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Episode 7 Shelly Fowlie, Robin Ayoub and Bob Hill Interview

Podcast Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the BLS podcast. I’m your host and founder of Bridging Legal Solutions, Sukhi Alberga Our topic today is a deep dive into leadership, sales, and business development. I am thrilled to introduce my guests today that are joining me. Shelly Foley is the President of Skills Dimensions Inc. She specializes in custom program design and delivery in areas of leadership, coaching, sales and service skills, and strategic planning. She has years of experience in telecommunication industry. My next guest is Robin Ayub. He’s vice president of sales and general manager at Lions Bridge Canada. He has decades of experience in localization and language industry. You might want to check out Robin’s Localization Fireside chat podcast on YouTube. I had the privilege of being his guest before and we had a grand time together. So do check out and have a listen to his podcast on YouTube. Finally, my guest is Bob Hill. He is a CPA and senior finance executive and CFO. He has assisted businesses with mergers and acquisitions, startup fundraising and business transformation. Thank you everyone for being with me today.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Thanks, Sukhi. We look forward to it

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Awesome. Alright, I would like to begin, Shelly, if I could just start with you and Bob, please feel free to also chime in. How do you define leadership? What’s the critical characteristics of a successful and effective leader?

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Well, I define leadership as the ability to influence others and gain followership. It’s clearly not just a title or a position. Leaders will emerge, whether it be in just within the community, based on their ability to gain trust and respect through the direction and support that they provide for others. So in terms of critical characteristics, think authenticity comes to the top of my list of things that a leader needs and the ability to be yourself and the ability to connect with others. It’s hard for people to connect with someone if they’re not sure who that person is and what they’re all about if they’re not authentic. So as a leader, that meaningful communication, the support, the fact that you show others that you care and you’re passionate about not just what you want them to do, but who they are as well, I think are the important elements. It’s about being able to bring out the best in the people around you. And that would be my summary of what it is and the characteristics.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
So more to be able to connect with individuals. Absolutely. What are your thoughts?

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Yeah, I think from my perspective, I agree with everything that Shelly has said, and I think it’s that ability to clear roadblocks on the way to achieving success with critical objectives for the organization. I think it’s someone that understands the vision and mission of the organization and the strategic objectives that are going to be able to make it successful and rallying people around those objectives to ultimately make them happen.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Thanks, Bob.

Speaker 4 (03:43):
Is it my turn now? Okay. I think Shelly and Bob round up the topic pretty good. Although I add a few items I guess to pepper around the initial characteristic definition by Shelly and Bob and characterizing leader and having worked with so many and having been in a leadership position for so many years, few words come to mind, few adjectives comes to mind. A leadership needs to have a vision, also needs to have integrity, need to have a communication skill, strong communication skill, decisiveness. It either cannot be undecided, they have to be decisive in what they do. Empathy, and I think Shelly and authenticity, Shelly targeted on that one a little bit. Confidence. They need to have a lot of confidence in their selves and in the team that they’re working with. Adaptability, accountability, emotional intelligence. This is another one too. Nowadays what people tell you and what they don’t tell you is a completely different thing. You need to be able to recognize the signs and leader normally recognize the signs if they work with others very closely and empowerment. Don’t feel like you’ve taken all the lights. You need to empower people to do what they need to do and be in the spotlight of things. Strategic thinking, resiliency, innovation and ability to delegate. And the biggest one really for me is ability to develop leaders. The leader needs to develop leaders. It is not after me. There’s nobody.

(05:25)
The old saying goes, there is a responsibility for a leader to develop and spot those talents and those diamond in the rough, if you will, and polish them and bring them to a leadership position.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Thank you for saying that, Robert, because it does bring into the next question was what impact do you think a leader should have in fostering a team culture, especially when you’re trying to tailor it to your business, your vision? Is there a set formula doing that? What are your thoughts?

Speaker 4 (06:03):
So for me, it starts with, depends on what team definition is. I guess we’re talking about team here in the context of business, not any other format. So in the context of business, if you have a team and depends on also, it plays a role if you have a small team of leaders versus if you have in charge of a call center or in charge of a big sales center and you have a hundreds of people reporting to you. Those are different dynamics. If you have a hierarchy of management reporting to you, also different management. But it starts with me with the business objectives. What are the strategic business objectives? And once as a leader, you understand what the business objectives are and you understand the sellability of those business objectives, now you need to rally your team around them and create that environment that says, here are the business objectives we need to achieve and we all need to go around that. So there are few things, and as I mentioned earlier, if you’re close to your team and you have empathy with ’em, you’ve worked with ’em, their communication style, you know how they behave, how they think, selling an idea to people who it’s much easier than the people that you don’t know. So as a leader, when you get to know your team, it’s easier to sell the ideas to them.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
Thank you for saying that. To be able to sort of sell the idea what your vision is in your objective in your business. And I think that really segue to me asking you, Shelly, how do you get team members to buy into that? What would be your tips?

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Well, it’s interesting, Sukhi, I recently did some leadership certification training with a team that had a combination of people who were very new to leadership and people who had been doing it for a long time. And I had asked that question around culture and what’s the leader’s role? And a lot of stuff came up, you influence it, you do this, you do that. And then I said, no, no, no, I’m looking for another word. It’s a three letter word. And finally someone came out with the leader has to own the culture. And that’s so true that the leader always has to have their finger on the pulse of how people are feeling and how people are interacting within the work environment and is it reflecting what it is that you want from a team culture perspective. Now that said, the leader has to share that ownership with the people on their team so that I know when I come to work the type of environment that I want to work in and the type of values that I want to see demonstrated in the workplace in order for me to achieve my personal best, the leader needs to be able to draw that information out of people.

(09:05)
In terms of culture starts with getting to know people and getting to know what’s important to them and why they get up in the morning and they come to work and what they’re expecting to be able to bring from the role that they’re in today and where they want to go tomorrow. And the more that we have that relationship as a leader with people and we understand what’s important, the more we have that ability to foster the culture that everybody feels connected to.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
Right. I’m going to hold what you just said, Shelly, because we’ll come back to that. But Bob, at this point I would want to ask you, what do you think are the elements of a successful business strategy and how do you execute it effectively?

Speaker 3 (09:54):
Yeah, I think when it comes to business strategy, I think that focus is absolutely critical. I think it starts with vision and I think it starts next with the mission of the organization, which has to be very clear. And then you’ve got a series of strategic objectives that are necessary for the organization to move forward on that journey towards the vision and the mission. But I think what’s absolutely critical is that there be focus. I think too many organizations fail and they don’t fail because of strategy. They fail through execution. So I think making sure that there’s a clear focus will be the difference between success and failure. I think that what is critical for success is then to be able to take the strategic objectives that are going to propel the organization forward and then be able to look at what’s actually achievable. And I find what is most interesting is when you start to look at your resources relative to the strategic objectives that you want to drive forward in a year. I find quite often organizations overestimate what they can do and instead of doing a few things very, very well, they try and tackle more than they can possibly handle. And the net result is that they do a mediocre job on many objectives versus doing exceptionally well with a few objectives.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
And Robin, what are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 4 (11:50):
For me, I would say from a business objectives and strategy perspective, it has to make sense, it has to be achievable. There are a few things around business strategy. There’s the wishful thinking in a business strategy, which I’ve seen so many years over the years, so many times over the years is the other one, is that something concrete, something that is achievable, something that we can wrap our head around and something that can be done. And the other thing too, in what gets missed generally in those strategies and those objectives is measuring the objectives. How are we progressing toward the goals? And a lot of times people will look, well, we have not achieved, especially like a young entrepreneur who launched the brand new companies or somebody who’s not yet got 10, 15 years in business, they just have this idea in their mind about a product or a service they’re currently selling. They build a business strategy around it and they say, tomorrow we’re going to become a billion dollar company. Well, you’re not going to become a billion dollar company overnight, so let’s set some realistic goal first and let’s measure toward those goals. Let’s do some market analysis around that. Where does your product fit?

(13:06)
What are the risks involved in this plan that you put together? And if it makes sense at a strategy component from a component perspective, from a strategy perspective, it makes sense, then it’s easier to solve as a team. It’s not the way, going back to Bob’s point where people don’t achieve their objectives is either the strategy was overinflated in terms of objectives, like we put on a big objective versus what’s real, or the people did not get a buy-in into it, so they didn’t buy into it as a strategy and they halfway through, they just lost interest in it and then it becomes unachievable. You absolutely, as somebody said earlier, you absolutely need to be laser focused on the strategy a hundred percent of the time the entire year. If your strategy is one year, and to be able to achieve it, you cannot take your eye off the ball. And that’s why it has to be measured, it has to be reported on, and it has to be steered in the right direction if you’re off your goals already.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
I did have something to add to what both of you said, and that is in terms of executing it and making sure it’s successful, I find when you can boil it down to something, it becomes like a tune in your head and it becomes easy for people to focus on what the strategy is. So often you have a strategy that’s a 30 page document or more or 45 PowerPoint slides. So this is what our strategy is. Yet when you can it into something of this is what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and it resonates with people, that works well. So let’s go on to the next question. So if a business is starting up or existing for a few years, what tips would you give to generate growth sales consistently? Bob, do you want to start?

Speaker 3 (15:18):
Sure. I think, yeah, I think if a company is a startup or has only existed for a few years, I think what’s critical to growing sales is again, having a very, very tight strategy in terms of what the markets are that the company is going to focus their attention on. I think that, again, in the early stages, organizations have limited resources. So I think being incredibly focused is what’s going to allow a company to be successful. Then as the organization starts to build momentum, then I think that there’s more resources that can be added and the focus of the organization can expand.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Robin.

Speaker 4 (16:17):
Yeah, I’ll take a stab at this. So I know we have so many questions to address, but I will keep this short. Normally startups, they focus on the idea creation and creating that product that has or service that has a specific angle to the market that they think it makes a differentiation, which is great. You need that differentiation in your product and services, but my advice for anybody starting in a company, I know you need to hire engineers and programmers, et cetera, make sure you absolutely invest in a Salesforce.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Yeah, the only thing that I would have to add to that is the importance of doing it with data, of really making sure that you search for the why behind what you’re seeing from a numbers perspective and using that to be able to continue to determine what you need to continue focusing on what you need to stop focusing on, what you need to start focusing on and constantly be looking at and managing that funnel of business that you have because it’s so easy for someone when they’re starting up to bring in that big project and focus on that and not be focusing on how you’re putting everything else into the top of the funnel so that once that flows out, you’re not starting from scratch again to bring in that new business. Okay. The next question is, do relationships correlate with business development? I’ll start that one off. It certainly does. For my business as a small business and being in business for 36 years, or sorry for 26 years, 99% of my business comes directly from existing relationships that I have or referrals from those relationships or the new relationships that I’m developing. I think it’s critical for your business. Robin, what would you add to that?

Speaker 4 (18:28):
Yeah, I concur for what you’re saying, Shelly. It’s absolutely necessary to have those relationships and for startup for instance, you need to start with something you must have already people that already know. So you start with what you have already and then you work a process and how to develop a new relationship, partnership, alliances, whatever you want to call ’em, coaches, people that guide you through to the next deal, those kinds of things. So you start with what you currently have and capitalize on this one and build upon it, use that as an example and start developing new relationships out there.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Bob.

Speaker 3 (19:05):
Yeah, I think that relationships are critical if you combine the relationships with fact-based selling, so there’s a clear alignment of your product against a market need. But the other comment that I would make is it’s absolutely critical for startups and early stage companies to establish the credibility of the product or service that they’re selling because ultimately all new companies need capital to be successful in their ability to attract that capital. Depends heavily on the ability to de-risk their business risk. And so if you can demonstrate some success and some market acceptance around what you’re selling, then that’s going to be critical to moving to the next level. And you can’t penetrate all markets at first, so you need to be able to go after some of the low hanging fruit that I think can come out of some of the relationships that you have

Speaker 2 (20:17):
For sure. So Robin, what would you say is vital to closing a sale, whether it’s a product service or a merger

Speaker 4 (20:27):
Closing a sale? There’s many ways, but the only thing that I can think about in closing the sale right now is comes to mind is figuring out what is going to make the other party say yes to the deal. And of course you got to get all the check boxes lined up, your prices, your value proposition, your contracts, your legal side, all that stuff needs to be done. But closing the sales does not necessarily begin toward the end of that sales conversation, be it merger or whatever it is. It normally starts at the beginning of the conversation.

(21:14)
I know it’s cliche, but the word that says always be closing. It’s always be closing. So from the moment you start the conversation to toward anything, a product sale or mergers acquisition, whatever it is, you always have that idea in your mind as to how do I, if the closing the sales is marathon, I want to get the best time on running that marathon. So if normally people closes a sale in two months, I want to try to get less than two months in that deal to close it. So the biggest thing is listen to the customer, check through that emotional intelligence that we talk about that sometimes customers don’t tell you or the other party don’t tell you what are the prohibiting factors from closing the deal. And then you can read through that. You can read between the lines and try to figure out, try to be agile in your proposition.

(22:08)
Try to be agile because people are not necessarily going to take your proposal the way it is. You’ve got to be open to the idea of that tailoring, customization, your proposal or your value proposition to these entities. Try to make them feel that this is or believe or convince that this is the right deal for them. And if they don’t take it now, they’re probably going to be missing out on a deal. So again, always be closing. You got to be thinking of that at the beginning of the process of the process of selling. And the second thing is be agile in terms of don’t be, so I want to call it rigid in terms of this is my proposal and that’s it. It’s a negotiation process. We have to be flexible in the way we approach these conversations. They’re not set in stone. It’s a back and forth until we arrive to a amicable deal between all the parties.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Bob.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
Yeah, no, I think I agree with everything that Robin said. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (23:08):
I think when I looked at this question initially, my initial reaction was sometimes one of the things that especially when someone is new to selling is try not to focus on the close of the sale, but focus on where you are in the selling process of if you focus more on at the very beginning of let’s start a conversation and let’s start this dialogue and Robin, as you said, listen to what’s going on and look for that fit and look for where you can actually provide value in terms of what you’re bringing instead of looking at what the end is, focus on the process of where it is that you need to go next. And if you focus on building that relationship and you focus on showing value and understanding what you offer can help this customer, whether it be solve a problem, be able to take advantage of an opportunity, whatever that might be, then that’s going to get you to the end of that race or that marathon.

Speaker 4 (24:34):
You just reminded me, Shelly, of a very important thing is that closing the sale is not necessarily every time meaning I received a purchase order, it could mean many times is what we call moving the yardstick one foot at a time in the process. So could be a small incremental close until you get to the big close meaning that every step I’m winning forward, that mean I’m step closer to closing the deal basically.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
Yeah. Okay. So what can companies do to evaluate the health of their business, whether it be financially, process related or productivity?

Speaker 3 (25:14):
Bob? Yeah, so I’ll start with that one. I think what’s absolutely critical with an early stage company is that they manage cash extremely effectively. And I think one of the tools to do that is what’s known as a 13 week rolling cashflow forecast. It’s a short-term focus, but I find that startup companies need to be that focused in the early stages in being able to manage their cash. So I think it also forces tough decisions that need to be made in terms of making very, very wise decisions on what they do with limited resources. So I think it looks at, so 13 weeks is a very tight focus, but I think as organizations look at their plan for say, the coming year, then they can look at where they are, where they want to get to, which lines up with their vision and mission and strategic objectives, and then this 13 week rolling cashflow forecast then forces organizations to make the trade-offs that are necessary to be successful.

(26:45)
Then I think that as things get moving and the organization is able to be successful with sales, then I think that there’s a whole series of dashboards or there’s a dashboard that can be put in place that lays out measures to see if the organization is successful in achieving its objectives. And I think that when you start to look at productivity, I think the productivity can affect all sorts of different aspects of the organization. It could be success in converting leads into sales, it could be success in terms of the cost of production, but I think that early stages is really to get going and build momentum and to drive sales and look at very carefully where to expend their limited resources.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Yeah, I think on that one, Bob, I was similar in terms of focusing on what the dashboard results are and what you’re tracking from data perspective. Because I think, and you have to assess all sources of data, not just what the numbers are telling you, but what you’re hearing from customers, what you’re hearing from employees, what you’re hearing from some of the coaches and mentors that you have, and being able to seek to understand what that data is telling you and as well combine that with what you’re feeling from a gut feel perspective, because you don’t want to ignore what you’re feeling. You just have to take that and go and look at how you validate it with the data that you have. In those respects, managing the health of your business isn’t that much different than managing your own personal health of, you’ve got to have your finger on your pulse of what’s going on. You got to trust your gut feel, but you have to go and you have to test it. You have to figure out what that actually means and what the implications are of what you’re seeing and feeling. Robin, what would you add?

Speaker 4 (29:24):
A couple of items. I mean, you got to manage the cashflow. That’s the most company dies because of cashflow problems, so you got to keep an eye on the cashflow as you mentioned. That’s the heartbeat of the company. The other one is I encourage people to do is make sure you absolutely institute an NPS score in place, not promoter score in place for your customers. And if you have, it depends on the size of your organization, you may want to have another one for your employees as well. So three metrics. One is how’s your cashflow doing? Second is how is your customers are doing by using the NPS score and internally for your employees, some HR survey that says that measures the employee engagement, if you will. Are they engaged to what level? And then you keep an eye on this one and you can adjust from there. But those are the main topics. Of course, there’s many details around those about just keeping it at a high level right now.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
Perfect. So what would you say are the common mistakes businesses or leaders make that prevent or hinder their growth? Robin,

Speaker 4 (30:39):
I was going to ask, can I take that on? The first mistake as they make is the idea person, he’s not the CEO of the company. So person who created an idea at an early stage of a company may not be necessarily suitable to be a CEO of an organization as that organization grows and they tend to want to be everything. They want to be the HR person, they want to be the salesperson, they want to be the engineer, they want to be the software coder, but there is a limit to every human. And we’ve seen many examples in large organizations where the idea person has moved aside to allow for a CEO to come in and take that company to the next level. Be willing as you put the company together to grow out of what you think you’re good at and move and let space for those who are better at what they do in terms of managing and running organizations.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
Bob?

Speaker 3 (31:37):
Yeah, I completely agree with that comment. I’ve seen too many organizations and too many entrepreneurs that think they can do it all, and they just don’t have the self-awareness to realize where the limitations are in their skill sets. And I think that there’s a lot of work that can be done with teams to make them as effective as they possibly can. And I’ve seen too many examples where there isn’t a cohesive execution. And part of it is, as Robin says, you’ve got the right people and the right skill sets to be successful. And then if you’ve got the right people in the, then it’s about bringing them together to focus on the outcomes. And as we talked about before, having the culture that’s going to allow the organization to be successful where there’s an opportunity to fail but fail quickly so that you can adjust your strategy along the way.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
With this one, I looked at it from a small to medium-sized business, and a lot of times the top three things that I see is first of all, it’s spending too much time trying to catch up to the day-to-day and not spending enough time planning and strategizing what it is that you should be doing. The other would be not responding quickly enough to opportunity and not necessarily recognizing an opportunity. And a lot of times that’s because it’s just being buried in the day to day. And the other one is just either not having or not leveraging the resources that you have more of a react versus a ProAct. You take what you can find and perhaps not provide for the rest of the team that direction and leadership that’s required for everyone that’s within the organization to be proactive as well. So the next question is how do you get key players on board and the team on the same page to move in the direction that the company needs to go? Bob?

Speaker 3 (34:34):
I think that what’s critical here is that people have the opportunity to input into what, again, we’ve talked about the strategic initiatives of the company, and I think what you see over and over again is if people have input into key initiatives, then I think that does a lot to foster engagement. So I think that ability to allow people to input I think is critical. And I think that what happens from that is then there’s a really robust discussion that happens where then people can understand where the organization’s going, why it’s chosen certain key initiatives to be successful. And I think that really helps people to get on board. And this isn’t a one where, or this isn’t a situation where you can run a company based on consensus. You absolutely can’t. But if you allow people to input and you hear them and you actively respond to the input that they provide, then I think that it’s easier to get people to buy in and then support the key initiatives of the organization.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
I agree. I think effective communication is so important. Most people focus on what to do and let the team themselves figure out why they’d want to do it and how to do it. I think that involvement of the team making sure that everyone is on the same page of understanding why we’re doing this, not just what we’re doing is important. Robin, what would you add?

Speaker 4 (36:32):
For me, I guess the only thing I would add is do you have the right team in place? Let’s start with that. If you’re going to spend a lot of time selling an idea that mean you probably have a bit of both, either we’re not selling it correctly. And the second thing that could be a problem is that you probably have the wrong team around you. Do you have the right team to take you to the next level? Maybe the team that you currently have got you to where you want and you arrive safely, thank God. But now from here on, you got another jump to take another growth or whatever, another product launch, another whatever it is, another phase of your business, and you got to do some self-reflection with yourself and your team and do assessment to say, do I have the right team for the next phase? And if I don’t, then there is a decision to be made on that one too.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
Okay, thank you. So finally, any words of wisdom that every entrepreneur should know when getting started, getting through turbulent moments and expanding their business?

Speaker 4 (37:39):
For me, try not to lose your cool, try not to get discouraged. Try not to get scared because it’s turbulent water. And some people get scared as well. I know people put on a good front sometimes and they always smiling when you’re talking to them. It’s just like, yeah, we know. I mean, it’s brand new thing that you’re doing. There’s a lot of risk in that. And one thing is you have to keep cool with those turbulent water because if you believe in what you’re doing, if you believe in the product and services that you bring into the market, they’re going to make a difference. You’re going to find customers and those customers are going to be happy with your services. Yes, you are going to go through some obstacles at the beginning to launch that, but the outcome for that, just keep your eye on the ball. The outcome of this has to be positive, otherwise you wouldn’t have started the idea. So keep cool, keep collected, calm, collected, and keep pushing forward. And sometimes people fail and let’s not underestimate that. Failure is a big lesson. I’m not talking about business failures, but I’m talking in the steps that you take towards your goal. Sometimes you fail and then you have to learn from that, and then you have to do better next time. It doesn’t mean that you stop what you’re doing.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
Yeah, thank you. You have to approach each day like the three-year-old you were and is undoubtedly somewhere inside you still today that three-year-old who feels there’s nothing that you won’t try that when you fall down, you’re going to get right back up again that you will be okay because there are others there that you can have support from that have your back. They know more than you do, and it’s important for you to recognize that because you’ll learn from them. And sometimes you need to have a timeout and sometimes an app, and it’s important for you to recognize that as well. But the world is there at your doorstep with limitless opportunity, and that has to be what you focus on and have that ability to just go for it.

Speaker 3 (39:47):
Yeah, and what I would add as well, I think is a couple of words that I find are absolutely critical in terms of an entrepreneur being successful. I think it’s about persistence and it’s about tenacity. That ability, as Robin had said as well, is when you fall down to be able to pick yourself up and continue to move forward. But what I would also say is know thyself. And I think that it’s very, very difficult for an entrepreneur to be successful if that person does not recognize their strengths and their limitations and is not willing to listen and seek counsel along the way. I think that that’s absolutely critical, and every entrepreneur that I’ve met that’s been successful has failed along the way. So I think continuing to be optimistic I think is critical, but at the same time, bringing in an element of realism to the table as well, and with something that’s not working, being able to pivot really quickly and making an adjustment.

(41:09)
And there’s a great, great story on the founders of Netflix and the struggles that they went through along the way where at one stage, Jeff Bezos had offered them about $10 million for the company, and they were in such a tough position cashflow wise, they considered it, but then felt that they would be selling themselves short if they were to take that offer. And they persevered. They didn’t know where the next dollar was going to come, but they were willing to continue drive forward and realize the potential of the business. And that’s again, where the tenacity and perseverance come into play.

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