Young Professionals Leadership Forum 2015

Date: May 12, 2015

Name: Young Professionals Leadership Forum 2015

Presenters: Igor Faletski, Juggy Sihota, and Tracey Renzullo

Innovation is one of the main elements for the success of young entrepreneurs; moreover, many organizations are looking for entrepreneurs who can lead innovation and engage their passion and creativity to help organizations improve. Company of Young Professionals invites the panelist, Igor Faletski, CEO of Mobify, Tracey Renzullo, the Marketing Faculty of BCIT, and Juggy Sihota, the Vice President of Customer Experience Strategy and Operations of TELUS Health. The moderator, April Yau, will discuss with the panelist of their career lessons and mistakes to help young entrepreneurs stand out from the noises in their industries.

Igor Faletski shares his startup journey starts in Vancouver. His company, Mobify, is a mobile shopping platform that helps many entrepreneurs to retail their products to their customers. Faletski believes it is important to ride on the big wave. Young entrepreneurs should identify if their careers have growth potential. They can start small, but it must be exciting and supporting future growth. Faletski believes young entrepreneurs should hire their friends who have the ability to work together because they already figure out their strengths and weaknesses.

Instead of staying in the same geographic region, Faletski believes young entrepreneurs should get into United States as quickly as possible. The export market is growing and young entrepreneurs should think internationally, not just next door. Young entrepreneurs must have a quick plan to profit. Faletski believes building a model that generates profit with the usage of technology can help young entrepreneurs to handle cash flow. Lastly, Faletski suggests young entrepreneurs to have determination for long term success.

Juggy Sihota is involved with one of the largest health division in British Columbia. TELUS creates the TELUS Health system to improve the local health care services in BC. The system will organize, secure, connect and share information with different health care services. Sihota believes there is a need to improve life of quality in BC citizen. The public sector is seeking support from private sector, and currently the system is used by over 300 thousand of Canadians, 14 thousands of physicians, 2.8 thousands of pharmacy and over 24 thousands of professionals. The system emphasizes the electronic medical record on the digital system, and the system is expanding and reaching to different industries.

There are 4 innovation components in the TELUS Health system: essential, mobile, easy, and monitor. The essential component is to schedule the basic patient information. The mobile component is to upload attachment and usage of satellite GPS. The easy component is to simplify the installation. The monitor component is to create monitor patients in their homes.

Tracey Renzullo believes the concept of life long learnings, and it is important to connect with the right people. Renzullo mentions the concept of self-innovation. Young entrepreneurs should build relationship with content. However, content will be overwhelming and young entrepreneurs need to have the ability to filter the relevant information. Renzullo believes it is important to pick the right passion. There is no way for young entrepreneurs to be expert in everything. Young entrepreneurs can learn the relevant information or skills from many online applications. Renzullo suggests young entrepreneurs to use applications that can customer the feed function to filter the right information, such as Google Alerts, Twitter lists, Swanyy, and Pulse. Renzullo also recommends young entrepreneurs to begin contribute to the community so they can get notice in the crowd.

“Stay young and be innovative”

Questions and Answers

All panelists share their biggest mistakes in their careers. Sihota mentions the fail launch of voice portal function to activate internet usage on cellphone. Faletski mentions the team is growing with the wrong members, and Renzullo mentions the restructure of Canadian sales that frustrates the customers.

Faletski believes the shift from desktop to mobile in marketing will be a trend in the next 5 years. Sihota believes many things are getting more portable and people are looking for ways to access information everywhere. Renzullo believes the industry will need to figure out the gap between systems.

Faletski indicates the biggest challenge is to keep the talent since the industries are changing every day. Sihota indicates young entrepreneurs need to discard the concept of looking for perfect solution. Instead, young entrepreneurs should try it first. Renzullo indicates there are still many organizations only invest in innovation when they need it; in fact, that will be too late. Sihota wants young entrepreneurs to help people understand about innovation and get the awareness from the community. Moreover, it is important to take small steps one by a time.

When Faletski works in a space that is exciting will help him generate his best innovation ideas. Sihota believes passion can lead young entrepreneurs their innovation ideas and Renzullo believes by staying connect with the right people, ideas will come eventually.