Since its beginnings as a side hustle with a handful of Canadian clients in 2014, Minutes Solutions has matured into an essential service provider to businesses and organizations worldwide. We talked with founder and CEO Noah Maislin about how it all began and where the company is going.
What does Minutes Solutions do?
We create professional sets of minutes for board meetings and work with clients across the globe, but our largest cohort is in North America. We take minutes for non-profits, charities, condo boards, municipalities, school boards, public and private companies – essentially any organization that needs official board meeting minutes. Our mission is to provide organizations with peace of mind and security by taking accurate, unbiased meeting minutes and delivering them quickly.
What problem does your business solve?
We fill the need for creating succinct and professional legal documentation of your board meeting. We keep the bias out of minutes and give board members back their time so they can focus on their organization and on participating in the meeting, not on writing the minutes.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
The inspiration for my business came from the desire to help boards of directors improve their governance practices. Proper documentation of official board meetings goes a long way in helping with this. We remove the pain point of minute taking by capturing the salient points of board meetings articulately and concisely.
What is your magic sauce?
All our professional minute takers go through an incredibly rigorous training program before getting hired. We separate ourselves by having industry-leading editing and customer success teams that review all work before it goes to the client. Our customer success team is the best in the industry and meets our clients’ needs in a timely manner.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
We’ve run into many issues along the way. We have had to pull back on many ideas and have many projects not work out. Ultimately, we are a company, and companies make mistakes. Our greatest strength as an organization is learning from those mistakes. We never make the same mistake twice and we use our errors to grow. Moving our company from an in-person solution to a mostly virtual solution was one of the biggest and most important changes we’ve made over the last five years. This will allow us to expand globally and enter new markets that otherwise would be much more difficult to enter.
What is the plan for the next five years? What do you want to achieve?
We want to be the global leader in professional minute-taking using the most efficient, effective, and innovative means. Our company will be making a major push outside of the North American market within the next five years to become the global leader in our space.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Continue to surround yourself with the best people, personally and professionally.
Tell us about yourself
I grew up in Toronto with three amazing sisters, two loving parents, and an incredible extended family. I spent a lot of my childhood playing sports and learning about business from my father and family.
Entrepreneurship has always been in my blood. My father’s side of the family once ran one of the largest trucking companies in North America and my maternal grandfather ran a leading plus-size women’s clothing chain in Canada.
When I was younger, I always had some type of business to make money. In grade school, I’d sell magazines and toys to kids, and at summer camp, I ran a head-shaving service and food-delivery business for my fellow teens. I always knew that one day, I would make a living working for myself.
Because of my love of business, I studied business management at Dalhousie University and took a major in entrepreneurship and innovation.
How can people get involved with Minutes Solutions?
To become a client, contact sales@minutessolutions.com. And we are always hiring! We have many job openings on our website at www.minutessolutions.com .