New Weekly Newsletter and the Visto App

Happy Sunday folks, it’s an exciting one for me.

Why?

Because this new weekly LinkedIn newsletter is underway, and because I’ve been toying with the idea of changing up my usual business emails from every 2 weeks, to every day.

Yup, 1 email per day – business day (Monday to Friday).

After sleeping on it and getting some feedback, I’m going to pull the trigger. Here’s why:

• I really like and enjoy email. I think it’s a great medium and want to make it the cornerstone of my Solopreneur Grind brand
• I don’t think every 2 weeks is enough to accomplish what I’m hoping to, and in a weird way, I find it harder to commit to every 1 or 2 weeks than to every day (it’s easy to say “ehhhh I’ll just do it next week” – can’t say that if it’s daily though!)
• I want to go deeper into sharing my business journey. The ins and outs, ups and downs – it’s a good exercise (basically a form of journaling) and apparently some (most?) of you enjoy it

So starting a few weeks ago, I started sending daily emails, Monday to Friday (you can?sign up for it here if you want more than a weekly dose from me).

Before you go running off… these solopreneur updates won’t be very long, because a) it’s obviously much more time to commit and b) I want to respect your time too.

It’ll be a 300-400 word email sharing some cool story, event, lesson, struggle or something else from the day before, and probably a key takeaway. Basically, going into more detail on the businesses I’m trying to build, what happens from day to day, and what we can all learn from my inevitable mistakes!

I recently got asked by a good friend (and subscriber on the email list) to go into a bit more detail on what Visto, my immigration tech company, actually does.

It’s a good question because a) I mention it a lot in my LinkedIn posts and SG blog, and b) if I’m going to share more business updates, it’s important you know the basics about the businesses I’m trying to build!

Anyway, what is Visto?

Quick story…

3 years ago, I was another run-of-the-mill, boring lawyer. I like to think I was a little cooler than most, but let’s just say some parts of practicing law are kinda boring.

In my case, I was doing immigration work for a lot of tech companies based in Canada, and filing work permits for them so they could bring tech workers into Canada.

The problem – once you’ve done this a few times, it gets VERY repetitive.

Same forms, same documents, same questions from clients…

Not only did I know there had to be a better way, but I was working with all of these cool tech companies who were automating stuff, building big teams and helping way more companies/people than a less-techy company could.

So I decided I should do the same.

I co-founded Visto to automate the immigration process, most of which lends itself well to automation, and to make it easier and cheaper for everyone.

We’ve come a long way because in 2.5 years we:

• built an initial b2c app and launched it to the world
• did a small fundraise to add even more features and functionality on the b2c side
• after struggling to make b2c work well, pivoted into the b2b space and did a bigger fundraise to build out a b2b app

This b2b app went live just over a month ago, and I can’t wait to share how it goes.

But first, let me explain what it does by setting the stage:

Right now Canada – like many other countries – is facing some problems. An aging population, fewer STEM grads each year and big US tech companies stealing all the talent. Not to mention Covid has made remote work more acceptable, so now you’re competing with the company next door, AND the company overseas, for the same talent.

What’s a Canadian company to do?

Look abroad – aka, try to hire inside Canada AND outside Canada.

Simply put, there aren’t enough skilled workers inside Canada, and the really good ones have even higher salary expectations because all the US companies are offering them USD salaries to work in their PJ’s in Toronto.

This means pretty much every tech company is now looking to hire workers from abroad, and bring them into Canada.

And that’s where Visto comes in… because we built a platform where:

• companies can search our database of developers from around the world who want to move to Canada
• sponsor those workers, as in get their immigration done, in 1 place and not have to go find/deal with a lawyer
• manage work permit statuses, expirations and all government compliance

That’s what we just launched, and that’s part of what I’ll be keeping you up-to-date on in this newsletter. The ups, the downs, successes, failures, etc.

Anyway, hope you’re as excited to keep following the ride every Sunday as I am living it.

Have an awesome day, and if you want to get these updates right to your inbox, make sure to join?the daily email list here.

Keep grinding,

Josh