EW 009 – How A Confident Leader Can Raise Capital First And Then Buy The Right Company – How CEO Petros Kusmu Got A Win For Alpine Vistas Capital

Gordon Sheppard (00:02.296)
Petros, welcome to the show.

Petros Kusmu (00:04.491)
Thanks, glad to be here.

Gordon Sheppard (00:06.338)
Well, it's so good to have you here because we're about to hear someone with a vision who isn't just talking about it. They're actually pulling off that vision and making things happen. And I'm just gonna leave that in as a little preview so that people get hooked in and just sort of stick around because this is gonna be a really good interview. But most of the people that are listening don't know you. So, you know, if you're at a party and you had to introduce yourself, how would you introduce yourself? What would you say?

Petros Kusmu (00:31.159)
Great question. I think I would introduce myself by saying...

married. I love to snowboard and I'm a musician as well. But if asked what I kind of do during the day, I would say that I'm the founder and CEO of Alpine Business Capital where a group of investors and I are looking to make acquisitions in the private market to buy a business from a retiring owner and to help grow it and make it exceptional.

Gordon Sheppard (01:03.31)
how lovely that we get just a few sentences from what takes decades in the making, right? You're obviously being eloquent about what that is. I mean, to really sort of let people know, if we just saw the tip of the iceberg, there's a lot going on underneath there. There's a journey to get here. I just want to set the stage a little bit. Take me back a little bit, because there's pre-Alpine vistas. Give me a little bit of your pedigree in there, like some of your journey and sort of your key roles.

Petros Kusmu (01:16.459)
Yeah.

Petros Kusmu (01:22.956)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (01:29.035)
briefly and then that kind of gets us to sort of a moment where you make this, you you turn this on.

Petros Kusmu (01:33.995)
Yeah, sure. So a little bit about myself. I'm from Edmonton, city of champions, and spent most of my life there. Grew up, in Northeast Africa for my teenage years. Came back, did my undergrad at the University of Alberta, and then was, right after undergrad, was the CEO of an educational services organization, effectively our Students Union at the University of Alberta, which is a full-time gig. It's a $13 million organization, 300 staff.

We had seven businesses, we opened one during my time there. We operate a whole building that we do, know, ten, you know, double digit, multi-million dollar renovations on. We do a lot. So that was my real first kind of...

foray into entrepreneurship of sorts, right? It was just managing and helping steer a large organization and enterprise. Decided to do graduate school in the UK, got a scholarship to do that. And after my time at the Lynn School of Economics, came back to Edmonton, worked at a French tech startup, Instamec.

you know, help them kind of scale nationally. And I figured I should cut my teeth somewhere just because, you know, as much as I love my buddies at the startup and my previous role, there wasn't really direct mentorship. I'm kind of like, you know, here's the way to be an ass kicker effectively and to kind of like work in a professional context. So I decided to go into management consulting would be the best way of cutting my teeth and developing this kind of what we call that consultant toolkit. So I joined Monitor Deloitte.

which is the corporate strategy group of Deloitte in Calgary. And that was the start of a nearly seven-year journey in management consulting. I thought I'd stick around for a couple of years and do something else, you progress within the firm, you get increasingly greater responsibilities and whatnot, and just interesting work, and doing work in New York, in Europe, all over Canada, the US, eventually transferred out to Vancouver.

Petros Kusmu (03:40.641)
was a senior manager at the firm, helping lead and sell large digital transformations.

and then decided to go back to graduate school. So had an opportunity where I just wasn't sure. I was trying to kind of figure out what the next big thing would be. And a lot of the not-for-profit work I was doing on the side, was helping build up an affordable housing provider here in Vancouver. I found myself saying I should really study a business degree at some point. I'm so plugged into the space. I was fortunate enough to get a scholarship to study at Harvard for my MBA.

And that was an incredibly eye-opening experience. Just being there, it got bit by the entrepreneurial bug after spending a little bit of time in private equity and credit investing at Morgan Stanley in New York.

and thought to myself, okay, let's start a fund myself. So I had classmates of mine who were investors. I'd met investors during my time at Harvard and they had liked me and I had liked them. And slowly but surely there was a belief implanted in me. It's like, you can just kind of start your own fund and you can use that to help finance buying a business.

large business and steering it towards even greater success. So that's kind of my journey to how I ended up to what I'm doing today.

Gordon Sheppard (05:05.932)
Well, thank you for that detailed journey because I know the snowboarding and the dog owning is, you know, obviously a big part of it too, because you brought that up. But we can see then somewhere in there, there's these moments where you were leading, you were following, you were studying and it, you know, it sort of gave you, I'm going to say you got to build up the confidence level of what it takes to kind of do what you're doing now, right? Because this is not for the lighthearted, I don't think, as we go to describe it. It leads us to this moment in the conversation, every conversation I'm in with folks like you. I say, OK, so

Petros Kusmu (05:19.904)
Go.

Gordon Sheppard (05:35.5)
Given up to this point, if you had to describe your biggest win in business in the last couple of years then, what would it be and how would you describe it?

Petros Kusmu (05:42.559)
Yeah, before even answering that, the point you brought up of just like, you know, it's not for the faint of heart and building up that confidence, it just like really resonated with me because there's always still that sense of like, I feel like an imposter doing this sometimes. And I think you talked to most entrepreneurs and there's always that general sense that actually a lot of people feel like they're kind of swimming outside of their death. going to business school and going to a place as entrepreneurial as Harvard was a big realization of like,

everyone feels this way, right? You know what I mean? Like you could be here and everyone feels the same way and that still doesn't stop the folks who, you know, I went back to business school a lot older, but folks who are in their mid-early, late 20s having the gumption and confidence to think that they can do this and they eventually do it and they become successful. And I say, why the hell not me? So I think to your point on confidence, that was really astute. to answer your question of what was...

Gordon Sheppard (06:40.834)
Well, I'll just jump in there and say, that's what I hear from many leaders. And I think it's amazing. There's something obviously persistent about going forward. So I interviewed Alvin Pike. Alvin Pike, the biggest loan he'd ever gotten was a mortgage. He raised $25 million to buy a screw pile business, got to 50 million in three years. And you hear the story and you're just like, how? And we had that conversation and it wasn't like...

Petros Kusmu (06:52.384)
Yeah.

Petros Kusmu (06:57.472)
Mm-hmm.

Amazing. Amazing. Yeah.

Petros Kusmu (07:07.518)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (07:08.588)
And it was sort of his own enthusiasm and whatever, he's got his own sort of motivation along the way, but it wasn't easy. And one of the, and sorry, I just mean to jump into that story. It's on another episode here, but the, he had a day where he to present two hour meetings five times to five major banks and he got term sheets and then turned down and then had to go back at it for another year. You know what mean? Like, so this is a...

Petros Kusmu (07:14.603)
Yeah.

Petros Kusmu (07:22.261)
Yes.

Gordon Sheppard (07:30.04)
But underneath that, again, the leaders I'm meeting are often, I'm gonna say there's a humility to this that's probably necessary to be successful, I would think to a certain degree. And thank you for being open. Because that's the kind of thing that the listeners can hear and go, right, I'm not supposed, I don't have to check all the boxes to be all confident to be a leader. I can be both uncertain and lead at the same time, I think is something that comes up as well. I know that other leaders I've met, in the nonprofit space, for example, will talk about having mental health struggles.

Petros Kusmu (07:43.083)
Yeah.

Petros Kusmu (07:59.691)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (07:59.767)
and leading large organizations at the same time. leaders are, I think, all of these things, if this is the fabric that sort of goes into it and it's not certainly a uni, all confident, all winning type of thing. thanks for letting us know about that, because that's a reality that leads into the win.

Petros Kusmu (08:15.796)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. In terms of my biggest business win, it feels like it's still yet to come. I'm going to feel that way with our initial acquisition with this fund. But I'd say my biggest win to date has just been raising not only the fund, but being oversubscribed, meaning I had way more investors interested in me that I could handle with the kind of budget that we were raising.

Gordon Sheppard (08:41.998)
So there you are, you've done your thing. And you're able to walk around to some people and you're saying, I wanna raise, are you able to say the amount of money that you raised for your fund? You don't have to.

Petros Kusmu (08:51.11)
Yeah, no worries. I mean, the way it works with a search fund is, you know, you're looking for just a modest amount. You're looking for less than a million dollars just to kind of get an operating budget, salary, have a team of sorts for the next two years or a period of time. We're looking for...

Gordon Sheppard (09:06.924)
And take me into this, because let's say you're going to raise this million, you're going to operate on a premise. And there's something about the premise that you put together for your fund that people are investing in. So you're pitching. You're like, you're in a room with somebody, they've got some money. What did you say to them to hand over the dough?

Petros Kusmu (09:24.502)
Yeah, it's interesting because a traditional pitch to investors would be I already have this interesting opportunity and I need X amount of million dollars, you know to actually acquire this and for you folks to have some shared ownership I'm actually going a step up or I'm saying I don't have the opportunity yet But you can believe in me that I will actually find that opportunity I'll then raise the money again from you and that money will be the range of

you know, 10 to 20 plus million dollars to actually acquire this business. then you can trust that I'm going to do an amazing job running this business and you folks will get a handsome return at the end of the day. you know, it's even more of a daunting pitch because you're just trying to pitch them on the belief and faith that you're going to be amazing at this. And it's a bit unconventional. But yeah, that's effectively how the pitch worked.

Gordon Sheppard (10:20.334)
Well, congratulations on the unconventionality of this. Cause I think again, you you raise, there's something again in you that put together that string of time in your development because you could have gotten into saying, I've got the business, you know, that just like you said, that typical thing, we found the business. I want to be whatever on the operational side or you've got some skin in the game and then other people sort of back you. But you've just said, wait a second, I'm a backable horse. And right, that's what you said.

Petros Kusmu (10:22.773)
Yeah.

Petros Kusmu (10:44.052)
Yes, yeah. Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (10:46.574)
And so what is it? Do they like your haircut? Like what is it about? What are they like about you? What think?

Petros Kusmu (10:51.698)
Yeah, so I'd say in this ecosystem of entrepreneurship through acquisition, what investors or traditional investors are looking for is a couple of things. First, they're looking for, this person smart and do they know what they're doing? Do they actually have operational experience running a large enterprise? Do they actually have...

investing experience, looking at deals, being creative in ways to structure a deal, finance one. So there's almost like a technical kind of competency and skill set that they're hoping someone's gonna be able to bring to the table, either being successful in finding and making an acquisition of a business or at least in the operating. And fortunately for me, I had to kind of present to myself as, look, I have a bit of both, more on the operating side, I have some of the investing experience.

but I kind of have the skill set one would need. And also I think of myself as one where my skill set is leading large teams. That's what I used to do. I used to build teams, lead them, deploy them in different organizations, solve problems. So I think there was that element like this guy's a pretty mature candidate and he could be really good at large running an organization. The second thing too is they had to believe that I had the...

like a stomach of steel to go through this process, frankly. They're like, do you actually understand how miserable this process is going to be? Like it sounds okay. You know, it's going to be great when you're maybe a CEO and you actually make the acquisition, even then it's still going to be tough. But before that, are you going to be comfortable with dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty and feeling like an imposter and feeling like you're not seeing prog, as much progress as you like to for an un-pre-defined, you know, for at least two years?

Like can you handle the kind of uncertainty that it takes to just do something like that and take that leap of faith? So what they're looking for is like do you actually understand how painful this process is and it's not a walk in the park and we don't want to back someone who has like a glittering resume only for them to crumble at the first sign of rejection or kind of

Petros Kusmu (13:07.03)
So they're looking at, do you understand this model? Have you spoken to a lot of people? So I was able to kind of demonstrate to them, look, you couldn't have picked someone better than myself to have studied it. I had my profs who literally wrote the book on entrepreneurship through acquisition, gone to a million conferences. I've met nearly 100 people to be talking about this. So all that to kind of, to your point earlier, Gord, of building up that confidence, right? If I felt that kind of insecurity, it's like, okay, let's

fun ways of.

of kind of fixing that hole, So that was the second element. And the third is, do we believe that you have like an edge alpha, let's say, when it comes to this approach? Do you have a thesis for what kinds of businesses you'd like to be acquiring? And in my case, it's broadly defined as infrastructure. it includes healthcare and education services, that's social infrastructure, but looking at other broad infrastructure.

structure businesses like housing, energy, construction, transport, et cetera. And I had a strong thesis for why I thought this space is interesting. I was able to tie it back to the kind of work I did when I was in consulting and investing, et cetera. And another element was, okay, just me as a person, Petros, you seem like you're a pretty personable guy. You can get along with just about anyone or any stranger and rapidly build that trust with an owner.

investment banker or broker to convince them to sell you a business, right? So they're trying to figure out what's your edge and what's gonna make you stand out from the rest of all these other capital allocators in acquiring a business at the end of the day. So I'd one out on that, I think, and I also have a unique edge in wanting to commit to providing all employees and any future acquisition a bit of the upside and having an employee ownership plan of sorts.

Petros Kusmu (15:09.132)
So still trying to figure that out, but it's something I'm currently studying at the business. I studied in the business school. I'm writing cases and doing research at the business school on this topic, but they, all this together of like competency, you know, a stomach of steel and strong conviction, plus you actually have an edge here. That kind of package was compelling enough.

for me to raise. I'd say really what helped me kind of get the big the business win as well was not only just me, but actually how I executed in fundraising as well. think that kind of helped a ton.

Gordon Sheppard (15:40.867)
There's so much in here to unpack and like I would have mentioned in our pre-interview, I've got a thing I call the anatomy of a win. Funny, I don't know why I want to hang out with you like on a Tuesday afternoon when your guts of steel, there's some, I see you zen on a mountain, it's kind of, because it's not all sunshine and roses, I don't mean to dig into that too much. But the idea, the anatomy of a win anyway, is we find out, so the win, I'm gonna ask you to redefine the win in sort of a sentence, that's one. But then we're gonna look at the strategy, work plan, people, operations and results.

Petros Kusmu (15:51.006)
Good.

Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (16:09.836)
behind the wind. So in one sentence, how would you describe the wind? Just to recap for us.

Petros Kusmu (16:14.708)
Yeah, in one sentence, I was able to fundraise the budget needed for me to get this fund off the ground and more importantly have more offers than I could handle with. So I was over subscribed.

Gordon Sheppard (16:28.48)
oversubscribe based on what you described. Whatever, there's four five major things in there the way you sold yourself, oversubscribe. You've got these investors, they want to invest in you. And now they want to see you take it all the way through for a couple reasons. One, I think they probably want to see you be successful because they're betting on you to a certain degree. But also, they would like a significant return on their investment because all investors do. And they would have their own thesis on why they've invested in you and why this is of value.

Funny enough, we could dig into the Harvard angle and the global angle. There's something really interesting behind all of that too, again, in this non-traditional approach to sort of getting your fund started before the business is there. But we know that business is coming sometime soon. That's really neat. What was the strategy for you, so the vision, mission, values, goals, behind wanting to do it this way, to get this win? How would you describe that?

Petros Kusmu (17:14.453)
Yeah.

Petros Kusmu (17:22.849)
So if I understand your question of just kind of like how did I materialize a strategize to actually get this win and make it happen? You know I think for starters I leaned heavily on my network initially before I kind of put myself out there, right? So one of my...

close classmates in business school. He actually worked for one of the largest kind of search fund investors that's out there. So I was like, man, talk to me. Give me the lowdown on kind of what is it exactly you guys are looking for in someone to pitch themselves here and.

to be a successful candidate that actually raises. So lean heavily on him getting feedback early on of just like being honest over a set of eyes to be reviewing my materials, my pitch. Can you help me introduce me to some of your senior partners that might be interested in pitching? And that went a really long way of just kind of asking for help, frankly, just from others of just can you make introductions? So that was number one. I'd say number two is I was really thoughtful about

of my strategy as well. When it comes to fundraising, I just had an innate sense that you want to build a sense of FOMO, which is a fear of missing out, right?

what you wanna do is you wanna make sure, you wanna add a bit of pressure on someone needing to act. Like I even see it now for instance. Sometimes I'll get deals that kinda come across my inbox and if there isn't a clear timeline or if there isn't a clear sense of like others getting in the process, I kinda put that deal on the back burner. I say I'll get to it. I gotta prioritize the other ones that are kinda demanding my attention. I just worked in securing what

Petros Kusmu (19:17.236)
or two yeses from really large investors before I actually kind of broadly went to market. So I had one from my friend's investment firm and another that I just made connections and

just built a good relationship with the people at this firm. I had built a good relationship for at least eight months prior to actually when I wanted to fundraise. I wasn't sure I was gonna do this 100%, but I thought, why not? You never know where a relationship will take you, and it worked out. Built a strong relationship.

Gordon Sheppard (19:48.559)
So the strategy is you lever your relationships, do you what I mean, in sort of that right way. You create FOMO, there's something in there and that's a confident thing to do, right? This is a confident thing to do that you're talking about. There's something about the vision and you. There's the secret sauce in here. If you had to describe that, how would you describe it?

Petros Kusmu (20:08.886)
Well, the secret sauce in me? Yeah, I don't know. think what helped was having the confidence to wait out and reaching out to other investors.

Gordon Sheppard (20:11.619)
Yeah.

Petros Kusmu (20:26.198)
When I was fundraising, was called off cycle. I was a little bit late relative to when most people would be fundraising during the year, just because I had other competing priorities at the time. So with every day that comes with me delaying reaching out an email to an investor, there's a risk that they might already have deployed all their capital for the year.

but I had kind of the confidence of like, nope, just get the two big ones to say yes, and then we'll go to everyone else. And not only when I go to everyone else, I wanna say, you have two weeks to decide, are you in, you're out, if you wanna have a call, that's fine. But there was an innate self-confidence I had of just, you're gonna, you know, like, and some people said, look, this timeline is too short for us. I'm like, that's okay, all good. Like, it is what it is, and being.

Gordon Sheppard (21:09.358)
And that fomos it up, right? When you can speak with that language. And funny when you say, I heard a hundred in there, a hundred somebody's like back to that thing. Like when you're talking about all these people that you've spoken to, to get your premise to go, you would have been iterating from one call to the next. So maybe it was four weeks, then it was two weeks and you create this urgency. Wow, there's so much that's really interesting. So we've got a strategy behind kind of the way to get this done. And we're hearing already, step two for me in the anatomy of a WAN is to talk really about, you know, the work plan.

Petros Kusmu (21:19.658)
Yeah.

Petros Kusmu (21:24.074)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Gordon Sheppard (21:39.438)
And you're describing that a little bit. You're saying, you know what, got started. What was the time from sort of start to the win? Was it an 18 months, a year?

Petros Kusmu (21:39.552)
Yeah.

Petros Kusmu (21:49.015)
Oh gosh, I mean there's different ways of slicing it. Like all the relationship building I had done, it was effectively a year leading up to it, right? Like all that, you know, and again, it's not, I had a sense that I might do this, but I wasn't entirely sure, but I still built the relationships anyways, because I was like, learn more, you never know where things are gonna come out. I had investors at the time approaching me being like, I think you'd be really good at this, like you should really think about it, and you know, I didn't do it with more

of it at that time. But I'd say all that really was kind of like a year's worth. But really from when I like pen to paper, putting my pitch deck together, doing calls, you know, it probably a total of two and a half months. But that FOMO period was, you know, I got my investors in, that took around two weeks, the main ones, and then I made the call to proposals for everybody else. That took two weeks, you're in, you're out. And then I had my own process of saying, no, I'm going to vet you guys, actually. I'm going to do reference calls.

You know, want to understand the people you've backed and if they like you and see if you're You know if you're a good fit for me on my cap table I think most people treat this like a one-way street They're just happy for any capital that they get but I just made it clear to folks like look I'm gonna have a standard for what I want to see on for investors that I work with and I think that only added to the FOMO, right? There's a center said folks responded well to the self-confidence that I think I was kind of projecting and putting out there which is wow this guy has a

a hardcore timeline. He actually wants to us and do reference calls on us, which is kind of the, you don't normally hear of. It sounds like he's pretty prudent. He'll probably be a good searcher. Like, great, let's invest in him. So I think that's kind of what worked well for me.

Gordon Sheppard (23:36.963)
love it. I'm going to vet you guys. I'm going to vet the folks that are giving me the money. I'm going to just say if people heard that alone as they're going to raise for themselves, that would be a huge lesson. Because I think it would be one of those things where that rolled off your tongue for the first time, where you might be a bit trepidated, think. I'm just guessing. I know you've got your premise or whatever. But that idea of it's a two-way street, super valuable. So we hear the strategy. We know what it took. There was that year in the making and then the two and a half months.

Petros Kusmu (23:47.222)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (24:06.118)
sprinting really, that's really quite rapid I would think, but there was all that prep time to kind of get it done. So now we know the what, who and the when a little bit. The third step in there is whenever anybody gets a win, there's, you if we did the full stakeholder map and I could take you back here, Deloitte days, the whiteboards would fly out and we would map literally every person along the way. But I love the highlights in here because how would you describe the major players and getting this win and what were their roles and what were their attitudes? We've heard a lot about your attitude in terms of

You know, you building up your confidence and getting that to go forward. And then there's your investors who are investing in you. So we know a little bit about them, but what are the highlights for the people along the way that you can sort of point out for us?

Petros Kusmu (24:46.71)
Yeah, that's a good question. mean, let's break down the different stakeholders. So that would be, you know, investors, obviously, the people that I was chasing and who they were chasing me. So...

and those that said yes, those that said no, those that I said no to, just maybe because it wasn't a good fit. The other stakeholders were my friends in personal networks, which we had discussed, which went a huge way, and none of this would have really been possible without them, frankly, of just understanding how this works and just getting me connected to the right people and doing that relationship building early on, not doing it when I needed it, doing

didn't need it. think that's the thing with relationship building and networking. The second you start doing it when you actually need it, you're almost too late and trying to do it before. you know, like my friends who were in the space was clutch. My wife, I'd say that's pretty important. There was like a period of uncertainty where she's like, you know.

I have this guy here who, amazing CV, but he's broke as hell. You graduated, you're turning down job offers that are super lucrative in the US, in Canada, left, right, and center, and you're trying to take a bet on yourself. Okay, I support you. That was tough, especially when I got the other offers, because right before I had fundraise, some folks had reached out.

I put some feelers out there and it's like, okay, like that was another nice kind of confidence boost of like, you know, if this doesn't work out, I think I can at least land something else, which is, which is great.

Gordon Sheppard (26:26.798)
So we're hearing really, you you've got these people on the family side, they're helping you out at certain moments along the way, a supportive sort of spouse, along with these friends that you've had along the way, you've built those relationships in a smart manner over time with that, again, really good insight into, don't go looking for a relationship when you need it, take the time and build that out. I don't know if a lot of people have that kind of patience with the sort of here now type of approach that so many people take. So we've gotten through the strategy, the work plan, the people.

The fourth step I love to look at is operationally, there are some things in play here. Like when you're gonna raise money, what are sort of the, I'm gonna say, if I say regulation standards, paperwork, due diligence in a sense that needs to be done, any highlights in that sort of realm that made this win occur?

Petros Kusmu (27:07.498)
Mm-hmm.

Petros Kusmu (27:13.958)
Yeah, it's a good question. The only thing that kind of comes to mind was...

Like I was like, don't know what kind of pitch deck do you put together for something like this? You know, it's not like I can put together, you know, some financial statements and projections on like the attractive. Like I, again, this is a pitch on you betting on me, this horse that is Petros that's going to do an amazing job out here. So from an operational standpoint, what I had to do was just reach out to people. Do you have templates of what the sort of pitch kind of looks like? And the way to tell this story is

as it's easy for me to kind of break down to you what I thought made me an attractive candidate to raise a fund. But before that I was like what are all the different components and pieces even though I studied this in school. So you know I got connected to people who connected me with the right guy who was like the big search fund investor in Canada. And he's like here are some template documents here's.

know, documents I can comfortably share with you that gives you a sense of what people put together. I was like, this is interesting. Like, this is what they're looking for. And I'm like, okay, great. I can work with this. And I'm actually gonna do my own version. You know, I saw what was put together and I was like, it's just like a...

a really boring 50 page Word doc that's put together. like, I'm a consultant. I'm used to operating in PowerPoint. I'm gonna put something a little slicker and that feels a bit more me. I put, and you know, as kind of silly as that might sound or non-material, it made a big difference because people are like, this is new. Like, I typically just get a Word doc, like this is a really spiffy material you've whipped up and it shows that you've put in effort and thoughtfulness.

Petros Kusmu (29:03.446)
You're hitting all the ingredients that you need to, but you've also added in your own flavor, which helped me stood out quite a bit.

Gordon Sheppard (29:11.554)
Congratulations. So the pitch deck was sort of this fundamental, you know, tool that had to be part of the operation. You had to sort of get it right and then put your, again, what I'm hearing, there's secret sauce in this. It's like, well, I saw the way it was done, but I'm to break the mold. I started out doing this thing, I'm going to break the mold. Like there's a petro-something here that, again, you know, good Canadians, we don't brag enough, but there's an element here of secret sauce.

Petros Kusmu (29:28.274)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (29:38.137)
that again is hitting it so many different moments along the way when we unpack it in this way. And again, we can go more into sort of the operational points where money changed hands and that kind of thing. And I'm sure that's more sort of standard. then that's so we got through the strategy, the work plan, the people, the operations talked about that. The final thing is how do you measure the results? What are the sort of the qualitative, quantitative? I'm gonna say quantitative, you raise the money. Like there's that part of it sort of clearly. Is that the big result that you like to measure or what?

Petros Kusmu (29:59.136)
Yes.

Gordon Sheppard (30:04.866)
What are you measuring? What data or what qualitative things are you measuring as well?

Petros Kusmu (30:09.01)
I mean, yeah, I'd say there's two goals. There's A, you raise the money, but B, how much more money did you kind of leave on that table that you weren't able to accept, right? So that was another kind of, you know, might be a bit of a vanity metric, but I thought it was, it's good to know because let's say I come across this investment and opportunity that I want to do tomorrow, and maybe one of my existing investors.

isn't interested in participating in the deal, knowing that I have all these other investors that I'm good relationships with who like me, who I wasn't able to accommodate at the time, just works in my favor because it just makes it that much more easier for me to raise any equity capital to invest in a deal. Those were the two financial metrics. I'd say the other important qualitative metric here that this was a win.

was like, I actually like these people? I think there's a, in all seriousness, I think there are folks who fundraise and I think some folks might have a mentality of like beggars can't be choosers. just gonna, I gotta take what I gotta take and I'm stuck with this firm or fund or person that I'm not really enthusiastic about and I just made sure to really like and see value in all

investors in some shape or form. Others might be more sage wisdom advice providers, others might be a lot more hands on supporting you on a deal, others might provide you lots of resources and guides to get you started up. So I think I was pretty fortunate in feeling like qualitatively I'd kind of gotten like a fantastic cap table of investors to work with.

Gordon Sheppard (31:48.483)
I think you know where this is gonna go and you've known where this is gonna go for a long time. There's a continuity of spirit and values. Funny, I wanna be one of your employees in the shareholder thing. Do you know what I mean? Like you can hear that that started a long time ago. You can hear that as you got into this, even though it was a bit rocky, say getting into, well, I'm gonna try it and then I'm gonna really do it. And then I'm gonna do that with everybody I deal with along the way, including the investors. And I'm not gonna treat it in a typical manner. I'm gonna treat it in a...

Petros Kusmu (32:00.381)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (32:17.366)
a Petros way, which will then speak to when you actually do make your acquisition and you get into running something over that duration that meets your thesis and those employees are going to benefit from it as well. They're going to feel that values driven culture that you've created obviously for yourself and your family and the people all around you. What an exciting time.

Petros Kusmu (32:36.638)
Yeah, thanks, thanks. It's funny, actually, you you kept bringing it like, what's that Petro's magic quality of sorts? And I think what's helped me a lot is, and something I frankly don't appreciate or realize as much myself, is a bit of that self-confidence that you and I were talking about of just certain choices I made of being picky with who my investors are, of choosing kind of do things my own way. Like for instance, this element of, you

committing to provide folks with

all employees some sense of ownership in the business, super unorthodox. And frankly, I've had my profs and other investors be like, I think that's a terrible idea. I don't think it's gonna work. I don't think there's gonna be much value added from it. there's still that conviction I had of just, think this just kind of feels like the right thing for me, what I wanna do. And screw it, if you're not interested in that approach, then good riddance.

you know, and there

parts with my strategy, with my fund of just how we want to go about our process for searching. And other investors who I said, like, this isn't a fit for us. And I was like, okay, that's fine. It's just having that confidence to be like, you know, if we have conviction in what we're trying to do, and we have strategy, then to the best extent we can, let's try to stick with it. Let's not be foolhardy and not be iterative or learn from our lessons. But if we have conviction, let's just try and hold on to our guns for a bit.

Petros Kusmu (34:10.261)
and actually just ride it out. So that self-confidence has me well.

Gordon Sheppard (34:12.768)
super, super inspiring. If we have the conviction, we can get things done. I think we're about chapter two in this long book that you're writing right now somewhere, right? We got through chapter one, chapter two somewhere in there. Can't wait to hear how the other chapters go. just, it'll be fun to keep up with your story and then see where all this good foundation pays off for you, including I can see the smiling employees, right? We can see it. We can see like it's happening.

Petros Kusmu (34:21.014)
I hope so.

Petros Kusmu (34:38.036)
Yeah, I heard. Yeah, yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (34:42.402)
That's super exciting. I just, how lucky to get inspired by your story. Thank you for sharing in such detail about what was happening there. If people needed to get in touch with you, what would be the best way for them to reach out?

Petros Kusmu (34:48.63)
Of course.

Petros Kusmu (34:54.015)
Yeah.

Absolutely, you can go to Alpine Vistas Capital dot com and there you'll find my email address and ways to get in touch and you know like I had mentioned at the top of the show always looking for acquisition opportunities where we're trying to buy out a business in its entirety or majority of it from ideally a retiring business owner who's wanting to maybe move on and and if there's anyone in your you know group of listeners or yourself that knows of somebody who might

be thinking about wanting to sell, regardless of whether we're in Canada or the US, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me. We have a very attractive finders fee for anyone that kind of leads us to an acquisition. It's an order of magnitude, $100,000 to $200,000 plus, depending on size. But yeah, we'd really love it if folks can keep... Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (35:43.055)
Well, and I saw your website, that's laid out in plain language. It's funny, it's not like handshake stuff. You'd like, they're like, well, no, if you do this for us, we're gonna do that thing for you. And you can hear from the values driven point that you're coming from, that if it all works out, someone is gonna get that in the end. And we're not gonna do it on that way, because it's the Petros way of sorts. That's funny, we would get out of the Petros way. We could sort of get into defining that for you. Well, super inspiring. I really appreciate all your time. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Petros Kusmu (35:48.534)
We have a little time. Yeah.

Petros Kusmu (36:09.184)
Yeah man, thanks so much. It's been really fun getting to know you and also this has been great for me. It's just kind of a nice moment in time for me to reflect and kind of where I'm at and kind of what I've done to date, which is nice.

Gordon Sheppard (36:21.838)
Well, the lucky part, I'll just jump in about my print, my thesis is that I use this structure to help leaders like you reverse engineer their past wins and then use this structure to get more wins in the future. So on the right day, I'm in a half day or a full day with a full leadership team and we're going crazy on in-depth rabbit hole. And we exhaust this because I think what happens is leaders don't, without this type of reflection, just cause I'm seeing it over and over again.

They're not taking the time to reflect in this manner necessarily, to really check those things along the way. And yet there's all these Olympic athlete moments that are happening along the way that if they can slow down and just forget it, it's not modesty in modesty. It really is about what worked, what can you take out of there that you want to carry for, what do you drop from the past in this structured manner? And that's certainly the premise that I have in the work that I do that leads to, when I call it the anatomy of win, that's the tip of the iceberg for what I call the executive planning system. And that's giving, that's

That's my 650 pages underneath for my thesis that I take organizations through. So I really, I'm glad to hear you enjoyed going through this process, because that's what I like to take people through. There's so many wins in this conversation. I can't wait to vet some investors. Like that would be just a cool, that would be a cool feeling, right? And we know someone who did it, so how'd you do it? And you pulled it off. That's just great.

Petros Kusmu (37:19.776)
Yeah.

Petros Kusmu (37:28.864)
What?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was going to say, you know, I'm a management consultant by trade, so I'm a sucker for frameworks, good frameworks. I really like the one that you've put forward and yeah, no, I'm going to be using it going forward for sure. Yeah. Thanks so much. Have a good one, Gord. Bye.

Gordon Sheppard (37:42.519)
Right?

Gordon Sheppard (37:48.514)
Well, sounds good. Thank you so much.

Gordon Sheppard (37:55.277)
And I'm just going to stop record.