Good morning. Thank you for inviting me. It's such a pleasure to be here, and so I'm going to speak from my experience providing legal advice to government about how to consult from someone who's done this for about 15 years. But that said, I need to say that the views that I expressed in this presentation are on my own and not necessarily of my employer, the province of British Columbia. So that aside. So let me start first with giving you a little bit of context about the history in Canada. I will be focusing on the most Western province, so that's British Columbia. That's where I'm from, Victoria. So Canada, you can see from this map that a large part of it, historically in the 1700s and 1800s, there were just treaties signed. And so essentially the international customs of the time was that when European countries were exploring the seas and when they came across land that was already occupied by Indigenous people who had their own rules and practices and customs, but how to make use of the land and resources, they needed to enter into treaties before those European nations could settle and make use of the land. So that did happen through the East Coast, the Peace and Friendship treaties, and then into the sort of the interior part of Canada there, we call those the number treaties from number one to number eleven. In British Columbia, though, only the very top northeast corner, there's some of the first nations there that has sent on to treaties and some just close to Victoria on Vancouver Island. And so we have a unique situation in British Columbia, where today still there's, for the most part, they're not treaties signed for most of the 200 plus first nations. There's 203 Indigenous communities. We call them first nations or Aboriginal groups. So for the most of the 203, they do not have treaties. And within British Columbia too, the 203 groups, they're very diverse from, you know, the coastal groups to the interior, to the ones who, you know, have the big mountains in their territories, the ones who make use of the rivers and the watersheds. There's a very large diversity in the cultures. There's about 34 language groups. It's a very interesting place in British Columbia. So here's just a closer view of our situation with treaties in BC. So again, most of the treaties occurred sort of close to Victoria. There are a few more up in the on the island. And then that's Treaty 8, where a few of the First Nations groups signed on to to that treaty. And then in more recent times, we have these modern treaty agreements that took about 15 years to negotiate. And there are just a few places here on the province with that. So let me take you to an important part of the legal context in Canada. And that's this provision in the Constitution. It's section 35. And it provides a recognition and affirmation of the Aboriginal and treaty rights of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada. It's very brief. And essentially it's been left up to the courts to interpret what this means. What is this constitutional protection for Aboriginal and treaty rights? And so it was through the courts after 1982, they developed the test for determining what can government do that constitutes an infringement on these constitutional protected rights. And if government art is to infringe it, there may be some certain circumstances where that may be justified. But if government infringes on the right, it has to meet this high legal justification test in order to do that. So there's only so much government can do before it infringes on these constitutionally protected rights. And so it's also been left up to the courts to determine what is the test then for proving Aboriginal rights. I mean it's clear when we have treaty rights, it's whatever the treaty says. So for example on Vancouver Island or up in the Treaty 8 area, there's a treaty right to hunt, to trap and to fish. But for the rest of the British Columbia where there are no treaties, we have these groups, these indigenous groups, who claim they assert rights, these legal rights that flow from the fact that they were here when Europeans came. So the courts, they have set up a test for proving Aboriginal rights in this notion of Aboriginal title. So for example, a very important case happened about three years ago. The Soco team nation, they brought on this legal court case, took about 15 years to get through the court system all the way to the highest court in land, which is the Supreme Court of Canada. And that court gave a declaration that this group, they brought enough evidence to show that they sufficiently and exclusively occupy a portion of their territory at 1846, which is the time when the British Crown, they signed the boundary agreement with the US. So that was the important date in British Columbia where this notion, this legal interest in land for Aboriginal groups in British Columbia, that's when it crystallized. So that's what Aboriginal groups have to bring evidence to court about, about how they made use of land at 1846. And this group succeeded in being able to prove that a portion of their territory, the dark green area, they got a court declaration that they have Aboriginal title to the land. And that is very significant because after that declaration, the Crown or the state no longer has jurisdiction over that land for a number of areas. It is the Aboriginal group, the Soco team nation, they have the legal right to exclusively use and occupy the land. They are the ones who can make management decisions about how the land and resources will be used. And they also are the ones who can, they are entitled to the economic benefits of the land. So they own the trees. The courts also said that they would own the minerals. At issue, what caused this court case was that the Soco team nation, they were opposed to a number of the forestry activity that was occurring there. So part of this was their effort to control that or to stop that. So part of this decision, the court looked at the province's forest act and saw that the forest act, the way it's written, it only applies to crown land, so state owned land. It's after title declaration, it is no longer crown land. So our forest act does not apply to that area anymore. So let me tell you about another important case, this court case from 2004, again from our highest court in the land, Supreme Court of Canada. This case was brought by the Haida Nation, which are, they're located north of Vancouver Island there. And again, the issue here was forestry. There was a lot of clear cutting occurring within Haida Gwai, their traditional territory. And at that time, government did not consult with them with a number of the forest authorizations that were granted. And so they brought this case to court and the Supreme Court of Canada said to the government that even though the Haida Nation, they have not yet proven that they have rights or title to their territory. They do not have a treaty. But even though they only have these assertions of these legal rights, there is a legal duty on government to consult with them before we make decisions to authorize forestry on their territory. So this legal duty arises whenever government to the crown has knowledge, real or constructive, of the potential existence of Aboriginal rights or title and contemplates conduct that might adversely affect it. So that term of adverse effect, the courts have since interpreted that as a low threshold. So it's the potential for there to be negative impact. If there is that potential, this legal duty consult is triggered. Very similar to our legislation. OK, yes. So essentially what this means is that all of our land and resource decisions require consultation now. And even though one of the arguments the province had raised in this court decision was, how can we possibly do that? We make hundreds, thousands of decisions each year in land and resource. How can we possibly consult with the 203 Aboriginal groups whose territories may be impacted by that? And the court had said, this is a constitutional obligation. It is not an excuse to not manage that, administratively manage that, because this is that important. Because what is at stake are these potential constitutional rights? So the question usually isn't, is there a duty consult? Because as I said, most of our land resource decisions will require consultation. The key question usually is, well, how much consultation then? And so here's a very simple diagram to capture what the Supreme Court of Canada had said, which is the scope or the depth of consultation is based on two key factors. So in British Columbia, because we have a lot of these asserted or claimed rights, the stronger the claim, the more information we have that indicates that that group, they would be able to make out actual title or meet the slightly different test for absolute rights, the stronger the claim, the more consultation. And also another key one is how serious is the impact of this decision? The more serious the impact, the more consultation, the less impact, then less consultation, sort of perhaps notification. When I say notification though, it's still before decision is made. So following this court decision, the province did issue this consultation procedure. And this is a document that guides government officials when they are making land resource decisions, there are steps in here about how to consult with indigenous groups who may be impacted. And so for example, some key principles here that you are to start early, as early as possible in the planning stage. And in saying that there was some discussion in our group yesterday about, well, you may not have all the information or the details early on, what do you consult about? But it's at this early planning stage that maybe some of them, the more substantial design changes can occur. Because once a company or proponent, you know, proposes something and they've invested a lot of money into the design, like where the tailings ponds is going to be, you know, where, how the walls of, you know, the different components are going to be built, it may be hard to change the plans at that point, even if what they hear through consultation is that that's a really important area, that's going to have a serious impact. So earlier is better because there's more flexibility there. And then as you get more details, then you start sharing more of that details as you go through the process. It's a process. And in that process end, there's a required amount of government to share information about what is being proposed, a proposed project, proposed activity. And also to pay attention to what we know of what are the actual interests, so the rights or the title of treaty rights that may be impacted. So one of the things that, you know, for government staff, when we're sharing information, we try to make it as clear as possible. A clear map of this is where this project is located, try to use non-technical, plain language to try to explain that. There's a number of sort of tools that government staff have to try to develop sort of clear explanations of what is being proposed and how that might impact the Indigenous community. Their exercise of rights. And then finally, the substance. It's more than just meetings or sending letters or phone calls. It's actually about what do you do about the concerns we hear. There's a lot of discussion about, you know, having a meaningful influence on the decision making. Well, there is also this notion that the Supreme Court of Canada talked about of a legal duty to accommodate, that in some circumstances, if it becomes clear that there is going to be an impact and perhaps even a serious impact. On perhaps a strong claim, government needs to look at ways to avoid the impact, ways to minimize impact, or if those are not possible, then is there some other way to address it, to offset it. We talked a little bit about, you know, maybe compensation, maybe some other offset like land swap, you know, maybe if the project can only be located there, maybe we can find other lands that are available for that group to use. So those are the kind of things that this accommodation notion can capture. And so I thought I would also show this diagram. It's very hard for you to see, but let's see if we can make it a little bit bigger. So this is just a summary of the four stages in the provinces consultation process where there is versus a preparation phase. We look at information that the province currently has. So we have databases. We share information amongst different ministries of what we get from First Nations, what we hear from them. You know, if the forestry authorities go and talk to them about this particular area, maybe that's the same area where maybe perhaps this road related to mine is also going through. So we share that information that's stored in a central place. So there's information then that government staff, they can review before they even start the consultation. And through that review, they can figure out, well, who's best positioned to start this consultation? And I'll talk about that we can sometimes get the company to go and talk to the First Nation. Maybe there's a number of agencies who have to make decisions. How do they coordinate that? Determine who takes the lead. And then they can also figure out, well, how serious is the project impact going to be? And then you can gauge, well, how much you need to plan in terms of the consultation? Is that the lower level, or maybe you need to plan a much lengthier process to make sure we understand the impacts and make sure we properly explore what we have to do to accommodate for those impacts?  We talked a little bit of time in our group. Standard is probably 30 days. We give the First Nation about 30 days to respond. We follow with a letter if we don't hear anything. And even if the First Nations don't respond, and I'll get to this, there is an issue with capacity, too. After the height of decision, a lot of the communities, some of them, maybe, you know, maybe a hundred or a couple hundred, some of them are larger, maybe a thousand or so. But they got inundated by all these letters and referrals and consultation packages for everything that occurs in their territory. So we know the capacity is a bit of an issue. And so we still, the procedures say that even if you don't hear anything back from the group, you still have to carry on based on what we already know and think about what can we do to try to avoid, minimize, or otherwise address potential impacts. And so that's this accommodation phase that there needs to be consideration is accommodation required. If so, let's talk to the group about it, try to reach agreement, try to come to consensus about what's required to address the impact. And then once there's sort of an analysis of have we done enough, we think that there's been a meaningful process, we've addressed everything we can, then you move to decision. Okay, so let me talk a little bit about the different relationships that are involved. So I'm going to use this term proponent so that that can be a company or an individual who proposes an activity or project. And so they make an application government we adjudicate that we make sure we have a fair a timely clear review process. But the duty consult rests between the government and the First Nation or the indigenous group that it is a government to government or I think today we use a term nation to nation. That legal obligation rests with government with the crown. But in doing that government can delegate certain components of consultation to the proponent. So for example, in an environmental assessment process for the major projects in the legislation, it allows the environmental assessment office, so the agency running the EA review, they can delegate and direct the company to engage with the First Nations. So typically they say that company you need to develop a First Nation or an Aboriginal consultation plan. You need to talk to the Aboriginal groups about your plan about how you're going to engage them throughout the process. They need to develop this plan in the pre-application stage, so early in the process. And then as part of that too, when they develop their application, when they finally submit their detailed application, that application needs to contain a lot of detail, not just about what the environmental impact is or social or health or heritage effects, the other things that the assessment office looks at. It also needs to include information about how this project is going to impact the indigenous groups there. They need to talk to them and this is where a lot of companies, they will find what they call traditional youth studies. So they will interview the communities, find out how the areas used for traditional practices, for hunting, fishing, gathering, trapping other activities. That needs to be captured and put into this application so that when government reviews it, we have that information. So they identify the impacts and they also identify what are the ways to avoid, minimize or otherwise address that impact. So all that detail and discussion occurs between the proponent and the First Nation because government required that. There was a discussion yesterday about cumulative effects. As part of the environmental assessment in the legislation, part of the adverse effects that need to be reviewed in environmental assessment includes cumulative effects. And it includes cumulative effects on the indigenous group. So that is also part of what they need to include in their application before we start running that formal review process. So capacity funding. In the major project reviews, there is standard capacity funding that government provides to the optional groups. But there is also quite a bit of funding that most companies will provide to groups as well. And there is a lot of understanding, I think, that these are really intense processes, very technical. And particularly when we're dealing with these major projects, it is very useful for the First Nations to be able to hire their own consultants, sometimes their own lawyers, to help them understand the different documents and different processes and the opportunities they have to suggest different options. So in major project reviews, there is quite a bit of capacity funding provided for the different groups. The other component of the relationship between the proponent and the First Nation is that there is a lot of encouragement for the company to understand what the concerns, as well as the interests, are of the community. And we encourage them to try to develop a good working relationship. And oftentimes that may result in sort of an impact-benefit agreement. So recognizing if the project were to be approved, there are going to be impacts on the group. Is there a way that the company can find to address those impacts through an offset, like a financial benefit, jobs, training programs, sort of school scholarships, things like that? So that's left up to the company and the Indigenous group to sort out. We also encourage a lot of early engagement, even before the application comes to or a project description comes to government. We encourage all companies. It is really important that you get to know and you develop a relationship with the Indigenous groups in that area. So there's a number of documents and guidance documents the province has published to encourage proponents to engage with Indigenous groups to help them understand why this is a legal requirement for government, how this can make a big difference for your proposed activity. So we have these two guides. And even for the applications or activities that are not major project reviews, where perhaps the agencies, they don't have perhaps in their legislation the ability to direct a company to do things, there's still a lot of language about, you know, we encourage you. We think this is in your best interest to engage early and to work together with the Indigenous groups. And different industries, they've also published their own guides. So this one here is published by the Mining Association. So again, a lot of explanation of why this is important and also some really practical tools about how you can engage. So the province, we've been doing this quite a bit since that 2004 case of consulting and over the years, I think we're getting better, a better understanding of what kind of impacts may occur on rights. And so this greater sophistication of understanding what are the different components of rights and appreciating that it's more than just understanding the biophysical impact. So for example, a project they may impact, say a wildlife herd, stay through our assessment, we determine with our biologists, it's a minor impact on that herd. We now today understand, well that doesn't necessarily mean a minor impact on the Aboriginal Treaty right to hunt that particular wildlife species. Because there may be other dimensions to it, that for example where that herd is or where this project is, that's a really important area for that group. They frequently go there, maybe because of close proximity to their village, maybe they bring their youth there every fall. They run a cultural camp to teach their traditions on to their youth. There may be sort of that site-specific component that may make that impact more than just minor. And there's also these cultural dimensions to it. I mentioned sort of transferring knowledge from elders to youth. There may be some spiritual components to that particular area. So that's also another component of rights that we need to pay attention to when we're asking the groups, well how does this project impact you and your exercise of rights? So this is sort of a new analytical framework that we're starting to apply, particularly on the major projects where there's a lot of contention, disagreement about what might happen. And what we're finding is that having this more holistic view and understanding of rights is really helping us understand better what do we need to accommodate for the impacts. If the impact is on sort of the sites or places, perhaps social, cultural, spiritual, experiential, then we can look at options to address that particular component. I mean it's a lot easier if it's the impact on biophysical, then maybe we look at habitat protection or habitat compensation, timing windows perhaps to reduce the impact on the wildlife herd. So having that sort of deeper understanding of how rights may be impacted can really help us figure out what do we need to do to move forward. And so same thing with this notion, this legal notion of Aboriginal title, which the courts have told us is made up of essentially these three general components, which is that there's a use in occupation, there's a decision-making component, and there's economic benefits. And so also with this holistic view we can hone in on what are the impacts and how do we need to address that. So again this notion of this legal duty to accommodate, the court has said that where you've got the stronger claims it may be impacted in a significant way. Government should be taking steps to try to avoid that irreparable harm or to minimize the effects of the infringement. So here's just some examples from the provincial consultation procedures of ideas to avoid, so timing windows, changing the footprint of a project, ways to minimize, so maybe you could reduce the term of a permit so that the activities are for a shorter time period. Other options could be monitoring, maybe as a condition of the permit. There needs to be a monitoring, maybe the Indigenous group needs to be part of that monitoring. And if certain thresholds are met through sort of an adaptive management, there's other steps that have to be taken then. Maybe there's land use protections and maybe even financial benefits, particularly if we are an area of a strong claim of title where on this slide economic benefits is a component of title. So I'll talk about some of the different kind of economic benefits that government provides as well as what companies provide. So why is this important for government to pay attention to? Well there are very significant consequences if government does not meet the legal duty consult. So last year, I don't know if the news made it out here, but it was a very big deal in Canada. This oil pipeline, it was the Northern Gateway project that has been undergoing many years' review, a lot of political pressure and political support for the project, but the Federal Court of Appeal, they quashed the federal government's approvals at the EA, the environmental assessment stage. So that was quashed by the courts and as a result now, that project is no longer going ahead. And so the reason for the quashing, government was found to have fulfilled their statutory requirements, it was a reasonable decision, but it was because they did not meet that legal duty consult and accommodate with indigenous groups, that was fatal to the project, to those approvals. And so the court gave a number of criticisms of how the federal government did not meaningfully engage, discuss, address the concerns raised by the Aboriginal communities and for that reason said, if you want to go ahead, you have to address all of those defects. And so the government then decided they were not going to go ahead with this project. But this is a very recent example of the importance of government meeting that obligation. And so just a little bit of explanation for the lawyers in the room. In our constitution, we have this provision that says the Constitution of Canada is the supreme law of Canada and any law that is inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution is the extent to the inconsistency of no force or effect. This gives our courts the ability to oversee and supervise to some extent government decisions that may impact on constitutionally protected rights. And in those instances, they can, as we just saw, they can strike down decisions if we do not meet our constitutional obligations. So I'll give you a few more examples from the mind and context. This was a really big one for in the province, and this deals with our northern caribou, which I think is probably the same as your reindeer, probably different subspecies. But there is a mining exploration program that was occurring in this area of an important to critical habitat for this herd of this northern caribou, this burnt pine herd of which there are only, I think, about 13 left in this particular herd. Yeah, they're pretty much all there. They're all tag, they all have names. It's a part of the context is that, you know, there's been different efforts trying to deal with the species at risk status of the caribou, but government just had not gone up to this particular area yet, so there was no plan, there was no protection plan yet in place for caribou. And some of the protection measures that applied to forestry did not apply to mining activities. So what we had was this proposal for a bulk sample program, an exploration program, and it was an area of the Treaty 8 communities, and it was an area where they hunted. Although, because the caribou are in such dire situation, our indigenous communities, since the 1980s, they voluntarily stopped hunting the caribou. So then they looked at this exploration program and they said, by allowing this to happen you are going to irreparably destroy forevermore, essentially, or for a very long term, this important caribou habitat. And I'm sure you all understand, you know, how long it takes to recover our caribou habitat. And so there was consultation, but the court in reviewing it said that it was not enough, it was not meaningful, and there was not meaningful accommodation. And so as a result of that, this exploration permit was suspended. So this is one clear example where the consultation was really criticized. One thing that the court reiterated was cumulative effects. The fact that, you know, there was only 13 left here was a result of a number of other activities that occurred in the area, oil and gas development, dams, roads, forestry. So this was sort of, we were already past the tipping point for the caribou here. So it was important that government should have considered cumulative effects on the right to hunt. And government started to not have done that. And so we did not succeed either at the trial level or even at the BC Court of Appeal level. And we had to sort of do that consultation. This program actually, a new company bought it and they decided to stand down on this and focus on other projects in the area. Here's another example of a mining exploration program. The company, they wanted to get some more information to support their environmental assessment of a major goldmine project in this area. This is, again, dealing with the Sokotean Nation, but outside of the area where they have proven title. And so there was consultation, but the Sokotean, they were not satisfied with it. So after the permit was issued, allowing this exploration to occur, they challenged it in court. There's an ability to obtain an interim injunction that stops the company from moving forward with any of the activities until the court can hear the full hearing of the permit and the consultation process. That injunction was granted. And even though there's a lot of evidence in the mining company about the thousands, I think even millions of dollars that was going to be sacrificed if there was a delay because they had rented all the equipment, they had secured all the contracts to move ahead. But the court said, well, the minerals, they're not going anywhere. It's important for government to make sure that they meet their constitutional obligation to consult. And so suspended that permit. And so there didn't need to be another hearing of it because, in the meantime, the parties negotiated a settlement and the company went forward with a reduced exploration plan. And then when they went to the federal environmental assessment process, the federal government actually turned on the project and said no. Finally, I wanted to just raise this example of legislation. And so this is not from BC. It's from the Yukon, which is just north of BC. But there's some similarities to BC that causes BC to have a little bit of concern when this came out. So in the Yukon, similar to BC, there is this free entry mining regime. So companies, individuals, to go and stake your claim in BC, it's just an online website program. You can just identify the area, submit your, I think it's $20 of a fee. And then there you go, you have the mineral claims. You have the exclusive right to explore that area. So Yukon has a similar sort of this free entry mineral claims staking program that it's sort of an automatic process. There's no opportunity for consultation because there's no decision point. The decisions come when you want to do a certain kind of exploration program. And then if you want to go forward with a full blown up mind, then there's a lot more permit and decisions and leases and other kind of higher levels of tenures that the company can apply for. But at this very early stage of just staking a claim, there is no decision and therefore no consultation. And in the Yukon context, with your staked claim, you can actually go forth and start doing some exploration activities, mechanized activities. And so the court had said the Yukon Court of Appeal, which is actually our BC judges, they said statutory regimes that do not allow for consultation and fail to provide any other equally effective means to acknowledge and accommodate optional claims are defective and cannot be allowed to subsist. So the court found that the Yukon had a duty to consult with the First Nation before they were to make the mineral rights available to third parties. They were also supposed to consult before allowing those exploration activities to occur. That was not the case. And so the Yukon was given one year to deal with this situation and within that year they changed the legislation. So this is an example where the Constitution that provisions section 52, a court can find that legislation is unconstitutional. So let me just talk about consultation at the deep end. So major projects like mine, those would be considered projects that could have a serious effect according to the simple diagram, you would be at that deep end of consultation. And so what the Supreme Court can has said at that deep end, it's aimed at finding a satisfactory interim solution. So government is trying to reach agreement then about how the project should or perhaps it should not go ahead. It may entail the opportunity to make submissions for consideration, formal participation in the decision making process, providing written reasons to show how their concerns were considered and to reveal the impact they had on the decision. So for example in the EA Process Environmental Assessment, the Aboriginal groups they are part of the working group, the formal working group with other ministry agencies, with the company. They have the ability to provide a submission directly to the decision maker and the decision maker typically will write a rationale document saying, in making this decision this is what I considered, this is how I considered the impact on Aboriginal and treaty rights and this is how I thought that it was or was not adequately addressed. So it's very clear that our decision maker put his or her mind to these very issues. It's really important to highlight this, which is a little bit contentious, that the Supreme Court of Canada described this duty to consult or duty to accommodate. It's a process that does not give Aboriginal groups a veto over what can be done with land pending proof of claim. The Aboriginal consent spoken of in one of the early cases, Dalgomuk, is appropriate only in cases of established rights and then by no means in every case. So concretely what this means is that the Sokote Nation, they have an established Aboriginal title right. In that area before government can do anything in a land or resource decision, they have to seek the consent of the Sokote Nation in that proven title area. That's the circumstance where consent is required, is legally required. And if government doesn't get the consent of the Aboriginal group, that very illegal high justification test needs to be met by government before they could proceed. So how this is playing out in some of the environmental assessments today, we've been trying to improve how we consult. We've been hearing criticisms of the process. Sometimes it's not meaningful. It doesn't give the influence that first nations think that they should have. So the Environmental Assessment Office in the last little while has been developing this notion of collaboration. We use this metaphor of bringing the Aboriginal group to our side of the table, that we are partners in the review process, that we are trying to seek consensus on what are the impacts of the project on their Aboriginal or Treaty rights, and what kind of accommodations are required. And we collaborate then on the development of draft conditions. So if a certificate is issued for the project, we work together to figure out what are the terms and conditions for that certificate then, those legally binding terms on the company. We all agree. We share the objectives of having a timely, effective participation. The process should be fair, clear, neutrally administered. It should be transparent. It should be predictable. And recognizing that these major projects, this is an area for a lot of contention, there will be disagreements. So we agree up front, how are we going to resolve those disagreements? So we build in processes to try to resolve those different points of views and disagreements. So one example of how this played out in a recent approval for this mine, this is a commesse underground mine. And this was a project that in 2007, it was rejected. It was turned down by government because it was in a culturally important area for these Indigenous communities. So a new company then bought the project, and starting in 2011, they started to collaborate. They worked very closely with those communities who were affected. And then they redesigned the project. So now it was an underground mine. And then by the time it came to government, government also offered up collaboration. We signed a collaboration plan agreeing what the key principles were, what the different steps were throughout the process, what role they were going to have. And as a result of that then, we collaboratively drafted the assessment report, that portion about how the project was going to impact on them. We collaborated on the methodology of how we were going to assess the project impacts on the rights and title interests. And we came to consensus, and this is reflected in the assessment report. We all agreed that the measures to mitigate the impacts on the rights and title interests were satisfied, that we had done an adequate job at this EA stage, recognizing there are still a number of permits that were required where you get into more detail. And there was a commitment from those agencies, the Ministry of Mines, that they were also going to collaborate. So with that comfort that there was going to be ongoing collaboration even after the EA, the company was also committed to the collaboration. The province government had also offered up to the community, recognizing that if this project goes ahead, there are going to be impacts that even with an underground mind, you can't avoid all the impacts still. So recognizing that there were offset measures. So with all of our major minds, we offer up revenue sharing to the indigenous communities who are going to be impacted. So it's about a third of the royalty revenues, the mineral royalty that government gets. That is shared with the First Nations there. And the company also had a number of economic benefits that would flow to the community. Who are the representatives of the benefit sharing? Who are the representatives? Who are the representatives? The percentage is a third. What sounds are we talking about? It depends on the mind. I can't remember offhand how much that results in for this particular mind, but it can be substantial. Yeah. So that's part of the decision-making process, recognizing that the indigenous community, they make a decision on behalf of their community. Government, we make a decision based on our regulations, legislation, administrative law, and we hope that through this collaboration, we end up at the same place. So we got a letter of support, a formal letter written by the community saying that they supported the approval of this project at the EA stage because of all the things that had occurred and all the legally binding terms that were attached to the certificate. And then so as a result, on March 8th, 2017, an EA certificate was issued for this project. So that's our most recent success story of a consultation and combination process which all parties agreed was effective. So I'm just going to close with some, a little bit of context of this notion of reconciliation, both in BC and Canada. So following that height of decision 2004, government entered into this new relationship vision document, recognizing that there was a paradigm shift now that prior to 2004, there was no legal obligation in government to consult and accommodate Aboriginal groups before making land and resource decisions. And so that then inspired sort of this political vision of a new relationship, this government-to-government relationship that was based on respect, recognition and accommodation of Aboriginal rights and title. This also led to the signing of this transformative change accord that was to try to address there's a fairly significant gap between the socioeconomic conditions of our Aboriginal groups with non-Aboriginals in British Columbia and Canada generally. There is also a number of agreements that government has been signing with different groups. We have been talking with them and working with them over the years to find out what are more effective ways in consulting and engaging on these decisions? Are there ways that we can engage on the more strategic decisions rather than the individual transactions? Can we agree on general principles about how certain areas are going to be used so that all those little other decisions, we don't have to spend any time or much time on those? So we have a number of these strategic engagement agreements. And through those, there was sort of a policy that we were going to try to group up a number of the different Aboriginal groups so that you're not dealing with, so we don't need 203 different agreements to try to group them up together based on how they wanted to organize. And so in that context where there has been this grouping, there's capacity funding provided to those groups to help them process all these consultation referrals. We also have, with the treaty First Nations, those ones that have signed those modern treaties, the treaty provides a commitment that, sure, government, we can continue to make authorizing uses and dispositions of land and resources, but it's subject to us not denying the First Nation the reasonable opportunity to continue to hunt or gather within their treaty harvest areas. So there's this notion of reasonable opportunity that you can only go so far before there's no more reasonable opportunity for them to exercise their traditional activities. And so we've been negotiating agreements with those First Nations about, well, how do you determine what is a reasonable opportunity? And again, this notion of trying to understand at a sort of broader landscape level, what are the indicators that would support a reasonable harvest of particular species? Information sharing, setting up annual meetings and with that group of sharing information about natural resource management, the First Nation can share information about how they're harvesting, where they're harvesting, how their success rate is like. We have sort of an ability to monitor, so maybe sharing information of monitoring together and figuring out together what it is that we should be monitoring in the first place. And then for one of these groups, we have this notion of important harvest area, that in these areas that the First Nation identified as this is the important area where they hunt or fish or gather, there's certain significant decisions that we've identified in the list that those are the ones that we're going to consult on. Those are the ones that we're going to spend our time and energy getting into, you know, the information sharing, figuring out how to accommodate, but for the rest of the other decisions, the transactional ones, we can let those go. So this is a way to be more efficient and try to be more strategic. Here's a number of other revenue sharing agreements the province has with the indigenous groups. So we share revenues on forestry, mining, we talked about resorts, and also clean energy initiatives. We also have reconciliation agreements, which can sort of cover a broader range of things, including how we can consult. So one of them, I know there's some discussion of land use plans. So there's one where government work together with the Aboriginal group, and sort of determined, you know, from a landscape basis throughout their territory, areas that were suitable for different activities, including certain areas that were going to be no-go zones. And because government was part of that process, you know, we could balance a different interest that we were aware of, and we could also use legal measures to carve out those areas of no-go zones so that it would be taken out of sort of, you know, the land registry, or there'd be certain notations put on it at a time. So that's another example of trying to be more strategic, and that's so decisions we make after that we can look at what did the land use plan say about this kind of activity here. So finally, I also wanted to paint a bigger picture of what's going on in Canada. We have just recently gone through a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Canada, similar to other Commonwealth countries, there was a time in our history where the children of Indigenous communities were taken from their homes and they were required to attend these schools run by churches and government, and they were prohibited from speaking their own language, practicing their own culture. There were abuses that occurred, and so through this Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 2007 to 2015, there was sort of this nationwide effort to make sure all Canadians knew of this history, and we were all part of this storytelling effort to understand, because for a long time, a lot of people were not aware that this was occurring. The last residential school closed, I think in the 1970s, 80s, so it's not that long ago, and the legacy of that, we still continue to see how that continues to have significant impacts on our Indigenous peoples. So there's a lot of recommendations that came out from this Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and I think that has shifted our national consciousness around these issues as well as judges are paying a lot more attention to how historic government policies may have affected these communities and may also affect their ability to prove out rights and title if maybe they haven't been there for a certain number of years because of their relocation or whatnot. So there's more emphasis, governments are paying more attention to it in recent elections. We're hearing more and more of this notion of reconciliation and Indigenous issues have increased in profile, I would say, for a lot of Canadians. And in 2016, the federal government, they announced their full support for the United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We were one of, I think, three countries in the world who did not sign onto it originally and then said that, well, we would sign onto it, but we really, we had some significant concerns about a few key provisions about free part and informed consent. But now the government, we have removed those qualifications placed by previous government, and they've also recently announced that there's going to be this federal working group of ministers to review all the laws and policies related to Indigenous peoples. They're going to run this review with the objective to ensure that the Crown is meeting its constitutional obligations, including adhering to the UN Declaration of Indigenous Peoples, and to support the implementation of this Truth and Reconciliation Commission, their recommendations. So we'll see where the federal government land on this, but that's fairly significant. There was a discussion yesterday about, you know, let's not touch the laws, but here we have a government saying, well, let's look at our laws, let's see what needs to change. And then finally, actually, well, Kaiser Rezmus and us, we were in Montreal, we went to our conference and made this announcement about the conclusion of this expert panel report that was reviewing the environmental assessment process. They had gone across the country to hear different concerns and complaints about how our EA process was being run, and there's a large emphasis about Indigenous communities and their meaningful participation in these processes. So that panel made a number of recommendations about how Indigenous communities could be more included at all stages of the EA in accordance with their own laws and customs, so we're waiting to see how that's going to translate into concrete measures. So, with that, text, I might get.


A man after my own heart. I can think of no greater gift than the gift of chapstick. Maybe a puppy. I also want to talk about how cute this is. I could probably put it on noodle. He loved it. Did you see that? He freaked out. I'm sure anyone watching this has probably brushed their teeth at some point in the past 48 hours. I'm hoping. Okay, quick. Adam, say something to me. What? That is actually when I learned in my childhood that everything is a lie. Hi, my name is Jonathan. This is noodle and this is tools of the trade. The show where we explore the everyday tools that everyday entrepreneurs need to succeed. And today's episode is featuring John J. Badien, who you may know as a visual arts expert who has worked on big Hollywood movies like The Grand Budapest Hotel, but he's absolutely marvelously talented and within his success as a visual effects master, he decided to direct his own film called Rockaway. And it is an incredible film. It's a huge transition from his career although they're technically in the same industry to go from visual effects and visual manipulation to being an actual director. There's such a huge shift there. I mean, anything in entertainment is a huge risk, right? People who go into entertainment do it because they love it and they can't see themselves doing anything else. So I really, really appreciate this man and the way that he's taken his career and really, really owned it. John, if you're watching this, noodle is available for castings and he can play many roles like stagnant turtle or sentient potato, you know, or woman number four, right? Whatever you need. Whatever you need him to be, he can be. So John, Hollywood, whoever's watching, noodle is ready for the spotlight. I am too, but that's, you know, neither here nor there. So we're gonna get into this box. Okay, the very first thing that is in this that I have to bring out is a value-sized bag of ring pops. I think this must speak too. I mean, I do love that his direct world debut is a coming-of-age story and I can imagine that as you're growing up, this very well may be one of your favorite things. I know I always had a pension for fruit by the foot. It was not a foot. It was not even, you know, three feet or something. It was a very strange amount of inches that did not actually equate to a foot in any capacity. That is actually when I learned in my childhood that everything is a lie. And I turned out just fine. Did you guys see enough? The Jennifer Lopez movie? Sorry, spoiler alert. If you haven't seen the movie and you want to literally stop watching this video. At the end of enough, starring Jennifer Lopez, she learns that she's had enough and she has to defeat her abusive husband. So what she does is she teaches herself boxing. When she takes all of her fancy diamonds that her abusive husband bought her, she puts them on her fingers and she puts boxing tape over it so that when she beats him up and she slaps him, she's got all these rings on her fingers. And I can imagine that that's the kind of thing that John was thinking of when he put this in his box. I do not know if John is the single greatest ring pop fan, but I love the idea that he's having a stressful day or something and he's just really looking for a new piece of candy. Okay, the next thing we have in the box is a small shoe. We thought this possibly could be a metaphor for life and for taking chances, but in reality, it is literally just because he loves Converse. I also want to talk about how cute this is. I could probably put it on noodle. No, I can't even put it on noodle. It's too small. It is just truly the smallest shoe I've ever seen and it's just a thrill. And I think when I see a small shoe like this, it just makes me think of all the different possibilities. The next thing we have, a man after my own heart. Noodle has chapstick. It's a dog chapstick he put on his nose for dryness. But everyone in the world should keep at least two of these on them at all times. Specifically because if you have one chapstick on you, it will disappear. That's the rule of chapstick. Now, these are important for so many reasons, not just because it's classic cherry and I love classic, but it's because this man has to network. He has to meet people. He has to be on set. He has to impress people. He has to try and get funding. Could you imagine trying to do that with crusty lips? Oh, you might have to cut. I think I'm gonna vomit. I think I'm gonna be sick, but chapstick is so important. Whether you are going out on a business deal and you just feel like you've gotta be ready and you can get tinted chapsticks too. I don't know if you were just looking to kill it with a rouge or something, but you can absolutely do that. I accidentally did that one time.  And it just looked like I put lipstick on. So I went to work and they were like, oh. You know, it's 2018.  But I was not intentional. I can think of no greater gift than the gift of chapstick. Maybe money, maybe a puppy, maybe like a car, a computer. Really nice headphones. Oh, a house. A house plant. Actually, there's quite a lot. There's quite a lot of peasants you could get that are more impactful than chapstick, but it's still awesome. How you doing, buddy? We always like to check in with Noodle in the middle of these. He does a lot of hard work. He actually puts all the boxes together. He decorated this himself. He did design the stickers. And one day we will reach out to an entrepreneur who makes dog products and we'll just shower him with them. The next item in the box is, is this a really old cell phone? Okay, I think he said phone and we didn't want to buy an iPhone for $1,200. So we bought this. Okay, I get that. This makes perfect sense now. So this, obviously this, you know, this particular phone may not be the, you know, the most modern. This might be a Noodle phone. He loved it. Did you see that? He freaked out. He absolutely loved that phone. Noodle, you can keep that. Saying in communication with people, he is in the entertainment business. He's a director, right? He filmed a movie. He has to be in constant contact with PAs, with actors, with assistants, with anyone, with anyone involved in the production. And anyone who owns a small business can attest to the fact that there are so many moving parts. There are so many moving pieces and there are so many people that help make these things come to reality. However, if you are a business owner in today's day and age and you bust out this, you may send some strange messages to your client. And I don't mean text messages because you literally cannot text on this phone. Okay, the next item we have in here is, oh my God, woo, this is a charcoal toothbrush. Oh my God, there's five in here? Are these disposable? You guys, oh my God, this is crazy. So, personal hygiene, hugely important, no matter what you're doing. I'm sure anyone watching this has probably brushed their teeth at some point in the past 48 hours, or at least, I'm hoping. And if we're lucky, 24 hours, and if we're really lucky, 12. I also literally did not know they made this. I knew they made charcoal toothpaste. I did not know they made charcoal toothbrushes. There are two things about this that I think speak to John and they speak to every entrepreneur. Taking care of yourself is so important. If you are gonna go see a client, you're gonna be in a movie set, gotta brush your teeth, gotta put deodorant on, gotta shower, gotta wash your face, gotta do it all. And if you don't, you're great. Or you're like me on Tuesdays because I have therapy in the mornings and I don't have time to shower. Noodle, what do you think? Again, he's completely riveted. Noodle has four teeth in his mouth. I have absolutely no idea where to brush, but I'm gonna do this. You ready to watch Noodle? And that's brushing Noodle's teeth. That's as close as we get to that. Thank you so much for watching. I adopted him about three and a half years ago and he had 12 dead teeth in his mouth and I rent them all out. And I said to the vet, I was like, can I keep them and make a necklace out of them? And she was like, no, rude. The final item in the John J. Bedayan box is I hate that I have to give these boxes away. These are really nice headphones and I can see these being important for a billion reasons. I'm going to take them out because I'm so excited to see what they look like. Oh my word. Ooh, these are like door knocker headphones. I love when they cover your whole ear. Wait, I can't hear a thing, right, ready? Okay, quick, Adam, say something to me. What? Are you speaking to me? Another thing that I love about these headphones is I feel like a lot of people really love music, podcasts, books on tape. I know my dad just sent me like finance for millennials to listen to on tape. And I just like, I am so sorry, that's not gonna happen. But if I had these headphones, I could. So I think this is a really awesome item for every business owner to have or every person to have. You gotta have headphones. Whether you like listening to stories, you like listening to music, or you like listening to podcasts, like True Crime, horrible podcasts like I do about horrible murders. If you lived in the 1970s, I just have to know how. How? If you lived in California in the 1970s, there was 100% chance that you were murdered. Anyway, John, I think these are fabulous. Wow, I'm screaming. Now I get to tell that I'm just really yelling. These are bold. Obviously the color of these are really bold, but these are sturdy. And I can bet these are awesome to use on set. I bet when he's listening to takes, I bet when he's pulling stuff from different cuts, this is a really incredible piece of equipment to have. And then he can use the same thing on his commute home or he can use the same thing to tune people out or to keep himself focused when he needs to. Noodle is not an entrepreneur and he has four pairs of these. And it's so strange because I did not buy them for him. I don't know where he got them. Thank you guys so much for watching this week's episode of Tools of the Trade, featuring a box curated by John J. Bedayan. I don't know about you guys, but I learned an absolute ton about him, about the entertainment industry, about what it really takes to be a successful entrepreneur in the entertainment business. Thank you so much for watching this video. If you enjoyed this, please like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We are putting out video content just like this. All the time, please follow us on Instagram where we also put content just like this. And Noodle and I will see, yeah, man, talk about you. We will see you next time for a whole new box with my diamonds. Thank you so much for watching. Please make sure to subscribe on YouTube if you did like watching this video and be sure to tune in next time.


Hello, everyone. Welcome to another Product School fireside chat. I'm very excited to be joined today by Bessel, who is the CEO and co-founder at User Interviews. Bessel, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. I'd love to just dive right in. I would love to know more about your personal story. How did you get started in the tech industry? Yeah, definitely. So, when I was a senior in college, I interned at a startup. I was at Duke in Durham, North Carolina, and there was a small company there. It was one of the first ones in the area to raise money. I just remember it being very exciting and fast-moving, and like a really good culture and community. So, I always had the idea like, oh, this would be something that would be fun to work on again in the future. Then I worked in consulting for a year, and then I actually went to law school. Then when I was in law school, my co-founders and I started a completely different company that was kind of a failure, and then out of that, we've kind of pivoted and turned into user interviews. So, I definitely took a bit of a scenic group to starting user interviews, but I think from early on, I was interested in tech. It's one of those interesting things how so many successful founders have experienced failure early on. Was there anything that was like your main takeaway from having something that failed that helped you make your next project successful? Yeah, I mean, very meta, because the company's user interview, our current company is user interviews, which really helps people find users and talk to users and do user research. So, in a very meta perspective, that first company, we didn't do any user research. We didn't talk to customers. I think that's part of the reason that it failed. So, as we were trying to save that company or pivot, we started doing all of that user research and became really passionate about it. So, number one takeaway is stay close to your customers and our potential customers and really try to understand what their pain points are. I don't imagine that you know all the answers and that if you don't talk to them, you can just build it and then they'll come. That's just not the way it works. Yeah, it's so interesting how you became successful by filling the need that you had in your first company. Yeah, so that's so meta, so interesting. So, well, you've already started touching on this a little bit. What is the main problem that you're trying to solve or rather, why is it such a big problem that these companies that need to be user focused just getting in touch with their users? Yeah, in some ways the problem is almost too simple, right? We think that every company is trying to understand their users. I think everyone agrees on that and I think that everyone knows one of the best ways to understand any person, whether it's a potential client or a friend is to talk to them and listen to them. But historically, when you kind of look at the space, it's just taken a really, really long time and there's been a lot of friction to finding these users and talking to them. It's not easy to just, you can't just raise your hand and 10 people will be coming into your office. So we believe that the values there and most people understand the value and the desire is there, but there's just been a lot of friction. So that's what we're trying to do is take away the time, take away the friction and make it super easy to talk to the users or prospective users. And how do you see the user research industry as having changed over the most recent years? Because it seems like there's been a real uptick in people adopting it as like I think they desperately need to do. Yeah, no, definitely. We've seen a massive change. Just like one aside, what we do just in case people don't know is we focus on finding users for user research studies, any type of research study. The big split there is if a company wants to talk to non-users or existing users and we have products for both, one that recruits non-users and one that manages reaching out to existing users. So with that product, we basically work with companies doing all sorts of research. And over that time, we've kind of had front row seats to see kind of the industry change. So when we first started, companies didn't really have a lot of researchers. They would outsource it or kind of other people in the company would try to talk to users when it was convenient for them. We then started seeing kind of this in-housing of research. So there was a lot of content, there were a lot of people talking about being the first researcher. And then once they were in the companies, how do we evangelize the value of research and make it so that people realize we're here and that we can be valuable? So there was a lot of talk in the community about that. Over the next few years, I guess all that evangelism worked because there's just been huge explosions in the size of these research teams. And now all these researchers are trying to figure out, hey, how do we prioritize research? We're getting way too many asked. Everyone wants research for every decision they're making, which I think is awesome, obviously. So that's really what we've seen. It's like initially we're bringing research in-house, then once it became in-house, and once there's been more tools to help decrease the friction, the demand for the research is just skyrocketed. And so to build this solution that is obviously so necessary, how are your products and engineering teams organized? Like how do you fix that problem? Yeah, we're definitely kind of constantly iterating because we've been growing fast as an organization. So when you have two engineers versus when you have 20, it's just different. I'm sure as we continue to scale up, there'll be more changes, but right now we use a pod structure where there are five engineers on the pod. So one tech lead and two squads, which are pairs of engineers, then each one of those has a product manager and a product designer. And we found that kind of this size of five and kind of having people work on one problem in an iterative way over a long period of time has really been good because then the whole team gets close to those problems and they get close to the users and they know how to work together well. And how often do you drink your own champagne and do your own user research with your own user research tools? Yeah, we definitely do a lot of dog food in the product. So we do research all the time. Our product team likes to do kind of continuous discovery and we're actually really excited. We just brought in our first VP of user research. So she's really helping to look across the company, figure out what decisions need to be made and when we should use user research and how user research can help that. Because we think of user research as a tool that just helps you make better decisions. So we do it a lot. We use our own product a lot. Yeah, that's quite a meta role for her where she's like the VP of user research, a user research company. That must be quite the head spinner at dinner parties. Yeah, because they always help a user researcher doing user research with user researchers about user interviews. So there's a lot of metanus, which I think also makes it fun. Yeah, it's the kind of like the whimsy of the job, I guess. Yeah, and I think it's fun for the clients too that we're doing the research with because they're used to being on the other side of the table, right? They're used to being the one asking questions. I remember one time very early on when I just started and was doing research, I was like doing research with the head of this fast-growing startup or the head of research of this fast-growing startup. And at the end, she was like, okay, all of your questions had bias. You did all of this wrong.  So I like, I went through the research session that she basically just coached me on it. So I think it's fun for them too. Yeah, amazing. So this month at Product School, we're focusing on leadership and what it takes to be a good leader, how you can sort of achieve that next level of authority, how it changes your perspective, all that good stuff. So you've got sort of the main title of CEO as well as co-founder. What does it mean to you to be a CEO? Because I feel like it's quite a weighty title with a lot of expectations and a lot of maybe misconceptions about it. So what does it mean for you? Yeah, me and my co-founders, we were all relatively young when we started this. So we don't have it so much, hey, what does it mean to not be a co-founder? We don't have the same amount of experience that most people do. But I think probably the major thing is you realize, if there's a problem or something not working, like you can't just not think about it and assume someone else will fix it. Like it's important for you to kind of bubble those things up to the top. When I think about kind of like what a CEO does, there's a few different responsibilities. First is kind of like setting strategy and vision, obviously hiring and recruiting a great team and then managing the team that you've hired and is on the team. Helping the fundraise, obviously, if you're a venture-backed company, it takes a lot of time and the bigger you get, the more amount of your time is talking to investors and fundraising and managing those relationships. And then you also want to communicate out the vision and strategy that you've helped build and you want to make sure that you're visible to clients and partners. So a lot of communication, a lot of quick decisions and you're communicating with a lot of different stakeholders and a lot of different people within the company. So you kind of have a unique view there. What's the most fun part of the job for you? What's the bit you enjoy the most?  That's obviously great. And then once they're on the team, you know, watching them succeed, being able to see them move up or gather new responsibilities, that's fun. And I do like kind of the more, you know, digging into the data probably a little bit more than most EOs and trying to come up with different insights or different strategies. And then kind of the final thing is obviously like just getting positive feedback from customers and the people that are actually using the product is always feels great. Definitely, I can definitely imagine that. So what would you say are the most important skills specifically for a CEO to have? Yeah, I think you definitely need to be a good communicator and that's something, you know, I'm trying to constantly work on and become better and that's good in both the way you communicate but also realizing the cadence and how often you should communicate and the different channels you should communicate. So that's super important. I do think, especially if you want to be part of like a fast growing startup, like you do need to just have a good work ethic, like it's not a normal job, it's a very unique job. And I think, you know, one thing that I think is always kind of, one thing that I am kind of proud of is I do think I'm good and my co-founders are good at being able to listen to people and change our minds if we find that there's new data or new insights that we didn't know before. We don't always think we have the right answer. So being able to have a team that you respect and that you don't pull rank on and that if they bring something to you, you think it's like as valid as something you might have brought is, I think, necessary as you scale. That's something interesting I picked up on there was you mentioned pulling rank. Now everyone has their own leadership style. Would you say yours is more like hands-on digging in or are you more like willing to delegate? A little bit of both. I think I really like to be aware of what's going on and I definitely have an instinct which I probably could be a little bit better about of just like jumping into the data or going and trying to understand something myself just because I like being close to the customers and close to the problem. And because that's what I used to do when there wasn't a big team. So with that being said, I do think that I really do try to allow my team to make their own decisions and to not micromanage, although I do like to definitely understand what's happening. Yeah. And I think there's definitely like a good nuance to be found between like hands-on and micromanager. Most of the people that we are lucky enough to talk to on the firesides, they found that balance. So that's what it's good to do. It's always kind of recalibrating because as the team grows, it's the job changes so often. Absolutely. That was actually gonna be my very next question. You totally read my mind.  Yeah, definitely. I think one thing is just at a very basic level when there's 10 people on the team, like I talked with everybody probably almost at least once a week. Some people more at the least, maybe like once every two weeks, right? So you didn't need to have as much structure with your communication. And you also didn't need to be as deliberate with communication because you just had a stronger relationship with everybody on the team because you're talking with them more. Now that we're over 70 people, there's different layers and there's just, you know, just it's mathematically impossible for me to talk to everybody that much. So sometimes that means, hey, stuff won't happen naturally. You need to build in structures. You need to build in times where you communicate this. And then also sometimes, you know, when you're talking with people, you need to realize I might not talk to this person again for a few weeks. So let's make sure that we're careful. I'm careful with what I say or that we're deliberate with what we're saying. So that's been one thing that, you know, when you're first starting, you don't think you need to change. You're like, okay, I'm just gonna be natural. This is who I am. And then as the company gets bigger, you just need to think a lot more about that structure and that communication cadence. And I guess another thing that tends to happen a lot when companies start getting bigger is that you have to start thinking more consciously about building the culture. Because when you've got a room of 10 people, the culture is the chemistry that exists between those 10 people and you don't really need to work at it too hard. So is that something that you're having to consciously build and really think about is like the culture of your company and how do you go about that? Yeah, definitely. Especially because we're a fully remote company and have always been fully remote. We've always had to be a little bit more deliberate about building time for interpersonal relationships, which I think is very important for culture because you're just gonna feel a lot more comfortable asking people questions, you know, just digging in, pinging people when you're not sure what's going on. So being able to build that comfort, it just wasn't gonna happen naturally because we're fully remote. So we have a lot of different kind of structured meetings that are almost, they're structured unstructured meetings where there are times on the calendar where people can just hang out, don't need to talk about work. And then we also have structured meetings for, hey, this is when we share our OKRs. This is like a AMA. This is a time where we show what we've released in the product recently. So you have to build in all of these structures so that people feel close and connected over time. Yeah, especially in a remote setting, it always reminds me of like going back to university when you arrive in your first two weeks and you don't know anyone and it's just a bit chaotic. So you have to like organize events to get to know everyone. It's like kind of structured, organized fun just to be able to like meet face to face. So that's what it always reminds me of. I don't know if that was ever- I think that's 100% right. That like, yeah, that's like a really good analogy. Yeah, the organized fun that we all started appreciating much more after the pandemic. So if you had to, oh, leadership's a big topic and it's difficult to summarize, but what would you say is the main characteristic that really makes for a great leader? Yeah, and I will say like, I think there are many different types of good leaders, right? And I think, you know, some are in vogue while others are out of vogue. I think like some of the best leaders of all time, probably, you know, we would frown on the way they were leaders. And that's just, you know, not the type of leader I am, but I think we should acknowledge that there's different types of leadership. But for me, I think some of like the marks of a good leader are, you know, being able to change their mind, being able to admit when they were long, being able to, you know, there are tough decisions that need to be made, being able to make kind of trade-offs between long-term and short-term. And it's not always you wanna choose the long-term, but sometimes you do and you need to figure out that right trade-off. And I think kind of like the marks of it are, you know, you have a team that's retentive and high-performing and it feels independent and feels empowered to take bets and to make decisions themselves. So I think those are like the main marks, like trying to find that balance between pushing forward the team, but also letting the team go out and like pull you forward. Absolutely. And are there any skills or characteristics that you're looking to get better at or any areas of leadership that you would personally like to improve on? Yeah. Once again, I think like communication is constantly, you know, something you can never be great at. And I think as the company gets bigger, figuring out where to delegate exactly and where not to delegate, those are the two that you're kind of constantly doing as you get, as the company gets larger. And then I think another thing as like a leader of a growing company that you don't think of as much when it's smaller is more organizational design. So like, how are the departments organized? How do they interact with each other? And what are the structures for that? Is something that, you know, now that we're at this stage, I'm trying to try to read more about and learn a little bit more about. We've actually sort of on that topic, we've got an interesting question from Adam on LinkedIn who wants to know, and he says, interested to understand how you decided which roles to hire for as you scaled from 10 to 70. Obviously you don't have the budget to hire every role under the sun. So how do you prioritize which roles to hire for? Yeah, I think one kind of like sideways answer to this question is the one thing you notice is that the roles self reinforce each other. So a lot of it is balanced because let's say you hire like five people, then you also need someone like an HR or if you have more product managers, then you need more data scientists or user researchers so they can be better at their job. And you start to realize, oh, like every time I hire this person, what pressure does it do on the other departments that help support that person or that person's supposed to support? So it's very easy to get into the cycle where the more you hire, you need to keep hiring more people. But at the end of the day, you have that strategy, right? You have to figure out, okay, like this is our goals. So therefore we need this many salespeople to hit that. Therefore we need this many leads. So then you need a marketing team of this size and then on the product side, like we have this many engineers. So therefore we need this many PMs, this many designers and you need to figure out how they all interact. So that's the most probably like important thing I've learned as a scale of the team is that the way to think about it is not to think like, oh, do I hire this department or this department? It's okay, hiring this person, what does that do to the whole ecosystem and to the whole company? It's interesting that you said you saw base it on the goals that you want to achieve. So I feel sometimes when I've spoken to hiring managers in the past who say that their C-suite is focused on output rather than outcomes. So they say, we want to do this, this and this. So we need to hire these people to do it. We're not really thinking, okay, but what's that going to achieve? Like we need to base it on the outcome. So it's just something interesting that, for example. That's idealized. I don't want to pretend that I'm perfect at that. Like sometimes it's hard to say, this person leads to this, but at least that's like a framework you can try to lay back on. But sometimes you do have to go with your intuition or with what your VP's tell you they need. So it's definitely not perfect. Of course. Well, everyone's got their own learning curves for sure. Yeah, definitely. So what are some of the things that you're the most interested in learning about these days? It doesn't have to be related to leadership. Like what are some of the things that most interest you? Yeah, so I'm always interested in just saying like macro trends and tech and startups and what that might mean for our company, but also just the space in general. And then from a more like, hey, this is how I can become a better leader. It is more of that organizational design. And part of that's learning through reading. A lot of that's learning through talking to peers or talking to other founders at later stage startups to see how they do it. So having that peer group's been very useful. And just another question. So circling back to hiring. I'm not sure how involved you are in the hiring process now that you're starting to scale a bit more. But when you were interviewing people to come and join you in the early days, what were some of the characteristics that you looked for just in general from the people you were bringing on to the team? Yeah, I mean, definitely out of startup you need like people who are like organized and can manage multiple priorities at once. And that also are like self starters. And then it obviously depends on the role. There's like other skills you look for. But people who have shown like initiative either in previous roles or life outside of roles like they have a side project or they're curious about this one thing and spend a lot of time like learning or working on it. That always like shines to me. Like, oh, that's gonna be a great member of the team. Cause they've shown that they can like prioritize things and also like be a self starter. They don't need someone to tell them what to do. Yeah, I guess in startups you need sort of almost as many entrepreneurs in the room as possible when you build something like that. Yeah, so when you're building your teams how much did you have to consider like the small thing not the small things but the softer things like people's personalities how people would sort of like mesh together the culture. Was that ever a consideration or was it more about the resume, their experience? Like how did you find the balance between those two things? Yeah, I mean, there is this concept of like, we want culture ads not culture fit. So you don't wanna just have like everyone who's like around a room looking at each other but there are some things that you try to kind of stay away from, right? You don't want people who seem like overly critical or negative about other people that they're working with or who just or who don't seem like to have some of those positive traits I mentioned previously. So like there is definitely a reason to have kind of these more like behavioral soft skilled interviews for sure but at the same time you wanna make sure that you're like taking away the biases that you have so that you're kind of like continuing to expand the team and the diversity of the team. But it is important to make sure that you're not gonna have someone who is kind of continuously bringing down morale across the team. I remember we asked that same question of I think it was Yareeva Dan I think from Google, maybe I'm wrong. And when we asked him that question he just said, oh, I have a very strong no jerks policy. It was the fantastic answer. It doesn't get better than that. So obviously, you've not just scaled your company but you've also scaled as a leader in your career. What were some of the major changes for you as you moved more into a position of authority like as a CEO and a co-founder? Yeah, I'd love for you to have this safe interview with people on my team to see if it matches. But for me, definitely delegating more, right? When it's just you and the co-founders, I'm doing every sale, we're doing every ops thing. My co-founders, CTO is building everything. So you have to be able to let go of these things that are hard to let go. And I think over the past few years there have been things that I probably have held on to longer than I should have. So that's been the biggest thing. And then the other thing is kind of like, you know, there's things that happen naturally when you're small and you need to kind of be always looking ahead to see like, are we taking this for granted? And what can we do to make sure that we don't wait too long to fix it? You want to get ahead of those problems over time. And we were coming up to our last few minutes now. So I just want to do a little bit more of a deep dive into user research and user interviews. If there's a company that somehow has managed to get by so far without doing much user research and they're suddenly realizing, oh my God, there's this huge thing that we just haven't been doing enough of. How would you suggest that they start from zero with their user research? Maybe even with your tools. Yeah, so I think our tools specifically are like the very self-serve they're made for people to just come in and launch without a ton of background. So we just try to really focus on finding the right user for you really fast. So easy to use. People definitely use this just for single projects initially all the time and low commitment. But I think the number one thing I would do if I'm trying, if I realize, hey, we're not doing enough user research of the team is to really think through, given the audience here, assuming we're talking about product teams, like really try to like map out what the product process is like, hey, this is when we set goals. This is when we choose what we're building. Like, I don't know what the iteration processes different companies have different ways. But if you really like map out that process, I think you'll find times where, hey, a decision is made here, a decision is made here, the decision is made here. And like, this is the type of decision where analytics would be super useful. Or this is the type of decision where, hey, we probably should talk to somebody and then you can kind of end up putting that research into your process. You want it to feel a lot more natural. And you also want research to feel a lot smaller. You don't want it to be like a very big, scary project that you have to plan for two months and it's gonna cost thousands of dollars. You want to just be like, hey, at the end of the day, research is asking someone a question. And this is a time where I'll have a question. I'm just gonna do it very quick, and not spend that much money, not spend that much time. And then you start building up that muscle. I'm excited about that. Start slow and build your way up for sure. Yeah, good. So unfortunately, we are running out of time. I'm watching the minutes tick away, unfortunately. I just have one last question before I'll let you get back to your very busy day, I imagine. What advice would you give to your younger self to help you go further, be more successful, be a better leader, all that good stuff? Yeah, I think one, find a peer group. The more peers you can talk with or bounce questions off the better. I found that I get, me personally, like peers are sometimes more helpful than mentors. So finding a peer group's been really important. And then thinking bigger, I think a lot of people kind of underestimate how big their companies could be at the beginning. And I think really trying to think about that vision and make sure that then the small decisions you're making early on are pointing in the right direction. And then I think I saw a quote that was like, most decisions should be made faster, but the biggest decision should be made slower. So trying to think like, hey, this is a decision where I really need to get to like full consensus and do a lot of research. Or it's like, it doesn't matter that much. And let's just like really focus on moving or on the flip side is this like a very large decision and let's take our time with it. So generally I would say like trying to make decisions faster. Absolutely fantastic advice. I hope you will write that down, you at home. Great advice to take away. So that was my very last question. Basil, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure to have you. Awesome, thank you for having me.  And we will see you in the next fireside chat. Bye.


The DSS has released the remaining two aides of Sunday, who will have been in custody since July 1. They are Jamio Nua, Uye Tungi and Amudat Habibat Babatunde Lady Kay. The detainees, Loya, Pelumi, Ola Jengbesi confirmed their release. The matter is still a subject of litigation and we shall have no comment further on this for now. So you get notified about fresh news updates.