Two Life Changing Exits in 14 Months | Peter Hwang, S3E6

Peter Hwang spent 28 years building six companies across six completely different industries. He survived the 2008 financial crisis, which wiped out a near-IPO a month before closing and left him with $3M in debt and a wife six months pregnant with their third child. He rebuilt from that. Then built again.

In 2018 and 2019, two of his companies sold within 14 months of each other, an 8-figure and a 9-figure exit. He was 45. Technically retired, but then everything stopped.

In this episode, Peter and I get into what was  driving him through 28 years of building, the fear, the proving, the  scarcity model he carried his whole life without naming it. We talk about what it felt like when the emails stopped and the urgency disappeared, why achieving everything he worked for left him feeling lonely and depressed, and how he eventually found his way back to building for a completely different reason.

We also get into what separates founders who make it from those who get stuck, how his passion and purpose shifted across three distinct chapters of his life, and what his dad said when Peter finally gave him the one thing he actually wanted.

This is a conversation about what happens when the outcome arrives and it doesn't feel the way you thought it would. If you've ever felt like you were chasing an external feeling of success and needed to rediscover your internal purpose, this one's for you.

_______

(01:25) Growing up watching his parents' Baskin-Robbins
(04:47) Why he knew he had to work for himself
(06:07) What actually drove his early ambition
(07:42) Starting Extreme Pita and his first exit at 24
(10:43) Why he keeps building in completely different industries
(12:53) Enwise: the near-IPO that collapsed in 2008
(15:03) The email that changed everything
(16:22) Who showed up when things fell apart
(18:28) What Cindy said when he told her
(20:32) What kept him going through two years of rebuilding
(23:37) How Enwise led directly to Globalfaces
(24:09) Running two companies simultaneously for seven years
(32:01) What separates founders who make it from those who get stuck
(37:07) Two exits in 14 months and the arrival fallacy
(39:53) From 100 emails a day to three
(41:52) How he found his way back to purpose
(45:07) How passion and purpose shifted across three chapters
(46:18) What his dad actually wanted
(47:40) How building businesses built him as a person
(53:47) What he hopes his kids take from watching him

Show notes:

• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. 

Connect with our host:

• Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Our guest today is Peter Huang, a serial entrepreneur who's built six companies over twenty-eight years across six completely different industries. His third company, NWISE, nearly went public in 2008 before the financial crisis, which led to their financing getting polled a month before closing. He was left with three million dollars in debt, a double mortgage house, and a wife six months pregnant with their third child. He rebuilt from that and worked on two companies simultaneously for seven years, Global Faces and New Strike. Those two companies sold within 14 months of each other. An eight-figure and nine-figure exit. He was 45. But then everything stopped. The urgency, the purpose, the identity he built around solving problems. What followed was one of the loneliest and most disorienting periods of his life. In this episode, we get into what was driving him through all of it. Why achieving everything he worked for still left him feeling empty and why he came back to build again. If you've ever felt like you were chasing an external feeling of success and needed to rediscover your internal purpose, this one's for you. Welcome to another episode of Profit Led. I'm your host, Melissa Kwan, co-founder of eWebinar. This season, we're exploring the intersection of passion, profit, and purpose, and how those things change as founders evolve and come into financial success. Let's get started. Hey, Peter, you grew up watching your parents run Baskin Robins every single day, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week for almost 30 years. And you've said that they created security for the family, but the business owned their time and their lives. And even as a teenager, you knew that you didn't want that. So thinking back to those days, what did success look like for you? Like, did you have an ultimate career goal in your teens?

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Yeah, I think if I if I kind of stem it back from like where my background came from, it was like my parents, it's a typical first-generation immigrant story. Like they came, my parents came from Korea with nothing. They were both educated, actually. They both had university education. They can transfer that education here to Canada. And if there's no gig work or there's no Ubers or where you can actually like work to re-educate yourself. So they literally settled. They did the whole like they bought your very typical Korean story. They bought a convenience store. They did that for a few years. My dad worked in a warehouse for a while. And then they end up buying a Basket Robins, which is another. It's a very typical kind of Korean buy yourself a job story. And then, but it's the level of security that they were getting for their family. And it's funny because I remember, like I always think about this day, but I remember there's this like entire franchisee kind of map, and then in part of the map they have part of with Basketball Robinson, they had everyone that was the new franchisees and existing franchisees. And I remember my dad was the only one that had like a full suit on in the picture. And it was like it was almost like the proudest moment he had because he just bought the franchise. And I remember that was a that was for him is like he found security and he found like a way to protect his family and provide security for his family. And then I still I don't know where that picture is, I wish I had it, but I just remember that so clearly and vividly because over the like a span of the 25-year period, you saw the life get sucked out of him a little bit, where that entire like sense of pride and sense of ownership and sense of just turned into like him being tired and him being resentful and him feeling like just what I do with my life because it was just exhausting, and I saw it every single day. They just worked the entire premise of like you work to live, live to work, kind of applied for my parents, right? And my my dad specifically. So I had a conversation with him in regards to like I don't think as a matter of regret, but I think he just felt like he was just very tired and very just like exhausted when he ended up installing the business. And he's like, I thank God, I think that was a really pretty hard existence. And I had a good conversation with him because I'm like, I think you don't really realize the sacrifice that you made because you basically your everything you did was kind of setting yourself up, us up for obviously having a much easier life. But more specifically, the next generation, which is our kids, they never have to worry again, right? So it was a lot of kind of what they sacrificed, I think in the in the moment it was really hard for them. And they didn't realize that you know what they did was set themselves up or set us up for having a really good life, but setting my kids up for having a really, really good life. But yeah, they didn't really realize at the time. So I just remember, you know, many times just feeling sorry for them and then feeling like our life was always like one of like we said to work really, really hard. And I saw my parents like kind of struggle and they weren't overly happy all the time. So yeah, it was kind of like just you know, feeling like working for yourself wasn't all that it was cracked up to be until you actually found a way to actually not feel like you're working for someone else, like working for the bigger franchise or another person. So that's why the independence from an entrepreneurship perspective, if I was gonna work for anybody, it was really gonna be for myself.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

So your idea of success back then was still having a business, but for yourself.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Yeah, it's funny because if I look at kind of my sister's path, like my two, I have two older sisters. My oldest sister is an academic, she took the entire like very academia route, she did her NDA, a PhD, and then my middle sister was took the very corporate route. So she worked in retail her entire life and then slowly but surely kind of went up the ranks, and now she's been present C level at multiple different large organizations, and she's now the head of retail at Samsung. I took a very entrepreneurial route. So all of us kind of have a very clear path of like kind of the direction that we wanted to take, but all of us I think wanted to just make sure that we're more just we want to succeed. We just want to make sure that our parents' sacrifice was never gonna be lost, you know. So I think for us it's like we just had to work harder than anybody else. So I wouldn't even think say it was more entrepreneurial that I had in my back of my mind that I was gonna be an entrepreneur from day one. I just knew that I had to work really, really hard to make sure that my parents' sacrifice didn't go wasted. So that was always in the back of my mind.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Would you say that was the one thing driving the ambition in you? Because you started hustling pretty early, it seems like from from what I've heard on your podcast and from what I've read.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Yeah, it it admittedly it was probably like money was the first thing that drove me. And I wouldn't say money, money so much in terms of the materialistic side of money. It was far more the fact that, like I said, I saw the life that my parents had, and look, I shouldn't say that my parents, we had that life too. Like it's it's kind of becomes a family affair when you when you want a franchise, right? Like I work there, my sister, both my sisters work there. So like it's a consistent kind of like you're always working in the business and working for the business, and it's all consuming. So I think the concept that I always had was like, if I wanted some level of freedom, it always had to be tied to making enough money to have freedom. But then it really got to the point where I didn't feel like I wanted to actually be a yeah, like I had to be accountable to anyone, right? So that's where, and I just remember I remember even moments in time with my parents, like just the struggle that they had, not only from a financial perspective of like just paying bills and just working their ass off, but it was like also just working in a retail hospitality environment where they're servicing people all the time. And honestly, this was back in the 70s, right? So being a minority in the 70s in Canada, servicing people, there was a lot of like really kind of negative stuff that was being thrown their way. So for them, it's like I saw all of that. So I think from the perspective of many different things, it was almost like I had to build up my own kind of psyche and own career to say, okay, I'm gonna make sure I get outside of that, not only on the monetary side, but just on the independent side and the feeling that I actually made it, right? And that can be accepted. So like it was a combination of everything, but yeah, it kind of all stemmed from kind of seeing what my parents went through, you know, growing up.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

And you started Extreme PETA, I guess, either in university or like shortly out of, but you had your first exit at 24, right? So what did having an exit at such an early age do to you? Like most people aren't even thinking about money or businesses at that age.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Yeah, I think I think the entrepreneurial journey is funny, though, right? Like when you start off that young, you don't think of it as I'm gonna have an exit. I think you're thinking of it as in you're just like curious and you're kind of dumb as well. Like we just did, we did we did stuff where I remember at that time, like I started multiple different like stupid little ventures in high school. And when I went to university, I played football at university, and I went to university primarily, you know, to basically play football, but also get a network and stuff. And I always had in my mind that I was gonna be, you know, have an entrepreneurial kind of background or I was gonna do something entrepreneurial. So when I graduated at school, it was funny, I actually had my last year at university was my fifth year, where you should go back and play football, but I decided to forego that because I won I knew I had a really close connection, like network at the university. So I'm like, I want to open up a franchise. So we opened up the extreme PETA franchise there, and it just worked really well because I had my entire close net community that just came and supported us and networked and supported us. So that was probably the best smartest decision decision I ever made because like we just saw this ramp up of like everyone supporting supporting us, and now we've built this network effect around this PETA franchise. So once we had one, we opened two others shortly thereafter, and then it became this like really kind of you know, we were young, naive at the time. It was like at that point, it was like five young kids that really didn't know anything. We didn't have a shareholder agreement. I was on the direct like incorporation docs of the two other brothers, they were my high school buddies, and but there was nothing formal about it, right? So I think at that point we weren't really thinking about the formalities of it, we were just thinking, hey, this would really be really cool to start a business. And then everything happened really fast. So yeah, so a year and a half, not even two years, like end up getting an offer from the two brothers because we got a franchise development company that came in and they said, listen, you know, we want to buy out some of the partners. I was one of the partners that ended up buying out. And like I said, at that point I was 24. It was wasn't a ton of money. I think it was like 50,000, but it was like my first exit, and it was like a king's ransom at the time. Because, you know, not having any money to having 50,000 bucks, it was a pretty cool thing, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:02

I mean, that's huge. 24-year-old, like people have like a thousand dollars in their account, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Absolutely, yeah, for sure. And it was funny because at that time I was I was actually working my first job at a school with C ABC Finance. So I worked as a sales rep for C ABC Finance, so it was like moonlighting at the time. So I was still at CABC when when literally I was doing Extreme PETA Thursday, Friday, Saturday night until 3 a.m. in the morning. And then I and then I sold it, and then I was like, okay, I'm still working at C ABC and I have an exit, right? It was just a really cool thing at the time, but it wasn't cool to the extent of like, hey, I was always planning on making money and having my first exit really quickly. It was just really cool that we we achieved that accomplishment, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:43

And most founders I know stick with one industry, one type of business. You've built companies in food, finance, energy, tech, you know, charity, cannabis, and now like supply chain, food, grocery, like all of these are different worlds. What would you say it is about you that makes it possible for you to pick up something new each time and just make it work?

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Honestly, it's and it's funny you ask the question because I've had this in many other podcasts and interviews and just like kind of mentorship meetings I've had with people where they always ask the same question, which is like you don't usually a lot of entrepreneurs, when they have an exit, they kind of they go to the next startup, they they kind of forego like a two-year non-compete clause and they go with the exact same industry and just repeat it over and over again. I've never really been motivated by like I said, I've never been motivated by money. I've been far more motivated by just like being very curious and solving big problems. So and then ultimately I think money and success kind of is a subset of that, if you have the ability to figure it out. So for me, it was always something that just came up where I'm like, okay, this is a cool problem to solve. And I think I've just been in my early days, I was actually really, like I mentioned, I was like kind of naive and dumb, where I'm just like, you know, for me I was like, I was very courageous to the extent that I didn't know any better. So I would just do things, it's trying it out, and then as my as my kind of knowledge and you know, you learn from the last mistake you're learning from the last company, you just try new things, right? And then you kind of build a continue to build a framework around it. So yeah, it's a kind of a it's like it's cliche, but it's it's absolutely true. You learn from your mistakes, and then your first startup and your exit is always gonna be small, but then you kind of build on top of it, on top of it and top of it. And then obviously my last two exits in 2018-2019 were like life-changing exits, right? But that's because I kind of built a lot of frameworks. So yeah, like for me, it's like starting off in terms of entrepreneurship was always about curiosity and kind of building things and just not being too worried about the end result, as long as I had the ability to figure, okay, how do I actually commercialize this and make this work? So yeah, I've always kind of been more curious about solving problems than I have been about making money or just doing something repetitively.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

So NWISE was your third company, right? You had grown it to 15,000 customers, like 50 million in revenue, you had a signed term sheet, you're gonna go public. And then 2008 hit, you know, financing was pulled a month before closing. You were very public about that. Basically, overnight, you're left with millions of dollars in debt, double mortgaged house, friends and family in the business, a wife that's six months pregnant with your third child. I mean, can you share more about how that period changed you?

SPEAKER_00 13:24

Yeah, I think it changed me in multiple different ways. Like at the end of the day, I think that's probably admittedly, the first two companies I started, and there's two exits I had, they're just bottom-up build operational businesses. They weren't big or they weren't big visions in scope. Like both of them were really good exits and they're great, almost like lifestyle businesses. But when I went down the N-Wise route, it was like on the end of the whole premise of like I knew there was a big market here to tackle. It was the first kind of a kind of top-down analysis where I was looking at addressable markets. I'm like, this could be a huge opportunity. So I took the approach of like, I gotta raise money, I gotta hire a ton of people, we gotta grow quickly, because we actually built the model on the premise of like there was a big eco-energy, like a government grant rebate program that I guess at launch, and we were the first ones that actually built a company around it. So there's rebates and energy grants that were given to the household if you retrofit their equipment. So I've built an entire model so fast around that. And like I said, over a two-year period, we we grew up to 15,000 customers, 15 million in top line revenue. And it was just a it was a good business. Mind you, we bought the business because we were growing so fast and we raised some money to do that. And it's so funny, you feel like you feel like indestructible to a certain extent. Like, and I all I knew previously was success, right? So for me, it was like you feel like this trajectory that's happening, and it's like everything's kind of going a different the upward route. And then all of a sudden, like I said, a material event happens. And I talk about this in multiple different kind of teachings I have even with my podcasts I've done before in Substacks and kind of learn teachings I have, which I always talk about the four determinants of success, but you realize like market timing can really screw you up, really, like in a very, very quick way if you don't see it coming. So for me, it's like I felt indestructible at the time, and all of a sudden 2008 hits, and I get this email, it was from our investment bank that basically said, like, listen, as per clause 14.c, is like act of God clause, or was like something like financial crisis, like we're pulling the term sheet. So it was like five million bucks we had as financing that got pulled immediately. And at that point, we were just left with debt. And at that point, like I was so confident because we had such a high trajectory of the business. I I went deep into the business, I double mortgaged my house, I was one of the lead investors in the previous round. So it was like everything was like on this whole like fearless moment because you I guess I felt like I was indestructible, and all of a sudden it just gets pulled immediately. So that was probably the most, again, it was the most difficult time in my career by far. Like, not only personally, like professionally, but personally, because everything I was thinking about was like it almost I saw the afters of the success that was gonna happen when we went public, and then it just got pulled. So again, very cliche, but it's like it's you realize really quickly the type of person you are in the worst of times when a couple things happen, when obviously a material event like that happens, but also when you're going through the aftermath of it and you realize, okay, who are the people that are closest to you that are your tribe, so to speak, that are most loyal to you and they just care about you. And I remember I'm not gonna name names, I'm gonna like this a very specific kind of story I always tell people that it's always the loneliest period when things are on the downfall or things get become struggle, become a struggle, because when when everything's going amazing, like you have co-founders or people that want to be part of the company or people that saying, Hey, I was early, I was one of the early employees of the company. They always want to be the first person to say, Hey, I was part of this. But the second something goes wrong, it's like they're the first ones jumping off the ship, right? And if you're the founder that's left standing, you just got to figure out how to compartmentalize that and deal with it, right? So, and I was dealing with it in a very difficult way because I had all of friends, I had colleagues, I had co-founders that basically just said, like, listen, like I can't be part of this anymore. So you realize pretty quickly who your friends are. And there's a really kind of you know funny story I have, and it's kind of a sad story, but it's funny. I had like two really good friends. One was I think he invested like $15,000 in the business right before it went public. And I was all I was almost letting him in because it was kind of late stage, you know, in terms of investment. But I'm like, hey, come on in for no problem, because it's you know it'll be good for you and a good opportunity. And then I had another friend that was a plumber, one of my best friends still to this day, he invested like $50,000. He didn't have that money to invest in, but he just believed in me at the time. And when both when the actual deal got terminated, the individual that invested $15,000, to be clear, he was like he was in the financial services industry, he was actually way more well off than a friend that was a plumber. He would pipe on me with questions saying, What could you have done differently? This doesn't make sense. Like, why, like, what'd you do wrong? Whereas my best friend who's a plumber basically just said, look, listen, I saw how hard you were working, and I see how hard you're working right now, see how stressful it is. Don't worry about it. Like, at the end of the day, it is what it is. Like, you know, I trust you, like you'll we'll figure it out. So it's that moment of clarity that you have to answer your question where it's like you just realize who your people are and who your friends are and who you actually need around you to support you in the bad times. And the biggest thing was my wife. Like, like she was six months pregnant at the time. When I told her that this was happening, uh, her first response was, and this is after a few hours of just having a lot of kind of sober, very emotional conversation. Her first response to me was basically listen, like Pete, we've been through everything together, we came up with nothing. If we have to start over again, we'll be okay. So that almost kind of gave me the clarity of like, okay, it's okay for us to keep going and uh we'll make it work somehow. But that's the whole thing. Like, if you don't have that support unit and and those individuals around you, it can be a really, really lonely and tough place. And honestly, I probably wouldn't have started my fourth, fifth, and now sixth company if I didn't have you know that level of support, especially for my wife, Cindy.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Honestly, I heard that as I was doing my research for for this podcast on another one. And I gotta say, it like made me tear up a bit. Like those are really important moments, right? And I've actually over the years seen unsupportive partners break businesses because they just didn't understand why, you know, their partner had to, you know, go on a business trip instead of investing in something else in the home or like something really basic like that versus just being fully supportive as you know, Cindy is even in bad times. Right. And, you know, if you're not an entrepreneur, it's very, very difficult to understand the sacrifices that you have to go through. Right. It's like before I hit record, it's like me, me telling you where my dad never fully understood like why I had to go and start a business, not just go and work for somebody. And he would ask me the question straight up like, if you were good at what you do, why don't you have any money? Like, why aren't you successful? And it's the same thing from a partner, right? And it's something that like you have to deal with every day. So I I love that story. Thanks for sharing that. And actually, two years after the NYS thing happened, you were still rebuilding that company, right? Trying to re-rebuild it from nothing. And and you've said that what you take from failure will carve out your future. So I'm curious, like, what kept you going in those two years when things were bad? And how did that experience end up carving your future?

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Yeah, it's it's funny. They always talk about like a post-mortem period and it's very real. Like the PTSD that you get from like a failed business is very real. It's like losing like a loved one, right? In terms of like you've put your money, time, effort, your entire heart and soul into this. Everything you, your entire existence kind of goes into this business and all of a sudden just goes away, right? So I had to deal for about two years of trying to figure out what I was gonna do with myself. And the easiest thing I probably could have done was just shut down the business. But honestly, I'm I'm not wired, and there's a whole other conversation we can have, Melissa, around the entire like Asian scarcity model and the want to want to prove yourself and make sure like you can prove yourself that you're worth around the your peers, but more specifically to your family members, to your peers, to other people that doubted you. Like I had this mentality of like a fear of failure that I have, and fear of like people thinking that you know differently of me or feeling I might be a failure or I can't succeed on something. So that's why it's always ingrained in me to like push and work harder than anybody else. But it's funny, I remember that moment in time where the easiest thing I could have done was like just shut down the business. Because like it was a like I said, it was the financial crisis. Everyone knows about 2008, what happened, and it could have been easy for me just to shut it down and then just say, hey, like. I'll start over, get a job or do whatever the case might be. But something in me just said, like, listen, like, and it probably was that again, the age in seriously, like fear of like failure. I just said, I gotta keep going. I just got for it's in some way, shape, or that probably is gonna be a lesson here that I that I should be able to figure out that hopefully in some capacity will give me some level of like clarity and clairvoyant thought of like what I can take in in the future. And it's funny because I remember two years into the restructuring of the business, I learned how to become an operator. I restructured the business. I took the entire kind of sales channel from like a fixed cost model where we were paying tons for customer acquisition and ads and marketing, and I put it all turned into a variable cost model where we just had all sales agents and third-party kind of agencies that came on board. And it's funny, this kind of goes to the premise of like what you'll learn in your most difficult times will kind of carry forward you, and whether it's serendipity or it's just like sheer luck, or if it's just like part of the process. One of the agencies that I was working with when we were restructuring that were part of this kind of bearable cost kind of model that we're changing, turned out to be the agency that like ultimately, when we ultimately shut down the business, NWISE, they approached me a year later and said, Hey, Pete, I know we weren't very good at you know, as partners with NWISE, but I saw what you built there and I have an idea, and I really, we really need your help to come on board as a potential partner of ours. So again, it's it's a lot of this is like, if you think of it, there's no way I would have connected with those individuals because I wouldn't have known them if I didn't kind of gut it out through that that two-year span. So it's like really the learnings that you take ultimately can lead the path of like what can happen later on down the road. And to be honest, like I know we're gonna faster, I can probably talk about this, but Global Faces was by far my like, not by far, but it was one of my most successful exits in terms of from a liquidity standpoint, from how proud I was in terms of the rebuild of that, you know, what it did and how the impact it's created. But that wouldn't have never happened unless I kind of gutted it for those two years at NYS post.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

And while you were running Global Faces, you were also running another company called New Strike, right, at the same time. You you said you were traveling constantly, you never really stopped to celebrate any of it, there wasn't a way to turn your brain off. I'm curious, like, what was your passion for those businesses and what was your purpose that was driving you at the time? Like, where were you headed?

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Yeah, Global Faces was basically the comeback story, so to speak. And it was like the bottom-up build of like building something really big, really cool, but also just building something that like literally was from scratch again. So it was almost like the entire, like, so to speak resurrection of like, okay, I'm going to start this over again and improve to everyone. Okay, I can I can do this. So Global Faces was the coolest model because we built it with like four partners, having no money, just literally kind of grinding it out and kind of getting to that point when we built it up. I got involved in Newstrike, which is a cannabis company. I got involved in New Strike probably two years later in 2013, 2014 time frame, of which that was far more of like an a market opportunity because I saw that like very two very different businesses. Bullface was the bottom-up build. Newsrike was far more of a, hey, there is something that's happening in the cannabis sector where Canada is being the first federally legalized nation across globally that basically is legalizing cannabis. So we just it was a moment in time where we said, okay, let's jump on it. And we had to, you know, figure out how do we actually get a license. So we became early entrants into that market. And that was a pure play, like right place, right time. But that was that wasn't as operational as Global Faces. Global Face was like always operational, but New Strike was like you had to hit moments in time where you're okay, I'm got my application. I I we ended up building a facility, like it was a kind of a lower capex facility, but you had to build it, you have to do all these different things. But nothing was operational until one day when we realized, okay, we just got we got officially accepted with our license, and then all hell broke loose, in which we just we caught that moment and wave where we end up going public within a year period. We signed a sponsorship deal with Tragically Hip as our brand ambassadors and partners. We end up going public six months later, we ended up riding up to close to $700 million valuation, and we end up raising $170 million like just under a year later. So all of that happened so quickly because we caught a moment in time. Again, two very different businesses. Global Faces was still operating, but like Newswork was just like milestone, milestone, milestone, milestone. And then it was funny, the moment we raised you know that big round of financing, we had to do something with it, that's almost a parallel path of when you know I had some buyers that were looking, private equity that was looking at global faces. So the time was really perfect because they approached us saying, Hey, Pete, here's you know what we're thinking. And I was very open and transparent with them. I said, like, listen, like I I'm also partners in this cannabis business. So if I sell Global Faces, there is a lot, like a very, very strong chance that I want to make sure that there I found I find a CEO that replaced me immediately so I can go over to New Strike. And they agree to it. So it happened like almost like immediately where I sold the company in 2018, Global Faces, and I had no time to celebrate. I didn't, I don't think I didn't anything. I ended up buying a vacation property, but that was the only thing I did. And then I ended up going on as president of Newstrike, and then that was a whole other year and a half of just chaos. And then we ended up selling that like a year and a half later. So it's like it was just pure like it was a beer, it was a blur, but basically from 2012 to 2019, it was like it doesn't seem like a lot of time, but it was like seven years of just like non-stop building.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

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SPEAKER_00 29:39

It was definitely curiosity, but it was also the ability to see kind of things that you build from scratch start to actually take shape, gets you motivated just to do more and more and more. And things that you actually never thought you can potentially accomplish when it happens at such speed, and and it's funny, like admittedly, that whole seven years was just like nonstop building, and I was just working so hard, but I never really thought it was hard work. I was just so excited about the momentum that was going. And I talk about market timing, by the way. When 2008 hit, in 2010, there was an entire market shift in which markets were amazing. Like everything I talk about this with everybody. Like you have to catch the wave of like good market timing. But after the housing crisis happened, from 2010 to 2022, like you had like 10 plus years of like if you were in tech, you were doing amazing. If you were in real estate, you were doing amazing. If you were doing if you were in cannabis, you were doing amazing. So you were in industries in which you just had to be a right place at the right time, and then you can actually build really good companies because money was free-flowing, like keep money was free-flowing, financing was happening. So that was a really great moment in time to be an entrepreneur. And like I said, like I happened to catch a wave in which I started a business immediately, but it was just a really great time to be an entrepreneur, and that's kind of where I was just really excited about all the different things we're building because it was just becoming incremental so fast. So, like I said, it was like seven years of pure building, building, building. And I always tell this, I genuinely tell this to entrepreneurs. And if you look at my kind of two determinants of success, they're basically idea is number four, execution is number three, and then market timing and resilience of a founder is like one, two. And they're very close to each other because at the end of the day, if you can be as resilient and have the best idea possible, but if you miss time a market, you can actually, you're gonna fail. Like your business is gonna fail. And vice versa. If timing is not good, you can find a way as a founder to build your business and then be very, very resilient and be very, very smart. But that's the whole premise of it. Like you just kind of you gotta keep going. And like I said, we hit they hit that market perfectly. So you're right, it was a kind of a blur, but when 2019 hit, I just realized I had two big exits back to back. And that was the first time when I had the sober second thought where I'm like, holy shit, I actually made it and I actually built something that was the two things that are pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

I mean, you've seen a lot of founders around you, right? Some who made it, some who got stuck. And outside of market timing, right? Which I guess one can debate whether you can control that or not. What do you think separates the two groups? Like what makes a successful one's successful and what keeps the other group from getting there?

SPEAKER_00 32:23

There's a reason why I talk about founder resilience and founder mindset as like number one factor. And I don't want to have this sound cliche or sound something that is like out of the textbook or whatever, but it's it's absolutely true. The reality is, and by the way, I know it to be true because like I'm in my sixth startup right now, which I would argue from 2022 to now, it's the worst market I've ever been in. And I've I've been on this planet for a long time. I'm turning 53 this year, and I've been an entrepreneur for 30 years, right? So this is by far the worst market for entrepreneurs and founders that I've ever seen, unless you're building like a very quick AI kind of engineering and architecture engine, which it like can build off of, which again, you have to be you can do that. But the reality is like most businesses aren't that. So you kind of realize that from the perspective of like when you're building something and you realize times things you just go through this like really difficult period. And I talk about this with every founder. Like, there's only two moments of clarity in when you start a business. One is at the very beginning, one is the very end. The very beginning is like when you have a great idea and then you have friends, family, people that say, Hey, let's like that's a fantastic idea. I'll invest a little bit of money into you, and you're too stupid to realize anything other than just I'm going for it, right? So that's one moment of clarity because you're just going for it. Everything's exciting. The other moment of clarity is when you either sell the business or you shut down the business. Everywhere in between is like this level of like roller coaster ride and uncertainty where it's just like you're trying to figure things out, right? So I talk about this, especially in periods where it's difficult to your point when market might the market might be off. Is like you just have to have the ability as a founder to have the mindset just to know and understand, okay, when do I pivot? How long can I sustain this? Like, what type of resilience do I have? Can I keep going? And I talk about this with everybody, which is basically more often than not, companies don't fail. Founders just get tired and they run out of good ideas and just they can't do it anymore. So I really believe that to be true. And that's not to say that people shouldn't shut down businesses, but there's a reason why when they talk about eight or nine out of ten companies fail, it's more often not because the founder resilience and founder mindset just can't keep going on because they're just like they're just so tired, right? And I've seen that multiple times. And the best founders I know are the ones that have kind of built out this muscle where they can sit in suffering and sit in pain long enough to just say, okay, I can I can withstand it, right? And that's not for everyone, by the way. That's it is an entrepreneur muscle that you have to build.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

My substack note today was one of the best advice I ever got was don't marry your idea. And I got that advice, I guess, in my late 20s. It taught me at the time to ask, you know, what if I'm wrong? Right. I think there's a certain kind of conviction and stubbornness that you have to have for your idea. But there is an opportunity cost if you don't change paths, I guess. And sometimes that path is like when you're tired or when you're not having fun. And when you kind of realize like this is never gonna be a great business. Actually, that's why I told my my last one. Like I realized I was waking up and I just I didn't want to do it anymore. Like I wanted to not be in that industry. Like I've been in the same industry for like in real estate for for 10 years, and I was just ready for a change. But I could have said, hey, this is the business that I have right now, and I could have just like kept hammering at it, but the opportunity cost of staying there just would have been too high. And if I hadn't given that up and sold it, I wouldn't have the business I have today, which is the one that actually and finally gives me the life that I've always wanted to have, you know, 15 years ago when I when I quit my last job.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

Yeah, yeah. I think that the vast majority of the founders, there's also the entire product, you asked me earlier, which is basically what is it that in my mind kind of keeps me going and stuff like that. And yeah, there is definitely the thought process that I have sometimes where it's like the fear of failure I have, it can kind of block the entire logic base and intuition of like, are you are you just holding on because of the stubbornness that you have, right? So there you you have to really kind of compartmentalize those things because if you don't, then you're right. Like you can hang on for too long and realize, okay, my opportunity cost and losing is like way too much, or you re you realize I'm just hanging on for the sake of hanging on for no particular purpose, right? So it's like there's a lot that goes into the entire founder mindset that goes towards like being resilient for resilient for the sake of being resilient, being stubborn to your own detriment is not a good thing either. But if you realize what I'm building is actually meaningful and that there's this forward momentum happening, then being resilient is a very important thing because you realize you know it could be one unlock that actually takes it to our next level, right? So you're right. It's a fine, it definitely is a flying, fine line of just understanding which one it is.

SPEAKER_01 37:06

So you went from running two companies full speed seven years to two exits in 14 months, like one eight figure, one nine figure. I mean, that is impressive, right? It's the stuff that founders only dream about. And yet you talk about the arrival fallacy, right? About how it never feels the way you you think it would. So how did you think it was gonna feel versus how did it actually feel when those events happened?

SPEAKER_00 37:33

I genuinely thought, and keep in mind, like when I talk about my two exits, it's like my first two exits were management buyouts. They're they're they're good exits, but they weren't life-changing, very similar to what we talked about earlier, right? They weren't life-changing, but they they just kind of gave me the the almost like the um motivation to say, hey, do your next one, do your next one. So the first two exits were not big exits. The first, and then candidly, like my third company, I gave it all back anyway, right? So is like as I got into startup number four and five, I literally was like going like crazy. And everything in my mindset was simply, hey, redeem yourself, redeem yourself, redeem yourself. Like, and it is all the voices in your head about okay, people think you're a loser, like you fail, like like you gotta redeem yourself now. And again, I've always came up with this entire Asian, Asian kind of glass ceiling scarcity model. I have to prove myself outside of it. And keep in mind, like, my parents were they were amazing humans for this one purpose, which is basically they took us out of the projects of Toronto and they brought us into like a very affluent area in Mississauga, but they did it because they saved us tons of money and they bought the smallest house in this very affluent area. So I grew up literally with like very affluent friends, very Caucasian, all white, doctors, lawyers, accountants, right? So it's like, so for me, it was like I was always like thinking, okay, I gotta compare myself with these people. So the only thing I can possibly do is just work harder, be a better athlete, work harder, and try to prove myself. So I kind of grew up with this entire mentality of like, I'm gonna prove myself and I'm gonna prove to everyone that I can do something that they don't think I can do. And I probably I went through the my entire life on that, and even to the point where like post end-wise, that's all it was. I'm gonna work, work, work, work, work, work. And then when I exit these companies, I'm gonna feel a certain way of like complete relief, financial freedom, like I did it, I feel great. And that didn't that didn't happen. It didn't happen at all. So when I saw Global Faces, like I said, I didn't have time to relax. I just went right into the operational president role at New Strike. And then, like I said, 14 months later, I ended up selling that company. And I there was a nine-figure exit, and at that point, everything just stopped because like literally we sold the company, I sold the company, and then it was I was off emails, I was off everything. So my hundred emails a day literally went to I joke about this, it went to like three emails a day, where it was like an email from promotions from like mob laws or or companies that just send me something, and it was very empty feeling, scary feeling. And you realize like all of that seems just very okay, what am I doing this for? How like what was I actually doing, actually doing this for? Because it didn't, at the time, for me, it was like the hard work of just trying to prove myself was probably the reason why I was doing it, and then all of a sudden it all ends, and I have a lot of money, but at that point, the purpose and the thought process I had of like feeling like this would change my life and I would feel like I made it, I actually felt very lonely and very depressing and very it didn't feel like the way I thought it was gonna feel. So a lot of kind of what I realized was that first of all, money wasn't the thing that was chasing. It was just far more of the proving myself and and proving to other people that I can do what I was intending on doing. And when I did that, admittedly, you kind of realize that that's your own personal feeling that you have right now, that it's quite empty because not everyone feels that way. Not everyone's looking at you as like, hey, this guy hasn't proven himself. Like it was just far more my own internal thinking of like, I gotta work this this hard to always prove other people wrong. And then when it happened, I realized like, what was I actually doing? Like, what why was I actually thinking that way? So yeah, so it was a really kind of lonely, depressed feeling where it was like I wasn't doing anything. I didn't feel I have a sense of purpose. And that's come around when I realized that my sense of like the of why I like entrepreneurship and why I like the struggle of entrepreneurship is because I just like figuring things out and like being busy and I like feeling like I can actually accomplish something. So when that all that ended, it just it was just it almost stopped immediately. And it was like just the arrival fallacy I had was like nothing that I thought I was gonna feel in terms of the fulfillment side of it didn't transpire at all.

SPEAKER_01 41:52

So, how did you overcome that eventually to I guess rediscover purpose that democratizes yourself from you know the external validation, the money, the proving to yourself or your friends or your parents?

SPEAKER_00 42:08

Yeah, great question. I kind of went down an entire thought and purpose-driven kind of almost self-assessment of like, okay, what is it that actually drives me and what actually gives me purpose? What actually gives me actually, you know, the feeling like I want to wake up every single day and feel like I'm accomplishing something or I'm adding value to something. And that's when I just looked at like the thought the next chapter, which is like if I'm gonna do anything and whether it be invest in a company, which I've invested a ton of companies, if it's gonna be starting a new, new have a new startup, have my six startup, it has to be something that's very purpose-driven and very impact-driven. And again, it doesn't have it can't be for the sole purpose of like I'm doing it for money, or I'm doing it to prove people wrong, or I'm doing it to just, you know, start something, you know, start a company. It has to be because like I truly believe it has some level of purpose and meaning that I can, and again, I don't want to sound cliche or too idealistic, but that was me personally. Like I just really wanted to, and the next thing I did to have a tremendous amount of impact and it'd be very purpose-driven.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

And did you ever imagine that you would get to where you are today? Like, and was there ever a version of you that that doubted that it would happen?

SPEAKER_00 43:20

The only doubt I had ever was during the moments of struggle when I'm like, can I keep doing this? Can I keep doing this? Can I keep doing this? But when I actually realized there was that next threshold I hit, and like I said, I truly believe entrepreneurship is one of those like the biggest quality that entrepreneur has is their ability to endure pain and loneliness and the ability to kind of work through stuff during the most uncertain times. And once I realize I can hit those thresholds and I can like sit kind of comfortably a little bit in that pain, is when I realize that I'm cut out from this, right? And I can definitely do this. So that's that's really where I realize that entrepreneurship is definitely for me. Because it's like I said, the vast majority of time, you live in uncertainty, right? So for me, it's like that's why I get actually joy and I get you know fulfillment from just figuring things out, right? So and that's kind of where maybe other entrepreneurs and other founders, definitely are the founders I talk to, when I talk to them initially, saying, okay, what's what drives you? If money is the main motivation they have, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, by the way, but I'm saying it's it's a lot of time is empty, right? Because for them, it's like they realize they might not be building the company that they're building, and they just feel like they feel unmotivated, and all of a sudden they've realized I don't want to do this anymore. So a lot of times when those companies fail, it's just because like you the purpose that you have, the reason why you're doing it, might not have been that fulfilling in the first place, right? Or might not be the right one. So for me, I always had in my mind that it was just I was really, really okay in the struggle of being an entrepreneur and just because I love figuring big problems out. That's kind of why I go on and drive to you know start new things. Because for me, it's about not feeling, you know, like I can't figure out something or I can't solve something.

SPEAKER_01 45:07

And looking back 28 years, six companies, how has your passion and purpose kind of changed over time? Would you say, like say in the early years and in the middle and and right now?

SPEAKER_00 45:20

Like I said, I think the the first part of my career was if I think of like the the three steps, it's probably like money was the biggest driver because I knew that we didn't have money. So for me, it was almost like the financial freedom of helping my parents out. Like definitely, you know, always in my always in the back of my mind is like I'm gonna buy my parents a house. I'm gonna like do something very special for them. And then by parallel path to that was probably the second chapter, which is like, I'm going to prove people wrong. You know, I'm gonna make sure that people respect me. I'm gonna do whatever it takes to just, you know, fulfill and and not fail. And I would keep going, keep going, keep going until it got to the point where I said had my exits and realized, wow, those two things were a little bit empty. Not we provided my parents, obviously, security. Like, I definitely we can talk about that all day long because one of the proudest moments was definitely being able to give my parents something that they wanted, which is like just not to feel like they have to worry about me anymore. I know we've talked about this, like that was the greatest gift my dad said. And my dad said, I don't want, I don't want anything you're gonna give me. I don't want a car, I don't want anything. Like the only thing I've ever wanted is like not to feel that I'm worrying about you anymore. He's like, he's like, I don't want to feel pepta peptape means like always feeling like you always have to worry about your kids. And he's like, You gave me that greatest gift where I don't have to worry about you anymore. And that was like really touching to me because you know for me, I always thought that he wanted a house, so he wanted something, something materialistic. So once I got through those two chapters, then the final you know thing was basically, okay, what am I actually building for? And like I said, now in my third chapter of my life, so to speak, it's like I just I want to build really cool things that have impact and have purpose. And like I said, I don't want to sound idealistic in nature, but for me, that's my that's that's the vision I have. Like anything I do has to have some level of like meaningful impact, not only for myself, but generationally for people that see what I'm doing. And I have three daughters, I have a wife that's been through 30 years of entrepreneurship with me. Like, I think you know, the greatest gift I can have is if they say, Hey, like this what you built is pretty cool, dad, and I'm able to thought that works with me in this business, and is it very much an impact-driven business? Like, they're seeing the things that we're doing and the impact we're making. So, like, yeah, I'm very proud about that. That's kind of where I'm pretty driven to just make sure like that is really where the reason why I do things these days.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

And how has building these businesses built you as a person? Like when you think about who you were, you know, in your early 20s of who you are today.

SPEAKER_00 47:50

Like I said, I have a I've developed developed a muscle where I had this whole level of like appreciation for struggle and appreciation for people that just gut it out and just have the ability to just like do whatever it takes to succeed. And like I said, I think for me, it's like I think more often than not, and it's I'm very different in than many people in their in the respect of like I know there's always that equilibrium of like the why versus the how. And everyone says, like, you just you know, law of attraction, vibrate into your world, and just like believe what you're doing has purpose and meaning, and they'll all come in. And I believe that is what I truly do. But the reality is I know there's an equilibrium between the two, which is like I've developed the muscle of the how and understanding the frameworks of how to build companies, but also very specifically the understanding of like how to actually be okay with the uncertainty in the lonely middle of like all the things that you don't know. And that's kind of the greatest, you know. If I if I were to teach a class from my Substack, Substack newsletter in the community that I developed, it's like basically all about it's called the Unstuck Entrepreneur. So it really is like teaching individuals how to actually work through this lonely middle and work through this uncertain period because that is truly 80, 90% of the actual journey that you have as an entrepreneur is that uncertain period. And just knowing that if you can get through that and just kind of learn through that, then you'll be successful. But that's that took a long time to figure out.

SPEAKER_01 49:14

So tell us what you're doing today and the kind of impact that you want to create in the world.

SPEAKER_00 49:20

Tradition is one of those like businesses that I truly believe if it's built the way I've in the way I vision it, can have massive amounts of impact for all the reasons that are basically kind of leading the mentality people that people have in this world today in terms of AI advancements, all these different things. So if you think of like where we came from, basically the cost of living is at all-time high right now, but that came literally because people like people actually got to the point where they were spending a lot of money and things were built off convenience, technology was built off of convenience, but you realize like if I if you think of like salaries and compensation, you know, back 30 years ago versus now, when I first graduated 30 years ago and got my job, first job at the bank, I got paid 50,000 bucks. My daughter, first job at a school, got paid $60,000 30 years later. That there's not much disparity there between the two. Yet a house is $1.2 million now. The same first house I bought 30 years ago was $200,000, right? Like gas is now a dollar 60 per liter here in Canada. Gas back then was like 35 cents, right? So like this the entire paradox of like what cost of living looks like back then versus now is dramatically different, but your ability to earn has not changed, or it's limited, it's been it's far less limited than uh so it hasn't grown at the same pace. So my whole premise is like there's certain industries and markets that you can actually change if you just change the foundation of how they're built. So food is by is the second highest cost in a household. Groceries are the second highest cost that people that people have in a household. Yet people go through everything about how they're gonna afford groceries on a weekly basis, and it's a struggle. And candidly, food is, and I believe it's a it's a right, not a privilege, right? So the premise that I had with it was basically I had to look at the underlying foundation and the infrastructure that that food and grocery was based on. And what it's based on is like layered, is basically layered middlemen, right? So you think of like all the different ways a grocery store gets you food, it basically goes from multiple wholesalers to distributors to suppliers to bricks and mortar, the retail costs, merchandisers, and then ultimately delivery aggregate, like an Uber that delivers from the grocery store. Like all those are layered costs that are very bloated in nature. So my whole premise was like if I eliminate most of those costs and try to optimize the supply chain, and I just do go directly from wholesaler right to consumer and use technology to actually get you that product, can I save you money? And I wanted to build the premise off of like a very small subset first, and which I did, in which it took us about two years to figure it out and just negotiating really good procurement contracts, delivering very smartly, picking packing at a facility, and just really optimizing the supply chain, which is where all the hard work resides. And we built a model where we can save other customers up to 25% on their grocery bill. And that's with very little volume, very little revenue right now. So my mentality now is like if I scale and grow that, can I get to that point where I'm saving more money? And now groceries become, again, back the mentality of that being something that is just simple to buy, as opposed to a thing that you have to worry about uh consistently. So that was the premise of the impact model of having like providing affordable groceries to homes again. But the biggest thing that I realized was that the data side of and the personalized behaviors that I can that I can analyze, if I understand someone's personalized behaviors on a you know, a week-over-week basis when they order from us, the reality is I know what they order, I know the habits they have, I know their personalized ordering experience. And the biggest thing I know is their budget. You know, so for me, it's like if I know they only have $150 to spend on a week over week basis, how do I actually build an entire technology tool and an ingenic tool to actually learn your behavior so I can get you more product for your discretionary budget? So that's kind of what I built in being launched literally in two weeks, where it's called Sprout AI, which is basically our AI tool, an agentic tool that basically acts as your grocery assistant, where not only do I know your food preferences and your personalized behaviors, how big your family is, but I know exactly how much food that you can afford with the discretionary budget you have, and I can make very smart recommendations. So a lot of this is entirely the business model where I had to rebuild the infrastructure first to get you through those cost savings. But once I have that, then you layer on innovation and AI to actually make it far smarter for you to actually be able to create impact for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 53:43

Oh, that's awesome. We're gonna have to keep an eye on that.

SPEAKER_00 53:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:47

Last question for you. So it seems like you've lived a few lifetimes now with all your experiences and all your learnings. You made a decision at a very young age about your future by watching the way your parents work. What do you hope your kids will take from watching you?

SPEAKER_00 54:04

Yeah, that's a great question. I think for me, the biggest thing, if I take something from my parents, it basically was the hard work that they did and the sacrifices that they made, literally allowed me to have the freedom to do what I did. And I struggle, don't get me wrong, because I always talk about this. Like the end the struggle, the sacrifice that that one generation makes doesn't really get passed on to the next generation because they still struggle. Like I struggled my entire life. But what happened, if you look at kind of you know, the sacrifices my parents made that allow my sister to be an academic, she's a teacher, does very well for herself. My Sophia was the president of Tommy Hill figure, she's now the head, the like global head of global retail for Samsung. I've sold four businesses, I'm on my six startup right now. Like all that only happened because of the struggle that my parents made. So now I really want obviously my kids to realize that you know, obviously, they should be very grateful and happy and proud that we've given them the life that we give them as their parents. But the reality is like my my parents, their grandparents, are the ones that actually sacrificed everything, right? Like they're the ones that actually allow them to, you know, have what they have. So I don't want them to take that for granted. They have to realize that in their mindset if they pass down from generation, like it literally is the same thing. You've got to be able to pass down the next generation and be able to pass on the work ethic, pass on the don't take anything for granted. You have to work harder than anybody else. Like I still want them to have that mentality. And I truly believe, hopefully, I'm not suggesting that I know we've talked about this earlier. I'm not suggesting that I'm gonna force them to get a job. If anything, I want them, I want them to actually have the ability to have some, you know, ability to experiment and take some risks and build a business for themselves, build a life in themselves, because they can do that. And I've I'm glad I've given the opportunity to do that, but I think they should, because I genuinely, with or without any sort of like starting point, I truly believe the vast majority in this day and age, the most successful individuals and the most independent individuals are the ones that are going to start their own businesses. They're gonna be founders, they're gonna be entrepreneurs. So developing that muscle and seeing my kids seeing kind of what I went through, like it's important because they have to understand like starting a business is hard, but it's definitely doable. Like they can they've they've hopefully learned from me and they can do it on their own now. So that's what I really wanted for them.

SPEAKER_01 56:29

Well, Pete, that was an incredible conversation. Thank you so much for your time and thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_00 56:35

Thanks, Melissa. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 56:39

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