it all day, every day. It's intense. It's very intense. You get very invested in the people you're working with. So you've got to. Got to leave time between sessions.
And you've also got to get a good sense if you want to work with the person who wants to work with you as well. They'd be there. If I was to coin the three really important items, that, that'd be them.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: Now that second one's important. So my wife does.
She's like in an emotional.
She clears emotion. She works kind of on an energetic level. Right. And so there's times where I ask her for, hey, I'm stuck with this, or you help me this. And there's times where she's, oh, look, there's certain things I can do, but she's like, sometimes I see I can tell exact Immediately what you need. But as your wife can't come and tell you what that is, like, you got to figure it out yourself. Right? There's been a couple of times in a relationship where it's like, I have the aha. And my wife is like, oh, my God, thank you. I was like, what? And she's like, ah, I've known about that. I've, like, seen that for, like two years. It took you two years to figure that one out.
So I think that's the way it is some. And that's part of, like, with my. My work is helping people publish books. Right. A lot of it is mindset and just coaching people through, like, hey, it's a framework. You got to get through it. But there's some times where people just kind of keep doing the same thing and you're just like, all right, we just got to keep doing the same thing until they go, oh, isn't it?
[00:27:55] Speaker A: So you're a great example. How many people do we know that want to write a book but never start or never.
[00:28:03] Speaker B: I've had maybe 4, 000 conversations off of LinkedIn of people reaching out, asking for help. And I started asking people, how long have you been thinking about writing a book? And you know what the average time is?
[00:28:15] Speaker A: 1 seven years, I'd say, yeah.
[00:28:18] Speaker B: It's so much so that I. There's one point where I was like, just so many people in a row said in seven years I would start la. Seen. They're like, seven years. I'm like, ah. And they're like, why is that funny? I'm like, no, no, it's not. You. You're just like the hundredth person this month that said seven years. I'm like, what is it with seven years? Yeah. Wow. Right?
So, yeah, that's. This is the way it is. So if someone's listening to this, I. I get. The site's not up, but by the time this episode publishes or the. The book goes live, it'll be up. How does someone. What's the. Where do they go to find the coaching platform, what's the URL and how do they engage?
[00:28:51] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. There is a side up at the moment, but the. The full production site probably be end of this month, start of next month. So it's Galoris G A L o r a s dot com.
So that's.
That's live. We have a LinkedIn page. It's very active. So between the website or Galoris on LinkedIn, you can reach out to the. To the team team directly.
Awesome.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: And if somebody wants to connect with you directly, is LinkedIn the best way to do that?
[00:29:19] Speaker A: LinkedIn or via the Galoris website? And if it's anything ICT, MSP, B2B related on tech side website is bra solutions.
[00:29:32] Speaker B: Love it. Well, Connor, thank you so much for taking time out of your day. It's been an amazing conversation and, and good luck with Galoris.
[00:29:39] Speaker A: Love the concept.
[00:29:40] Speaker B: Am I saying that right? My, my, my, my bad. American accent can't handle the.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: I love it. No. Thanks so much, Travis. I'm really looking forward to the book.
