EW 014 – How A Self-Taught Entrepreneur Bought A Manufacturing Business And Made It More Profitable – with Owner Colin Harms from Hypervac Technologies

Gordon Sheppard (00:01.459)
Colin, welcome to the show.

Colin Harms (00:04.558)
Thanks for having me.

Gordon Sheppard (00:06.173)
Well, it's really good to have you on here because you've got such a varied background where you've tackled so many different entrepreneurial things along the way. And then you're leading to sort of this really interesting time in your entrepreneurial journey with your current success story. And I wish we had the other five future podcasts for the other ventures that you'll be on as well. Cause you know that you're the type of guy

that is going to be doing so many different things like you already have along the way and you're so young and you'll be doing your thing, you know, as you kind of go forward. But a lot of the people that are listening don't know you. So if you had to describe yourself, you know, if you're at an event and you had to describe yourself, what would you say?

Colin Harms (00:43.246)
Sure, I'm Colin Herms as you said and I would call myself, I don't love using the word self-made. I don't believe any of us are self-made but I self-taught might be a better word, entrepreneur. I love tackling new business or any business for that matter. Each and every time seems to be a different, I would almost call it a vocation or industry. just yeah, head on in like dive in the deep end and.

see if I can swim.

Gordon Sheppard (01:14.899)
Well, and we got to get back into a few of those big moments along the way. Help me out where you started out, maybe what was the education background, if there was any, and if not, what was that sort of the chunky steps? And then, cause then we can really demonstrate the dive that you're going to tell us about here, that one you did. So take me through some of the highlights in this career.

Colin Harms (01:33.038)
For sure. Starting out, I came from a very, very small town, 6,000 people, and just a humble family that my dad was in construction. I should say he wasn't in construction, he was a carpenter. I made it sound like he was a contractor. He was a carpenter, and my mom was a stay-at-home mom, and worked a little bit where she could to help provide for the family. So I never had an educational background. My dad left to Mexico when he was in grade eight.

come to Canada with his family and then he got into the trades and went that way. So we were never brought up thinking of a higher education or post-secondary. It was never talked about, just wasn't. So when I graduated high school, I did graduate high school and so that was just thing we did back then and just moved into the work world. So more or less, not to be corny, but very true the school of hard knocks.

I found some mentors in my life and people I really liked working with and my room just went black on me here. But that's okay. Things progressed rapidly in my life I guess from when I was...

Gordon Sheppard (02:47.054)
This will sound funny. think we need to... It looks a bit odd and dark now. Sorry. We can start again. We're just starting. So we can get started again. No problem. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Go ahead, please. It just looks funny with the... That's awesome. I love it. I love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Colin Harms (02:52.15)
Yeah.

Yeah, let's get over. You know what it is. Okay, give me one second. I forgot I have, we have motion lights and if I don't move enough, it goes to sleep. give me one sec, I'll turn those lights on. I was like, what happened here? Okay, Gordon, one sec.

Colin Harms (03:33.518)
That was ridiculous

Gordon Sheppard (03:36.743)
No, it's funny because it looks like witness protection program there for a second. it's, and we're not that far in. can just, we'll fire it up again and just start again. So we're all good to go. And it's nice if the conversation kind of just flows and we don't need to do to any editing. So start again and get it going. So we're still recording, but just give me a second. I'll give that pause again, get started up and then we'll kind of get going. So hang on. Colin, welcome to the show.

Colin Harms (03:41.89)
I gotta put up.

Yeah. All right. Perfect.

Colin Harms (04:03.822)
Thanks for having me, Gord.

Gordon Sheppard (04:05.414)
Well, we're really lucky to have you because I think what we're gonna hear today, and it was that good chance to chat with you in the pre-interview, to hear about your unique upbringing and all the different ways you've gone about becoming successful in so many different ventures throughout your entrepreneurial career so far. The audience is gonna be really excited to learn about it. But before we get started, we always have to ask for the people that don't know who you are, give us a sense of who you are.

when you get asked at a party and let us know.

Colin Harms (04:37.582)
Sure, I believe in one thing. I'm a self-taught entrepreneur. I did have a few mentors growing up and straight out of high school. One in particular that helped shaped a lot of who I am today. But I guess it would be self-taught. I came from a very, very small town, about 6,000 people, and my family, just a small family growing up there.

I guess you could say I came from the school of hard knocks. I don't really like to say that, but it's true where my family never went to post-secondary education. It was never talked about. I was never one of those people in high school where, you know, a counselor or somebody like that said, what are we going to do? What are you headed for after this? I never had that conversation. I, you know, I graduated one day and I started work the next. And so, yeah.

As time went on, that was 1990 when I graduated high school. And if we fast forward from then until now, there's a lot of work years working with a public company, and I'm sure we'll get into that. And working my way through the ranks there up until owning my own companies and buying and selling, and now into one large international company that I'm owner in. And that's where I'm at.

Gordon Sheppard (05:58.121)
school of hard knocks. Anything about the hard, what's a hard knock that you share along in those early days? Is there one in there that you sort of put out there that again is big part of maybe what makes you?

Colin Harms (06:09.802)
I think so. The biggest one would be my mentor at the time and still is a good friend. As a matter of fact, he was one of my first bosses and he was also in my wedding party. He was the best man in my wedding. I was 23 and he was 50 and now I'm the executor of his estate. So the hardest part there was I really watched him and...

watched how he grew in the hospitality industry. He owned nine restaurants at one time. It was a big deal. And then I had an opportunity to leave and that was probably a hard knock for him and for me. He was somewhat grooming me to take over a restaurant and get into that line of business. I was looking more, I didn't want to work seven days a week, 364 days a year to earn what he was earning. Just didn't make sense to me.

Gordon Sheppard (07:06.386)
So you had established, I mean, you're young, you get established, you have this mentor relationship with someone obviously you became very close to, but you had to make that internal decision because your own radar was going in kind of a different direction. That's a real tough character moment to get through that kind of moment. Although it sounds like you maintained a lifelong friendship out of it. And maybe the business part didn't continue. How lucky to have someone with that kind of continuity in your life. And it sounds like there's other people that have been there.

kind of along the way as well. terms of chunky sort of things that you did, you mentioned you worked for a public company. What public company was that?

Colin Harms (07:39.778)
That was BFI, which is in the waste and recycling industry.

Gordon Sheppard (07:43.9)
Yep. And so you did the BFI zone and then off into entrepreneurship from there as well, another inflection point. Like how long were you with the BFI?

Colin Harms (07:50.486)
Yeah, well before that I left the restaurant industry and I went into food distributing and started selling food back to restaurants and hospitality outlets and then I went into the garbage industry. And I can tell you about that was that was back in the day when job ads were in a newspaper. And I remember seeing a clipping for for a job ad for that. And it was welcome to the garbage industry. You know,

It's something everybody needs, it's in the backyard but nobody sees it type of thing and I thought, you know what? I'm gonna apply for that job. I don't know why but I'm gonna apply for that job. So I did, you know that was back when you're on a typewriter and you go and hand deliver a resume or an application. I it wasn't very complex. And I did and interviewed and I ended up getting the job. It was for less money than I was making but I thought the opportunity was greater. It was a larger company, it was international.

I think at the time they had 44,000 employees and I thought, you know, how the heck, like, I read self-help books and I listened to CDs back then. I need to just keep moving. we, Gord, I'm waving at you and we'll do that. We live in a world of conserving energy and my lights turn off on me. So I apologize.

Gordon Sheppard (09:09.736)
That's awesome. But what's neat is you can hear a little bit as we build out, you know, get these highlights from your character, you know, in the past, we see these moments where you had to make a tough decision with your mentor. Then you're into this moment where you're entering the BFI world and then you get through the BFI garbage thing. How long was that for? 17 years. So you would have, and I'm going to just, without getting the full meal deal, you would have had a number of different titles there, you know, as you sort of moved along. And what was your last title there? And then why'd you leave?

Colin Harms (09:26.574)
17 years.

Colin Harms (09:38.456)
I was a division manager in mergers and acquisitions and I left involuntarily. We'd gone through a number of acquisitions and then it was down to not an acquisition but they were making changes and at that point there was no different position. I wasn't moving cities and there was no position for me so at that time after 17 years I walked in one day and I walked out the same day a few minutes later and

I looked at that as the greatest opportunity I would ever have because I also would, you know, for a few years before that would go home and somewhat, you know, discuss with my wife that I had the golden handcuffs. It was a great paying position. You know, they gave me the world. They really did. I met some wonderful people from across North America and I learned a heck of a lot about business, right? From financials to, you know, working with my controller and sales and marketing and...

until the day I was let go. And so I always say it was May the 4th, 2017. And I always remember because of the cliche, May the 4th be with you. And I'll never forget that. So I remember going home that day and telling my wife, today's the day. I got let go. And she didn't believe me. But I said, no, it's true. And I said, but this is going to be the best step ahead we've ever had. And for sure, sleep less.

Gordon Sheppard (11:03.528)
Isn't that remarkable? I got packed out from the TV business. I was working at Rogers. I'd been 12 years in my game there. I know that sort of moment of like, for me, it was like, yeah, this is gonna happen. Cause this is simply the TV business, the revenues left and sort of over the years, actually did go back to school and did a business degree, sort of to transition out of there. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing now. But the, know that feeling, but it's a funny moment where you're like, and you saw it as an opportunity, like you weren't sort of devastated by it. You were like, nope, this is a good opportunity. And that's 27, that's only eight years ago.

Colin Harms (11:14.605)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (11:32.24)
And so there's some things that have happened since then. So you come out of there and what'd do after that?

Colin Harms (11:37.038)
So what I did, I've had a real estate license in Alberta since 2008 and always did that somewhat as a side hustle in evenings and weekends and was very successful at it as well, had a great clientele. So I just said, you know what, I'm gonna dive straight into that, go hard at that and continue to see what happens and look for some businesses. And so I was finishing my year end, fiscal year end with my accountant at the time.

And I've always asked him the same question. I said, Shane, is there any businesses for sale, somebody retiring, somebody wanting to make an exit? I'm ripe, I'm looking for something. And he always says no or kind of goes away from the conversation. But this day, he said, you know what? I have a guy that may want to sell his business. He's 50 years old. He's been in it since he was 15 with his dad.

And he just wants to move he wants to move away and sell everything and I said well, what does he do and he said he manufactures Vacuums and trucks and trailers from the ground up for the air duct industry And I said well, I have no idea what that is, but could I have his phone number and So he gave me his phone number and his name. I went to the parking lot I phoned him and I drove straight out there and I'll make it real short six months later. We owned the company

Gordon Sheppard (13:05.096)
Okay, so I'm in restaurants and then I'm in the garbage business and then I'm a realtor and now I'm six months later involved in the acquisition of a manufacturing business that puts, I'm going to say parts on the backs of trucks that folks can ride around with and make sure they can clean air ducts. Is that about right?

Colin Harms (13:25.036)
Yeah, 100%. That's exactly what we do.

Gordon Sheppard (13:27.4)
That's a remarkable, and thank you for digging me into sort of the pedigree there. I wish we could go on the hard knocks and all those wonderful stories. You're a terrific storyteller and we hear them coming out in spades, but we've got a good sense now of you. And since then, what year was that that you made the acquisition? 2021, four years later, how's the business doing these days?

Colin Harms (13:42.638)
2021.

Colin Harms (13:47.566)
Fantastic. So 2021, February 1st, we took over. Interesting part was it was a business was started in 1980. And from 1980 to 2021, they never counted one part. There was no inventory. There was no systems. There was no CRM. They had a Gmail that all the employees were in on the same email account, including their finance, everybody.

They were an international company. did a phenomenal, phenomenal job. Just had no systems. we worked diligently from day one to say, we need some systems. We put them in play and then COVID hit. And we never knew what would happen, but 85 % of our customers are in the US. And we weren't able to travel. We weren't able to go see them. Industry was new to us.

So I said, you know what, we have to go old school and I have to pick up that thing on my desk called the telephone and I'm going to have to talk to customers in an industry that we have no idea. We have no history in the industry. So probably the best thing that could have ever happened. And I would say if I was in, and I will do it again. The number one thing I will do when I get into that industry or that business was probably pick up the phone and call every single customer I can.

We were a little shy, we were afraid. As in the industry, they had heard, new people bought this company. We're a big player in the industry. They're not from the industry, so the customer base will probably be a little combative and attack us. Our competitors will attack us. And you know what? Me and my partners just said, you know, no, we're gonna learn it. We're gonna listen to the customer. It can only get better. Like if they had done as good as they did without any systems, without any methods.

You know, they just kind of shot from the hip and they did really well at it. I think we can do better.

Gordon Sheppard (15:48.425)
That's pretty neat. And so you get in there and you you got this time, you say they need systems, you're listening to the customer, pretty good ingredients for successful entrepreneurship for sure. Which leads me to sort of kick off our conversation, which is if you had to describe your biggest win then in business in the last couple of years, how would you describe that win?

Colin Harms (16:09.112)
I wrote that down when you asked me the question and I just said stepping into the unknown. So that was my biggest win. Not being afraid to step into the unknown and figure it out.

Gordon Sheppard (16:21.096)
So you're able to take sort of your confidence, your skill sets from the past. You would have had skin in the game there and I don't need to pull out all the numbers, but you got skin in the game, whether it's hours or capital, do you know what I mean? Like there's some things, there's risk involved. So there's that combo of entrepreneurial, all of that, that takes to acquire a business that's, I'm gonna say minimum six figures, seven figures, possibly without, not trying to reveal your financials, but I'm just gonna say there's something like that when you're talking about a manufacturing business setting.

Colin Harms (16:28.024)
Yeah.

Colin Harms (16:45.325)
Absolutely.

Gordon Sheppard (16:49.736)
when we're kind of getting in there. there you go. So the fact was the win is that you actually made the leap.

Colin Harms (16:56.43)
That's right. and it's very interesting. Maybe I'll back up just for a minute is when I chatted with a fellow who was looking to sell his business, I knew I couldn't do this myself. I said, like, this is much too large. Plus, I don't actually know what it is. So I had had a referral in my real estate business. I had a client looking for, he wanted to start a business. He's an automotive and a heavy duty mechanic. He's an intelligent engineering mind.

he said, you know what, maybe a tire shop or something mechanical, that type of thing. So I had looked at a few with him for himself. And so that day I called him and I said, John, I need to come get you right away. He was managing a motorsports dealership at the time. I said, I have something to show you. So I went and got him. We drove back over there. We looked around. We got out and we said, this is something we need to do. And so then we said, this is large. What else are we going to do?

So I went back and I said, who's really supported me in my real estate endeavors and been a great client. And I had two guys that had really supported me over the years. And I actually grew up with them, went to school with them, played hockey with them. And they were very successful in different businesses. And so we did a little bit like a dragon's den or a shark tank. John and I sat down. We interviewed three different investor parties that, and we had never done this before.

that we thought, let's see who's a good fit, who's interested. So basically we made a presentation and they came at us with what they thought. And all three of them wanted to be a part of it and we could only pick one. So we picked the one group and so that's who we still have as partners. I still agree, we picked the right ones. They're phenomenal, they're great. They've got a depth of knowledge into business, different types of business. One's an electrical and one's a feedlot operator. So totally different.

So that brings us to today. We're four years in, just over four years in, and we've grown substantially from day one. We started out in a 7,500 square foot building that the previous owner had owned and built, and we leased it until we could have a new building built. And so four years later, we're operating in 32,000 square feet, brand new building. And we've added laser manufacturing and all types of stuff.

Gordon Sheppard (19:21.074)
Congratulations. What a great story. And it's so fun to hear those moments along the way that are not when you're making those level up steps. Those aren't easy days all the time. Do you know what mean? When you're doing your Dragon's Den audition, when you've got these things, but interesting that you had the interested capital kind of thing in there. Give me your sentence again for the win. What would you say it was? Stepping into the unknown is the win. So one of the things I like to introduce in the conversation now is talk about the anatomy of a win.

Colin Harms (19:31.118)
Yeah.

Colin Harms (19:38.549)
stepping into the unknown.

Gordon Sheppard (19:45.449)
So what is the strategy, work plan, people, operations, and results behind that? Well, strategically, we've been hearing some of the things along the way. You knew you wanted to acquire a business from your own perspective. And we talk about strategy like, what's the vision? What are the goals? What are the values, in a sense, that you bring to that? So if you had to describe the highlight from the strategy behind this acquisition and stepping into the unknown, what was the strategy from your perspective?

Colin Harms (20:09.422)
We each sat down as a partnership and came up with cultures and values. And the number one that I stayed on was focus on values, clarity, and long-term scaling. One of the reasons being is everything I watch and hear, and whether it's mentors or peer groups, everybody has an exit strategy. They always talk, what's your exit? What's your exit? And then I heard somebody say, I think it was Mark Cuban, actually. And he said, he's so sick of hearing everybody

pitch what their exit strategy is. And he goes, you haven't even made it. You haven't even started. So that one kind of hit me, and it was a realization that I took home with me. And so it yeah, focus on my values, be clear about it, my clarity, and long-term scaling. I can exit at any time, but I think we still need to have a long-term vision to get there.

Gordon Sheppard (21:05.192)
Sounds reasonable in terms of what are those values just so that we know.

Colin Harms (21:10.274)
Yeah, value number one was we want to employ people and give them a great place to work. We want them to wake up every day and want to come to work and we want to provide a safe workplace so they can go back home to their families at the end of the day.

Gordon Sheppard (21:25.318)
Isn't that funny? You didn't start at profits, right? You didn't start in what's in it for me, make it a great place to work. How lucky, because you can hear as part of your system and process building, you would have gone about the organic process of making that occur, probably based on also feedback from the shop floor in a sense, right? Where you would've got an iterative feedback and you're probably, is that say a continuous improvement area for your business?

Colin Harms (21:47.022)
100 % it is and you what you touched on a great point that I didn't touch on profits. We rarely we do very well. I'm not going to shy away from that. We've we rarely talk about profits and I think part of that inside of me comes from 17 years at a publicly traded company. I never want to hear about shareholder value just internally. I you can have the greatest plan and it doesn't matter. It's shot out the window and you can go to a budget review.

You've worked hard with your controller and you've worked all year to have this great presentation and and it just goes down the drain and they say well This is what we need. Well, why don't we just do that? So? Collectively we've decided we're not gonna do that. We're never gonna talk to employees about This is the bottom line, right? If we're creating a culture and we're doing it right and we're bringing them along with us Those are things we don't really we talked about up as an ownership group But our staff don't need to hear about that. Our staff need to know

They have security. They never need to know, we could be laid off next week. Even with the tariffs we're dealing with right now, 85 % of my business is still US. And they never hear about that. We just talk about how we're going to shift on the fly. We're going to adapt. We're going to do what we have to do. And they ask the questions. We give the honest answers.

Gordon Sheppard (23:09.35)
It must be so easy to sleep at night, you know, in terms of taking that approach to things. And it's a really, again, a values-based approach. It speaks to you, it speaks to your partnership group in terms of what you put together. The Mike Tyson quote, everyone's got a plan till you get punched in the face, right? So that's sort of your school of hard knocks along the way. Cause you've seen it at those multi- you've seen it in a multinational, you've seen it at your level. And I love it because it sort of takes my MBA and flips it on its head. And I don't mean to dig in and be overly proud of it because there's moments where

Colin Harms (23:35.672)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (23:38.313)
There's the theory and then there's the reality. And a big part of the luck on this show is talking to people that's kind of been there, done that, and just adding, I get lucky because my toolkit gets bigger every time I get to speak with people like you along the way. We've got a values-driven strategy. As you've gone along the way, is there like a, I don't know, BHAG, big, hairy, audacious goal? said is there that long-term vision for the company? I'm gonna say dollars or people or size or something like that. Because you mentioned that earlier as well as part of the strategy.

Colin Harms (24:07.5)
It would, we do have a long-term goal and I do personally, and that comes along with an exit as well. It's more of a multiplier and this might sound a little bit different. I've done a lot of investigation and I was involved with mergers and acquisitions in the waste industry. Similar, yet different. Just the multiplier was different. I think we can push this business to a seven to eight time multiplier.

That's aggressive, but why it's aggressive is it's real numbers. And with our trajectory, our growth trajectory, you know, when we purchased the company, they'd been increasing for, well, they've been around since 1980, but the previous five years have been fantastic. Nobody knew COVID was coming. And you know what? We grew during COVID. We actually grew. And we've continued to grow incrementally and phenomenally, even again this year with the tariffs. We're still growing.

Gordon Sheppard (25:05.458)
Well, and I heard the word laser. And when I hear about seven or eight times multiplier, you're doing some secret sauce work in there. If you're gonna get it, you know what I mean? Cause if we went to industry comparables and we started to look around, I'm gonna say in a build anything type of business for where you're at, obviously the two or threes are probably automatic. Certainly from the buy side, they're gonna try and grind you to there. But what you're doing is you're building a moat where you're actually gonna make it worth that seven and eight.

Colin Harms (25:11.586)
Yeah.

Colin Harms (25:19.457)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (25:32.467)
times along the way. And it's all those incremental things that you're doing with the staff, these sort of this lifelong thing. With the investment in innovation, you can hear it. And I wish we had the whole show to talk about innovation and how you're sort of going through there. And then on the system side, we would talk about where you're at now. But then I'm going to guess frontier is AI and what does that look like? And then international customer-based expansion. But I love hearing this thing of like, no, no, no. If our industry multiple is

What would be typically like four, five, three, four, five kind of thing? Yeah, three, four, but you're shooting for an eight. And I just love it in the owner's mind of like, well, how are we going to get it there? Cause that gets pretty creative and exciting in the strategy side. Well, if this is an eight hour podcast, we dig right into that one, but I love the perspective in terms of what it is. So we looked at the strategy, we've learned quite a bit about the values. And again, this long-term goal that you have. Anytime we have a strategy, we need a work plan. So it's 2021, you kind of get in there.

Colin Harms (26:02.111)
Yeah, three four three four probably yeah, yeah

Gordon Sheppard (26:25.582)
and you know kind of what you're lacking. know that certain things are working, obviously. What are the highlights from the work plan along the way, kind of the inflection points, if we drew out the timeline? Is there a moment in time where it sort of made a jump or something like that that we could share with the audience?

Colin Harms (26:40.728)
Yeah, in the business, we had a large, large customer that we acquired when we bought the business. They, what we weren't told was that they had given notice that they weren't going to be a large customer anymore. Wasn't underhanded. It was just, I'll give you an example. They were building, I guess they had built about 46 trucks in a couple of years for them. US dollars, it was large. When they were building about maybe 60 total.

Halfway through the first year, they just said, just so you know, this is the date we're done. We're gonna do our own thing. We're going elsewhere. And you know what, I got off the phone and I just said, okay. I said, well, we have all of North America. We have all of the world actually. So we're gonna allocate a bunch more time to getting more customers. So our customer acquisition, we can do a lot better job because right now, if you called Gord, I would have to say you're four to six months out.

right, because we have this much in the queue. Now if you call, we said, you know what, why don't we go to almost be like an auto dealer. What we build right now is acceptable in four to six months. What if a customer called and we had pre-built them and we had, you know, 18 to 20 trucks ready to go at that given time. So I went back to the partners and said, this is what I feel we should do. And they said, okay, let's do it. So word on the street was these guys are crazy. They're going to go broke.

No one has ever done this. And when I hear nobody has ever done this in the industry, that's when I know I should do it. So we did it. And customers would start to call. We didn't know our customers. We didn't even know where new ones come from. We just picked up the phone. And they said, well, what's delivery time? Two weeks? What do mean two weeks? That's impossible. Not anymore. And so now, we've made it very difficult for the competition because they have, one, they don't have the capital to do it.

And they don't know how to explain to their lenders why they're going to do it That's the way we see it and and the customers no longer will accept four to six months Right. We've changed it

Gordon Sheppard (28:51.304)
I love this, because honestly, I've walked in and walked out with a car off the lot. Do you know what I mean? Like I get that feeling, but that's fine. It's fine if I'm buying a $5,000 junker. But I mean, this is a different sort of game and to actually convince each other in a sense or to have the vision to say, no, we're going to build some inventory. Because that's a big capital outlay. It's people, right? Like you're tying up your workflow.

Colin Harms (29:05.87)
That's right.

Gordon Sheppard (29:19.944)
It bites into, I'm sure, other customers' demands and maybe extends that out a little bit as you're sort of getting that inventory built out. But you saw an opportunity. That's pretty remarkable.

Colin Harms (29:29.454)
And we and we've built on that now that's now it's just part of our day to day This is what we continue to build out and just in the industry. We we will always have 16 built bodies in the queue gone from

Gordon Sheppard (29:41.691)
I love it because I've been in other, I work as an advisor, you know, and I've been in sort of some settings where they just have the downtime for their people. Your people would never have downtime because you're either fulfilling an order or you're pre-building because you've got a feel and you know what those purchase orders are gonna look like. And now you're getting a number of years under your belt. So you would actually get a feel for.

Colin Harms (29:50.893)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (30:05.074)
Well, it's 16 right now sitting in the lot or whatever it is. It could be worked towards 24, 50, whatever that looks like in the future. That's remarkable. That's scalable.

Colin Harms (30:10.584)
That's right.

Yeah, and we've actually sat down and with the operation we have going right now, we could take an order for 100 trucks or trailers and we could fulfill it in a very, very short timeline. And the other thing we did, which was due to the supply shortage, everybody was hit with supply shortage, and we said, okay, well, we're not gonna be hit with that. We're not gonna say no to our customers. We've made a big promise and now we're getting hit with this. So as far as...

engines, that type of thing went for what we build. We went right to Briggs and Stratton and said, well, what if we buy one day supply off your line? And I said, well, nobody's ever done that. Why would you do that? And we said, so we have the inventory. We can build out for a year. In the case, they said it was 50, 58 weeks to get an order. And we said, well, we'll just buy a full day. So we did. And then we had other suppliers calling us to buy them from us. So we just continued on that path.

to today where we're at. And another thing, Gord, that was, I guess, a game changer in the industry when the auto manufacturers stopped manufacturing vehicles. You saw it. No car dealers had vehicles. That's the way it was. They were trickling in because we had pre-ordered some stuff. We went out and we walked our yard. And that's what my business partner and I do. We think that way. We look. We try to think, OK, what are we missing here? And I just said, what if we build our truck into a trailer?

And I said, we don't need a chassis. We can build the trailer. We can build the frame. We can do it all. And we took our exact truck body, put it onto a trailer, put a V-nose on it. But we made it with the frame so it could be upfitted to a truck at a later date when they start to come available again. Well, now that trailer, people love them so much, they don't have to have an asset, you know, an extra chassis. They don't have to tie up $150,000. You know, they can tie up 80.

Colin Harms (32:09.332)
and they can pull it around with a vehicle they already have. So that's been a real, real good win for us.

Gordon Sheppard (32:14.354)
This is so wonderful. This sort of reinvention of the supply chain and where to put a dollar. Where do your investors put a dollar? Where do your suppliers put a dollar? Where do you put a dollar? And then what's lovely about, it's so funny to hear you say early on about this, we're taking a chance on something we don't know being the win, except your entrepreneurial perspective is pretty special combined with the group that you're with.

Colin Harms (32:21.262)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (32:41.618)
to then be recognizing these things. Cause it sounds like you could be resting on laurels. You could have come in here, probably gotten by. They had, you know, whatever good years and you bought a, you know, a good business that could have gone in the same direction. But in fact, based on your nature, you're challenging yourself, sounds like day in and day out to find those improvements, which again, really backs up that long-term vision for your eight times multiple on the way out. I mean, that is just stunning. And again, you're,

happy to walk through your objections. Hey industry, guess what? Now we're going to put them on trailers. Well, that's great. Right. And so that worked. And then you've got the affirmation from, you know, we've got, we're going to have supply in, in, in queue, just, yeah, good. We'll throw it on a tree. We'll get to you in two weeks. Unbelievable turnaround. So you must be getting articles written about you and sort of building up your reputation brand alone would be again, multiplying with those types of investments that you're making. So we talked about the strategy, these unique things that are happening on those timelines. It's really.

inventive, innovative moments through those ways. The third part is people, but we've already heard quite a bit about that in terms of, you know, people are contributing to a win. I heard early on there's you and your partner, and then you've got the Dragons Den Auditions, there's these investors. How would you describe sort of that core group, maybe the people in the group, maybe yourself or whoever, how would you describe their attitudes in contributing to this win?

Colin Harms (34:05.576)
They're very much, when we did the, I guess the interview process and they interviewed us, we looked for some people that were like-minded, right? Entrepreneurial, more or less free-spirited, not so tied down to here's a certain set of rules we're going to follow, which that's important, but they needed to be open-minded to listen to what we had to say because they weren't familiar with the industry either.

Right, I guess they're not venture capitalists, but in some way they were to us. Because they're gonna invest some money, quite a bit of money, and they're gonna believe in us to carry it out. And that's what's happened. So I'll give you an example. meet with, you know, we have emails, we have chats, but we meet as a partner group one time a month for an hour and a half, and we review our financials, we review just normal business. And you know, my biggest thing is we don't need a giant schedule for a meeting.

What's our biggest opportunity? What's our biggest threat? Everything else in between is operational. Those are the two things we talk about.

Gordon Sheppard (35:10.352)
And that's, again, you can hear your process improvement mind, right? Right down to the meetings. You're gonna challenge every area of the business to make it sort of run in a way that makes sense and also then carries your values and the spirit of the way you've put this kind of group together. That's wonderful. So we've heard the strategy, the work plan, the people. The four step is operationally, and again, we've been hearing just anecdotally through as you've been explaining things, operationally, what were the things that got put into place to make this win occur? I'm gonna do the quick summary from what I've heard so far.

There's systems, there's a CRM now that makes sense as opposed to zero CRM, say in the beginning. There are lasers. And again, I'd love to get into sort of the tech there, but I'm gonna say there's tech and tech investment in there. There's also the ability operationally to be agile. There's something in there about, well, we're not gonna stay stuck to one way or another. So if you had to describe maybe, you know, enhance some of these or describe other operational highlights that contribute to your win, how would you describe it?

Colin Harms (35:46.318)
Great.

Colin Harms (36:05.546)
I'll give you an example. We had no inventory system. So we had to find one that would work with, we were with QuickBooks online, everything had to mesh together because we had nothing. And so we found one that we thought we would like and then we had to figure out how it all worked. So it comes down to personality and culture. Both my business partner and I, actually all four of the investors, I guess we would call us, are Edmonton Oilers fans.

So we were able to start this industry and people have seen it. If you came into our warehouses right from bin locations for inventory all the way through the entire thing, there is a, I'll use a number four for Kevin Lowe if anybody knows hockey. That's our lowest price items because it's a four. But actually all our inventory numbers in that bin location will start with a four.

And it goes all the way up through Yare Curry, Paul Coffee, right up to McDavid, to 97 of the highest price items. And we just do it as a culture thing. And unfortunately, if somebody doesn't like the Oilers, they probably aren't real comfortable working around here. But that's okay. We do however they like their own. But it's a fun thing we've done, but it's an actual integration right into our systems. So whoever, if somebody bought this company from us, they would have no idea why there's an Oilers jersey on the end of every aisle. And there's number with a name.

us as a player and right through. And that's kind of how we've built our culture and what we live off of. And you know, my other partners, they'll come in, I guess the silent guys, they'll come in and they'll do a tour. They love to show it off. We love our facilities and they love to show in the Oilers jerseys and explain the bin locations and that we had no inventory before. And I just think it makes us better, right? It makes us creative. We're not following a script or.

you know, we're more or less inventing it to fit the business. And it really works. And this is how much it works. I won't take too long on it, Gord, is we were delayed on a lot of our manufacturing. Like say we, you know, we build bodies. There's 1300 parts in a truck. We're delayed, something was cut wrong. We said, how can we make this better? How can we not? We called it the Bermuda Triangle. Things would go from our facility,

Colin Harms (38:27.182)
to a Calgary facility, to a Strathmore facility, to a Coldell, Alberta facility. And we said it's the Bermuda Triangle. And what happens in the middle? Stuff gets lost and damaged, right? So we said, how do we increase that and move it into one spot? So John said, you know what, maybe we should get into laser manufacturing. And we said, well, how are we gonna do that? He says, well, we just figure it out. And so he started researching it.

We had a number of vendors out there that we worked with in the fabrication and they heard that we were looking at equipment and this is a true story. One day I was in my office, this guy came in, I had recognized him, I didn't know him, he worked for one of the suppliers and I said, do have an invoice? And he said, no, it's a resume. And I said, for what? He said, well, I heard you're gonna get into laser manufacturing, I'd like to work here, I love the place. And he still works here, Gord. To this day, he's our number one guy.

Then two weeks later, his boss called. Said, I'd like to have a meeting with you guys. And we said, we don't have to answer for ourselves. We can hire whoever we want. so we said, OK, come on in. Have a meeting. And we had no idea what he was stepping into or we're stepping into. And he applied for a job. And we hired him as well. And so it was a testament to, of course, it sounds all rosy and everything's great.

You know, for the most part, 99 % of it is. We still have hiccups like anything else. But we were able to hire the best of the best to implement our laser fabrication division. And they knew how to set everything up. We ordered the equipment. The one thing was the bank wouldn't let us lease equipment or do anything until we actually took possession of it. So we had to pay upfront for all this equipment. And it was just shy of a million dollars. So we fronted the cash. We put the money up.

And we waited for I think it was like eight or nine months and we still had no idea what we were getting Is it just containers is a hot wheel? I always joked is it hot wheels like what if we just get this and then we start over again And it came we figured it out And we operate with we have a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility and we still have those employees and they bring Better employees to us. We really don't have to go out and hire because they see it they hear it

Colin Harms (40:51.162)
and more people come, we don't have a giant team and we don't need it. We believe in paying, pay more money and have less people. Right, and then you get the, that's how you get the good ones. That's just a philosophy we have. And so it's really worked good for us.

Gordon Sheppard (41:04.678)
Well, and you can see that it comes from the values. So how lucky that you defined your values and that you're very clear about them because that's, again, those values, one thing to get it working at one person, two people, but what a remarkable story that you've had it work for. You can hear the folks at different areas of the company are living those values themselves as they go out to talk about the company. So talk about, again, internal brand reputation, external brand reputation.

Colin Harms (41:07.352)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (41:32.017)
you're hitting so many different parts of the industry, you're overcoming the naysayers as you're kind of going along as well. Again, must be super satisfying. And this is, I can hear it very clearly. If we had another interview in a year or two, you'd be telling me about the next innovation in culture, the next innovation in system, the next in, we talk about whatever vertical integration, if you want to call it that, you know, in terms of what you're going to do and in terms of maybe eliminating the Bermuda Triangle, depending on how you want to go, especially in these days of,

free trade, not free trade, depending on what you decide as a company to move forward. But you've got those options and you've also got that track record of controlled risk. It's not bad risk. It's controlled risk because you've taken some risks along the way, but you've proven yourself out so that when you go to make the next one, you can hear you've got that again, sauce together for, you know, making the right meal that makes it successful going forward. Wow. We could talk all day because there's so many.

brilliant rabbit holes to run down here around, again, culture specifics. Can I work for you? That alone is its own thing. Congratulations. I heard strategy, work plan, people, operations. Finally, there's results. And if we had to talk about the qualitative and quantitative results, what are the highlights that you measure from this kind of win that we talk about?

Colin Harms (42:52.014)
Like we look at our, I guess I call them our metrics and I'll give you one. When we bought the company in 2021 and this is full exposure, we had a seven year plan. That seven year plan was to pay the business back and see where we can go from there. We paid it off in two and a half. So we just put our nose to the grindstone, I guess, if you will, and said, you know what, this is fantastic. Now what do we do? Then we start the laser fabrication division.

then what do we do? And that's where we look at now is I love to look at fixing our failures, but I look at who's our vendors, who's not quite hitting it, who's not supplying us the way we need to be supplied. And we're not hard to work for at all, right? I believe we're good to work for, but I watch them and then I look at, I'm very aware of.

who may not be doing well financially like a vendor and who may not be there tomorrow. We don't know. let's say we place another, we give a PO, we place another order. Well, what if they're not there on Tuesday? Gord, I'm sure you've seen it out there, right? Like use a bed bath beyond. We don't deal with them, but a week before they go bankrupt or you know, the Hudson Bay Company or whoever it may be, there's a downline to that. We need to be prepared for what happens next. And we do have a few suppliers that were...

You know, I'm watching and I'm cognizant of, you know what, they're not doing the best job they could. Who's their competitors? You know, we reach out to them and they're doing okay. And then I start asking people out there, you know, we reach out and say, is there somebody better out there? Is there somebody quicker? That type of thing. And what I want to hear is no, there's not, because that means there could be.

Right? And like it's, if you're a hockey player and you're fantastic and you have to play against McDavid, it might not be so fun, right? But if we can, if we, here's where the bar is. A lot of companies set their bar very, very low and I think they should push it and they stay there. And I think you alluded to it as if we had bought this company and it was doing okay, it was doing pretty good and financials are good and.

Colin Harms (45:06.317)
You don't need to hire anyone. You don't really have to work any harder or smarter. You could exist, right? And you'd be OK. We don't want to be there. We want to keep pushing the bar. We want to keep moving it, not just forward, but up and then forward and see how far we can take it. And I did say.

Gordon Sheppard (45:22.96)
Isn't that remarkable? when I say what results are you looking at, it's funny, it's so wonderful how pragmatic it is. I didn't hear you say, bought a yacht. I didn't hear you say, you know what I mean? We're selling the business next year. You can hear that you're in it, in it to win it in a sense, because you're looking for again, more incremental or major improvements that you can make to grow this business along the way, which is very consistent with the whole theme that I've heard throughout those years in the way that you've explained

the On episode six, I interviewed Alvin Pike on the podcast. Alvin, the biggest loan he ever got was the mortgage on his house as a working engineer. was doing fine, could have been an engineer for a long, time, but he had a vision for buying a screw pile business. He got the back, not being able to see inside. He said he got the term sheet finally when they signed the NDA and it was him and his dad. His dad had run it like a half, making a half million bucks a year doing his little

Colin Harms (45:58.094)
I love that.

Gordon Sheppard (46:21.298)
sort of screw pile installations and then it ran into supplier trouble. So then Alvin was like, well, let's look around and see if we can buy a business. They get inside under the hood of this thing, the guy wants $25 million because it's a good business. And Alvin's like, okay, well, we better go back to the drawing board. And then he goes back and over the short story is they raised $25 million and they bought this business that was making 10 million bucks a year. He got it to 50 million a year in three years. So I'm hearing a similarity here about that hustle.

that it takes, but he had the vision to take that business, was called Peace Line Piling at the time, called it Helical Peer Systems is what Alvin ended up calling it with his partners, and they ended up taking it to an industrial level. That was that thing. But I can hear the similar, I gotta throw all you folks in the same room at some point, because the expediting of ideas is remarkable. I'm getting to filter a lot of them and cross-reference them, but how nice to hear about that short timeline, how interesting to hear again on results side, it's not an immediate jump to.

say dollars or profits, but it's that no, wait, how can we incrementally improve again, is kind of where you got it to. Wow. It's something that we can go on and on here for all the wonderful things that you're describing. Congratulations on what you're doing. And I don't think it's your last venture in terms of the things that you'll be doing in the future. If you can do me a favor, just summarize again your sentence for the win and then put a bow on this in terms of pulling it all together for us and just sort of as we get out the door.

Colin Harms (47:43.374)
Sure, I thought about that and it keeps coming to my mind and I keep saying it to John, my business partner, is I heard it recently as IKEA started as a pencil company. And I'm like, so I keep on saying, said, you know what, maybe one day we won't even be building air duct trucks, right? Like we could have the same business, but we won't even be building it. So my final reflection and I wrote it down was winds come from the basics.

Listen hard, solve real problems, play the long game.

Gordon Sheppard (48:15.548)
Listen hard, solve real problems, play the long game.

Colin Harms (48:20.174)
Absolutely, and that play the long game is is Straight against the exit strategy. Of course. We have an exit strategy, right? Of course, but play the long game, right? I don't want to be done tomorrow Right, and if I am I got a gourd I'm gonna phone you and say introduce me to some people I got it I listened to them to the screw pile one and I actually sent it to John and I said you got to listen to this This is amazing. I go this is incredible

And it's no different than anyone else is doing. It's just they're doing it. is the difference. But it's, listen hard, solve real problems, play the long game. That should be on shirts. Maybe that's what I'll do here is we do put sayings on the back of the guy's And maybe that's the new one.

Gordon Sheppard (49:09.256)
It's eloquently said, we could talk all day long. Colin, I just wanna say thank you so much for sharing your story on the show.

Colin Harms (49:16.462)
You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

Gordon Sheppard (49:21.767)
Holy! Completely unexpected for all those twists and turns along the way. I'm just gonna stop record here.

Colin Harms (49:22.862)
Here we go.