EW 020 – How To Win With Home Builders and Buyers By Innovating The Light Switch In Your House – with President James Keirstead from Levven

Gordon Sheppard (00:01.272)
James, welcome to the show.

James Keirstead (00:04.504)
Yeah, thanks, Gord. Good to be here.

Gordon Sheppard (00:07.5)
Well, lucky for me to be here because I've had a chance through the work that I've done to see you in action at the board level. I've also been a fan on the sidelines to see you at the entrepreneurial level. I've also been someone in a networking scenario who has seen you give back and give back and give back and just assume simply that you don't sleep because of all the activity that you have throughout all the different areas of your life, right? I'm glad you're smiling because I think that would-

kind of makes sense, but a lot of people that are listening are meeting you for the first time. So if you had to describe yourself, you know, to somebody who's meeting you for the first time, what do you say?

James Keirstead (00:44.27)
well, I'm kind of like the energizer bunny. I got a lot of energy and, I just, I keep driving. I'm really committed to not only growing Levven, which is my passion, but also helping all entrepreneurs grow businesses. So, that's why I'm so involved in the community and in the technology ecosystem. I believe that I can deliver the most by lifting where I stand.

So that's why I focus on this.

Gordon Sheppard (01:17.75)
It's so neat to meet folks like yourself. There's a humility in that sort of gentle statement that you're making. There's a lot of iceberg underneath the tip of what you've just described in terms of how many people you've impacted in the way that you're describing. And again, we could do a whole episode around just simply your entrepreneurial ecosystem joy that you have for the folks here in Edmonton and Alberta, and I'm sure touching globally as well. But I want, need to dig into just a couple things first, just for your origin story.

Tell me a little bit about your pedigree and your background specifically related to the work that you've done now in Levven. I need you to sort of give me little bit of where you got started. Give me a little bit and then lead me up to this Levven thing. And I don't need a full biography, but I need some of the highlights because we need to, we're gonna hear and appreciate the acumen and the skill sets that you've developed long ways. So where to get started and how did we get to this moment?

James Keirstead (01:54.807)
Yeah.

James Keirstead (02:04.792)
Sure, I guess I would start off to say that I'm kind of your classic entrepreneur. I've been an entrepreneur all my life. I managed to go to college. I actually graduated from Grant McEwen in their management studies program a very long time ago. I took a stint at university, but like a typical entrepreneur, I just couldn't hold out any longer. I had to get out and make money.

I come from a single parent family, so, you know, did not have much growing up and always had that kind of desire in my belly to go out and try and make my mark in the world. And when I was young, it was just about me surviving. It's about making enough money to live, right? I'd say, you know, I had a number of businesses, but probably the one that really was the breakout is when I got to partner with my

friends at Arctic Spas and a company called Blue Falls Manufacturing. We were the makers of Arctic Spas. Founded that company with them back in 1997. Grew that company to 30 countries. Became Canada's largest hot tub manufacturer. And what a lot of people didn't know about that organization is that we were a little different than other

hot tub manufacturers. Most of them are just assemblers and we set out and vertically integrated a lot of our supply chain. you know, I set up our first cut and sew operation in Southern China in a place called Zhongshan. Then we got into, you know, injection molding there. We set up another factory to do LED lighting for the hot tub industry. And we even had one factory making

games room furniture and billiard tables and everything. So I a long history of setting up manufacturing and also on the business development and distribution side set up many of our distributors in Europe. And so had a very dynamic career doing just about everything in the business. And what was unique was that while I was

James Keirstead (04:30.478)
competent in sales while I consider myself to be relatively good at, you know, looking forward and having that vision for an organization. My real skill would probably be as an integrator. I'm just one of those people that, you know, I can see the systems that need to go into place to help us, you know, build scale. And at Arctic,

Gordon Sheppard (04:58.101)
And so Artic Spaws is happening and so that's 97. Then there was a moment where Artic Spaws, there's an evolution I'm going to say out of there and something else. So take me to that moment.

James Keirstead (05:07.212)
Yeah.

Yeah, so we had vertically integrated all these different areas. And then in 2009, we had an opportunity to buy a company that was trying to build control systems for hot tubs for us. So I bought that company. And in 2011, I then bought where we see where I am today was a place called Inspire Electronics.

We rebranded as Levven Electronics and we've been making control systems for Arctic Spaws ever since that time. That has been really our core business for quite a long time. But we were the first guys to kind of develop wireless control, know, connecting a hot tub over the internet through a mobile app. And in 2012, I met

Reza Nasri from Landmark Homes and Reza was building most of his walls in a in a panelizing factory here in Edmonton and wanted to seal the walls off. So he was looking for a way to do that. But to do that, he had to get rid of the wire in the walls so that he didn't have to have electrical inspection come and inspect those wires. And he was introduced to us from someone from IRAP.

And my head engineer and I at the time really saw the idea almost immediately on how to do it. Because a switch today has kind of two operating components. It has the rocker that you interact with every day, you know, as the customer. But then it's got the power break in the back and that actually snaps. hear that snap to turn the power on or turn the power off.

James Keirstead (07:04.042)
Our concept was really simple in lean manufacturing. We're always thinking, how do we remove waste in the process? Right. And if we could remove enough waste, could that waste savings offset the costs of the technology? So what we did was we designed a battery remote powered to Cora style switch that would just mount on the wall and then a load controller that would go into the junction box above the light.

and they would connect and communicate via RF. Now, it sounds pretty simple, but when you put 35 of them in the average home, so you're talking about 70 devices in the average home, you have to have very solid protocol for communication so you don't get latency. You have to have very secure protocol, both in setup and in communication.

And you have to have it, has to be ultra reliable because if you're putting it in a home, it has to work as well as the current product that people deal with every day, which is a wired switch. So it's a big challenge as you put more devices in, it gets harder. So that's what we set out to do at 11 and it took us a couple of years to build the base technology. And then we spent

You know, we got started in Edmonton, did like seven homes back in 2015. And then,

tried to go down into Calgary, ran into an electrical inspector, didn't like that we were taking all the wire out of the walls. And within two weeks, we couldn't put our product into new construction right across Canada. In the United States, we had one pocket in Arizona, New Mexico, where we could install. We started installing there in 2017.

James Keirstead (09:05.294)
But we've been mostly locked out of market until about 2020 in the US. The code adopted, the NFPA 70 adopted wireless wall-mounted controls. And then in 2021, the Canadian Electrical Code actually removed the entire sections, first time ever happened, removed the entire section that wired and wireless switches is in. And that opened up

for us to get into the Canadian market. That being said, even though we had these code approvals, it took about two years in both countries for that adoption to get across all the states and provinces. So we're a really old startup.

Gordon Sheppard (09:55.534)
Here at Startup, 11 years or whatever, 10 years in the making in terms of how that goes. And I'm just going to recap for a second because this has been so fun and thank you for being so articulate. One, about your passion for being an entrepreneur. We hear that origin story. Get a little bit of background, maybe about some of your motivation about your give back from your early days. You know, university for me, got to get out there. You hit it out of the park with Arctic spas, but that's also another story. Again, if we did that whole story, it's one thing to sort of hit that laundry list pretty quickly right now, but

James Keirstead (09:59.02)
Yeah.

James Keirstead (10:21.965)
Hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (10:25.395)
seeing those opportunities, making those capital investments, that's quite remarkable, because that's a stackable kind of thing that helped that business to succeed. You did well enough that you got into an acquiring scenario, you acquired expertise, you brought on some people, rebranded. And then you're in a market where you can maybe be in the hot tub servicing market, probably quite nicely for a while, but you're inventors and you want to create something and you see an opportunity. So then it's 2015, you're in those seven homes.

You get that kind of going. The code is not going your way. It's such a funny thing, right? Like here you are, you're like, wait a second, we've got, we're sitting here. It's 2015, we have the solution. We've installed it, it's working. We know how to make it work. And in the meantime, and this happens for, I think inventors in a variety of ways. I know a fella in nuclear right now just wants to throw sea cans all over the place. And boy, that one's another one that's gonna be a code nightmare as they kind of go through things. And governments are slow to adopt. Governments are slow to adopt in Canada, but you've got a pocket in the States.

James Keirstead (10:54.765)
So.

Gordon Sheppard (11:19.745)
And then, know, even still the code breaks for you, but now, so this 2021 and then things start to roll. Is that fair? Like, so I'm going to say in the last couple of years, you're in quite a few homes. Is that fair?

James Keirstead (11:28.461)
Well...

Yeah, so I don't know if I'd say it starts to roll. I would say it's kind of like pushing a car. The whole experience is really humbling. You know, when you're like, okay, great, now we can go. But you got to prove out that the value proposition actually quantifies real savings to those builders and contractors on the ground. Then you got to

Gordon Sheppard (11:35.82)
Okay.

Gordon Sheppard (11:59.246)
I know what it costs to put electrical wires in. I've done it forever. We've been doing it for whatever, 100 years or whatever. And then here you're coming along with the new thing. And so the value proposition, and you said something that was interesting to me, which was your installation is the same cost.

James Keirstead (12:03.244)
Yeah. Yeah.

James Keirstead (12:13.976)
Well, it can be. Yeah, it doesn't. It's not always. So it requires and that's the hard part. It requires us to really sit down with the contractor and the builder, walk through all the costs and the hidden costs that they have with wired switches. And the truth is many of them don't know. They don't know all the costs. So to get them to understand all the costs is a real journey.

to validate those costs and to really quantify that value so that you can get them to agree, yes, this is the price we're gonna sell it to you at, this is the price we're gonna install for the builder at, and if those can align and be a quick equal or close to equal of what a standard switch is, they'll go. Even though we're gonna deliver them, their homeowner, so much more value because

every home that comes with our product already has a smart home, right? Where today they're not smart, but the builder won't pay more for that. And the contractor doesn't want to lose money working for the builder, right? So you got to, it's a real challenge to get all these stakeholders on board, understanding the value proposition. And then once you got that, you still have to teach everyone and

do the change management necessary to get those organizations to make change across their organization. is painfully slow. It's like, like I said, pushing a car where you're pushing, pushing, pushing, and it doesn't move. And you think, oh my God, this thing is never gonna move. And then all of a sudden it cracks and the wheel just spins ever, you know, just moves an inch. And then another.

Gordon Sheppard (14:06.669)
Well, that's super well said and don't we have the right person in this story? Because now we're not just deploying inventor skills or management skills, we're back to your university teaching skills. You know what mean? You're managing not only your product, but you're managing all the other aspects, including an emotional component. You know what mean? If I'm a builder and I've been doing it a certain way a long time, who are you and you're the new person and where do you make those connections in? Sophisticated kind of sales process. That leads us up to saying, okay,

So we got seven homes in 2015. We go through the peaks and the valleys. We're pushing the car. How many homes were you in in 2025 as an example?

James Keirstead (14:44.382)
Up to 2025, we probably hit about 5,000 homes now.

Gordon Sheppard (14:50.381)
Okay, so you got the 5,000 homes and that kind of brings us up to date in the story. And how lucky again, thank you for that thorough explanation. I'm sure there's way more to it in terms of it, but we've got the Energizer Bunny. You're doing your thing. You got this far. You're pushing the car. It's 2025. And that leads us to this moment in the interview, which is to say, okay, if you had to pick a win or tell us about a win in this story, that, we're going to pick one because we've heard a lot of the whole story, but let's pick one and kind of focus on it and talk about it.

James Keirstead (14:54.925)
Yeah.

Yeah.

James Keirstead (15:16.91)
Yeah. So the biggest win, which I'm excited to share with you happened not too long ago, just in April here and was just announced about a week ago. We brought on investment from Pulte Group. They're the third largest builder in the United States. They built about 31,000 homes last year alone. They do annually about

$17, $18 billion. They're massive. So A, partnering with an organization that big is both exciting and scary all at the same time. And then B, you find out that for them to get on board is such a testament to the whole thing because the change management in that organization, they have 29 divisions.

each division operates kind of autonomously for the most part. I would say they're most big builders like that. They're loosely decentralized organizations. So they have a central core leadership team, but a lot of the day-to-day operational decisions have to get down to the divisional level, right? So we now...

have to start rolling out and convincing all these divisions. The fact that we have a partnership with corporate, that corporate is supporting it, does help a lot. Doesn't change the fact that we still gotta get their contractors on board. We still have to build all the change management skillset and change through every single division we start with. And so this year, our goal is to roll out in six divisions.

of those 29 divisions. We're starting off in New Mexico, then we're moving into Arizona, two divisions in Arizona, Tennessee, Orlando, and then out into the rest of Florida, Texas and Nevada.

Gordon Sheppard (17:30.254)
Wow, so I mean, you're pushing the car and you have that moment where the car kind of pushed forward, you know, when you lose your footing for a second, because you actually got some momentum for a second, but then the car didn't roll easily, you're now still, but it's a big validation point that the win is. Massive, right? Because you've got this third largest in the United States in terms of in that market. They're into what you're doing from the corporate level, a massive, massive win. And again, we could talk more about the details. What I want to do is get into what I call the anatomy of a win now.

James Keirstead (17:35.971)
Yeah.

James Keirstead (17:40.822)
Now...

is huge. Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (17:59.736)
which is where we actually break down the strategy, work plan, people, operations, and results behind the win. So if the win is we got the agreement, MOU, whatever it's called, the... We got actual investment from them. So dollars, like the, yeah, right.

James Keirstead (18:02.787)
Yeah.

James Keirstead (18:11.521)
Actual investment.

Yeah, that was the interesting thing about it. They not only wanted to start rolling out with us in their divisions, they also wanted to place a strategic investment in Levven. It's not a significant sum of money, but enough that they can see some upside. And we tied the whole thing to some success along the way. they can actually get them what's called warrants and they can actually

increase their share in 11 by bringing us more business. Why is that important? Because it's more business, more doors, more houses that actually tests out our capacity, our processes, our systems and helps us really scale. So that's why we've been doing that way. you know, our strategy all along has really been stay focused. Our focus is

How do we drive switching to make it more affordable, easier, and more sustainable? And we have never moved off of that. Everything we do is about solving that problem. And even the new products that we're coming out with are designed to actually reduce the amount of cost per home for the builder. Why? Because the better we do that job, the better attachment we get.

And the more attachment we get, the more homeowners get the benefit of having a wholly integrated smart home in an everyday home.

Gordon Sheppard (19:52.332)
Isn't that the entrepreneurial journey, and I saw your marketing representative from your company one time throw up an ideation map of how much work you've put in behind the scenes to get to that value proposition. Because if the value proposition at the front end is like, we're just going have a wireless switch and it's going to be easy. You actually have drilled it into saying, no, no, no. The home builder is our target customer in a sense.

James Keirstead (20:00.674)
Mm-hmm.

James Keirstead (20:04.099)
Yeah.

James Keirstead (20:17.378)
What's the problem we're solving for them? They don't care about our technology. Right today, they compare us to a wired switch and they price us against a wired switch. So for them, they truly do not see value in the technology itself. They actually only see, can I save less through hole penetrations, less wall penetrations? Can I have less warranty issues and rework issues?

Can I get my crews through that home faster? And can I do it at a similar cost? That's what they care about. If I can also have this smart technology that the homeowner gets a better experience for, then I'm interested. But that's not what's signing me up. Does that make sense?

Gordon Sheppard (21:10.241)
I love it. you've, you found the real problem and you're solving, but you're solving the real problem. you're at 5,000 homes, you're solving it. Like you're actually getting in there and making that happen. And now you've got this next step of validation, which really speaks to scaling. So that strategy of getting there and you don't arrive at that strategy in the first year, I don't think you've, this has been sort of the iterative pushing the car all the way along with those fits and starts. And you've gotten to this moment where you got this big win. know the strategy. Every strategy needs a work plan to execute.

James Keirstead (21:38.988)
Yeah. Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (21:39.533)
So if you're going to get to this investment, there are highlights along the way. We've heard some of them. We invented it in 2015. We started, got it out and deployed. Any highlights on the work plan that you'd like to point out for this journey?

James Keirstead (21:51.618)
Yeah, I'd say so firstly, we are not a new startup. So we've been out in the market. We've been proving out our technology. We've been learning about how we can actually help builders and contractors on board and train their teams and manage the change that we're bringing because it is while we look at it from the outside in, it looks like a small change for them. It's a big change. And then with

we spent time, we really focused on building relationships at the divisional level, getting out with the crews so that we could actually quantify and show them where the value was actually happening. Then we piloted in a select regions to prove out that we could install faster at lower costs and create a better home experience. And at the same time, we worked internally

to make sure that our product, our processes, our team was ready to scale. We really follow what you would call a land and expand approach. We go in, we get a division, we get it rolling right, we manage the growth, we get the people trained, we turn them into advocates, and then we ask them, hey, can we now move to your other divisions? And we're doing that with other great Canadian builders like Matamie Homes, Minto Homes.

Brookfield Homes, big players that exactly the same way we started in one division and now we're starting to press out into other divisions.

Gordon Sheppard (23:27.029)
I love it because what I'm hearing from your first story at Arctic Spa is vertical integration. There's not sort of an area of all the touch points where you've got your focus, but you're also then getting after the pieces that support that focus and are helping everybody to win, helping your internals to win, helping the people at the other end to win. Funny enough, the people in the homes are winning down the road, but that's actually not the main point in terms of where you had to prove out.

James Keirstead (23:32.045)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (23:52.429)
you know, getting into the marketplace. I love it. So we've got our strategy, we've got our work plan and those highlights along the way. This idea of, again, we've got the Energizer Bunny with all of your skill sets. You're bringing these decades of experience to this on the leadership side to know all the things you need to go after, because you've got that instinct as well as the integrator. It gets us into the people part of what the anatomy of a win is. So if we had to describe the key players and their attitudes in getting this win to happen, who would you talk about and how would you describe their attitudes?

James Keirstead (24:22.734)
Well, okay, so first thing, this is not me. Like I get the benefit of being the leader of the team, right? I try to keep us focused on what's important for us to deliver the value that our customer expects. But we have sales, we have engineering, we have marketing, we have operations, we have customer experience. Every single part of our, and we have manufacturing, because we manufacture the goods right here in Emerson, right? So literally we have every

part of our team has to come together and understand very clearly what's their role in this, right? How do we prove that it's not just our technology, but that we actually understand what the builder is going to go through and we've got systems and processes and executable tasks in place so that we can deliver to them consistently. And then

At the ground level on our sales team, we have people that have to be able to go into the field, that have to be able to work with electrical contractors, show them how the wiring is different, right? We spend a ton of time with Pulte's divisional leaders and not just their corporate. For a partnership like this to work, it has to be real on the job sites, not just.

Gordon Sheppard (25:42.677)
And when we talk about the attitude, because you keep, change management's come up over and over and over again, right? So attitudes are going from one state to another, from in some cases resistance to acceptance, right? There's some of those things. And there's something on your end from a push point of view where you've got to be hyper enthusiastic for everybody. I know it works. I'm going to have the patience to demonstrate this.

James Keirstead (25:48.717)
Yeah.

James Keirstead (25:56.728)
Yeah. yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (26:08.924)
over and over again. How would you describe again, just to give me an example from somebody from your team about what it takes on the attitude side to get that, to get over the finish line, and then what you're seeing transformationally on the other end, getting paid off.

James Keirstead (26:20.888)
Yeah, so, you know, our team has to really believe and love and be committed to the change that we're bringing to the industry. It can't be, I'm just selling a wireless switch. Because actually at the end of the day, that's the easiest part. Making the product and delivering the product to the customer, actually the easiest part of this whole thing, getting them all on board.

You'd be stunned at how many times we have to go back to their sales team and retrain the sales team just because they've had turnover in their organization or they not everyone saw our technology. So how do we help them understand what they got to do? How do we look at the attachment rates for the for the homeowner? How many customers actually turn the system on? And then we work with the builder and we go, OK, here's what the attachment rate looks like. How might we?

improve that and then we have to come back with whole suggestions and plans on how they can do that. So it takes people that are really focused and committed to the actual outcome that we're looking for, which is this change in that industry. It is so much more than just the technology.

Gordon Sheppard (27:35.671)
So much more, and you can hear what it takes again. I love the pushing the car thing. You said it's not just you pushing the car. We got a big gang from Levven that's pushing the car. There's lots of people. Some people push at different times. And then on the adoption thing, this win is proving it out. It's proving out, you know what I mean? You hit that corporate thing, you you pulled off, you checked all these boxes to get in the door. So with strategy work plan people, we get into operationally describing some of the operational highlights along the way. So.

Funny enough, the invention part and the building part, you kind of got it down. And then you've actually got some elements in there where you know how to manage people and process. There's something about hitting regulatory and advocacy and whatever it took to get in there. Any highlights that you'd to point out operationally that gets this wind to occur?

James Keirstead (28:19.086)
Um, I would say probably the biggest highlight is the iteration process we've gone through in the sales and onboarding side of this whole thing. You know, um, in November of 2023, our pipeline, our sales pipeline was like 3 million in potential opportunities.

Our pipeline today sits at about 54 million in regional opportunities. And that doesn't include what those national builders could bring in all their other regions. So our sales and marketing team have done a really admirable job of getting us out, socializing us in an industry that does not typically like change.

and helped us gain the confidence of builders and contractors over this time so that now that we're in a position where we're really ready to scale on all the operational stuff, like our product, it's simple, it's reliable, it's ready to scale. Our supply chain and manufacturing have been locked down and we have plans for how that growth is going to get managed, right? But that's the hard part.

While we've done an admirable job, we still to this day are finding catch points, areas where we get stuck in the sales process, where things don't move forward in the fashion that we'd like it to. And the great thing about our team is that they take that back. We look at it. We analyze, what are we doing wrong? Where's the message not hitting? How can we add to that? Who do we need to talk to to help them understand this?

And, you know, what, obviously it helps when you get a big win like this, cause that gives validation and helps other builders that you've been talking to realize, okay, this might not be as risky as I thought. Maybe we can take a chance.

Gordon Sheppard (30:31.731)
I love it. And I'm just going to pick up on iterative. There's not an area of your business that you're describing where you're not having the entrepreneurial long-term patience to be iterative. You know what I mean? There's an iterative element to this that where there's a discipline in it because it wouldn't be hard to just sort of throw your hands up in the air at so many moments along the way here, but there's something persistent in you and your gang in that iterative way. Is that fair?

James Keirstead (30:44.014)
Correct.

James Keirstead (30:50.594)
Yeah, I like your word.

James Keirstead (30:57.794)
Yeah, I like your word discipline. If I could leave any entrepreneur in the tech space with a couple of things that they need to really keep in mind at all times. One is, you know, be resilient because it is going to be a long hard journey. The one who lasts the longest typically is the one who ends up succeeding.

It's not necessarily the smartest or the best technology. It's the one that understand really stays focused on understanding and has the discipline to stay focused on the problem that that customer has not on the next great thing that your technology could do. Because if it doesn't add value, you're wasting your money. I'll give you a perfect example. Our next controller coming out, it's a dual output controller. It's

only about 25 % bigger than a single output controller, but it will now operate two lighting outputs. Why is that important? Well, we can drive less devices into the home, which means less costs for the builder. Well, that's a value proposition the builder can get behind. If we can solve that problem, we've just reduced significant costs to the builder and

more adoption available for us.

Gordon Sheppard (32:24.969)
I love it. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. so that discipline piece has been there all the way long. Shiny objects for inventors is such an easy... We could do... We could put these in planes. We could put... You know what I mean? Like all that kind of thing. It'll be so cool.

James Keirstead (32:33.228)
It's.

James Keirstead (32:37.058)
We could use AI, right? We could use AI and you're like, yeah, AI is great, but these people don't have an understanding of even what the basics of home automation can do. Why are we spending time trying to solve a problem that isn't a big problem yet? Let's solve the problem, which is how do we get it into every home? Because once we got it into every home, then we can apply new ideas and new technology.

and really start to create more and more benefits for the homeowner.

Gordon Sheppard (33:10.251)
And these, and this thing of it's 2015, we invented a cool thing. It just take two years, we'll be up and we'll be a hundred million dollar company. It takes 10, it takes 10 years, right? And you've done this a couple of times, right? In terms of how this has gone. So you've got the chops to know about the been there, done that, all those up and down moments and what it takes to kind of be in this thing. said strategy, work plan, people, operations. Finally, there's results, qualitative and quantitative. So quantitative results. One of them is this company invested in your company.

James Keirstead (33:17.23)
No.

James Keirstead (33:33.836)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (33:40.367)
So that is a quantitative number thing. It's not that reveal the numbers, they made that investment. They showed that level of commitment. What sort of again qualitative and quantitative results do you like to measure for this win?

James Keirstead (33:52.972)
Yeah. So, I mean, obviously we're seeing sales pick up. We're seeing more product being built in our plant. We're seeing our new products get released and the attachment on them has been really, really great. The feedback has been amazing. So those are great results for us as an organization. We're also seeing some things, Gord, which you might not expect, which are results.

that are both good and bad. And by that I mean, for example, we have older equipment. We're doing more work with that equipment. Our equipment's breaking down. It's creating production challenges that we hadn't anticipated. And we have it in our work plan to buy new equipment that will increase our capacity, that will reduce our downtime. But we're also a startup. We gotta manage cash flow, you know?

So it's a great result that creates a new problem for us.

Gordon Sheppard (34:56.693)
And you're taking me back to my NBA hockey sticks. You know what I mean? There's those little S curves. There's that S and then you're like, push the car, push the car. we plateaued. This is, wait a second. Now we're gonna go on that next one. And we could do it by dollars, whatever, X number of millions. When we talk about single digit millions and then we're into tens of millions, which you've been there before, you understand that. And then what's interesting is this has got that kind of like sniffing around, you know, five and 10 years out around those hundreds, I would think, in possibility anyway.

James Keirstead (35:00.118)
Yeah.

James Keirstead (35:08.61)
Yeah.

James Keirstead (35:21.966)
Yeah. Yeah. mean, uh, uh, last year we were 4.8 million this year. did. We just finished out the year end of May 7.5. You know, I have very good visibility to 12 next year and you know, consistently now I can see where that is coming, but you're absolutely right.

For those people who think that that y to the x exponential growth curve looks nice and linear, nice and smooth like that, it isn't. It is as bumpy as it gets. You think you're hitting the inflection point and the next month you're like, what happened? Where'd all the orders go?

Gordon Sheppard (36:03.208)
What happened, right? my goodness. And what's fun is you're still smiling. Dan McDonald was on. Dan runs Biz Safety Software at Assured Park in the Edmonton region. 20 year overnight success story is how I would describe it. It took them 10 years to get the product market fit. In those first couple of years, Dan said, we were paying our mortgage with our mortgage, right? And so as they went, they deliver safety software. They're now cresting 20 million.

James Keirstead (36:08.366)
Yeah.

James Keirstead (36:17.133)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (36:29.586)
and they're delivering 30 to 40,000 course downloads a week. So, but those early days are him and a couple other people, they talked about that first Christmas party when they made a hundred grand that year or whatever it was, right?

James Keirstead (36:40.578)
Yeah, and it's so hard. You're trying to plan, but you cannot see consistent things happening that allow you to forecast into the future. it makes it, you live in this level of uncertainty. And that can be the thing that breaks us down as entrepreneurs the most. The longer we're at it, where we're uncertain, it gets hard. It gets tiring and frustrating.

When something like this happens, it's massive validation. And that validation carries over into other customers. They're like, yeah, we've been doing great with you guys. Now let's move on to another division. The fact that Pulte has come along and validated that you guys are the real deal, we have more confidence than we did before. And I would say that's probably the biggest outcome of this whole thing is that it's helped.

helping the industry realize we're the real deal. We offer real value and it will be a real game changer for those who bring it on.

Gordon Sheppard (37:48.651)
I love it. And again, so many good things in there. Talking about little validation steps for my little podcast, which started in January, 2025. It just won a Quill podcast award for best new podcast this year. And Quill podcast is a legitimate thing. If you check it out, they're backed up. And I was like, oh my goodness, a little moment where you think, hey, I'm doing these interviews and how's it going? Another little one for me on the podcast was a fellow runs a VC locally.

James Keirstead (38:03.758)
Fantastic. Congratulations.

Gordon Sheppard (38:14.772)
came and said, hey, thanks for the podcast. I listened to half of episode two and now I do wellness check-ins with my team. I'm like, what? That's because he listened to Karen Unland, a wonderful entrepreneur in the Edmonton area and she talked about doing wellness check-ins with her team. And so then this podcast changed behavior and isn't that lucky to be in your trench doing your thing. And you know, here I'm putting these things out there but they are actually making an impact and making a difference. So you've got this huge validation. Congratulations on your win.

Just because I've got you and we're just lucky with all those different ways that you encourage leaders as What sort of final thought can you leave us with that a leader entrepreneur can take away? You've given us so many that you know, they can actually take away from you now and just a bit of wisdom

James Keirstead (39:00.044)
If you really spend the time quantifying and validating your value proposition with your customer, their words, not yours, and you understand that it brings them value, don't stop. Don't give up. Keep going. Look for a different way if the way you're doing it isn't working. Be resilient because you

If it's right, you will get the break. It will happen. We make our success happen. We make that luck happen. You know what I mean? That's what I would.

Gordon Sheppard (39:38.846)
That's super well said and funnily enough, just interviewed, the episode's not up yet, I interviewed Cheryl Watson from Junior Achievement. in terms of supply chain for entrepreneurs, they really tackle those folks that are in the high school level and they encourage them with a ton of programming. But she talked about a deficit of entrepreneurs in Canada. And what you're talking about is encouraging an entrepreneur about how to get it done.

And again, you've done so much encouragement out in the community. Congrats on your big win. We could talk on and on and on, but I just want to say thank you so much for coming on the show.

James Keirstead (40:12.952)
Thanks for having me, Gord. This was great.