Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Welcome to Beyond Titles, where we go beyond the Surface to discover the real stories behind the roles in each episode, we invite fascinating guests to share their journeys, expertise and the purpose that fuels their work.
Whether you're looking for inspiration or insight Beyond Titles offers a fresh perspective on the people who make a difference in their fields, tune in and join us as we explore the human side of every profession.
All right, Andrew, so great to have you on Beyond Titles today.
Thank you for taking the time to join me.
I'm very excited to hear all about how you move through the world.
I got a little insight into that in our pre-call and really excited to share that with
everyone else.
And just for the listeners, Andrew immediately identified the background of my office,
which is also my home.
um
building that he has been in.
So we already have something in common and excited to see what we continue to evolve from
here.
So Andrew, I'm rather than asking, you know, what do you do?
What's your role?
What's your journey?
I'm going to start by asking you to give us three fun facts about yourself.
And then uh and then we'll dive into a little bit more about your leadership journey, if
that's all right.
Three fun facts.
Well, I'm guessing we're pulling at uncovering my my my psychopathic tendencies from uh
from before the call.
So I think fun fun fact number one is that uh I lack the ability to cry and often laugh in
situations where I should be crying.
So that is I don't know if that's a but it's a fun fact that when I get uncomfortable, I
laugh.
So apologies if things get uncomfortable here.
I might laugh more than usual.
I think fun fact number two is I've lived a whole bunch of different places.
I love to travel.
I've had the good fortune of living in a whole bunch of different places all over the
world.
My kids at age three and four have been to over 10 countries which is pretty cool.
And um
Yeah, I guess fun fact, I have two kids, a little girl age four and a little boy age
three.
Four and three.
So they're at the ages where they're starting, they have their personalities, but now
they're starting to really take the world in, right?
What'd you say?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Oh, good.
Strong opinions.
they like, dad, here's the way it is, or are they more inquisitive?
Mostly inquisitive, unless it's my daughter around clothes or my son around candy, in
which case there is definitive procedure for how we get candy or like a sure thing, a
guaranteed opinion on what we should wear today.
Even regardless of the weather, that's what we wear.
Okay, I mean that's a skill that I wish I possessed personally.
uh My biggest struggle every day is what should I wear?
So I might have to hire your daughter at some point just to help me with that.
You know, she's actually pretty good at picking her own clothes.
You know, some kids, get the Joey from Friends where they're, you know, like wearing all
the Chandler's clothes and you show up to school and like there's that kid that's wearing
all of their clothes.
She's got style.
Sometimes she misses the the weather mark, you know, like the middle of the winter, she's
got like a sundress on and you know, you kind of have to send her to school with layers or
like...
do some modifications to her outfit just to make it winter appropriate.
yeah, generally pretty good.
I mean, I would say that she's just kind of Canadian.
You can never get the weather right.
So yeah, she's just patriotic Canadian.
She knows that you can never be certain, so may as well just wear what makes you feel
good.
Canadian girls don't get cold.
That's the, you know, that's what it is.
the new slogan.
Amazing.
So that's a little bit about you just holistically.
Thank you for sharing those fun facts.
And talk to me about how those specifically, you know, living in so many different places
led you to to start certain and where you are now and and how those contributed to your
role.
Yeah, that's, I mean, that's an awesome question.
So maybe not super well known, but the idea of certain actually came from a few different
places in my life.
The most important part was I had actually moved to New York from Toronto for work.
So trying to set up one of my former companies in the States.
And I've had the good fortune of starting businesses in the past, having good credit,
finding a place to live had never been a problem, getting a credit card or access to any
opportunity that required some sort of good financial standing had never been an issue.
And so I moved to New York and I go to get an apartment and they're like...
you have no credit, we don't know your employer, we don't like we know nothing about you.
No, you can't get this apartment.
Fortunately, some guy from the Midwest sublet me his apartment in an awesome location.
It was absurdly expensive for 350 square feet.
But let me tell you, I would have been I probably would have had to turn back to Canada
because
Staying in, I mean Airbnb was new at the time, but like staying in hotels was just, in New
York was just not feasible.
So I did get a place to live, but I've lived in a whole bunch of different places and
that's always been the case.
It's hard to find a place to live.
It's hard to find a job.
You know, there's all of these trust issues with you being from somewhere else.
Now I'm a cisgender straight white guy who was living in Toronto and moving to New York,
literally the largest migratory route
in North America, like Toronto, New York is like, you know, more people move from Toronto,
New York, New York to Toronto than Vancouver to Toronto.
You know, like it's like a rite of passage to do time in New York or do time in Toronto.
this should have been easy.
um And this has happened a bunch of times in my life.
And I thought, you know, it would be awesome if there was a way for...
businesses, know, landlords, employers, lenders, whoever, to get access about people, to
information about people to build trust in their home countries.
Or for that person to be able to show up with their credentials.
So look, here's my proof of income directly from the source.
Here's my proof of employment.
Here are my past tenant references.
Here's everything about me that says that I'm a great tenant.
I mean, you for me, I'm just coming from, I'm coming from not far away.
Imagine I came from like any other part of the world.
It would be impossible for me to get a place to live in a competitive rental market.
Even if I had a great job, you know, my employer might have to rent the place for me and
that doesn't feel.
That doesn't always feel good.
So that trust issue was a thing that we were trying to solve from the very beginning.
We used to call it NFTs for degrees, but it was 2016 and NFTs weren't a thing yet.
So, bit early, bit early.
uh
So close.
I love that.
And I love that you really lean into the word trust.
And I think that's something that, I mean, that is the crux of everything.
It's not just the credentials, but there's trust on both sides.
The landlords feel they can trust, but there's also trust going back the other way.
So you feel like you're secure in anybody that's looking for sound credentials.
They're clearly doing it because they're hopefully trustworthy as well.
So does it bridge that gap looking both ways?
Totally.
I mean, really, I wanted to and I still want to.
The end goal is to model it sort of like Visa and MasterCard.
know, when you show up to a store and you know that they accept Visa and MasterCard, you
know that some vetting has been done on that merchant to make sure that they belong in the
network.
that's where I wanted to get to, that's where I want to get to with trust.
You can request those credentials for trust or as an individual, you should be able to
hand them over your credit card em and say, know.
I'm the right person for this job.
I'm the right person for this apartment.
I'm the right person for this loan.
I'm the right person for this opportunity.
You know, I'm the right person to be able to immigrate to your country.
I mean, you think about how long it takes for nurses and doctors and all of these
essential workers that we need.
in Canada or all over North America how long it takes for us to like verify their
education, to verify their employment, to verify you know their criminal status like all
this stuff is instant like it is it's it's it all just gets lost in this translation layer
that today is you know humans and manual process and
bureaucracy.
reality is it's like, yeah, you don't need that.
And so that's the problem that we've been trying to solve for all of the last, whatever,
eight years.
Yeah, my gosh.
how many, so how many countries are you in right now?
How far is your is your reach?
We have people physically in 13 countries, em but we do background checks in every country
except for North Korea and sometimes Russia.
I mean, for, yeah, very good reason.
I understand why.
ah Just probably hard to get some information.
yeah, mean, the good news, bad news is we're background checking more North Koreans than
we ever have before, but usually they're not posing as North Koreans.
uh So, you know, it's kind of funny because yeah, we're background checking a lot of North
Koreans for employment fraud, believe it or not, it's like rampant right now.
Wow.
But yeah, so we we can't tell you if they're a criminal in North Korea, but we can tell
you if they're North Korean and they're applying for a job.
They're either a criminal by our standards or um by North Korean standards.
um So that's fun.
that's really interesting.
Big influx there.
What drove that?
Fascinating.
remote work.
And so, okay, yes, I mean, that makes sense too, right?
Just applying for a job, you obviously want that credibility.
uh And so have you seen that, I'm sure you saw that explode with remote work happening
where now you needed to expand to every country because employers have employees in every
pocket of the world.
Yeah, I mean, it was a huge growth driver for our business, especially in the beginning.
It was like, okay, you can screen people everywhere.
I need to hire people wherever the best people are.
We're remote.
So I don't care if they're in Indiana or India or, um, or, or England, you know, like it,
it doesn't matter.
I just want to hire the best people so that
I mean, that gave rise to great opportunity, but it also meant that you needed to do
something that wasn't having someone physically sitting in your office to determine if
they were trustworthy or not, if they were who they say they are.
You know, that's a, that's a big one.
And then, then there's kind of the evolution, you know, first it was like, how do we
onboard these people?
And then now it's like, how do we make sure the person doing the work is actually the
person that we hired?
um
So it's, I mean, it's created rise for people to have multiple jobs, to, you know,
outsource their day-to-day work.
It's also been the rise of the software developer, you know, like where AI is taking that
now, who knows?
But like, you know, this is like the pandemic years were literally, you know, was boom
time for software developers.
So you could have people making huge amounts of money outsourcing their jobs to...
people in other countries at lower cost who might be just as skilled.
But there's a bunch of that.
And then it also gave rise to fraud.
If you're a bad actor working for an organization that wants access to information, wants
access to systems, you've got to...
You've got a large number of skilled people in certain countries, you know, like North
Korea, where they can pass the code test, they can pass all that sort of stuff.
The only thing that they need to get by is identity.
And now it's easier than ever to create a fake identity.
And then you have this developer now who's a very talented developer for the first few
weeks, for a few months, they start getting access to more and more information.
And before you know it, your honeypot is gone.
yeah, honestly, I mean, I wish that I knew about this.
Let's call it 10 years ago.
I was a victim of fraud moving to a new place.
I don't think I've ever told anybody this before.
You're the first person.
Well, and everybody else listening.
But yeah, I submitted an application and had friends that were in San Diego, asked them to
go check the buildings there.
Yep.
This is is the right place.
and I showed up with my bags and I didn't have a place to live.
And luckily I hadn't paid that much, but had I had something like certain, would have had
that, you know, the trust to show up because I blindly gave trust to somebody.
And that was, I think that was at the start of when all of that, all of the accommodation
fraud was starting.
I was one of the, I guess you can call me an early adopter of the fraud, which was not
great.
accommodation fraud is wild because not only have you paid money, often they'll ask you
for the information to complete a background check.
which is a ton of PII that then they can go to get loans and credit cards and create
identities and all this kind of stuff.
like all of a sudden, you know, because you're not just giving up in a lot of cases.
If a landlord asks you for your social insurance number, your social security number, your
ah
you know, usually five years of past address history, uh know, copies of your driver's
license or passport, you know, proof of residency, ability to work, like there's all of
this stuff that they're getting.
And then, you know, they have your consent to run a credit report, which gives all, know,
all of your credit.
you know, not only have you lost your deposit or whatever, but you could also have lost
your identity, which is, you know, where this like network side comes in.
And it's funny because people are always like, oh, you know, like it's, you know, it's,
unfair that landlords get to screen tenants at the same time, like.
by virtue of being able to screen tenants, know, with, with, you know, the credit bureaus
or through certain or whatever, like that, that landlord has been vetted.
And so like, there is kind of two sides to that trust equation is like, if the landlord's
not doing the verification, could be challenging.
m
and if they're not doing it through a reputable organization.
Because most of the time, I I think I probably have a bunch of old rental forms, but you
fill out this piece of paper and that's all your personal information on that piece of
paper.
Especially right now, I could do a lot of damage to your life with that information.
um
Yeah.
And I mean, luckily, I didn't have to provide my sin number or anything.
It was a short term rental.
So knock on wood.
Otherwise.
Yeah, it was short term didn't have a background check.
It was kind of like, you maybe there were some red flags that I was I was young and naive,
I should have paid more attention.
However, had I had a mechanism to be able to do that, because if you don't know, right,
it's it's really hard to navigate those things.
So
especially a lot of people coming to a new country, they might not know what the processes
are.
Yeah, yeah, and if you don't have the means, that, you you can imagine, like, you you were
coming over from a developing country to do some really important job, you know, and you
show up and you don't have an apartment.
I mean, that's...
Yeah, yeah, that's pretty disastrous.
So I think you're doing the good work out there.
I do, as, again, an early adopter of scams, think uh if we can, if you can circumvent any
of that and save somebody that hassle, and honestly, just the embarrassment of standing
out on the street with your bags and nowhere to go, uh then you're really helping a lot of
people.
two sides of the equation.
mean, on both sides you can get screwed and it's really important to have both sides feel
comfortable with a transaction.
mean, that's the whole purpose of trust.
If trust was guaranteed, the economy would move exponentially faster.
An opportunity would be...
ah
You know, it would it would be a right and not a privilege um Especially for for people
that are great because my challenge in my career is what I've seen is like there are
people that get access to opportunities that don't deserve the access to those
opportunities because You know, they're outspoken their heritage.
They're you know where they come from whatever that That to me is is another problem that
we can solve is like put people on equal playing field like
look at my history up front, look at what I've done.
I'm actually the better tenant, I'm actually the better employee, I'm actually credit
worthy for this opportunity or to go on this date.
I'm the, know.
I'm the better, I mean, it is kind of like dating when you think about it.
Some of these relationships are, you think of banking relationships, like when's the last
time you changed banks.
There's definitely a dating element.
to this stuff that it kind of applies in dating too.
uh mean, we were talking before the show about the guy who found out that he had kids with
his sister by accident.
mean, how good would it have been to have a, I mean, we don't do like DNA testing or
anything like that, so that probably wouldn't have worked.
But like, but just in the concept of trust, it's like, wouldn't it be nice to know?
some of these things.
in a world where everything is perfect, that's great, but how do you navigate this stuff
quickly when the world isn't perfect and not everybody is great?
And not everybody's so transparent.
yeah, I mean, good to hear you also don't do DNA testing.
But I think in this guy's case, it would have been worthwhile for him to know a couple of
years sooner that his wife was his sister.
But that's neither here nor there.
uh Just unfortunate, unfortunate news for him.
And it really brings about a moral dilemma.
But switching, so thinking about trust, and I want to
kind of dial in and look at the other side of the coin because one of the things that I
love about business owners who have, who are solving a problem is what does that look like
internally?
Because you're talking about trust externally and how you're creating trust for others.
uh And I always find that when you think about a business internally, people can say like
integrity is one of our values.
And I always ask, why is it a value?
Shouldn't businesses operate with integrity anyways?
ah However, that's
sometimes goes over people's heads.
So coming back to the idea of trust, I'd like to know how do you develop trust within your
team and what does that look like?
Because you're the biggest advocate for it.
So what's your internal, the internal makings of your team?
How do you foster that?
So I want to say that certain hasn't nailed it internally and I don't know that many
companies right now have nailed it internally.
So from like an expert perspective, I think I'm a much better expert externally than I
probably am internally.
And I think for most leaders right now,
I mean, if they're not feeling the same way, they should write a book and I will be the
first to buy it.
Or you should get them on this podcast.
Because, I mean, the world is just changing so much.
And so quickly that it's never been more important to have trust within that team.
And the way that you build trust has changed so much over the last few years that
there are now internal and external pressures that can cause mistrust, that can cause
misalignment.
So for me, the big thing that I try and focus on is communication.
And honestly, we kind of lacked some of that in the last few years internally.
which is as we grew, know, when the pandemic happened, was 19 of us.
And then, you know, fast forward, there's like, you know, four or 500 of us across 13
countries speaking 23 languages.
It's like, you know, it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's been, it's been hard and you kind of
forget that not everybody knows what's going on all the time.
And then there's this process of trying to grow up where you're like,
By growing up, means that I communicate less and I'm not intentionally not as transparent,
but there's stuff that's like need to know only.
where I've kind of been going for the last six months or so is just complete openness.
know, like how do you talk about the things that are happening in the business in a way
that everybody understands, in a way that everybody knows the important things that are
going on, that people aren't afraid to ask the hard questions and for you to be honest
about it.
So every week we have this thing called Channel 6 News.
um Channel 5 was Anchorman, Channel 6 is certain.
um
And so we host a new show every week.
It's 15 minutes.
And then 15 minutes afterwards, I just hang out and chat with people who want to talk.
And every week, someone asks a hard question.
And it's important that no matter how hard the answer is or no matter how much the answer
could have negative impacts to some people.
It's like you just, have to answer honestly.
um Because most of the time it's the perception of this negative impact and that people
don't understand.
like at the end of the day, most of it is...
Reasonable people make reasonable decisions.
I like to think I'm a reasonable person.
So like, if there's something challenging, it's actually better to talk about it and, you
know, have that rationale.
So I think that's the biggest thing for me is to build trust, is not to be in an ivory
tower, but to be there every day, telling people like exactly what I'm thinking and
feeling and how things are going.
And I mean, we saw that also in the way you operate at the beginning of this episode where
you mentioned that, or maybe this was in our, our talk initially where you, you laugh in
uncomfortable situations.
So you had said to me that you, you preface any hard conversation with, I just want to
give you a heads up.
I will laugh and for people to not take it personally, because imagine you're sitting
there in a very difficult conversation.
and you're just giggling like a school girl and they're thinking like, what the hell's
going on here?
Right?
Even...
It is true.
It's something that, I've tried holding it back.
You know, I've tried to keep it in in the past, but then it just looks like I'm about to
cry or explode or, you know, my face gets all red or whatever.
And it's like, I'm now just like, hey, look.
If things get really uncomfortable or like, I'm starting to get out of my comfort zone, I
might seem joyous, but like, it's not any, I don't mean any disrespect.
It's just like, that's how my body reacts.
know, like whether it's a funeral or a hard conversation, you know, a termination.
um
Or a promotion, like, because joyous times I also laugh a lot and not so joyous times I
also laugh a lot.
So it's like, I kind of have like two speeds.
It's like, well, I pretty much have two speeds in life.
All in or asleep, like, like I'm, I am on or off.
There is no, you know, slow mode.
It's just, it's just, I am, I am now asleep or, or.
laughing or not laughing, you know, like that's like and laughing is like there's there's
kind of steady state and then laughing is at the top or bottom so It's it's it's
kryptonite or superpower depending on who you talk to
Well, I mean, from my perspective, I would think how refreshing is it that you you front
load that conversation?
I'm sure it lightens things a little bit.
But also, I think one of the things that people get really hung up on when they go to have
a hard conversation is how will this person react?
It's the what if on the other side of the conversations, it's not necessarily what I'm
going to say, but it's, you know, if I say this, what will Andrew's reaction be?
They already know it's laughter.
Well, then
at least that's something that they can predict.
And then it's the follow-up question.
is Andy gonna react at this funeral?
He's gonna be trying not to laugh in the back.
What is his speech gonna look like at this memorial?
It's gonna have jokes in it.
It can't not have jokes in it because if it doesn't, it looks really bad.
It's a really bad look.
yeah, no, that that one's not so cute.
Time and place, of course, you know, and if you work in jokes.
Yeah.
Yes, of course.
And laughing with.
Yes.
So you've learned how to leverage this to make it a superpower.
Yeah.
It's, yeah, yeah, I would say that I fumble often.
I would say that I'm good 59 % of the time.
And then the other times I need to revert to not saying anything.
And that works.
That's my 41 there.
know thyself, one of the great strengths of leadership as well.
Know thyself.
So we covered trust, we covered the external and internal of how certain develops trust
and how you develop trust within your team.
And I also just want to highlight something you said, where you were like, I don't think
we've got it all figured out.
And to me, that is the making of a great leader as well, not to...
muddle through it, not to fake a smile and say, everything's great.
We do it so well here, come work with us.
But if you don't have it all figured out, your team helps you on Channel 6 News.
And I think that's really, really great, especially since you've grown exponentially.
It's, I mean, that's the thing is I have a hard time in hierarchical organizations um
because I've never been in one.
I've been an entrepreneur pretty much my entire career.
I've only ever started my own business or been in a startup, like the...
I think largest company I've ever worked directly for, I've consulted for and contracted
for much larger companies, directly for is like, I mean, outside of being a snowboard
instructor, um was 10, 12 people um that I didn't start or wasn't a founder of.
ah
So I'm not used to playing corporate.
We tried for a little while to be really corporate and it just uh didn't work.
That wasn't for me because it's just, it's not how I've ever operated.
I'm used to sports teams.
I'm used to being nimble and open and you don't keep something from your teammate, um
especially if it could help them, even if you think it might hurt them.
You have to give that feedback because you want the team to win.
and if everybody feels like they're on a team, then that's really important.
So I don't want my Sertonians to feel like I'm not approachable and that I'm in a
different league than they are because I was in their shoes um not that long ago.
There's no course to become a CEO.
You don't go to school for four years, come out and be like, I'm CEO.
That's my job title now.
And I think, I mean, they're hired guns, but you get there from working your way up.
So I think it's really important that you're able to have those conversations and you
learn.
so much from those people and you also identify people that like will be the next the
future CEOs.
Yes.
Yeah.
which is also cool because then you can invest in them and you can, you know, both
financially and also, you know, in career development.
So you can be a part of what they're doing.
And that's what I love about startups and growth.
And, you know, it's like, yeah, there's people that stay here for a really long time and I
love it.
And then there's people that go and start something cool.
And I'm like, yes, like I can be part of that journey too.
yeah, exactly.
Oh, so refreshing to hear this conversation and to know that people like you exist, where
it's kind of a one team mentality, everybody's working together, and you're not afraid to
get your hands dirty to get scrappy.
And you I truly believe to put a nice bow on the idea of trust that that is exactly how
you build trust that corporate staunchy, you know, it's this, but it's inauthentic.
that does not bring about any kind of trust that makes people wary of you.
There's uncertainty, ton of morale issues, but when you can be authentic, when you can get
your, know, get on there and chat with your team, hear what they're struggling with, that
develops trust.
So I would say, although you already said you're not nailing it totally, I'd say from an
outside perspective, you're doing all the right things.
So thank you, thank you.
I just had to figure out how to get one-on-one time with every single person at certain um
and not, you know, not burn out myself.
Yes.
Well, that's also remembering when you grow up how what your first team is, as Paul Lewis
on one of our previous episodes had said, your first team looks a little different.
And then you have people who are an extension of you that do get FaceTime with everyone.
And ah eventually it does happen.
But, you know, there's if you can do one to many in your position right now, that's also,
I think, very impactful, a lot more than most are doing out there right now.
Well, I think the one to many is important and I think it's important to know your people.
And also, I'm a social creature, so it's hard not to want to talk to everybody.
No, no.
at all.
Well, Andy, I will say that we've got a lot of information, a lot of giggles in this
episode.
And I would love to just if you could leave anybody with one final thought on whether
that's entrepreneurship, leadership, your journey, don't marry your sister, whatever that
looks like, what is the one piece of advice you would leave our listeners with?
I would say stay true to yourself.
If you're somebody else outside of work than you are at work, your life is going to be
hard.
If you try and be something you're not, it's going to make your life harder.
Last year was really tough for me because I felt like in 2024 I tried to be someone that
I'm not.
And that was, you know, my New Year's resolution, if you will, was to get back to being me
and to stop trying to be just to stop trying to be a corporate CEO um and to just do the
right thing.
know, trust, trust your gut.
Because most of the time that's right.
And that little thing in the back of your mind that's saying
you shouldn't do this because you might hurt someone's feelings or what are they going to
think?
You got to, uh in the movie, Luca, you say, silencio Bruno.
Sorry, going back to the four-year-old references, sometimes you got to give it a silencio
Bruno and then you're like.
You can move forward because that's the best thing.
mean, at certain, we made some really big changes at the beginning of this year that were
really hard.
It meant some great people left the business, em but we needed to be culturally in a place
that aligned with me and with how I want to operate and where I want the business to go.
And they were like the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life.
But from a culture perspective, we've done like a 180.
From an engagement perspective, engagement is way up.
I mean, we've delivered more across every part of the company in the first quarter of this
year than we did all last year, which is wild.
So, Silencio Bruno, long story short, Silencio Bruno, follow your heart, know, go all in
and the outcome will be awesome.
I can guarantee it.
Amazing, thank you.
That is a mic drop, a mic drop moment to leave us and you know to show us out.
I'd love if you could just share where people can find you so that they can follow more of
your your whether it's Pixar tips or you know grown up tips.
Both are applicable.
I think they rock.
So where can people get more of that?
So you can get more of that.
I'm on LinkedIn at Andrew McLeod III um or you can find all my contact information on the
certain website.
So um thanks for having me, Kendra.
This is great.
Thank you so much.
hopefully this is not the last time.
I would love to continue this and see what else we can uncover in our conversations.
Sign me up.
All right, and I have.