Welcome to the Adaptive Mindset. I'm Brett Gallant, cybersecurity thought leader and founder of Adaptive Office Solutions. Here, we don't just talk tech, we unlock the strategies, stories, and mindset shifts you need to stay secure, lead boldly, and thrive in a digital world. Let's get started. Welcome back to the Adaptive Mindset. Today's episode, I'm very pleased to have with me Alex Gorelik. Alex is an operator, educator, and entrepreneur working across two distinct fields, residential cleaning and land surveying. He is building Squeakly, a modern cleaning company in Victoria, BC, while also advancing operations with Polaris Land Surveying and helping the public better understand property boundaries and surveying concepts. Alex focuses on consistency, practical structure, and using technology in ways that generally support day-to-day work. He shares what he learned so others can avoid the mistakes he made along Pleasure to be here. Yes, this is great to have you. We Yeah, we met in person, which is very I know, it was exciting. We were both at a at an event in Kelowna, and it was a pretty exciting way Yeah. So Alex, let's dig in a bit. Tell people a little bit about yourself. What's Oh, as you introduced me, thank you for this. I'm building in two different industries, completely different, which is fascinating and also very exciting. I'm a land surveyor by trade. I have a formal education in land serving. I'm an immigrant. I came from Russia 170 years ago, and I got my education from there. But since then, I got into land serving in Canada, and I was commissioned in three provinces, actually, in Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan. Right now, I'm just Alberta and British Columbia. and this is really my life, land serving. However, I'm very much business oriented and I really love entrepreneurship and building stuff. So I am also building a residential cleaning company together with my wife. It's our family business. And I'm a partner in land surveying firm and involved in building that side of things as well. So I'm busy with the building Along the way, have you had pivotal moments where you had to shift your mindset and change things that you Well, daily, Brett. Yeah, yeah. It's not true for all of us. Yeah, you don't ever You don't ever rest on something. You always shift. I actually read a quote in a book today that if it's a win or a loss, you celebrate for or or cry for that matter for 24 hours and then you forget about it and then you move forward. For me the mindset shift is about intention and I know that for years and years and years of my life I haven't been really intentional and right now this is all sinking in and I don't like this analogy, but it's a puzzle analogy, right? The pieces coming together in my head and I understand what needs to be done in order to achieve something. So, if you really want something, it's not just a wish. You have to have things in place to achieve that. Yeah. And Intention is the key. Well, it's just one bite at a time as you go through that. What are some obvious ways that you've set yourself up for success like that every day? Is it a daily or a weekly rhythm that It's both. It's daily, it's weekly, it's monthly, it's yearly, it's annual as well. Personally, myself, I like to take short chunks. It's the scheduling. It's essentially scheduling and planning for me. I typically go one or two weeks at a time. I plan them out and make sure my calendar is as full as possibly can be. And if it's not full, I block the time for certain things that can happen on those days. And every Every night, I plan my next day. And the trick is to do the most important thing the first thing in the morning. You know what you need to do. You get up, you go to your computer, and you just do it. before. In fact, my emails, I have multiple emails and I don't check them very often. I, I don't have them delegated yet, unfortunately, but, uh, I do not check my emails until about 11 o'clock in the morning. Wow. Was that, is that something new that you would, uh, It's It's fairly new. I came from, uh, Tim Ferriss' book, 4-Hour Workweek, and I started implementing it. It's very hard because my squiggly email needs to be attended sometimes a little bit more frequently. I know that I have tools in place. I have an outer response. So if it's very important, people know the ways how to get hold of somebody. It's not just me, right? But for Polaris, for my land surveying company, I'm pretty strict with when I check my emails. It's twice a day. I do have channels for people that really need to get ahold of me to get ahold of me. Yeah. And, and that's, and that's about it. I can't really turn it off because I'm operating in an environment when I have field crews in the field and then they do need support and they, I can't respond in four hours. So, so. I have channels for them to reach out to me. However, emails, there's no such thing as a land survey and emergency. So it does not exist. If somebody cannot Yeah, I know 100%. But other other people's perceptions might in might, they may seem that it's an emergency, but it's probably They do think it's an emergency. However, that's where my that's why I love educating people on land surveying matters and I started doing it not that long ago on Instagram and I quite enjoy it. I'm tweaking as I go and I'm trying to make it more user-friendly and appealing. I hope it's working, but I do produce land surveying and litigation reels when I explain to public what's going on in land surveying, because it's such a I really do enjoy it. So for me, this is part of education, Brad, when you just tell people, listen, there's no such thing. You're not going to fix a problem in three hours. Sometimes it's Yeah, I think that there's probably some truth to that in all aspects. I want to center around something for a minute. Sure. You're pretty unique, dude. You know, you operate. Thank you. No, no, it's true. Like you're operating in two very different worlds, land serving and residential cleaning. OK, correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How did that happen? What's the story behind building in Thank you. Thank you for this question. I would be happy to talk about this. This is something I really like talking about. So I'm a land surveyor by trade. I have a formal education. I serve at For my entire life, I got into university when I was 16, and that was for serving, and I'm serving since then. However, we always had something going on as a family. And back in the day, we had a couple of short-term rentals going on. And then we took over another short rental for our friends. So we had three short-term rentals going on, and we were looking for cleaners to clean those places. And we had a cleaning company and then we had some other individual cleaners and it just did not work. It was not consistent. And me being me, I was sitting down with my wife and said, you know what, let's just radically fix that problem. Let's just start a cleaning company and just do it. And she was not a big fan of it, and she wasn't a big fan of it for the longest. Now we're on the same page. But we started a cleaning company, but we only cater to Airbnbs. And we only did, well, short-term rentals, anything. Verbose, Airbnbs, whatever short-term, right? And we, I believe in niches. I believe in going really narrow into things instead of just spreading yourself wide and offering residential, commercial, everything. No, I don't do that. So we're really focused on one thing. And we went for it and we did it for a little bit and we started to get really busy. We incorporated in April and just before summer and it was getting really busy. And then in November, news broke out that British Columbia is shutting down Airbnbs as a whole, really. And the entire downtown of Victoria wouldn't be allowed to run Airbnbs. Wow. Which was very interesting because it's, it's kinda, it was a big blow Brett I'll No, it was November, 2023. Okay. Sorry. I missed that. Yeah. So starting, we started in April, 2023. And, uh, And we decided to, well, what are we going to do is either we're going to shut down because we're losing 80% of our clients. Uh, really? Yeah. Because you can only operate if it's in your house and certain areas. Uh, but if it's a apartment building, you can't, so we're losing. We were losing 80% of our clients and we decided, okay, well, what do we do? And we decided to pivot it into residential cleaning. And I thought it would be easier than that, but no, no, building business in residential cleaning is not easy and we're fully into it now. And yeah, that's what it is. I don't do a lot of day-to-day brands and squiggly. I'm very high level visionary, if you will. I see things and we have a small team of people that we work with, like my wife, she's on the operations side and then we have other employees that basically move this thing forward, but building systems in the background is what I do with Squiggly. My most time I spend in land surveying, there's a lot to do here, but I Yeah especially when you're doing that and then there's other aspects of. Life the pop up that we want to schedule because we have to do the biggest thing is entrepreneurs we forget to carve out that me time that time where we can build our identity. And before we were talking, you were talking about how you're prepping for something special. So you find it funny that you said me time because literally this morning when I was journaling and I do journal every morning, I did say, I think I'm being very efficient and it's great, but I need to get my me time in there. And that's exactly the wording I used. So that's very funny that Well, I think everybody that's listening to this episode would say, I need more me time. I think it's a universal truth. Absolutely. Yeah. Whoever's listening. I mean, being productive feels great and accomplishing things feels absolutely But do not forget about that meantime, because what I, what I wanted to say about this, I love what I do genuinely love what I do. I, I really enjoy building my personal brand. I really enjoy it talking about Lanser and I really enjoy talking about, uh, building systems, cleaning business. I really enjoy doing all that. However, your fatigue is not going anywhere. Even if you love what you do, you will you will get to a point where you really need to reset and resets can be different. And I spoke about it not that long ago. Reset may be very minor change. It doesn't have to be two weeks vacation. However, you do need to, um, an hour. It can be even change in your routine. Yeah. I really went for a run out of the day and I, I typically don't think about too hard, so I take the same route every single time, just so I don't have to pre-plan, done. And I did change it the other day because it was snowing here, it was slushy, running that side of the road wasn't really great. And I changed that and I was like, oh, you know what? This is different. And you started thinking different. And even that can be a reset, like even small little change. But you have to be intentional I'm going after once we finish recording this episode. I'm going for an hour hike. And I'm going to You've been doing this. I saw you on Instagram. It's I even went last night, headlamp, went in the middle of the woods Yeah. Well, I do that too. I have a little like a harness with lights that I run in because I like being seen and it does different. It's helpful, isn't it? Yeah. It does different lights. So I'm in a Christmas spirit. I'm I'm red on on my chest and green on my back. So I'm running like a little Christmas tree around Creston Christmas cheer of having the me time. You Yeah, I actually might want to stay tuned. So, um. How did you like, how, what identity shift did you have to make from going from employee to operator to entrepreneur? Like, like there's, there's been a journey there. Like what, how's that I've been employed for the majority of my life. And, uh, I, been employed by different land surveying companies. And my last company in Calgary, just before I got my commission as a land surveyor in Alberta, I It was a very small company and the owner was very businessman. And I taught, he taught me a lot. I learned a lot from him. And, uh, I actually think I would be his business partner if things aligned there. Uh, but never happened. And that's when I started thinking about actually doing business. And then it was a oil and gas crisis as a. typically happens in Alberta once in a while and I was in an oil and gas related field and got an offer from Victoria and we decided to move. And it was a very, very big company and I don't like very, very big companies, just not me. I'm not a big corporate culture guy, even though this is what, I'm not trying to build a corporate culture, but in Squiggly, I'm building culture, I'm building a company, right? But being myself in somebody else's huge company, and it was a multinational company, 40,000 employees, this is not me. I couldn't do it, so I was there for about a year and a half, and at that point, I probably worked, I know how serving companies operate, and I just didn't want to be part of it. So I decided to start on my own. I started on my own, that was fairly briefly. And then just before COVID, I merged myself with Polaris, and I became partner at a fair, it's still a small company, Polaris is about 25, 30 employees, or contractors, I should say, we don't employ people. But yeah, So I became partner of that. And that wasn't enough for me, Brett. I thought I need something on my own. And that's how I end up in cleaning business and I think that's such a fascinating business to be I love service businesses. It's great. They're grounded. They certainly make money and it's a good business to be in. However, it's a lot harder than it seems from the outside. I don't like talking about competition because One of my favorite books is Blue Ocean, Red Ocean Strategy, where you build something that separates you from the market. But it's easier said than done. When you start, you're just a little small fish in this ocean and you need to build to the point where you're in the blue ocean. You have to swim. towards that blue ocean. And that part, which I feel like we're in right now, is is quite, quite challenging and quite interesting, for sure. It's, it's a very, my point is, like, we don't offer cleaning services, we offer people time, we sell time, because they're too busy to do it themselves. And you have to package it in a way that people buy it. And that's probably the challenging part of the business, because in this industry, it's very common to judge and pick by price. And the very first question we typically ask is, what's your hourly rate? And we don't have one. We don't have an hourly rate because I don't believe in hourly rates. We do flat fee and I think that's the way to go. It gives a clear understanding to a customer how much it's going to be. And you can predict your profit. And I think you will deliver better service by being transparent and knowing, okay, I'm going to charge you X amount of If it gets done in two hours, that's... It doesn't matter how Your house will be clean. This is our promise. We guarantee that if you're not happy, we have a 24-hour guarantee that we come back in 24 hours and fix it. And it doesn't matter. You can be unhappy about whatever things. And obviously, we don't strive for unhappiness. Obviously, we know that we can deliver. But, you know, things happen. And then in that we're different. There's a lot of companies, majority of companies in Victoria charge by hour. And I think this is our number one step and in service industries in general. And if I, if I may to give an advice to whoever's listening, if you are in service industry, the more Oh, yeah. Like you said, the niches, you know, the and differentiate yourself like not. I don't think a lot of people are doing that by pricing by objective in No, not really. There's a lot of hourly charges, but it's when you price yourself differently and when you position yourself differently and people inquire with you and they ask you questions right they ask you well uh what's your hourly rate well we don't have one or what do you what do you do when you come in in teams of three oh three wow that's crazy That's good because in their mind, they're thinking, aha, Squiggly, that company that does things differently. Well, maybe that's not necessarily what they think, but this is what you strive for, right? You try not to blend in. Your objective is to do things differently from the crowd, and then you will stand out. And I think It's slowly but surely working for us. Since we pivoted into residential cleaning, it hasn't been two years coming up in January. It will be two years as in residential cleaning. And because we're building something massive, and I know that, it does take time. It does take time. I can see my momentum shifting now because we're starting to be known and we recently connected with a local charity, Vancouver Island, a child uh child society uh helping helping kids and we they have a several on vancouver island they have two places houses where kids stay when they get in treatment at the hospital and we recently uh donated the clean to one of those places uh the one in victoria that was a that was a huge event it was entire team And we cleaned that house, which been around for 15 years and never been professionally cleaned. Oh, wow. Which is And we feel like there's a there's a long term partnership there because, well, first colors match with both purple, which is, you know, I believe in that. Believe it or not, but yeah. So we're starting to get known and I see the momentum shifting, but you want to be different. You want to do That's for sure. I needed to You're welcome. But you know that this is true. You're No, no. And so much today where people are identical, our businesses are identical, but there's always something unique that you can bring your own flavor and bring your own personal touch, what you build. And like you said, you're the visionary leader. So you're setting that and, you know, building culture, but also how are we different, you know, and then doing Yeah. And giving back is important and not just because, not just because you want to gain attention. And really it's the last thing it's on your mind. You just want to genuinely want to help. Yeah. Like you said, intention earlier and at the beginning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just, Going back to differentiating yourself, there's a great quote in a great book of Jamie Curran Lima called Worthy, the book is Worthy, and she repeatedly said throughout the book, you're not crazy, you're just first. And I like that because if you think about it, when people call you crazy, why does it happen? People call you crazy because it's unfamiliar. They just don't know what it is. It doesn't mean So yeah, yeah, yeah. It's new. Exactly. Exactly. So when when you when you go crazy, I'd say take it as a compliment and take it as a clue as if you're going in I got so many questions. I'm going to ask you this one, though, because it No, no, that's I love these ones. Like, I have some questions here that I'm like, I'm coming back to. But I like. I like going into this in the depth that we are, because there's some great little nuggets you've shared. But we've dived in a bit in your journey in creating Squeakly. But I think there's some lessons that you could share with us. And I want to narrow it down to this. What's This is going to be, or might be, uh, fairly deep, but I, I gonna say that. So when you, when you build in your business or your personal brand or whatever you're building, you don't want to blindly copy that someone else did. Yes. Uh, and, uh, to expand on that, there's no such thing as a blueprint. As a land surveyor, I just, I laugh at this blueprint stuff. Blueprint is a thing that is specifically completed for a project. for a specific one project. So there's no such thing as a blueprint for business. I don't say that don't listen and don't take the knowledge and don't use the knowledge. I just say you have to make sure that this works for you. And I'm very easily influenced by a lot of things. So early in the business, what I would do is I hear a system or blueprint or something else, and I would immediately insert it to my business and started doing it exactly as it says. And then I found another one and I would do the same. And it turns into a huge, huge mess. So you are, or your business is a project. And this project is so unique that you cannot take a blueprint and put it on your project. And when we're talking about mistakes that I made, This is probably a mistake I made when we started our residential cleaning company. We had and we still have another residential cleaning company as a mentor. But we we hired them, if you will, as a business coaches and and they're they're very established residential company in the United States. And we actually went through their headquarters and we saw their operations. I was still in the group and and they did a lot of good things to us and we learned a lot of things. But my mistake was to take it exactly. as they do it. Yeah. But I forgot one thing. They're eight years into operations, um, seven figure second, seven figure business with 70 people. And we are, you know, five people business with one year of experience and it's different. And you have to, you have to really, think how you implement those things, right? And it's any, any coaching, really any programs, and I'm not saying they don't work and I'm not saying they're not great. No, but you have to, you really, you A hundred percent. Yeah. And that was my biggest mistake. And I'm, I shouldn't say I still paying for this mistake, but I'm still feeling, I'm still feeling the, exactly. I'm still feeling them. impact off of that. Like, I probably shouldn't done that because that cost us too much money, which we could have saved. And so if you could go back right now, what would you say to that version of you when you were in that pivotal moment? What would you say to Yeah. I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't change a thing really. Like, I mean, all this lessons are valuable lessons. Uh, they're hard lessons, but you don't learn unless you make those mistakes. But I, I think that like right now in our operations, we, we have to be really careful with what we invest in. Uh, and, uh, back then it felt like. We're just going to And and I many other variables involved in Yeah, correct. And I, I think I think I would say, you know, I really think hard where you throw in your thousands of dollars, right? Like. Yeah, really, really do. And be picky and be choosy and think about the future. That's My bookkeeper has said to me in the past, are you suffering from shiny object syndrome? not just the tools, but the programs. And I believe investing, but sometimes you have to take the best of what, what you learn and You know, very much suffer from shiny objects, uh, syndrome and tools. Not, I don't care about cars or, uh, physical things like I, I, I like living a simple life. I am implementing a profit first Yes, yes. And he's just about to release his new book on personal finances. I think it's coming out in January, which I'm really excited about. I'm definitely going to get my hands on that because I really love what Mike does. He's such a humble guy. He started a new podcast under Relay brand. And he interviewed Brian Scudamore at the very first episode. And Brian Scudamore, if you don't know, he's a founder and CEO of 1-800-GUT-JUNK. Okay. and he's also on Dragon's Den Canadian version of Shark Tank. Love Brian, incredible guy. He's building in the service industry. I think 1-800-GUT-JUNK. This year is about $600 million business. Uh, And again, you look at this as like, wow, but I got to tell you something, Alex. I don't think it's appropriate to say it, but I'm going to say it anyway. Oh, you do. You do. You got to hear this. I met, uh, so Mike was at an event that I, uh, I And as you know, I thought was right in the journey where I started to really embrace getting to the gym at five in the morning. So I was consistent even when I was away for this conference, I was at the gym, 5am. in there working out, there's a few others of us, and in comes in Mike Michalowicz, working out, just plugging away, getting his gym routine in. And I start chuckling, because I started calling the people that were there, I said, we're a member of the 5 a.m. club. And he had his headphones on, so I respected him, I didn't talk to him, I just nodded and said, hello, give the man his piece, let him have his hour. I can't believe I'm telling this. When I got to meet him and I spoke to him, I said, Mike, I got a question for you. And I asked this in front of the audience. When I saw you at the gym, it was great to see you. It was great working out with you. But I know I listen to thought leaders while I'm working out. Question for you, Mike. Do you, I want to know this. Do you actually listen to your, your own audible books and podcasts while you're working out? And if you don't, Mike, he said such a Mike thing. No, if I did that, I'd be a douche bag. I'm This is true. It's no, it's. Sorry, I just thought I'd tell you. Oh, that's OK. You know what? In the same in the same kind of realm of a story, I am. I ran into Gary Vaynerchuk at the Chicago card show. I don't do cards. Don't judge me on that. It's just I was driving my son to university across North America, pretty much, from Victoria to Moncton, Sackville, as you know. Not everybody knows where Sackville is, but you do. I do. But Friday. Yes. So so we drove through states in this summer, this past summer. And Chicago had a national card show, which we stopped by. And of course, Gary Vee, he's doing his Vee Friends. And we stopped by his booth. And I had a chance to talk to him for probably five minutes. Maybe three. But in any case, I was shocked how humble the guy is. And we talked about it. And as you may know, Gary Vee has Soviet heritage. He was born in Belarus. And I asked him if he still speaks Russian. And he actually did speak Russian with me, which was fascinating. He had quite a bit of accent, but I was shocked. And to see Gary Vee in this environment and how he talks to people, how grounded the guy is and how humble the guy is. He's just a real dude. You would never say that the guy is worth millions and millions of dollars. He would never show it to you. He talks to you, he wants to help you immediately. The first phrase out of his mouth is to help you. It's incredible. Speaking of meeting these Yeah, no, it's just sometimes these little parts in the journey just impact us. I'll always remember that. Hey, a question for you, because we're getting close to the time, but there's some questions. I'm having such a great time. Let's do that. Great. few times along the way, we've talked, you've shared pretty openly about some of your mistakes. Okay. Why, why, for you, why is that important to share that? And like, I just want to make sure that it's always better to learn from somebody else's mistakes than from your own. Although the lessons from your own mistakes typically sink Yes. But you have to but you have to concentrate and teach yourself to actually learn from other people mistakes. Hear what people say. Listen and hear. And and I really hope that if I'm sharing something like that, especially I think about blindly copying blueprints or somebody else's ideas. Whatever, it might be too vague, but I really hope that people will find value in this and listen and actually will save them from costly mistakes. And I made very many mistakes in my life and I'm not afraid to share really any of them because I think it's part of the identity. It's part of Other people are doing that for us. So why would we not give back? Hey, what advice would you give someone right now who's trying to build a service business while juggling so many hats that you do? We touched on it a bit, but systemizing everything. You have to have a system for everything. And I actually, I have my kind of personal things that are like a personal systems or frameworks, if you will, that I use and keep. And I have one called OnePainOneSystem. It's basically, it's a very simple method that helps me to analyze how things work and what needs to be fixed. It's basically identifying the pain, defining the smallest possible solution, choosing the system type, documenting, implementing, and reviewing. I have a little PDF there and I'd be happy to share that with your listeners. Perfect, yeah. Connect with me on Instagram. I'm sure you'll have it. in your show notes. It's at alex.gorelick.now and DM me system and I'll be happy to send you that little PDF. It's a very, very simple thing. Just it is really good to use it as, as a reminder, you look at it. Okay. And you go through the steps and systems. When people hear the word systems, they, It doesn't have to be. It really doesn't have to be massive. It just has to be written. That's all. That's all it is. And, uh, when you build, when, when you build in service and I, I, I'll never say that we're perfect. We're far from perfect, but you, you have to, you have to keep building. You can't just stop at something. Right. So, uh, systemizing everything to me is a key. You have to have a. written system for pretty much everything you do. It doesn't have to be a playbook. It doesn't have to be full SOP because there are tasks in our business that are really tiny. And maybe not even tasks, maybe habits, like how you answer to that, how you respond to this. So all that needs to be systemized and don't ever I love this, man. It's I appreciate it. Okay, last question for you. What's the one message you want our audience to walk away from today after listening to what we're sharing? Uh, down to one thing, Alex, one thing, um, Don't, If you build in something, don't stop. Uh, it's the, the only way to lose is to stop. As long as you keep going, you're not losing. In my opinion, you're winning. It's that momentum, yeah. It can feel hard and you can feel down, but if you are actually going and waking up every morning and working on your thing, you are winning. So don't stop. Fully believe in it and go all in. Um, and, uh, if you can avoid it, uh, don't do two businesses at once. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking from a man who has experience, it's, uh, it's sometimes you think, you know, what? It is what it is, but if you have one thing, it's a lot easier to focus and concentrate on it. Especially young people nowadays, they tend to jump around and start this and then start that. Don't do it. start something you believe in And then and then build it to a point where you can leave it or, you know, have somebody else running for your whatever the case is or sell it or whatever, and then start something else. Don't do two things at once. That's. It's not easy. It might sound easy. I mean, I understand the concept of side hustles, totally fine. If you work in nine to five and you starting to build in something on the side and you invest in your time a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, there's nothing wrong with that. But having two businesses is, is Yeah, no, truer words have never been said. You know, from a man who's been there. So everyone, please share this episode with someone that you know will benefit from it. Reach out to Alex, DM him, start a conversation. Alex, it's been such a pleasure to have you today. And I enjoy our conversations we have when we do check in. when we message each other and having the privilege to met you and I know we'll meet each other again. Absolutely will. I know that. So with that, thank Incredible. Thanks for tuning into the Adaptive Mindset. If you found value in today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who's ready to thrive in the digital age. Stay secure, stay