29. Lori Weir: Scaling for Success in FinTech
EPISODE 29
Lori shares her experiences scaling a tech company, the importance of securing funding, and the challenges of constant innovation. Despite being based in New Brunswick, away from major financial hubs, Four Eyes has successfully attracted talent and contributed to the local innovation economy. Lori emphasizes the value of aligning skills with vision and making informed decisions to scale effectively.
Catch the Conversation
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Lori Weir is the co-founder & CEO of Four Eyes Financial.
Lori is a people and business builder. In her 30 years of entrepreneurship, she co-founded and was the managing partner of two successful consulting firms; helping some of Canada’s most profitable companies, including JD Irving and Scotia Wealth, align processes and employee behaviours to drive positive client experiences. Lori’s background in strategy development and execution governance led Four Eyes Financial, a company she co-founded in 2015, to earn both the 2023 RegTech Company of the Year & Best Wealth Management Regulatory Solution (Canadian Regulatory Technology Assoc). Lori is the past chair of ALS Canada and Marathon by the Sea, her volunteer efforts have taken her abroad including work in Economic Development in Latin America.
You can connect with Lori through LinkedIn and learn more about Four Eyes Financial on their website.
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Julie and Lori discuss…
(00:00:04) Women Entrepreneurs Scaling Businesses
(00:14:12) Building a Business Outside Financial Centers
(00:24:30) Navigating Challenges in Entering US Market
(00:28:07) Journey to Scaling Business Success
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Julie : 0:04
Welcome to Figure Eight, where we feature inspiring stories of women entrepreneurs who have grown their businesses to seven and eight figures revenue. If you're in the mix of growing a bigger business, these stories are for you. Join us as we explore where the tough spots are, how to overcome them and how to prepare yourself for the next portion of the climb. I'm your host, Julie Ellis. I'm an author, entrepreneur and a growth and leadership coach who co-founded, grew and exited an eight-figure business. This led me to exploring why some women achieve great things, and that led to my book Big, Gorgeous Goals. Let's explore the systems, processes and people that help us grow our businesses to new heights. If you're interested in growing your business, this podcast will help. Now let's get going. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Figure Eight podcast.
Julie : 1:08
Today, I am joined by Lori Weir, who's the co-founder and CEO at Four Eyes Financial. Lori is a people and a business builder and a serial entrepreneur who is now working in the fintech space and building her company there. I'm very excited to have her with me today and I say welcome to you. Thanks for joining me, Lori.
Lori: 1:33
Thank you so much for inviting me, julie. I'm really happy to be here.
Julie : 1:38
I'm so excited to have our conversation because I love talking to a diverse group of women entrepreneurs and all the reasons that we start businesses, because we see needs in the world and I'm interested for you to share a little bit about what your entrepreneurial journey has looked like.
Lori: 1:58
Yeah, I'm happy to share, share. So I've been an entrepreneur since 1996, which is likely a year in which some of your listeners have yet to be born.
Lori: 2:14
So but what's interesting about being an entrepreneur is you know once once you are one you kind of are always one and but my my journey has been really interesting in that you made the point entrepreneurs really want to. They see a need in the world and they want to, you know, to meet it head on. And my first business was actually an adventure-based learning company that I started in Atlantic Canada and that came from a consulting project that I had working with the province of New Brunswick to help them identify if there was a market opportunity in incentive travel, and so you're likely aware of, you know, sales organizations incentivizing their teams and people to achieve targets by sending them off to places like Vienna or Australia or some really sexy places around the world Las Vegas or whatever it might be but destinations all over the world. They categorize different types of clients that they try to attract to their destination. Part of that is meeting and incentive travel, and so that was a project that I had, and during that research, of course, there aren't you know, sort of world renown. You know we don't have like anything akin to the Eiffel Tower or you know the experience of West End London. However, what we do have in New Brunswick is a lot of nature, a lot of adventure and a lot of opportunity for quiet reflection. And when I was doing my research to see what kind of product was available in New Brunswick we do have some very high-end properties here and I thought to myself, well, what kind of people actually win these types of incentive travel programs? And in my research I discovered that the same people tend to win again and again and again, regardless of what the prize is. So the destination wasn't really the pull, it was really coming from within the individual who, you know, wants to win. So these are, you know so, serial winners.
Lori: 4:28
And I thought, you know, I thought people like that would really like an opportunity to have further development, and I set about actually putting together some programs that would be encompassing motivational experiences, time for reflection, um, motivational experiences, time for reflection, um, experiencing some of the natural beauty of the province through kayaking, uh, being in the woods, doing high ropes, experiences, things like that. And I worked with an individual to build out these programs and I presented it to the province and I thought it was such a fantastic idea and they were like I don't think so, and so, uh, I really was sold on it and I said, well, we need something like this. In don't think so, and so I really was sold on it and I said, well, we need something like this in the province. And so the person I partnered with to develop the programs we started a company and so through that work evolved throughout the years different types of consulting into organizations around organizational design, creating operational efficiencies. So, beyond the individual, what can the organization do to help create, you know, the opportunity for people to win in their work, and that included everything from leadership development to, sales training , to Lean Six Sigma and operational efficiency types of programming.
Lori: 5:52
And one of my clients happened to be in wealth management and I had a number of firms that I worked with in wealth management in the GTA. I had clients in Atlantic Canada like JD Irving. But through my work with wealth management, I saw a real opportunity to create some operational efficiencies in the back office.
Lori: 6:14
You know, basically, as investors, and if you have a financial advisor or somebody who's giving you advice about your investments, you want to know, you know kind of bottom line am I invested in the right products, products that meet my risk tolerance, that are going to help me achieve my goals, and the rest of it is kind of noise to most people.
Lori: 6:35
What I found in the background is how difficult it was for organizations to present that simple message back to clients because of risk rating of products and the complexity of that and that changes every day creating a risk profile around the product and creating a risk profile around the individual so the individual investor, which also changes because we start new jobs, we lose jobs, we get married, we have children and all these things that change our risk profile as a person and I saw an opportunity to create some efficiencies around being able to bring that data together to present back to clients in an efficient way. That didn't take, you know, like six weeks, but you could do in six hours. And that was kind of the genesis of starting Four Eyes Financial, which we did in 2015. I did with my partner in life, who's also my co -founder and is also an entrepreneur and he had had previous technology companies, and so we set about to build this experience and solve that problem for investors.
Julie : 7:40
Well, and I think it's interesting because, you know, when I started a direct-to-consumer e-commerce business, we did not have a technical co-founder, and it was something that we always kind of said you know, in the perfect world, if we did it again, we would have wanted somebody. So it does seem like you had these insights from the consulting piece you were doing and then you had a co-founder who could bring the technical piece and kind of bring that together, which seems like a really good it is.
Lori: 8:07
It's great and some people say I don't think I could ever work with my partner. It's a 24 seven commitment. But I think one of the reasons it really works for us is for the very fact that you know we started the business in our forties, so we know ourselves pretty well and we're very different people and we bring different strengths to the table and we are both so committed to the same vision and goal that you know the differences in our approach, which are very different in how we do things. We can easily I would say easily, most times easily. Sometimes it's a struggle work through those things to move the company forward, but having that technical expertise is critical.
Lori: 8:51
I really don't know how people do it without, because it's a bit of a black box in some cases, like in and around. That for our business has been a strong mandate for me as the CEO to make sure that we can actually see into the black box and see how things are moving. But yeah, it definitely has been great, I think, for our young management team as well, to have leadership that is product focused, technically inclined, innovation focused, and also, I'd say what I bring to the table is a revenue generation focus organizational structure design, creating scalable processes, you know, making sure that the company's financed to go to that next level of growth, and so both of those things are critical to running a successful company, and you know that complementary nature of our skill sets seem to work out really well.
Julie : 9:56
Oh, that's good. Well, and the scaling of a technology company is not the same as what it would take to scale up more a consulting side company where you're doing it with human capital. You know, in this way you you need to scale up by adding to the black box, really, and and enhancing what you the base level product and, you know, iterating on it and keeping up with the regulatory environment would also be very important in the financial services realm.
Lori: 10:24
All of those things a hundred percent. And one of the things I learned about running a technology company is that you're never done building. It's never done and and. And I think most people would think, well, yeah, there'd be enhancements, but I think the extent of work done on the product, enhancing the product and a great point that you just mentioned, which is the regulatory requirements, are also evolving and changing and you have to be ahead of that and work that into your solution. So, yes, it is very different than running a consulting company in that regard. And also, I think you mentioned just the financing of that. So if you're always building, you know that that requires money to you know to kind of flow into the business to enable that and and making sure that you've got the capital to do that.
Julie : 11:22
Yeah, and so that's where, then you know, fundraising comes into play and, like learning a skill set around you know, going out and I mean people talk about it being wildly distracting from actually the roadmap of product and the roadmap of how you're building the business when you're out and you're trying to raise rounds of capital and bring people on your board and the kinds of things that, yeah, absolutely.
Lori: 11:47
And you know, I think it's a really key part to any successful innovation company. Innovation is expensive, and so a core part of leadership's responsibility is to make sure that you're engaging externally with all kinds of different partners, including financial, potential financial partners, and it is a significant part of of the role. And yeah, and I, you know, did my own sort of how to capitalize a scaling tech company informal MBA this past 12 months as I thought about how do we do this. You know we are going to market in the US in 25. We've been in earnest contemplating this for a couple of years. We've done some market readiness work with consultants. We've, you know, kind of done some things that aren't capital intensive, but now we're ready to go and this was a critical piece to enable that. We're ready to go and this was a critical piece to enable that, and it was, you know, it was definitely extremely valuable.
Lori: 12:54
I learned a lot and, like most of us in life, things that we wish we'd known before. But you know what, today's a new day and start now, and I think there's a lot of really good resources out there too, but the thing is there's no one way to do it, and I think sometimes the world presents like there's a clear path on how to capitalize your business and bring money in. And it's either you're, you know you're going to self fund, you're going to bootstrap or you're going to do this sort of equity. You know seed series A, you know kind of roll up in that way and you know. And then there's companies that do a mix of many things. There's a lot of ways to approach it and you have to figure out your own business model, what you're trying to achieve, what makes sense for you know the mission that you're on, and but figuring out how the rest of the world thinks about it is really important so that you can make a choice.
Julie : 13:58
Yeah, yeah, and that yeah. How can you dilute as little as possible as you take in the early money that you need to get going, so that later you you have more control about what happens Exactly?
Lori: 14:11
That's it. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs and early date, you know they're so desperate to get people behind them to believe in what they're doing. They're willing to give up a lot in order to make that happen, and that's understandable. I wouldn't, you know, completely empathize with that, never judge that, and you know it's like anything in life. You know, looking backwards and saying what you would have done is, you know, that's just, that's not the way the world works, or how life works, and we have to make the choices that, with the information we have and are presented to us, not look back and just move forward and say, okay, this is where we are now and how can we, you know, get to the next step?
Julie : 14:56
It is one of those interesting things, though, where, considering how many people have done it and and how many people are currently figuring out how to do it, that you can't Google and get the answers. It's always surprising to me in entrepreneurship that you know there are there. Are you always feel like you don't know what you're doing.
Lori: 15:17
There's always an aspect there is, and one of the things I will say, though, is I find that there is more available.
Lori: 15:24
I think a lot of this information was kept close to people's chest, for I don't know whatever reason, but one of the things that I have noticed is there are people out there who are in the, you know, investing time to be thought leaders in this space, that have consulting practices that are really focused on helping firms capitalize ideas into significant size global businesses, and they're out there presenting a lot of information that I know.
Lori: 15:56
When I originally started the business in 2015, that information just wasn't available through a Google search, but on LinkedIn and in Google and other places. Now, I think, in the last couple of years, there is more information, and I think the key starting point is understanding what your business model is, because every business model has a different need in terms of capitalization and how that looks, how much you know you need to give up in order to gain what makes sense for you in terms of your long-term plan. You know, do you want to build out a geography and then sell into private equity? Do you want to grow the company globally? What are like? And you know it's easy to ask those kinds of questions, but in any given day you might have a different answer yourself, depending on how the day is going.
Julie : 16:45
It's true, it's so true. Well, and certainly I mean one of the interesting choices that you've made is to build your company outside of a big financial center. I mean, most people would think of a company like yours starting in the Toronto area and in Canada and growing in that kind of an environment. But you know, you were living in Atlantic Canada. That's where you've built your adult life and so you've really built a business there and attracted talent and done all the things to really bring people to you.
Lori: 17:19
Yeah, it's true New Brunswick is not the center of financial services in Canada, and that's certainly been brought to our attention more than once. But what's great about that is you can build a company anywhere, especially an innovation company, a software company, and we are able to attract incredible talent, people who have moved to New Brunswick to go to school here, who want to stay here, new Brunswickers born and bred. That's part of our mission at Four Eyes. When we started the company was to solve the problem that we mentioned earlier, also to provide interesting employment in technology leading edge technology to New Brunswickers and to help sort of strengthen that part of our economy. And originally, when we started the company with that mandate, I thought this is a New Brunswick or an Atlantic Canadian challenge. But what I've learned is this is really a Canadian problem to be solved.
Lori: 18:21
We have our main industries, which we're aware of that have been brought to light, especially in the conversation around tariffs that are happening now and automobiles, natural resources, lumber paper all these kinds of oil gas that we're known for, which are amazing industries. There is a need for Canada to continue to invest in and grow its innovation economy, and I'm a big proponent of that, not just in Atlantic Canada, but for the country, and I'm thrilled to say that, you know, of our 60 employees, all but three actually live and work in New Brunswick and we're able to hire really great talent because the people who come to join us want to be in a community. So they don't want to, you know, live in New Brunswick and work for a company in Silicon Valley or someplace else around the world. They want that touch point. So we have an in-office culture.
Lori: 19:20
I'm at my office today. Yesterday we have an office in St John and one in Moncton, new Br, brunswick. I was at our Moncton office. You know we had about 12 people together put the Christmas tree up and had a moment, you know, together decorating the tree, having some hot chocolate and these, you know, kind of connecting points are really important to the kind of people who choose to work at Four Eyes and I think it really helps us with retention and you know we're introducing people not only to interesting our technology is built on AWS, but also to financial services as a sector which they would not be exposed to otherwise. Here, and I think you know we're in wealth tech, which is a subset of FinTech, and that is a sector that will continue to grow, and so the folks that are joining us fresh out of school and who are learning. It's great for their career trajectory wherever they choose to go right.
Julie : 20:20
Well, and I mean interesting because it makes me think of that sort of wealth transfer stat that's out there which I think, for Canada alone, is in the trillions over the coming sort of decade. And so I think you know people are interested in wealth tech because they want to protect their assets and protect the money as it moves in between generations.
Lori: 20:42
Yes, absolutely. And I think just even understanding what you know investing is and what it means and the core pillars of life are health and wealth for a successful life, and being part of understanding what does a healthy, you know sort of investment strategy look like and understanding that from a deep knowledge perspective, but also literally seeing how the sausage is made by being involved in our business, I think is is incredibly enlightening to people and, just as individual employees, helps them make really good choices at a young age around it and, to your point, around you know sort of wealth transition. It also helps them with members of their family as they think about what does good look like and none of us really know what wealth management is going to look like 20 years from now. But people are always going to want personalized advice from someone they trust and at this stage, you know a lot of people of people say, well, is ai going to kind of replace the traditional advisory model? You know, personally I don't see that.
Lori: 21:53
Um, there are self-directed opportunities and passive investing available for people currently. Yet people still are looking for someone to um to guide them, give them confidence in their choices, stay invested when things are troubled in the world those kinds of things that are really important, and also to understand. Ai is great and we use it in our platform and machine learning. We are focused on using it to its fullest ability in a very structured, thoughtful way, but we are providing, you know, solutions that help the industry perform. It's always going to rely on judgment and until AI has demonstrated good judgment, I think we're you know. I think things will move quickly, but at the same time, that trust and personal touch will. I don't think that will ever go away.
Julie : 22:53
Yeah, yeah, as it evolves.
Lori: 22:55
there's still a role for for relationship in this process, but we can definitely take the cost out of it, like the, the busy work right, all the stuff that people are doing behind the scenes so that they can actually give really good advice. Yeah.
Julie : 23:09
Right and actually do what people want to pay them for. Exactly, and that is really the at the core of it. So when you imagine starting this business, I'm sure that things looked a little different than they look today in terms of what you thought the product would be like. And you know, I think, that the need you're trying to meet is probably not changed, but how you're meeting it is changed, and I'm curious about what that journey has been like.
Lori: 23:38
Yeah. So you know when the rubber hits the road is when we really learn and get in market and also understanding what isn't in market Right. So, especially, I think, for people who are providing B2B technology solutions, you know we talked about understanding what, how to really go about capitalizing your business in the best way possible for you there was very little information. I think the same holds true for really getting a good lay of the land from a competitive analysis perspective on B2B software that's in the back end. You know that is challenging and you get to learn that by being in market. And then you also understand where there's clear opportunities that you may not have recognized, and I found that certainly the case for Four Eyes.
Lori: 24:30
So in our solution, you know we had, we ended up building out what we now call it. You know, simplifying compliance from a front end, know your client am I invested in a suitable product perspective, but we also provide which wasn't part of our original product iteration a post trade surveillance, monitoring and desktop for compliance officers so that they know that they're meeting the regulatory requirements presented in Canada by CERO used to be known as IROC and also that they're meeting the suitability requirements of the individual clients and their companies' policies and procedures, and so our platform enables the data to flow through the front and experience with the client to the back end around post-trade surveillance, and that is unique in in the marketplace interesting, so I would think that makes you desirable.
Julie : 25:33
But of cracking into selling to in a highly regulated industry as a new player is always a challenge in terms of like how you build that right and that comes over time as you add clients and they have good experience and they go through audits and they're successful.
Lori: 25:59
Those things all help to build credibility in the market and you know, you always need your first person to raise their hand and say they're willing. And we were very fortunate to have our first client who continues to be a client today who was willing to raise their hand, and I think any entrepreneur will tell you, getting that first customer is is tough and it's exhilarating. Um, and it's a critical. You know that's the first step to the rest of the journey and um, uh, for us now going into the US, that's, you know, that's what we also have to achieve now. We have a proven product in another market, but we all like to think we're very different and in fact, there are differences from geography to geography. So we have to go through that same proofing path with our US growth as well and find someone willing to raise their hand and say I'm going to take a chance on these guys.
Julie : 26:51
Yes, and you had mentioned to me before that you know, 2025 is your year for learning about the US market and about how you want to play in it and what your role is there, and my reaction is I think that's a great way of looking at it, because it can be hard when you're in learning mode, like when you keep hitting oh, it's another dead end, it's a door that won't open, it's a you know, and so you're sort of seeking and learning and trying to, you know, figure out where you're going to get your toehold, and that can be sometimes difficult.
Lori: 27:25
Yeah, absolutely. And we, you know we don't know who that first customer is going to be. And so we, you know, we have a thesis and we're going to go in and we're going to approach the market. The great thing about being in a niche market is we know exactly where those buyers are so we can go have the conversations, test our, our hypothesis and see what we learn, and come back and modify and go back in and, and you know it's, it's about accelerating that and doing that quickly to advantage. That will, you know, that will help us by the end of the year say, okay, we've got our first client now and that's what we're, that's, that's the target.
Julie : 28:07
Yeah, Yep, and getting the toehold with those first clients so that you can grow up the you know the smaller ones, the medium ones to the big players.
Lori: 28:15
Exactly right, yeah, and I think one of the things that sets us apart in the market is that we're enterprise grade software, and and that's great, except, you know, selling into that space requires a lot of resources, and so we definitely have the same path that we took in Canada, which is start with a smaller firm, move up to mid-sized market and then approach the enterprise once you've got those proof points in place. I'm excited about that, though, because once you get to that enterprise level and there are very few competitors at that level will be positioned, will be positioned to win. So, as an entrepreneur, I'm always focused on the future and I'm very optimistic about it.
Julie : 29:01
That's great and and exciting and I'm sure there's going to be a lot more learning and it'll be interesting to hear in a year from now where you feel like you're sitting. Yeah, I know what happened was expected, what was completely unexpected and what was in the middle where you were like huh, not exactly, but okay
Lori: 29:24
Yeah, I know exactly, right, and so I expect we'll be on generally heading, you know, like if we're heading Southwest, we'll be heading southwest. But you know, are we traveling by water, by road, by plane? You know, figuring out all those things then, yeah, it's definitely going to be a journey. It's one that you have to be, I think, mentally ready for from a resource perspective, ready for and feel good about the people you're traveling with.
Lori: 29:53
And I'm excited because we've built out our team for Canada. We've grown our young management team to run the playbook here in Canada, and so really, it's going to be myself, my co-founder, our head of growth, who really were, you know, kind of ran the, you know, the entrepreneurial playbook in Canada and we're going to run it again in the U S and so, and so you know, I'm kind of thinking about it like this is going to be fun. We're starting again and we're going to put our energy into this. And, yeah, we don't know what exactly roadblocks we're going to hit along the way, but we'll have at the end of the day. You know, if we've signed our first customer, we've accomplished our mission, if we know a lot more about what it's going to take to do that, and we're close. That will also be successful.
Julie : 30:41
Yeah, it will. It will and I guess, yeah, it's about now hiring people who have connections and experience in that US market, who can help you get to the people that you need to sit around the table and talk to.
Lori: 30:56
Absolutely, and you know this talent is expensive and hard to find, and one of the things we're investing in this year as part of that is a disciplined RevGen process. We're putting a new VP of a RevOps in place this year, and I'm not a fan of, you know, just selecting somebody with a great Rolodex and hoping for the best. These are long sales cycles, so you know, 18 to 24 months a lot can be spent and a lot of time with. You know we don't expect people to go in and close deals quickly, so we need to know that we're doing all the right things to accomplish that, though, and so definitely we're. You know we're keeping our eye on, and we do have someone in market that we're working with, but ideally there were. You know we're not outsourcing our sales. We're actually hiring people and setting up our presence in the US in 2026.
Julie : 31:53
hiring people and setting up our presence in the US in 2026. Well, and I think that'll be exciting times and I look forward to hearing more from you about how it goes. Thank you so much for talking with me today, and I'm excited to see how Four Eyes grows and changes over the coming years.
Lori: 32:09
Well, Julie, I really appreciate the work that you do, bringing forward these entrepreneurial stories and journeys, sharing them. Canada needs more entrepreneurs, the world needs more entrepreneurs, and I'm sure the work you're doing is is fueling someone's passion and giving them the confidence to to take the leap, and so thank you for that. Thank you.
Julie : 32:29
Thank you so much. I hope so that sharing the stories that I know about in my you know corner will help people, because I think we do what we see as possible and so I love sharing stories, and thank you so much for talking with me today.
Lori: 32:43
Thanks, Julie.
Julie : 32:47
I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please remember to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you won't miss any episodes. Figure Eight isn't just a podcast. It's a way of seeing the big, gorgeous goals of women entrepreneurs coming to life. If you're interested in learning more, you can find my book Big, gorgeous Goals on Amazon, anywhere you might live. For more about my growth and leadership training programs, visit www. julieellis. ca to see how we might work together. Read my blog or sign up to get your free diagnostic. Are you ready for growth? Once again, that's wwwjulieellisca. When we work together, we all win. See you again soon for another episode of Figure Eight.Julie : 0:04
Welcome to Figure Eight, where we feature inspiring stories of women entrepreneurs who have grown their businesses to seven and eight figures revenue. If you're in the mix of growing a bigger business, these stories are for you. Join us as we explore where the tough spots are, how to overcome them and how to prepare yourself for the next portion of the climb. I'm your host, Julie Ellis. I'm an author, entrepreneur and a growth and leadership coach who co-founded, grew and exited an eight-figure business. This led me to exploring why some women achieve great things, and that led to my book Big, Gorgeous Goals. Let's explore the systems, processes and people that help us grow our businesses to new heights. If you're interested in growing your business, this podcast will help. Now let's get going. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Figure Eight podcast.
Julie : 1:08
Today, I am joined by Lori Weir, who's the co-founder and CEO at Four Eyes Financial. Lori is a people and a business builder and a serial entrepreneur who is now working in the fintech space and building her company there. I'm very excited to have her with me today and I say welcome to you. Thanks for joining me, Lori.
Lori: 1:33
Thank you so much for inviting me, julie. I'm really happy to be here.
Julie : 1:38
I'm so excited to have our conversation because I love talking to a diverse group of women entrepreneurs and all the reasons that we start businesses, because we see needs in the world and I'm interested for you to share a little bit about what your entrepreneurial journey has looked like.
Lori: 1:58
Yeah, I'm happy to share, share. So I've been an entrepreneur since 1996, which is likely a year in which some of your listeners have yet to be born.
Lori: 2:14
So but what's interesting about being an entrepreneur is you know once once you are one you kind of are always one and but my my journey has been really interesting in that you made the point entrepreneurs really want to. They see a need in the world and they want to, you know, to meet it head on. And my first business was actually an adventure-based learning company that I started in Atlantic Canada and that came from a consulting project that I had working with the province of New Brunswick to help them identify if there was a market opportunity in incentive travel, and so you're likely aware of, you know, sales organizations incentivizing their teams and people to achieve targets by sending them off to places like Vienna or Australia or some really sexy places around the world Las Vegas or whatever it might be but destinations all over the world. They categorize different types of clients that they try to attract to their destination. Part of that is meeting and incentive travel, and so that was a project that I had, and during that research, of course, there aren't you know, sort of world renown. You know we don't have like anything akin to the Eiffel Tower or you know the experience of West End London. However, what we do have in New Brunswick is a lot of nature, a lot of adventure and a lot of opportunity for quiet reflection. And when I was doing my research to see what kind of product was available in New Brunswick we do have some very high-end properties here and I thought to myself, well, what kind of people actually win these types of incentive travel programs? And in my research I discovered that the same people tend to win again and again and again, regardless of what the prize is. So the destination wasn't really the pull, it was really coming from within the individual who, you know, wants to win. So these are, you know so, serial winners.
Lori: 4:28
And I thought, you know, I thought people like that would really like an opportunity to have further development, and I set about actually putting together some programs that would be encompassing motivational experiences, time for reflection, um, motivational experiences, time for reflection, um, experiencing some of the natural beauty of the province through kayaking, uh, being in the woods, doing high ropes, experiences, things like that. And I worked with an individual to build out these programs and I presented it to the province and I thought it was such a fantastic idea and they were like I don't think so, and so, uh, I really was sold on it and I said, well, we need something like this. In don't think so, and so I really was sold on it and I said, well, we need something like this in the province. And so the person I partnered with to develop the programs we started a company and so through that work evolved throughout the years different types of consulting into organizations around organizational design, creating operational efficiencies. So, beyond the individual, what can the organization do to help create, you know, the opportunity for people to win in their work, and that included everything from leadership development to, sales training , to Lean Six Sigma and operational efficiency types of programming.
Lori: 5:52
And one of my clients happened to be in wealth management and I had a number of firms that I worked with in wealth management in the GTA. I had clients in Atlantic Canada like JD Irving. But through my work with wealth management, I saw a real opportunity to create some operational efficiencies in the back office.
Lori: 6:14
You know, basically, as investors, and if you have a financial advisor or somebody who's giving you advice about your investments, you want to know, you know kind of bottom line am I invested in the right products, products that meet my risk tolerance, that are going to help me achieve my goals, and the rest of it is kind of noise to most people.
Lori: 6:35
What I found in the background is how difficult it was for organizations to present that simple message back to clients because of risk rating of products and the complexity of that and that changes every day creating a risk profile around the product and creating a risk profile around the individual so the individual investor, which also changes because we start new jobs, we lose jobs, we get married, we have children and all these things that change our risk profile as a person and I saw an opportunity to create some efficiencies around being able to bring that data together to present back to clients in an efficient way. That didn't take, you know, like six weeks, but you could do in six hours. And that was kind of the genesis of starting Four Eyes Financial, which we did in 2015. I did with my partner in life, who's also my co -founder and is also an entrepreneur and he had had previous technology companies, and so we set about to build this experience and solve that problem for investors.
Julie : 7:40
Well, and I think it's interesting because, you know, when I started a direct-to-consumer e-commerce business, we did not have a technical co-founder, and it was something that we always kind of said you know, in the perfect world, if we did it again, we would have wanted somebody. So it does seem like you had these insights from the consulting piece you were doing and then you had a co-founder who could bring the technical piece and kind of bring that together, which seems like a really good it is.
Lori: 8:07
It's great and some people say I don't think I could ever work with my partner. It's a 24 seven commitment. But I think one of the reasons it really works for us is for the very fact that you know we started the business in our forties, so we know ourselves pretty well and we're very different people and we bring different strengths to the table and we are both so committed to the same vision and goal that you know the differences in our approach, which are very different in how we do things. We can easily I would say easily, most times easily. Sometimes it's a struggle work through those things to move the company forward, but having that technical expertise is critical.
Lori: 8:51
I really don't know how people do it without, because it's a bit of a black box in some cases, like in and around. That for our business has been a strong mandate for me as the CEO to make sure that we can actually see into the black box and see how things are moving. But yeah, it definitely has been great, I think, for our young management team as well, to have leadership that is product focused, technically inclined, innovation focused, and also, I'd say what I bring to the table is a revenue generation focus organizational structure design, creating scalable processes, you know, making sure that the company's financed to go to that next level of growth, and so both of those things are critical to running a successful company, and you know that complementary nature of our skill sets seem to work out really well.
Julie : 9:56
Oh, that's good. Well, and the scaling of a technology company is not the same as what it would take to scale up more a consulting side company where you're doing it with human capital. You know, in this way you you need to scale up by adding to the black box, really, and and enhancing what you the base level product and, you know, iterating on it and keeping up with the regulatory environment would also be very important in the financial services realm.
Lori: 10:24
All of those things a hundred percent. And one of the things I learned about running a technology company is that you're never done building. It's never done and and. And I think most people would think, well, yeah, there'd be enhancements, but I think the extent of work done on the product, enhancing the product and a great point that you just mentioned, which is the regulatory requirements, are also evolving and changing and you have to be ahead of that and work that into your solution. So, yes, it is very different than running a consulting company in that regard. And also, I think you mentioned just the financing of that. So if you're always building, you know that that requires money to you know to kind of flow into the business to enable that and and making sure that you've got the capital to do that.
Julie : 11:22
Yeah, and so that's where, then you know, fundraising comes into play and, like learning a skill set around you know, going out and I mean people talk about it being wildly distracting from actually the roadmap of product and the roadmap of how you're building the business when you're out and you're trying to raise rounds of capital and bring people on your board and the kinds of things that, yeah, absolutely.
Lori: 11:47
And you know, I think it's a really key part to any successful innovation company. Innovation is expensive, and so a core part of leadership's responsibility is to make sure that you're engaging externally with all kinds of different partners, including financial, potential financial partners, and it is a significant part of of the role. And yeah, and I, you know, did my own sort of how to capitalize a scaling tech company informal MBA this past 12 months as I thought about how do we do this. You know we are going to market in the US in 25. We've been in earnest contemplating this for a couple of years. We've done some market readiness work with consultants. We've, you know, kind of done some things that aren't capital intensive, but now we're ready to go and this was a critical piece to enable that. We're ready to go and this was a critical piece to enable that, and it was, you know, it was definitely extremely valuable.
Lori: 12:54
I learned a lot and, like most of us in life, things that we wish we'd known before. But you know what, today's a new day and start now, and I think there's a lot of really good resources out there too, but the thing is there's no one way to do it, and I think sometimes the world presents like there's a clear path on how to capitalize your business and bring money in. And it's either you're, you know you're going to self fund, you're going to bootstrap or you're going to do this sort of equity. You know seed series A, you know kind of roll up in that way and you know. And then there's companies that do a mix of many things. There's a lot of ways to approach it and you have to figure out your own business model, what you're trying to achieve, what makes sense for you know the mission that you're on, and but figuring out how the rest of the world thinks about it is really important so that you can make a choice.
Julie : 13:58
Yeah, yeah, and that yeah. How can you dilute as little as possible as you take in the early money that you need to get going, so that later you you have more control about what happens Exactly?
Lori: 14:11
That's it. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs and early date, you know they're so desperate to get people behind them to believe in what they're doing. They're willing to give up a lot in order to make that happen, and that's understandable. I wouldn't, you know, completely empathize with that, never judge that, and you know it's like anything in life. You know, looking backwards and saying what you would have done is, you know, that's just, that's not the way the world works, or how life works, and we have to make the choices that, with the information we have and are presented to us, not look back and just move forward and say, okay, this is where we are now and how can we, you know, get to the next step?
Julie : 14:56
It is one of those interesting things, though, where, considering how many people have done it and and how many people are currently figuring out how to do it, that you can't Google and get the answers. It's always surprising to me in entrepreneurship that you know there are there. Are you always feel like you don't know what you're doing.
Lori: 15:17
There's always an aspect there is, and one of the things I will say, though, is I find that there is more available.
Lori: 15:24
I think a lot of this information was kept close to people's chest, for I don't know whatever reason, but one of the things that I have noticed is there are people out there who are in the, you know, investing time to be thought leaders in this space, that have consulting practices that are really focused on helping firms capitalize ideas into significant size global businesses, and they're out there presenting a lot of information that I know.
Lori: 15:56
When I originally started the business in 2015, that information just wasn't available through a Google search, but on LinkedIn and in Google and other places. Now, I think, in the last couple of years, there is more information, and I think the key starting point is understanding what your business model is, because every business model has a different need in terms of capitalization and how that looks, how much you know you need to give up in order to gain what makes sense for you in terms of your long-term plan. You know, do you want to build out a geography and then sell into private equity? Do you want to grow the company globally? What are like? And you know it's easy to ask those kinds of questions, but in any given day you might have a different answer yourself, depending on how the day is going.
Julie : 16:45
It's true, it's so true. Well, and certainly I mean one of the interesting choices that you've made is to build your company outside of a big financial center. I mean, most people would think of a company like yours starting in the Toronto area and in Canada and growing in that kind of an environment. But you know, you were living in Atlantic Canada. That's where you've built your adult life and so you've really built a business there and attracted talent and done all the things to really bring people to you.
Lori: 17:19
Yeah, it's true New Brunswick is not the center of financial services in Canada, and that's certainly been brought to our attention more than once. But what's great about that is you can build a company anywhere, especially an innovation company, a software company, and we are able to attract incredible talent, people who have moved to New Brunswick to go to school here, who want to stay here, new Brunswickers born and bred. That's part of our mission at Four Eyes. When we started the company was to solve the problem that we mentioned earlier, also to provide interesting employment in technology leading edge technology to New Brunswickers and to help sort of strengthen that part of our economy. And originally, when we started the company with that mandate, I thought this is a New Brunswick or an Atlantic Canadian challenge. But what I've learned is this is really a Canadian problem to be solved.
Lori: 18:21
We have our main industries, which we're aware of that have been brought to light, especially in the conversation around tariffs that are happening now and automobiles, natural resources, lumber paper all these kinds of oil gas that we're known for, which are amazing industries. There is a need for Canada to continue to invest in and grow its innovation economy, and I'm a big proponent of that, not just in Atlantic Canada, but for the country, and I'm thrilled to say that, you know, of our 60 employees, all but three actually live and work in New Brunswick and we're able to hire really great talent because the people who come to join us want to be in a community. So they don't want to, you know, live in New Brunswick and work for a company in Silicon Valley or someplace else around the world. They want that touch point. So we have an in-office culture.
Lori: 19:20
I'm at my office today. Yesterday we have an office in St John and one in Moncton, new Br, brunswick. I was at our Moncton office. You know we had about 12 people together put the Christmas tree up and had a moment, you know, together decorating the tree, having some hot chocolate and these, you know, kind of connecting points are really important to the kind of people who choose to work at Four Eyes and I think it really helps us with retention and you know we're introducing people not only to interesting our technology is built on AWS, but also to financial services as a sector which they would not be exposed to otherwise. Here, and I think you know we're in wealth tech, which is a subset of FinTech, and that is a sector that will continue to grow, and so the folks that are joining us fresh out of school and who are learning. It's great for their career trajectory wherever they choose to go right.
Julie : 20:20
Well, and I mean interesting because it makes me think of that sort of wealth transfer stat that's out there which I think, for Canada alone, is in the trillions over the coming sort of decade. And so I think you know people are interested in wealth tech because they want to protect their assets and protect the money as it moves in between generations.
Lori: 20:42
Yes, absolutely. And I think just even understanding what you know investing is and what it means and the core pillars of life are health and wealth for a successful life, and being part of understanding what does a healthy, you know sort of investment strategy look like and understanding that from a deep knowledge perspective, but also literally seeing how the sausage is made by being involved in our business, I think is is incredibly enlightening to people and, just as individual employees, helps them make really good choices at a young age around it and, to your point, around you know sort of wealth transition. It also helps them with members of their family as they think about what does good look like and none of us really know what wealth management is going to look like 20 years from now. But people are always going to want personalized advice from someone they trust and at this stage, you know a lot of people of people say, well, is ai going to kind of replace the traditional advisory model? You know, personally I don't see that.
Lori: 21:53
Um, there are self-directed opportunities and passive investing available for people currently. Yet people still are looking for someone to um to guide them, give them confidence in their choices, stay invested when things are troubled in the world those kinds of things that are really important, and also to understand. Ai is great and we use it in our platform and machine learning. We are focused on using it to its fullest ability in a very structured, thoughtful way, but we are providing, you know, solutions that help the industry perform. It's always going to rely on judgment and until AI has demonstrated good judgment, I think we're you know. I think things will move quickly, but at the same time, that trust and personal touch will. I don't think that will ever go away.
Julie : 22:53
Yeah, yeah, as it evolves.
Lori: 22:55
there's still a role for for relationship in this process, but we can definitely take the cost out of it, like the, the busy work right, all the stuff that people are doing behind the scenes so that they can actually give really good advice. Yeah.
Julie : 23:09
Right and actually do what people want to pay them for. Exactly, and that is really the at the core of it. So when you imagine starting this business, I'm sure that things looked a little different than they look today in terms of what you thought the product would be like. And you know, I think, that the need you're trying to meet is probably not changed, but how you're meeting it is changed, and I'm curious about what that journey has been like.
Lori: 23:38
Yeah. So you know when the rubber hits the road is when we really learn and get in market and also understanding what isn't in market Right. So, especially, I think, for people who are providing B2B technology solutions, you know we talked about understanding what, how to really go about capitalizing your business in the best way possible for you there was very little information. I think the same holds true for really getting a good lay of the land from a competitive analysis perspective on B2B software that's in the back end. You know that is challenging and you get to learn that by being in market. And then you also understand where there's clear opportunities that you may not have recognized, and I found that certainly the case for Four Eyes.
Lori: 24:30
So in our solution, you know we had, we ended up building out what we now call it. You know, simplifying compliance from a front end, know your client am I invested in a suitable product perspective, but we also provide which wasn't part of our original product iteration a post trade surveillance, monitoring and desktop for compliance officers so that they know that they're meeting the regulatory requirements presented in Canada by CERO used to be known as IROC and also that they're meeting the suitability requirements of the individual clients and their companies' policies and procedures, and so our platform enables the data to flow through the front and experience with the client to the back end around post-trade surveillance, and that is unique in in the marketplace interesting, so I would think that makes you desirable.
Julie : 25:33
But of cracking into selling to in a highly regulated industry as a new player is always a challenge in terms of like how you build that right and that comes over time as you add clients and they have good experience and they go through audits and they're successful.
Lori: 25:59
Those things all help to build credibility in the market and you know, you always need your first person to raise their hand and say they're willing. And we were very fortunate to have our first client who continues to be a client today who was willing to raise their hand, and I think any entrepreneur will tell you, getting that first customer is is tough and it's exhilarating. Um, and it's a critical. You know that's the first step to the rest of the journey and um, uh, for us now going into the US, that's, you know, that's what we also have to achieve now. We have a proven product in another market, but we all like to think we're very different and in fact, there are differences from geography to geography. So we have to go through that same proofing path with our US growth as well and find someone willing to raise their hand and say I'm going to take a chance on these guys.
Julie : 26:51
Yes, and you had mentioned to me before that you know, 2025 is your year for learning about the US market and about how you want to play in it and what your role is there, and my reaction is I think that's a great way of looking at it, because it can be hard when you're in learning mode, like when you keep hitting oh, it's another dead end, it's a door that won't open, it's a you know, and so you're sort of seeking and learning and trying to, you know, figure out where you're going to get your toehold, and that can be sometimes difficult.
Lori: 27:25
Yeah, absolutely. And we, you know we don't know who that first customer is going to be. And so we, you know, we have a thesis and we're going to go in and we're going to approach the market. The great thing about being in a niche market is we know exactly where those buyers are so we can go have the conversations, test our, our hypothesis and see what we learn, and come back and modify and go back in and, and you know it's, it's about accelerating that and doing that quickly to advantage. That will, you know, that will help us by the end of the year say, okay, we've got our first client now and that's what we're, that's, that's the target.
Julie : 28:07
Yeah, Yep, and getting the toehold with those first clients so that you can grow up the you know the smaller ones, the medium ones to the big players.
Lori: 28:15
Exactly right, yeah, and I think one of the things that sets us apart in the market is that we're enterprise grade software, and and that's great, except, you know, selling into that space requires a lot of resources, and so we definitely have the same path that we took in Canada, which is start with a smaller firm, move up to mid-sized market and then approach the enterprise once you've got those proof points in place. I'm excited about that, though, because once you get to that enterprise level and there are very few competitors at that level will be positioned, will be positioned to win. So, as an entrepreneur, I'm always focused on the future and I'm very optimistic about it.
Julie : 29:01
That's great and and exciting and I'm sure there's going to be a lot more learning and it'll be interesting to hear in a year from now where you feel like you're sitting. Yeah, I know what happened was expected, what was completely unexpected and what was in the middle where you were like huh, not exactly, but okay
Lori: 29:24
Yeah, I know exactly, right, and so I expect we'll be on generally heading, you know, like if we're heading Southwest, we'll be heading southwest. But you know, are we traveling by water, by road, by plane? You know, figuring out all those things then, yeah, it's definitely going to be a journey. It's one that you have to be, I think, mentally ready for from a resource perspective, ready for and feel good about the people you're traveling with.
Lori: 29:53
And I'm excited because we've built out our team for Canada. We've grown our young management team to run the playbook here in Canada, and so really, it's going to be myself, my co-founder, our head of growth, who really were, you know, kind of ran the, you know, the entrepreneurial playbook in Canada and we're going to run it again in the U S and so, and so you know, I'm kind of thinking about it like this is going to be fun. We're starting again and we're going to put our energy into this. And, yeah, we don't know what exactly roadblocks we're going to hit along the way, but we'll have at the end of the day. You know, if we've signed our first customer, we've accomplished our mission, if we know a lot more about what it's going to take to do that, and we're close. That will also be successful.
Julie : 30:41
Yeah, it will. It will and I guess, yeah, it's about now hiring people who have connections and experience in that US market, who can help you get to the people that you need to sit around the table and talk to.
Lori: 30:56
Absolutely, and you know this talent is expensive and hard to find, and one of the things we're investing in this year as part of that is a disciplined RevGen process. We're putting a new VP of a RevOps in place this year, and I'm not a fan of, you know, just selecting somebody with a great Rolodex and hoping for the best. These are long sales cycles, so you know, 18 to 24 months a lot can be spent and a lot of time with. You know we don't expect people to go in and close deals quickly, so we need to know that we're doing all the right things to accomplish that, though, and so definitely we're. You know we're keeping our eye on, and we do have someone in market that we're working with, but ideally there were. You know we're not outsourcing our sales. We're actually hiring people and setting up our presence in the US in 2026.
Julie : 31:53
hiring people and setting up our presence in the US in 2026. Well, and I think that'll be exciting times and I look forward to hearing more from you about how it goes. Thank you so much for talking with me today, and I'm excited to see how Four Eyes grows and changes over the coming years.
Lori: 32:09
Well, Julie, I really appreciate the work that you do, bringing forward these entrepreneurial stories and journeys, sharing them. Canada needs more entrepreneurs, the world needs more entrepreneurs, and I'm sure the work you're doing is is fueling someone's passion and giving them the confidence to to take the leap, and so thank you for that. Thank you.
Julie : 32:29
Thank you so much. I hope so that sharing the stories that I know about in my you know corner will help people, because I think we do what we see as possible and so I love sharing stories, and thank you so much for talking with me today.
Lori: 32:43
Thanks, Julie.
Julie : 32:47
I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please remember to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you won't miss any episodes. Figure Eight isn't just a podcast. It's a way of seeing the big, gorgeous goals of women entrepreneurs coming to life. If you're interested in learning more, you can find my book Big, gorgeous Goals on Amazon, anywhere you might live. For more about my growth and leadership training programs, visit www. julieellis. ca to see how we might work together. Read my blog or sign up to get your free diagnostic. Are you ready for growth? Once again, that's wwwjulieellisca. When we work together, we all win. See you again soon for another episode of Figure Eight.