EW 006 – How To Raise 25 Million Dollars To Acquire A Company That Fits Your Vision – How Former CEO Alvin Pyke Got A Win With Helical Pier Systems

Gordon Sheppard (00:01.562)
Alvin, welcome to the show.

Alvin Pyke (00:04.002)
Well, thank you, Gord. It's really good to be here today. I really appreciate you giving me an opportunity to talk about me. I don't generally like to do that, but I'm happy to do it today with you.

Gordon Sheppard (00:16.166)
Well, the audience is going to be just so lucky because they're going to learn about a bit of your pedigree and the wide variety of experience you've had leading in so many different scenarios, along with the win that you're going to provide us here today. We can't wait to hear about it. But there's a lot of people maybe that haven't met you that would love to hear a little bit of, if you could introduce yourself at a cocktail party, what would you say?

Alvin Pyke (00:38.616)
Well, first off, I would say I was a technology entrepreneur. I love technology. I'm a very curious guy, so I love to learn about new things. You know, once I've mastered something, I generally put it aside and look for something else to master. I tell people that I love to build things. I'm a builder at heart. And whether I'm building a bicycle or building my backyard,

gardening stuff or anything. I love building things and including businesses and so that's been my passion through my whole life and has made me the entrepreneur I am is that passion for building stuff.

Gordon Sheppard (01:20.666)
And for what I know, and I don't know the whole story, somewhere there, there's an engineering firm that you're part of, sort of forming and being a part of. You got out of the engineering firm into your next venture. There's another, at least one or two ventures in there somewhere. But if you can give us bit of maybe some of the, just the resume highlights so we can locate you again for the audience in terms of just how experienced you are building companies.

Alvin Pyke (01:42.168)
Sure, well, you know, I started my first business when I was 12. I literally developed the business and had a plan at 12. And there was a specific purpose to that plan. I was with my father one day, we were shopping for, we grew up very poor and had very little money, but I was an avid hockey player and my dad had me playing hockey at a very young age, at a high level.

So I was always going to buy used equipment. So we went to this used equipment store when I was 12 to buy a pair of used skates. And in the window of that store was this beautiful little motorcycle. It was a little Yamaha 60 motorcycle, 1972. I fell in love with that motorcycle and I just could not get it out of my mind. And I kept bugging my dad about it. And you know, I wanted that motorcycle and my dad said, well,

I can't buy it for you. You're going to have to figure out how to buy it yourself. You're going have to make your own money. So that was the start. And I developed this little fruit stand in my local neighborhood. I worked for the local farmer picking fruit. at the end of the day, when his fruit stand closed, he had fruit left over and I would buy it from him at a very cheap price.

take it back to the house and you know as everybody came home from work my brother and I had our little fruit stand out in front and you know just like the little kids with lemonade we had fruit and and of course you know the cute little boys on the corner it was irresistible and by the end of that summer that year I had enough money saved to buy that motorcycle and interestingly enough my dad had put it away on a layaway plant so that they didn't sell it on us.

And so he had actually had the owner save it for us and put it in the back shop. because he knew we really wanted it and worked hard for it. So at the end of the summer.

Gordon Sheppard (03:45.254)
What a remarkable, what a remarkable start, you know, in your first business, somewhere in there, you got through your, your training, your background. know it is in a high level computer engineering type work in terms of, you know, getting out of that pedigree you get on, you're in an engineering firm and then somewhere in there, you break away to maybe set the stage and the engineering firm was going good, except you had a passion to move into this next venture. And I want to really set the stage because that's where we're going to dig out the wind, but

Alvin Pyke (03:49.517)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (04:14.278)
Take us on so you're in the successful engineering firm, but you're getting the bug to do something else. So how did that get going?

Alvin Pyke (04:20.77)
Yeah, well, you know, it's as I say, I'm a computer engineer, went to the University of Calgary, got my engineering degree when computers were just coming out. But at this engineering firm, I worked a lot with my father-in-law who had a small little business in British Columbia. His house was actually sinking, sliding off the side of a hill. And he came across this technology to shore up his home and

and level it and keep it in place. And I fell in love with that technology. I thought this is the coolest stuff. And so I kind of followed the technology thinking, know, someday this can be used for big construction, not just, you know, small homes and stuff, but for big industrial construction projects. I felt that we could upsize it to that level.

Of course, I had my own successful engineering company. It was doing quite well and still is to this day. Of course, I don't own it anymore, but the technology was called screw piles or helical piles. You screw them in the ground. You don't need to dig out any dirt. You don't need to pour any concrete. You just put it on the end of what I would call a large cordless screwdriver.

In this case, a 45 ton excavator with a 250,000 pound torque drive head, but just the same large cordless screwdriver to screw these things in the ground. so in 2007, when the housing market went for a crash in the US, my father-in-law's business was exporting very small, what I call baby piles into the

residential housing market in the US. His business got himself into a bit of trouble and his supplier of screw piles decided that he wasn't going to supply the screw piles anymore. And so there it was, my father-in-law, you know, had been successful for 10 years doing this. Now all of a sudden he doesn't have a supply of screw piles and he has no market anymore. The market is just shut right down.

Alvin Pyke (06:42.242)
He came to me and I'd been working with him quite closely anyways. I did a bunch of engineering for him. I actually became a self-taught civil engineer. actually was approved by a Pega to do civil engineering at Screwpiles, even though I'm a computer engineer. We tend to be able to cross boundaries in engineering if we put our mind to it and do the hard work of study and learn how to do it. I was doing the engineering for him anyways on occasion and

He came to me and he said, I don't know what I'm going to do. And I said, well, I said, you have three choices. said, you can either find a new supplier of screw piles or you can find someone that's making screw piles and buy the company. Or you can start from scratch and build your own manufacturing plant and build your own screw piles. It's not rocket science. It can be done fairly easily.

And so I said, well, what I'll do is I'll look around, I'll see what's available in Alberta that we had two big companies here, Almeda Piling and Rotera Piling, one in Penocha, one in Edmonton here. You know, really Alberta is the pioneer around larger screw piles. Again, they've been used for small homes and stuff forever, but the large stuff was really homegrown right here in Alberta. And so.

I started to look around and I found this company for sale. It was called Peaceland Piling out of Fort St. John, British Columbia. And so it seemed about the right size. I didn't have anything other than a simple teaser sheet on the company. And I thought, okay, well, we can have a look at that. And so I went to my father-in-law and I said to him, Ed, I said, this company's for sale. Why don't we sign the NDA?

and get the confidential information memorandum and have a look and see what we can do with this. And so I did, I went out and I signed the NDA, I got the confidential information memorandum. And of course I look on the very first page in the summary, they want between 25 million and 30 million for the business. And I just went to my father and I said, Ed, I said, it might be a little bit big, a little bit more than we can chew off.

Alvin Pyke (09:01.774)
Ed's best year he may have done half a million dollars in business by any account of M &A standards. It might have been worth two million dollars potentially, but there was no way he was going to buy a 25 to 30 million dollar company. And so we kind of put it aside and said, okay, well, that's not going to work. And of course I went back to Merrily, back to engineering and did my engineering work.

And this is kind of where the big win comes in. guess the one that we want to talk about today is the big win was actually closing that deal and buying that company. And it was a pretty amazing feat. In fact, it became quite known throughout the business community in Edmonton because a small little company like My Father-in-law's Business

buys a $25 million company. And of course, the minnow swallowing the whale is not a story you hear very often. It does happen on occasion, but.

Gordon Sheppard (10:08.402)
Let me, okay, so you have the vision for it and then there's something that happened in between, because you said you went merrily back to engineering, but something hung around in your brain where you got the wheels turning and you were able to get the capital raise. Was it $25 million, the raise to get this done?

Alvin Pyke (10:14.914)
Yeah.

Alvin Pyke (10:25.664)
Yeah, well what eventually happened was, you know, I started talking to a friend about it. I had an advisor, mentor at the time and I started talking to him about it. He says, well, he says you're kind of looking at this wrong. He said, you don't have to have the $25 million. All you got to do is have enough capital yourself that you can borrow the rest against whatever you have. And so that got me thinking that, you know, my father-in-law's company had

had value and you know, I knew enough people that I could probably raise the rest of the money that we needed to kind of pull it off. But the first thing I had to do was convince banks that we had something here. And so what I did was I sat down and I put together a business plan and a business case and that took me a couple of months. And then I rented a conference room at the Delta Hotel on the

on the crossroads corner of White Mud and Calgary Trail. I rented a conference room and I scheduled the big five banks to come in and hear my pitch and had them show up in two hour sessions from first thing in the morning till, you know, five o'clock in the afternoon. I had two hour sessions with each bank. And out of that, first off by the fifth one, I had polished the presentation pretty good.

And I also had three of five that said they would write me a term sheet for the deal.

Gordon Sheppard (12:01.426)
Take me back for a second. just going to back into this for a second. So the night before, you got the five banks where you're going to raise the capital that you need to raise to raise your portion of the money that's going to give you the leverage to do this $25 million. What's your head's lying on your pillow the night before? What was that like?

Alvin Pyke (12:18.382)
I guess excitement more than anything, maybe a bit nervous. I had never asked, when you think about it, we managed to raise $7 million. So I needed to borrow $18 million. The biggest money I'd ever borrowed before was a mortgage on my house, a couple of hundred thousand dollars. And all of a sudden I'm asking a bank for $18 million. And so you can imagine that...

I didn't sleep all that much the night before. I was probably sweating pretty hard, but I had written a good business plan. I really understood the business and I knew where I could take it. I knew where I could go with this business. I knew that the owners of the original Peaceland Piling were only touching the surface of where this stuff could go. having all of the conversations with them, it was like, well, how come you're not doing this?

Well, we don't have the capacity to do anymore. The one thing that I kept hearing about is we don't have the capacity to do anymore. And I thought, well, that's easily fixable. Let's build the capacity to do more. And so, yeah, it was nerve wracking. But as I say, you know, the first one maybe not as smooth as the last one, but you know, by then I gotten it down pretty good.

Gordon Sheppard (13:41.658)
love it. So here we've got, you know, sort of a business that you sort of got insight into with your father-in-law. And then somewhere in there it percolated because you could have, I'm sure, had a happy life in your engineering firm. But there's something in you that had that entrepreneurial bug or whatever that was to even go to the next thing. But then you had a vision for it and the tenacity or the courage in a sense to say, well, the money was not an obstacle, obviously, for what you're talking about. And the win becomes

this moment where you raise the $18 million, you're on your way to doing that. And we're in the middle of the story right now where you've got this big critical day where you've got this five major presentations in a row. And you said by the end of the day, three of them had term sheets or whatever that was. And that's quite something. I'm now going to sort of jump into help the story a little bit. In every interview, we like to introduce what I call the anatomy of a win. And this is where we break down in a little bit more detail. What was the strategy, the work plan?

operations and results behind that win. So think we've really set the stage well. We know this spectacular raise, because you went from borrowing hundreds of thousands for a house, and now you're into these double digit millions that you had to raise here. What was the strategy behind raising this money and acquiring this company? So what was your vision, values, mission in a sense, the goals that this one had to be the one that you needed to buy?

Alvin Pyke (15:05.548)
Well, you know, first off, was, was pretty enamored with the technology. And so, you know, I really understood where we could go with it. I understood that the owners of the business had really not had the vision for the future. They were very focused on what they were doing and just doing that very well. They had no engineering.

They had no technology in the company whatsoever. I'm a technology guy, so it's all about adding the technology. I felt like, and that was the pitch. The pitch was I could take this company that was making $10 million a year and I could get it to 50 in no time flat. I mean, that to me was the pitch. I could grow this business quickly by adding technology, by adding engineering.

by adding the people that really understood that business.

Gordon Sheppard (16:03.826)
And I'm just going to jump in because you said the early application in your father-in-law's business was sort of a home residential almost application, small. Your vision was to take it up to the oil sands or to take it to large industrial application maybe anywhere in the world. But is that where it of was going for you?

Alvin Pyke (16:10.819)
Right.

Alvin Pyke (16:19.852)
Yeah, yeah, of course, having having grown up in the oil sands and work for big oil for most of my life, you know, I understood the problems with construction that we'd have up in Fort McMurray, the cold weather and concrete and working with concrete and all of those things that are problematic at minus 40 are not so problematic when you're using the new screw pile technology. And I thought, well, this is something where

We could overtake, we could save companies money, we could save them time and it proved itself out and we certainly...

Gordon Sheppard (17:00.002)
That's remarkable. So I'm just going to jump in. strategy was you had a vision for the business that you observed. Your vision took it way beyond what they could see. Funny enough, it's got a Ray Kroc feel looking at the original McDonald's brothers and saying, wait a second, this could be a lot bigger than what you're doing with it right now. And then you also had the goal to take it from the current revenue state, along with the backing that you had with your partnership group that you'd gotten from your father-in-law and all that kind of thing, to take it from this $10 million.

to this 50 million and up. And I know the story went even higher than that when I pre-interviewed you for this one as well. I mean, that's just remarkable. So we can see the strategy is very clear. And then the next part is if we have a strategy, we need a work plan. Now we've already heard part of the work plan in this win, was to get the raise, you were started to raise the 7 million in capital and the different ways that you put that together. Then you had to get this other 18 and you set up in a sense, these five key meetings. And if we keep focused on the financial raise part of things,

How would you describe the highlights from the work plan to get from, you know, pre getting the 18 million to actually getting that to happen? Cause you had to some calls with the bankers. You had to get their attention. You had to get them there on that day. Like what are the what, who, and when of making that moment occur?

Alvin Pyke (18:14.614)
Yeah, well, you know, it's the one thing that I learned and I learned this lesson well and I've heard it over and over again is that, you know, an &A deal usually dies a couple of times before you ever got it across the finish line. It dies a couple of deaths. And, you know, there were two occasions where, you know, we got the term sheet together, we got everything together and then got turned down. You know, they just did not go beyond the term sheet.

Gordon Sheppard (18:27.986)
Ha ha ha ha.

Alvin Pyke (18:44.256)
never got the deal across with their risk management teams at the bank and at that point you say, okay, we're done, the deal's done, we're dead in the water. And the one thing that I learned was you need to surround yourself with the right people when you're trying to make these deals happen. You know, a lot of guys think they can just go out and buy a business themselves without gathering the right people around them to make that happen.

I went out and I got myself a great advisor, an &A advisor to support me who had a large network of other private equity and sub-debt lenders. And so I took it to them and I said, listen, we couldn't get through this with the bank. I need some support, I need your help. And so we started again and the whole financing piece and put together.

a source and use of funds and the real stuff that you need to do to get an &A deal done, which I had no knowledge of at the time. So I think an important part is to surround yourself with the right people. And I think no matter where you're at, no matter what stage you're at in your business, no matter whether you're just starting, you're trying to acquire, you're trying to grow, you're trying to sell,

it's surround yourself with the people that can help you get it done because, you know, entrepreneurs can have pretty good egos and say, yeah, I can do this myself.

Gordon Sheppard (20:18.844)
And then they get stuck down those shiny object rabbit holes and it can spin a lot of tires or what did someone say recently? They can get the right answers to the wrong questions. And that can sort of take you off the rails as well. Well, that's interesting. So we've got the strategy. You could see what it was going to be. You knew what the raise was. There's a practical part. You set up these meetings and then that big day with the banks sounds like it didn't kind of work out in a sense. And then you had to get into this &A.

Alvin Pyke (20:28.718)
Hey.

Gordon Sheppard (20:44.306)
scenario where you're getting that right advisor. The third step is the people. And I need to flesh this out a little bit because I love hearing about the people, their roles and their attitudes. Cause there's something about you, there's got to, you'd have to be a bit humble going into that &A meeting to say, well, that didn't work out. And there's something like there's something in there about attitudes that kind of then starts to pull this wind together. How would you describe the attitudes of yourself?

We hear the attitudes of the banks because they couldn't get it through the risk management. And this &A advisor that you had on, like, how would you describe that?

Alvin Pyke (21:19.096)
Well, you know, first off, I would describe it as a lesson for me. I learned an awful lot about what it takes to do this sort of thing. So, number one, it was that. And I think I was initially discouraged, but in talking to the &A advisors, I don't worry about it. I mean, this happens all the time. You know, it gave me hope, I guess you would say.

I've renewed vigor to get back to the grindstone, to crunch more numbers, to really get into it, refine the business plan, really do more research, test the market. But at the end of the day, the mindset was, can do this. I can get this across the finish line. And with the people that I had around me who were encouraging me.

you know, by this time I'm spending most of my time on this deal and not a whole lot of time on my engineering business. And so, you know, I had to have the support of my partners and in the engineering business to say, listen, I need to do this for me. This is, I've got to get this done. you know, with their support, I guess grudgingly gave me the support to allow me to spend the time at it. So,

In essence, for a year, this is all I did. It took me a year of jumping through hoops, filling out this schedule, doing that schedule, refining the business plan, doing more market research, really understanding the industry to get to a point where I could convince the financiers that this was a good deal, that we could do this.

Gordon Sheppard (23:14.418)
That's remarkable. It's one thing to be post-story and snap your fingers and do a quick conversation like this to see what happened. What's it like getting up every day that year with uncertainty on the horizon?

Alvin Pyke (23:27.098)
I would say enthusiasm. for me it was enthusiasm because I had both, the business I was trying to buy really wanted it to work. And so I got their patience. I got their patience in, in waiting for me to make it happen. you know, they had other suitors in the, in the wings, but,

working with the owners and working with the team at Peaceland Piling, we got a sense of teamwork. We started to work together. They could see that I was about to add something big to the business from where it was, and they could see my vision of adding the engineering and adding the various technologies around the business to take it to the next level.

I convinced them to hang in there for a year and basically kept them on the hook while we try to reel this deal in, And so waking up every morning with enthusiasm, talking to the team, I was actually doing work with them. There's an interesting story in all of this when we were looking at the deal and we're putting it together, my father-in-law started to buy his supply of screw piles.

from Peaceland Piling. And so they had their manufacturing plant out in Lamont. And so I would go out every day in Lamont and all I did was I brought all my tools out and I packaged up screw piles to go to the US. I was the guy building the crates, know, putting all the strapping down all the piles on the crates, building them up and just doing that work, you know, in the plant.

with all my own tools, just creating up these piles to go to the US. And I just remember someone saying one day, one of the owners, one of the workers came up to the owner at the plant and said, hey, what happened to the carpenter? And Kent says to the guy, bought the company. So it was a...

Gordon Sheppard (25:41.97)
Oh, that is just so good. Isn't that, I mean, isn't it stunning? And funny, I wonder about these deals in terms of just amounts in relation to duration. Talking about diligence, this thing of like, you know what, I'm gonna take my shot. Oh, that didn't work. But I'm gonna stay in there. And like you said, with your attitude and your enthusiasm and your ability to rally a large group of stakeholders. I've heard right now, what do we have? We have bankers on the sidelines now at this point. They're probably enthusiastic, but they wanna see you succeed, cause they'd love it to work.

You've got your &A advisors, your family's in the background there somewhere, you've got people at your engineering firm, you've got people in this new company that are going on. I mean, this is a stunning, and then you're the cheerleader. You're the one saying, I have the vision, stay with me, let's keep it going. I mean, that's quite something.

Alvin Pyke (26:27.842)
Yeah, well, I mean, there's even a story behind that too, is even though, you know, RBCs was one of the banks that gave us a term sheet. I was working with their senior VP of commercial banking, his name is Monte Ross. And Monte Ross was a big supporter. He was a big cheerleader for us. And even when we didn't end up going with RBC,

Monty was always there for me, always giving me advice, you know, saying, you know, I like this, this is good. Him and I got along really great. We're both avid fishermen and Monty's since retired from RBC. But, you know, he was a big fan and a big cheerleader for me. And that was very helpful. And really, it's those kinds of people that were behind me that kept me moving forward saying, yeah, we can get this done. We can do this.

Gordon Sheppard (27:19.708)
Yeah, and you can see the little touch points along the way, right? So you said even with the people that I didn't deal with directly, there might've been sort of a relationship or a support moment along the way to get really a big thing over the finish line. And that's sort of what that is. So we just, talked about the strategy, a little bit about the work plan. We're hearing this duration of what it takes to get this financing in this year plus kind of zone. other part, and then we talked about people. We've talked in there and we've heard a lot about the attitudes and kind of what that takes with you as the driver, but also.

with all these support players along the way and a lot of empathy, begrudging empathy from your engineering colleagues, along with support from people that may do the deal, may not. Pretty remarkable to pull together that group all together. And then the fourth step that I love to examine in here is operationally, things need to be in place to get this kind of thing to occur. When I say operationally, I'm referring to things like rules and regulations. There might be deal terms or some of the contracting aspects that are going on here when you're doing the financing. There may be...

aspects to the operations themselves at this screw piling business. Is there any highlights operationally that was sort of influenced or helped get this win across the finish line?

Alvin Pyke (28:29.214)
I think a lot of the people that worked for Peaceland Piling, they also had a vision. Now it was owned by four brothers and a dad, who were very conservative folks, never borrowed a dime, only grew the company off the backs of profit, you know, not risk takers. But there were employees within the company that could see my vision.

where this could go and what we could do with it. And I think that was certainly helpful in keeping the owners on the hook, keeping them convinced that we could do this because the general manager for Peaceland Piling was a big supporter. He knew that if he had different owners that it could be quite successful. So I'm not sure that answered the question, but.

Gordon Sheppard (29:21.906)
No, I mean, it gives more character again to the people in another set of the group of the stakeholders. When I say operationally, there's an element of, what are the terms, like there's deal, there's term sheets, there's, again, I'm gonna say regulations when you go to purchase something under, I'm gonna say provincial, federal, municipal, like what were some of the sort of the nitty gritty details that might be highlights to get this win over the finish line?

Alvin Pyke (29:47.358)
Yeah, I think it was, you know, from a regulatory point of view, there's really not much in place when it comes to private business sales and that sort of thing. I think there was a lot of work around the share structure, making sure the share structure was right because they had like, I think they had 12 different classes of shares.

within Peaceland, they had two actual companies and operating divisions and they were both separate companies with different share structures. So there was a lot of work around gathering up the share structures and getting that all in place. Certain brothers had certain share structures than others. There were certain payouts on those and there was a lot of work involved in analyzing the share structure and trying to get that in the place.

tax planning for them. Like we literally paid for their tax planning as part of the deal. I agreed to use our &A firm and their tax department to plan all of the tax planning on the sale for the former owners. And so that was a big deal and it took a lot of work and it was expensive, let me tell you.

You've got in these we're talking in early 2000s time, you know, it's $700 an hour for a senior tax planner in these firms. So you can imagine what the bill was at the end of that. And we covered that cost, you know, on their behalf.

Gordon Sheppard (31:30.418)
So we've got share structure work to do. This is all, again, part of due diligence. There's the business plan that you've been working on, refining and refining. There's your pitch deck, know what I mean? Assets along the way. And then you've got this, again, tax planning thing that you throw in the mix. mean, a tremendous amount of detail, again, in correlation to the nature of it, seems to make a lot of sense, again, when we get up into these higher dollar amounts. I'm sure this is just more due diligence that you have to do.

Alvin Pyke (31:58.594)
Yeah, well, I mean, the due diligence, you again, it took a year to get it done. And so there's due diligence going on all the way through that because, you know, the lenders that we ended up getting our financing from, they were making us jump through a lot of hoops to get there. So every day it was a new schedule I needed to complete a new, you know, plan on.

you know, various sources and uses of funding and all of that sort of stuff. just, you know, I got to tell you when we finally inked the deal, I couldn't believe it when I went into our lawyer's office in their main conference room. And, and you've been in some of these big conference rooms and in a law firm and they're massive. I mean, it's like 40, 40 chairs long. Well, I can tell you there were boxes on that table from one end to the other.

I signed my signature on a piece of paper no less than 200 times. And think about that with all of our partners. there was a lot of ink spilled in that boardroom that day. So there is an exorbitant amount of due diligence that does go on. A lot of paperwork, a lot of resolutions, especially with the share structure that they had in place.

the various owners and all of that.

Gordon Sheppard (33:25.586)
So if we back up the story, we have an engineer who started a fruit stand with a vision in this moment in time to say, well, we can do that. We can raise $25 million. And you said about doing it. We heard about the strategy, the work plan, the people, the operations we just covered. The final step in the anatomy of a win is the results. How would you measure the results? I'm going to say you got the money. That would be one of the key ones. But what are some of the quantitative qualitative results that you'd like to point out?

when you talk about this win.

Alvin Pyke (33:57.614)
Well, I think the first thing was is executing on the plan, of course, was getting the right people in place in the business. Okay, so number one was what I call going through the draft and, you know, looking for those draft picks that are going to be your key players, your senior leadership in the organization, understanding who are.

the stars in that industry, in the screw pile industry. I mean, you can find construction people across the full spectrum, but I needed people who understand, understood screw piling. So I already had one first rounder in the general manager that came with the company. He became basically my right-hand person.

And then I started on the next two draft picks, which I call the number one, number two that weren't already in the organization. And that was, I managed to convince the general manager from one of the competitors to come over and become my vice president and a leader of the operation. So I convinced him to come over and he is a...

you know, unassuming red seal carpenter. But he grew the business for another screw piling company to the point where they were quite large. So we understood the business. and of course, I had, I had a family relationship, unknown to me. But my wife was friends with his mother. And, you know, of all things, talk about a small world.

through some association they had with their pets or something. And so it turns out my number one guy then was I convinced to come over. I sold him on the vision. He saw it as well. And I got him over. He became our operations leader, our integrator if we're going to use an EOS term. He was the guy that put together all of the operation for me.

Alvin Pyke (36:14.106)
And the other department I needed was engineering. I knew if we were going to go after oil sands, go after the big power line companies, we were going to need to be legitimate. We were going to need to have an engineering department that could do it. And so I looked around the industry and the number one guy in the screw piling business was working for one of our customers as it turns out. And that's another story.

But he did his master's degree in screw pile engineering at the University of Alberta. So he was very well known in the industry. He understood screw piling like nobody's business. And as it turns out, was able to design screw pile groups that held the largest load on the planet. To this day, I don't think anybody has surpassed our world record of the amount of load we put on a screw pile.

And so building that engineering department legitimized us. It really provided that legitimacy that, yeah, these guys are for real. So what I like to say is I took a construction company and turned it into an EPCM. Now an EPCM in the engineering world is engineering procurement construction and management, EPCM, which is a standard term for a company like.

Warley Parsons or SNC Lavalin or any of these other big companies, they're EPCMs. We were the EPCM of the screw piling business. We did every part of it. So that's in essence what we did. We turned it into a conglomerate of an EPCM.

Gordon Sheppard (37:59.538)
And if we need to put a bow on this, I mean, what a remarkable story. And I know there's just so much more detail to it. Cause then it, you know, there's the next, you know, but we talked about this one win, which was you had a vision. You're able to see a company to buy. You're able to use your enthusiasm to sort of do that early raise of the 7 million. You're able to get the other 18 million into play. Not through, not in a day over a multi-year period to get this to occur. The results are.

you were able to then get some of the A players into the situation, make it a very legitimate sort of thing, change the structure of the organization to one that it needed to be to be a leading cutting edge company and your vertical, excuse me, financially, did it reach your goals in the end? Because you were saying you thought you could raise this certain amount, you thought you could get it to a certain amount. What was sort of the end number in a sense, if you're able to imply or say that sort of resulted from raising this capital?

Alvin Pyke (38:56.664)
Yeah, well, you know, it's funny you say that and you ask that. In talking with one of our financiers, you know, he was coaching me as well and he said, now you got to figure out how to get to $50 million. And of course I just laughed and never really thought that hard about it. I knew eventually we'd get there. And then...

Three years later, we were at $50 million and I think back and someone asked me, well, how'd you get there? And I said, well, by accident. I don't know how I got there. We just got there. You know, I mean, I'm being a little bit facetious. It just happened almost naturally. You know, I had the vision, but we just, it just naturally started to gain momentum and we won bigger and bigger projects. And you know, there are some.

milestones along the way, know, winning our first million dollar project on an Enbridge pipeline. You know, we built a pump station on screw piles. It was our first million dollar job. And when I got that check, was like, holy crap, look at that. And then, of course, then we went to the next level. We won the five million dollar job. the height was winning a 40 million dollar project on

power line for it was AltaLink at the time now owned by Berkshire Hathaway company, Southern Electric or something. But you know we did that 40 million dollar project for AltaLink and to me it was we were on our way.

Gordon Sheppard (40:37.094)
Well, what a great storyteller. Thanks for the fruit stand, from fruit stands to 50 million and more, along with the tenacity to sort of keep that stakeholder group moving forward to get that done. know so many leaders are gonna hear this story and learn a ton, not only from the details, but from your attitude towards it as well. If people needed to get in touch with you, there a way to do that?

Alvin Pyke (41:04.878)
Yeah, well of course I'm on LinkedIn so I'm fairly prominent on LinkedIn I I post there regularly and and of course they can reach me at my email address a pike a pyke at pivot Corp comm that's pivot P IV ot Corp comm That's my new venture now. We're building something great in Edmonton here. That's going to be

The next big win, can talk about Gord at some point, but.

Gordon Sheppard (41:36.132)
I can't wait. You've set the stage. Great excitement. Alvin, thank you so much for being on the show.

Alvin Pyke (41:43.626)
And thank you, Gord, for having me. It was great to relive that story. was such a great moment in time for me, and I will always look fondly back on the work that we did to get that across the finish line.

Gordon Sheppard (42:02.226)
That was it.

Alvin Pyke (42:03.52)
All right. Well, that was.