Birket Foster of Storm Internet on rural connectivity, smart farms, cybersecurity basics, and what the digital divide really costs Canadian entrepreneurs.
GROWTH PILLAR: Cybersecurity & IT
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Rural entrepreneurs / Farm operators / Solopreneurs working outside major cities / Anyone advising Canadian businesses on tech infrastructure
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: Real talk on rural internet options, practical cybersecurity habits, how smart farm technology works, and what reliable connectivity actually means for your bottom line.
Most Canadian businesses take internet for granted. Rural entrepreneurs can't afford to.
Birket Foster has been connecting people and technology since the late 1970s. He built mbfoster.com out of Carleton University into a global software company — selling into 48 American states and 38 countries, with Hewlett-Packard as a partner. When the internet in rural Ontario wasn't good enough to support the businesses and farms around him, Birket didn't wait. He built the solution. Today Storm Internet runs over 262 wireless towers and serves more than 150 smart farms across Ontario.
In this episode, Birket breaks down what reliable rural internet actually looks like — and what it makes possible. Dairy farms where no one gets up at 4 AM anymore because the milking machines handle it automatically. Grain operators in Lanark County selling directly on the Chicago Board of Trade. Maple syrup farms tracking sap levels in real time from the back forty. These aren't future ideas. They're running right now on Storm's network.
Birket also covers the cybersecurity basics every rural business owner needs — starting with default passwords, firewalls, and why your ten-year-old router is quietly failing you. He explains how Storm uses AI to detect network anomalies before they become problems, and what the real cost of a four-day service level agreement looks like when your business can't wait four days.
The episode closes with a look at Storm's current expansion — 16 new wireless sectors, 3,200 new connections coming to Lanark County — and what that kind of infrastructure change actually means for rural economic growth in Canada.
Key topics covered:
Connect with Birket Foster:
Returning guest: Birket appeared in Season 3, Episode 138 — Browse all episodes
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NEXT STEPS
Bernie (00:21)
question to the audience: What if the internet your business depends on just doesn't exist where you live?
That's not hypothetical for a lot of Canadian entrepreneurs. Today's guest didn't wait for someone else to fix it. He picked up the tools and built the infrastructure himself. Let's get into it. So Birket Foster has been connecting people and technology since the late 70s. He built mbfoster.com out of Carleton University and grew it into a global software company, selling into 48 American states and 38 countries. Along the way he partnered with industry names like Hewlett Packard.
But when the internet in rural Ontario wasn't good enough to support the businesses and farms in his community, Birket didn't complain. He built a solution. the privatization of Storm Internet in 2003 and completed the full acquisition in 2020. Today Storm serves farmers, home based businesses, and rural families who need real connectivity, not just a signal. Over 150 smart farms are running on their network right now.
When he's not steering the ship, you'll find him casting for muskie or deep inside a good science fiction novel.
Find out more at storm.ca or mbfoster.com. You can also connect with them on LinkedIn at Birket Foster. Birket, absolute pleasure having you back again. Good to see you, sir. Welcome. How goes your day?
Birket (01:37)
my day is busy.
Bernie (01:38)
Yeah.
Birket (01:39)
It's one of those things.
Bernie (01:41)
I appreciate your time. Do you have a favorite quote or saying you like to share?
Birket (01:44)
Well, you know, it's we're changing the way that people look at internet. Internet is part of everybody. And and so it's not just about working from home anymore. It's also learning from home. It's also people have medical devices connected. the the the children that need special learning have programs that are available to them through the internet. there's every business needs internet.
Every household needs internet. I don't think my dishwasher needs internet, but everything else is good.
Bernie (02:15)
It's not because of research out, you shouldn't have eaten that food. so storm solves a problem. And we're both in the in here in the Ottawa Valley in Ontario, Canada. And what was the what was the first light bulb that you're going, hang on, something's missing here. There's a gap, and you recognize the gap. What was that first instance?
Birket (02:34)
Well, the very first thing was I had a our team got a contract with Hewlett-Packard. I organized us to be able to provide Hewlett-Packard with ODBC drivers. So that's open days database connectivity. And in that process, HP licensed our our our technology for around the world distribution.
but it we had to go through a process of of onboarding the new technology into HP, which meant we had to do regular meetings with the folks in HP. and and for a while I was flying out to HP once a month to spend a bunch of time with them to go over things and and make sure that the next the next rev contained more more pieces and parts. So
We would go down and rent the bell room at some point where the bell folks had online cameras so that we could actually join the HP people without flying to HP. So that saved a day each way. and you just had to do the meeting. So so we were doing that. And then we realized for some of the research we were doing, we needed the internet.
So and I had about fifteen engineers sitting in Chesterville, Ontario, the budding metropolis of Chesterville, Ontario. And and they really needed the internet. So I ran eight public meetings in six months and persuaded Storm Internet to come and supply us with internet to the building, which improved everything. I tried to get Bell to do it, but Bell Bell wanted like thirty-two thousand dollars to put a card in into the central office.
for doing internet and I just didn't feel that that was the right way to go. 'cause it was only two hundred and fifty six KB at the time. So not not not a big thing, you know.
Bernie (04:18)
Well for thirty two K at the time it would have been. so it's the delivery of internet services not just a matter of being able to have the reach, it's also being able to make it feasible or sustainable in the for both for both the the client and the provider.
Birket (04:33)
Correct. And and then you have to integrate it into your business. People don't realize it's not just about internet, it's how do you use internet within your business. There's a lot of work that gets done to to make it w make it part of your business. and and nowadays of course people are doing smart buildings, smart homes, all kinds of things like that. And of course we've been doing smart farms since twenty fifteen. And in there
Each different niche inside the the agri industry has different integration needs. So for instance, the milking machines and the feeding machines know which cow's in front of them by an RFID tag that's on the ear of the cow. And and then it gives Bessie her specific blend of of feed that she needs and it notes the milk that
she produced when she's automatically milked. so the in a in a dairy barn, nobody has to get up at four in the morning anymore. It can all be done using the the automated technology that makes that possible. but when we're doing a campus for a farm, a dairy farm, we also will add the the two houses because there's typically two houses, the the you know the this
one of the children has actually split off a house on on the two acres that you're allowed to split out of your of your main farm. And so you need to feed both houses with Wi-Fi because everybody uses Wi-Fi at home. And then then the barns will probably have cameras around the birthing pen and also in the tool shed. So you can go repair your tractor while looking up YouTube videos on how to do that. So
All of that to say we put a private network together for for a farm and we do that often. we also do work with grain bins where we actually help them manage both the weight on the of what the shipment is that that arrived or left, as well as the actual moisture levels through sensors. So they
put them into dryers and the dryers do what they need to do, but it's all connected to the internet. And and the Internet's even connected for one of the grain operators is right across the road from our office in Chesterville. And they actually are connected to the Chicago Board of Trade and they go and sell off a chunk of their grain on in the beginning of the season, the middle of the season and the end. So they split their
the way they sell, but they sell directly on the Chicago board. And they also do some for export. So they do GMO w will go to Vietnam for soybeans so they can make make so so they can make things out of soya beans and then the the the folks from Japan also use it but they want the non GMO ones.
so right from across the road from us, there's containers leaving for export to go around the world. so you know, that's changed things because you have the internet. People can place an order from far away. you can track the entire shipment because of the internet. you know, all these things have have changed the way people handle things. there's still too much paper, but it's another story. Yeah. and maple syrup farms, well, people want to know.
how full the the container in the back forty is. So what is it that they that that's going on back there and they need it for their point of sale and for their their guests as so that the guests that are at the Panscake House can take nice little selfies and advertise their their maple syrup trip. So those kinds of things happen too. We do have a whole bunch of those.
Bernie (08:01)
So a couple of things come to mind as you're describing it. You're you're talking about grain operators and you you're talking about milking livestock or or you know capitalizing on the livestock at the time. And you're also talking about you know short-term production because maple syrup doesn't run year-round. The endpoint. So do you just bring the pipe in and then they go from there? Or do you bring in the pipe and then going, I now integrate with the hardware? Or in the case of the maple trees, because they're not
Not in a barn, you know, they're out in the field, in the forest. like how do you that's that's multiple endpoints out there if you gotta hope multiple buckets. Do you hang it off of the bucket on the tree or do you hang it off the off where the where the
Birket (08:42)
No, there'll be a collect there'll be a collection point where where they now do in case you haven't been to a farm lately, for for maple syrup, they actually now have see through little little pipes and and you can actually see the the ma the sap running down into the collection bin. And and then it's the collection bin that you where you put your sensor. you don't you don't put it on every tree. It just
Just at the collection bins. Yeah.
Yeah. You just never know. and then the the other thing is that that it's useful for for people to keep stats because now that we have it all digitized one way or the other, we know how many gallons a particular area produced. you know, or liters, I guess. so that we so you can actually measure what's going on. So
That's that's good for people too, because they can look at year over year statistics on those kinds of things. Same with the grain, same with the milk.
Bernie (09:35)
So is it they find the hardware that integrates back to the internet and then you just make that cross connection or are you also inv also involved in the okay, you're getting this piece of hardware, it's gonna be a good fit and not a or not a good fit.
Birket (09:50)
Our our team will actually integrate the hardware into the network. and sometimes we make recommendations and sometimes the farmer is already picked and in which case our job is just to integrate it. but they they want a private network, they want they want stuff hooked up and we we facilitate that and add Wi-Fi points you know proper properly tuned to the building that they're in.
Especially with those metal roofs.
Bernie (10:16)
Yeah, Wi-Fi doesn't go, yeah. I yeah, you may as well have a tin hat while you're doing it. For security purposes, how tight is that network? Because having worked in an institution prior, they are always mindful that whatever you ta you know, hang on your system, right, might be a leak point, whether it's the human operator or a piece of hardware and it's communicating back and forth. How secure is the space for for a business?
Birket (10:41)
Well, it depends on the devices that people put there. And my first piece of advice to everybody is do not leave it with the default passwords for that kind of device because I can look that up on the internet. So that's that's one thing right there. I really think it's important for people to actually understand that that they need to put passwords together that make sense. they need they need to store them properly. it's nice if you have a f if you a f have a firewall.
So that p people who are not supposed to be coming into your network don't get to g to come in. so so you can't leave the back door open. it it needs to be something where somebody who needs to let's say update the firmware on on a a milker or a feeder, they they would actually need to go through a process to be able to log into the device. and that the it's
shouldn't just be somebody can connect to the device. It needs to be a login process. It needs you you didn't use the defaults. So you actually need to keep a a list of what what those passwords are so that you can share them with the appropriate people that need to be able to do those updates. but it's all part of being safe on the internet.
Bernie (11:49)
The other the other question came to me as as you were describing this, quite literally someone can buy, I want this product or that version of the product and I'm buying it in real time. What is the financial impact by having that instant on access? I am it's like just in time inventory kind of seems to fold into this, but also it you know, back in the day, if you think back to the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties.
you know, I I made a product and by the time it goes from here to wherever in the universe, you know, it's it's time has elapsed. And so you're hoping that it's there versus what you're talking about now, which is like instantly I'm going, good, you have a crop. I want to buy it. So what type of ROI has that impacted on on the business space?
Birket (12:33)
Well it it it changes the the time from order to cash.
No, I mean really it collapses out the different workflows because it's now all automated and digital or it could be automated and it is definitely digital. and that helps with your record keeping as well, because I know that that with with a herd of cows, if some if I'm trying to sell you Bessie, you wanna know how's Bessie produced over the last two years?
you know what's the what's her percentage of of butter fat you know things like that you're gonna want to know that and and I can now have that automatically recorded and and have a complete digital history of this this particular cow. In fact for herd management and we manage herds from sixty to two thousand head of cattle. we it's all about the RFID tags and then then you need to figure out
Who bred who in order to figure out you know what the lineage is of of your calves i is. So there's all all that kind of thing that happens. So
Well the the thing is once you ha once you have it in digital form, you can store it locally or you could store it, quote, in the cloud, which is just somebody else's computer on the other end of a network. And nowadays, of course, there's so much stuff going on in the cloud that people need to be aware that the up speed is no longer one. if you're gonna do a digital visual conference call.
You you're gonna need to do something where because of that you you need about five up for for a camera in general. I mean you could get a fancier camera, you know, you could decide you want a four K camera, an eight K camera, but you know, it's not really necessary for the most part for the kind of things that most people do. So but they would take more pixels, which means more megabits per second need to be there for the up.
And that's something that's changed since the pandemic. Before the pandemic, you know, we were doing video calling with Hewlett Packard, but most people weren't. And then everything got a camera built into it. Your phone, your laptop, they all have cameras built in. So now it's instant to d to do a Zoom call or a or a Google meeting or whatever. you instantly get your your
ability to to have a data stream that needs to go up. Well that means that the devices that w that we used to roll out where there were three one, which was perfect for Netflix, by the way, three down and one up, it, you know, produced okay Netflix. but if you're actually going to do a Zoom call or a or a Teams call,
Zoom needs five five one, but it's way better if you do ten five. the people from Teams, which is part of the Microsoft suite, they want six down and three up. and if you have multiple people in the b i in your household that are doing calls at the same time, that adds up because all of a sudden, you know, you've got five plus five plus five plus five. So four people. Now
That's why we're rolling out some of this new wireless high speed stuff at three hundred down and fifty up. So and people go, Well, I might need more than fifty and you go, Okay. Well, fifty's good for ten Zoom calls. can you tell me what you're actually doing if you have more than ten Zoom calls going on from your house? That's always a good question.
Bernie (15:47)
A production studio, obviously.
Birket (15:49)
Yeah. Wow.
Bernie (15:49)
Do medical devices need that same up down level or are they
Birket (15:53)
yeah,
there's lots of especially th things like x rays. you know, if we if we were doing x rays or you're you were actually trying to do a real time monitor on on on somebody's heart or something like that, it needs some it it's gonna push some data. So it depends on how much data it's gonna push, but you need good solid connections. Prasim is a company that does an annual report at the Canadian Wireless Internet Service.
providers conference. And last year they told us all about how the down speed it had in that the average Canadian household has had increased from by twenty percent. And we went, wow, twenty percent. Well it turns out that the average was five the year before and it's now six. So the average download is really six per household.
And and that's probably not a bad estimate, because unless you're running 4K for for the videos, there's not a lot that that's gonna going to to eat your bringing things down. I mean you you can bring a lot of data files down and things like that, but on average are you using more than six? And the answer is that's what percine things seems to think Canada has as an average. Now, what we need to do.
to help develop the the economy is we need to make sure that the internet's everywhere. You need to make sure that it's really going to produce the ability for people to work from home, learn from home, and do all the things that need to happen from home. so that's important. you can bet that if you looked up smart buildings or smart homes, there's lots of opportunity there to help
change the way that your building works and might make it more energy efficient. It might it probably will make it more secure with cameras and and remote locks and so on. And so those kinds of things are internet connected and configurable remotely. And that's how a lot of the Airbnb people work, where they they can change the combination on the on the lock remotely.
they they know when you when you arrived, when you left. They've got all that, because it's all digital. So the you know, those are things that are happening. People are making it a smart home so they can have the temperature rise in the house for half an hour before your presumed arrival time, so that they don't have to keep it at you know, a high temperature all the time or a low temperature in the summer when it's air conditioning.
Bernie (18:15)
Here's a question that's slightly different, and but I'm trying to figure out the impact it might have. The use of AI. If if you're a data center and you're the AI data center, that might be one thing I don't probably foresee that happening in the rural setting yet.
Birket (18:30)
Actually a rural might be a good place for it, but we'll talk about that. Go ahead.
Bernie (18:34)
yeah, no, awesome. No, that's good. So a couple quick questions around AI. Do you find that AI helps the end user manage the load coming through their through their internet? And do you use AI to help deliver services that tweak the services?
Birket (18:50)
we we certainly use AI to enhance our ability to detect anomalies in the network. So for instance, if somebody turns a PC into a bot and all of a sudden it starts you know sending out four hundred emails an hour, it's probably something we need to pay attention to and and alert the user to say, Hey, you've got an issue here. Partly because it it
You know, it's really a pain in the whatever, to have the the the that kind of spam coming from you because at some point somebody'll get you banned and then you have to go through a whole process to get yourself back online. so that's something for people to think about. but the other thing is that spam is is not a nice category anyway. it's a waste of of internet bandwidth, if
if it's not legitimate. so you know that's among the the many things. And of course it could be something where it's trying to distribute the bot software to other places, which w is really a bad thing. once once you you know, 'cause you could get a huge number of of compromised PCs w which have viruses on them and
So AI helps us figure out when those anomalies are happening and and helps pinpoint w which IP addresses might be involved.
Bernie (20:05)
So AI data centers, you think that it'd be a a good thing to do it in the rural space?
Birket (20:10)
Well, you have to look at at AI data centers in the whole. right now, th there are a number of organizations trying to put AI data centers into rural areas because they can get access to water for cooling, because the odds are that they can actually get some power because one of the big things about AI is it needs power.
And we're in this double whammy because people have been pushing for EVs for a long time. and so i if you have the EV demand plus the AI demand in an urban area, probably that will cause issues. For instance, Canada right now has been going and working with Ontario Hydro to see what they can get in terms of additional power because there are
a couple of AI centers that would like to take advantage of Canada a Tech Park North, which is the largest tech park in Canada. so they they'd like to be able to put an AI center there and get some of the talent to work on it with them. But y you can't build your data center there. So it's you know, they're gonna have to put it somewhere else. Maybe Chalk River. Who knows?
Bernie (21:19)
I well, at least you know there's water there.
Birket (21:21)
Yeah.
Bernie (21:23)
And power. So with all this going on, the it's the next question then comes in because we touched on it, is infrastructure to help support it. So when you're reaching out into the rural space, electrical power is not the limiting factor. It's the distance and quality of service that you're going to provide to the end user.
you're doing stuff with adding more towers, if I'm not mistaken, to have reach, but how do you map out the infrastructure to make this all come together?
Birket (21:49)
Well, the nice part is that the infrastructure itself is now modeled before we actually go and do something with it. So in our case, we're working on a project that involves nine towers. They're all existing towers in this particular case. so what what we're doing is changing out some equipment and and upgrading the speeds that are available off that tower. so as we go through the process of of
making that available. the first thing we do is we look to see where there's demand. where are there places where where there's a demand and there's not supply because that way we can actually put in multi-year contracts with customers for the supply of internet to their home or their business. then once we know where we think it is, we look to
Because we have 262 towers in our footprint, what we do is we look to see which tower might make sense to capture a large group of people and we do some math to figure out what the return on investment might be, because we often have to put a shed at the bottom, put in a UPS, put maybe put a generator in.
we have to have a place to put all the switches and those switches aren't free. so we have to figure all that out. And then we run this modeling software that says, gee, if we put this at 180 feet on this tower and pointed it in this direction, then we would we would cover these houses. and w we can actually run what's called a propagation map. So the propagation map actually
does color coded maps of what would actually be available to a home based on the terrain, the the actual vegetation, and the distance. the the new the new generation were good for thirty kilometers if you have line of sight.
That's huge because it used to be 12 to 16. So all of a sudden we get 30. The second thing is the the sectors are actually good for 120 degrees instead of 90. So you have a a larger wedge for picking up houses out there in the in the field. and then beyond just that, what we're also looking at is is the fact that
These radios actually do teraflops to keep track of all the signals. They can handle up to 200 simultaneous connections. the the spec says 256. We know some people that have got 209s, but we did all our math on 200 because it's easier to do. So we were putting in 16 sectors. we from those 16 sectors, we could put 200 connections on each. so that would be.
thirty-two hundred new connections available in Lanark County, which is huge. It means that there's going to be a bunch of people that are all of a sudden going to their life will change. They will have way better internet speeds. It'll be rock solid. And that's how we help solve the digital divide. Because, you know, it's the same kind of speeds you need when you're in the internet anywhere, including urban areas. In fact, some people tell us that that they have better connections
out at the cottage where we've put it together than they do it in Ottawa. So there you go.
Bernie (24:57)
Was dial up totally dead then or is you know the 'cause I I I still my my my memory's still strong for hearing the screeching of of a modem. And you know, I don't know many if many people still can recall that. I is the is the modem is the dial up totally dead then? Is it totally out of the out of the picture or is it still
Birket (25:15)
We actually
we actually still have some dial-up, which is surprising to everybody. But it it's usually used for backup by commercial clients because it would in case of a everything else failing, it would still work. so it there aren't a lot. It does drop significantly every year, but w we've rejigged the technology and it honestly it produces like seventy percent margin. So we're we're okay with leaving it in place.
You know, as it fades to black. but when we look at an address, we try to figure out how we serve that address. if you're in Clayton, we've got this fiber. if you're near one of our fibers, we'll hook you up on that. If not, we look at our wireless network and figure out if you're near one of our towers and w what would it look like if if we were to try to connect you.
based on the exact address. And then failing that, we're a wholesale client of Bell Rogers and Kojiko. And so we're able to actually deliver technology from Bell, for instance, we we would have access to DSL, which is on copper. So we're not sure how long that'll actually be around, but we're also we're also reselling their FTTP or fiber to the premises. So we can deliver that.
and we have got cable from Rogers and f Cogeco And if you're a business, we got we can get fibers from all of the above, as well as from there's some other people, that we use to supply fibers with service level agreements. for the most part, if you read the fine print in your contracts from
from any of the service providers that provide you internet, unless you're buying a package for robustness, unless you actually have something that has a failover built built into the the way that you bought it, you probably have a four day SLA, which surprises people. because they call and say, I need to work today. And you go, Well, you you're not on a business line.
You're you didn't pay for the business service and therefore we have four days to fix you. That's especially important if a Direco rips through the valley. But that's you know, for the most part, we don't want to leave you there for th for four days. But we're starting to offer an option with resilience built in, where we would actually provide you with a UPS that would last for N hours based on what you put in, you know, what you're gonna plug into it. you can get something.
It's, you know, two hours, four hours, eight hours. one of our towers out by Bayshore is twenty seven hours. So we have twenty seven hours worth of battery in case the power goes out because somebody's doing construction or something. Because sometimes that happens. You know, somebody somebody shuts off the power while they do construction and now you're stuck. so and at that point, you know, w about twenty four hours in, we would actually launch somebody with with a generator, to a portable generator to go
augment refilling the batteries. so but you know if we don't think the power the street power is coming back. Anyway, it's that's the kind of thing we will do for we're gonna going to have a new offering on small office home office. And the small office home office people will be able to get that UPS and we will work with the customer to size it based on what they're doing. And when you're doing it, get yourself an LED light because when the power goes out it might not be daylight.
You know, plug the odds. Plug in your router. Right? Plug in your router. Figure out what else you need to plug in. You might want a separate one for your TV if that's the most important thing while power is out. You'd still want to watch TV. You might want to do that. and by the way, you should not run your TV on Wi-Fi. You should actually, even though it's wireless, what that does is it takes a huge hunk.
out of the available bandwidth avail on whatever frequency it's gonna run on. Most of the time they default to two point four off your Wi Fi. So now you've got a significant chunk of the two point four bandwidth absorbed by that one T V. And and if you have two, God help you. so y you know, and and it's competing against all the other devices on that channel. So if you can possibly drop a cable to to your router, you're gonna be way better off on that. That's just
you know, how to get better performance out of your internet. Your internet's still doing what it needs to do. The problem is too many devices interfering with your with your Wi-Fi. That's always a big problem. About probably about sixty percent of all the problems that we see at the residential level are caused by people not counting on how many devices they have. So by the time you add the smartwatch, the tablet, the f the the the laptop, the TV, the smart lights, the nest
the ring, I'm at thirty-two devices. Well, you know, the old and the and your router's ten years old. Well the ten year old routers were probably good for a dozen simultaneous devices, so you may have gone over the device limit, in which case they have to swap back and forth as to which twelve devices they're they're supporting. So people need to think about that too.
Bernie (30:01)
Let's understand that you because you deliver services and you know, speaking of contingency planning, you're involved in a project right now that's just happening today, where someone says, Hey, something's going sideways with a competitor and you have to step in. How how do you manage something like that? Like we need if whether it's tower based or there's wire too or fiber too.
How do you kind of backfill them to that spot? 'Cause you know, that that's that can be an urgent matter.
Birket (30:31)
well we never like to see people lose their internet. It's a really tough spot for people to be in. So it's a team effort on our part. we there's there's a piece on the business side where we need to go take a look to make sure that the revenue coming in will pay for the expenses that are required and pay for our team that's gonna run this network. so we are helping out. at this point we're helping
things move forward a little bit. we're basically going to run the network for 90 days in this particular case. So we have people from our networking group. we have people from our field team. we have people from our support team. We have people from our legal and governance team and we're putting together a plan that says this is how we could run this for 90 days.
And then at the end of ninety days, while we're looking at it, we can actually figure out whether there's a whether we can make it into a profitable piece of our business. 'cause you can't do it for nothing. As you know, when you're running a business, you have to have a way of making money and and and yeah, there's expenses, but you need to be able to make that money.
Bernie (31:34)
Absolutely. Do you have any books that you like to refer to that are kind of bring home the the whole story that you know that you've referred to?
Birket (31:45)
sure. There's there's a number of different books that are the basis of things we do. that it includes first of all, Traction by Geno Wickman. Traction is a book that is behind the EOS, which is Entrepreneurs Operating System.
It's a methodology for organizing your business. There are many ISPs that use it. it's probably good till you have 125 people, which means that 61% of Canadian entrepreneurs should be using it, because they're less than 100. just so you know. the deal is that it gives you a framework in which to run your business.
It helps you focus on what are the issues of the day and you do a thing called IDSing, which is identify, discuss and solve so the problem of the day, and you get rid of those problems as fast as you can. that way they don't fester for more than a week or two before they're solved. so that's one of the books that's behind things. there's always the inspirational book, Good to Great, by Jim Collins. and then there's also
recent trout have written a series of books and they had a lot to do with marketing. So the first one that's really important is for people to realize marketing is so important. It's senior to selling. you're really trying to understand what's going on. So marketing is their book on marketing starts with positioning the battle for your mind. well worth
looking at that book because it helps people understand the kind of things that you can do to help people understand what's going on in your industry and how you would be able to solve the problem that they're trying to solve. Because really what service is all about or business service is all about is businesses try to solve problems. And if you understand the problem clearly you can actually solve it for people.
So yeah, so positioning is one. There's another one called Focus which Reese did on his own. but I'd recommend those books for people to take a look at. And those are always good reads when they can help give you a framework to do things.
Bernie (33:41)
have a special offer that's available right now for the public at large in the area.
Birket (33:45)
Yeah, if you're a Storm customer, there's a refer a friend which will get you a a special deal on your internet. the person you referred will get a month free and you'll get a month free. So that's a pretty good deal. And if you're in the Lanark County area and you go to storm.ca slash FPW, standing for fiber powered wireless, you can actually find
a form to apply for getting internet from us. that's the new technology that we're putting in. So that's where things are. you know, that sometimes help people
get there. We we're calling it Operation F one because it's high speed. for those of you who haven't watched Netflix Drive to Survive, which is the F one Drive to Survive. It's a pretty interesting series. And something that's happened this year in the F one series just because I happen to watch things, is the very first race with Cadillacs in it has showed up. So Cadillac is a new team. There are now 22 slots, not just 20, on the grid. And Cadillac is on a three year plan
to have its own engine right this year it's running engines f from Ferrari. so it's the the season is underway and two of the events have been moved because of the Dubai and I think the other one was Bahrain. they've just moved them down the calendar so because at this point in time you don't want to compete with drones.
Bernie (35:04)
Yeah, it's a different race altogether. Birket, you know what? This is really, really because there's so many different parts of this whole dialogue, that from a tech perspective to understanding you know to the customer service delivery, etc. But if you know someone's listening here, they should head to storm.ca, explore the coverage map, check out the webinars, find out what's available out there.
also that's I'm gonna assume that's how they're gonna get hold of you or through LinkedIn. I just want to remind the guests that, you know, Birket's a returning guest. He was on season three, episode one thirty eight, and where we're talking about why Canadian entrepreneurs hold the key to economic growth. And that's really key for everybody here in Canada. But you know what? It's a universal thing. whatever country you're from, economic growth in your space is equally as important.
Just we might end up having the perfect example to work from or work with. And reach out to Birket because we take certain things for granted and infrastructures, everything from hydro to the roads, etc. understanding how things come together. And if you want to understand more and you're in a a situation where you're looking for service and or you're part of the Ottawa Valley.
Reach out to Birket because it it can actually help you along. And
Birket (36:15)
We actually cover a lot i in Ontario. We have customers in the GTA who love our support because we can resell Bell and out outside of the immediate Ottawa area. So anywhere Bell has product, we can sell it. That's part of our wholesale agreement. And the answer to your question on what would the muskie say you needed to pay attention to? Yeah.
Bernie (36:36)
Yeah. Go for it.
That's good. I like that. I like that. That's good. And by the way, folks, by the way, folks, to reach us, it's knack4business.com. And that's knack, like the word knock, except an A where the O is, the number four business.com. We have a chat bot. You can reach into that and find out about past episodes, whether it's Birket's conversation or other conversations we're having with
people.