Belmar Bytes Episode 1

June 19, 2025

Episode 1 Transcript:

Scott Billows (00:02.387)

Okay, here we are, Matt. We are officially doing a podcast, which is exciting. I know you and I have been talking about this for some time, and we're officially launched. So here we go, episode one. Why don't I just kick this off by way of introduction? My name is Scott Billows, founder and CEO of Belmar Consulting.

I am located in West Palm Beach, Florida. I'm originally from Vancouver, Canada, and excited to be hosting this with my business partner and colleague. So Matt, maybe with that, don't you introduce yourself.

Matt Hui (00:44.258)

Yeah, to be doing this again, Scott. I know we've tried in the past and we're rebooting this. So, fresh slate, but just by way of introduction, my name is Matt. I'm the president at Bellmark Consulting. And we're trying this again. We're effectively just having a conversation and inviting those who are listening to hear perspective, trends and whatnot. So I'm excited to be doing this, Scott.

Scott Billows (01:12.085)

As we were thinking about this, I a couple of weeks ago, I of repitched this idea to you and your comment was, we get on calls all the time and we talk about a wide variety of topics that it's just easy to do and always free flowing and always come away from those conversations, really feeling like we're executing well. so why not record these ideas, at least some of these ideas and share them with the community?

I really, you know, in terms of format, you and are gonna kind of co-moderate this and it's not intended to be more like interview style. It's more just you and I rifting on topics. so why don't we start with, maybe I'll just pose a question to you. I guess when you think about this podcast and what it's gonna be about, what's the target, what are we trying to accomplish? Give me some ideas in terms of what you're thinking.

Matt Hui (02:09.006)

So we've, like I said before, we've tried this before, and let's call it varying success, and I think rebooting it now, the real goal here, at least from my perspective is just invite our customers, invite our clients, industry experts, partners, to hear what an organic conversation would look like. We've not got a name for this yet, but effectively it's like somebody could be a fly in the wall.

fly on a wall in a conversation you and I might have and really be able to hear the experiences that we've seen, share some of the pain, share some of the gains, share some of just what's our take on what's going on, what things should we be cognizant of, but it's really no different than just you and I having a conversation and you made the note that we get on so many calls. I've not counted how many calls I've been on today. I'm sure you've been on multiple, but this is just a conversation.

that you and I are having and we're inviting those to hear our perspective as well. So that's where I think this can go, is weigh in on what's happening in market, what's happening in industry, and provide my two cents. And I've got a lot of two cents to share about things and I know you do as Scott.

Scott Billows (03:23.349)

A lot of two cents to throw at people. All right, well, that's exciting. All right, well, listen, maybe we should just introduce, I guess we've introduced ourselves, but introduce the company and where we sit in the market. so why don't I take a shot at that? And we'd love to get your commentary on that as well. So our business is called Bellmark Consulting. We are a Salesforce implementation partner. There's many different labels that we can attach to who we are and what we do.

But really it boils down to Salesforce being a very large software company based in San Francisco, California, build great technology. have amazing customers that want to adopt their solutions, in some cases build on top of their existing solutions. And many of them either don't have the internal capacity to do that on their own and or they just value outsourcing those types of services and.

And so that's really where we fit in the market. We are an implementation partner, a full service Salesforce implementation partner. We do have a few specializations that we consider ourselves to be experts in. But we like to approach conversations with customers really as being not only Salesforce experts, but really experts at helping to break down their business processes.

and look at the best possible ways that Salesforce can address what they're trying to accomplish. And so we have a couple of vertical specializations. First is non-profit. We probably get into this in the conversation today at some point, but in terms of where we started and how we got to where we are, but where we sit today is really two verticals, non-profit and the other is public sector. And there's a lot of intersection between those.

And so it's very similar use cases that we're addressing for those two types of customers. But it's a fun space to be in. It's at its core consulting, solving business problems with technology. And the reward really is just seeing our customers thrive after they've had a great implementation of a technology solution. So what would you add to that, Matt?

Matt Hui (05:51.586)

Yeah, well, I I appreciate the background, and honestly, I don't have a ton to add, per se, but you asked me the question earlier, and I wanted to get your perspective on what are you hoping to, given that background and who we are, what are you hoping to get out of this podcast, and what do think the value is for people listening to this?

Scott Billows (06:13.757)

Yeah, I think as we look into the future in terms of what are the goals, what do we hope to accomplish with this? I think if I think internally, what are we trying to do? It's really just to share our ideas. at our core, and I are consultants. We both have lived in that consulting world for many years. And we tend to...

look at the world through a set of eyes that tries to dissect and break down what's going on with a problem, how can we overcome that challenge? I think we've got lots of ideas that bounce between our ears, but getting them captured and maybe somebody to listen and take something away that they can go and implement within their own life or their own business.

think that for me is one of the objectives. I mean, I've been invited on numerous podcasts and had various interviews and things such as that. I know the same for you, So I think as we started thinking about that a little bit more, we were just like, well, you know what, why don't we just do this on our own and publish content and see who benefits from it. I'm sure that some time, somebody over time is gonna benefit from ideas that we've got and hopefully,

As we expand this and move forward, there'll be opportunities to have guests and bring people in who are in industry. Maybe it's existing customers, but really just giving an opportunity for both ourselves as well as future guests a platform to share ideas.

Matt Hui (08:00.834)

Yeah, right on. And I think the exciting part is people also get a sense to understand who you are, who I am. Just a peek under the hood, if you will, especially in this digital world. hey, just rolling on from, you gave a bit of background about Bellmar. And I know a question I get often, and I'll put you on the spot here. Why is it called Bellmar? How'd you start?

Scott Billows (08:22.771)

Yeah, great question. I have got that one a lot over the years. So I guess by way of introduction, so going back.

I don't know the exact number of years, but it's, we'll say more than 20 years ago, I graduated from SFU, which is in Burnaby, British Columbia on the west coast of Canada. And I got into a technology company in Vancouver and was there for a number of years and they were...

bringing into the organization at that time a contact management tool, was kind of pre-CRM, pre-customer relationship management. was pretty basic, capture contacts, capture some notes or conversations that you had with a contact. And they were bringing this solution into the business. it was a project that I was tasked with. I didn't know the first thing about contact management software. And so...

Matt Hui (09:23.726)

Thanks

Scott Billows (09:27.557)

went external, found an organization that could help us with that. And that company was actually Belmar. It was a small, kind of one or two person organization based in Vancouver who was at the time working with a technology tool called Act. And maybe some people that are my age and older would remember a tool called Act, which at the time it was awesome. It was a great tool, but...

Fast forward to sometime after that project was completed, I kind had this itch to go and do something outside of actually working within a company. I approached the founder of that company and started exploring some opportunities with her. And it really just made sense for her and for me at that time to make a small acquisition. So the company was acquired. We kept the name and

over the next handful of years, continued to work with this tool called Act and expanded beyond that, sort of beyond the original acquisition, but that's where the name came from. we've...

Matt Hui (10:43.886)

So was this the first business that you kind of grew from the ground up? Or had you tried before in the past?

Scott Billows (10:48.905)

Yeah, yeah.

No, this was the first venture on my own. it was, and I didn't have sort of this idea, hey, I'm going to go start something on my own or I'm going to go acquire something. I was very interested in the work that Belmar did for us. I found it really interesting that you could.

put yourself into many different organizations and help solve problems with technology. And I mean, I was aware that that was going on, but I didn't have any friends in consulting. I didn't know anybody really that was in consulting. And so when I got connected to Belmar originally, it was to have them come in and help solve a problem that we were experiencing within the organization that I was at. And so that opened my eyes to just the world of consulting. so...

Yeah, I guess to answer that question, this was the first venture and is the venture that continues.

Matt Hui (11:54.936)

So I know so many people are probably hearing the word ACT, this acronym or software that maybe they don't know, and then they hear today that we're a Salesforce consulting company. what, obviously the two are very different. What was that evolution like? What was really the, okay, we've got to switch up here. What was that moment for you when you wanted to take Belmar in a different direction?

Scott Billows (12:22.729)

Yeah, great question. And again, one that I've answered over the years as follows. So when I took the reins of the company, it was just me. So as I said, it was a small, very, very small acquisition, essentially transitioning the founder out of the business. And then I took over. Act was a

Matt Hui (12:45.422)

Thank

Scott Billows (12:50.397)

really, really great tool for a very, very narrow use case. It was targeted at small business, individuals, like maybe one to five people using a shared database. It wasn't even client server, it was like desktop base. You had to act installed in your machine and

I mean, you could back it up to a server, I suppose, but it was not even a client server model, which for those that don't know what a client server model is, go Google it. You'll figure that out pretty quick. there was a lot of transformation happening back then. So Act, it kind of just hit this wall in terms of its capabilities. it was acquired just actually shortly after I jumped into this business. It was acquired by

Sage software. So Sage is pretty well known for accounting tools and ERP tools, but Sage was making a move into CRM and contact management. And so they had acquired Act. They had acquired another company called SalesLogix, which truly was a client server CRM. was a pretty robust application. so before we got into Salesforce, we actually started working with SalesLogix.

That got us into a much larger cohort of customers in terms of size and capability. And then it was actually almost 15 years ago. I actually looked this up, Matt, just earlier today in preparation for this conversation. It was September 25 of 2010. So this coming September, we'll have to celebrate this, but September 25th of 2010, I filled out an online form.

on the Salesforce.com website to become a partner. so what led to that? What prompted that? Salesforce in the year or two prior had started appearing on opportunities. They became competitive against deals that we were running with both Act and with SalesLogix and...

Matt Hui (14:47.246)

you

Scott Billows (15:13.993)

Salesforce was a very different company then compared to what they are now. I don't remember what they were doing in terms of revenue, but when we got involved, I believe they were less than a billion dollars in sales. So they were small in comparison to what they are today. But the writing was on the wall in terms of some of the work that we were doing with Act and with SalesLogix. We were just really limited and there was this...

you know, up and coming, if you will, technology company called Salesforce that, you know, when I looked out over the edge of the horizon, I these guys are going to either eat our lunch, or they're not, but I think we, need to get involved in some, some way. September 25th, 2010 was the start of, what's been now almost a 15 year relationship with Salesforce. And, one that's obviously

Matt Hui (16:11.403)

And how big was Velmar at that time when you started the sales?

Scott Billows (16:14.517)

Yeah, at that time, I guess in September of 2010, we would have been, oh man, we are small team, like, don't know, like five, six, seven people implementing these fairly basic solutions for customers. And then the story sort of continues from there, which it goes something like this. I had been approached.

Matt Hui (16:31.734)

All right.

Scott Billows (16:43.613)

a few times from other Sage partners inquiring about acquisition, both from their ERP partners that were looking at getting into CRM or contact management, and then from, I guess, direct competitors of ours that were Sage partners that were doing services around the tools that we were working with. so opted to actually...

exit and sell that piece of the business off to a competitor that was based in Ontario. It's interesting, they're still going strong. I don't actually keep in contact with them anymore, but I get emails the odd time from them and they're still selling act and still selling services. That ecosystem is still alive and well, but yeah, it just made sense back in

which probably would have been about 2021 when I exited that. Didn't exit the business completely, just, yeah, I just basically sold off that piece of the practice, kept the name, and then we launched the Salesforce practice.

Matt Hui (17:46.958)

You kept the Belmar name though.

Matt Hui (17:54.584)

Yeah, good.

Matt Hui (18:00.366)

So that's history and that's, I appreciate you sharing the roots. Maybe just for those who don't know who Belmar is, give a sense of scale of what Salesforce, how Salesforce has evolved since 2010, 20, September 25th, 2010 to today. How big are they now? How is it different? And how big is Belmar now? How is it different? Just to give some sense of that for those listening.

Scott Billows (18:30.345)

Yeah, well, I'm happy to respond to that, but I'll flip that around and sort of prime you to answer that same question, because you've been in the business now for a number of years, and you've seen a lot of change and a lot of evolution. So I'll answer it this way. I remember it was September 25th of 2010. I actually remember where I was. I was in Seattle. I was at a conference in Seattle.

And I was, just, I had this, you and I have talked about this a bit before, Matt, this Spidey sense. I just kind of had this unsettled feeling that the ground we were standing on wasn't like rock solid. And in terms of being able to scale and build a business that would last and one that, you know, it just create a lot of opportunity for myself, but also for the employees that we had. just, was feeling very,

unsettled about that. And so I was attending a conference in Seattle. I was actually part of an organization called EO. And there was a conference that was happening in Seattle. And I was in Seattle for this. And I remember after, I mean, was one of the evenings that I was there. I was like, you know what? We can no longer fight against Salesforce. We're just going to join them. that was what was going through my head at that time. so I filled out the form, became a partner.

which was a very, at that time, a very, very low bar to do. But since that time, we were, call it say five, six people in terms of our company, Salesforce, they were doing less than a billion dollars. Fast forward 15 years, they, I don't know what their exact number is, but it's 30 to 35 billion a year. They grew from, at the time they had,

maybe three products, sales cloud, service cloud, and they had just launched some very, very basic portal, which they changed the name on that 100 times now called Experience Cloud, but it was this ability for customers to log in to the system and interact with the customer that had implemented Salesforce. And so, very limited set of products.

Matt Hui (20:28.942)

Mm-hmm.

Scott Billows (20:56.145)

I remember going to Dreamforce and sitting up in the second or third row in Moscone Center in San Francisco. I thought there was a lot of people. There was maybe 10,000 people there. I guess that was 14 years ago. Now, fast forward, 30 plus billion, they've made multiple acquisitions. They've built a whole bunch of products themselves that address

all these different verticals, obviously through COVID they grew like absolute, they grew like crazy through COVID. We as an org haven't scaled maybe at the same level that Salesforce has starting at five employees. Today, we're about 25 people plus or minus. But I think what's been interesting for us as a company

is just the opportunity that we've scaled and grown into. today we have employees across Canada and we've got employees across the US. when we started with Salesforce, were very much, we would work with customers sort of within driving distance, not that we needed to be on site to implement the solution, but very much Vancouver based and that's.

obviously grown a lot since then. so very honored to have customers across Canada, customers across the US and across these different verticals. so a lot has changed, but yeah, we still a lot of exciting work ahead for us in terms of where we're going as an org. But what's your story, Matt, with Bellmar? You joined the organization. I'll let you introduce kind of where

what you were doing before and what you've done since you got here.

Matt Hui (22:55.564)

Yeah, yeah, well, the organization that I joined, I guess I've had a career in consulting, technology consulting, and really accidentally fell into Salesforce consulting. And I've told you this story before, but maybe for the benefit of those listening, I come from a very technology-oriented background. So think software development, database design, this, that, and the other thing.

Let's call it this. It's not the most exciting stuff. It's not the stuff that you're reading about on a day-to-day basis, but it is the of foundational infrastructure stuff. Really, my education geared me towards, and I came from a family of very technical folks. Having gone to a technical institute, I was primed to be a application support CTO, CIO kind of pathway.

The only catch here was I didn't like coding. I really did not like coding. was something that I'm, A, I'll admit, I'm bad at it, I don't enjoy it. I'm very fortunate that we've got a great team of developers who are good at it and enjoy it, because that was not me. So all I knew was, okay, well, I don't like the pure technology stuff. I don't like coding. I like the business side.

How do I bridge the two together? So in my mind, I always thought, I am going to be a BA, a business analyst. When I grow up, I'm going to be a BA or some type of bridging that gap. And I remember saying that very distinctly at a very young age. I'm going to bridge the gap between technical folks and non-technical folks. So my first kind of gig out of post-secondary, so university, I went to university at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. I said yes to the first job that I got offered.

which was a client application support role, technical support, for a recreation management software. And after about three months, four months, I realized this is totally not what I want to be doing. was, I mean, kudos to those who can do it. I just, I couldn't. I couldn't do it. It's, I felt like there was parts of my brain that I wasn't being able to really utilize. So I threw out an application to a consulting company. Little did I know.

Matt Hui (25:15.596)

that this was a Salesforce consulting company. And only found out once they got to a technical demo and asked me to present a Salesforce demo. And I thought, well, what's Salesforce? I didn't even know what I was signing up for. I thought this was a BA position. So I got to it and managed to fake my way through a demonstration, which oftentimes it's, you're learning on the fly in consulting. And since then entered this Salesforce consulting world and I've been there since.

I made the move over from what was a larger technology Salesforce consulting firm to Belmar and at that time we were maybe five to six to seven people. And I remember on my left, Scott was sitting behind me, Ro, our director of operations was sitting on my right and that was the room. There was maybe a couple other folks. So certainly I joined at a time in which we were still very much on that growth path and Scott you alluded to it, but today I think the official count is actually 32.

Let's call it 25 to 35 folks on a...

Scott Billows (26:16.233)

Wow, was way off. smokes. Okay. Well, sorry to the seven or eight people that I missed. Sorry, team.

Matt Hui (26:26.222)

But there's, we've certainly grown over that. And I'll just give a snapshot for those who haven't seen Salesforce or have not heard of Salesforce's growth journey and Miratars as well. So 2010, September 25th, Salesforce, like you said, maybe doing a billion dollars today, they have a market cap of $250 billion. So let's call it little bit of growth there. We have grown and yeah, so I think you're right, it's like 30, 35 bill is.

Scott Billows (26:50.261)

So that's market cap, but what are they doing rev? You know what they're doing? Rev? Yeah. Okay.

Matt Hui (26:56.116)

is what they're doing. And they're on a growth path to get to $50 billion. But in terms of just their scale and size, I think one of the things that excites me about Salesforce and still gets me excited about Salesforce is that over that time, and they've got some really humble origin stories with starting this up in Banyhoff's apartment, over that origin story and even to today, they still continue to innovate. And I think innovation is everybody's favorite.

buzzword innovation, digital transformation, insert whatever buzzword you want, but they've really been able to prove it through some really strategic acquisitions, really strategic product development, and they have moved themselves from what is a CRM software, that's a CRM SaaS software, to be able to solve a whole variety of use cases, and I think that is their superpower, is being able to build purpose-built solutions while all built on the same platform.

and I don't think anybody else can have that or share that same claim as well. So that's a little bit of history. That's my kind of entrance point into the Salesforce consulting world and it's exciting. I think it's exciting. You never know what's gonna happen next, but it's kind of like this. You're on the side of a rocket ship and you're just strapped on hoping to build the plane as you're flying it, but it's really exciting. It's really exciting as well, so yeah.

That's it.

Scott Billows (28:25.557)

Yeah, well, it's been a fun journey over the last number of years together. And I'll give you kudos. mean, when you join, I mean, it is a funny story to think back about Kluge Little Office that we had and the configuration of it. I mean, at the time I was the only person selling. I mean, frankly, we had very...

Matt Hui (28:42.542)

for you.

Scott Billows (28:54.447)

I'll be generous and say we had little process. You know, that process was, hey, by the way, we've just won a deal, you know, hey, who's up, go and implement. So, you know, that was kind of our process today, which today now has completely transformed. you know, we've got like a very, very robust and very capable team. So if anybody from the team is listening to this, kudos to each of you for the great work that you do.

Matt Hui (29:09.859)

Yeah.

Scott Billows (29:24.735)

There are very few of us, well, there were very few of us and there are even fewer of us from back then that are still together. But I think of you and Ro and a few others that were jammed into that little office and we figured it out and.

challenged each other to grow and to go and accomplish some really cool stuff, which I'm proud of what we've done. It's been a really fun journey over the last number of years. But I really, this is gonna sound super cliche, but honestly, I do think our best days are still ahead of us. We've got, there's, as you said, Matt, just Salesforce as a company.

Matt Hui (30:17.39)

you

Scott Billows (30:17.897)

They have amazing products that allow folks like us to do really amazing things for our mutual customers. it's been, we haven't really talked much about the of the rise through COVID and now that we're sort of in the shadow of that and sort of what's going on in the economy, what's going on in the business. Maybe we'll save some of that for another.

conversation, just, know, have, you know, customers are very ripe and in many cases are in, you know, real need for the capabilities that Salesforce can deliver. And so it's a fun place to be. And I myself love variety. I mean, you were describing kind of your first job out of school. You know, I would...

that to my one of my first jobs at a school before I actually got into technology full-time. It had offered me a lot of variety and it was just it was amazing. I loved it and then when I got into technology it was it created a very similar experience in that we see a lot of different customers and we see a lot of different problems and it's sort of every day even you know throughout the day we're just solving.

different challenges and so it creates variety. It creates color and just this experience that certainly for people like myself are wired to. I just, you know, not do one thing repetitively over and over again. This is this is kind of the perfect thing for me so. Yeah, so alright well.

Matt Hui (32:05.326)

Well hey, I know you said there's a couple topics and certainly that's a foreshadowing for future ones to come and I think a lot of people will be interested in hearing that as well. But that's kind of a great way to tie things off for this first episode and looking forward to hearing more of those stories.

Scott Billows (32:23.561)

Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, let's do that and we'll pick it up on the next one. And this has been awesome. So, you know, here's to many more of these and excited to see where this conversation goes. So thanks everybody, at least for the friends and family that are listening to this. Thanks for listening. And we hope to bring you more of these on a frequent basis. So looking forward to the next one. So thanks, Matt.

Matt Hui (32:50.712)

Yeah. Thanks Scott.