Bootstrapping to Millions

Mike Pinkus: Over the last 10 years at ConnectCPA, we've had the privilege of witnessing the incredible journeys of over a thousand businesses. We've been there for the thrilling highs and daunting lows of entrepreneurship. We've celebrated wild successes and monumental exits, and we've also stood by businesses as they've navigated the stormy seas, facing roadblocks and challenges that every entrepreneur encounters in their day-to-day grind.

Join us as we dive deep into the stories of these resilient individuals who dared to dream, who persevered, and who were a testament to the power of entrepreneurship. This is their journey, their lessons, and their triumphs.

Welcome to GrowthTales. I'm your host, Mike Pinkus, co-founder of ConnectCPA.

Mike Pinkus: Today, we have two awesome guests. We've got Daniel and Greg, who are the co-founders and owners of the West State Group, which is one of the industry leaders in workforce management solutions. This is really a truly unique entrepreneurial story where Daniel and Greg have been in business for around 20 years. They started this thing as teenagers and have scaled a multimillion-dollar corporate group of companies to well over a thousand employees.

And just to give a quick overview of the companies — and guys, I apologize if I'm missing any of them — we've got Gatsby Valet, which is in valet and parking management. We've got Caraway, which is in traffic management. We've got Westlake Security, which is in security solutions. We've got Red, which is a boutique event staffing agency. And then we've got Parkenda, which is a technology play with turnkey valet automation and technology.

Wow. You guys have built a hell of a company. Thank you for hopping on and joining me.

Daniel Grima: Thank you, Mike. Thank you. Glad to be here.

Mike Pinkus: So I've known you guys for a while, and in other circles, I brag about what you guys have built — not only because you've been at this for so long and have played that long tail by playing the long game and being together in business for so long — but you guys have built a multi-group of companies, which is huge.

I would love to know the origin story of how you guys got started, because you were so young when you started this business. Most people, when they're teenagers, are thinking of their first job in corporate Canada, America, etc., where they put on a suit and tie.

How did you guys get started? How do you know each other?

Greg Rzeplinski: Well, I would say I've known Daniel since I was six months old. His mom was my babysitter. She took care of me since I was six months. I used to poke him in the little strawberry basket as a kid back in the day. We grew up there under the table at Dan's house, his mother's. That's how we first met.

We went to grade school together, then high school. And then we pursued a few other ideas prior to this one here, but we always thought, let's get into business. So that's how we first met. My parents introduced me to his mom as my second mom.

Daniel Grima: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Greg and I have been childhood friends — high school, grade school. It wasn't until really towards the end of high school when we started to really come together and say, let's start a business.

I had always been sort of entrepreneurial — in grade school, selling little lighters and fake watches, and in high school, selling... essentially the high school bookie before online gambling existed and you just had Proline. I'd always been very entrepreneurial in that sense. And Greg...

Greg Rzeplinski: Worked. Yeah, I had three different jobs. I was a janitor at night while going to school, working at a gas station, and working as a doorman. So my work ethic was just — just keep working. Daniel had a different spin on things.

Daniel Grima: Yeah. And so towards the end of high school and then leading into university, we decided, let's start a business. We both agreed we wanted to be business owners.

He went to Guelph-Humber University, I went to Humber College, which is in the same building up on Highway 27 there in the Rexdale area. We were going through the motions — okay, what business should we start? That was the question. And we arrived at this idea — again, this is around 2002, 2003 — where we wanted to start a juice business.

This is actually right when Booster Juice came on the scene — really, even just before Booster Juice. We had a business idea called Fit Stop. I actually still have the drawings of it.

Greg Rzeplinski: Oh, you took it pretty far.

Daniel Grima: Yeah. And we went to Humber College because we wanted to open up on campus.

What we realized though, obviously — aside from going through the motions and all the roadblocks — was getting turned down at 18 years old at that point, and 17, by these schools. Because, A, you have no experience, and B, we realized we didn’t have the money. There’s a lot of CapEx cost.

So we kind of had to go back to the drawing board. And it was around this time that I really started reading a lot. I got introduced to this quote: “Where you're going to be in five years is dictated by the books you read and the people you meet.”

So I started just reading everything — a lot of leadership books like John C. Maxwell and Dale Carnegie, Think and Grow Rich, all those classics.

Daniel Grima: But one particular book came on my desk — The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses by Amar Bhide. In that book, he basically studied the origin — and of course, the evolution — of all these businesses. But more so, what stuck with me was the origin.

The statistic that really stood out was that the majority of multimillion-dollar companies were actually started with $5,000 or less. That’s the statistic. And I’m like, What? $5,000 or less? And so that changed my framework.

Every time that Greg and I would conjure up a business idea, we put it through the lens: Can you start this with $5,000 or less? Yes or no? And that was the framework that we started to reevaluate these ideas.

Obviously, we nixed the Fit Stop idea because it didn’t fit that model. So we started exploring. Our friends and family knew we wanted to start a business, and we were just still kind of waiting for this idea to pop.

And it didn’t come from Greg and me — it actually came from a mutual friend who gave us this idea: Hey, why don’t you guys start a valet business? He had just come back from the States and saw valet operators all over the place. In Canada, around 2003–2004, you didn’t really see many valet operators.

And because I was very tech-oriented — I went through everything from MS-DOS, Windows 95, and so on and so forth — as soon as dial-up internet came, I was on that. So I was very tech-oriented.

I did some Google searches right then and there and, of course, nothing showed up. So I called Greg and said, I got it. This is it. This is the business.

Daniel Grima: We can do this for $5,000 or less. I did a Google search — there’s no competition. Meanwhile, there were plenty of competitors; they just weren’t online yet, of course.

So we were pretty much the first valet company to have a website, thinking that we had the whole marketplace to ourselves — which obviously was not true.

So in reality, we said, Okay, this is the business we’re going to start. We started building the website — of course, being the first to market with a website.

And it was pretty much within three months that we had our first paid contract — our first paid deal. And it wasn’t even valet parking.

This is a little fun fact for anyone who knows us — the very first check we got written was actually not for valet.

Daniel Grima: It was for a mobile car wash service at a golf club in Caledon called Devil’s Pulpit. The idea was, while all the guests are golfing, we want you to wash all the cars. And there were like 150 of them.

That was the first gig. I think that was around August of 2004. And we weren’t even incorporated by then.

We later incorporated under the name Gatsby Valet, which Greg came up with — a phenomenal business name. It had great brand recognition and resonance with the clientele we were servicing because our aim was to do big parties and galas.

Mike Pinkus: Oh, so like the actual Gatsby — that’s where Gatsby comes from?

Daniel Grima: Yeah, that’s where that concept came from.

Greg Rzeplinski: We just looked at it — the clients that would hire us were probably well-read. And who hasn’t read the book Gatsby? You’d remember that before anything else.

And we were looking at Donald Trump coming to town with the Trump Tower and the statistics on Ferraris in Toronto compared to the rest of the world — there was money here. So we thought, they need a service.

And — I don’t know if I’ll be stealing Daniel’s thunder here — but it did come from my nightclub job. I was working as a barback and then a doorman. We started the valet company right out front of a nightclub. I told the guy, I want to start a company. He said, Be here next week or we’ll get someone else. So we had to be there.

We just worked our entire — I’d say from 18 to whatever age we were — out front of this nightclub every single weekend: Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

And my mom would say, No one will ever pay you $20 to park a car. No one’s got that kind of money. But we stuck it out.

Daniel had the foresight to say — after making, say, $1,000 a night — No, no, no, we’re going to leave and hire somebody else. For me, I looked at it like I had to make $96 a day. That was my objective to get past — to work for myself.

I was working for the City of Toronto at the time, and that was my paycheck. If I could get past that every single day, I could run my own business. And that kind of dictated where I’d go with my next path.

Mike Pinkus: It’s interesting — you guys were outside of a nightclub, but you mentioned, Greg, like Trump Tower — the fact that you were thinking about hotels and other avenues where valet would be applicable.

How did you guys — when you decided on valet — did you have a list of all the potential areas you’d be able to service? Because you said you didn’t see any valets in Toronto back in 2003, 2004, but you probably had to think of where would valet even be applicable? Who are the customer segments that would need valet?

How did you go about that exercise together?

Greg Rzeplinski: I guess on my end, we kind of winged it. To be honest with you, I think it was more winging it on my end. I think if I let Daniel dig up all the stats and do all that preparation work, it would’ve taken a long time. Daniel’s very methodical and makes sure it’s done right.

I kind of run in there, get the contract, and then we’ll figure it out afterwards. So I don’t think we even thought about that. We said, Okay, we have a chance to do something at night on our own — let’s see where this goes, and then dig into it afterwards.

Daniel Grima: Yeah, I mean, Mike, you gotta realize — Greg and I grew up middle class. We lived in a suburb of Toronto called Etobicoke.

I’d never actually seen a valet operation before. I’d only seen it in the movies. I wasn’t frequenting hotels, I wasn’t going downtown — so you gotta imagine, we didn’t really understand that industry.

Obviously, America is where the majority of valet operations exist, and it still does to this day. It’s way more advanced out in the States in terms of demand and presence than in Canada.

But obviously in 2004, compared to now, it’s a drastic change as well. Of course, the cityscape has grown exponentially, and just the wealth creation in those 20 years has been monumental.

So in terms of research or business planning and that sort of thing — there really wasn’t much of that going on. It was really just like Greg had mentioned — stuff thrown at us.

We put it out in the ether that we wanted to be in this business. He says to one person, one person says to another, and then all of a sudden the nightclub owner gets wind that Greg wants to start this business. And coincidentally, Well, actually, you know what? I want valet outside of my nightclub. Be here next week. That’s it. And then it just got thrown on our laps.

That’s as far as we thought — it was never really thinking much further than that. Remember, we were 19 years old. I look at my nephews that are 19, 20, and I put myself in their shoes — Wow, how did we even do that?

Mike Pinkus: Yeah. And I think you guys bring up a valid point — action normally beats preparation. You guys just took action and went with it.

And I guess on that, I’m kind of curious — you guys have been friends a very, very long time, going all the way back to when you were this big. But 20 years in business — it’s different to be friends than it is to be business partners or co-founders.

You’ve managed to be in business, and obviously entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. There are ups and downs. You don’t meet a single entrepreneur without war wounds from dealing with just the things that get thrown at you as you’re growing.

How have you guys managed to stay together for 20 years and survive in that partnership for all of these years? And I’m sure you both have a unique perspective on this — what makes the two of you work together?

Daniel Grima: I’m not gonna start. I’m very curious to see what he thinks before I tackle that question.

Mike Pinkus: Say something nice, Greg.

Greg Rzeplinski: I would say a big thing is carving the lanes out — that’s been a big reason why we don’t kill each other. I was looking at pictures on my old computer the other day, and it was literally like, we started this out of a room with two desks right in front of each other — I’m making calls, he’s making calls.

But we always had different responsibilities — that’s kind of how we assigned it. I knew my strengths, he knew his. Everyone laughs at our relationship ’cause we’re like a husband and wife — we will bicker and be like, “This is the right answer,” and we’re still fighting over the exact right answer.

But we see it — we have different perspectives on things. Like I said, I think carving out lanes really helped us get to where we are today.

And I would not be where I am today without Daniel. I don’t know if he’ll say that now, but I think he thinks it — deep down, in that heart there.

Daniel Grima: Keep going.

Greg Rzeplinski: No, enough — your head’s getting big enough already here.

Daniel Grima: I think Greg’s confusing the here and now with the origin era. We’re talking about lanes right now — especially now that we’ve hired a CEO and CFO to help us grow our business, which we’ll get into.

But in the early days — and through that middle era — it really comes down to a couple of things in my mind.

First is trust. At the foundational level, if you don’t have trust between partners, you cannot build anything. The foundation has to be trust. And trust isn’t something that’s given — it’s something that’s earned.

I think how it’s earned is through the work, the output, the dedication. Early on, Greg showed me, and I showed him, how dedicated I was to this idea. Because as friends, you hang out and come up with ideas.

And I always say this to him: “What really separates real entrepreneurs, real business owners, from those who are not, is what are you doing on Monday morning?”

I always say this because on the weekends, you have ideas, inspiration, you talk. But then I look around and see no one doing anything on Monday morning. That’s what separated me and Greg from the rest. Monday morning, I’m calling him saying, “Remember what we talked about Saturday night? Well, I’ve done some research, I’m doing work.”

A lot of people come up with ideas, but there’s no execution — and that is more important than the idea itself.

I think early on, when we were 19, that back-and-forth built trust — me in him, him in me — by creating tangible output. And because we saw that in each other, that continued to grow.

That’s the foundational layer.

Later on, as the momentum built, I think what really helped us stay in business together — especially through our twenties, when so much is going on in life — was equality.

We always strived for equality: everything has to be split down 50/50. You should never do anything that only benefits your interest, and not the other person’s. We had an agreement: You’re not going to start anything without me, and I’m not going to start anything without you.

We’d do everything 50/50. We even bought our first house together 50/50. We lived together when we bought our first house at 22. From 19 to 22, we saved enough to put a down payment on our first house in Etobicoke — detached, 50 by 150 lot. We were so proud of that.

Of course, we rented part of the home to our friends, so it became a big party house in our twenties. And that’s where we ran our business out of.

So — equality, trust. And the other two things are luck and timing.

Luck — because we had such complementary skill sets. Greg alluded to this: his skills are different than mine. Together, we form one great entrepreneur — but individually, we don’t.

Also from a behavioral profile — every employee in our company goes through a behavioral assessment. We started this program called Predictive Index last year. And if you look at our profiles, it’s literally the exact opposite. If my “A” is far to the right, his is far to the left, and so on.

We didn’t know that as kids — we were just friends. But from a business perspective, we got lucky there.

Timing — anyone who started a business in Toronto in 2003–2004, it was hard not to succeed. The city saw the biggest real estate growth, business growth, population growth.

Anyone who started in that era should be successful now — just by starting at the perfect time. And that applies not just to valet — every business grew in that timeframe.

That’s my perspective on how we’ve been able to survive for 20 years.

Mike Pinkus: And Greg, I’m wondering — Daniel just explained really well what makes you guys click together and stay together over the long haul.

But I’m kind of curious — how do you split your responsibilities day to day? You’re now running a big company, multiple companies under a corporate group.

Greg, what do you do versus what does Daniel do on a day-to-day basis? What are those lanes — as Daniel alluded to — that you guys take ownership over?

Greg Rzeplinski: The way we looked at it now, and Dan kind of made this pretty simple on my end — we know what the objective is for sales. We know where we want to be in five years. If we don’t get that number, it’s me. I’m at fault for that. There could be a thousand other micro reasons below it, but at the end of the day, I’m completely at fault for not getting that number.

And we have different strategies. There’s a few different ones we’re going to use to get that number — whether we’re going to grow each company individually, expand the verticals, acquisition, whatever it might be — it’s on me. I’ve got to get that number. That’s my responsibility at this point. And Daniel’s taken on sort of a different role there, but I’ll let him talk about that one.

Daniel Grima: Yeah. So again, going back to the laneway review, this is something that has been part of our topics of conversation, meetings these last few weeks and months due to the fact that we brought in a CEO to help us run our business and our day-to-day, as well as a CFO to assist on that front. Those are two very important decisions that were made recently and are starting — to me — are starting to bear fruit. I can already see the benefits happening.

But again, it is a natural evolution, I believe, as business owners going through the growth that we’ve gone through in the last two decades — but more so in the last, I would say, five years. I always say, to get to your first million literally took almost a full decade. So imagine that — full 20 years, we couldn’t get past the million dollars in sales.

Once we reached that million, to get to $3 million took less than six months. And then going from $3 million to $10 million, again another maybe one year, two. Then from $10 million to $20 million, again another — and now we’re approaching the $30 million marker. And it all just starts to cascade and snowball.

So this evolution requires that there’s lane — realizing what your skills are and what you typically gravitate towards. I think removing ourselves from the day-to-day operations of the business by getting a CEO, getting a CFO to handle that and lead that team — so Greg can focus, like he alluded to, on the bigger picture.

Mergers and acquisitions right now is the phase that we’re at — going into new business verticals under the West State Group umbrella or adding or acquiring businesses already in the sectors that we already service, which I call like organic acquisitions.

And on my end, what I always gravitate towards was the systems side, the automation side. And now, of course, the big catchphrase now — AI. So how can we bring in the latest technology to improve our day-to-day workflows for all our business operating units that we have under the West State Group umbrella? That’s my laneway.

I’m naturally a visionary — and so is Greg. Greg — naturally we can see things that others can’t see from a macro level. And so bringing that vision, communicating that vision to the CEO, to the team, to the department heads, and executing on those visions is what excites me, and what excites Greg.

So that’s kind of like where we see ourselves within the West State Group in the next evolution that we’re about to embark on. Greg and I have some ambitious goals that Greg alluded to. We have a five-year mission — $100 million by 2028. So we’ve set that target, so now everything has to be in alignment with that. All the decisions we make — how do we grow to that level, that scale in the next five years? So that’s kind of like where we are right now in our chapter.

Mike Pinkus: And those are big moves — a CEO, a CFO — these are C-suite titles. And you guys built this company. And what I always wonder — I’m sure a lot of entrepreneurs think about this — is when you’re an entrepreneur, not all entrepreneurs have ego. But when you’re young and you’re building a company, sometimes having an ego is strength — meaning you’re willing to go through walls and barriers and build and build.

But to be the co-founders and to give someone a title CEO — it takes a lot of humility to do something like that. ’Cause you guys built this. You guys built this multimillion-dollar company. And then all of a sudden someone’s got what’s perceived as the top title — CEO.

I’m curious — first of all, how did you come to that decision? And is it that after 20 years of doing this, it’s just being objective and being humble and saying like, where are our best strengths? And do we need outside help at this size in order to help us get to the next level?

Yeah, I wanted to just know — handing out those titles, it sounds like it was a big decision. How did you come to it? And does ego play into that at all — like, hey, we’re gonna let go of all ego and say, you know what, we don’t need the CEO title or whatever it might be?

Daniel Grima: I can tell you that, again, as you know, Greg and I are complete polar opposites, so we would probably have different perspectives on this. I personally — this decision’s much easier for me in the sense that I have always tried to run under the radar. I remember many times when I would operate — like obviously I had to work on the curb in the early years — and I would never like to say that I’m the owner of the company. I would always pretend I’m just an employee.

Part of that was to do with — I wanted to always pretend as if the company was bigger than it actually was. So my title would be, you know, Account Manager, even though I was the owner. By putting Account Manager, it made the company look and seem bigger.

So I think for me, there is no ego. Titles to me are just titles — it’s what you do. Again, going back to that foundation — that trust level — is all to me. I judge someone based on their output — i.e., results, what have you produced. Titles to me don’t really matter.

But it is important — as we go along — to realize that titles are important to a lot of people. It’s what they put on their resume. It does have bearing. But as a small business owner growing into an enterprise-level company, you realize that’s not the case for everyone. So we do pay attention that titles do matter to people. And it does set the expectations and their role, their responsibility — it defines that.

But ultimately, the decision was not that difficult at all for me. What is difficult is, again, navigating that new environment. But one of the things that really separates us from a lot of companies — I feel — is that we’re adapters. If there’s one word that encapsulates us — it’s adapting.

During Covid, we adapted. We grew out of Covid — whereas a lot of people were shutting down. We pivoted, we got in, we adapted to the situation and redirected our resources and workforce to services that we thought were needed during that timeframe. And we attained new business out of that — actually, our security division was birthed out of that conflict.

So I’m not concerned about bringing in two new C-suite level — we’re gonna adapt again. We’re gonna adapt to this new environment. It’s gonna take a little time to get used to it, but one thing I’m certain of is that we can adapt to any environment — as the economy changes, as the environment changes, internally or externally — that’s our strength.

Mike Pinkus: Yeah. And Greg, how do you feel about — with those lanes and the new people coming on — has it been easy to adapt to those changes? Or is it new because it’s been the two of you at the helm all these years? Is it like a new thing to adapt to, I guess, as Daniel alluded to?

Greg Rzeplinski: Yeah, it’s relatively new still. It’s still getting used to, you know, trusting the way that someone else leads. I know what I would do in situations, but thinking big picture — they probably have the exact same idea, it’s just a different way of getting to the finish line.

So just stepping back and letting the team do what they do — it’s been a challenge on my part because I wanted to get involved. I’ve been so involved. I have clients and relationships — they’re important to me. These clients of mine that I’ve worked with for years — they trust me, they trust what I’ve promised them — and I still want to make sure they’re getting that.

But I think we made the right call. We’ve got a great guy who’s leading that now. And it’s just letting that go — that’s been the hard part for me.

But as Daniel says, he’s like — put everything back there and focus on how we’re going to get that goal forward. It’s really trying to remember that every single day.

That’s been — I wouldn’t say a challenge — but there’s noise in the background that always... I hear a client that’s unhappy and I want to get involved when I really shouldn’t. That’s the challenging part.

Mike Pinkus: Yeah, no, that’s awesome. And I think that’s something that’s probably hard at scale, guys, right? Because like, you’re now a bigger company and your time becomes more and more valuable.

Meaning — your time might have been a hundred-an-hour opportunity cost in the early days, and then a thousand an hour, then ten thousand an hour. And then at some point it becomes — you can’t quantify it. You just need more time.

And I feel like — there’s a lot — I think it does show a lot of humility to bring on help to get to what is a really audacious goal. And at the end of the day, when you own a business — you’ve got equity. You want to make that pie as big as it is.

And at least I’ve seen — and we work with a lot of companies — sometimes you get drawn into wanting to do everything yourself. And so some things stay smaller than they could have been if you didn’t get outside help.

But yeah — that humility part is something you don’t always see.

Which kind of brings me to my next question: now that you do have this new — not only vision to where you guys want to go — $100 million coming up to... I guess you said 2000 and what was the number?

Greg Rzeplinski: $100 Million 2028.

Mike Pinkus: Which is a big, big number, short period of time to get there. Is acquisitions — you guys have now dabbled in acquisitions. Dan, you mentioned Greg is the one leading a lot of the acquisition, I guess, makeup of how you guys figure out who fits in.

My question is: how do you figure out if someone’s a fit or a company is a fit for the West State Group — like, to bring into your portfolio and be a part of your culture? How do you guys figure out what kind of companies, who’s the right fit? What’s that process look like?

Greg Rzeplinski: You know, like Daniel said with trust — it’s something that’s earned. It’s tough to do right off the bat. Like the one big one we just did recently with our security side there — that took months of side-by-side talking.

You know, we dated before we got married. We started working on other little ideas — I’d throw some work to him, he’d throw some back. I’d see how quick he’d respond. So essentially, I was... we’d be courting each other for months on end, just to see how close is he — and work ethic, like Daniel and I, right?

If things went wrong, is he going to put his hands up and I’m going to have to get into it? Or is he going to be able to handle that ship and steer that ship without me?

So it’s — I guess it’s just like any relationship. How do you know you want to stick with that person for a very long time? You’ve got to date ‘em. You’ve got to try, you know, keep talking, keep conversations going, work through some adversity together to see if you can get past certain things — and go from there.

Daniel Grima: Yeah. I think just to further that, in terms of deciding what business verticals to add to the West State Group — what I call NBVs, new business ventures — as opposed to just an acquisition of a business that’s already a service that we offer.

With regards to NBVs, I think it’s a matter of looking at the West State Group — what is our core competency? Like, what value do we bring that a business owner that’s, let’s say, doing under $1 million a year — because we went through that, we went through that 10-year period, like I mentioned before — where a lot of business owners will not get past that.

And part of that reason is — number one, trust. It goes back down to trust. They just don’t trust other people to do the work as good as them.

Part of it is because they haven’t developed the systems required to manage and monitor those people that you’re delegating that work to. Part of it could be because they lack the skill set to do that task. Part of it could be because they just flat out don’t trust. They have a hard time trusting people to execute.

So part of our focus really is finding these business owners that lack those skill sets to scale, and use the systems effectively. And as you know with tech — every month, there’s a new software coming out that needs to be evaluated, right? Determine if it could be integrated within the environment of the company. And they just lack that time.

So this is something that — if the business unit fits under the scale, under what we call a frontline workforce — so again, the verticals that we’re in is parking and valet, security, food and beverage staffing. We’re exploring cleaning and janitorial services.

So any frontline workforce labor-type business model can be assimilated and brought into the West State Group management system.

And we can provide tremendous value to those entrepreneurs who are looking to — you know, they have a large piece of a very small pie at the moment. And with the West State Group, we can offer them a smaller piece, but of a much larger pie — where you can begin to have real talks of exit planning down the road.

And just being around like-minded business owners together under one roof — that peer-to-peer type environment — can’t be overstated. It provides so much value.

And then of course the marketing umbrella — the marketing synergies together. Having one unified sales force selling all these services under one umbrella is something that we feel has a lot of value to the client base that we service.

Mike Pinkus: Yeah. And I would say what you guys are building is, as you mentioned, it’s incredible — by bringing all of these services under one umbrella, the whole is greater than the sum. I don’t know what the saying is, but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Meaning — when you bring all these things together, you’re adding so much value to your customers. Because they don’t need to go and get 18 different vendors. They’ve got a one-stop shop — for security, for valet, for parking — and the list goes on and on — event management. And you become the de facto shop for everything, which is incredible.

And I want to be respectful of your time, guys. I know we’re a tiny bit over here, but my last question for you guys: 20 years together — building, scaling a multimillion-dollar business, multi-eight-figure business — what’s next for you both?

I know we’ve got that big target of 2028, but what’s next for Greg and Daniel?

Daniel Grima: Well, Greg just got engaged, so I'm—

Mike Pinkus: Sure he—oh, congratulations! Pumping champagne is what’s next?

Daniel Grima: Yeah, yeah. Next—I'm married and two kids, so just kind of watching them grow on the personal side. And obviously we talked at length on the business side in terms of where we’re heading, our goals, and kind of reverse engineering how you triple—how you 3x the business in five years, essentially. So that’s gonna be fun.

And again, it’s gonna require adaptation. It’s just an evolution — it’s what it is. And I’m really excited about AI. I believe in the workforce management sector, there is a lot of innovation still required in that space.

So we’re building some new softwares aimed at bringing some of the top AI and automation tools to workforce management — from scheduling and time attendance sector, all the way through recruitment, training, and retention.

The three pillars of success in our business we’ve coined is: recruit, train, retain. So everything we do is on those premises. How do we get better at recruiting? How do we get better at training? How do we get better at retaining?

I believe there’s a lot of innovation still required in that space that has not been capitalized on. So that’s kind of where I’m shifting my focus.

Where Greg, again, is just adding more business units for more billable hours, right? Our business model is based on billable hours. So the more billable hours we do in the various business services, that’s how we reach that top line.

And my goal is to make that bottom line grow. How do we be more leaner? We’ve got a very large offshore component to our business, where we’ve allowed to be more lean on the M&A side.

But I feel there’s still a lot of work to—a lot of improvements still on that side. So that’s kind of where I’m seeing the future.

Mike Pinkus: Yeah, that’s awesome. Well guys, really appreciate you jumping on and telling your story. It’s an incredible story, and I love the fact that you guys have figured out how to split your roles — even at over a thousand employees — with that much going on.

The fact that you guys have had staying power — and also, I talk about you guys a lot as being this success story where, let’s be real: 90-something percent of businesses fail. Most don’t even get to 10 years. And I think the stat’s something like 0.1% of businesses get to eight figures.

You guys have done it all. You’ve crossed the 10-year mark, you’ve crossed the eight-figure mark — and you still like each other!

So kudos to both of you. And congrats again on what you’ve built at the West State Group. I’m excited to see — we’re going to keep in touch, and I’d love to get an update every year up to 2028.

It’s a big, big number and a big audacious goal — but if anybody can get there, I think you guys can get there.

And thanks again for taking the time — ’cause like I said, I don’t know what your hourly rate is worth today, but it’s obviously a big number!

Daniel Grima: I appreciate that, Mike. Thanks so much for having us.

Mike Pinkus: Been great. Thank you. Thanks so much, Greg. Thanks, Daniel.

Daniel Grima: Thank you.

Closing Thoughts

Mike Pinkus: That was Daniel and Greg, co-founders of the West State Group. Daniel and Greg have stayed together as partners for 20 years building their businesses.

There were two key takeaways from the conversation:

Number one — you can win business in the long tail if you’re patient. It took Daniel and Greg a full decade to reach a million in revenue. However, the compound learnings from that decade allowed them to sail up to $30 million in annual revenue during the second decade of their 20-year business journey.

Number two — great co-founder relationships are built on trust. Businesses go through ups and downs, and the only way to weather that storm is to have unconditional trust in your co-founder.

That’s it for today. Until next time — keep scaling up and breaking barriers.