From A People Perspective

Martin Hauck (01:11)
Welcome back folks.

another episode of from a people perspective. I'm your host Martin Hawk and today we've got Josh Dominguez. Welcome to the show.

Josh Domingues (01:20)
What a start, Martin. What a start. Thank you. Yeah, six, but we'll say two for people watching. It was two, everyone. It was two.

Martin Hauck (01:22)
There we go. Only took you tries thing. ⁓ interesting. This is gonna be fun.

There we go. There we go. Appreciate that. So ⁓ you had reached out recently, and we just got to chatting. And I just thought it would be fun to do a podcast together. It was really cool to to connect with you and learn about your background. And we didn't get a ton of time. But I love to use this podcast as a chance to kind of like, start at the beginning and figure out how you got to where you are and

Josh Domingues (01:58)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Martin Hauck (02:02)
what you're up

to now and all that fun stuff before we dive in ⁓ for the audience just to kind of like break the ice for the listeners. ⁓ You're stranded on an island and you only have one music album that you can listen to for the rest of time. What is your go to album?

Josh Domingues (02:11)
Okay.

Man, the first one that comes up to mind is The Chronic by Dre and Snoop. I don't know why, because I'd probably want to go something like Ed Sheeran, just like chillin', but probably The Chronic because I can't think of any albums that I would just loop. Maybe The Carter 3 by Lil Wayne, actually. Yeah.

Martin Hauck (02:31)
Nice. Nice cut.

Okay, okay. I'll be a

fun that sounds like a yeah, that would be a that's a good. That's a good choice.

Josh Domingues (02:48)
We'll

go with the Carter 3 because I would just have that on loop for like two years back when we had like CD players ⁓ in my old Jeep. That's what I listen to all the time.

Martin Hauck (02:54)
You

Amazing. ⁓ All right, next one. ⁓ In terms of midnight snacks, where what's where do you lean? What are you what are you reaching for in the pantry or the fridge or freezer?

Josh Domingues (03:12)
Yeah, well, I'm trying to lose weight right now. So trying for air and water, carbonated carbonated water maybe, but like my go to be chips probably like ketchup or all dress. Those are my go tos.

Martin Hauck (03:18)
Ha ha ha ha

like a laser laser ruffles which we

Josh Domingues (03:28)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Lay's

ketchup and then Ruffles all dressed. ⁓ But I've got kids that are getting older, so like anytime that I have a bag, like they're starting to be depleted without me eating them, which is like good and bad. More good right now. Exactly.

Martin Hauck (03:33)
Okay, all right.

Yeah. Yeah, they're helping you out.

Awesome. And to help us go back in time. What was your What was your first gig?

Josh Domingues (03:56)
My first job, I worked for my dad's company. So my family business is like lawn sprinklers and it's called Aquaman. So I joke that my dad's a superhero. And one of my first jobs, I worked for my dad for like six hours and he yelled at me for something I did wrong and I just quit. And then I went to go work at hockey camps. So I would say like working for the family business and lawn sprinklers and then also like shooting on goalies and hockey camps.

Martin Hauck (04:07)
You

Ha ha ha.

was a short lived experience working, working with pops was that, that was sort of like a save the relationship kind of moment where like,

Josh Domingues (04:25)
Yeah, exactly.

⁓

I don't know. I have two of the brothers and the younger sister and they're all in the family business. So I'm the only one of four who's like completely removed. So I don't think it was a save the relationship moment. think I'm the last one in my family that gets trusted with like a shovel or anything like handy. Like I don't even get asked. Like it's almost like

Martin Hauck (04:41)
Okay.

you

Josh Domingues (04:55)
It's almost like I'm a toddler where they're like, Josh can't do that. Like don't even think to ask Josh for like something handy, which yeah, I gotta work on that. Anyways.

Martin Hauck (05:04)
I mean, we all have our

we all have our strengths and then you got into hockey camps. ⁓ And I, I guess like we don't need to start there in terms of details. But yeah, I'd love to walk us through your background. How'd you get to where you are?

Josh Domingues (05:11)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, ⁓ I guess like I grew up playing hockey. was a high level hockey player my whole life. And as that translates to like my work story, I played in the OHL in the Quebec league and then I went to school in Halifax and I played hockey out there. And then when I was done playing hockey, because I wasn't good enough to play pro at a high level. So I went to the work in finance in Toronto. I did that for a little bit. And then I went to management consulting.

And then my old hockey agent was pretty prominent NHL agent. And he actually brought me into run a family office. So like an investment firm just for the NHL hockey players. So there was like, yeah, like I joked like my life, I was like the rock in the show ballers, like literally every morning I'd go to the ACC in Toronto and I'd like walk into the media room. just like walk downstairs, that's how to leave stress here, walk into the media room, get a coffee, go to the stands and like watch practice in the stands. It was so cool. ⁓

And I would travel around North America meeting clients and really like, just have to get people to sign documents and make sure that they weren't wasting their money on stupid things and getting them set up in the right kind of structures. But I did that for a couple of years. And then I started a company called Flash Food. I always wanted to be a tech founder. I tried to start something similar to Wealthsimple while I was a banker and it didn't work.

I couldn't, I didn't know what I was doing with like developers and product managers and I tried to bootstrap it and the whole thing just like didn't work. So I shut that down. ⁓ but I was like, the next time I get conviction on something, I'm going all in and like just going full out. So at the time I, I lived very frugally saved as much money as I can because I knew I was going to go on a journey at some point and then learned about food waste, learned about the environmental impact of food waste and learned how much food was getting thrown out of the grocery store.

Martin Hauck (06:49)
Mm.

Josh Domingues (07:13)
And that food still had like two or three days of shelf life before it gets tossed. So the idea that I had was if there's a way for the store to mark the price of the food and send me notification, I could see it through my phone, pay through my phone, pick it up at the store the same day. People would shop like that all the time. And that's what we built. We took the discount food rack, made it look cool, put it on your cell phone. And that company, so I'm still on the board of that company. ⁓ We hired a CEO a couple of years ago, replaced myself. I became the exec chair and then about, ⁓

eight or nine months ago, I left to start another company, which I'll get into. But the journey of FlashFood, like I did all of the things. We went from an idea on a laptop to, I think it was around 110 people at our peak and raised, I don't know, 25 million of venture capital. I was on Dragon's Den. Like I've just done like all of the things starting a startup and went through an entire journey. then about nine months ago, eight months ago,

I left flash food, I'm still on the board, still active, ⁓ but I'm starting a new company called MedWallet. And so I just think it's crazy. We don't have all of our health things in one place digitized. And I don't just mean like health records. mean like doctor's notes, prescriptions, notes from like a psychologist, psychiatrist, like all of the things digitally encrypted in one place that are readily available. if like,

Martin Hauck (08:16)
Mm-hmm.

Josh Domingues (08:37)
Somebody asks you for your vaccine card, you actually have it or your health card or your insurance card. Like literally just that easy. And then underlay all of your data with AI so that you get idiot proof insights. And then we allow people to like API and the wearable data and help facilitate booking appointments for all the things and reminders for things like appointments and prescription refills. And then do that for you and your family. So if you have kids, can put your kids on the account or if your parents are getting medication.

Martin Hauck (08:40)
Yeah.

Josh Domingues (09:04)
Like you could see what they're getting and see the lineage play across your whole family. So I started that journey, I don't know, eight or nine months ago and pre-launch haven't, gone to market, but we were in private beta and products ready and have a couple of things happening in the next couple of months. That'll be pretty meaningful.

Martin Hauck (09:21)
Amazing. No, that's, ⁓ I have so many questions about all the things and, ⁓ I want to kind of stick to a bit of a chronological thing so we can end on the most exciting parts. But when you said you were launching sort of like a similar wealth, simple app and you didn't have a sense of like working with product folks and like, it's not necessarily your first startup or was that your first startup?

Josh Domingues (09:25)
Hahaha!

Yeah.

Hmm.

I

would say, yeah, like I would say, like I spent probably six months on it and like maybe like 10 grand. Like it was, it was while I was working at the time, but yeah, that was my first foray into trying to build a product. And also like back then there was two companies, Wealthfront and Betterment in the US and one other one that I can't remember, but like it was very obvious that like robo advisors were coming and at the same time Wealthsimple had raised their first round of financing from

Martin Hauck (10:13)
Mm.

Josh Domingues (10:20)
the DeMarais family, don't know if it was Portage or what, they had just raised a couple of million. Yeah, that was my first foray into it. And when I say like, I didn't know what I was doing specifically, I hired developers internationally and they were asking for like wire frames and mockups of the wire frames and user journeys. What should the code base be like? All of this stuff that I just had, like I hadn't worked in tech, I had no idea. I just let you hire an engineer and they built you an app. That's not how it works.

Martin Hauck (10:23)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Josh Domingues (10:50)
Yeah.

Martin Hauck (10:52)
It's, ⁓ it's funny. And I haven't necessarily, I haven't built a company to the size that you have, but when I like, I had a similar idea with like buying art from coffee shops, like you should be able to do that with a QR code. And of course you see some, companies doing that now. I don't know if it's like,

As like the idea was valid, but we did everything backwards and like hilariously it's like, okay, we need tech. So we got a developer buddy to build out something. And he's just like built out this whole infrastructure and we hadn't talked to a single like potential buyer at all. No research, guess, like classic example of doing all the wrong things first, like what from your experience, did you take away and bring to flash food? Like, what are some of the biggest lessons that you took away?

Josh Domingues (11:22)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Martin Hauck (11:42)
You're like, OK, I'm not going to do that again or I'm going to. Yeah.

Josh Domingues (11:43)
Yeah. I'm trying to think of it at that time because the first version of FlashFood was built ⁓ by a developer named Nazama and Nazama would only talk to me on Skype.

and like not voice or video, just like literally typing. like Nazama could barely speak English. And if you reverse Google the image of Nazama, it's a famous Chinese actress. So I joked that like, I have no idea who built the first version of FlashFood. I have no idea where in the world they were. And the thing that I did differently the second time was I went and got wireframes done before I hired a developer internationally who like...

I ended up redoing somebody else, an agency in Toronto, redid all the wireframes, but like I had the map of what the app looks like before I brought in an engineer. And yeah, it worked. It worked for a one store pilot. Thank God. And then we just like built the app from scratch with cassette, pretty high end agency in Toronto after that. But that would be the first, that would be the thing that I learned the most from like that first kind of like foray to the next one is you need a roadmap for whatever you're going to do.

can't just like hand stuff to people and people won't understand exactly what you mean if you don't communicate. Like this sounds so obvious, but there's oftentimes even with working with me ⁓ where like in my mind things are, the saying is what's obvious to you is not obvious to everyone. And it took me a long time to learn that.

Martin Hauck (12:59)
Hahaha.

obvious. I like that. I like that. ⁓ And in terms of anything else that you took away from that experience leading into to flash food.

Josh Domingues (13:15)
Yeah.

Yeah, there was the Bank of Scotland after like a year of me killing that thing, the Bank of Scotland fired 200 of their financial advisors and everybody with less than $200,000 worth of assets got rolled into their own proprietary robo-advisor. And that's where I was like, I couldn't pull it off, but like the vision that I have in the future, like the way the future will be, I was spot on with. And so whenever I get that kind of conviction, I'm just going all in and I'm going to pull it off. That was probably the biggest learning. It was like, here's how I thought the future would turn out.

Martin Hauck (13:45)
Hmm.

Josh Domingues (13:53)
And it's very much happening. Like Wealthsimple at that time had raised like 20 million again. And then the Bank of Scotland did that thing and then all the dominoes have fallen since then. Yeah.

Martin Hauck (13:55)
Right.

That's interesting.

It's like an intuition or an instinct, the ability to sort of like predict the future. And then you make those own bets. So you have those own ideas on your own and then seeing it kind of come to life. That gave you sort of confidence in, okay, next time I have a big idea, I'm just going to go all in on it because I was right. That that one time or for a couple of times.

Josh Domingues (14:15)
you

Yep. Yep.

Martin Hauck (14:30)
Has that happened more than just those instances like in your life or is it was it just like that one experience?

Josh Domingues (14:37)
Well, yeah,

flash food has obviously worked and like, ⁓ in the med wallet, like literally two weeks ago, three weeks ago, open AI announced chat, GPT for health, and they bought a company called torch for a hundred million dollars and like torches building exactly what I'm building. So it was like, this all happened like three weeks ago and I'm like, okay, well like, and then anthropic announced clode for healthcare. So.

Martin Hauck (14:41)
Mm.

You

Josh Domingues (15:06)
It's funny because FlashFood has very much played out the way that I had anticipated. then MedWallet hasn't, but like the world is going in that direction. Like people are uploading all their own health stuff for like chapter to the D today to get answers. So we're like, we're effectively productizing that in an encrypted way. So I would say those would be three instances that like when I've gone really deep on something, ⁓

Yeah, they've played out and it's not just like, Hey, here's my idea of the future. It's like, no, this like is all kind of, it's hard to explain, but like these things are all kind of converging. And then certainly like when you build the future, like you are the one who dictates whether it happens or not. like flash food wasn't just like flash food because it was a vision of the future. Like we did all the things to build it. ⁓ yeah.

Martin Hauck (15:55)
there's a pretty uphill battle I think in terms of the here like it's not just uphill. Yeah, sorry. But even just like the idea of like that cart you see that's unappealing. And it's like, here's the discount food and like, just like getting a store to change what that looks like. I can only imagine what that conversation is before you can talk about technology.

Josh Domingues (16:00)
Yeah, that's a little bit of an understatement. That's funny.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Martin Hauck (16:24)
what kind of like dialing into sort of like the people and culture side of things because flash food obviously became a much larger organization. ⁓ What what was some of the things that you ⁓ what were some of the things you you took on like, things were growing fast. ⁓ And what are some like the I imagine some high level like leadership

Josh Domingues (16:29)
Yeah.

That's interesting, yeah.

Martin Hauck (16:53)
lessons came to you on the people and culture side and building up a company, what were what were some things that you like kind of predicted? like, I feel like it's gonna go this way. And it did, right? Kind of going back to your intuition side.

Josh Domingues (16:57)
Ciao.

Yeah, so there's a couple different ways to answer this. The first is that one of the reasons why, so like we are now in over 2000 stores and now on a daily basis, these store employees are like scanning product out of their system and scanning onto flash food. And if you think about the person who works in a grocery store in these roles, usually they're not there forever and they frankly don't want to do.

their job. Like you're just like, here's like what I'm doing for the summer or something. So the focus to those people was we have to be the most fun thing that they do every day. And like, that's how the software has to work. And they have to know that this is impacting families because it's reducing the environmental impact of food waste, but it's also feeding families affordably. And so from just a people perspective, like, it's not like, Hey, here's this other app, we have to figure out how to communicate.

those things. It's like the thing that you do right now with flash food will make an impact today on a family. And I think that was just like really important. I mean, that was the biggest differentiator. It wasn't the app. wasn't like it was that it was connecting with people. And then from a from a leadership perspective on the journey, there's so many different things that I learned. Yeah, one of the funniest stories that I go back to is when like COVID hit, we ended up doing

We ended up doing a salary reduction of a third of the salaries and we didn't fire anybody. And this was like right at the beginning when we had no idea what was happening. And so we had a, we had a call and I put the laptop, it was a remote call and I the TV on in the background and I threw the news on. So it just looked like that was like important. And I was like talking about like, Hey, like, unfortunately we, this is what's happening to our, our revenue dropped like 80 % in like two days. We literally had a board meeting and it's like, okay, let's like.

model out what happens if we're down 50 or 60 percent. This is worst case scenario. Flew back two days later, it was down like 85 percent. Sounds like, okay, cool. So we had a board meeting or a company wide call. And this is also like, I have no idea what's happening in the world. Nobody that I talked to knows what's happening in the world. And so we tell everybody we're cutting salaries by a third and we're not going to fire anybody.

And in the back of my mind, like the intention was always as the business comes back up, we'll pay people back their lost wages and make them whole. But I couldn't promise that at the onset because you have no idea what's happening. Funny enough though, during my meeting, Justin Trudeau is on stage on TV behind me talking about the wage subsidy for companies and how they're going to give companies like an 80 % wage subsidy or something.

And so as I'm giving this talk, the first question that comes up is like, are we going to take part of like the wage subsidy where we're like covered on wages? I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, it's right behind you on the screen. So I'm like watching Justin Trudeau on stage. They're like, I don't know. I have no idea what's happening. Like if I go inside, I'll drop dead. Like, I don't know, give me a second to read some of this stuff. So probably the learning from that was like a very important learning in terms of like just

Martin Hauck (19:51)
right there. ⁓

Josh Domingues (20:06)
being open with people through the journey on like what's good and what's not good and what's happening and what's not happening is just like, it's just kind of table stakes. At the same time though, you could be too open and then people like, you can have folks in a company that on a hockey team, call them cancers. So like these people like cancer spreads and you're like, these people are negative and they're pulling other people with them. And like, you can have like,

all things open and people still complaining about not having enough openness. Then at one point, at one point it's like, okay, like, are we catering to everybody? Are we trying to like make one person feel good? Who's pulling people like down with them? Like, do we just have the wrong person in a seat? ⁓ Yeah, there's just, there's like, there's so much that I learned through the journey. But one of them was like,

Yeah, I mean, like, look, during that time period, somebody, one of the staffers, this is a story that I haven't told, but like, I'll never forget. One of the staffers is like, this is bullshit, like blah, blah, cutting salaries by a third. So I had to call with the person and I'm just like, look, like, I don't know what's happening either. Like I'm trying my best to like not fire people, but our options are literally cut salaries or cut headcount.

And they're like, well, I send money back to my family and all this stuff, and this is going to hurt. And I'm like, all right, like I'll give you like, I'll loan it to you. Like I'll send it back to your family and just like pay me back or whatever. And then the person just like scoffed at that and like didn't take it. And then things go back to normal for the business. And this person's like great at what they do. They were like a meaningful person of the company for awhile. And then fast forward like a year and a half, like all things are back to normal and their boss gives them like a $10,000 raise.

And their comment was like, this is the first time I've ever felt like a company had my back. And I was like, that is such bullshit. Like, and I can't say that to anybody. I can't tell anybody the story. But I was just like, this is like, here's a person who's like complaining about how bad things are around like what we're doing to other people and like telling me the impact to them personally. And I'm like, here, I'll do this. Like, and I hadn't even talked to my wife at the time. I was just like, what is it? How much is it like?

Martin Hauck (21:58)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Josh Domingues (22:22)
I'll help you." And then to get that back, was like, okay, there's like different levels to how you can treat someone and you can treat people in different instances, like too well. ⁓ Yeah, I believe that, which is like a weird thing to say out loud. ⁓ But it comes back to like just being open and clear about what people are signing up for, what the expectations are and like how the company will have your back. mean, there's another story of like, it's funny.

Same kind of story, but a different person. They were, and this is a different time in the business, but they were going through IVF and they were going through IVF for the second time. And it was like really financially difficult for them, but they were going to do it because this was like basically the only chance they had. And we just paid, we just paid 20 grand for them to do it. And they're like, there's like, they basically said like,

I'll come work for you whenever, wherever you are for the rest of my life. And like, fortunately, like now they have a couple of kids. It's just like, it's awesome stuff, but yeah, those are like some of the, some of the things that happened to the journey that I never anticipated would have happened.

Martin Hauck (23:21)
Mm.

there's there's this interesting because what you're talking about, I don't know that it's controversial, but it's definitely kind of what people hope their experience is like. And I'm sure nobody forgets what the pandemic was like. Unless there's like a four year old listening to this, and that's definitely not the case. But at that time, shortly after, like, for flash food to just

Josh Domingues (23:57)
Mm-hmm.

Martin Hauck (24:03)
cut salary as opposed to reduce workforce by 20%, 40%, 50%, whatever. Like, that's you're already an outlier as a business. And I mean, that's probably that was a harder choice financially as well, in the sense that like, normally any board would be like, okay, 80 % revenue loss. So like that that in itself kind of stands out. But I guess there is an

Josh Domingues (24:07)
Okay.

Martin Hauck (24:30)
level of like, we're gonna do things differently. This is this is why and it kind of like skirts that like, are we a team? Or are we a family kind of thing? A lot of people in the HR

Josh Domingues (24:38)
Yeah.

Martin Hauck (24:41)
spheres, like, don't, we're afraid of saying don't say we're family. Because at the end of the day, you're you're not. But then there's this element of like, hey, looking at it from a humanity perspective, like, hey, you're going through IVF. It's expensive. You try this your second time around, we're just gonna pay for it because we care about you.

And, you know, we want to treat you with respect, like that in itself, technically is not scalable. If every person came to you at that time and said, Hey, I want that to your bike. Huh? Right. How, how, how have you managed that balance? Cause it's like an art and a science, think.

Josh Domingues (25:06)
Yeah

I also want to say like Another virtue signaling like there's probably there's so many things that we did wrong as a company and I've done wrong as a CEO through the entire journey so like For these stories. There's probably people who have like 15 that are like this guy

this guy treated me this way or that way. I've always tried to be like stand up and always try to share as much as I could. But like, I mean, you go through a journey, there's going to be that. I'm just trying to think tangibly. So full stop, like the entire

we're a team, we're not a family. And the reality is with teams, like playing at a high level, like you. So for me, when I was 17, it was my NHL drafter and I broke my leg in a fight.

and I had to learn how to walk again. had a plate and screws put into my ankle. And when I came back, I still played at a high level, but I had to do different things and play different roles to stay at the same level on the team in the leagues that I was in. So I just think it's like important to realize one, wherever you are, what is it? Are you a family or a team? I'm always in the camp of a team. And then two, different people on the team have different roles and like,

The reality is some people are worth more to the team than other people are. So it's funny, I talked to an HR person yesterday, literally yesterday about med wallet and having it as a company perk. And one of the reasons being your employees could be more organized from a health perspective so that like they don't miss something when they go to the doctor's appointment, have to take more

off. And this person's like, well, if my team, people in my company don't have their lives organized, then I would fire them. And I'm like.

you're going to fire your CTO because they don't have a report for a doctor's office and they have to miss another day. And they're like, well, no, I wouldn't do that. It's like, like, ⁓ there's different levels of people in a company that bring different skill sets that frankly have different value to the company. And I think we as employees and as people through our career need to realize that. like, that's not to say you can't up level and become more important to a business over time and have more of that like leeway, but it's just the truth.

It just like flat out the truth. So I don't lead with that. ⁓ well, we did a flash fruit and what we're going to do at Medwell is we had what's called culture boards. So at the beginning of the journey, we, we were like, here's five of us on the team at the time. And it's like, okay, how do we want to treat each other? And we ended up like coming up with like a few themes and we put them on boards and we like tied them to like pop culture references. So for climate change.

The slogan was like, fuck climate change. And there's a picture of a polar bear and a melting ice cap. We had one that was delivered a great product and it was Steve Jobs with the first Mac computer. ⁓ Ducks fly together and there's the old Mighty Ducks movie picture. And it was like, you have each other's back. And then how we reinforce that because nobody ever remembered all the culture boards, but how we enforce that was we had standups every week, whole company wide. And at the end of the standup, we had what's called shout outs. And so you just like shout out.

a colleague that did something that week that was like meaningful. And then you'd tell the entire company what happened and you tie it back to a culture board. And what ended up happening is like if the first person said like, deliver a great product, then all of the shout outs would be deliver a great product, even if it was like something completely different, because like nobody remembered all the culture boards. But it was a way to institutionalize learning and culture. yeah, yeah, it was just, it was interesting. So those are some thoughts I have.

Martin Hauck (28:47)
So one of the one of the things we chatted about ⁓ at the very beginning was sort of like hot takes and was sort of like, give a one word answer for performance reviews. And you know where this is going. ⁓ What's what's your take on that? And like, in, in a kind of factoring in what you just talked about, right? It's like, you want to empower the organization and the team to have like, great culture.

Josh Domingues (29:01)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Martin Hauck (29:17)
what there's there's an angle here. I'd love to hear it. But your your take on share your your take on like performance reviews.

Josh Domingues (29:25)
I think like, so we did a couple of things in the life of the company and notable for me is I never had a performance review of my career as an employee. went from company to company to company and started a flash fruit. So I jumped, jumped, jumped, a company. and what we did early on at flash fruit is people who are doing great, like let's just pay them another 10 grand or like 15, can't like just give them a salary bump. they're, they're obviously doing better and like going over and above.

learning, being a good teammate, like just pay them more. And then when we got like to 30 people ish and like had an HR function, like we were still doing that, but then it kind of got a bribe because then you'd have like different people getting pay bumps for different reasons and it's not fair across the board, which I understand. ⁓ and so I don't, I don't know how to make this work as a bigger company, but performance reviews came in and then it's like, okay, the amount of times that we had meetings.

for all the leaders to talk about what's a four out of five and what's a five out of five and what's a three out of five for a performance review score. And then you're still going to get different rankings based on who the manager is. Even if you give management training, like some people are still going to rate four out of five. Some people are still going to rate three out of five. Just three out of five mean meets expectations. Doesn't mean slightly exceed expectations. Like you're have new managers in a fast growing company in six months. How the fuck are they going to rate? Like it's just like, it's so bad. And like, there's not really a way.

to get it uniformed and effectively what a performance review does is it gives the staff an ability every year to know that they might get a raise, they might not, and they can have an understanding of why that's the case. So like full stop, and there's like a structured document to look back on. That's kind of what a performance review is. Like people don't actually, I don't think anybody's looking at their performance review saying like, I got a 32 and a 50.

I'm at like 64%. I think people are like, I need to do these other things. You're going to race. Like that's what it is. So yeah, exactly. And like, and like, honestly, not even promoted. Like, I don't know, like some people care about titles, but like how we should have done it is we should have had no titles. it's like engineering, you're part of the engineering team. And this is like what Anthropic does. And like some really, really good tech companies now, there's no like senior and this like, doesn't

Martin Hauck (31:23)
Yeah, am I getting promoted? Am I getting a bump? That's it.

Josh Domingues (31:46)
really matter if you're a team because it's like, what are you contributing? And then you have the job description so that people have an idea. Also though, like in a fast growing company, like if you want to get ahead in a fast growing company and be trusted, take your job description, understand it, but then throw it out the fucking window. Cause like the most, like if you do the things that are going to make it easier for other people in your team, that's how you get noticed. And that's how you get recognized. And that's how you get given.

More autonomy, more responsibility, more money, bigger pay jump, bigger title. Like it's that. It doesn't matter if you're like doing the thing in your job description. And why I say that is because like your whole HR function is trying to figure out what job descriptions mean. If that's ever evolving and if you're growing as fast as like you want the company to, like you want to be part of the deal of joining a startup is you want it to be growing fast enough that all of these things are broken because it means your equity is increasing in value. If it was like,

you're part of a startup and it's sequential and you know all of these things and it's like comfortable and like your equity is probably not worth that much. like you're also your career growth. Like if you come out of, I don't know, well simple, Coho, Neo, Shopify, like if you were at these companies during critical times, you were so much more employable than like

being at these companies in different times when it was like they were big and established. Like you just did the thing at different times. ⁓ so these are like a little bit of like, and these are Josh takes, these are not like flash food takes. These are not med wallet takes. These are like, no, no, no, but these are, these are just like my takes. So coming back to performance reviews, this is like perfect world ideology, but if every manager just had like a quarterly or biannual meeting,

Martin Hauck (33:13)
Yeah. Yeah.

I smell a book. smell a book Josh. ⁓

Josh Domingues (33:40)
status meeting where it's like, let's just take notes on how this meeting goes. I'm going to talk about things you're doing well. I'm going to talk about things that you're not doing well, or you need to get better at. And it's just like stored us a note. And if people consistently know that they're doing a good job and they can get paid more for that and it's not structural, like, I just think like that is a better place to be. Now I say that, can you do that at a hundred people? I don't know. I didn't try it. Can you do that a thousand? I don't know. I didn't try it.

Martin Hauck (34:07)
That's fair.

there's an interesting there's an interesting aspect here where it's like, yes, you can have like, sure, some of these takes are against the grain, which is first off, relatively normal, but not normal in terms of practice. But then I think the important thing is that you're transparent about it, you're transparent about talking about it here. And more importantly, you're probably transparent about it in all the interviews, like, listen, this is how we operate. This is what we you can expect. Because I think the real

Josh Domingues (34:36)
1000 percent.

Martin Hauck (34:41)
like, sure, if you do things differently, as long as you're being upfront about it, not an issue, right? Because then people are choosing I want to go. I'm I want to go work at Shopify because of x, y and z, or I want to go work at well simple because of x, and z. And as long as it's a realistic, like job preview, like, hey, listen, and we like, we did that. We did that at coin square, we did it basically at every company had worked at

Josh Domingues (34:48)
thousand percent.

Yeah.

Martin Hauck (35:08)
it's important if the culture is different, or there's an aspect of the culture that somebody is not going to like, you're kind of like, letting them know advanced, like, here's all the good stuff. This is what you can expect. Here's, here's what we do differently. You might not like it. But this is how we operate differently. If you do that in advance, it's fine. I think companies get into hot water when they don't when they do it sort of like behind the scenes, or they're not overt about it. Yeah.

Josh Domingues (35:16)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Thousand percent.

Yeah, thousand percent. The other thing too is like, and this is again, what's obvious to you is not obvious to everyone. I have really strong opinions that are very loosely held. So if someone's like Josh.

you idiot, we should be doing it this way and this is why and here's what these other companies are doing and here's why we're losing talent to these other companies. It's like, all right, let's change everything. Like, yeah, that all checks out. All right, cool. Let's do that. ⁓ Yeah. And like, as long as you have that kind of openness and like humility, they go part and parcel. So a lot of things that I'm saying, it's coming from somebody who has high ego that like needs to be seen all the time and it has to be their way or the highway. Like none of it works.

⁓ literally none of the stuff I said works. I'm on the other side of that where like, I'm Frank, like I'm consistently the dumbest one in the room. ⁓ and like, like I'm always asking like elementary questions. So like, try to understand from people with other perspectives and their life experiences and stuff. So like that's as a, as a founder CEO, that's how I think you're most effective. It's like, be naive all the time. Try not to like tell people how to do something, but ask questions so that you can get a, like an element.

Martin Hauck (36:24)
Hmm.

Josh Domingues (36:40)
elementary level understanding, because that kind of gets to core of the thing. And I'm just perpetually learning.

too is like, I've always been a leader on every team I played for growing up. And so you could spot, could spot a bad teammate, like a mile, a mile away. And we had a situation where we had, this is like, this is more, this was more important to me than any like CEO review I ever had. We had an engineer who we brought on. I can share, I can share the whole context of this. So we were like six people at Flash Read at one point and it was.

like a one bathroom, two story loft in Liberty Village. And we had one female employee and five guys. And the female employee would come in once a week. And I remember just looking around being like, what am I doing? Like, this was when like, like everybody was talking about numbers. And I'm like, if we don't start aggressively, like trying to fix this now, like fucked, like if you don't like are aware of it, like try to change. So I say that because like, when I, what I did is I DMed every like,

female leader in tech in Toronto that I could, I'd had a bunch of coffees, tried to told everybody what I was like thinking and how to like solve for this. And we brought in an engineer, she was incredible, complete badass. I'm like, I don't talk to her all the time, but when I do, it's always like good interactions. And she was at Flash Group for like maybe a year and it just like wasn't working for whatever reason, it just wasn't working. And finally she was like, Hey, I'm giving my notice and we move on. And I'm like, honestly, I think that's the best case because like you and your manager aren't seeing eye to eye and like it's just.

I basically recruited her because she was an engineer and the job didn't fit her skillset. So it was just like square peg round hole the whole time. But before she left, we had an office in Liberty Village and it was like the third floor of this old historic building that wasn't getting torn down. it was like every, there's five rooms and every room was an old apartment building, like condo apartment unit. So that was the office setup. We had the whole floor.

Martin Hauck (38:35)
Yeah, yeah.

Josh Domingues (38:40)
She was like a week away from leaving and she was in the front room and there's a boardroom there. And we had one of our senior folks, I guess, yelling at an intern, like yelling at them, cutting them down. But so she comes out of the room and she's like, Hey, just so you know, like this is happening. I was like, what are you talking about? She's like, I was outside the room and so and so I was just losing it and so and so and completely cutting them up. And I was like, okay, like this person has no incentive to tell me there's no benefit of them telling me.

They're literally leaving in a week. She's just like kind of chilling. She's not even working at this point. I don't even know why she's at the office. And she told me that and then we ended up like letting go of that, that person who was screaming at the intern. like, the hell are you screaming at anybody? But it's one of the things that like, I'm going to continue to look back on always. Cause there are somebody who had like the psychological safety, comfort, confidence to share something like that with me, even though they were on their way out. And even though like it wasn't a fit for them, they cared enough.

Martin Hauck (39:11)
Yeah.

They still care.

Yeah.

Josh Domingues (39:37)
about like the team to be like, this isn't right and I'm to tell Josh. And that was just like such a cool, I'm so grateful they did that.

Martin Hauck (39:47)
you has a cool story and like you can't you can't get those moments all the time and you don't always get those that level of care from from everybody on the team all the time but like as much as you can foster it that's that's awesome I guess one of the things that you mentioned briefly is like you can spot a bad teammate from like a mile away from

Josh Domingues (39:56)
you

teammate.

Martin Hauck (40:13)
from your sport, like I'd love like, give us a crash course on, you know, a how it relates to to sports and how you translate it into business.

Josh Domingues (40:23)
Yeah. On sports, you're like constantly, if you're the best on your team, you're moving up to the next level and you're very rarely the best at the next level. And that just doesn't stop until you get to the Olympics and you're a gold medal or you're in the NHL and you're Cindy Crosby or Conor McKean. So you have to adapt at every level to be.

to fill a role on a team and you have to do it in a way where you're driving value to the team. So there's like this role in hockey where if you're a stay at home defenseman, it basically means like if nobody notices you, you're doing the best job that you could do. Literally like you never make mistakes. like nobody's ever getting behind you. You're never coughing up pucks. You're just doing the simple small things and getting the pucks to the right people. And there's people, there's NHLers that have made.

however many, 50, $100 million, like having a full career on just doing simple things and like being a stay at home defenseman. And I share that because those people were not stay at home defensemen their whole careers. They were probably the best people on their team at different levels. And as you get to higher levels, you have to adapt to different roles. And in terms of like the signs and telling a bad teammate, usually somebody who says I a lot instead of we, and it's usually somebody who's like,

always friendly and always happy all the time. Like if I like know somebody's going through something really shitty at work and they're like managing up to me in a way that's like superficial. It's like, look, like I know this is miserable. Like tell me the bad stuff. And if you can't like open up to the bad stuff and even like the worst kind of situations, it's like, what else are you hiding from like a level perspective? And then how are you treating people around you and people below you if this is how you're acting all the time?

Martin Hauck (41:55)
in

Josh Domingues (42:09)
So that was actually really, really hard. It was a really hard thing to like, to do and implement when you're remote only. And it was also harder as we got bigger as a company. yeah, just how people treat other people is like the biggest way. I guess particularly like how people treat other people that are below them in different parts of the organization that they're never gonna work with or have to work with. That's the other thing. And the subtle thing could be like,

Somebody asks a question in a Slack channel and then you just like ghost them and like don't get back to them. Like that's a bad teammate. Obviously if it happens once or twice, but if it's like a consistent thing and several different people are like, that person never answers me. It's okay. Like it's not a good teammate thing to do. So hard tactically to understand it, but those are some of the things that I

Martin Hauck (42:42)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, like hybrid work and completely remote work is a completely different sport than in person as well, which is an interesting, I'm sure people have already thought of that analogy. But ⁓ no, fair, fair, fair play on that. I'm I got a little bit of time left. I'd love to just kind of double click not necessarily on the people side, but just hear about med wallet.

Josh Domingues (43:03)
Okay.

Martin Hauck (43:22)
how the idea came to be and where you're at, what's exciting in the future for it and what you're excited about.

Josh Domingues (43:30)
Yeah, there's a couple of stories that are like what kind of formed it, but at a high level, I just think it's crazy. We didn't have all this stuff in one place. And so like our data, like our most important data sources are finance, but even before that is our health data. Because if you had all of your health data and everything that's happening with you in a way to like see it digitally and you parse out with AI, like you're going to get insights for yourself that like are going to save your life basically at some point.

There's like a spike in colon cancer for young people now. Like there's just all kinds of things happening in the world. But the story of like the inception of thinking about it was there's two that come to mind. One is my sister-in-law. ⁓ She was gonna start at Toronto Western as an ER doctor. She was a Davutorian and McMaster in med school. And she ended up starting as a patient the same week she was supposed to start as a doctor. And she had a ⁓ tumor on her skull.

They didn't know it was a tumor. And then like she got biopsied by her friend and it's like, okay, let's check this out. And ended up being a sarcoma, very aggressive form of cancer. Did the whole journey of all the things. Her dad was a retired ENT chief of surgery. And so seeing them go to different medical appointments and like Barbara had like skin grafts, bone grafts, like all the, so many different convoluted, challenging things. Seeing her go to these like appointments and having like

binders to carry with her and her dad being there too and the doctor's telling you one thing and you're hearing it but you're also not hearing it because like you're basically like you're gonna die and she ended up unfortunately passing away and battled for a year and a half and kind of luckily she passed before COVID because we were all around her and it was just really nice to like be with her through the journey but seeing that whole journey of like how the fuck is this how it works like

Martin Hauck (45:13)
Hmm.

Well.

Josh Domingues (45:22)
How is like, I couldn't believe, I honestly couldn't believe it. Like I would carry her bags to some of her appointments, because like we all live downtown. I like blocks from each other, which was also really special. And it was like heavy to carry all this stuff around. I'm like, this is crazy. So there's that. And then the second piece is my two and a half year old when he was six months, he was at the hospital, he had a stomach surgery, was at SickKids for a couple of weeks. And he was, he's good now, but he was hooked up to all the things. And I just remember being like, man, like.

Martin Hauck (45:36)
Yeah.

Josh Domingues (45:50)
⁓ If there is a way for a doctor to explain this to me and I can just learn instead of hearing a word here and Googling it and like just make this be easier for me. Those are the two things that compelled me to think about it. So for MedWallet, the product is going to be like my vision of the future is that currently doctors are scribing a lot of our appointments now with AI. So they'll turn on a scribe, it'll take notes for them. We have the same functionality for patients. So if you go to an appointment, you can just turn on Medi and Medi is going to capture

Martin Hauck (45:56)
Mm-hmm.

Josh Domingues (46:20)
What happens in that appointment? All the questions that you ask, all the weird words the doctor says that you don't know, and just store it as a note so you can always reference back it. And also, if your parents, if you have language barriers or anything, if somebody goes through an appointment, usually right now everybody has one family member who's a doctor or a cousin or an uncle, so you're trying to get them to call into these things and ask questions. So basically alleviating the need for that via having a note taker for a patient.

Martin Hauck (46:28)
Mm.

Josh Domingues (46:50)
And then just having all your stuff stored in one place because like, why would you not do that? So sure, there's like some burden around like uploading your family's account at the start, but once you have it, like you have it. Um, and the other thing is like, as a business owner, I could take a picture of a receipt and all my bookkeeping is done. So why can't I do that for all my health stuff? And that's how we've thought about like the upload process. Like we'll pull up from your email and we'll also give you the ability to just take pictures and stuff. So you don't have to be integrated into every system.

Martin Hauck (47:01)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I have a funny kind of adage to this, but my business partner recently went through some sort of like really robust tests and just to just as a checkup, because I guess normal checkups don't really happen in the same way anymore. But his analogy was like, I've spent so much money and time trying to get my car fixed. And like, the apps that you can use to like,

have your tires changed at like your house and everything and just like the history and all the data is like, why is it that I have more data and ease of access to ensuring that my car is okay. But I don't have for myself. So I mean, kudos to you for for for building this and getting it started. Like I've every I imagine almost everybody you talk to are a lot of people like there's a handful of folks that are just already uploading stuff to AI and like

Josh Domingues (48:01)
It's fucked.

Exactly. Yeah, it's already happening.

Martin Hauck (48:19)
they're all doing it.

And it's not in the best way either, because obviously, there's like hallucinations and stuff like that. And like, are you getting the best advice? And like, people are like, Dr. Google is not great, you got to be careful, but still having an informed opinion, or at least like, you get so little time with the doctors now anyway. So anyways, I mean, I'm just excited, like when we first chatted, and I'm still more excited now just that that you're a building this, I wish nothing

Josh Domingues (48:41)
Yeah.

Martin Hauck (48:47)
nothing but the best for you and the app is it like I'm just in the corner cheerleading I'm happy to do it and whatever. ⁓ But anything you'd want to leave folks listening with

Josh Domingues (48:49)
Thanks. Yeah, thanks, man. Thank you.

Yeah, just the last thing on Medwell, like the output from all this is like when you're going to go to a doctor's appointment, because you're right. Like basically WebMD just tells you that you're going to die no matter what you plug into it. It's like, have a cough, whatever, you're dead. Like you're dead and everything. So the output for Medwell is going to be like, Hey, I'm going to see my family doctor. Like, what should I talk to them about or why? And the AI is like, here's the three things and here's why. So when you go to your doctor, you're like, here's what Maddie says I should talk to you about and why. And then they can go into detail on things as validated.

whether it's real or not. So that's like how we're thinking about the future. Things to leave with people. ⁓ I think, especially for like the people group, I think that so ⁓ I've had some really incredible people leaders at Flashroot through the journey. That's one thing that I like back on that I'm so fortunate enough. Like I had my right-hand person, Kat, she was amazing for years, had my back and had the company's best interest. then ⁓

Martin Hauck (49:31)
Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Domingues (50:00)
Megan who still leads all things people at FlashFube like just incredible and there's been others along the way but especially with AI doing what it's doing I think being human and like taking off the shield of like this is my like this is Josh at work or this is Martin at work and it's like no this is Martin and this is Josh and imperfection is like gonna be more and more in demand in the future to the point where like dude to the point where I'm like I'm writing memos and

Martin Hauck (50:25)
Hahaha

Josh Domingues (50:30)
putting decks in front of investors and commercial partners. And I'm like, should I put some spell checks in this so that they know that I'm writing it? And should I put some grammar like errors in it? Because everything is so like AI slot polished now. And there's going to be an inverse, especially in person where people want to deal with people. And that's becoming less and less. So that would be the one thing. It's like, how do you not talk about all the drinks you had on the weekend with every coworker that you talk to, but also like

Martin Hauck (50:38)
Yeah.

Josh Domingues (50:59)
talk about what your weekend was like. You know, like you just have to be more real with people than you ever have before and be less worried about that changing your career because from my perspective, like, humility is the superpower and if you can get to know somebody faster and there's like no guards, it's only a benefit in your career more times than not. And if it's not, in an instance, you'll get the benefit of the doubt.

Martin Hauck (51:21)
That's a really cool place to leave off on today.

Josh Domingues (51:25)
Yeah, I appreciate you having me and thanks everyone for listening.

Martin Hauck (51:28)
Awesome. Thanks, Josh.