Derek Bullen: Five Strategies I Used To Grow My Business To Reach Seven Figures In Revenue

An Interview With Doug Brown

Find and navigate your river of cash. Join a business group to learn what you don’t know. Take an accounting course — a good one — and learn the basics of how to read a balance sheet, income statement, and cash flows. Design your business around the work, not around the people. Implement a few things at a time and implement them well.

As a part of my series called “Five Strategies I Used to Grow My Business to Reach Seven Figures in Revenue”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Derek Bullen.

Derek Bullen is Founder and CEO of S.i. Systems, one of the largest professional services companies in Canada, with thousands of information technology consultants working on projects for blue-chip corporations and government agencies across Canada. His new book is In Defence of Wealth: A Modest Rebuttal to the Charge the Rich Are Bad for Society (Barlow Books, 2022), and previously published High Velocity, a book to help new IT professionals develop their soft business skills. Learn more at bullenbooks.com.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I graduated college with an engineering degree in 1984 in Calgary. Interest rates were at 18%, there was a deep recession in the local oil and gas economy, and there were no jobs to be found. I saw an ad in the paper for a programmer for an older chip set that we practiced on in school. I applied and became a programmer. Soon I started freelancing at nights, and later I’d get jobs for my friends that were also programmers. Eventually I turned that into full-time work, matching client requirements with the right talent to do the job.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began at your company?

In 2006 the economy was booming in North America and we had just crossed $50 million in sales. We had a planning session in Whistler, and I floated the idea of doubling the company to $100 million in a year! Everyone bit on the idea. We spent three days planning. One month into the plan, it looked like nothing was changing, and I wondered if I had set the bar too high. I went into my partner Larry Fichtner’s office and asked if we could talk about the goal to grow to $100 million in one year. I was having doubts we could do it. Before I could say anything, Larry stated, “One hundred is a great goal — it’s easy to remember and everyone is fired up! What is it you want to talk about?” I was swayed by his confidence and I replied that I just wanted to see what he thought, and left his office. It was a good call. Nine months into the year we’d doubled the company and hit $100M in sales!

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I had two amazing mentors that helped me achieve my dreams: Doug Bouey and Larry Fichtner.

Doug ran a CEO group for TEC Canada (Vistage in the USA). When he met me, we were not yet profitable and I wasn’t yet able to pay myself. He told me I had to grow myself from the inside to grow my company. He was right. He invited me to a vision quest with the Southern Alberta Blood Tribe. I spent four days out on the land with no food or water, putting out my intent and waiting for a vision. Well, I got one! Doug seemed to always know what I needed to learn next.

Larry Fichtner was also in Doug’s CEO group when I first joined. He took his seismic company to the NYSE and retired two years later. I took Larry my business plan in 2001 and asked for his opinion. He said he liked it, and liked the business and offered to buy 15 percent of the then tiny company and he become the Chairman and my partner. It was a great deal! The first day of our partnership I asked Larry what we should look at, and he told me, “We should get a real business plan.” We paid Traction Works, a think tank owned by Chicago’s Divine Interventures, $100K to write up a business plan for us. It was an amazing plan, and we ran it for 18 years without a change. It worked like a dream. Quad C became a partner in 2018 and, after a long ride, Larry cashed out. He helped me achieve my dreams and I was very blessed. I think about him often and we still chat once a quarter.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

You need to know when to say “no” in order to be successful. Life, business, relationships — they’re all full of multiple opportunities. You can’t say “yes” to everything, That will dilute your purpose. It’s impossible for people to know what you stand for if you say “yes” to everything that comes your way. In the early days of S.i. Systems I’d do anything I could in order to get revenue. I programmed, trained, wrote documentation, set up UNIX workstations, and sold some applications I wrote. Anything a client said they might like, I’d do it. It was hard to manage, hard to scale, and hard for clients to remember me. I was a grey fog of compromise.

In one of my early meetings with Doug Bouey he asked me what I did that was scalable, unique, high value, and in demand. My answer, I discovered, was finding software developers for the local oil and gas companies. He encouraged me to only sell that, nothing else, and to see how it went. During the next three months, while meeting new clients, all wanted something other than that. Still, I stuck to my plan and would politely tell them I don’t do that type of work, but if they needed a software developer, that was what I specialized in. Then, later I began to get a steady stream of calls where the conversation would always go: “I remembered that you were the guy who specialized in software developers. Well, I need one now, can you help me?” It was a valuable lesson. Find the sharp edge of your wedge that people will remember you for, and will pay you in exchange for services, then stick to it. Focus and separation brings great results over time.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. We’d love to learn a bit about your company. What is the pain point that your company is helping to address?

Large organizations enable their businesses with Information Technology. When they have a large project or new initiative, they’ll temporarily need more specialists than they have on hand. They’ll call me for a project manager, business analyst, or software developer with specific experience in their technology stack and the project domain in which they’re building. I match them with the best-fit contractors in their local market so they can get the job done. Our typical contract with a client is 9 months, and we perform more than 8,000 new contractor transactions per year.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

The “why” of our company is to connect human potential with meaningful work. We understand that connections matter. We have a proprietary database that’s a meta model of local talent, and our website is one of Canada’s top 10 job boards for IT professionals. Our matching of talent is so precise that we’re the only agency in North America that provides our clients with a 30-day money back guarantee on all contractors we put forward. When the recession happened in 2009, and the COVID disruption in 2020, we worked overtime to keep our clients and our consultants working. We thought it was our job and our duty to keep as many people employed through a crisis as possible. It was us living the “why” of our company.

When you first started the business, what drove you? What was your primary motivation?

Honestly, I was fired from a great job and out of work. I was Vice President of Research and Development at a digitization company. I moved our target platform from DEC VAX to Sun Microsystems in 1989 and I was bounced out. I had a family and I needed to earn money. I was in the phase of doing anything I could with computers if someone would pay me. I spoke to the salesperson I’d bought the Sun Microsystems gear from, and he recommended I contact Veritas Geophysical and see if they needed some programmers. They did, and they were my first client. My future business partner, Larry Fichtner, worked there. It was a great coincidence. We took a large loan from the bank and lived on credit for a long while before the company made any money, but that’s how S.i. Systems formed. A crisis is very motivating.

What drives you now? Is it the same? Did it change? Can you explain what you mean?

In my business, inside and outside, I’m very much into developing human potential and matching people with meaningful work. Recognizing talent is hard and putting it in front of the right challenge is even harder. That’s the game I love right now and what I enjoy doing. I’m thinking of my succession two levels deep into the company and engineering the leadership pipeline that will provide me candidates. I love that there are lots of talented people taking on strategic projects in addition to their day jobs. I get a kick out of watching people discover themselves through taking on accountability and risk, then realizing their potential. I’m a small part of that and I love it.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

We’re always looking at new scenarios for our business five years out — what’s a potential course for our current identity as we cast it into the future? When we agree on an idea, we’ll pilot it. If the pilot is successful, we’ll operationalize it first then optimize it and bring it into the regular fabric of our business. We’re currently starting to look at Robotic Process Automation for many of our administrative tasks. We’re in the second generation of Artificial Intelligence in talent matching and cash application. We’re starting to place corporate professionals outside of Information Technology with a lot of success and we’ll continue to scale that. We just rebranded and have a lot of marketing initiatives coming out this year. That’s exciting, too.

The topic of this series is “Five Strategies I Used to Grow My Business to Reach Seven Figures in Revenue.” Congratulations! Seven figures is really a huge milestone. In your experience what was the most difficult part of being able to hit your first million dollars in sales revenue?

My hardest push at the beginning was to get people to believe in the business. I had a lot of turnover in the early days because few people that I hired thought we could stay in business. There are some magic numbers when you’re growing a services business. One, three, seven, and eleven people are very stable numbers, however the next one is 25 and then 77. After you hit 77 people, the laws of business physics change and you start going more predictably.

In our early years getting from 11 consultants to 25 consultants was the toughest chasm to cross. Just as we’d build up towards 18 or so, something would happen — like an elastic band pulling us back down to 11. I hoped we could make it, but there were so many setbacks and weird one-time events that kept pulling us back to 11. It looked bleak at times. One person stuck with me from those early days, Jane Hein, and she’s now my Vice President of Western Operations.

Could you share the number one sales strategy that you found helpful to reach this milestone?

I made a special deal with a company. I’d find them contractors for a monthly flat fee instead of an hourly rate. It was low profitability, but it caused ingress to happen. More business begets more business. We became a bit more relevant because we represented all the deals from this client. We started to attract better people, too. Over the course of three months, we made the impossible leap from 11 to 25 contractors, and the cash flow and status of being more credible helped. It was a bit sad when I dismantled the special deal later that year. The client loved it, but I didn’t need it anymore. I outgrew it and was on my way to 77 consultants, a bit more confident and capable than I was before.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you or your team made during a sales process? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

There was a period of time when I did all the sales for the company. In the mid-90s there was no internet. I’d find potential clients in the yellow pages, set up a meeting, then go over in person. Well, one time I went to the wrong address. I got to the building looking for a company called Merak, and they weren’t there. Looking at the directory there was another company with a name that looked techie to me called Argus Systems. So I called on them, cold, and asked if the president was in. He wasn’t, but his second in command was. It turned out they needed software developers too, and they soon became a client. I think it’s back to having a sharp edge to what you do and to continuing to look for opportunities along that line. Never give up, but make sure you know exactly what you’re looking for.

Does your company have a sales team? If yes, do you have any advice about how companies can create very high performing sales teams?

Yes, every company is in the business of sales whether they declare it or not. Sales is one of the most noble careers. When you’re in sales your customers have the sugar, and you want it. You need to be representing something of value and be able to articulate it into the customer’s frame of reference. It takes grit, resilience, and self-determination to be a successful salesperson. My advice to anyone with a sales team is: pay for performance, pay for the win, and pay your salespeople well. Your sales compensation should be directly related to results and it should be in the top quartile for your size company and industry.

Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “Five Strategies I Used to Grow My Business to Reach Seven Figures in Revenue?” Please share a story or an example for each.

1. Find and navigate your river of cash. Be specific about what you do and what you don’t do. Most of success is knowing when to say “no” and where to put your strongest efforts. We started with software developers on demand, and now are focused on all types of information professionals on demand. Being specific opens doors. If you had a spear in your chest you’d want a surgeon specialized in scarless removal of foreign objects from the thoracic area; you wouldn’t want a family doctor.

2. Join a business group to learn what you don’t know. Find a good one and pay for it. I was a member of TEC Canada for 28 years and my group chair, Doug Bouey, was instrumental in teaching me what I needed to know every time I had a crisis.

3. Take an accounting course — a good one — and learn the basics of how to read a balance sheet, income statement, and cash flows. It’s essential to know the basics of how cash flows through your business, to understand problems when they arise, and to stay in covenant with your bank. I took a three-day course at the University of British Columbia and got my head in the game, tuned up my balance sheet, and increased profit. I still have a CFO who knows 100 times more than me, however I know enough to keep the company running.

4. Design your business around the work, not around the people. Decide what you want your business to be and what roles and skills you need. The E-Myth by Gerber really lays it out well. Once you have the organizational structure laid out, then see if you do or don’t have the right people. If you do, and you can really objectively say that you do and move them into the seat. If you don’t, then be compassionate and give them a package and let them go find where they can add the most value. They’ll be happier and more successful and so will you.

5. Implement a few things at a time and implement them well. When companies try to do too many things, they all get stuck halfway completed. Priority rank your opportunities and problems all the time, and only work on a few. Don’t start a new project until one is completed. Have a huddle each week and make progress visible. You’ll get far more done and move your company forward by completing projects, not by having projects in progress. Every quarter we pick a few key projects and we huddle for 30 minutes each week to discuss our progress. Each person has a part. The reporting makes it happen. Completing each one allows us to look at new possibilities.

What would you advise to another business leader who initially went through years of successive growth, but has now reached a standstill? From your experience do you have any general advice about how to boost growth or sales and “restart the engines?”

Radical transparency here: maybe you’re not the right person to continue to lead your company. I always told my staff that the year we stall out is the year I realize the company has outgrown my capacity to be in front of it. Leadership has a limit. Most of us will reach our limits in our lifetimes. It’s not a bad thing. When you plateau, take the company to market, and sell it to someone who can continue your legacy. Cash out, grab the brass ring, and know you’ve done the right thing.

In your specific industry what methods have you found to be most effective in order to find and attract the right customers? Can you share any stories or examples?

Do a good job and when your customers move to a new company, they’ll take you with them. That’s it. Just do a very good job at what your specialty.

Based on your experience, can you share a few strategies to give your customers the best possible user experience and customer service?

Tell the truth, be professional, and take accountability. When you do a good job, do those three things. When you screw it up, do those three things. That’s it, period.

As you likely know, this HBR article demonstrates that retaining customers can be far more lucrative than finding new ones. Do you use any specific initiatives to limit customer attrition or customer churn? Can you share some of your advice from your experience about how to limit customer churn?

Have your sales team laser focused on one or a few clients each. It’s much easier to get more business from an existing customer than it is to get business from new customers. Tenure and loyalty are profitable.

Wonderful. We’re nearly done. Here are the final “meaty” questions of our discussion. You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I think it’s in my book, In Defence of Wealth. Successful entrepreneurs and CEOs are like sports stars. Not everyone can do the job, and not everyone can do the job at the highest levels. It takes time, practice, and discipline to be at the top of any game. People who create companies create wealth, and the vast majority goes to everyone else. Entrepreneurs and CEOs are the last in line at their own buffet. They only get to eat after everyone else has eaten. These are elite, difficult jobs and they require some talent and a lot of work. I think we should celebrate the wealth creators among us, and not deride, denounce, or penalize them. We’ll all be better for it.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you’d love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

Michael Bloomberg, without a doubt. He started his company by visiting new customers with a tea and a coffee so that he always had something to give his client. It took guts to become the mayor of New York and put his life and family into a fishbowl. He was a great mayor. I respect his grit, education, drive, and legacy.

Thank you so much for this. This was very inspirational, and we wish you only continued success!