============================================================
TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
============================================================
[00:00] SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_01: Hello, this is Robert Smigel and welcome to the BC edition of Canada's podcast where we talk to
[00:11] SPEAKER_01: entrepreneurs who are making it happen here in British Columbia.
[00:14] SPEAKER_01: Our guest today is Nick Findler. Nick is an accomplished entrepreneur, angel investor, and venture capitalist.
[00:21] SPEAKER_01: He is the CEO and founder of GoPublic.ai, a Fintech GoPublic investment bank that unites world-changing businesses
[00:32] SPEAKER_01: with $1 million to $50 million of growth capital, shell vehicles, and know-how to go public, both in Canada and on major stock exchanges around the world.
[00:44] SPEAKER_01: Well, Nick, welcome to Canada's podcast and thanks for taking the time today to be here for all our listeners.
[00:50] SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me, Robert.
[00:52] SPEAKER_01: Glad to ask. Okay, I want you to tell us a little bit more about yourself.
[00:55] SPEAKER_01: Give us the details on your business. And are you from Vancouver, for a race?
[01:00] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I grew up just outside of Vancouver. I'd call Port Moody my hometown. So it's about 30 or 40 minutes outside of downtown Vancouver here.
[01:11] SPEAKER_00: I grew up a very entrepreneurial kid.
[01:15] SPEAKER_00: My first couple of pseudo businesses were started before the age of 10.
[01:20] SPEAKER_00: I had a pressure-washing business, had lots of lemonade stands, but really the one that sticks out and that I still kind of cherishes,
[01:27] SPEAKER_00: I used to go to golf courses all around my house, and I used to go into the bushes and found hundreds of golf balls every day.
[01:35] SPEAKER_00: And I'd take them home, clean them up, and I'd sell them to all the dads in my street.
[01:39] SPEAKER_00: So I had no input costs other than the time spent hunting golf balls.
[01:44] SPEAKER_00: And I started making a couple hundred bucks a week to sell them these golf balls.
[01:49] SPEAKER_00: So that was really my first foray into entrepreneurship.
[01:52] SPEAKER_01: Sounds like the Vancouver version of Gary Vanya, Chuck.
[01:57] SPEAKER_01: Awesome. Okay, tell us about your business. What do you guys do?
[02:00] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we are primarily, we're an investment bank that focuses on finding amazing companies that have some kind of mission statement that will better impact the world in some way.
[02:15] SPEAKER_00: We partner with them and help them raise growth capital as well as taking them public in most cases.
[02:21] SPEAKER_00: We'll typically partner with companies anywhere from 18 months to 6 months before they go public.
[02:29] SPEAKER_00: We'll typically raise them a few million dollars in a initial bridge stage financing and then typically anywhere from 5 million up to as large as 50 million on a go public transaction.
[02:44] SPEAKER_01: Okay, that sounds interesting.
[02:46] SPEAKER_01: So you probably need financing to start that kind of a business.
[02:50] SPEAKER_01: I imagine what's that look like getting a venture capital banking company going like that?
[02:56] SPEAKER_00: Well, really, there isn't a whole lot of startup capital needed.
[03:01] SPEAKER_00: It's really a connection business.
[03:04] SPEAKER_00: And it's something that connection and bringing people closer together, and I'm sure we'll get into some point in the talk,
[03:09] SPEAKER_00: it's something that's really important to me and really feels my cop is, you know, bringing together the right people, the right ideas, capital.
[03:19] SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, there's a team of nine of us that work full time on this and our mission is really to find companies that are making a difference.
[03:30] SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of companies that are trying to find these businesses and there's a lot of businesses out there.
[03:36] SPEAKER_00: So you kiss a lot of just a lot of frogs, be at the princess.
[03:40] SPEAKER_00: So we spend a lot of our time getting to know businesses intimately doing due diligence analysis, figuring out how big this opportunity is and really the lens in which we at the end of the day look through for all of our portfolio companies is if this company succeeds, will it matter?
[03:59] SPEAKER_00: And so that's really where where we start and our ethos of our company is, you know, if we as an investment bank are successful, will it matter?
[04:11] SPEAKER_00: And if our portfolio companies deliver on their mission, will it matter? And so that's really the lens at which we look through.
[04:19] SPEAKER_01: So what kind of companies do you what vertical do you look at that you would entertain or spend time reviewing or looking at opportunities?
[04:29] SPEAKER_00: We're quite agnostic. You know, you can make a difference in the world in a lot of different ways.
[04:35] SPEAKER_00: So to give you some examples, some of the trends that we are intimately involved in right now are healthcare, plant-based foods.
[04:50] SPEAKER_00: Disease eradication and biotechnology and food and beverage are sort of the four main pillars that we're working right now, but you know, we're agnostic.
[05:02] SPEAKER_00: We're just looking for great teams, great missions, normally companies that have proven that they're whatever service or product they offer, people do want and need capital experience connection, building, and building.
[05:17] SPEAKER_00: And then we're looking at a team to kind of take that to the next level and that we're really an accelerant for companies.
[05:23] SPEAKER_01: Okay, we have a lot of listeners that are obviously startups and engineers, programmers, people like that that may be starting companies that may not know too much about your industry.
[05:35] SPEAKER_01: I want you to give me a key piece of knowledge or information about your industries that our listeners can learn from that they may not know about.
[05:43] SPEAKER_00: Well, I think something that's really interesting and really unique to Canada is our public venture capital system.
[05:52] SPEAKER_00: It's typically when people or entrepreneurs think about going public, they think their company's got to be worth billions of dollars and humongous revenues and this sort of access to capital has started to tap into.
[06:04] SPEAKER_00: But what we have that's very unique in Canada and one of the top public venture capital systems in the world is you really, if your business is, you know, worth, you know, five to 25 million dollars.
[06:15] SPEAKER_00: So quite small in the grand scheme of things and have service or product offering that, you know, the public or the public investor can get excited about very much like a sharp tank type investment or dragon's emperor during Canada.
[06:29] SPEAKER_00: There's actually a very vibrant public capital scene here where your company can actually go public access capital now and access capital down the road.
[06:41] SPEAKER_00: So it, you know, it does a lot of things that can benefit entrepreneurs. One, obviously, acts as the capital for growth and that's, you know, goes without saying, but also having that visibility of being a public company also gives you a little more cash, more companies.
[06:56] SPEAKER_00: If you're doing B to B type businesses, your shareholders often become sort of your biggest fans and help you get deals done so that that visibility really helps.
[07:07] SPEAKER_00: And then also creating liquidity for your investors, you know, when you invest in a private company, your money can be locked up for two, three, four, five, maybe even forever and never see the light of day. And when you go when you get public, it really creates a route to liquidity not only for the early stage investors, but also the founders that started the business and.
[07:26] SPEAKER_00: And sort of all the other stakeholders along along the road and then the fourth really interesting thing is if you're in an industry that you know you would like to make acquisitions or you think there's an opportunity to roll companies together once your public you now have this public stock currency that can use to acquire other businesses. And so we see that quite often when companies going through an M and a strategy that they, you know, they wouldn't be able to unless they were public.
[07:53] SPEAKER_00: They just wouldn't have the cash to make those acquisitions.
[07:56] SPEAKER_01: So someone was to approach you and say, hey, would you consider us? What are the things you look for?
[08:02] SPEAKER_00: You know, great team is really where it all starts because when you're a company of, you know, an size that we look at is anywhere from five million to a hundred million evaluation is typically the size we look at.
[08:15] SPEAKER_00: We will, you know, do angel investments and smaller deals and we will look at bigger deals that kind of our sweet spot.
[08:21] SPEAKER_00: You know, so it starts with a great team starts with a visionary at it's driving the shift that you know likely the CEO of the company.
[08:31] SPEAKER_00: And proven that people want their product or service.
[08:35] SPEAKER_00: We don't invest in companies that are just ideas days. We want to see some level of traction.
[08:42] SPEAKER_00: And you know, what really gets us excited and public venture capital money excited is a business that shown traction.
[08:49] SPEAKER_00: You can inject a handful of millions of dollars into the company and that money can help it scale to something that is, you know, doing 20, 30, 40, 50 million dollars in sales, say three or five years from now.
[09:02] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, businesses that are growing at 15 or 20% a year are amazing and credible and I'm an investor in many of those companies.
[09:11] SPEAKER_00: For public venture capital, we're looking for really that that hockey stick curve potential.
[09:16] SPEAKER_00: So that that that would be kind of the parameters of which which we look through.
[09:21] SPEAKER_01: And you look for international companies, right? So you're not just focused on Canada?
[09:25] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we work with companies all over the globe.
[09:30] SPEAKER_00: So right now the companies that we're working intimately with are a company of New York called Plantable, which is a a dietary change and lifestyle to income that helps people adopt a plant centric diet.
[09:44] SPEAKER_00: That's backed by clinical research at some of the world's leading institution.
[09:48] SPEAKER_00: So today we've raised them two million dollars were just put to head into a larger six million dollar raise and the public the plan public listing here in the in this quarter coming up before the end of the year.
[10:02] SPEAKER_00: Also working with a company out of Israel called forest innovations, which is focused on eradicating some of the world's deadliest mosquito diseases, including dengue, Zika malaria.
[10:15] SPEAKER_00: And it's found in environmentally friendly way to do so.
[10:18] SPEAKER_00: And we're also working with a healthy alternative to Coca Cola based on Greece.
[10:23] SPEAKER_00: And that's grown quite quite rapidly and doing about 35 million revenue this year.
[10:28] SPEAKER_00: So those are kind of the three businesses that were we're intimate with at the moment and working on capital raises for and really taking them to the next level and getting them public.
[10:38] SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we love Canadian businesses. We're all Canadian entrepreneurs and so we also love to partner with international companies.
[10:46] SPEAKER_01: Awesome. Okay, well, we've learned a lot about you and your company.
[10:49] SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about doing business in British Columbia.
[10:52] SPEAKER_01: You are from Vancouver or British Columbia port Moody. What are the biggest benefits for you and being an entrepreneur Vancouver BC?
[10:59] SPEAKER_01: I want you to give us some of the good points about starting a company here by now.
[11:03] SPEAKER_01: I also want you to give us some of the tough things or challenge you had. So our listeners keep keeping out for them.
[11:09] SPEAKER_00: I mean, some of the good things are there is a lot of support here for entrepreneurship.
[11:16] SPEAKER_00: Both from a mentorships standpoint where you have been blessed to have amazing mentors that are very open to spending time and want to see myself another entrepreneur succeed.
[11:28] SPEAKER_00: There's also a ton of opportunities in in grant and government assistance.
[11:33] SPEAKER_00: I also own a company called grantist dot CA that helps businesses access grant funding as I've been accessing government funding for a while now and thought why not create a company around it and put a really bad FCEO in place to really help companies access that capital.
[11:51] SPEAKER_00: The mentorships in support and government support is great.
[11:56] SPEAKER_00: There's not a ton of red tape in getting companies started here.
[12:00] SPEAKER_00: So I would say that's another benefit as well.
[12:03] SPEAKER_00: So those would be on the positive side.
[12:06] SPEAKER_00: On the negative side, we are a small city and we're not a global financial hub yet.
[12:16] SPEAKER_00: Often when you're raising those kind of larger fundraising rounds, you're going to other cities, other countries.
[12:23] SPEAKER_00: Toronto is definitely has a more grown up venture capital system that's a much more suited for bigger raises and bigger companies.
[12:37] SPEAKER_00: Once you kind of a click Toronto, you're looking at Toronto, New York, Shanghai, you know, kind of going more global.
[12:45] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I think and one of the things that got me so excited about Vancouver, especially being from here and you know, graduating university about eight years ago,
[12:53] SPEAKER_00: with I saw this kind of meteoric rise of the city, so much capital coming here.
[12:59] SPEAKER_00: Another amazing thing about Vancouver is it's so densely populated.
[13:03] SPEAKER_00: I think that it's one of the most densely populated downtown cores in all of North America.
[13:09] SPEAKER_00: So what I find amazing about living downtown is, you know, within, within, you know, three or four blocks of my house, I have amazing entrepreneurs, amazing ideas, capital.
[13:21] SPEAKER_00: Everything you need to create great companies is all within a few blocks of my house.
[13:27] SPEAKER_00: And so it makes creating and bring people together and connecting a lot easier than if we were, you know, much more spread out.
[13:35] SPEAKER_00: So I really love that density.
[13:38] SPEAKER_01: Well, we are Canada's podcast, but we do have a lot of international listeners.
[13:42] SPEAKER_01: So this next question I want you to speak to them.
[13:44] SPEAKER_01: If you were to start all over again and you just moved here to Vancouver British Columbia, but this time you don't know anyone knowing what you know now.
[13:50] SPEAKER_01: What would you do and how would you go about starting all over again as an entrepreneur?
[13:57] SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a lot of great meetups here.
[14:01] SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of great events that bring entrepreneurs together and funders.
[14:07] SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, one of the best ways to meet people is, you know, Vancouver is blessed to have such beautiful scenery and beaches and hikes.
[14:16] SPEAKER_00: And I find that every time I put myself in some of those situations, I leave there having met someone cool.
[14:23] SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I think that really just, you know, being okay with being the one to stay hello, whether it's in the elevator or on the street or at the beach and really putting the effort into building those relationships can be extremely valuable.
[14:38] SPEAKER_00: And so if I were to start over again, I would just immerse myself in the culture here in the outdoor activities and making sure that, you know, I wasn't afraid to be the first one to stay hello.
[14:53] SPEAKER_01: Okay. Entrepreneurs are very disciplined people.
[14:55] SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about your routine. What does the first hour look like for you when you get up in the morning? Do you have a specific routine or a ritual that helps you get motivated start your day?
[15:04] SPEAKER_00: Oh, that has changed over time.
[15:09] SPEAKER_00: The last few months, my morning routine has actually been disrupted quite a bit.
[15:16] SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned, we're doing deals.
[15:20] SPEAKER_00: I'm in Israel, Greece, some of our funders are Australia. So some of the hours are very obscure time.
[15:28] SPEAKER_00: So to give you an example, my first call was at 5.30 this morning.
[15:33] SPEAKER_00: So I didn't have a whole lot of time to get up and have my morning ritual.
[15:37] SPEAKER_00: So I'm typically, I'm up around between 5 and 6.
[15:41] SPEAKER_00: I'm in the shower and most days I'm directly into my first couple calls.
[15:46] SPEAKER_00: So those first couple hours of meetings from kind of seven until 10 a.m. are pretty slim.
[15:51] SPEAKER_00: And after that, you know, I typically take my dog for a nice long walk.
[15:57] SPEAKER_00: I had a little bit put my phone in my pocket a lot of times on airplane mode for about, you know, half an hour, 45 minutes.
[16:05] SPEAKER_00: Meditations really important to me to kind of clear my head, get a good healthy breakfast and and a workout kind of typically all before noon.
[16:13] SPEAKER_00: And then kind of the second half of my day gets going.
[16:16] SPEAKER_00: But with the typical day life looks like, but, um, yeah, there's a lot less structure than there used to be with so many time zones involved in our business.
[16:27] SPEAKER_01: Okay, you've met a lot of entrepreneurs in the last few years.
[16:30] SPEAKER_01: Do you think entrepreneurs have to be weird or unique in a positive way or are wired differently?
[16:37] SPEAKER_00: I would say for the most part, they are.
[16:42] SPEAKER_00: They are wired differently.
[16:45] SPEAKER_00: I believe entrepreneurship can be taught.
[16:50] SPEAKER_00: But from what, you know, and the circle that I, I, you know, kind of gravitated towards and the friends, you know, are, I would say my circle of friends is by 95%
[17:02] SPEAKER_00: and there's seems to be this, this really intense lust for life and lust for risk and, you know, lust for the excitement and their, you know, being an entrepreneur is very lonely at times.
[17:18] SPEAKER_00: And, um, you need to have people around you and things to keep you excited and things to keep the serotonin levels high when, you know, there, there is, you know, a lot of risk and I think Elon Musk really well when he said that, you know, entrepreneurship is like, I'm chewing glass and staring into the abyss.
[17:38] SPEAKER_00: And there is a lot of that where, you know, you, you don't know where the next paycheck is going to come from sometimes. And so, you really need to have a strong mind and also be a little bit delusional to, you know, get past some of those fears and obstacles.
[17:56] SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I think that a lot of entrepreneurs are, you know, a little wonky and I would say, I would, I would put myself in that category as well.
[18:04] SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's talk about how you educate yourself. What books are you reading now and why are even audio books and or podcasts and you, can you recommend any books for listeners who are also entrepreneurs?
[18:15] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[18:17] SPEAKER_00: So some of the best books that read this year, there's a book I've read a couple of times now called Never Split the Difference by Chris Boss.
[18:27] SPEAKER_00: He's a, he was a previous FBI host as a negotiator and he gives a lot of tricks and tips to dealing with different types of people and negotiating and, you know, really trying to create win-win-win scenarios.
[18:43] SPEAKER_00: And that's, you know, essentially what our business is is we try and create a scenario where all of the stakeholders at the table with.
[18:50] SPEAKER_00: And, you know, often when you meet with a company, you know, they've got, you know, anywhere from 10 to 50 to 100 investors and they all have to win and the investors have to win and that's the firm needs to win.
[19:01] SPEAKER_00: So, so I've spent a lot of time thinking about negotiation, strategizing, deal structuring.
[19:07] SPEAKER_00: So that would be a book that I, that I think is amazing.
[19:12] SPEAKER_00: On the podcast side, I've been really enjoying the podcast called The All-In Podcast that's, you know, I've got a few great sort of high level entrepreneurs and including Tomat, Paul Yapatia, who's someone that, that I definitely look up to and spend a lot of time researching.
[19:30] SPEAKER_00: So, and those would be the two recommendations that I have.
[19:34] SPEAKER_01: Okay, earlier in our conversation, you touched on all the, the beauty of the city Vancouver and all the things you can do.
[19:44] SPEAKER_01: How do you relax and not think about work and where do your favorite activities to do in BC, do you ski, bike, kayak, golf, hike, or simply go for a drive?
[19:51] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[19:51] SPEAKER_00: I, I snowboard a lot in the winter time and that's a really great way for me to unplug. I love to walk and I spend at least a few hours a day walking.
[20:05] SPEAKER_00: See well sometimes.
[20:06] SPEAKER_00: See well. Yeah. Yeah. See well. You can, you can find the other, you know, that's pouring rain. I'm, I'm walking out there and I would say half the time I'm alone with my thoughts and half the time I'm on calls and I just find my brain just works better when I'm not going to be able to walk.
[20:21] SPEAKER_00: I'm moving. I don't, I don't know if it's the ADHD or what it is, but when I'm walking my mind just feels at ease. So, yes, I've had a lot of time outside.
[20:32] SPEAKER_00: I got one of my close business partners and go public. I live stuff in Whistler. So we spend a lot of time out there in the woods and we were actually a bunch of us went up there on the weekend and we're swimming in these waterfall pools and went for a nice hike.
[20:45] SPEAKER_00: I think you've had the phones turned off the day. So, you know, those are some of the ways that I, that I try to escape the work, but to be honest, I'm, I love what I do.
[20:53] SPEAKER_00: It really doesn't feel like work.
[20:57] SPEAKER_00: And I feel truly impactful that we're able to find these companies that need grow capital.
[21:05] SPEAKER_00: And, you know, there's, I think there's, you know, founders don't spend enough time building relationships with investors as a whole or an aggregate.
[21:15] SPEAKER_00: And, and that's what my team does full time. So we kind of become your capital raising arm of your business.
[21:21] SPEAKER_01: Okay. If you weren't doing what you do now, what would you like to do for a profession?
[21:29] SPEAKER_00: I mean, this was kind of always my dream to do something like this.
[21:36] SPEAKER_00: So I feel very, very blessed and it took time to kind of get into the spot that I'm in now and being running my own business.
[21:43] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I wouldn't change anything, but if I could have an alternate career, definitely professional athlete.
[21:52] SPEAKER_00: I love different feet, professional snowboarder.
[21:56] SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I'd be a snowboarder, but, you know, probably basketball hockey, football, one of those three.
[22:08] SPEAKER_00: I truly love competition. I love figuring out how to get the most out of my team and really understanding each person's individual desires and what gets them motivated.
[22:20] SPEAKER_00: I find it extremely interesting. Something that I was really interested as a really young kid, which my parents found really weird about me that I, you know, some people need a pattern for that.
[22:29] SPEAKER_00: Some people needed a, you know, to be reprimanded and some people just needed to encourage me.
[22:34] SPEAKER_00: So figuring out what, what made other people tick really, really got me excited.
[22:38] SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I'd love to be a professional athlete. What job could you not do?
[22:49] SPEAKER_00: I'm not a very detail oriented person. I try and I'm a sort of ready aim fire type of guy.
[22:57] SPEAKER_00: So I like to surround my team with very kind of detailed, anal people.
[23:02] SPEAKER_00: So anything super de-assail oriented, like an assistant or data entry or anything with monotonous, I would be absolutely horrible at.
[23:14] SPEAKER_01: Okay, in business, what is your favorite word quote or sentence that you'd like to use?
[23:21] SPEAKER_00: Well, something that we've been using a lot.
[23:24] SPEAKER_00: I mentioned the beginning, you know, if we succeed, will it matter?
[23:29] SPEAKER_00: And it's a question we, on our team calls, we, we ask ourselves a lot.
[23:33] SPEAKER_00: If, if we can succeed in whatever our new plan is to do, like, will it actually matter?
[23:40] SPEAKER_00: And will we be sitting in our rocking chairs 50 years from now and look back?
[23:45] SPEAKER_00: Will that move, have actually moved the needle for humanity?
[23:50] SPEAKER_00: So that's something that's really, that really sticks with me.
[23:54] SPEAKER_00: Another one that I say to my partners and my friends all the time is actually just left foot right foot.
[24:02] SPEAKER_00: And that's to really symbolize that, you know, you really can't solve everything at once.
[24:09] SPEAKER_00: You just need to pick a direction and you just need to continuously and persistently march one foot after the other.
[24:17] SPEAKER_00: And there's going to be so many rollercoaster.
[24:19] SPEAKER_00: And our world is a rollercoaster.
[24:21] SPEAKER_00: We work at a hundred percent success base.
[24:23] SPEAKER_00: We take no fees, we come to these and less.
[24:25] SPEAKER_00: We're successful in what we do in raising capital.
[24:28] SPEAKER_00: So we have to be level-headed and just left foot right foot one after another until we get the job done.
[24:37] SPEAKER_01: Okay.
[24:38] SPEAKER_01: What's your least favorite word sentence you do not like to hear?
[24:51] SPEAKER_00: I don't like, I don't like the words I can't.
[24:54] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[24:55] SPEAKER_00: And I think that.
[25:00] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if you believe that you probably can't and but I think that that's just a belief issue.
[25:08] SPEAKER_00: I used to not, I used to really not like the word no.
[25:10] SPEAKER_00: I hated being rejected, but I didn't.
[25:13] SPEAKER_00: Funny how that.
[25:15] SPEAKER_00: I've trained myself to actually like become very fired up by the word no and it's.
[25:20] SPEAKER_00: It's a, it's a maybe for later.
[25:21] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I always like to say we'll find a way.
[25:25] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree.
[25:26] SPEAKER_01: That's one of my favorites.
[25:28] SPEAKER_01: Okay.
[25:28] SPEAKER_01: Anything keeping you up at night these days other than your late calls and early morning calls.
[25:34] SPEAKER_00: Now I sleep pretty good.
[25:37] Speaker UNKNOWN:
[25:38] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I, I, nothing really.
[25:41] SPEAKER_00: I, I, I don't, I don't feel.
[25:44] SPEAKER_00: Once you're done.
[25:44] SPEAKER_01: Once you're done, you're done.
[25:46] SPEAKER_00: Once I'm done, I'm done.
[25:48] SPEAKER_00: I feel very, I feel very fortunate that the people that I have working with me at my team and my partners are all have all become.
[25:57] SPEAKER_00: Family and.
[25:58] SPEAKER_00: You know, it's really important.
[26:01] SPEAKER_00: To do impactful work, but it's also extremely important to do with people that you love and care about and.
[26:07] SPEAKER_00: And you can really stick together and really look at each other in the eyes and say, look, if we.
[26:11] SPEAKER_00: We really bear down here and, and put our heads together and get through the hard times like we could build something that really makes a difference.
[26:21] SPEAKER_00: And so, um, and it doesn't keep me up.
[26:23] SPEAKER_00: But it's something that that that keeps you motivated.
[26:26] SPEAKER_01: Okay.
[26:27] SPEAKER_01: Do you have any advice that you may have received that you can pass on to entrepreneurs or Canada?
[26:35] SPEAKER_01: Some of our told you something that resonated with you that you think about frequently.
[26:41] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a few things.
[26:43] SPEAKER_00: I mean, one piece of amazing advice I got.
[26:47] SPEAKER_00: Was, uh, was my first time really traveling.
[26:50] SPEAKER_00: I was about 20 years old.
[26:51] SPEAKER_00: I was with a friend.
[26:53] SPEAKER_00: Um, they maxed and he'd been traveling quite a bit in his younger years.
[26:57] SPEAKER_00: And I remember getting on this trip that we'd planned for about six months.
[27:00] SPEAKER_00: We got to Rome.
[27:01] SPEAKER_00: I've been anticipating this trip for six months.
[27:03] SPEAKER_00: And I was so excited finally get out of Canada and, and like, be on my own and be my own man.
[27:08] SPEAKER_00: And when I got there and the first few cities we went to, I was really kind of underwhelmed.
[27:13] SPEAKER_00: And, um, we had this conversation about it and he said, you know, it really comes down to having no expectation.
[27:21] SPEAKER_00: And really just, um, not being tied to the outcome of things and really just doing the good work that takes to get something done and really just, you know, just experience something for what it is and not what you think it should be.
[27:36] SPEAKER_00: And so that kind of lesson in traveling actually really started applying into into business.
[27:42] SPEAKER_00: Um, and the way that new opportunities would come and I really just try to stay out of thinking about the outcome wasn't really just being in it and absorbing it.
[27:51] SPEAKER_00: It helped with friendships and, you know, intimate relationships and, and, and so I find that the more that I can detach myself from the outcome we're having expectations, the more the good things happen.
[28:04] SPEAKER_01: Okay, good. We're going to wrap things up here. How can our listeners get whole of you and is there anything you'd like to add before you leave us today?
[28:13] SPEAKER_00: Nothing that I, that I want to add, I encourage companies that are looking to go to the next level, whether you think you're ready to go public or not.
[28:22] SPEAKER_00: We, and we do help fund businesses that aren't going public. So if you are looking for capital and, and looking for expertise and, and guidance and advisory, please reach out to us.
[28:31] SPEAKER_00: You can find us on our website at www.go public dot ai.
[28:37] SPEAKER_00: And if you want to shoot me an email directly feel free. I'm Nick at go public dot ai.
[28:43] SPEAKER_00: And just, yeah, I wanted to say thank you for having me on the podcast and, um, I love listening to all the episodes and looking forward to sharing, you know, a little bit about our company and our mission with the world.
[28:54] SPEAKER_01: Awesome. Okay, Nick, thanks for coming on the show. I've learned a lot about you and I'm sure our listeners have as well.
[29:00] SPEAKER_01: Awesome. And to all our listeners, thanks for listening to Canada's podcast and listening to Nick's story, light comment and subscribe to all our channels to get the latest podcasts from our two or entrepreneurs across Canada. And we'll see you next time.
