GetintheLoop is also one of Canada’s fastest-growing franchises. The franchise side of GetintheLoop provides budding entrepreneurs with the opportunity to strengthen local businesses within their own communities.
We recently caught up with Matt Crowell, founder and CEO of Get in the Loop, learn more about how he turned a humble need into a successful entrepreneurial venture.
On Choosing a Direction…
It all came down to the same question, “how do you make marketing simple and easy for small businesses? I think there is a huge demand for people who want to control their destiny, do something they care about, and want to be in control of their income. We are one of the first to offer something like that; I think that’s why we’re having so much success.
On Staying True to Your Vision…
The riskiest thing we ever did was go to all of our big media partners and say, “we are not going to work with you anymore.” It just wasn’t the right fit, some were not showing enough support to their local business community. To help small businesses, we needed somebody who was in their community. So, we created local franchises where an entrepreneur can represent their local businesses.
On Supporting Local Businesses…
If you start a company in Vancouver or Toronto, you’re naturally trying to find out how you win big quickly. And nobody is thinking, “how do we start local?” Starting in Kelowna, we had to be good locally. Our first 25 cities were all under 150 in population. Now that we’re going global, being good local is our biggest competitive advantage.
On Company Culture…
You only get to drive culture till about 8 or 10 people, and then you get to enable culture. We worked hard to build a culture where it’s cool to work hard, to work overtime because everyone has shares in this. Everybody who joins knows they’re joining a team that gets in early and stays late.
On Expanding into the US…
We think Middle America is going to be a lot like Canada, and that’s where we’re starting. We’ve got a lot of international opportunities but we think we’ll find the most success in the United States. Small business is looking for this. The entrepreneurial spirit runs ten times higher in the States.
On Set Backs…
Sometimes you think you’re failing, but you’re learning. Whatever you’re doing today won’t be how you’re succeeding in 3 or 5 years. Just start learning, because nobody is going to be right. Make sure you get better at learning and iterating because you’re not right. And there is no such thing as right. The customers will tell you what to do.
On Market Validation…
We took a lot of customer feedback, and that helped us scale. We would tell them what we had heard, then we’d show them what we did. If you let people know you want their feedback but you don’t act on it, you lose them twice. If you do act on it, then you gain advocates.
We even did that when we started franchising. We wanted to hear what we could have done better, what we can do better. 90 or 180 days later, we know what we’re doing, and they were all a part of that. Without feedback, we wouldn’t be doing as well as we are.
More on GetintheLoop. Connect with Matt.
Hungry for more? GetintheLoop collaborates with RBC Ventures.
