Tell Us Your Story. What motivated you to start your business? Why are you passionate about what you do?

The motivation behind starting Red Pill Labs was to offer a fresh approach to assist small and medium-sized organizations (SMEs) achieve real value and results from their digital transformation journey. This approach upends the traditional consulting model by prioritizing problem-solving for clients rather than focusing on billable hours. The passion for providing this different approach stems from firsthand experience with large consulting firms that primarily emphasize billable hours, understanding how technology vendors sell and implement their products and services, and witnessing how client needs are often given low priority. A few years ago, Neal Chaudhary established Tacit Consulting. This independent firm provided unbiased and technology-agnostic advice to help organizations make confident and informed technology decisions for maximizing their investments in technology. Tacit garnered clients and attracted the attention of a major management consulting company, which eventually acquired Tacit. After the acquisition, Neal assumed a senior leadership position in the consultancy. After several years, Neal grew disenchanted with the politics and relentless emphasis on billable hours over client needs within the consulting firm. He realized he wasn't happy and needed to take a different path. Without a plan, but with some clients following him, Neal found himself with projects to deliver. To execute these projects, he required a team. He realized that his new path was to solve problems and assist SMEs in optimizing their technology investments. Inspired by the 1999 movie, The Matrix, Neal derived the new company's name from a scene where the protagonist, Neo (played by Keanu Reeves), had to choose his future by taking either a blue pill (where his story ends believing whatever he believes in) or a red pill (embracing a new adventure). Thus, the seeds of Red Pill Labs were planted. His motivation to provide a straightforward, unique experience that emphasizes delivering results, valuing people over profit, and solving complex problems for SMEs through unbiased and technology-agnostic advice and client-side project management has attracted like-minded people and clients. Red Pill Labs is now an advisory team of 12 full-time employees. The company is profitable, stable, growing, and serving clients in various industries across Canada.

Describe and demonstrate, including metrics, your community support. How do you support and uplift your community, and how do they show that support in return? Minimum 25 words, maximum 2500 characters.

Red Pill Labs supports and uplifts the community in various ways. Here are some examples. • We empower local businesses by providing tailored technology solutions, and our team helps small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) improve their operations, enhance productivity, and achieve growth. • Our company's growth contributes to local employment opportunities, directly and indirectly supporting the local economy. 100% of employees are hired locally. • Red Pill Labs offers seminars to the business community. In 2023/24, we participated in two in-person seminars to share knowledge and insights about technology. • Red Pill Labs provides training to staff on the latest technology trends and tools empowering local businesses to stay competitive and innovate. • We are active in the community. RPL has developed, organized, sponsored, and participated in various local events to share knowledge about technology and trends with the business community. We are members of the Vancouver Board of Trade as we aim to build a stronger connection with the local business community. • Our founder, who is a CPA, provides pro bono financial guidance and services for a local non-profit organization to improve their financial governance. In return for our efforts, the community shows support with: • Client loyalty. Most of our revenue is from repeat client business that engages us for multiple initiatives. These satisfied clients spread positive words about our services and results leading to referrals. Companies that aren’t clients refer us as they appreciate our business model and our values. • Attending events. The events we’re involved in attract high attendance. RPL recently provided a local in-person seminar on human resources technology that was 80% sold out. Bolstered by this, we plan to provide more seminars over the coming months covering a range of technology subjects. These events are not focused on sales, but rather, on sharing knowledge. • Partnerships. RPL currently partners with five complementary local and/or Indigenous owned businesses that align with our values.

Why do you deserve to win the Business Impact award?

At Red Pill Labs, we don’t conform to any one category. We pride ourselves on being a unique blend of advisory, technology, and digital expertise. Our core passion lies in solving problems, leveraging our distinct industry perspectives, and cultivating a commitment to social change. Our mission is to create exceptional experiences, not only for our clients but also for our employees and the communities we serve. We aim to build an organization that, at its core, values the lost art of listening, genuine engagement, humility, prioritizing people over profits, and fostering a fun, diverse, and quirky team. Our guiding principles revolve around integrity, transparency, and diversity, and we strive to cultivate long-term, meaningful relationships with organizations that share our values. Our secret to success is simple: we foster close relationships with our clients who appreciate our highly personalized advisory approach. Since our inception, our collective at Red Pill Labs has been dedicated to leaving a positive impact on our communities. In May 2022, we partnered with One Girl Canada, an organization committed to promoting education and empowerment for girls and women. We sponsored 5 girls this year and aspire to triple the number of sponsorships in 2024. We are determined to continue making a positive difference within our communities by sharing senior-level knowledge, experiences, and best practices with business owners and decision-makers. For instance, we were accredited advisors for the Canadian Digital Adoption Program, offering a range of advisory services to aid numerous small and medium-sized businesses in developing strategies and tactics for technology adoption. Our services yielded positive outcomes for our clients, as evidenced by a 9/10 Net Promoter Score - a common metric used in customer experience programs.

Tell Us About Your Culture. How are you creating a sustainable and healthy workplace where everyone feels welcome? Provide examples of leadership you show in interactions with clients, vendors, contractors, staff and others.

Creating a sustainable and healthy workplace where everyone feels welcome is a top priority at Red Pill Labs. Below are a few examples demonstrating our commitment to this priority: • We promote work-life balance through flexible work arrangements including flexible working hours, remote work options, and ample paid time off for vacations, illness, mental health days, and family emergencies. • We prioritize mental health by providing benefits that give access to mental health resources, counseling services, stress management, and mental health apps or hotlines. • We establish communication channels for open feedback through surveys and town hall meetings and encourage employees to discuss concerns with management without fear of reprisal. We maintain transparency about company goals, challenges, and changes to foster trust and alignment. • We provide growth opportunities through professional development, such as continuous learning opportunities via training programs, workshops, conferences, as well as clear career development pathways and mentorship programs. • We recognize and reward employees by celebrating individual and team successes every Friday afternoon as a group and encourage colleagues to acknowledge each other's contributions to success. • We ensure a safe and supportive environment by enforcing a strict no-tolerance policy for harassment and bullying and clear procedures for reporting and addressing such incidents. We have conducted a risk assessment of our operations and have a policy against modern slavery, human trafficking, and child labor. • We foster a sense of belonging through team-building activities such as regular events and social gatherings. We also celebrate diverse cultural traditions through group lunches where staff socialize over food from different nationalities represented by the employees.

Why do you think you should win the Premier’s People’s Choice Award?

We believe we deserve your vote to win the Premier's People's Choice award because our team is dedicated to solving problems for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) every day. In British Columbia, 98% of businesses are SMEs, and we feel that only the largest businesses with the biggest budgets can afford high-quality advice for their digital transformation initiatives. This creates an unfair advantage. We believe that all businesses should have access to unbiased, high-quality, senior-level information that focuses on their specific needs (instead of the revenue-focused needs of large consultancies or vendors). Our team is committed to helping decision-makers and owners of SMEs solve problems and implement the right technology to achieve their goals. Our track record in British Columbia speaks for itself. For example, we helped a small company optimize its financial processes, reducing the financial close process to just two days. This improvement enabled the company's staff to have more time with their family and loved ones instead of working weekends and late nights to close the books. In another case, we provided solutions for a non-profit to track program results and make better decisions about program funding. In addition to our dedication to SMEs, we are also focused on making a positive impact in our community. We hire local employees and contractors, and we believe our growing company supports the local economy by helping SME’s solve problems and thrive. Specifically, we provide unbiased and technology-agnostic advice to help business owners make informed decisions that increases the likelihood of a positive return on their technology investments. Our efforts in the community extend our commitment to creating a positive impact. Since our early days, we have sponsored a non-profit (One-Girl) and participated in non-sales-focused in-person events to share knowledge and insights with business owners about digital transformation. Your vote for Red Pill Labs is crucial as it provides further evidence and support that we are moving in the right direction, providing a service that benefits businesses and the community we are all a part of.