My name is Michael Keene, and I’m applying for Match Type 1 – Startup/Company Founder.
I’m an entrepreneur with a strong background working in unstructured environments to deliver superior business development and customer experience.
I like working through ambiguity as a member of a cross functional team.
What I bring to the table
Comfort in uncertainty.
Whether moving across the Atlantic to work as an actor, or building a 34 seat bar in to an internationally known multi-location brand without prior restaurateur experience, I thrive in the flexibility that uncertainty creates.
The drive to build a business.
Owning a business isn’t black and white like the classroom, it’s full of incomplete information, and there’s skin in the game. I know and honour the passion, creative thinking, and sheer force of will it takes to build a business because I’ve been there before.
Communication focused.
Business, like acting, is all about listening. Listening to partners and to the environment, to employees and stakeholders, and most importantly to clients. My work has always started from a premise of listening and seeking to understand before judging.
My Story
I’ve spent much of my life running my own businesses. When I was 12 I started mowing lawns. My success was in the details. None of the other kids mowing lawns were raking up their trimmings, picking up after the dog, or checking the ideal time for each client to have their lawn mowed. I was. The little things add up, and mowing lawns helped to fund my education at University of King’s College.
After graduating, I became an actor. Acting taught me how to listen. Your one job on stage is to listen; to the audience, to the other actors, and to yourself. If you stay truly present and listen, completely in tune with the experiences of others, it’s like that feeling of being at the top of a swing, right before you start to come back down, a moment of weightlessness, completely still and yet pregnant with motion.
As well as performing, I founded the theatre company LEFT in Bristol, creating immersive theatrical offerings that gave audience members that same feeling I got when I was on stage. Seeking to create value for the community, I founded Sunday Script Readings, a collective where artists from all disciplines could come to network over script and project pitches.
My life took a new path when in 2016, I met two founders in need of assistance.
After working with them for six months, I found myself in a position to negotiate for equity in The Lockhart, Toronto’s Harry Potter themed bar. My roles included business development and customer experience design.
Montreal the night before open.
Business Development
While working at the Lockhart, I reinvented the menu offerings to align with the market, substantially reducing input costs while creating experiential value offerings, achieving a profit margin of 14%, nearly 2x the industry average. I lead a culture change in client facing success factors that increased our rating from 3.9 to 4.4 stars on Google. We were featured in over 60 articles worldwide, including one in Time Magazine. Seeing potential for growth, I opened the Lockhart Montreal, and successfully brought the same concept to a new market. Our hiring practices were equal opportunity, and I was proud to have a workforce as diverse as the city, representative of our BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities.
Table-side make your own potion kit
Customer Experience Design
The guiding philosophy for the bar was to know the customer. Market research, pulled from Google+ analytics and benchmarked against industry trends, was the bedrock of our success. Everything from the lighting, to the music, to the cocktail design and the staff culture was designed to align with the market and create an atmosphere that let our clients relax, have fun, and be themselves. It’s not often you can go to a bar and find Dundas West regulars in double denim rubbing elbows with starry eyed suburbanites cosplaying as Hufflepuffs, but we found that balance. When it was running it felt natural, but every decision - from the symbolism hidden in the décor to the height that the lamps were hung from the ceiling - was the result of careful and deliberate consideration of market research and the experience we wanted to create.
Schulich School of Business
I began my MBA at Schulich School of Business in 2020.
Academic Excellence
I have flourished in my studies, achieving a CGPA of 7.94.
Relevant courses
Relevant courses enrolled in include ENTR 6400: Field Study, Innovating with Entrepreneurs, MKTG 6800: Customer Experience Design, ECON 6210: Economic Forecasting and Analysis, and 601.
Schulich Startup Community Participation
Since pitching my idea for a robo-law firm at my first SVC event, I’ve been engaged with the Schulich Start-Up Community. Though the Fire Side Chats with Andrew D’Souza and Rusul Alrubail have been highlights, my favourite part will always be hearing other students pitch. The excitement and energy are contagious.
Other relevant leadership experience
Though my time has become somewhat constrained since starting school, I am active politically, and personally canvassed more than 800 houses in Andrew Cash’s 2019 campaign for Toronto Danforth. As part of my duties, I also trained and guided new volunteers in the finer points of cold calling.
Why I’m applying
I want to bring my unique experience to the table, and create impact.
The world of start ups is one that I will always be drawn to, and I love meeting and working with people who have the passion and drive it takes to not only to identify a gap, but to create a way to fill it. The opportunity to not only learn from them, but also to create value for them and make an impact, would be incredible. I’m a fast learner, and I know that if I got a chance, I could make some real value for a founder.
The opportunity to represent Schulich in the community would also be deeply meaningful for me. I’m incredibly proud of the work being done at this school and of the incredible community we have. The chance to give back to that community by boosting our reputation amongst start-up firms is something I’d love to be a part of. We stand here today in no small part because of the work done by last year’s class. I want to build on their legacy and pay it forward.