The Entrepreneurial Journey: From College Football to Business

I am a 28-year entrepreneur. I played football at Wilfrid Laurier University. Go Hawks! I literally started my first business right out of school. That was my first exit. It was like, I think, I'm not sure what it was, like $30,000 to $50,000, something like that, which at 24, it's like, yeah, sure, I'll take it. So I started my own brokerage with my partner at the time. He was my, my sales manager at CIBC. We started this equipment brokerage called Easy Lease, grew it to a pretty big company, and I think we had like 50 brokers across Canada. I have a venture advisory studio called A-List Ventures where we help advise and fund entrepreneurs and startups, as well as I have my own startup that I'm working on right now called Trudish. The average household of 4, so they're spending like $1,500 a month in food and it's increasing, it's growing, obviously not even including obviously the tariff situation. We're providing delivery to them, but we provide delivery from the wholesale cost. So now we can provide 30% 20% savings on an average grocery bill, which is crazy. Like right now it's like, and again, keep in mind, we're just basically cutting out the middleman and compressing that supply chain to do something that's more optimized and I believe smarter.

Founded in 2017, StartWell is Toronto's independent hub for innovators to collaborate.

Our podcasts relate perspectives from the world's most diverse urban population to reflect unique insights into global business, media, Once I got into it, I kind of realized that entrepreneurship and kind of calling my own shots was probably the path I wanted to take. So I literally started my first business right out of school.

Like high school or university?

University.

Okay.

So I played, oh God, I'm dating myself. I played football at Wilfrid Laurier University. Go Hawks. That was back, I graduated back in 1996.

Okay.

So typically I was, I was a relatively good football player, but I injured my knee. So usually you go back for your 5th year. Instead of going back for my 5th year, um, I had 2 high school buddies that basically said like, listen, like we have a great concept that is opened up at Queen's University called Peter Pit. Come check it out. And, you know, we had one pretty drunken night and we just like saw this lineup at the door and I'm like, this is ridiculously like A, it's cool because it's a healthy kind of late night snack. And I can't believe how busy it was. It's like 3 AM in the morning, lineups around the corner. So that was my first entrepreneurial venture because we basically replicated that concept and built the first Extreme Pita at Laurier University where, where I was supposed to go back for my 5th year of football. I didn't do that. We opened it up, you know, across the street from the university and I had my entire network come support us and That was my very first entrepreneurial venture with 2 brothers. Wow. I started it, yeah.

Fast food.

Fast food, which is in retrospect, not a great industry to be in. It's really hard. It's really tough.

Yeah, right?

Full circle moment. I'm sure we're gonna get there. I'm now in food again, so.

So wait, what were you at university for?

I did poli science and football. I played football for 4 years. So admittedly, I was probably more of a football player than I was an academic.

Right.

I wasn't your typical like Asian, really smart Asian academic, to be honest. I'm more of like a street rat and hustler and stuff. So when I graduated, it was one of those things like I, I thought to myself, okay, if we're going to do something— actually, let me back up. So the first job I had out of school was at CIBC Finance.

What?

Yeah, that was my favorite first job.

Let me just say how I'm not typically East Asian, but the first job I had was at a finance—

It was a sales job. So the sales job at CIBC Finance. And it was funny because I did the typical 9 to 5. Yeah. Um, there. And then Thursday, Friday, Saturday evening, I would go drive to Waterloo and we would work till 3 in the morning. And I would sleep in the back, back room on a futon, a smelly pita futon that smelled like Cheetos.

You had a job while you also were involved in extreme pita.

Yeah.

But you were slinging the pitas. Like, if you're working at night, what were you doing?

Not only slinging the pitas, we literally like, I'm not a carpenter in any way, shape, or form, but we actually built the shop. We built the shop. We built the, literally the counter. We built everything from scratch and painted everything. And it was like kind of a hack job. But at that point, it was almost like a, a pretty cool hack job that actually looked like we were planning it.

But were you like, if you remember those weeks of like then working, you know, in the office, were you excited for the weekend to like go and Get your hands dirty?

Oh, so going back, I'm like, we won't go— we don't have to go through my whole family tree, but like literally my parents owned a Baskin-Robbins for 25 years. And my dad, my dad's like, whatever you do, like he loved the fact that I went to university and loved the fact that I got a university education. 'Cause he's like, and he loved the fact that I, my first job was a bank.

Right. Right.

'Cause he's like, okay, great.

Don't be like me.

He's like, do not ever get into retail because retail is a terrible life. It sucks. And owning retail is the worst case scenario. So then when he found out that I actually opened up Extreme PDA, he's like, you're an idiot. Like, what the fuck are you doing? Like, I've told you so many times not to do this.

Yeah.

Yet you do it. And it was one of those moments where it's like, I think I just like the hustle of like, you know, starting something on the side. And candidly, I was— we're doing exceptionally well. I was making more money kind of doing that than I was even at Extreme— at CIBC Finance.

So easy.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, there's an adrenaline rush to kind of controlling your own destiny, but also this experiment. This is the way I look at entrepreneurship. Like you can experiment with things, you could try things, you know, and test things live in market. And that's super, super exciting.

Yeah, so that was entrepreneur venture number 1. And then since then it's been like this.

Did that grow into a chain or I don't know what happened with that?

Yeah, so funny. So it's a funny thing is like—

Also what made it an Extreme Pita? Why was it called Extreme Pita?

You know, if you remember back in the late '90s, there was this entire fad where like skateboarding, extreme skateboarding, extreme sports.

Yeah.

That was becoming a thing.

Yeah.

I think we just played off that. Okay. Like we were providing healthy snack or healthy food that would supplement that. And it was like extreme everything was kind of a big thing. That was like kind of a catchphrase at the time. So we played off it. And that funny thing is our logo, our brand was done by one of our high school buddies, but just basically like back of a napkin type of thing that we just used it the entire time.

Love it.

Yeah.

See, that's something startups can learn from.

Yeah, the hustle culture of like—

Just like opening up a shop and doing some stuff, you know, and talking to your customers and like, yeah, you want more hummus in that pita? Okay, we'll make it more extreme for you. Okay, wait, so this, how did it grow then?

To what size did it grow? So funny, when I was at CIBC Finance, when I was at CIBC, I had a client there who owned a franchise development company. And he's like, Peter, he's like, I told him that we got together.

Serendipity, man.

Yeah, it was, but it was like one of those like conversations we had that was, it was funny because like I told him the side, you don't want to tell your client that you have a side hustle, but I'm like to hear, I'm not totally devoted to your work. I have a side hustle. And he's like, he's like, I'd love to check it out. So he came and checked it out and he's like, this is a concept we can completely like Like franchise and kind of scale. And so as he started getting the diligence of like who was involved in it, there was 5 of us involved at the time, right? And we were all 5 kids out of school, didn't really know too much about business. We don't, didn't have a shareholder agreement. We had nothing at the time. So, um, long story short, he basically said like, listen, like I'd love to get involved with kids, but the reality is like, like we're trying to build something here. So I'd rather kind of reduce this cap table.

Sure. Yeah.

something that's more narrow and more small. So at that particular point, the 2 brothers offered the other partners, me being one of them, a buyout. And at that particular point, it was like a king's ransom at the time. That was my first exit. And it was like, I think, I'm not sure what it was, like $30,000 to $50,000 or something like that, which at 24, it's like, yeah, sure, I'll take it.

Oh, totally, man.

Yeah. Yeah. So that was like the very first exit I had back in like a year out of university.

That's better than free pitas?

Yes, absolutely.

And did they go on to do great things?

Yeah, they expanded out quite a bit. So they ended up, I think, partnering up with a franchise development company. They expanded it out. I ended up still at CIBC Finance, and then I started my second startup called Easy Lease about a year later. So again, it's the carry forward of like every Yeah, I guess I got the bug, but kind of every other one of my ventures kind of just happened kind of simultaneously after that. So.

But you kept the job and Easy Lease was?

Easy Lease is an equipment finance company.

Okay.

So I had all my clients at CABC. I realized that obviously I was doing quite a bit of business, but if I just take 3 or 4 clients, I can start my own brokerage. So I started my own brokerage, um, with my partner at the time. He was my My sales manager at CIBC. We started this equipment brokerage called Easy Lease, grew it to a pretty big company. I think we had like 50 brokers across Canada. It's still around today. He's the sole owner.

Construction equipment or?

Anything, any equipment. So any equipment leasing, any equipment finance. So it'd be like office equipment, heavy iron, renewable equipment, renewable energy. technology, any technology software. So we financed anything.

Wow.

Yeah. So they're still doing that today. And many, I know a lot of my kind of colleagues have been financed through Resili. So yeah.

So was that your first and last job then?

CIBC?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

So how long did you keep that going while you were doing your leasing company or you left?

You left? No, no, I left. I left. That would have been a conflict of interest.

You're like, I kept signing these clients.

That would have been a vast conflict of interest. No, no, I worked there for, so I was only moonlighting when I was doing CABC and Extreme PETA. And then sold Extreme PETA. I worked at CABC for a little bit longer. And then at that point I had the opportunity to start Easylease with my partner, David Karp Michael. He's still running it today.

Amazing.

Yeah.

And then, so that was venture number 2. There's a—

Venture number 2. Yeah, he, David ended up buying me out in 2005, because I, at that particular point, I wanted to start something that was a little bit more operational. Finance is one of those things like you, you help a lot of companies get their concept and business off the ground.

Yeah.

So that's what we're doing. We're financing a lot of like established companies, but a lot of startups as well.

Right.

So whenever someone needs all this equipment, like we would finance that at easy lease.

So— I should have financed all my equipment.

Yeah, you should have bought it. You could have, you could have got a tax write-off on the leases. But what I saw is a lot of companies that we would finance and start, and I would see almost like industries that would be kickstarted, right? So one of, we were one of the first companies that financed ATMs. ATMs came way back when where they're deregulated. So you had these convenience stores, these like anywhere you see those ATMs, we were the first company that financed those ATMs in Canada.

That's super interesting.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because for anyone that doesn't know that business, I've, I've kind of just like, again, napkin mathed my, you know, at some point I was going to get a couple of those machines. Just for fun.

Yeah.

Because typically the operators are leasing those machines, right? Or—

Yes. And that's why when I saw the way we structured the deal, and it was, I should say, we are the equipment finance company that we actually brokered it to. The way they wanted to structure it was basically they would have a sweep initially of their payment on the financing side of it. And then anything excess would go to the actual convenience store or whoever owned, whoever was leasing the ATM. So the fees paid off the lease payment first. So it was a really secured—

Yeah.

It was a secure vehicle. Like it was an awesome program, but I saw that and we're financing it and I see this company out of nowhere. I think it was Quick Cash, the name of the company, but it was like, it was an ATM company that just like skyrocketed and did like became huge. So I saw like I financed many of those type of like deals from scratch, in which when you're financing a bunch of these transactions, you're like, I think I can do something myself.

Right. You see the trends.

That's right. So that's when I got the itch to actually become a creator of this operational widget company. So that was when, and this is probably the start of the real entrepreneurial ventures, I guess. So I ended up exiting that in 2005 through a management buyout. David bought my shares out. And then I ended up starting a company called Enwise. Enwise was—

Also known as the New York Stock Exchange.

That's right. This was E-N-Wise, so it's a play on words of EnergyWise. But yes, I wish, like, we could have been on the New York Stock Exchange. I'll tell that story now. So we, it was a company that was basically built on the news that the government was putting out this thing called EcoEnergy Program. So if you retrofitted your home with brand new equipment, you would basically get a rebate from the government to say, hey, if you got rid of your old furnace, air conditioner, water heater, and replaced it with new equipment, they would give you up to like $3,000 in rebates. So we were providing those retrofits, but what we would do, and this came from my background in finance, Yeah. We put those on rental plans.

Okay.

So now you had the ability to replace everyone's inefficient equipment, finance it at $150 a month, and then the customer would actually get a rebate back, a $300,000 rebate back. So now you would have this entire, like, very amazing way for people to become more energy efficient, save money on their energy bills, but also get a rebate from the government. So I built that company. I started that company called Enwise in 2006. And we grew it within 3 years to like a close to a $50 million run rate of revenue.

Whoa.

Yeah. So we had this like hockey stick of growth. And funny enough, that was my first entrance into the actual institutional financing world. So we signed a term sheet to go public in 2008, early 2008.

Okay.

So this is kind of, you're gonna kind of understand the timing here of which.

Yeah. And then.

Yes. Early 2008 to go public in which we were, I think it was like a $5 million financing that we were gonna, it was called concurrent financing. So you raise that money, that comes in as soon as you go public. And July of 2008 hits, which you recall the housing market crashed, if you do recall that.

I recall it.

It's funny, a lot of younger entrepreneurs and longer start, like younger founders.

Yeah.

I'm like, where were you in 2008?

Well, 2008 is a weird time too, because it was kind of like, it was, I think in retrospect, people are unpacking it as a bigger disaster than what it felt like at the time if you weren't immediately in finance.

Oh, I agree.

Right?

Yeah. So kind of like, yeah, kind of like SARS before COVID I always talk about 2008 was like a sledgehammer over the head. So if you compare financial downturns and like really shitty markets, this 2025, 2022 to 2025, way worse than 2008.

Yeah, 100%.

Like, and people don't understand that because in 2008 it was like the entire like tsunami happening where it was like an economic crisis crash. And it was like a sledgehammer over your head. Once you, if you lost something, everyone lost everything.

Right.

Right. And then a year later, you see this resurgence of like, okay, markets are turning, right? There's like balloon up happening. 'Cause it was like very much a sledgehammer over your head where 2022 onwards has been this like death by a thousand cuts. Like it's like a kind of needle or shiv that's hitting you in the side where it's like nonstop things happening where it's like coming out of the woodwork where it's like the economy's just getting worse. Right. So Many different things happening. All that being said, it's like, I talk about 2008 and many of them co-founders, because I've started many companies kind of over the last 28 years. Many of my co-founders are anywhere from like the mid-20s to mid-30s. And I asked them where they were during 2008 and they're like, oh, I was just graduating high school. Right? So it's funny, you kind of realize that with the passage of time, you just have a lot, you see all the ups and downs and the bull and bear markets. That was an interesting time because I had a company that was doing exceptionally well. We signed a term sheet to go public. We're about to go public, and then the market collapses. And I ended up getting an email from our financing, from basically, it was a CPC transaction. So the going public transaction from the company that we were about to go public with, basically saying, as per clause, 8, kind of like financial downturn of the markets, unforeseen financial downturn of the markets. We have to terminate the agreement. And I kind of knew it was going to come because it was like, it was colossal across the board. You just knew something was happening, but it was like the pit in my stomach that I had was like the worst case scenario. Because we bought a lot of our revenue at that particular point. We saw this kind of inflection of like run rate of revenue that was pretty high. And our goal was basically to get recapitalized, go public.

Mm-hmm.

But you needed that money? We needed the money. We needed the money to pay off a bunch of debt.

Oh man.

So that was probably one of my, I think the biggest challenge and darkest moments I had. 'Cause at that particular point you had to either decide, okay, am I going to shut the business down? And this is 2008. I'm either gonna shut the business down or I'm going to gut it out and try to become a real operator and figure out if I can restructure the company.

Right, right.

So I, Begrudgingly chose the latter where I'm like, I might, I'm young, I might as well learn it. And let's restructure and let's have like, let's make the best of this. And again, in retrospect, it was the most difficult time in my life, you know, 2 years.

What was the annualized revenue of that company?

Probably close to $15 million. $15 million?

With what kind of margin?

God, it was low margins because retrofit, it was energy retrofit. So we weren't doing like very, weren't profitable at the at the point.

Right.

So I had to find a way to become profitable with, you know, that portfolio of customers that we had, right? So it was a complete mind shift in terms of like buying revenue and growing really fast to getting to the point where it was just like, okay, we have a good customer base. Um, I can restructure the company. We had over 100 employees at the time. How quickly will it take to kind of restructure it? And then, and I had some advisors at the time, so I had some good advice in terms of helping me restructure. But we took, we turned the company around and within literally a 2-year period, um, we were profitable. Um, couldn't get out of debt, but we ate away at the debt that we had. So it was one of those, like, I learned how to become an operator at that particular point and I learned how to actually properly build a business, but also just understand market trends. I think that was the first time when I'm like, I wouldn't do it again. Like, I don't, I can see there's great ideas, great momentum, and like you gotta ride that wave like crazy, but you also have to understand when you see market signals that things might be going a little bit sideways too.

So that's so many lessons, right? For anyone listening, watching this, that I think there's also this maybe a problem. Now I'm going to abstract this a bit, but we'll come back to your life story. But I feel like, especially in the market that we've had for the last 20 years odd almost, Since what you just described, kind of like the feeling for young first-time entrepreneurs has been like, it's all upside, you know, and only look for upside. And as soon as things go south a little bit, you could just like jump ship and start something new.

Yeah.

And, you know, and that's like, it's interesting as a philosophy in business because I think It also kind of like, and I'm talking specifically about like, you know, SaaS companies and startups and stuff. You don't see a commitment to building like legacy. You don't see a commitment to building a company that could last, forget about generations, but a lifetime, you know, at least one person's career anymore. It's very rare to see that, the commitment to a business outside of when it's good. So to live through that downturn and have to try and figure out ways to survive it, Um, for the experience of that, if nothing else, right? Well, forget about trying to save it to make a few million dollars one day, but like to just save it.

And I think I, yeah, so I, cause I agree with you 1,000%. Like it's easy. It's easy to quit to the extent of like, if things get really, really hard, it's not necessarily ingrained in you to just keep gutting it out and keep grinding it out. Those that can, Um, I have all, I have all of the respect in the world. I'm not saying I'm because I'm that individual, but there's something to be said about like, just not just giving up because at the end of the day, it's easy to, you're right. Like it's one of those, like this entire, and don't get me wrong, like you learn from failures. I know the entire clichés of it. You learn from your failures, you learn from your mistakes. Totally agree with that.

Yeah.

But it's also, you learn a hell of a lot more of trying to figure out how long you can gut it out and if you can turn it around, because at the end of the day, there's always a path to turn something around, you've got to do some really hard stuff, right?

Oh, for sure. Yeah. You have to rethink. And that's the most difficult thing is like, well, maybe not for everybody, but to rethink all your apprehensions, all the factors to do with what you assume to be your success trajectory, to have completely new destiny just within your hands is terrifying and exciting. But it requires, I think, this like a certain presence of mind as well, right?

Oh, for sure.

Which is tough in a downturn as well.

Well, I would argue that, and that's why I use the analogy of in 2008, vast majority of founders, sorry, the founders that I've been partnered up with since, with my other 3 ventures since 2008, they're all, like I said, they're all like late 20s, mid-30s, right? So they're individuals that are brilliant. These are like young, brilliant, amazing entrepreneurs, amazing founders. But they're also young to the extent of not young, because if you're mid-30s, it's not young. It's not, you're not young, but it's like you haven't been, you haven't seen that type of market yet.

Right. Right. No, I mean, absolutely.

So what they're witness to is like from 2010 to 2022, whereas like hard, fast, crazy tech. Like, I mean, I've been part of many different industries that would, like, I sold a company in data. I sold a company in cannabis. Like those two are like the fastest rocket ships you could possibly imagine. Right. Short-term.

Opportunities.

So it's one of those, like, when you talk to these individuals, for them to now be part of this 2022 to 2025 market that we're in right now, it's almost like you turn your pockets out, they turn your pockets out a little bit saying, I have no idea what the frickin' do right now. This is like, it's completely foreign to them. Not saying they don't want to gut it out, but this is a different market because in 2028, sledgehammer. In 2022 to 2025, the VC market's compressed, the startup funding is compressed. So it's a different beast. Like your mentality has to be, okay, I have very little capital and I got to figure out how to do as much as possible with that very little capital. Because if I'm looking to do a follow-on funding or growth funding round, I got to prove out whatever I can prove out with as little money as I have.

I was talking to someone recently, About the economic downturn that we're kind of experiencing now. This is actually maybe a year ago I talked to this guy and he's 60, what would he be? 68, 70? Oh, he's almost my dad's age. He's over 70. He must be 74. And we were talking about the era that I moved to Kenya in 1992. We moved and this was that economic recession of the late '80s, early '90s, which was really bad.

Yeah.

Going back into these cycles and what you remember, right? So I knew it was bad from my own memory because we had to move to Kenya. My dad just couldn't make it work. work. He had a couple of, a series of maladies. So there was a business that he ran that was an interior joinery woodworking kitchen cabinet manufacturing company in Calgary. And he had just got into this new venture with a partner of his and things were going gangbusters and people, developers were writing up all this business for them and they were doing like 200 houses there, 100 houses there. And a lot of this was on like, I don't, I don't know if that's how it works or how it used to work, but they'd be carrying the credit for the developer, right? On all the stuff they were putting into houses. And then those projects just flopped, didn't get built because the financing ran out or whatever. And they were left holding the bag. And then someone left the door open in the spray booth and a rag spontaneously combusted and blew up the whole factory. And it was just like at that point, my dad said, okay, it's not about the recession, but we're throwing in the towel.

We're moving back to Africa. It was like someone Level of serendipity. I just came in like, okay, it's time.

Yeah. I gotta wake up. This is outta my hands.

Yeah.

So I remember, you know, thinking back to those days and I was wondering the other day, how bad was it financially for the people that stayed behind? And I was talking to this guy in the gym the other day and he was saying he refinanced his house. I guess it was in '92, '93. He was saying, I don't know. And he was saying, I think he had his house financed at 25%. His mortgage.

Yeah.

So it puts it in a perspective, right? That like how bad things could get. We don't want to believe that it could get that bad. Uh, cause we also feel, I think, a closer proximity to the information of macroeconomics and politics today because of the internet. But crazy town down south could impact the world for the next few years in a way that takes us back there.

I'm sure that's a whole 3-hour conversation we have. Yeah.

And by the way, for anyone listening, it is election day in Canada today. So different conversations tomorrow perhaps, but without getting into politics and without kind of like, yeah, trying to like crystal ball the current state of things, just knowing that it's bad and that like these optimistic youth that are starting things in Canada, partners or otherwise, are waking up to like the question, I think, lots of questions. So what are you seeing? And I guess we could jump, we talk a little bit about what you're doing now, I think, because what we've already done, and anyone can dig into your LinkedIn a bit, but you've done a bunch of ventures in different spaces and now you're helping entrepreneurs with their own journeys, right? And obviously, skin in the game, lots of experience doing this. So your perspective is valuable, let alone any capital that is packaged with your advisory services.

Right.

So tell me a little bit about that. What's the name of your advisory studio?

A-List Ventures. So we're a venture advisory studio. The reason why I call it A-List is because we have 2 major programs, one on the front end called the Analyst Program and the back end Catalyst Program. So it's almost like seed companies we help through the Analyst Program, kind of getting you funded, getting your message out there, getting a proper commercial strategy, financial model, like everything associated with like, do you have an idea that can go to market?

Okay.

So that's the endless program.

That's ideation stage.

Ideation, but almost to the point where like everyone has a good idea and they might've put some money into it, some drip funding into it, like initial from friends and family. But to get to the point where you actually build a proper go-to-market strategy and commercial model for it, that's kind of where we come into play. Because I can just fast-track that with an entire, obviously 28 years of experience, but a lot of kind of team members that have commercialized businesses. So for us, it's like, Kind of building, the best way I can explain it is like the typical entrepreneur founder will do a top-down approach in terms of the market analysis. Well, they'll say, hey, like I, I'm the Airbnb of this or the Uber of this.

Right.

Oh my God.

God save us all.

I see tons of decks that, that look like that initially. And my recommendation to every founder is don't do that. Do a bottom-up approach because what we do with every one of the founders and entrepreneurs that we talk to, is that bottom-up approach to actually really look at like, okay, total addressable market is massive. I get it. Totally understand it. How do you break it down to like the SOM, like the serviceable attainable market that actually gets you to a pilot? Because that pilot, if it's a broad enough use case, it can be repeated over and over and over again. So it's almost getting, breaking it down to like, how do you actually go to market with like 1, 2, 3 customers and then repeat that over and again?

Of course.

So that's kind of, we kind of build that entire framework around that. And Yeah, so that's on the analyst side. And then on the catalyst side, a lot of what we do is kind of how do you scale and how do you build torque in the model?

Okay.

So there's a couple of ways we do that. One is just kind of applying every one of kind of our shared resources. And again, this is like 28 years of experience and just individuals that I've worked with building 5 companies, whether it be product development, whether it be UI/UX design, whether it be financing strategies, whether it be a kind of family office network that can help kind of build revenue into models and companies. So we basically build that Catalyst program, which is more like a longer tail. Think of us like a fractional group of experts that can help you out. Because at the end of the day, most companies will try to find, okay, I need a CMO, I need a CFO, I need a—

Yeah, they try and internalize all these functions and then it's expensive, it takes time. And then you got to get people aligned, leave aside getting them up to speed, but with the same vision.

Right.

And if it's a founder-led approach to everything, then that vision is either going to be unitary or it's going to be extremely difficult to articulate if that founder is a practical or is a product-focused founder.

That's right. Yeah. Well, or more probably, I think—

Asperger's person. Yeah.

Yeah. But it's funny because like from a textbook perspective, every founder entrepreneur, they're, again, they're going to use the whole analogy. Like, I don't know what I don't know, which is crazy important. It's awesome. But They'll level up the perception of like, I need this CMO of Uber, or I need like, so their whole thing is like, they'll look at a resume of someone and they'll say, okay, great. This is this person.

Is that a thing? Really? People, people try and acquire talent that way? Well, because they're like, maybe they know something about like where I need to go.

Yeah, they'll, but that's the whole point. They'll, they'll think that it's easily applicable because you had someone that was part of a company in a high growth stage. But they don't really know necessarily the actual ins and outs or the hardship of actually starting 0 to 1, like literally 0 to 1.

Oh yeah.

And more specifically, 0 to 1 in the shittiest economy that we have right now. Because if you think of like the 2010 to 2020 period, I'm not saying it was easy because it's not easy, but anyone who is part of like the high torque, high finance, like finance companies, if you're a CMO at one of those companies, Your goal was basically to buy revenue and spend as much as humanly possible to torque up revenue really quickly and torque up user retention.

You could do no wrong.

Yeah, totally. It was like, so if you try to bring in that type of talent into your business now, I would argue it would be very, very detrimental for you to do that as a startup founder because literally like that doesn't exist right now. That mentality does not exist right now, right? So.

Yeah, the playbooks have changed and the guys who kind of had teams to run them, Typically are like distanced from the, like getting their hands dirty, which is kind of like what you need early stages, like everyone to be able to get their hands dirty, but like work together and move in the same direction. Right.

So, so that's kind of where we come in from a fractional perspective. We build, we give you shared resources, we give you kind of practical experience. We get you to kind of market quicker, um, whether it be kind of a commercialization strategy, go-to-market strategy, getting to product-market fit, kind of condensing down. what you need and doing it faster. But then the biggest thing I think is like, and this is what everyone always asks me, and I think I mentioned to you, like the meetings I've been taking in the last little while have been, I just did a passive kind of launch on LinkedIn to say, hey, A-List is open for business. We're a venture advisory studio that's helping founders, founder-led venture advisory studio in which we not only provide obviously advice and to kind of help you kind of go to market, but also capital. People have reached out saying, hey, like, I have this idea, can you finance me? And my whole thought process around that is like, I don't find— we don't finance companies until we actually understand what is it that you're building and how are you building it. So the advisory-led model is really important because again, we can kind of get to that path quicker. And then at that particular point, I have a large family office network of investors that love to invest in great companies and great founders. But they just want to make sure they're building in the right way. So that's kind of where, you know, the family office that we have is a bunch of, um, individual, uh, individuals that can definitely kind of build torque on a model. So you might have a big contract that can be leveraged because here's an example, but they might have thousands of property management units, right? There's a software that could be applied into that, into that network.

Yep.

So If you have the ability to build torque in that model, build strategic investment, as well as looking at like, how do you actually go from point A to point B faster from a product-market fit perspective?

Yeah. If you're on Dragon's Den and you've got, you know, a fast food product, you want to talk to the like Boston Pizza guy, right? Yeah.

It's like, yeah. And waiting in line for Dragon's Den is, is obviously one of those things. Like it's, it's like the perfect architected storm, right? When you go on that, like if you can get that Torque, like the model makes sense. At the end of the day, they can put you into their network. It's very similar. Like at the end of the day, I have a pretty big network of individuals and investors that want to invest in good companies that are diligenced well, that they can bring into their network as well because they can actually use their technology or use their product.

Oh, totally.

Yeah.

No, it's interesting. I think this is a whole missing piece or a piece that has been missing for so long in Canada is this idea that like And again, okay, I'll roll back and I'll say one of my great hopes for Canadians to realize, I think, and it used to be part of our fabric maybe decades ago, if not longer, was this idea of DIY culture being part of our culture. I think people have forgotten that this country is still nascent, or that's the wrong word perhaps. I don't know. It's young. We're all building it together, you know?

Yeah.

Canadians kind of like assume that like we're at a certain level of infrastructural development that connotes like a more developed economy status that means that they're all employees. And the funny thing about that is it kind of leaves a lot of opportunity on the table. And that can add, I think, to the apathy that I feel like I see across the country where people feel like, you know, developing opportunities out of their hands. Yet it's something that's fundamentally about entrepreneurship. It's a fundamental aspect of entrepreneurship. And entrepreneurship could be something that everyone takes on. You know, the idea that like you started in business as your side hustle almost, right? And then many businesses later, I mean, you're always just in business. You never really self-identify as an entrepreneur, I think, because that identity just means that you're like willing to jump into things. Yeah.

Or you're unemployable to a certain extent. You can't get a real job. Mom, I can't get a job. The only thing I can do— That's a true story, actually. I remember thinking to myself when I did my first entrepreneurial venture, I was employed at the time, but as I kind of got into the next one and the next one, it was, I felt a little bit, back then entrepreneurship was not glamorized in any way, shape, or form. It was very much like, I'm an entrepreneur. What does that mean? I can't get a real job. Right.

Right.

Right. Um, but it's funny because now I think, and again, we can go into the entire, like the cost of living crisis and the inability to earn to keep up with cost of living, but there's a real problem that exists right now where I truly believe if you don't become some level of entrepreneur and just, you know, have a side hustle or have your main hustle.

Mm-hmm.

You're not going to be able to earn anywhere close to what you need to keep up with the cost of living. It just, it won't happen, right? So Canada is like, you know, is a typical, is the prototypical kind of like first world environment that there should be great opportunity, but also it causes major amounts of pain because the 3 biggest costs you have between housing, food, and transportation, that represents over 70% of your actual, you know, after Market after tax, right? So think about all the other things that you got to do. And I use this analogy many times because when I graduated out of university back in 1996, my first job, CIBC Finance, I got paid $50,000, I think $55,000.

Oh, that's a lot back then. Yeah, it was pretty good.

It wasn't bad. So that was my first job out of school. Back in '96. Totally dating myself, by the way. My daughter graduated 2 years ago. Her first job out of school, $60,000.

Same thing.

Same thing. Exact same. So we're talking about like the— and she graduated from a business program.

Back when you were young, Coca-Cola cost a nickel.

And my first house, my first car was a Toyota Corolla. Yeah. $12,000. Brand new Toyota Corolla.

Brand new, $12,000. So that, that's a good inflationary kind of Oh, I'll tell you the bigger one though.

It's my first house that I bought in 1999 was a $190,000 house in Oakville, semi-detached, 3 levels. I think it was 2,000 square feet. That same house today is $1.2 million.

Yeah.

You can look it up at MLS and realtor.ca and it's crazy because, so I try to put it in perspective. And again, I don't want to sound like an old head, but you literally You can't even remotely, remotely kind of think to yourself, okay, this is sustainable or in any way, shape, or form tenable right now for the future.

It's not. It's not. And I think that the big aspect here is that quality of life is going to decrease, right? As affordability inevitably goes down, people are already making sacrifices in urban Canada to try and maintain some sense of quality of life. You've seen post-pandemic in people in their 20s and 30s kind of a lot higher percentage of people than 2 decades ago having roommates.

Yeah.

It's crazy in Toronto. Like a lot of people have roommates and that's cool. It's not a bad thing unless you don't want it to be a thing in your life. If you want space and you can't afford that space, it's problematic. There's so many things like that. There's people talking about how expensive the public transit system is. It should virtually be free or feel free, right? In terms of how much it should cost us. There's all these things that add up to quality of life being tough. And of course, we've seen the last few years, one of the podcasts that I produce is called Gathering, and it's a survey of organizational behavior through the lens of CHROs and people in culture ops.

Right.

And I keep hearing this, that a couple of years ago in the immediacy of the pandemic's, let's say the health scare starting to abate, but now the economic reality kicking in, right? 2022, '23. The rush to remote first, or at least hybrid workplaces and employers telling people it's cool to move or have moved away from home base city for the company to work from wherever they are. That was encouraged for a kind of like a, yes, have a quality of life and Maybe there's a bottom line implication here of if we don't need an office and we don't need to spend the rent, then we can save that. A couple cycles later, of course, the companies that didn't have that on their balance sheet anymore could never have it on their balance sheet. They couldn't justify spending money that they never have or hadn't in the last couple cycles. So there's that. But this idea that in Canada we don't have the variance of tertiary cities to support this as an ongoing phenomenon.

Right.

There was that first wave in the pandemic of people moving to second-tier cities to get a better quality of life. Let's call Calgary, for all our listeners in Alberta, I'm sorry, I'm calling Calgary a tertiary city, but people went to Calgary and they're like, mountains, great. A lot of Ontarians moved there. This is great. We could live by the mountains and we can live and work and have all this great space for our family and stuff.

Yeah.

There was a way oversupply of available housing, right, in Calgary. And Calgary's always had this culture of building anyway. New communities are being built all the time because everyone's always upgrading their house. But the houses started getting filled up with immigrants. The province has seen a lot of net immigration in the last few years. And what happens when now it's not as cute anymore for all the people that—

Right.

Want a $4 macchiato instead of a $7 one. Anyway, so I think it's interesting because across the board, I mean, we've had a bit of a delta there of like people being able to be a little bit like flexible if they can be to move. But the reality is that like, yeah, all cost of living is going up across the board.

Well, I think about the balancing act. At the end of the day, cost of living has gone up and we're not even talking like I just mentioned the 3 things, which is like roof over your head, food you put in your mouth, and obviously transportation from point A to point B. Now there's all the other discretionary items that people don't even think of. Like, again, back in the '90s, early 2000s, they didn't have any sort of subscriptions, any Uber costs, any Uber Eats costs. Like there was nothing relative that would be something like a sleepy subscription that you would actually pay on a monthly basis.

Sure.

Now there's like, I did this exercise. I kid you not. I had 18 subscriptions that I didn't even know about that I'm being charged on a monthly basis. Right.

Even debt.

Yeah.

Like even if you look at credit card debt and what households are carrying today.

It's because everything's so easy. Like you just, you acquire it and it just becomes a natural part of your life. So to figure out how to get ahead, to your absolute point, it just becomes a payment that you're putting out there and becomes a recurring payment. You're like, ah, it's just there, but you don't really realize, okay, how I don't have any money in my account that I've actually accumulated or saved. Right. See, I think there's 2 things here.

And again, Again, it's interesting, but I think, I don't know, call bullshit on it if it is bullshit, but I think there's 2 kind of forces here that are very interesting that are reinforcing this indentured labor mentality in Canada that's kind of at odds with entrepreneurialism. We'll come back to this. All of these factors add up to us needing a more entrepreneurial society to create solutions for society and at the same time for people to grab the reins of their own destiny, right?

Yeah.

And fill their pockets a little bit more if they can and help others do the same. But yeah, like you've got this cost of living thing. You've got monopolies taking advantage, of course, by nature of the market as it's been constructed for years. But with the monopolies, you have Canadians for decades now feeling like they can't challenge the monopoly, right? So building a challenger brand doesn't feel that sexy for a local market. Entrepreneurially, but that beats out a lot of innovation. We don't en masse have innovation across the whole economy because the incumbents are so strong and have such strong moats that people are like, I could never start a pharmacy and challenge Shoppers Drug Mart. Gail and Weston's naans are better than my grandmother's naans. I can't ever start a naan company.

Are you segueing into my startup right now tradition?

Yeah, maybe.

Let's go there.

I wasn't meaningfully saying that.

Yeah. Well, we're talking about food. Food, but also, yeah, cost of living. And the point being, I think if that's a great segue into obviously Tradish as well as A-list is that from an A-list perspective, I think people are going to have side hustles were almost frowned upon before. It's almost like, hey, you have a corporate job, like focus on your focus on your job.

Like, what are you doing? Don't mess it up.

Yeah. But you realize You're not going to be able to earn enough to live. So therefore, like side hustles are encouraged now. Like how many individuals, you know, that basically do the Ubers on the side, right? So they're encouraged, but now getting to that point where you're teaching people how to fish and say, hey, like I'm going to teach you how to start like a side hustle or an entrepreneurial venture that ultimately, if you earn enough, it can be your primary gig, right?

Right. Sure.

That's the best case scenario. So I truly believe like Incentives, tax structures, everything associated with like how to incentivize entrepreneurship is critically important, especially in Canada, because Canada is like, I won't go too political, but at the end of the day, the entire, like the sovereignty that we don't have right now and independence that we have in other nations right now is very, is, is right in our face. It's crazy apparent because we don't have the ability to earn ourselves. Right. So it's like incentives for entrepreneurs is critical in nature. I truly believe that.

Yeah.

But you're right, it's almost like getting over the fear of, of what's in front of you and being okay to disrupt and okay to start new stuff. So going now to Tradish. So if you think of it, Tradish, the entire concept of Tradish is like, and so it's so simple in nature. And I truly believe like anyone who tries this, they'll understand the simplicity of it. We have an amazing tech platform that ultimately Is our— it's, we start off as a SaaS platform, but it's like the D2C grocery platform that allows anyone to look on our platform, see the food that they want, order from us, and then we just ship directly from wholesaler right to the consumer.

So it's like instead of having an Instacart shopper or a whatever grocery store shopper for their digital service walking through the aisles, getting the thing, you're getting it straight from wholesale, saving money.

That's right. So think about the, Think about the actual supply chain in that model.

Wait, sorry, sorry, sorry. Okay, what you're talking about, forgive my naivety, because I have been wondering about this for a while, is all the grocers across Canada, and by that I mean the couple of companies that exist here owning all the grocery stores.

There's 3 major, there's an oligopoly of 3. And the other 2 big ones are the other largest Fortune 500 companies in food, Walmart and Costco.

Yeah.

And then there's Amazon, which is a whole other thing as well. But it's owned by a very small few.

But what I found really weird about it is like this weird embrace of e-com that we've had in the last decade in Canada. It's like they're superimposing new purchasing models onto their preexisting supply chain and products and service offering rather than Looking at that opportunity of saving end customer money, but also operational inefficiencies. I don't understand why—

Yeah.

I know this sounds dramatic here, right? And I don't know if you want to say it, but like, and we've met Instacart people here and we've had them on stage here. The founder of Instacart spoke at StarWorld before, but I've never understood outside of maybe urban pedestrian convenience, I don't understand how hiring a shopper to do your shopping, especially for products that are like you would regularly have every week arriving at your house, makes any sense.

Yeah, you nailed it. So especially in a market, in an economy where cost of living is so high and food is so high now.

So expensive. I spend $450 a week easy.

The average household of 4, $17,000 a year. Annually. So they're spending like $1,500 a month in food and it's increasing, it's growing, obviously not even including obviously the tariff situation. But yeah, so again, I'm going to state this relative to, think about the last decade up to 2022, everything was about technology advancements, economy is booming. So everything you're seeing in terms of these technological advancements and these apps and these marketplaces was there for convenience, kind of building a layer of convenience on top of your regular day-to-day practices.

Right.

So think about what Instacart is, Uber Eats is, what DoorDash is. It's an egg delivery— they're delivery aggregators at a level of convenience on top of the highest cost that exists right now. So grocery stores, they charge a premium obviously because they have their embedded supply chain, all the different levels in the supply chain that they have to charge that get passed on the consumer. Now you add on a level of convenience, which again, in retrospect, it makes sense if the economy is okay and you can spend that level of convenience, but they're tacking on a delivery cost and the highest cost grocery retail cost. So what we're doing is completely the opposite. We're kind of compressing that entire supply chain and people are ordering from us.

Yeah.

We're providing delivery to them, but we provide delivery from the wholesale cost. So now we can provide 30% savings on an average grocery bill, which is crazy. Like right now it's like, and again, keep in mind, we just launched a year ago. And we're able to provide 30% savings. We have no bulk inventory, sorry, no bulk discounting yet. We don't buy massive quantities right now, but we're just basically cutting out the middleman and compressing that supply chain to do something that's more optimized and I believe smarter. So that's why we can provide those savings to the consumers, which right now they need it more than ever. But again, going back to the Instacarts of the world, the Uber Eats, the DoorDashes of the world, their model's all about convenience.

Right.

Their customer is the grocery store. Our customer is the consumer, which is very different.

So on that, like what have been the greatest kind of marketing challenges and coups that you've managed with that company so far?

That's a great question. I can go off.

Because it's tough. Like it's tough to market to Canadians. One thing we've already said is, you know, like 10, 15 years ago, not even like 6, 7, 8 years ago, ads worked.

Yep.

Right? Like ads worked. Now they don't work. And I'm talking to people in all segments about this. And one of the partners that we have for our content series is even the Institute of Canadian Agencies. And it's got me talking about marketing effectiveness with all the top agencies that should be experts in how to not only creatively position brands, but enable their access to market as well, right? On the programmatic and the media buying side. And people are scratching their heads, man. If you're selling shoes and someone really wants that specific model of shoe, maybe you can use an ad. But if you're selling anything that's experiential or not impulse purchase, it's tough. It's tough to use ads.

I would say that we've been really lucky in terms of our brand positioning because if you think of it, we have this embedded impact thesis, which is basically, again, it's a simple model. You cut out the middleman, because we're cutting out those costs, those costs and those savings get passed on the consumer.

Right.

During a period where literally it's like, we have a partnership with Feed Ontario. So we provide 1% of our revenue to Feed Ontario, mainly because obviously it was part of our impact thesis, which is like Ontario food banks are seeing the highest attendance ever, ever. Like, so for us, like we just know that this entire impact thesis exists associated with like If you can provide a simple, disruptive way to provide better, more affordable groceries to the consumer, like that's an easy impact thesis. And embedded in that is a brand message, right? So for us, it's like, that's one thing that resonates loud and clear with everyone from a marketing ad spend is like, we don't really have to, you know, do tons of marketing and tons of ad spend because like we have people that are definitely spreading word of mouth in terms of our service.

Yeah.

I think the biggest challenge is getting, getting past the norm of how you typically do things.

So changing the way the purchasing behavior.

That's exactly. So that is by far the thing that once it takes, I think, again, I think Tradish will be a household name and it'll go viral. I really believe that because the biggest hurdle by far is changing your consumer behavior. What we do is we basically have you order a day in advance. So, you know, there's no longer instant gratification. Um, because if you think of like the supply chain and the way the operational model works for a typical grocery store is like you're inventorying tons and tons of groceries.

Yeah.

Whether you sell it or not, you have your models in your mind and on paper to say, okay, this is, this is the throughput of how many customers are going to come in and buy all this inventory. But then whatever people don't buy, you throw away the spoilage overages. For us, we don't hold any inventory. So people order on a Monday and they get delivery for, um, it's right now it's 2 days, but we're going to get it to 1 day. But You order the night, you get delivery the next day. So we literally have 24 hours to do the entire distribution, the picking, packing, all those different things.

It works in commercial. I mean, this is the thing. That's how commercial food vendors like restaurants and hotels manage their food supply.

Yeah.

Right. So like, it's interesting. It's interesting that households don't. And I think, you know what, I think, um, yeah, I think I haven't seen any data on this. You probably know this better than anyone, but the 1 or 2 person home versus the 4, 6 person home in terms of their purchasing habits on food. I can't buy food daily and we're just 3 people in the house.

Right.

Because we'll run out of food or we'll have run out of some types of food. I have to buy weekly or twice a week, but I don't want to buy that often because there's enough stuff that needs to be in my fridge. So I'm no longer in that like rundown of the store for this thing. So I guess my point is the time from order to delivery doesn't matter because I would preorder and I know what I'm going to order anyway.

So think about if everyone adopts that behavior, then it changes the entire norm of your ordering experience. So right now, That's what we do. We basically say, hey, if you change the behavior of what you have, you're going to get the net benefit of savings. You're going to get the net benefit of fresher product because we don't hold the inventory on the shelves.

Right.

So for us, it's like there's so many different things that are great if you actually change that behavior just slightly. So for us, it's like we launched again, just, you know, our official commercial launch was September and we're starting to see great traction. Great. A lot of interest. A lot of people have tried kind of our product. The biggest hurdle by far is people that try us once, they have to get over their mind and get over the typical consumer behavior of like, oh, I'm so used to going to the store, right? So those that are loyal to us, like we have like 1,700 recurring customers in a span of like 6, just over 6 months, of which they're just loyal. They've, they have a repeat ordering cycle because they've adopted that behavior where they're just ordering every 2 weeks. And they know exactly, almost like recurring box. They know exactly, here are the essentials, here are the staples that I'm ordering. And they order every 2 weeks, which is fantastic. Those are the ones that completely get it. And now it's a matter of just like changing that behavior because like to your point, vast majority of individuals, if you can save them that money, changing that behavior is not difficult.

It's interesting because even if you talk to these like life hack productivity guys that you see all over YouTube these days, you know, that are like stealing the mindshare of young entrepreneurs a lot, Alex Hormozi, You know, like all these dudes, the idea of even wasted time, right? And like, how much time does it take to go to the store to do the shopping? So the convenience angle plays into this. It just, it's about, you know, foresight and this idea of savings and impact all coming together in a nice mix.

Well, I think it's important though, because there's a mass necessity for it. And again, going back to the entire the impact thesis of Tridish and the cost of living skyrocketing. Like, there's, A, I don't think it's even that inconvenient, but B, it's a necessity right now. Like, people are going to have to figure it out because something's got to give, right? So this is kind of where I always joke whenever I talk to investors and shareholders, um, in that they, they believe what we're trying to crack the code on is something crazy audacious. And it is like, many companies have tried this before in terms of disrupting grocery. But what I'm suggesting is that it's not that difficult. Like what we're proposing is not that difficult a process. Again, the biggest thing is like, you just got to change your mentality a little bit because if you do, you get fresher product, you get cheaper product because again, you're eliminating all the costs in the supply chain. It's just, it's a different mentality that you have to have. And it's a necessity because like I said, cost of living and food costs are not—

Yeah, people have to change their behavior.

You have to, you have to.

What's fascinating though is this idea that like in Canada especially, we are, We're not that many people spread across a huge landmass and clustered in just a few cities, but we don't have the means. And part of this is this fragmented media landscape that we have and over-commercialized one. And there's a lot to say on that, but we don't have a great unified communication across our nation. For even collective messaging. I don't mean propaganda machine, right? That's the way I described it. It sounded like that, but like, like the CBC's kind of brand equity has diminished ridiculously in the last couple of decades. And it's not necessarily a primary channel of information as it was when we were growing up, for example.

Right.

We had like, I don't know how many Canadian channels, like 6 Canadian channels, whatever it was, not many Canadian television channels. And so it's very interesting because getting the message out when it's one that is a positive message, even if you're relying on word of mouth to develop the brand awareness, forget about changing behavior because I think also people enjoy copycatting far too much. They'll do what the next guy is doing if they desire to have that guy's life or whatever. Right. So I think it's possible to hack that virality of how people change their behavior, but getting that message out there and encouraging people. And I think this is, in Canada, I think it's gonna be a big win for marketers. I think it's a lot of people are thinking about how to do this for different brands. And this is maybe a global phenomenon as well, is that we're looking today at brand advocacy as something that needs to be baked into the brand experience. And companies are rethinking how they empower their customers to have a voice, but also do it in a way that's constructive for their mission, their mandate. And you hear about this in CPG or in these bigger industries. You look at even in beauty makeup, of course, the obvious examples, simple kind of candy examples are influencer marketing, then using people to become semi-organic spokespeople of your brand under the hopes that like then your actual customers will copycat them and help advertise you. But it's not really about advertising. I think it's more about inserting the brand in the larger narrative in a way that everyone socializes it. And if it's mission-aligned like yours is, empowering those people to feel good about their purchasing decision, And that alone should fuel that, like, want to see their neighbors and their friends also buying healthy and buying better, you know?

Well, yeah, I think what you're saying is, um, again, I don't want to be idealistic in nature because again, like, I'm an entrepreneur, so I fully am aware, like, this, what I'm doing right now, maybe in this next, like, I guess this later chapter of my life, because what I'm doing is not necessarily about kind of purely building businesses to sell and have liquidity events. That's not, I'm not past that, obviously, but in the same respect, I think very much, a lot more about impact in the next generation, how it's going to impact the next generation. So a lot of what I want to do is kind of do things that I believe will create positive impact, good social impact. So when I think about this thesis, it's one of those, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when mentality.

Yeah.

I know it's going to take off. And I know the entire thesis around changing behavior, because again, there's such a far end of the spectrum of what change needs to happen in terms of getting cost of living down and your ability to earn and be able to pay for all these different things we talked about. It's just not going to happen. So one of those, that's why maybe this is such a beautiful kind of relationship between A-List Ventures and what I'm doing with Tradish is because I truly believe, like, on the A-List side, you have to get up someone's ability to earn. You have to, because at the end of the day, cost of living ain't coming down. But on the other side of it, if you can fix the one-off things that are like the biggest expenses for people, then ultimately you're tackling one at a time to just change the mentality, right? So for me, though, about food with groceries is like, it's going to happen eventually because it just makes sense. But it's a matter of curbing someone's behavior and their ability to just say, okay, well, this does make sense. And a lot of it's going to happen when, to your point, their friends talk about it or they say, okay, have you tried this? It just makes sense. And again, the pushback might be, it's not as convenient as me just hopping in my car and going to the grocery store. But if it becomes a way of life and a norm for people, then it becomes the mainstream, which I believe will happen eventually.

Yeah, man.

Yeah.

But it is interesting because coming back to the A-list thing, I think it's fascinating to consider that people have ideas for improving society and maybe monetizing those improvements, but don't have the means to articulate in business, extrapolate that monetizable idea for a product or service into Okay, well, how could this become a company? They might have the gumption and the want to do it, but to just not have the knowledge, maybe spend years or months or whatever ardor and expense there is to become a business person of some degree, ultimately fail, because what's the failure rate of entrepreneurship? It's extremely high.

Like 90%?

Yeah, right? And so if you could provide that function to streamline a path to commercialization, Right. And enable people to, you know, to test products and services and then have an on-ramp to scaling them. I mean, that's good. That's what we need. How have you found the reception of this approach for A-List Ventures amongst the finance industry?

Yeah, that's a great question. So everyone that's in my current family office network, They love the model mainly because from their perspective, it's a level of diligence of them to say, okay, like I've great, far more diligence, far more kind of articulate deal flow of like deals I can invest in, right? Because there's diligence.

Yeah.

There's a clear path in the framework that we apply, that I've applied kind of for 28 years in all my companies. So yeah, from a finance perspective, like individuals love investing in deals where you've de-risked it, but also that have a clear path, right? Because if you think of like, again, going back to, it seems like I'm shitting on like the decade from 2010 to 2020. I'm not, because that's where, that was my 2 largest exits. And we haven't even talked about those, but those were my 2 largest exits where momentum was happening like crazy, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

But if you think of like how money was flowing during that decade, it was All about top line revenue, user growth, adoption. And what adoption meant was basically just grow hard and fast as quickly as possible. Okay, cool.

But that's a startup thing in general, right? It is.

Sell, sell, sell.

Try not lose too much. So customer retention, it's more like customer success. Try and keep them happy and educated. No brand, no marketing, no long tail.

Yeah, but the difference being 2022 hits and Y Combinator puts out their cautionary letter to their founders to say, hey, if you raise money 2 years prior. This seed round that you got, you got to let this ride and get the default alive or get the sustainability or profitability with the money that we gave you. Meanwhile, you have these young founders that are like, I don't even know what that means. Yeah.

What is profit? Isn't that revenue?

I'm just building my company now. I don't even know what this company is. Right. And you gave me a bunch of money to just figure out what this company is. So from a perspective of like, You asked me about kind of how is the finance community looking at this. They love the model because it's just, it's creating a far better framework of how do you invest in companies. Because at the end of the day, the goalposts have changed. I actually empathize far more for the actual entrepreneurs and the founders over the last 5 years because they don't know how the goalposts have changed. They just changed. So you might've had a VC that funded you in a seed round, that said, hey, get to this level. And that level might've been like acquire 20,000 users. And by the way, I don't care what it costs to get to that user as long as there's some level of stickiness and cohort that actually looks kind of similar, that it shows some level of user adoption. That founder might've gone back and said, hey, I'm almost there. And then 2022 hits and they're like, no, sorry, you're not getting a follow-on funding because we need profitable revenue. We need this revenue to actually like mean something and be repetitive. So you actually have a clear path to sustainability and profitability. So now their mentality is, okay, the goalposts have changed. What is it gonna take for me to get to that next level?

Right.

So I empathize far more for the entrepreneurs that, and the founders that started something because the rules were different then. And now the rules are very different now. So I think from the perspective of like where we sit, we help the founders and entrepreneurs get to that clearer path faster because they're trying to figure out how to get unstuck and do it themselves, which is very hard to do if you've never done it before.

Totally.

And then from a financeable perspective, many of kind of my investors in my network are looking at this and saying, this is a great model because you're downsizing the risk and you're actually giving me a clear path for these founders that have really, really good ideas that have a quicker path to obviously getting commercialization or product market fit.

So just for our listeners and audience that may not understand this, if you come from that kind of first-time founder startup world, And you're maybe unclear as to how venture capital works. Something interesting from my vantage might be worth spelling out, which is that venture capital funds are invested in by, in Canada anyway, by a good proportion of it by the government through its distributaries, the Business Development Bank of Canada and so on. And then otherwise through other LPs, limited partners in their funds. And those LPs typically are high net worth individuals if they're not institutional funds.

Right.

funds, like those government funds I mentioned. What's fascinating to me though is the bulk in Canada of the LP money is high net worth individuals that either come from generational wealth or raw material extractive industries and so on. So they're not necessarily the type of people, if you talk to them directly about investing in your proposition, that would either understand what you're working on directly or assume that you don't know what profitability is. Like, it's a really interesting thing that I've seen, like, general partners, operators of venture capital funds in Canada for a very long time, 2 decades in my vantage, you know, play this kind of like obscuring role where they're not— LPs of that identity, like the individuals that are bringing millions of dollars into funds, they're actually quite excited about participating in a venture fund. They don't need a return. Typically, this is throwaway money for them. They throw away money in venture capital funds because it's kind of fun, but the funds rarely get—

That's not now though. We can totally talk about that.

It's a little bit different now, a lot different now in terms of the last year or so, But I would say that they've always wanted to be included in the story of innovation, but they've been held back from it from 2 factors. One, people working in VC funds being career employees and not understanding what entrepreneurship's all about. That obscures the whole picture about what their fund's mandate is and how they ensure success or help success for the founders that they invest in and find the right investable propositions. work with other investors about de-risking their collective portfolios. And then 2, they've been very poor at communicating with LPs in their funds about the stories of the founders that they're investing in. And those stories are typically, if you really scratch the surface with a lot of LPs, what a lot of people are interested in backing. And because of the structures of these venture capital funds, For the most part, I feel like I've seen this happen many, many times where like companies that are doing well, that have good sound principles that they're operating on in a portfolio, they might be kept at bay from LPs that would, if they were connected to their story directly, help follow on finance. But those LPs don't have that access. And when the fund's not turning out well and the operators are worried about their next round or whatever, and leaving these guys in the lurch about finding their sustenance capital, they won't find it. But there's a guy right here that's always been a champion. And I've seen that a number of times.

Right.

Right. And you're right, things have changed lately, right? Things have changed lately. And also we're going through this thing in the next 5, 10 years in Canada where a lot of those old guard oilmen and whoever else that invested in these funds, their families are inheriting wealth. And the question is now, how active are they going to be in legacy mandate or otherwise providing value through that inheritance to a new set of businesses to be born and entrepreneurialism in general?

Yeah. It's just a It's almost like this new world that we're in right now, let's call it from this point on, like 2025 onwards, is an entire theory or thesis of you got to do more with less now. Because before, the GPLP structure was all basically, and again, this goes from the early teens when you were the first check-in to a big unicorn and all of a sudden that unicorn went public. I think about when DoorDash went public.

It was like— You get your payday.

Like the ridiculous payday you got, right? And did an LP foresee that or did they get lucky? It's a combination of both to a little bit. Either it might've been in a great network, but they also, they got hell of a lucky because at the end of the day, they were right place, right time. Part of an initial founder round that saw massive amounts of liquidity. And you kind of look at the the initial founder cap table of Uber, and you'll see a bunch of individuals that got lucky in terms of like, hey, this is what I got gifted, right? So it's crazy. But that being said, it's a different mentality now. And the reason why I talk about, I think the game has changed a little bit in that if you look at the VC community right now, you'll be surprised how many, like a lot of the GPs and the funds that are trying to raise their second, their next fund, are having difficulty doing it because they have a fund that is underperforming or stranded right now. And before they raise their next fund, they have to actually get liquidity for the LPs. So there's like, there's this absolute, like almost combative approach right now because you have really great deal flow of companies that are really close that they want their growth round. They want their next, you know, they might be seed round, but they want, they're almost at a pre-Series A, sorry, Series A round. But they can't get funding because a GP can't double down on their, on the company because they have to get liquidity for other companies that are really close. So it's almost like a time and attention thing too, right? So it's like there's, it is very polarizing because I just know a lot of the VC market has changed and will it turn? Yeah, potentially could. But right now it's just really strained because like really great deals exist, but it's a buyer's market. There's no question about it.

Yeah.

So you gotta be a really good deal if, You know, you're gonna have to play with capital out there.

Yeah, it's so weird. I think one output that I hope to see out of this tough kind of venture crunch is the ability for greater storytelling, you know, in our entrepreneurial society in Canada, like for more companies to be able to get better at marketing and branding from day one, because I think it will help them down the line in sourcing capital, but also in identifying to market why they're relevant. It's a tough one. It's definitely a tough one, but I think we need it. And part of that is a media question. We need media in the country that I think supports that storytelling as well.

I actually think you're nailing it to the extent of like the entire quote unquote build in public theory. I think this absolutely is mandatory right now. And I'll give you my own personal story because this will give you like a very direct correlation. So I had 2 exits back to back in 2018, 2019. I retired for about a year, got depressed, got anxious, kind of figured out what I was going to do. That's when I started my family office fund. And then from that point onwards, I was like, when I started Tradish, I realized that the Tradish thesis was very impactful in nature. So for me, I realized I didn't, I had no social media presence, no LinkedIn presence, no nothing. I think I maybe had like sub-500 followers on LinkedIn. You just did your work and Yeah, I just grinded away. And for me, it was like an old school mentality of like, hey, God, I don't want to put myself out there. Like, no one really needs to know who I am and I don't really care. I was like this kind of underground covert founder and entrepreneur, just built stuff. But because Tradish had such a heavy impact thesis associated with it, I had to, I figured I had talked to a number of different investors and like, people need to hear about the story. So I put some posts out, I started getting more active and it took me a long time to just get comfortable doing that.

Right. Right.

Because I never did that before.

Yeah.

So for me, it's like, thank God I did, because like I said, I'm at a point right now where I get some pretty good engagement. People want to hear about some of the stuff I'm doing. They want to hear very specifically about how Tradish is doing. And this whole entire build in public theory is really, really relevant. And I know that because if you look at the companies that like entrepreneurs and founders that might be at the same level, they might have similar companies that are at similar stages in terms of their, their growth or they're close to being product-market fit. But the companies that build in public that are outward in terms of how they're doing it, those are the ones that are getting funded and fast because they're public. Everyone knows about them. Everyone knows all the hair about what they're doing wrong, what they're doing right, and how, if you're an investor, hey, I can help. I can build torque in the model and help this company because I can just inject this client in there, for example. So because they're public and because they're telling everything, it's like this advantage and superpower that they have because everyone knows about them.

Right. Yeah, and I think, you know what, I hope that we're moving out of that era. And again, I go back to this David and Goliath thing. Like, I've seen it in Canada and Canadian tech for a long time where, you know, there was this mentality that, and part of it is raising cycles and all this, but there's this kind of like mentality that people have had for a long time that like, I can't tell my story until I get to this point. And the milestones are about stuff that if you're on venture track, you'll never get to. You'll get to it if you go public and you have a nice payday for people.

Mm-hmm.

But everyone feels like everyone's judging them. You know, all these entrepreneurs are feeling Like, not only am I being judged, but I don't want to be shut out of deal flow and opportunity by being too public about things that might piss people off or set me against someone. And yet I look at it and I say, we're a small country. We got to be able to be ourselves and be open about what we're working on so we can communicate and help each other.

Yeah.

So, if you're always looking over your back or you're feeling like everything's proprietary, it's going to be very difficult to engage any stakeholders. You start shutting off potential partners and investors that way, and you're gonna shut out customers as well. And it's a really interesting thing, this idea of like founder-led marketing as well. And the idea that like if you step on camera and you start speaking on behalf of your company, you'll empower the other people in your organization to do the same, which can open you up to so much opportunities.

Ridiculous amounts. And it's funny because it's like the old mentality, and I was part of the old guard, right? The old mentality is like, so secretive.

Right.

You're like, you're like, I don't want to, if I tell people what I'm doing, someone can replicate it or someone will know exactly what I'm doing. And it's like that mentality of like, you gotta be so guarded and so secretive what you're doing. And that's completely thrown out the window now because at the end of the day, it definitely compresses success. Like at the end of the day, the most successful companies are the ones that they put all their words out there because in some way, shape, or form, an investor or a partner will look at this and say, hey, I see that as an opportunity. I can add value there. So the entire build in public theory is like, it's very real. And it's funny, it's almost sad. It's almost like those who haven't adopted it or haven't embraced it are going to be left behind in many respects. And I'm not even talking about from an entrepreneurial perspective, but I see, I do talk to a lot of colleagues that have zero desire to be in public whatsoever. They might not have a LinkedIn profile, they might not have Instagram, they might not have— and For that, because for them, it's like, for so long they've been successful kind of not being that, but now if they want to get a job or if they want to start a company or they want to be part of a network, it's, it's really hard to do that unless you actually put yourself out there.

So, well, it's also interesting because I think something's changed in the last 5 years with the digital saturation of the pandemic, as, as people have been like super saturated in, in media experiences, both Entertainment like Netflix and chill, and then Zoom, and then all the different digital tools if they've been working hybrid. Everyone's burnt out from digital interfaces. They want authentic things. And even if they're going to spend the screen time that they're going to spend, they'll want it to feel more authentic. They want to talk to people. They want to hear from people talking to them. So it's really interesting how that— I think that whole profile of what kind of information people are looking for has changed. We're seeing it here, of course, at Startwell, right? Because like, obviously clients use our studios to produce content and the ones that are vocal using content that's authentic and allowing everyone not vetted by comms and legal to speak on camera, people pick it up and they're like, wow, I heard that. I saw that thing that you did. We heard that thing that you did. We saw you do this panel and you talked to that guy and they can socialize a company a lot better and the experience of it. So it humanizes brands, right? And then there's also this idea of events and event marketing. And I was just talking to someone before you came in, actually, the guy that I said bye to, who was a former chief revenue officer at one of Canada's largest entertainment companies for a number of years. And we were talking about how there's a competitive advantage. This is some of what we were talking about, but— There's a competitive advantage that I hope entrepreneurs listening to this kind of definitely wake up to, no matter what stage in your career you are. The opportunity to be able to speak with your own voice is a rare thing. Like, I look at it competitively even, like there are companies that can't talk about what they do. They just can't. They never will.

Right.

Because of their internal management of information and And all of that. And if they're a public company, you've got all this risk, potential risk to mitigate. So that's a competitive advantage. I mean, companies, and we're going to have, there's a guy named Jake Carls. Yeah, you know that dude?

Midday.

Midday Squares. He wears sunglasses, he's got a funky vibe, and he had to market his own company with his co-founders. They didn't have money and they're a CPG company.

He is the epitome of building in public.

Yeah.

Literally using as little as you have and putting, giving it all you got to essentially amplify your message and build in public. Like there's, there is a, one of the marketers that I, I work with that I have a lot of respect for. She said something that was actually really, really poignant and very, very relevant. She basically said, um, putting out content for the first time, is cringey until it's not.

Yeah.

So the whole theory behind it is like, it gets to the point where someone's going to look at you and say, oh, that message is like, I've seen that before, or they're going to have their own opinion on it.

Right.

Until it gets to the point where there's like, it becomes elevated and amplified and it becomes more relevant and people start to respond to it and engagement and you get a large following. And that's just the way the behavior analysis is of like people when they see something, from a credibility perspective, once it gets larger-scale adoption, then it's no longer cringy.

It's powerful, right? Yeah, there's that. And there's also this, I would say, is kind of like a recommendation to anyone in the audience that's considering what's their personal brand and overthinking it, over-strategizing it. I think part of this is also the ability, and this is what the reps do for you, right? The repetitions of posting and posting, especially like UGC content, but like user-generated content. If you're talking to camera, especially in video, you'll get a feel for how you want to be talking on camera once you work through the cringe, once you work through the personal apprehension of who's looking at me because I just see the camera. You know, as soon as you start feeling your audience out and knowing who you want to talk to, Talking becomes cathartic. It's actually good. It feels nice. And that's what audiences really are receptive for, I think, is feeling that point at which someone is articulating in a really kind of free-flowing way that's natural. They can pick it up and they feel part of the conversation. And I had this chat with a guy who's running a pretty interesting digital orchestration company last week. And he had hired a media management kind of company. It seemed like a functional thing, right? You hire a company that tells you what— they send you a script every week or whatever, and you put your iPod or your iPhone or whatever your device is on a tripod and you talk to it and it's got a teleprompting app. And then that sends it to their post-publishing, post-production crew. They edit it and they manage all your social channels for you. And now you're everywhere and you've got your message everywhere. And I was like, I was like, dude, man, the content's not working. If I look at it and he's like, yeah, but engagement's up, numbers are up, we're closing deals. And I'm like, sure, it'll peak at some point. And at the same time, you're also missing out on deals. So there's something to be said about that, which is I think the highest impact you can have is, you know, as someone who's developing a personal brand is when you can speak authentically in a way that feels like you're in control of your voice. Because then you're gonna find the best fit come outta nowhere. People will connect with you in a different way than, yes, if you just advertise to them, they will respond.

So I'll tell you one funny story, 'cause this, and this is so relevant to this. So one of my larger exits was this cannabis company.

What was it called?

Newstrike, Newstrike Brands. So my brother-in-law was the CEO, I was the president. We used to talk nonstop because we were both on the board of directors and I was basically everything kind of board of directors down, everything operational. He was board of directors out. So he was front-facing, he was the CEO, he's public-facing. And we would always talk about the talk track that he had, right? And he's so brilliant in terms of his ingratiating nature. And he's just a very kind of personable individual. But it's funny because we always talk about he can He can rhyme off a talk track and make it sound so natural. And it's like, it was so extraordinary. Like, like when someone thinks about it and talks and like talks to him and like, hey, this, I love this guy. This guy's amazing. And it's funny. I remember having my interviews every now and again. I'm like, I just can't get into it because I just, I don't, it's not my story.

Right.

I just, I, I would talk about it and, but it would be very scripted and it would be like, it was almost like the PR, old PR and the old IR.

Yeah.

was, and I shouldn't say old, it's still here today. Let's be clear on this. But it's like, I'm going to script you in terms of the talk track. You stay within these guardrails and then you'll be fine. Because at the end of the day, you can spin media to say like, go back to the talk track, go back to the talk track, go back to the talk track. I was never comfortable in that. Like, it's funny, the reason why talking about A-list and talking about Tradish, even having this, like, I'm not sure how many— we're an hour in the conversation.

Talking for 5 hours.

This seems so natural to me because it's like something that I've— it's my life, right? It's my career. It's my passion project. So for me, this, like, this is very natural and having these conversations seem very organic and authentic.

Right.

But that's kind of where I think if you're going to start your own kind of building a public or building your own personal brand, you got to do it in a way where you just feel comfortable doing, saying things that you actually are totally comfortable saying, because that's probably where they'll feel comfortable for you and they'll be comfortable for anyone else watching you, right?

There's so many examples of this where like, and I think, look, in the last few years, I think the success of celebrity mimicry and this kind of like makeup culture on Instagram has kind of led people astray about what works. Because we all think there's formats that work that, and a lot of people have apprehension about, I have to emulate something. I've seen examples of this where like people in business, especially on LinkedIn, and their content's been performing like crazy because they're not even talking about their company.

Yeah.

And when it performs, people are gonna reach out when they wanna like do a deal about something. So it's more like we're all craving authenticity online like crazy these days and we just wanna like hear what's up? What's up, Peter? What are you working on? You know? So I think that's exciting 'cause like also even for me, I geek out on that stuff. Like I like that kind of content. I wanna know what people are doing. And if they're doing stuff, if they have perspective on things, I connect with that. And I think everyone does ultimately at some level. It's like we can get entertained all day long in all those channels you mentioned that are eating holes in our pockets.

Right.

There's an endless amount of entertainment out there. So when we don't want to be entertained, we want to be educated or informed in other ways, be in the loop, that's what we're looking for. And that's an opportunity.

Well, you're bringing Jake on and he's the epitome of like going for it, right? Like he just, you look at him on LinkedIn, Instagram, and he's the epitome of like literally kind of building his brand, personal brand that ultimately just resonates to business, right? And if you do that naturally, best case scenario.

I'm going to have him on a discussion panel for Tech for Canada, the upcoming conference in June. And we're going to pair him with some like OG marketers, some performance people, and just like really mix it up. But it's going to be like agency CMOs and then like Jake. And he's like, this is what I had to do. And this is what brands should wake up to the potential for. It's going to be good. Awesome spending some time chatting. We didn't talk about the multi-billion dollar exits, your 5 airplanes.

It's funny, we missed that. We missed the momentum push from 2010 to 2020, which is like—

It's version 2. That's podcast episode number 2.

That's actually not a bad thing. Honestly, it's, uh, this has been great because it almost like talks about the foundation and the origin story of me becoming an entrepreneur. And then you got to be lucky to be good because I think there's that period from that momentum push in which I, I started 2 companies within a 5-year period. I exited both of them in 2018, 2019, 2 of my largest exits by far. And COVID hit like a year later, less than a year later.

Right.

So there was an entire like karma and serendipity that kind of good big man or whoever looks down on you and says, okay, you worked your ass off. Like now's the time for you to be rewarded, I guess. But it's funny because that was, you got, I always talk about this from a timing perspective is like, you gotta be lucky to be good as much as you have to work your ass off as an entrepreneur. But that was like the epitome of like, in my view of like, Um, getting lucky from a timing perspective, like literally, like I sold 2 companies back to back, one to private equity, one through an M&A transaction with our IPO and the world completely collapses, right? Like completely collapses. So that's a whole other conversation that you and I can have.

Let's do a second chapter of the podcast. It was awesome having you in the studio, man.

Yeah. Thanks, man.

Good to chat.

Appreciate you.

Um, and more to come.

Yeah. Excellent.