Improving social outcomes and launching products into underserved markets

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[00:48] SPEAKER_01: today. Welcome to Canvas Podcast.
[00:57] SPEAKER_02: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Canada's Podcast. I'm really pleased to have with me today,
[01:04] SPEAKER_02: Justin Sweeney. Justin is an entrepreneur. He's a social entrepreneur in all around. Just great
[01:12] SPEAKER_02: guy who's doing some cool things in the entrepreneurial world. It kings your brideswit.
[01:22] SPEAKER_02: That's really where I want to start the conversation today. He's got a full thing to happen in
[01:31] SPEAKER_02: through Gary's to two enterprises. Let's start with Gary's to king. What's it like to
[01:37] SPEAKER_03: work at a king's department? I'm writing King's County. I'm definitely a rural location. I have this
[01:49] SPEAKER_03: nice balance where I spend a few days a week in St. John New Brunswick, where I'm in the city.
[01:56] SPEAKER_03: I met a hot desk style, co-working style space, set up a little differently each day.
[02:03] SPEAKER_03: I have that kind of really fun entrepreneurial space that I get to spend a lot of time in.
[02:12] SPEAKER_03: The rest of the time is right here in King's County. I love people. I love being around people.
[02:21] SPEAKER_03: For re-energizing and keeping my thoughts clear, being able to think, being able to just find
[02:31] SPEAKER_03: some time for myself. I've always been drawn to nature. My dream was always living in the woods.
[02:36] SPEAKER_03: It was always growing through the back yard. Nice, open field. Being able to take my kids for walks
[02:44] SPEAKER_03: and not seeing neighbors and just hanging out with the animals and the butterflies.
[02:49] SPEAKER_03: These kinds of really cool things. Our kids are two and five right now. Very well-brime nature is
[02:58] SPEAKER_03: just wonder right now. Nature is the baby center. That's what we went with when we selected this place.
[03:07] SPEAKER_03: But we never anticipated we'd ever do any business out of here. That was never the inclination
[03:14] SPEAKER_03: in that we would be doing our work from home. It was pure hop and stance. It was a COVID evolution.
[03:24] SPEAKER_03: We suddenly moved transition into this online mode for bubbles and bombs and moved it into the house.
[03:34] SPEAKER_03: All of a sudden this work from home experiences. When the kids are little, it's been great.
[03:40] SPEAKER_03: I don't know if we'll do it forever. But while they're pre-elementary, it's been awesome.
[03:45] SPEAKER_03: So much more time together. Such a less commute. They're able to spend a week at home here.
[03:53] SPEAKER_03: We've got their grandmother living on site. It's good. They're getting what we really hope
[04:01] SPEAKER_03: they get when we came back to New Brunswick in 2018. Nice balance man. Good for you. Talk was
[04:07] SPEAKER_02: started into bubbles and bombs and that story that started it. I started with the white duty.
[04:14] SPEAKER_02: Having a challenge, if I could call it that with regards to skin. That's what kind of get you
[04:23] SPEAKER_02: started on bubbles and bombs. Can you talk to about that aha moment? Yeah, it was absolutely. There's
[04:36] SPEAKER_03: up until that point. I had dabbled in some things but the concept of business and entrepreneurship
[04:43] SPEAKER_03: were still very boring. It was not a natural space for us to be and I'll say. What happened was
[04:53] SPEAKER_03: maritimeers. My wife has eczema. We moved to southern Alberta. Absolutely beautiful space, cowboy
[05:02] SPEAKER_03: country for sure. Just out the Calgary. Really enjoyable spot but while we were out there,
[05:08] SPEAKER_03: my wife's eczema flared up and we had lost. We'd only been there a couple of months. We're in a
[05:14] SPEAKER_03: smaller town. We'd lost the source for the types of very simple skin care products that she was using.
[05:25] SPEAKER_03: We used a couple others that weren't really labeled very well or accurately, I guess, would be
[05:32] SPEAKER_03: another way to put it. It just aggravated it and pushed it to a point where she's looking at
[05:40] SPEAKER_03: corticosteroids. Water suddenly became an irritant. It would aggravate the situation and dry it out
[05:48] SPEAKER_03: even further. She's bathing with a face cloth for weeks at a time. We're just steroids or
[06:02] SPEAKER_03: there had to be a better solution. There had to be something better. We went to the pharmacy.
[06:06] SPEAKER_03: The things that were there, she just didn't feel comfortable with a lot of them. She was having
[06:11] SPEAKER_03: sensitivity reactions to things that had any sort of dyes in it, anything that had any sort of
[06:15] SPEAKER_03: fragrance in it. We were able to find some simple, unscented things finally, but it just really didn't
[06:25] SPEAKER_03: fit the bill. It was hard. She couldn't build a full routine. It was like, I found one thing for my
[06:34] SPEAKER_03: skin. What do I do about my shampoo? What do I do about my condition? It was this struggle
[06:40] SPEAKER_03: little girl, probably six to eight weeks, I would say. Just bathing with face cloths,
[06:46] SPEAKER_03: reading about ingredients and stuff. It was super old school. Her and her mother ended up
[06:54] SPEAKER_03: going to the library and just did a stack of these books and brought them back. We got to figure out
[07:01] SPEAKER_03: how to make a couple of the things that we were using before. It just started out with this
[07:06] SPEAKER_03: whipped cocoa butter that she used on her skin. It started to basically just immediately
[07:13] SPEAKER_03: started to replenish the barrier is what it was doing. It was really starting to just allow
[07:19] SPEAKER_03: reply to an opportunity for the skin to really heal. It was, for me, she's doing this. She really
[07:28] SPEAKER_03: gets into it. She's doing all the ingredient research. She's starting to make things. As soon as
[07:34] SPEAKER_03: you start to make things, you have more things than what you can actually do. You're giving them
[07:38] SPEAKER_03: away to other people. I couldn't get over the number of people within our immediate vicinity.
[07:46] SPEAKER_03: I'll say, like, my family and people who were just talking to people who could give stuff away to
[07:50] SPEAKER_03: who were all of a sudden just sharing their complaints and their concerns about their skin care.
[07:56] SPEAKER_03: You know what's rosacea? Others are like, I have an exam the whole time. I didn't even realize,
[08:01] SPEAKER_03: I was like 27 at the time. I just thought I was itchy all the time in the winter. I thought it
[08:07] SPEAKER_03: was something wrong with me. I never put two and two together that I had an issue with some of
[08:11] SPEAKER_03: the cleansers. There's like a very super cheap body wash. I was going in and buying and bulk
[08:16] SPEAKER_03: diping, right? Whatever was happening. I just wasn't putting two and two together that I needed a
[08:21] SPEAKER_03: back scratcher every night because of the stuff that was putting on my skin, right? It was like,
[08:27] SPEAKER_03: and so that was the aha. This is a bigger issue. It seemed so weird to us that there wasn't
[08:34] SPEAKER_03: like a brand that seemed to just speak exclusively to this audience. There were a handful of
[08:40] SPEAKER_03: products here and there, but we just said, okay, well, let's start building out some products based
[08:48] SPEAKER_03: on what we're doing. Everything from there was just an adventure. I'll tell you, I thought I was
[08:53] SPEAKER_03: ready. I still remember just feeling like we can make a few products and I bought a cash register
[09:01] SPEAKER_03: at the Walmart. I'm pretty much ready to do business. I didn't know if I was going to need anything
[09:08] SPEAKER_03: else. I'm like, we're going into this. We're going to have this all figured out. That was basically
[09:13] SPEAKER_03: like the kickoff moment. That's when we just realized there was an opportunity. There was a need.
[09:19] SPEAKER_03: We had a passion. We had a purpose behind it. We just started having fun with it. Right from
[09:25] SPEAKER_03: the get-go. We just said we were practicing. We didn't put a lot of pressure on ourselves because,
[09:29] SPEAKER_03: like I said, we just didn't have the background or experience to feel like we were going to shoot
[09:33] SPEAKER_03: off out of a cannon as we were doing this. We just said, well, let's just start going one step at a
[09:39] SPEAKER_03: time, right? A little better each day and build it from there. Let's talk about that part of your
[09:44] SPEAKER_02: journey. You've got the album and you're in the youth and you're in your love and love. She was
[09:52] SPEAKER_02: involved, obviously going to the main librarian and you know, talk about those first six months
[10:01] SPEAKER_02: in business where you start to make some money or at least get some movement happening
[10:08] SPEAKER_02: that you started to say, this is something we got to do. Deep or into.
[10:14] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, for sure. It's kind of evolved in a couple different ways, right? I would say there's
[10:21] SPEAKER_03: almost been three iterations of the company from the first days. So,
[10:28] SPEAKER_03: iteration one is this 2014 very end of the year. First six months were like,
[10:35] SPEAKER_03: basically what we said was we had time because we had just moved to Alberta. I had actually passed
[10:42] SPEAKER_03: on what I would consider to be like the safe choice of continuing my career in post-secondary education.
[10:49] SPEAKER_03: I had passed on that and had taken up an opportunity learning how to restore antique jaguars,
[10:56] SPEAKER_03: actually. So, I was doing this for about eight weeks when the price of oil just absolutely tanked
[11:03] SPEAKER_03: and everybody suddenly just got really kind of, well, everyone pulled back on the hobby projects,
[11:09] SPEAKER_03: right? Those are the first things everybody's cotton. And so, that opportunity kind of dried up.
[11:16] SPEAKER_03: And, you know, Judith had been making some of these products and, you know, the sharing and the
[11:21] SPEAKER_03: response was really positive. We had gone to a couple of farmers markets was that was totally like
[11:28] SPEAKER_03: sales was really uncomfortable. Sales and marketing for us was really uncomfortable. It was not
[11:33] SPEAKER_03: a nature that we would put ourselves out there. We're very introverted by nature. So, that's been a
[11:39] SPEAKER_03: lot of like that's been an area we haven't developed. But like I saw that the products were good,
[11:45] SPEAKER_03: they were responding. People were coming back and buying more, right? They were buying at the
[11:49] SPEAKER_03: farmers market. They come back and buy more. We had quite a stock and inventory. It was like right
[11:54] SPEAKER_03: around November at this point in time. And we said, well, like let's just hustle up and see if we
[11:59] SPEAKER_03: can find a spot to like just put the product in for a month, right? Like let's try to, you know,
[12:04] SPEAKER_03: we've got the busy holiday season coming up. Like let's just see if we can find a cubby hole to
[12:09] SPEAKER_03: rent, so to speak, right? And we're really planning beyond that. It was very much that one month
[12:16] SPEAKER_03: at a time, I happened to not be working right now. We have product, we have the holiday season,
[12:23] SPEAKER_03: we have an audience who's responding. Let's give it a shot. And so this was like the trip to Walmart
[12:28] SPEAKER_03: to get the cash register. And like, you know, you put a float in there a couple of hundred bucks and
[12:33] SPEAKER_03: we're just about ready to go. And so we were, you know, one thing that we had that was this, I guess,
[12:40] SPEAKER_03: you know, we were a little bit ahead of the curve on a lot of this downtown redevelopment that we see
[12:45] SPEAKER_03: happening pretty heavily now, you know, 2014, like downtown and the small rural town we were in,
[12:51] SPEAKER_03: vacancy rates like 30%, right? So plenty of spots, we just, you know, found somebody who was
[12:57] SPEAKER_03: willing to let us take over, you know, a location month to month. And it was kind of within range.
[13:04] SPEAKER_03: So yeah, we kind of bootstrapped the opening with about a couple thousand dollars, I think. Like,
[13:10] SPEAKER_03: you know, months rent, I'll tell you this, I remember it was like Pinterest threw up all over
[13:17] SPEAKER_03: the inside of this place. Every Pinterest project you could ever imagine, we had to come up like,
[13:22] SPEAKER_03: even for chalkboards, we were like, oh man, we're running low, we don't really spend any more money.
[13:27] SPEAKER_03: Well, we had all these cardboard boxes. So we took these cardboard boxes and painted them with
[13:32] SPEAKER_03: chalkboard paint and we put, you know, this kind of like tool around the outside of it to make it look
[13:37] SPEAKER_03: like something and attached it to the wall and rolled on it. And so it was just, it was really scrappy.
[13:43] SPEAKER_03: Because like I said, we, we thought we're going to run this for the holidays. God only knows that
[13:47] SPEAKER_03: this is going to like going to January February and beyond. And so we made an agreement with one
[13:53] SPEAKER_03: another, like, we'll just take this month by month, right? We'll open in December and we open
[13:57] SPEAKER_03: December 3rd, 2014. And at the time we did it as a natural good store because we had like our
[14:04] SPEAKER_03: products, but we didn't have enough. So like I ran around the markets and like, you know, grabbed
[14:10] SPEAKER_03: like three other people that were making things that we thought were really cool and said, hey, like,
[14:14] SPEAKER_03: we'd like to have your stuff in here. And then we like, you know, brought in like a natural
[14:19] SPEAKER_03: chalk paint line after that eventually in the line of honey and so kind of built it out that way.
[14:24] SPEAKER_03: But yeah, so we launched like December 3rd and we have, I remember at the end of December,
[14:30] SPEAKER_03: we were like, hey, we got enough to do this for like four more months. Like, let's just,
[14:35] SPEAKER_03: right? Let's just see how this works. And we didn't know how it worked January, February,
[14:40] SPEAKER_03: March, but I think, you know, the community responded so well, right? I think that's one of the
[14:46] SPEAKER_03: advantages sometimes of doing something in a smaller place. Is it gets noticed maybe a little bit
[14:51] SPEAKER_03: easier? Yeah, right. You know, there was just such an appreciation that somebody was doing something
[14:58] SPEAKER_03: different, right? In the downtown. And so I think that really worked in our favor. We built
[15:03] SPEAKER_03: community really fast. And we just had a lot of, you know, kind of playful fun with it. But I would say
[15:10] SPEAKER_03: those first like six months, I definitely, I've always, almost at every stage thought I knew more
[15:16] SPEAKER_03: than obviously I did, right? And you know, you don't quite set things up properly. And yeah,
[15:23] SPEAKER_02: what are some lessons you've learned from those first six months in our first year?
[15:29] SPEAKER_03: 100% like the cost of working with an accountant on getting your book set up properly just from
[15:36] SPEAKER_03: the get go and not having to kind of learn processes and work back through that stuff. Like,
[15:43] SPEAKER_03: that was an area like we tried to save money by doing everything ourselves, right? You're like,
[15:49] SPEAKER_03: I'm going to do the account you work. I'm going to do the marketing. I'm going to create the content.
[15:54] SPEAKER_03: I'm going to build the website. And it is like, you know, there are moments where that stuff's
[16:00] SPEAKER_03: rewarding, but there's, you know, as you continue and progress, like it's just, it's not possible.
[16:06] SPEAKER_03: And it's not feasible. And so like getting to understand, you know, where are there areas where I add
[16:13] SPEAKER_03: value and where are there areas I don't add value? I don't add value to content creation. And I don't
[16:18] SPEAKER_03: add value to bookkeeping. I add value to interpreting the statements when they're accurate and making
[16:23] SPEAKER_03: sound strategic decisions on those statements. Right. So I add value there. And I add value when we
[16:29] SPEAKER_03: look at our marketing strategy and we kind of review overall, okay, what content's performing,
[16:34] SPEAKER_03: what's underperforming. Okay, let's continue to kind of move it in the direction. That's where I
[16:39] SPEAKER_03: like to spend my time, right? But I, you know, and I do that probably because I tend to have a more
[16:45] SPEAKER_03: strategic systems oriented mind. And so I like, you know, I can work at that level because I like to go
[16:52] SPEAKER_03: pretty deep on things, but you don't need to go deep on your content. You know what I mean? Like,
[16:56] SPEAKER_03: you just get some content out and do it quick. And I watch other people do it. I'm like, how do you
[17:01] SPEAKER_03: do that so fast? Like, when I have to create content for myself, it takes me all day to schedule,
[17:06] SPEAKER_03: you know, four posts next week is a little value in me spending my time there. So the biggest lesson
[17:14] SPEAKER_03: was that, you know, just understanding value, like true cost, signing like a value to my time,
[17:22] SPEAKER_03: right? And saying, well, you know, what, there's a value to my time. And in some areas, I get a better
[17:28] SPEAKER_03: return on that investment than others. And so, you know, I want to conquer down in those areas,
[17:33] SPEAKER_03: because where we can normally get better ROI is in, you know, areas that drive more revenue, right?
[17:38] SPEAKER_03: Like the cost mitigation by, you know, hand-cuffing myself to content creation was never,
[17:45] SPEAKER_03: never worked very well for us, right? We did it. We still did it for years. But,
[17:49] SPEAKER_03: yeah, those were the things that finally like, and part of that was education, like going into it
[17:55] SPEAKER_03: was zero, like zero education, you feel kind of nervous, right? Because you're like, you just,
[18:03] SPEAKER_03: you're wary of the mistakes you're going to make. And so, you know, you're wary of spending too
[18:07] SPEAKER_03: much money and over investing. And so we, you know, in hindsight went really slow. We did a lot of
[18:13] SPEAKER_03: things ourselves. But we learned a lot of things. I mean, the one benefit I would say that comes out
[18:18] SPEAKER_03: of going slow and doing it that way is I'm much more confident now when somebody else tries to
[18:24] SPEAKER_03: sell me something. So if you're trying, right, services, you're trying to sell me marketing services.
[18:30] SPEAKER_03: I know enough that I can tell if you're full shit. So that really is like a huge benefit,
[18:36] SPEAKER_03: I think of kind of going that road. But yeah, I would say those were some of the biggest lessons,
[18:41] SPEAKER_03: like just identifying what really, you know, drove the revenue where we added the value in the
[18:48] SPEAKER_03: return to the company and then not finding the right people to work the other responsibility.
[18:56] SPEAKER_02: How many shoes do you have right now? We're at 46 shoes right now.
[19:03] SPEAKER_02: Is that right? Wow. Good for you. And it's all, do you have a, if you have a spot in St. John
[19:09] SPEAKER_02: or anything like that that you, would you sell your products? Yeah, it's been a lot of learning,
[19:15] SPEAKER_03: right? So I mean, we had the natural good store at West 2018 came around. We sold that as like
[19:21] SPEAKER_03: an asset sale, right? We want to rent take that over, but we retained our brand and our products,
[19:26] SPEAKER_03: right? So we pulled that out, gave the store to them. Then we launched December 2018 in
[19:33] SPEAKER_03: uptown St. John. When we initially had done that push, we were very bricks and mortar oriented.
[19:40] SPEAKER_03: The plan was 100% of multi-location strategy. We were already starting to evaluate
[19:47] SPEAKER_03: Charlottetown Halifax. Like we were just looking at like East Coast. We were looking at
[19:50] SPEAKER_03: tours and driven locations. We had a better understanding of boutique operations based on what we
[19:56] SPEAKER_03: did at West, right? Right. And so, you know, we started out with that. Of course, 14 months later,
[20:06] SPEAKER_03: COVID arrives. And we're like, you know, we had four staff play that point, right? So you're
[20:13] SPEAKER_03: thinking, you know, you want to try to keep the staff busy and keep them going. So if we did
[20:18] SPEAKER_03: the pivot to online and 2020 to 2022, those two years was 100% committed to understanding,
[20:29] SPEAKER_03: learning and adapting to a online digital first environment where us is a direct to consumer
[20:36] SPEAKER_03: company. And we actually eliminated. Because when we're in physical bricks and mortar,
[20:42] SPEAKER_03: you just pump out product that sometimes aren't even the best quality product. But you just
[20:46] SPEAKER_03: have shelves based of them, right? You've got a whole audience. So I'm going to add some
[20:51] SPEAKER_03: skews here. And I'm going to, you know, retail my own line of essential oils. And so when we were
[20:56] SPEAKER_03: in the boutique, we were closer to 200 skews because we had like just a whack of different
[21:02] SPEAKER_03: more creative, like kind of packaging and things like that. Because we were, again, we had a fixed
[21:08] SPEAKER_03: audience in a fixed space. We weren't working digitally and we didn't have to really kind of
[21:12] SPEAKER_03: meet that expand and be a lot of things to the people who happen to be there. So we stuck to our
[21:19] SPEAKER_03: motif of like, you know, still formulating specifically for dry and sensitive skin. That's always
[21:25] SPEAKER_03: kind of been at the core and the center of everything. And again, eco-minded and sustainability and
[21:30] SPEAKER_03: things like that. But we, yeah, when we transitioned online, it's been a process of sculpting that,
[21:38] SPEAKER_03: right? Because I think the biggest lesson there was the importance of understanding your value
[21:44] SPEAKER_03: proposition in order to be able to, there's so much noise online that in order to stand out,
[21:50] SPEAKER_03: you really don't want to be, you know, that group of 200 okay-ish skews, right? Like you really
[21:57] SPEAKER_03: can niche down into the things that you do exceptionally well. And so that's been the process. And so
[22:05] SPEAKER_03: now we're at like 48, what we started in, or 48, 46, 48 skews, eight product types, right? So a lot
[22:13] SPEAKER_03: of it's aromatic variations. So, you know, it's eight product types, eight manufacturing processes,
[22:19] SPEAKER_03: there's a cycle different. And yeah, we still do all of our manufacturing on site. 2022,
[22:26] SPEAKER_03: we had gotten the catalog, the value prop, the brand, the everything was to the point where we felt
[22:34] SPEAKER_03: comfortable starting to work with retailers. And we started to push out into that audience. We
[22:39] SPEAKER_03: picked up 35 locations pretty quick within the first few months here. Merit times.
[22:46] SPEAKER_03: Great. We got everything out there. And we almost immediately started to hit challenges about
[22:52] SPEAKER_03: six months later because all of our packaging, all of our thoughts, everything we've always done
[22:56] SPEAKER_03: has been for our own direct-to-consumer channels. It was never thinking about the the amount that it's
[23:02] SPEAKER_03: going to get beat up in transit, getting onto a retailer shell, getting picked up, look back
[23:08] SPEAKER_03: down again. I mean, we always controlled that whole environment, right? So we, and we were able
[23:15] SPEAKER_03: to turn our inventory really quickly. So we never had material or products sitting on the shelf six
[23:20] SPEAKER_03: months, nine months, 12 months. And so we had part of our ethos was to be sustainably minded. So we
[23:28] SPEAKER_03: had brought on like a completely compostable packaging. And it was great. Love the compostable
[23:35] SPEAKER_03: packaging does what it's intended to do. But the problem is it's paper-based packaging. And we make
[23:40] SPEAKER_03: a normal product. It fits most of the time, but the packaging was a little bit more quality.
[23:47] SPEAKER_03: Some of the seams weren't perfect. And so after about six months or so, you'd start to see
[23:52] SPEAKER_03: staining on the outside of the packaging from the product material actually like weeding out through,
[23:59] SPEAKER_03: right? So it was, it really kind of stalled a lot of things. It was, you know, because we had to
[24:07] SPEAKER_03: respond, we had to be able to, you know, refresh and make sure that retailers were getting what they
[24:12] SPEAKER_03: had invested for, you know, it challenged us relative to our distributor because we were thinking
[24:18] SPEAKER_03: like they were holding like way too much material and product at one given time.
[24:26] SPEAKER_03: Sitting on things for too long, I mean, it's just, you know, things that you were learning.
[24:31] SPEAKER_03: I mean, we work with purely like natural ingredients and aromatics. And so we sell my smell. Like we
[24:38] SPEAKER_03: are known because of our ability to basically include light natural aromatics from a variety of
[24:46] SPEAKER_03: sources, botanicals, unrefined butters, s'moils, and still be a good fit for dry and senseless
[24:53] SPEAKER_03: skin, right? That's a big part of our value. And so those aromatics, they oxidize, which basically
[25:00] SPEAKER_03: mean they're natural. They're, they're going to fade sometime, right? And so like we're like,
[25:06] SPEAKER_03: okay, there's, so now we're learning a little bit more about just kind of inventory management
[25:11] SPEAKER_03: strategies. And some locations work better than others, right? Like just, you know, we were pretty
[25:16] SPEAKER_03: open initially as far as like pretty agnostic, like, you know, gift shop, pharmacy, like we were
[25:23] SPEAKER_03: kind of working across the board. But we've heightened back actually, we've trimmed back a
[25:29] SPEAKER_03: pair of bill. We're now kind of going almost more with like an authorized dealer model. Like it's
[25:35] SPEAKER_03: really where we have like a much deeper relationship with more regional representative who carries
[25:42] SPEAKER_03: and can communicate the full brand of the line. But what that also enables us to do is have a much
[25:48] SPEAKER_03: closer relationship so we can help with managing the inventory, you know, ensuring that instead of
[25:53] SPEAKER_03: retailers bringing on like a, you know, three to six months worth of inventory, let's, let's keep
[25:58] SPEAKER_03: a small amount, let's refresh on a monthly basis. Let's revisit, you know, quarterly to see what's
[26:04] SPEAKER_03: on the shelf with anything aging, anything, you know, his first product impression fading in
[26:09] SPEAKER_03: any way. And then we're doing a lot more in coaching as well for the retailers, right? And it helps
[26:14] SPEAKER_03: us with our focused marketing strategy as well. So yeah, we've got St. John, we've got a
[26:22] SPEAKER_03: Frederickton Depot setup. We're setting up another one in St. Stephen, like that's a big part of
[26:26] SPEAKER_03: what we're doing this year in 2023 is really, you know, kind of transitioning more into that
[26:31] SPEAKER_03: authorized dealer model and sourcing some new pack too. Well that all sounds like an
[26:40] SPEAKER_02: interesting journey. I saw you one in one that you know, you take with the proverbial green assault
[26:48] SPEAKER_02: that you go through it. It's you accepted it as learning rather than frustration and yeah,
[26:56] SPEAKER_02: well for you. Congratulations on your journey with bubbles and then bobs. Sounds really like it's
[27:04] SPEAKER_02: it's driven by definitely all the things you talk about, but also well along the way. So
[27:11] SPEAKER_03: congratulations on all that. No, I appreciate that. Rivers, there's a lot of times where you question
[27:16] SPEAKER_03: yourself and you question about, you know, whether or not you should be doing this and you know,
[27:20] SPEAKER_03: has it been too long? Do we really try another pivot on this? But at the same time, you know,
[27:26] SPEAKER_03: I also recognize like there's a skill and a technique. You know, I would say especially in my
[27:32] SPEAKER_03: life who's been full-time in the company since 2015. Like I spend a lot of time outside of the company
[27:38] SPEAKER_03: and I think we'll get to that here shortly, right? But you know, well done. An expertise in a
[27:44] SPEAKER_03: knowledge when you're serving like, you know, one specific customer segment with one specific
[27:51] SPEAKER_03: aspect of their daily care routine, right? Like you're, you know, when you're all about, you know,
[27:55] SPEAKER_03: the cleansing, exfoliating, the conditioning, the moisturizing of skin for people for dry and
[28:00] SPEAKER_03: sensitive who have dry and dry skin sensitivity skin, eczema, you know, you build up a knowledge
[28:07] SPEAKER_03: based in a capacity over, you know, nine years of doing that. And that's the piece that I know for
[28:13] SPEAKER_03: me a lot of times keeps me going because, you know, I see how it impacts people and you don't
[28:21] SPEAKER_03: really think about it too much, but you know, kids can be cruel. If a kid has an eczema on their face,
[28:29] SPEAKER_03: there's a lot like some of the bullying stories that we've heard about
[28:34] SPEAKER_03: skin concerns and challenges they have. Parents after Whitsend because they can't put their kid
[28:39] SPEAKER_03: in the bath, the kid is screeching and hollering and will have nothing to do with the water or
[28:43] SPEAKER_03: and because it hurts, it hurts. It's normal. Like these are, you know, it goes beyond, I've got a
[28:49] SPEAKER_03: little itch on my skin, which for me that's what it mostly was. I was dry, I was scratching my back a
[28:54] SPEAKER_03: lot, but you know, that was almost the extent of my challenges with the dryness aspect. But,
[29:00] SPEAKER_03: you know, when I started to hear more of the stories and then understood more of how, you know,
[29:04] SPEAKER_03: Judas insight and, you know, the comfort and the familiarity really helps to, you know,
[29:10] SPEAKER_03: help with the transition and the transformation for these people as it relates to their comfort and
[29:15] SPEAKER_03: their own skin. It's that part is motivating. That part is really motivating and that's the part
[29:21] SPEAKER_03: we want to get that really 100% spot on correct because if we can, then that's the long-term growth.
[29:27] SPEAKER_03: This is a saturated market, right? So we've got to be able to do that one thing just
[29:31] SPEAKER_03: expertly and I think we're there right now. It's just a matter, just really rolling out the model
[29:38] SPEAKER_03: that the model's working. Everything's working for us right now. We just need to, and I think we're
[29:44] SPEAKER_03: past our hiccups on the inventory and packaging and some of this other stuff that's kind of
[29:48] SPEAKER_03: held us up a little bit, right? But yeah, I'm excited to see where it goes. The name's got to get
[29:54] SPEAKER_03: bigger. Her name's got to get bigger. She's, she's, she's, she, people are going to know her,
[29:59] SPEAKER_02: Judith's winning. Nice. I love it. I love it. I love it. So let's talk about the collitis hope that
[30:08] SPEAKER_02: in the affordable housing world, let's give that to that aha moment, what's that, what's started with that focus?
[30:19] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so something we talk about in bubbles and bombs and that I talk about a little bit more and
[30:25] SPEAKER_03: more every time goes on is like our sensitivities and experience was experiences with sensitivities
[30:34] SPEAKER_03: kind of go well beyond their skin, right? So I'm, we've had some chronic mental health conditions
[30:40] SPEAKER_03: and challenges that we've kind of worked through and found out it's 38 that I have a neurodiversity.
[30:46] SPEAKER_03: I am, I'm currently 38 so it's been pretty recent. And, and so, you know, learning how to live with
[30:55] SPEAKER_03: that has been really challenging. I've had the benefit of, you know, loving parents. Like, I
[31:01] SPEAKER_03: should say, learning how to live with some of these things when you didn't know about them and you
[31:04] SPEAKER_03: didn't know it was going on and you were just things normally or as we thought would be normal.
[31:10] SPEAKER_03: Right. You know, it was like, you know, by the time I was 11 or 12, all the men that I knew in my family
[31:17] SPEAKER_03: were self, they were all self-medicating one way or the other. I just assumed that that was
[31:23] SPEAKER_03: going to be a part of my life as I continued to get older, right? And so, you know, there was a lot
[31:29] SPEAKER_03: of alcohol problems, I would say, drug and alcohol problems through my teens and into my 20s.
[31:37] SPEAKER_03: You know, even once I got off drugs, like the anxiety challenges that were still there after that.
[31:44] SPEAKER_03: Because I just wasn't like, you know, I'm, I'm, I need some of that downtime, like that King's
[31:51] SPEAKER_03: County time. I need that King's County time, where I can just unplug for a couple days every week,
[31:57] SPEAKER_03: just get myself back to ground, like just get grounded again. Because when I'm like in a space
[32:04] SPEAKER_03: where I don't have good routine or if I'm just kind of, you know, running from thing to thing or,
[32:09] SPEAKER_03: or, you know, chasing the next exciting thing, I can end up just, I end up going into some dark places,
[32:15] SPEAKER_03: right? So, you know, I came out on the other side after, you know, kind of had in the rock
[32:22] SPEAKER_03: bot in around 27 and steadily improved by life, you know, bit by bit through, you know, personal
[32:29] SPEAKER_03: development, a lot of stoicism was a big thing for me, finding stoicism and kind of baking that
[32:35] SPEAKER_03: into my daily routine, was a big thing with overcoming it. But a lot of friends and family did,
[32:41] SPEAKER_03: right? So I, I, I've unfortunately, you know, buried, you know, two uncles, a cousin, my best friend,
[32:49] SPEAKER_03: my wife's father, you know, all men, all, all guys who had kids and, you know, left way, way,
[32:59] SPEAKER_03: way too early. And that's always weighed on me, really heavily. And I've always wanted to be able
[33:07] SPEAKER_03: to help there more. So even when I went and did like an undergrad, my undergrad degree was in
[33:12] SPEAKER_03: psychology, because I, you know, I already knew there was stuff going on, I just, let's try to figure
[33:17] SPEAKER_03: out what it is. That's not a good idea, because then yourself animized with every possible
[33:22] SPEAKER_03: you can come up with. So, but, you know, I always wanted to do something, because what I saw,
[33:30] SPEAKER_03: I was lucky. I grew up with loving parents who worked hard. And so I, I had what I do, there's a
[33:37] SPEAKER_03: really good childhood, but I watched cousins and others kind of grow up in what I would call
[33:42] SPEAKER_03: like the intergenerational poverty space, where, you know, they're on assistance, their parents are
[33:47] SPEAKER_03: on assistance. You know, the places that they're living in don't feel even available, right? You
[33:54] SPEAKER_03: know, when you go in the, the aroma to some of these places, you're, you're just kind of struck by
[34:00] SPEAKER_03: how some people are living right here kind of in your backyard. You know what I mean?
[34:06] SPEAKER_03: So it's, you know, three doors down sometimes, right? And so I remember seeing that and just be on like,
[34:14] SPEAKER_03: you know, the kid with a big heart that there was just a lot of injustice in the world. And I think
[34:20] SPEAKER_03: that was, you know, when you're young, you know, I've washed out as, you know, anti-establishment,
[34:25] SPEAKER_03: anti-police, you know, because I disliked, I was resenting, you know, the system because of
[34:34] SPEAKER_03: the system, in quotes, right? Stop. And so when I was out west and was working, and so while
[34:43] SPEAKER_03: Judith and I were growing bubbles and bombs, I also was offered and took the role of the economic
[34:49] SPEAKER_03: development officer for the community that we're working. And so as I was doing that, I was introduced
[34:56] SPEAKER_03: for the first time to the concept of social enterprise, which as I saw, it was really just a supportive
[35:04] SPEAKER_03: employment model using a very simple business structure in this scenario. It was like a used
[35:11] SPEAKER_03: clothing store to give kind of transitional employment experiences for people who had,
[35:18] SPEAKER_03: you know, chronic mental health, right? Depression, exactly. Who were uncomfortable, you know, maybe
[35:23] SPEAKER_03: taking on eight hours at a time, needed two hours or four hours or a little bit of time to kind
[35:30] SPEAKER_03: of transition in. And that was really interesting to me because until that moment in my life, it was
[35:35] SPEAKER_03: there is business and commerce and economy and all the things that happened here. And there is,
[35:40] SPEAKER_03: you know, charity and charitable giving and, you know, all the not-profit profit and, you know,
[35:47] SPEAKER_03: you need to be a martyr and accept lifelong poverty if you're going to do work on that side, right?
[35:54] SPEAKER_03: That was, I think, my, my, the dichotomy that I understood that the world operated with him. And so
[36:01] SPEAKER_03: the find out about social enterprise was like, oh, wow, like these tools and these things that
[36:06] SPEAKER_03: work really, really well for wealth generation and creating employment and, you know, raising people
[36:13] SPEAKER_03: up, which is, you know, we can try to maybe purposely apply these to some of our social channels.
[36:20] SPEAKER_03: And so that was my aha, that was my, oh, this could change some things, right? Like this,
[36:27] SPEAKER_03: this is a thing. And so in 2018, about a year after I was helping that group, we're moving back
[36:35] SPEAKER_03: to New Brunswick and I found an organization called the St. John Community Welfare,
[36:41] SPEAKER_03: which is now kaleidoscope social impact. And so I found that organization and the co-founder who
[36:49] SPEAKER_03: had been there for 17, 18 years, Seth Asamakis. And so they were bringing somebody on to kind of
[36:57] SPEAKER_03: work on this really kind of like cobbled together role where it was like going to have to do some
[37:05] SPEAKER_03: social finance activity. So like micro lending and stuff like that. So it was going to have to do some
[37:10] SPEAKER_03: of that. But I was also going to have to do some like real estate redevelopment for affordable
[37:17] SPEAKER_03: housing and stuff. So maybe do some project management for, you know, construction. But I just saw
[37:25] SPEAKER_03: it as this opportunity to explore further this idea of like social good paired with, you know,
[37:32] SPEAKER_03: business activity or finance. Right? And again, I didn't have a background in any of this.
[37:37] SPEAKER_03: I've always been super, super lucky that people have seen something in me and given me an opportunity
[37:44] SPEAKER_03: to do things. Because, you know, I definitely on paper probably was not the best social finance
[37:53] SPEAKER_03: expert at that point. So, you know, but I had done things. I had built an economic development
[38:00] SPEAKER_03: department, you know, within that I created kind of like a small business center. So, you know,
[38:07] SPEAKER_03: I built tangible things. And so I think that's what was seen when I went in, you know, for that
[38:12] SPEAKER_03: opportunity. And yeah, so I got on there. And since then, I really leaned very heavily. Like,
[38:23] SPEAKER_03: I spend my time right now. The last five years has been really 50, 50 between
[38:28] SPEAKER_03: fellows and bombs in kaleidoscope. With kaleidoscope, it's all about building what we've
[38:34] SPEAKER_03: termed the New Brunswick Social Impact Fund. So the idea is basically a very nimble,
[38:43] SPEAKER_03: flexible pool of capital that could be held in the charitable sector and made available to those
[38:51] SPEAKER_03: who are doing social good in the province of New Brunswick. Right. In the form of loans, right?
[38:59] SPEAKER_03: And so mostly, mostly loans. Well, that's the idea behind it. What was great was I came in and
[39:07] SPEAKER_03: there was no idea when I arrived in 2018. The, you know, the lending activity had always been
[39:14] SPEAKER_03: micro lending. The pool at that time, I think we had a few hundred thousand dollars when I arrived.
[39:20] SPEAKER_03: It had really kind of stalled. And so, you know, I got in there and my job was, you know,
[39:27] SPEAKER_03: as we got going, we realized like, was to identify the investment pieces. And, you know,
[39:32] SPEAKER_03: what are the opportunities? How would this work if we were going to do things? And so, you know,
[39:37] SPEAKER_03: started with social enterprise because that's what I was familiar with. And have the experience of,
[39:44] SPEAKER_03: you know, building a, a fine-lancing program for social enterprises and social entrepreneurs. And so,
[39:51] SPEAKER_03: it is literally as entrepreneurial as you could imagine. Like, we just have the idea. I remember
[39:57] SPEAKER_03: calling FCNB so the financial and consumer services of New Brunswick and get an appointment and
[40:03] SPEAKER_03: have a meeting. I think they have five of their representatives at the meeting because I was
[40:08] SPEAKER_03: telling them what I was doing. And I was like, is this legal? Like, can I do this? Can I just go out and do this?
[40:15] SPEAKER_03: And they're like, well, we can't really tell you what fear the other, but they were super generous in
[40:20] SPEAKER_03: that they pointed me towards all of the pieces of legislation that we would need, right? As we were
[40:25] SPEAKER_03: kind of going through. And then, you know, I stumble across like a charitable lawyer who kind of
[40:30] SPEAKER_03: understands a little bit of a fun activity and fun structure. And, you know, it's, you just kind of
[40:36] SPEAKER_03: cobble one piece together with another one and try to continue, you know, building on, you know,
[40:44] SPEAKER_03: what you want to see, right? So, we've had no idea how big of an opportunity there would be,
[40:49] SPEAKER_03: how big the pool yet. We just, you know, could we build something that was sustainable and could
[40:56] SPEAKER_03: operate on its own and could kind of be there in the perpetuity? And so, that's what we're trying
[41:03] SPEAKER_03: to do. It started with the micro landing. We added social enterprise. We realized, you know,
[41:07] SPEAKER_03: New Brunswick's a small province. There's only so much social enterprise activity happening.
[41:13] SPEAKER_03: You know, so in other terms, like, deal flow was not significant. And so,
[41:21] SPEAKER_03: we were working on this small little two unit. Like, I've only ever had to oversee one little real
[41:26] SPEAKER_03: estate project or a portable housing project out of it. And it was two units in St. John. And I
[41:32] SPEAKER_03: realized very quickly that I'm not a project manager for real estate. That is not my expertise or
[41:37] SPEAKER_03: workday. But it was, it was really enjoyable. And I learned a lot. And I talked with other
[41:43] SPEAKER_03: developers. And I realized how bourbon they were in trying to get projects up and going. Like,
[41:51] SPEAKER_03: it wasn't that there wasn't a night to use. It wasn't that, you know, people didn't want to get
[41:55] SPEAKER_03: active at the end. It was like, you know, if a key piece of property came online, most not for
[42:02] SPEAKER_03: private housing developers can't jump on it because they don't have a lot of liquidity sticking
[42:06] SPEAKER_03: like, you know, I'm just kind of hanging on. And the other thing is that, you know, a lot of these
[42:10] SPEAKER_03: associations have been around for quite a while. So, you know, the boards, a lot of them didn't
[42:15] SPEAKER_03: even have experience with, you know, doing new development, right? Right, right. You know, a couple
[42:23] SPEAKER_03: key challenges there. One's capacity one is finance or the funding. And so we went after the finance
[42:29] SPEAKER_03: and funding aspect. And basically what I did was very did an investment thesis in 2020 around the
[42:37] SPEAKER_03: idea of using affordable housing lending and projects as an anchor asset in a multi kind of
[42:47] SPEAKER_03: multi asset portfolio. So basically saying, look, if we do, you know, 70% of our activity in this
[42:54] SPEAKER_03: affordable housing space, it's going to allow us to, you know, this is how big of an opportunity it is,
[42:59] SPEAKER_03: you know, we'll be able to hit a fun size of 10 million or higher, which has kind of always been
[43:05] SPEAKER_03: the marker of sustainability for like being able to, for the way our fund model works. And
[43:17] SPEAKER_03: so, we put that investment thesis together. We submitted it to a big foundation named McConnell
[43:23] SPEAKER_03: Foundation, other Quebec. It was accepted as one of nine from across the country for the
[43:31] SPEAKER_03: solutions finance accelerator. Basically, they like layered us with a bunch of support and fund
[43:38] SPEAKER_03: managers and fund developers and legal support and accounting support from people who really know
[43:44] SPEAKER_03: what they're doing from across the country. And it was awesome, right? Like it just allowed us to
[43:50] SPEAKER_03: build out our business case really well. We found great like student supports in an organization
[43:58] SPEAKER_03: called Propel Impact, which is a national organization works with some of the leading kind of social
[44:04] SPEAKER_03: entrepreneurship social finance minds currently in undergraduate universities across Canada.
[44:10] SPEAKER_03: So we had a number of them come on at different periods to help us with a lot of the like market
[44:15] SPEAKER_03: analysis and basically just building up the business case for both sides of the fund. And yeah,
[44:21] SPEAKER_03: we just, you know, kind of continued to piece it together from there. I believe with the arrival
[44:28] SPEAKER_03: of COVID things really changed about a year in because all of a sudden everybody seemed to
[44:34] SPEAKER_03: recognize how precarious our housing situation really is. Right. Right. No, we hear a lot about
[44:40] SPEAKER_03: it now, National Housing Strategy, CMHC, Canadian Mortgage Housing Corporations back in the game and
[44:46] SPEAKER_03: doing lots of big lending to get these projects up and going. And so what we do is we provide that
[44:53] SPEAKER_03: really hard first bit of capital, right? We come in and we help with stuff like some pre-development
[44:58] SPEAKER_03: activities, but we help a lot with like acquisition, right? So we can help with a quick acquisition,
[45:04] SPEAKER_03: which can help when an opportunity comes up for a new piece of land, but also helps when you have,
[45:13] SPEAKER_03: you know, affordable units that are going on the market that might be lost to,
[45:19] SPEAKER_03: right, to an open market and seeing some challenges there. So yeah, that's been a journey, man.
[45:27] SPEAKER_03: That's then. And so we are like at this point, we're not at 10 million, we're, but I will say that
[45:34] SPEAKER_03: in the first two months of 2023, we've approved just over a million in lending and we have
[45:45] SPEAKER_03: leveraged out of that. It's amazing the leverage we get because we're such a small check in the big
[45:53] SPEAKER_03: size of things, right? We're getting such a 10 to 12 X as far as the size of the project, but,
[45:59] SPEAKER_03: you know, over our contribution to the project. So yeah, like I'm going to go to over a million out,
[46:07] SPEAKER_03: but I think out of that off the top of my head, we've leveraged, I believe, 16 new units and
[46:13] SPEAKER_03: the acquisition and conversion of 180 units into a like a cooperative ownership.
[46:21] SPEAKER_03: So yeah, it is like it's worth it. It's it's tired. It's tired. But it's, but it's, that's super
[46:30] SPEAKER_03: meaningful. My one favorite story was like the two units that I actually renovated. I,
[46:35] SPEAKER_03: because I had, you know, my daughter at the time, like a year old, I'm like a, a, a,
[46:40] SPEAKER_03: Google Gaga data, like I just love the whole dad world. Like it's, it's a big, like it, it
[46:45] SPEAKER_03: brings a lot of happiness to me, a lot of joy. And so in those two units, there was a young man,
[46:52] SPEAKER_03: probably about 26, who was going to be taking one of the units. And I just remember the look on
[46:57] SPEAKER_03: his face as he was like setting up his daughter's bedroom. And I was like, you look so excited. He's
[47:02] SPEAKER_03: like, my daughter's going to be able to stay with me for the first time. Like that was it. Like he
[47:06] SPEAKER_03: had never, he didn't have a stable living situation. He wasn't a lab to see his daughter, this
[47:12] SPEAKER_03: housing unit was going to change on that. That was, that's a tingle moment, right? That you're
[47:19] SPEAKER_03: like, oh, I get it. I, I, I, I can get up done doing more of that stuff.
[47:24] SPEAKER_02: Well, you're doing awesome stuff, man. Thank you for taking us down the story of
[47:28] SPEAKER_02: Kalinascope. I could speak for hours on to what it is you're doing. But the attention span of
[47:37] SPEAKER_02: an entrepreneur. Just to thank you so much for being on the show today and sharing your stories,
[47:48] SPEAKER_02: sharing your journeys, sharing your lessons and sharing your love for what it is that you've
[47:55] SPEAKER_02: been with and the results are coming from that. So we're glad you're back in your friends with
[47:59] SPEAKER_02: a glad you're here doing the magical things that you're doing and keep on making them happen,
[48:05] SPEAKER_02: one man. Thanks so much for being out in Canada's podcast. We finally can't underpins.
[48:11] SPEAKER_03: Rivers, I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Thank you for letting me run on and my
[48:16] SPEAKER_03: answers a time or two. Definitely the biggest thing. Thanks for letting me explore both worlds
[48:23] SPEAKER_03: in this conversation. I was glad to know.