David: I often say building a business like... walking through quicksand and chewing broken glass. I mean, you know, every day there's endless problems, but those problems with the right team and most importantly, the right framework and environment for them that they trust can really, really help you surmount any challenge, frankly.
Jerrid Grimm: David, welcome to the show.
David: Thanks for having me, Jared. Good to be here.
Jerrid Grimm: Alright, you've got to be the most knowledgeable person that I've ever met to do with tea, so we're good. We have to start there. I I made myself a tea today for this show. I don't identify as a tea person. I'm like four coffee a day jittery by the time one o'clock shows up, kind of thing. my family is a tea family, though. My wife. is in she's taking her phytotherapy which is like the study of herbs as medicines so we've got dried leaves of all kinds we've got teas and tinctures in our house my son's homesick from school today he is like downing tea nonstop because he has a sore throat so so tell me how you got into tea in the first place let's start there
David: Well, I actually think you touched on some of the reasons David's tea ended up working so well. I got into tea fairly serendipitously and because I realized nobody was doing it in a fun way on the main street. So I did a couple of companies. I went to McGill, graduated while most of my friends were going off to Goldman Sachs or Lehman Brothers at the time. I'm probably dating myself there or Proctor Gamble or whatever large company they aspire to go to. I had been a serial entrepreneur since I was very young, so I really wanted to do something different, do my own thing. So I had worked in clothing stores and selling running shoes at a concept called Athletes World, which is Canadian version at the time, similar to Foot Locker. Anyway, long story short, I had this software business that didn't work, and we captured what people tried on in a fitting room, we compared it to what they bought. I got a pilot on Macy's, the 34th and 7th, but in the end, didn't work and I needed a job. And the girl I was dating at the time, who's today my wife and mother of three kids together, said to me, you need a job. Like, this is enough, you're not making any money, this thing's not working. So I went to a cousin of mine who was 50 years my senior and had built a big clothing company, and he decided to, he wanted to invest in small companies. he said, look, you'll come, run around and help me make these investments. I think he paid me something like $30,000 to start a year. And I was looking and considering what we should invest in, in this sort of small PE investment house that we wanted to build. And I bought a book. I bought what Warren Buffett looks for in investments. And I serendipitously, my wife's a neuropsychologist. She was doing her PhD at McGill and we were early for... an international movie at this theater that was sort of off the beaten path of one of the main streets in Montreal and across the street was this tea house. And so I'm like, let's check that out. And it was very Asian inspired. You felt like you had to whisper when you walk in, you you had to know something about tea and it sort of hit me. I was like, wow, you know. Not only is this interesting where when you think about it, tea is anything you put in hot and cold water. It's not coffee, even though tea is actually a very specific plant. It's the Camellia sinensis plant. I'll spare you the tea 301 class, but it has to do with the level of oxidation. But we call any herb, any spice, any fruit that you put in water tea. So the combinations of what you can create are somewhat endless. It's like cooking, right? And so I got excited by that. I realized nobody's doing this in a fun way on the main streets. And not only that, but it's a Warren Buffett business. There's no size, no color like there is
Jerrid Grimm: Mm.
David: in the businesses I've been in. So limited amount of complexity in terms of what's called skews, which is basically a retail term for items. It's not big. You can operate our small spaces. You're not selling TV sets. It doesn't go bad like a turkey sandwich. And the margins are great because it's leaves in hot water. And so I got really excited about this. walked into work the next day and I was like, T, we should do T. And so we ran around trying to find a T concept to invest in. And I just got, you know, I was in my mid 20s at this point and I got more more excited about this. And finally I turned to my cousin who was employing me at the time and said, look, I'll do it and you back me. And
Jerrid Grimm: Hmm.
David: he said, sure. And away we went and... you know, we became a 10-year overnight success.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah, right. And this is like this is two thousand and eight, give or take.
David: This is 2006, 2007, we opened the doors in 2008 on Queen Street in Toronto. first day we were, I mean, the store wasn't even ready, there's a ladder in the window, we opened the doors, people start flooding in, we didn't have enough staff, nobody really knew how to sell tea. I ended up calling my brother and my... my wife and they came in and helped and we're all selling tea and doing the best we can. And this came naturally to me. I loved it. At the end of the day, you know, I love selling. I like being with the customers and I loved selling running shoes when I was young. I loved selling tea the second I got into it. so, you know, and I had hired people, one of whom especially, who went on to run all of our sales and operations, who also loved it. So we fed off each other's energy. And we got really good at selling tea. we did, I think we did 1500 bucks on our first day and we were like, wow,
Jerrid Grimm: Right.
David: that's amazing. This is incredible. Of course that was Saturday, Monday, I think we did 400. So, you know, and, and, you know, fast forward and, at its peak when I left David's tea, you know, a good store would do, would do, call it, 3000 bucks a day. So,
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: we just sort of got better and better at it. And I think why it worked is When you think about it, what we really did with David's tea is we uncommoditized the commodity. So prior to us, walked into it. Where did you buy tea? You walked into a grocery store. You looked up at a tea wall, which had, you know, a variety of different brands. They all had the usual suspects. So Earl Grey, and then you have eight versions of Earl Grey and you have peppermint and chamomile and English breakfast and all the ones we kind of know. And you made your decision based off the price point and the picture on the box. And so You know, we take that and we flip it entirely on its head where now we have this colorful wall of 100 different flavors of tea. And you walk in and the first question is, hey, do you, people are like, what's this? It was new, right? So it's like, hey, well, do you drink your tea loose or in tea bags? You're like, I drink tea bags. It's like, let me show you how easy it to make loose leaf tea. And next thing you know, you're engaging in this sensory experience where. You know, you're smelling tea, you're tasting the tea of the day, you're talking about stories. I mean, you talked about how your family and the history. That's exactly why it worked. Here you have a concept that's called David's Tea. So David is a common name that transcends culture, number one. Two. Yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: Mm. I was actually gonna I'm actually gonna ask you on that. You name it David's T, right? Did you? Okay, why do
David: Yeah, I hated the name by the way at first. Hated.
Jerrid Grimm: you hate why did you hate the name? Because it's your name. It's what's the word? Epidemus? up I never know how to say that word, but it's where it's named after yourself.
David: Yeah, it's, I mean, didn't, know, the marketers got frustrated with me. They came up with a variety of names. We hired this marketing group. They were great. They'd come from Sweden and they'd done some pretty big brands, Absolute Vodka, et cetera. And they had a connection to my partner. And so they were doing the consulting work to come up with the original branding package, the name, et cetera. And so... They had all kinds of names like tea, like the Boston tea. had Jules and Juliet and some play on, on, you know, a Romeo and Juliet kind of thing. And none of them really fit for me. And they, in the end, they're like, well, why don't we call it Dave's tea? And I was like, no way. I don't want to be Paul Newman on the salad dressing bottle. so,
Jerrid Grimm: Ha ha ha.
David: you know, anyway, my, partner actually, the next day came in. He's like, no, you want to have a beer with Dave. You want to have a tea with David. And so the rest is history, but
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: yeah. So it had common name, tea transcends culture. We all have some kind of memory. we remember from a grandmother, an aunt, an uncle, whatever, a round tea, especially in Canada. And so yeah, people had this nostalgic connection to the product. So they'd come in, they'd engage their senses, they'd get nostalgic, and it became this, and the other two pieces that we didn't think about at the time is you then go home and you recreate the store experience for your family and friends, right? So
Jerrid Grimm: Right.
David: you buy three teas, you get home, you're excited about it, or you go to the office or wherever you go. And whether it's family, friends, or colleagues, you're like, hey, can I make you a tea? Smell this, smell this. I went to this cool shop. It's something you want to share. And of course, the staff we hired, we ended up getting a lot of theater kids because they were very much attracted. When you think about who retail attracts, it attracts all these social people. Well, what are their options? They can go work at The Gap and sell clothes, but you're all bubbly and excited and you're like, hey, welcome to The Gap. How can I help you? And what's the first thing we all say? Just looking. Right? It's because we all know how to buy clothing, but at that time, nobody knows how to buy tea. So you get these people that are energized by those social interactions and they get to put on a performance because the customer is so new to this concept and the idea of buying tea. So it just became this perfect storm where we call them our tea guides would get energized by the customers wanting to engage with them. And then the customer, of course, would feed off that energy. end up leaving the store, really having this unique retail theater experience and then go home and replicate it, which created a virality to it.
Jerrid Grimm: Well, I mean I've if no one if someone hasn't been in a David's tea, I there used to be one by our office in Gastown in Vancouver and you'd go in there. There's a couple of things with it that I found really interesting was one, it was you know, it was like a an Apple store to me. You know, like you'd walk in, it was like spotless, everything looked really well designed. I'm a marketing guy, so I just like fell in love with that. The cups, like iconic cups with this like teal you could recognize it without David's tea on it. I think that's Probably still if I saw a cup and it had that teal kind of shape on it and everything, I I think I would know right off of the bat. it smells great in there for sure. And you'd be right, you probably attracted this more outgoing professional or or where they took their job seriously because tea is also premium, you know, like it maybe they'd have a tough time working at McDonald's doing fries. But there's something about a tea shop that feels High end, it feels cultured. And so I could see how you detract that as well. So you you grow this, you know, David's tea from one store, and at what point are you sitting in there going, like, this is gonna be big? This is going to be locations everywhere, I'm gonna expand into the US. There must have been a tipping point that said, This is actually gonna work out versus one store that may or may not make four hundred bucks the next day.
David: I don't know, I was so naive at the time that I think it took a while for that moment to hit. Probably, I don't know, if I had to pin it to one moment, it was probably we went from, we went from like nine stores to 40 in one year.
Jerrid Grimm: Mm.
David: It was the year my first kid was born. It was a crazy year. We opened all these mall stores and it worked in the malls. And what's nice about the malls is you can make a lot of deals quickly because it's typically owned by institutional landlords. So if it works, there tends to be a formula for expansion, right? So, know, Cadillac Fairview, Ivan O'Cambridge, Simon in the US, there's a, there are Oxford, et cetera, et cetera. They, they have a portfolio. So if you can make it work in a few, they can very quickly help you expand to many. And we kind of hit that formula fairly early on. I our first four stores were street stores. They struggled. We didn't know how to sell tea in the summer. It took us a while to figure that out. We did eventually. But the malls, I think, is where we really were able to accelerate fast. And once, you know, we picked our heads up at the end of that absolutely whirlwind of a year of opening 32 or 31 doors on a base of eight or nine, I think. You know, we then had more infrastructure. had 40 doors. All of them were working. And I, I, at that point it was sort of like, all right, well, we really have something here. This is a serious business.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah, and what's the looking back, what was the hardest part of building David's T?
David: The hardest part, I think, was, I mean, look, I didn't control the company. So I had a partner who had the majority control and I was a minority partner. I was the sweat, he was the equity. I had no money when I started, right? So that became challenging. He was a great partner in many regards. You the way I like to describe it is I probably would have had 10 stores in five years without him. You know, I would have got I would have had to go much slower and it would have taken me a lot longer. And who knows how far along that journey I would have got before somebody else came in aggressive in the market. And without me, he would have had zero stores. So we
Jerrid Grimm: Right.
David: made a really good partnership of youth and experience. What ultimately happened is he wanted to bring his kids into the business, which complicated things, quite frankly. And I would say, you know, the story of David's Tea is one where if, and then we brought in a private equity group later, which further complicated things and they started, you know, there's a fair amount of infighting that, you know, without passing any judgment on who is right and who is wrong and who is this and that, it just creates an environment that unfortunately has people focusing on the internal politics rather than the customer. And I think for David's tea, you know, when you're successful in business, people watch, they see you do that and the market folds in on you. It catches up to you. You you start to think, I'm untouchable. going to go. mean, look no further than, know, who was on Lululemon in your backyard. know, Chip was on our board. you know, Lulu now, if you look at their competitive environment, it is so much greater, right? Like so many other concepts have come on the scenes, built off the back of Lulu's success and are now challenging it for market share. And so the same thing happened with David's tea, direct to consumer exploded. We were slow on the punch there. We were slow to evolve the store concept. I if you think about the store concept really didn't evolve much. And I think a lot of that had to do with some internal unfortunate distractions that ultimately cause you to take your eye off. the customer, serving them, staying ahead of your competition and really being best in class concept. And we had the lead. And, you know, I think that when you take that lead for granted is where others are able to catch up. so, you know, I left reluctantly. mean, we went public and I sold I sold everything not because, mean, I don't love the business. mean, obviously I wouldn't start another tea company later. I obviously love it. And my name was on the door. I, you know, last thing I want to do is leave this this incredible business I'd built with with, you know, from zero. to this juggernaut of a company. But when you have that kind of environment on the inside and you're not focused on the customer, I I fear a bit too much about what happens to the business. And it ended up, unfortunately, I tried to buy it back a few times. You know, they didn't want to sell it to me. It ended up coming down. Like when I sold it was a $500 million market cap. Today, I think it trades at three, four million. And we did 200 million of revenue, 30 million of EBITDA. Today, I think it's what, like a 40, $30 million business? mean, it's contracted dramatically. So
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: it's a real cautionary tale.
Jerrid Grimm: Well it's interesting because people I actually expected that you'd be like, well, it was really tough to like source the right T from the right place or the way that like the store footprint would work, but that's not a lot of times it's underappreciated that the biggest challenge is dealing with people in like a fast growing company where all of a sud sounds a little bit like you had your own little version of succession kinda going on. And maybe they'll make a movie one day of that.
David: I mean, yeah, the issue with that is that it doesn't work.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: you know, mean, succession makes for great TV, but it doesn't work. mean, you know, just because your last name's Hilton doesn't mean you know how to run hotels. So, you know, you it almost never works.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: You hard pressed to find cases where that type of where it works is where you're able to. You're able to. uncompromisingly protect meritocracy.
Jerrid Grimm: Mm.
David: And when you can't do that, the problem is you can't get the talent. know, talented people want to be able to spread, they want a few things. They want clarity, integrity, consistency. They want to be able to spread their wings and fly and make the business part theirs too. And it's very difficult to offer that in environments that aren't professionalized. And so, Yeah, I think that was a real drag on, and it's a balance, right? Because
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: founder energy is really important. There is a dynamic around... that type of energy and that energy can be very prevalent in early family businesses as well. But that's really important as well because there's a level of grit, level of caring, a level of urgency that is hard to find in just hired management. That's not what I'm suggesting. But I think when you need to create an environment, regardless of the ownership dynamics in a company, it's really, really critical to create an environment where top talent wants to come in, can produce is held accountable in a very clear and transparent way that is as consistent and not erratic.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah, and people need that framework to know that, hey, I could spend ten years at this company and move my way up. There's no ceiling
David: Right.
Jerrid Grimm: on my I could be CEO one day. They need to like if that's what they desire, it you want ambitious people, you want people that are self-motivated, and those people tend to wanna be able to move up quickly, even quicker than probably their skills or experience will allow them to do. I mean, that's what I've always found most interesting. I always find the highest maintenance employees are my favorite ones. I mean, they're a pain in the ass to manage. I manage sales teams for a long time. Highest maintenance group of people that you can because they're so ambitious, they want more all of the time, but man can they help grow a company, that type of personality type, right? And you probably adding a ceiling, management ceiling in there probably distracts a bit.
David: I don't know if it was so much the ceiling on seniority as it was the, people need to know that when the company wins, they will win. And there needs to be a framework for that that they trust. And there needs to be environment where their contributions are valued. And I think that's really, important. And the more companies I'm involved in, and the longer I've been doing this, the more I see how great companies have everyone aligned and motivated to achieve towards a common purpose. And that's easy to say and hard to do. so anyway, mean, the other things obviously were challenging suppliers and stores. I often say building a business like... walking through quicksand and chewing broken glass. I mean, you know, every day there's endless problems, but those problems with the right team and most importantly, the right framework and environment for them that they trust can really, really help you surmount any challenge, frankly.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. What an interesting kind of lesson that you were able to take for So David's T hits like I would even call it the peak at IPOs, like you said, couple hundred million dollars in revenue, thirty million dollars in in profit, which is insane, right? Like that is an incredibly healthy business. Yeah.
David: Yeah, we had a good business.
Jerrid Grimm: And you kinda hit the peak of every entrepreneur's dream, I would say. So you Let's say you sell off some of your shares then, you leave the company, the David and David's T is no longer there. It falters over time. But how do you feel after you've hit this ultimate goal for every entrepreneur? Like, do you walk away from that moment, the money hits the bank, and you're like, Great, accomplished, now time to golf or whatever your your sport of choices and and drift off to the sunset? Or what is it, what does that feel like for people that have never had that experience?
David: I went into a massive depression after I exited DAVIDsTEA Yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: Crazy. So massive depression, like right away, like kinda happens No way.
David: Almost instantly. was several, I mean, I ended up with a few health issues that compounded it, but it's hard to say what came first, the chicken or the egg. I think they're interrelated. Look, I had worked so hard and it had taken so much energy out of me for so long. you somewhat suppress the anxiety, the pain, the difficulty while you're in it. And then when it ends, it's like, you know, my biggest mistake is I didn't think about life after DAVIDsTEA And
Jerrid Grimm: Mm-hmm.
David: I didn't think about my identity after DAVIDsTEA And... Yeah, it was really tough. mean, on the one hand, look, it wasn't that tough. Like I want to keep it in perspective. I made a lot of money. So
Jerrid Grimm: Course. Yeah.
David: that was really nice. know, you all of a sudden, like there's definitely a moment when money hits your bank account where you're like, wow.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. Good.
David: And to pretend that that's not a real thing would be inauthentic. So I mean, that is a real thing. It does matter. That's why you do it. You do it for a lot of reasons, but one of them is obviously to create generational wealth for your
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: family. And I had done that. And so that was amazing. And I felt like I had done well, not just for myself, but for my young family at the time, right? And so that was really important, but I also lost, know, a friend of mine once said, a secret to life is someone to love, something to do and something to look forward to. And I had lost, you know, something to do and something to look forward to. And so, and I really didn't know what I was going to do next. I didn't think about it. And yeah, it just sort of came down on me like a ton of bricks. And I went through a pretty difficult time in my life.
Jerrid Grimm: Hmm. Such a surprising thing, I think, for most people to understand. I mean, when I sold my company Pressboard, what I found was it's a bit like have you ever seen an athlete that is like gold medal kind of thing or playing professional sports and then
David: Right.
Jerrid Grimm: they retire and they balloon up with weight, right? Because they had all of this, they were working out eight hours a day, they're eating like 6,000 calories, right? And then all of a sudden you put a stop to it and just like boof, right? It just all happens. I felt like that with the energy that I was putting into my company. I had all this energy and focus and ambition. And then I had nowhere to direct it. I actually kind of directed it at my family. I got like very intense with like over intense spending time with my family and my wife and my kids, where they're just like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like I know that you've been like in the office, like working on this thing and it's a good balance. But now all the energy and they almost couldn't like handle how much.
David: Right.
Jerrid Grimm: focus I was putting into that. And it was something I had to learn with was you have to direct this energy somewhere. And if you have nowhere to direct it, is probably the biggest challenge. Is just it has nowhere to go, right? So how did you end up what was the first thing that you were able to like redirect, you know, if you came out of maybe like learnt to deal with the why you were depressed and what your identity was. How did you feel that move? When what was the thing that kind of I guess your next thing that that maybe fulfilled you in that way.
David: Well, I mean, I... I'm a big believer that you don't solve these things in one hot flash, right? And I don't know that I understood that at the time. In my mind, at first I was like, I need a quick cure, right? Like what's the magic pill or the magic this? And I think it's a series, first of all, I needed to change some my habits. I started... eating differently, I started exercising better, I started meditating, which became mindfulness became a huge part of my life. You know, this is 10 years ago. I still do it regularly. And that really helped me stop. That probably was one of the single biggest things that impacted me positively of everything I've done that that really stopped. was I was I used to ruminate quite a bit. And and I think that really helped me quite a lot to be able to compartmentalize and shift and be able to calm myself a little bit. And it's not one of these things that happen overnight, it's one of these things that happen over time through consistent practice. And then, you know, I just, I jump back in and maybe not in the best ways. You know, I would probably do it differently if I had to do it all over again, but. I put one foot in front of the other. mean, I know that's cheesy to say, but it's kind of how you do it. Like, I don't know that there's, I don't know another way. You just sort of show up. And so I started looking for new things to do. I made some investments. I joined an investment group at the time with Christine Day, who had ran the lemon for a while, and some other partners. that didn't, you know, we made some investments, but that I was only an investor and sort of an advisor. give me an that wasn't enough. was and anyway long story short I was looking for concepts to invest to build what I was going to do next. I ended up noticing you know as my diet changed the healthy fast food sort of explosion at that time in the states led by sweetgreen which today is so many different concepts and felt there was nothing quite like it in Canada so I built a concept called mad radish. You know the food business really, really hard. The way I describe it is like in tea, the young person behind the counter can really only screw up the service. can't, you know, can't do much else. In restaurant business, they can screw up the service, the product, your margin in one fell swoop.
Jerrid Grimm: Right.
David: So, you know, very, very different business. Took me a long time to figure that out. Ended up you know, with a great partner, we're 12 stores in, it's called Mad Radish, healthy fast food. The partner I have there runs it and is incredible. that's growing. like, you know, I had to spend way more than I care to admit, and it took way longer than I ever would have thought to even get to a place where it's sustainable. And then I started a tea concept with my best friend, Harley, who's the president of Shopify. We also have a podcast called Big Shot together. And anyway, Fire Belly Tea. You know it we don't use any flavorings like the secret in tea is it's all natural and artificial flavorings and even the natural flavorings are kind of a lot of chemicals So this is just pure tea. It's the tea I drink we still have it today We have we have CEO running it a partner running it who's doing a great job And we do really really high quality loose leaf teas herbal teas whatnot and you know fire belly sells sells wholesale in a grocery sells on direct-to-consumer But neither of them were big enough You know, a certain amount of time went by where I realized I'm now in the prime of my career. I, you know, I'm in my 40s and I have a lot of knowledge and I want to. build something big. I want to, you know, I want to. So I ended up becoming a customer of Highbeam. Highbeam is a banking and cash management platform for consumer brands in the U.S. Now, what does that mean? Banking and cash management? Well, banking is pretty obvious. It's the way you think about banking. You know, you have money, we give you yield on your cash. We have a series of automations to make you more money on that on that cash, on that float that you carry, streamlining your accounts payable, credit cards, cash back, term cards, capital. But then what's happening, what's so fascinating about that space, what attracted me to it is a few things. One, I just got fed up with my bank. I I was getting 0 % yield on my cash, no intelligence on my data, clunky software, bureaucratic service. I just got to a point where I'm like, there has to be something better. I ended up discovering Highbeam through an industry newsletter. I called up the founder, was really impressed with him, took a leap of faith, became a customer, was blown away. Product was great, service was great. And I kept thinking, wow. You know, when you think about AI and what it's going to do in banking, it's going to completely redefine, and this is what Highbeam is doing, the value proposition of what a bank does for you. a bank, if you go back 100 years ago, a bank was your partner. They knew you, you shook hands, they helped you, they understood your business. Then in the ensuing decades, it got commoditized, right? You
Jerrid Grimm: Mm-hmm.
David: have a 1-800 number, you press one for English, two for French or Spanish and whatever. and they don't really know you or your business. And it's basically a necessity and a cost center. then now what's happening is, know, cash management is really the name of the game, especially with consumer brands. So consumer brands, mean, businesses that sell physical goods. So when you sell physical goods, number one, the banks don't lend to you because there's no hard assets. So it's all private credit mostly.
Jerrid Grimm: Mm, yeah.
David: until you get to a certain size where they're willing to lend your own money back to you. So at the end, RBC would lend to David C because we had so much EBITDA that, yeah, sure, you deposit 30 million with me, I'll give you 5 million in credit, right?
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: But for most of the market, most of those Shopify, Amazon, Walmart, Costco brands, the lenders are either merchant cash advances or they're asset-backed loans, but it's all private credit. One, you need to navigate that ecosystem so your partner understands it and can help you help facilitate the right product for you at the right time on the on the lending side. Two, you're turning money into inventory back into money. So you can be profitable and broke in that process, depending on how good you are at buying inventory and how well you negotiate your supply chain so that you don't have so much time between when you pay for product and when you sell it. And so you need to be able to manage your cash flow really well. And that's really hard to do. There's a lot of moving parts, right? And it's all done in these clunky spreadsheets. I mean, I had like 10 people at David's Tea doing all kinds of manual work figuring this stuff out. And so what Highbeam does is we automate cash forecasting, scenario planning, and a host of other financial workflows to help you analyze and make decisions in minutes and hours, what used to take days and weeks. But then the best part is we also have the banking core, so we can streamline the money movements as well, right? So the whole thing becomes automated. So when to borrow, when to pay back, what to do with idle cash when it shouldn't be sitting in a 0 % account, who to pay, when to pay them, when to expect your
Jerrid Grimm: Mm.
David: accounts receivable. So it's really exciting time. where we're able to add tremendous value and turn this into a profit center where we can fundamentally be deflationary. So the same business like a David's tea that used to take 10 people to run and whether you're a one million dollar business or a 200 million dollar business or anything in between the supplies, you can run the company with way less finance resources. And I think it's a really exciting time where, you know, if you think about it, Shopify and Amazon and they made it so it's never been easier to start a business. But what HighBeam is doing is making it so it's never been easier to make money from a business.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah, definitely. I could see I was like, how do how does the guy that basically creates the T category get into software and banking? It kind of reminded me of, you know, they I know a lot of entrepreneurs that have built a business and then they they're like, what is the opposite of this business? I personally feel that way. I'm like, I've been doing marketing and advertising. My first business idea I had after was to start a flour mill. Right? Like the opposite. What is the opposite of being on a laptop? it's like grinding flour and putting it into parchment bags. Yeah, kind of idea, right?
David: Right.
Jerrid Grimm: Well, but it's start it's kind of making sense. It's like, hey, I I lived this life, right? I I understand what happens with consumer brands. I understand what's happening with the banking. I I did hear, I'm gonna I'm gonna call you out on something from from 2021. So you're on my first million, right? And there's this great quote where they're asking you, right? They're asking you like why you stay in these like difficult consumer physical product. Cause I think you just started Firebelly around that time. And you say, Software is a great business, but I don't love software, right? I love that because that's several years ago though. And I'm curious what changed in that time. Like
David: Well, it's funny even hearing you call HiBeam software. Because
Jerrid Grimm: Great.
David: in my mind, I don't view it like that. HiBeam is a platform. So when you think about it, we're your most trusted relationship. We have your money. We're your bank.
Jerrid Grimm: Right. Yeah, yeah.
David: So what I have gravitated towards, what I love about what I'm doing right now with HiBeam is I get to talk, I mean, I talk to over a thousand... brands a year, just me, nevermind my team. We have process of over 15 billion of transactions, we have 7X the business. We service this ecosystem of entrepreneurs whom I identify very strongly with. I am one, I was one. I'm still a high beam customer through FireBelly. I love working with this community. mean, these are people taking risks. know, entrepreneurship is very much a lonely journey a lot of the time. It's a personal pursuit disguised as a business pursuit. You learn so much about yourself. You know, you have to face tremendous mental adversity. Anybody who's done it knows this, regardless of what you build. And I love being there to support them. and grow these businesses and we become a really trusted relationship for them across their financial stack. so, know, yeah, okay, do we have a part of our business that's monetized through software? Yes, you know, there's also deposit spreads and card spreads and card. So it's a full platform. so I, what I like about it is that I feel I'm in the game. I see so much. I'm exposed to all these amazing entrepreneurs all day long. I'm with them constantly. And, you know, what could be better than that? And I still have my hand in the game with Firebelly and I'm still involved in it. So, you know, I kind of get the best of both worlds and I think I've kind of hit a speed that works for me. What's great about iBeam is, you know, it's growing really fast. It's on the verge of becoming a really big company. And I like the mental challenge of it. I feel like I'm growing, you know, I'm learning. And in the two years I've doing this I feel like my game has gotten better and you know that's really exciting I mean that's that's part of sort of the the human condition is sort of to feel like like you know you went back to like the the NBA analogy you know I want to see how far I can go Right? Like how many cylinders do I have that I can kick into? Like I don't want to be 30, 40 years or whenever I'm in a proverbial rocking chair as an old man, hopefully one day. I don't want to feel like I underachieved, like I left something on the line. And so I, you know, this was something that I naturally gravitated towards as a customer. And then I dabbled in consulting with Highbeam and investing a little bit. then ultimately, you know, made the decision, of course, you know, in partnership with the founders to come in as the president and work with them as we try and build out this team and scale what we think is going to be a generational company.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. I've thought about this lot where you have this prime. You said you're like at the prime of your career and people don't always realize that sometimes people think, well, you have the most energy in your mid-20s. Well, sure, but you
David: Right.
Jerrid Grimm: have like virtually no experience at that point, right? So you're just like running really fast in all directions. And then maybe in your like 70s and 80s, your energy probably isn't there. Maybe you just you you don't care that much about that part about like building it, but right in this like Same we're we're relatively similar ages, like mid 40s. It feels like you have all of the experience. You have all like the scars that you need in that time. You still like as long as you're eating healthy and and in the gym, like sure, my my knee doesn't work as well at hockey as it used to,
David: Yeah
Jerrid Grimm: right? But you kind of are in this like key thing, and it does feel like it's it's almost like a shame to waste it, right? Because
David: Exactly.
Jerrid Grimm: yeah, That really relates well to me. And I think it relates to a lot of people that are in this point of their career probably. what do you think is the learning that you've taken from your past experience that makes you the right person to be the president of High Beam? And then what do you think is your biggest thing that you'll learn over the next few years?
David: Look, I understand the customer about as good as you possibly can. I I've operated as a $1 million company in five, 10, 20,
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: 50, 100, 200 million. You know, I've seen the stages of growth that consumer brands go through. So I think in that regard, you know, it's a perfect fit. And I understand it. you know, I ran the buying group at David's Tea. I handled the real estate. you know, I was in the CFO's office every day. I'm oriented towards understanding every aspect of these businesses and what it takes to grow them and how Highbeam truly can unlock material savings in both dollars and time. So that's the first thing. The second thing I would say is, you know, I love selling and I understand how to do it and I've been good at it since I sold running shoes. so, you know, that just comes naturally to me and I'm used to leading teams. You know, I've been doing it my whole life. What am I going to learn over the next two years? I mean, I've... I didn't know what the word GTM meant until I started at Hybeam. It means go to markets, a fancy word for sales and marketing. So, you know, there's a lot of how to scale a technology platform is a new frontier for me in many ways. You know, I'm a quick study, I'm picking it up fast. You know, I've not been doing it for two years. I, you know, but... And I have a host of great mentors around me. I mean, mean, no further than my buddy Harley, who. you know, my God, I mean, look what he's done and and and everybody at Chubb Toby on down. mean, they've they built talk about a generational company. mean, so, you know, fortunately, I turn to him for a lot of advice. mean, he's done such an incredible job there. So I get mentorship from a variety of sources. And yeah, I love that challenge. I'm up for it. I mean, I think about it day and night. I you know, I don't there's no off switch on that. And I Yeah, so I think over the next two years, being able to hyper scale is really where I will pick up a lot of learnings. I'm sure we're gonna hit a lot of obstacles that we'll have to overcome together.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. I think it's really interesting when you have so you had, you know, David's T and you understand that con you have Firebelly, Mad Radish, so you understand businesses, you understand how they can scale all the way, and then you use that to be able to be a voice of a c of a customer within High Beam, right? like, you know, Shopify, the the founding story of that is the snowboard shop that Couldn't find software, right? We couldn't find software to do it. I think didn't Harley have like a t-shirt thing or something like that at one point. Like he was a Shopify customer, I think, at one point as well, right?
David: Correct. That's right.
Jerrid Grimm: So it's these interesting stories of like just solving a problem that you have. You understand the problem really well, and this solution comes across. I love that you found High Beam in like an industry newsletter and then reached out to the founders of it and kind of went from that point. Just a really interesting there's all these whys in the road that your life takes, right? Like you don't see that newsletter, maybe you just never reach out to hybrid. Maybe this doesn't become a part of your story at all.
David: Well, I actually think that's a great insight. mean, opportunity doesn't come with a bow on it. It doesn't work out in a nice little package the way you think it's going to work out. You have to be receptive to having, know, when it's coming your way. And it's not always obvious. You know, you have to sort of sniff it out. And it involves difficult decisions, difficult... changes in your life that you maybe didn't anticipate making. know, one thing I know for sure is it never goes according to plan.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. You have this unique situation. So I interviewed Jamie Schmidt of Schmidt's Naturals. Her name is on the deodorant. She's not involved anymore. Sold it to Unilever, right? You have David's tea. Your name, whether you liked it or not, is is the name of the tea, right? You are David of David's tea. I actually have a we had these cups that I have that we got from David's tea. I used to we it was our Christmas blend, right? Like Davis to me, to me, is Christmas because we'd always get the Christmas blends. It would be in the stockings, we'd all have tea, Christmas. Yeah, very sure. I could switch over very easily.
David: We'll get you on Firebelly now, Jared. Don't worry.
Jerrid Grimm: but you're forever going to be a key part of that. And it's such a massive success, right? But it occupied, let's say, 10 years of your life. And it's almost been 10 years since you have that, right? Like
David: Right. Correct.
Jerrid Grimm: there's a so and there was 10 years before that, and there will be 10 years after. I'm curious if you if you've thought about this, you know, maybe when well when you're meditating, I don't think you're supposed to really think I should meditate more so I understand it a little bit better. I know a lot of the breathing stuff, but when you're thinking about you're you know in the rocking chair, 70 or 80 years old or 90 years old or whatever it is, and you look back at all the things that you've done in life, like how how do you want to be remembered for that life, or how do you want to remember what you did? And maybe you don't have to go all the way till you're in a rocking chair, but over the next ten years, what is it that you would like to accomplish?
David: I mean, I am all in on making High Beam a massively successful company. And of course, you know, I'm still involved in other companies like Mad Radish, like FireBelly. And I'm blessed to have incredible partners there helping me build those as well. But High Beam is where I think I can have the biggest impact. It's where I think we can help some of the most important people in the economy, i.e. the people creating businesses, creating jobs, making investments, help them be successful, and be able to do that at scale. That's really, I'm laser focused on that, and when I'm not laser focused on that, I'm having a good time with my wife and kids. so that's really... That's really where I'm at right now. I'm trying not to go too far ahead of myself. I'm just looking at the putt that's right in front of me, you know, and yeah, I think that the opportunity is right there and I just, I put my head down and I pursue it.
Jerrid Grimm: I mean a lot of people in their second act, the biggest challenge I find when I'm speaking to people that had a company and they sold it is they know how much work it takes to build a business. Like
David: yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: the incredible amount of focus, the length of time, like these are never one year things. These are always like 10 to 20 year like
David: That's right.
Jerrid Grimm: I watched the Odyssey the other night and I was like, that's a journey. And I'm like, that's what business feels like sometimes. It's just
David: Cheers.
Jerrid Grimm: It's just so it's gonna be a long time. So I don't know if everyone realizes that when you make a commitment like this with High Beam, you're not thinking like, Hey, I'm gonna do this for six months. You're thinking like I'm taking this through, I already see 10 years in the future where it could be and how big that could be. I think someone like you needs that potential out there of it to be able to kind of like satisfy so that you aren't the athlete, you know, that balloons up the next day. You need to be able to keep going after something. I'm I'm super excited for it. Yeah.
David: So long race, 100%, long race. And yeah, and I think the people that are the most successful are the one, look, 80 % of the value in most companies is often created towards the last, call it 20 % of the race, right? If you look at any company, you look at their market caps, if they're public or, I mean, most of the value is created. know, later on in the company's existence, there's a lot of foundational work and growth. if you, you know, that's just the way compounding works, right? Like you have to hit that hockey stick part of the curve. And so, yeah, I mean, you're, getting validation along the way. Don't get me wrong. It's not just blind, blind faith, but like, It's one thing to triple the business from 10 to 30. It's another thing to triple it from 300 to 900, right? So you need to put yourself in the position where you start to hit that exponential curve. yeah, know, Harley and I have this podcast called Big Shot. We're both Jewish. We interview these older Jewish entrepreneurs who had built these monumental companies. Incredible entrepreneurs like Izzy Sharp who built the Four Seasons Hotel, David Rubenstein, a huge Carlisle group. We just did Jeffrey Katzenberg who is Steven Spielberg's partner in DreamWorks.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: Some incredible, we've done 30 of these interviews. Some just heavy hitters, unbelievable wisdom. And what's amazing is the way they talk about decades in one sentence. It'd be like, and then the 70s was tough and I almost lost the business.
Jerrid Grimm: Right.
David: You're like, what? Izzy Sharp was 50 years old. Not many people know this Canadian. He's unbelievable. Izzy Sharp is the founder of the Four Seasons Hotel. He's in his 90s now. Canada celebrates Terry Fox. Izzy Sharp is literally the guy who made sure Terry Fox got known to the country. And Betty Fox, Terry's mom, says without Izzy there would have been no Terry. He was instrumental in that. Anyway, he tells us the story on Big Shot of his building of Four Seasons Hotel. I he was 50 years old and he had three hotels. I just think about that for a sec. The Four Seasons, one of the greatest hotel chains in the world. And he'll be like, yeah, in the 70s I almost lost Vancouver.
Jerrid Grimm: Right.
David: And you're like, wait a minute, like that's a whole decade.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. Yeah.
David: So these people, you see them at the end of their careers, you realize the adversity, they didn't just build over the course of weeks or months or even years, they build over the course of decades and they hit major tricky times where they had to surmount enormous obstacles. And so anyway, just, I became very inspired through Big Shot and the podcast. You start to realize, you're like, wow, okay, I should be thinking in terms of decades, not even years.
Jerrid Grimm: you do small things every day and they a they compound into these like incredible things over a long period of time. Where would people be able to find High Beam? How would they best reach out to you? we got a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to this show, right? A lot of marketers, a lot of entrepreneurs. I don't know if we have all the finance people. I don't think we have the controllers really that interested in it yet, but where would where would you suggest they they reach out to you?
David: I mean, you can go, we're on LinkedIn, you can go to highbeam.com, you can go to High Beam Instagram, you can go to my Instagram, Tmaverick. T underscore maverick, Yeah, you can check us out. I'm also on LinkedIn, David Siegel. Yeah, you can find us in all your usual stompin' grounds. Yeah, exactly.
Jerrid Grimm: All the places. You're in all of the places. Well, I think you've found you found something to do, right? You've got you've got some people to love, right? And it
David: Exactly.
Jerrid Grimm: really sounds like you've got something to look forward to. So well, whatever your friend told you about Nalin life, it sounds like you're you're hitting on it. All cylinders right now, to use your own term. Awesome.
David: Thanks for having me, Jared. It's been a ton of fun.
Jerrid Grimm: Great to chat with you, David.
Jerrid Grimm: David, welcome to the show.
David: Thanks for having me, Jared. Good to be here.
Jerrid Grimm: Alright, you've got to be the most knowledgeable person that I've ever met to do with tea, so we're good. We have to start there. I I made myself a tea today for this show. I don't identify as a tea person. I'm like four coffee a day jittery by the time one o'clock shows up, kind of thing. my family is a tea family, though. My wife. is in she's taking her phytotherapy which is like the study of herbs as medicines so we've got dried leaves of all kinds we've got teas and tinctures in our house my son's homesick from school today he is like downing tea nonstop because he has a sore throat so so tell me how you got into tea in the first place let's start there
David: Well, I actually think you touched on some of the reasons David's tea ended up working so well. I got into tea fairly serendipitously and because I realized nobody was doing it in a fun way on the main street. So I did a couple of companies. I went to McGill, graduated while most of my friends were going off to Goldman Sachs or Lehman Brothers at the time. I'm probably dating myself there or Proctor Gamble or whatever large company they aspire to go to. I had been a serial entrepreneur since I was very young, so I really wanted to do something different, do my own thing. So I had worked in clothing stores and selling running shoes at a concept called Athletes World, which is Canadian version at the time, similar to Foot Locker. Anyway, long story short, I had this software business that didn't work, and we captured what people tried on in a fitting room, we compared it to what they bought. I got a pilot on Macy's, the 34th and 7th, but in the end, didn't work and I needed a job. And the girl I was dating at the time, who's today my wife and mother of three kids together, said to me, you need a job. Like, this is enough, you're not making any money, this thing's not working. So I went to a cousin of mine who was 50 years my senior and had built a big clothing company, and he decided to, he wanted to invest in small companies. he said, look, you'll come, run around and help me make these investments. I think he paid me something like $30,000 to start a year. And I was looking and considering what we should invest in, in this sort of small PE investment house that we wanted to build. And I bought a book. I bought what Warren Buffett looks for in investments. And I serendipitously, my wife's a neuropsychologist. She was doing her PhD at McGill and we were early for... an international movie at this theater that was sort of off the beaten path of one of the main streets in Montreal and across the street was this tea house. And so I'm like, let's check that out. And it was very Asian inspired. You felt like you had to whisper when you walk in, you you had to know something about tea and it sort of hit me. I was like, wow, you know. Not only is this interesting where when you think about it, tea is anything you put in hot and cold water. It's not coffee, even though tea is actually a very specific plant. It's the Camellia sinensis plant. I'll spare you the tea 301 class, but it has to do with the level of oxidation. But we call any herb, any spice, any fruit that you put in water tea. So the combinations of what you can create are somewhat endless. It's like cooking, right? And so I got excited by that. I realized nobody's doing this in a fun way on the main streets. And not only that, but it's a Warren Buffett business. There's no size, no color like there is
Jerrid Grimm: Mm.
David: in the businesses I've been in. So limited amount of complexity in terms of what's called skews, which is basically a retail term for items. It's not big. You can operate our small spaces. You're not selling TV sets. It doesn't go bad like a turkey sandwich. And the margins are great because it's leaves in hot water. And so I got really excited about this. walked into work the next day and I was like, T, we should do T. And so we ran around trying to find a T concept to invest in. And I just got, you know, I was in my mid 20s at this point and I got more more excited about this. And finally I turned to my cousin who was employing me at the time and said, look, I'll do it and you back me. And
Jerrid Grimm: Hmm.
David: he said, sure. And away we went and... you know, we became a 10-year overnight success.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah, right. And this is like this is two thousand and eight, give or take.
David: This is 2006, 2007, we opened the doors in 2008 on Queen Street in Toronto. first day we were, I mean, the store wasn't even ready, there's a ladder in the window, we opened the doors, people start flooding in, we didn't have enough staff, nobody really knew how to sell tea. I ended up calling my brother and my... my wife and they came in and helped and we're all selling tea and doing the best we can. And this came naturally to me. I loved it. At the end of the day, you know, I love selling. I like being with the customers and I loved selling running shoes when I was young. I loved selling tea the second I got into it. so, you know, and I had hired people, one of whom especially, who went on to run all of our sales and operations, who also loved it. So we fed off each other's energy. And we got really good at selling tea. we did, I think we did 1500 bucks on our first day and we were like, wow,
Jerrid Grimm: Right.
David: that's amazing. This is incredible. Of course that was Saturday, Monday, I think we did 400. So, you know, and, and, you know, fast forward and, at its peak when I left David's tea, you know, a good store would do, would do, call it, 3000 bucks a day. So,
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: we just sort of got better and better at it. And I think why it worked is When you think about it, what we really did with David's tea is we uncommoditized the commodity. So prior to us, walked into it. Where did you buy tea? You walked into a grocery store. You looked up at a tea wall, which had, you know, a variety of different brands. They all had the usual suspects. So Earl Grey, and then you have eight versions of Earl Grey and you have peppermint and chamomile and English breakfast and all the ones we kind of know. And you made your decision based off the price point and the picture on the box. And so You know, we take that and we flip it entirely on its head where now we have this colorful wall of 100 different flavors of tea. And you walk in and the first question is, hey, do you, people are like, what's this? It was new, right? So it's like, hey, well, do you drink your tea loose or in tea bags? You're like, I drink tea bags. It's like, let me show you how easy it to make loose leaf tea. And next thing you know, you're engaging in this sensory experience where. You know, you're smelling tea, you're tasting the tea of the day, you're talking about stories. I mean, you talked about how your family and the history. That's exactly why it worked. Here you have a concept that's called David's Tea. So David is a common name that transcends culture, number one. Two. Yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: Mm. I was actually gonna I'm actually gonna ask you on that. You name it David's T, right? Did you? Okay, why do
David: Yeah, I hated the name by the way at first. Hated.
Jerrid Grimm: you hate why did you hate the name? Because it's your name. It's what's the word? Epidemus? up I never know how to say that word, but it's where it's named after yourself.
David: Yeah, it's, I mean, didn't, know, the marketers got frustrated with me. They came up with a variety of names. We hired this marketing group. They were great. They'd come from Sweden and they'd done some pretty big brands, Absolute Vodka, et cetera. And they had a connection to my partner. And so they were doing the consulting work to come up with the original branding package, the name, et cetera. And so... They had all kinds of names like tea, like the Boston tea. had Jules and Juliet and some play on, on, you know, a Romeo and Juliet kind of thing. And none of them really fit for me. And they, in the end, they're like, well, why don't we call it Dave's tea? And I was like, no way. I don't want to be Paul Newman on the salad dressing bottle. so,
Jerrid Grimm: Ha ha ha.
David: you know, anyway, my, partner actually, the next day came in. He's like, no, you want to have a beer with Dave. You want to have a tea with David. And so the rest is history, but
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: yeah. So it had common name, tea transcends culture. We all have some kind of memory. we remember from a grandmother, an aunt, an uncle, whatever, a round tea, especially in Canada. And so yeah, people had this nostalgic connection to the product. So they'd come in, they'd engage their senses, they'd get nostalgic, and it became this, and the other two pieces that we didn't think about at the time is you then go home and you recreate the store experience for your family and friends, right? So
Jerrid Grimm: Right.
David: you buy three teas, you get home, you're excited about it, or you go to the office or wherever you go. And whether it's family, friends, or colleagues, you're like, hey, can I make you a tea? Smell this, smell this. I went to this cool shop. It's something you want to share. And of course, the staff we hired, we ended up getting a lot of theater kids because they were very much attracted. When you think about who retail attracts, it attracts all these social people. Well, what are their options? They can go work at The Gap and sell clothes, but you're all bubbly and excited and you're like, hey, welcome to The Gap. How can I help you? And what's the first thing we all say? Just looking. Right? It's because we all know how to buy clothing, but at that time, nobody knows how to buy tea. So you get these people that are energized by those social interactions and they get to put on a performance because the customer is so new to this concept and the idea of buying tea. So it just became this perfect storm where we call them our tea guides would get energized by the customers wanting to engage with them. And then the customer, of course, would feed off that energy. end up leaving the store, really having this unique retail theater experience and then go home and replicate it, which created a virality to it.
Jerrid Grimm: Well, I mean I've if no one if someone hasn't been in a David's tea, I there used to be one by our office in Gastown in Vancouver and you'd go in there. There's a couple of things with it that I found really interesting was one, it was you know, it was like a an Apple store to me. You know, like you'd walk in, it was like spotless, everything looked really well designed. I'm a marketing guy, so I just like fell in love with that. The cups, like iconic cups with this like teal you could recognize it without David's tea on it. I think that's Probably still if I saw a cup and it had that teal kind of shape on it and everything, I I think I would know right off of the bat. it smells great in there for sure. And you'd be right, you probably attracted this more outgoing professional or or where they took their job seriously because tea is also premium, you know, like it maybe they'd have a tough time working at McDonald's doing fries. But there's something about a tea shop that feels High end, it feels cultured. And so I could see how you detract that as well. So you you grow this, you know, David's tea from one store, and at what point are you sitting in there going, like, this is gonna be big? This is going to be locations everywhere, I'm gonna expand into the US. There must have been a tipping point that said, This is actually gonna work out versus one store that may or may not make four hundred bucks the next day.
David: I don't know, I was so naive at the time that I think it took a while for that moment to hit. Probably, I don't know, if I had to pin it to one moment, it was probably we went from, we went from like nine stores to 40 in one year.
Jerrid Grimm: Mm.
David: It was the year my first kid was born. It was a crazy year. We opened all these mall stores and it worked in the malls. And what's nice about the malls is you can make a lot of deals quickly because it's typically owned by institutional landlords. So if it works, there tends to be a formula for expansion, right? So, know, Cadillac Fairview, Ivan O'Cambridge, Simon in the US, there's a, there are Oxford, et cetera, et cetera. They, they have a portfolio. So if you can make it work in a few, they can very quickly help you expand to many. And we kind of hit that formula fairly early on. I our first four stores were street stores. They struggled. We didn't know how to sell tea in the summer. It took us a while to figure that out. We did eventually. But the malls, I think, is where we really were able to accelerate fast. And once, you know, we picked our heads up at the end of that absolutely whirlwind of a year of opening 32 or 31 doors on a base of eight or nine, I think. You know, we then had more infrastructure. had 40 doors. All of them were working. And I, I, at that point it was sort of like, all right, well, we really have something here. This is a serious business.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah, and what's the looking back, what was the hardest part of building David's T?
David: The hardest part, I think, was, I mean, look, I didn't control the company. So I had a partner who had the majority control and I was a minority partner. I was the sweat, he was the equity. I had no money when I started, right? So that became challenging. He was a great partner in many regards. You the way I like to describe it is I probably would have had 10 stores in five years without him. You know, I would have got I would have had to go much slower and it would have taken me a lot longer. And who knows how far along that journey I would have got before somebody else came in aggressive in the market. And without me, he would have had zero stores. So we
Jerrid Grimm: Right.
David: made a really good partnership of youth and experience. What ultimately happened is he wanted to bring his kids into the business, which complicated things, quite frankly. And I would say, you know, the story of David's Tea is one where if, and then we brought in a private equity group later, which further complicated things and they started, you know, there's a fair amount of infighting that, you know, without passing any judgment on who is right and who is wrong and who is this and that, it just creates an environment that unfortunately has people focusing on the internal politics rather than the customer. And I think for David's tea, you know, when you're successful in business, people watch, they see you do that and the market folds in on you. It catches up to you. You you start to think, I'm untouchable. going to go. mean, look no further than, know, who was on Lululemon in your backyard. know, Chip was on our board. you know, Lulu now, if you look at their competitive environment, it is so much greater, right? Like so many other concepts have come on the scenes, built off the back of Lulu's success and are now challenging it for market share. And so the same thing happened with David's tea, direct to consumer exploded. We were slow on the punch there. We were slow to evolve the store concept. I if you think about the store concept really didn't evolve much. And I think a lot of that had to do with some internal unfortunate distractions that ultimately cause you to take your eye off. the customer, serving them, staying ahead of your competition and really being best in class concept. And we had the lead. And, you know, I think that when you take that lead for granted is where others are able to catch up. so, you know, I left reluctantly. mean, we went public and I sold I sold everything not because, mean, I don't love the business. mean, obviously I wouldn't start another tea company later. I obviously love it. And my name was on the door. I, you know, last thing I want to do is leave this this incredible business I'd built with with, you know, from zero. to this juggernaut of a company. But when you have that kind of environment on the inside and you're not focused on the customer, I I fear a bit too much about what happens to the business. And it ended up, unfortunately, I tried to buy it back a few times. You know, they didn't want to sell it to me. It ended up coming down. Like when I sold it was a $500 million market cap. Today, I think it trades at three, four million. And we did 200 million of revenue, 30 million of EBITDA. Today, I think it's what, like a 40, $30 million business? mean, it's contracted dramatically. So
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: it's a real cautionary tale.
Jerrid Grimm: Well it's interesting because people I actually expected that you'd be like, well, it was really tough to like source the right T from the right place or the way that like the store footprint would work, but that's not a lot of times it's underappreciated that the biggest challenge is dealing with people in like a fast growing company where all of a sud sounds a little bit like you had your own little version of succession kinda going on. And maybe they'll make a movie one day of that.
David: I mean, yeah, the issue with that is that it doesn't work.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: you know, mean, succession makes for great TV, but it doesn't work. mean, you know, just because your last name's Hilton doesn't mean you know how to run hotels. So, you know, you it almost never works.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: You hard pressed to find cases where that type of where it works is where you're able to. You're able to. uncompromisingly protect meritocracy.
Jerrid Grimm: Mm.
David: And when you can't do that, the problem is you can't get the talent. know, talented people want to be able to spread, they want a few things. They want clarity, integrity, consistency. They want to be able to spread their wings and fly and make the business part theirs too. And it's very difficult to offer that in environments that aren't professionalized. And so, Yeah, I think that was a real drag on, and it's a balance, right? Because
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: founder energy is really important. There is a dynamic around... that type of energy and that energy can be very prevalent in early family businesses as well. But that's really important as well because there's a level of grit, level of caring, a level of urgency that is hard to find in just hired management. That's not what I'm suggesting. But I think when you need to create an environment, regardless of the ownership dynamics in a company, it's really, really critical to create an environment where top talent wants to come in, can produce is held accountable in a very clear and transparent way that is as consistent and not erratic.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah, and people need that framework to know that, hey, I could spend ten years at this company and move my way up. There's no ceiling
David: Right.
Jerrid Grimm: on my I could be CEO one day. They need to like if that's what they desire, it you want ambitious people, you want people that are self-motivated, and those people tend to wanna be able to move up quickly, even quicker than probably their skills or experience will allow them to do. I mean, that's what I've always found most interesting. I always find the highest maintenance employees are my favorite ones. I mean, they're a pain in the ass to manage. I manage sales teams for a long time. Highest maintenance group of people that you can because they're so ambitious, they want more all of the time, but man can they help grow a company, that type of personality type, right? And you probably adding a ceiling, management ceiling in there probably distracts a bit.
David: I don't know if it was so much the ceiling on seniority as it was the, people need to know that when the company wins, they will win. And there needs to be a framework for that that they trust. And there needs to be environment where their contributions are valued. And I think that's really, important. And the more companies I'm involved in, and the longer I've been doing this, the more I see how great companies have everyone aligned and motivated to achieve towards a common purpose. And that's easy to say and hard to do. so anyway, mean, the other things obviously were challenging suppliers and stores. I often say building a business like... walking through quicksand and chewing broken glass. I mean, you know, every day there's endless problems, but those problems with the right team and most importantly, the right framework and environment for them that they trust can really, really help you surmount any challenge, frankly.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. What an interesting kind of lesson that you were able to take for So David's T hits like I would even call it the peak at IPOs, like you said, couple hundred million dollars in revenue, thirty million dollars in in profit, which is insane, right? Like that is an incredibly healthy business. Yeah.
David: Yeah, we had a good business.
Jerrid Grimm: And you kinda hit the peak of every entrepreneur's dream, I would say. So you Let's say you sell off some of your shares then, you leave the company, the David and David's T is no longer there. It falters over time. But how do you feel after you've hit this ultimate goal for every entrepreneur? Like, do you walk away from that moment, the money hits the bank, and you're like, Great, accomplished, now time to golf or whatever your your sport of choices and and drift off to the sunset? Or what is it, what does that feel like for people that have never had that experience?
David: I went into a massive depression after I exited DAVIDsTEA Yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: Crazy. So massive depression, like right away, like kinda happens No way.
David: Almost instantly. was several, I mean, I ended up with a few health issues that compounded it, but it's hard to say what came first, the chicken or the egg. I think they're interrelated. Look, I had worked so hard and it had taken so much energy out of me for so long. you somewhat suppress the anxiety, the pain, the difficulty while you're in it. And then when it ends, it's like, you know, my biggest mistake is I didn't think about life after DAVIDsTEA And
Jerrid Grimm: Mm-hmm.
David: I didn't think about my identity after DAVIDsTEA And... Yeah, it was really tough. mean, on the one hand, look, it wasn't that tough. Like I want to keep it in perspective. I made a lot of money. So
Jerrid Grimm: Course. Yeah.
David: that was really nice. know, you all of a sudden, like there's definitely a moment when money hits your bank account where you're like, wow.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. Good.
David: And to pretend that that's not a real thing would be inauthentic. So I mean, that is a real thing. It does matter. That's why you do it. You do it for a lot of reasons, but one of them is obviously to create generational wealth for your
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: family. And I had done that. And so that was amazing. And I felt like I had done well, not just for myself, but for my young family at the time, right? And so that was really important, but I also lost, know, a friend of mine once said, a secret to life is someone to love, something to do and something to look forward to. And I had lost, you know, something to do and something to look forward to. And so, and I really didn't know what I was going to do next. I didn't think about it. And yeah, it just sort of came down on me like a ton of bricks. And I went through a pretty difficult time in my life.
Jerrid Grimm: Hmm. Such a surprising thing, I think, for most people to understand. I mean, when I sold my company Pressboard, what I found was it's a bit like have you ever seen an athlete that is like gold medal kind of thing or playing professional sports and then
David: Right.
Jerrid Grimm: they retire and they balloon up with weight, right? Because they had all of this, they were working out eight hours a day, they're eating like 6,000 calories, right? And then all of a sudden you put a stop to it and just like boof, right? It just all happens. I felt like that with the energy that I was putting into my company. I had all this energy and focus and ambition. And then I had nowhere to direct it. I actually kind of directed it at my family. I got like very intense with like over intense spending time with my family and my wife and my kids, where they're just like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like I know that you've been like in the office, like working on this thing and it's a good balance. But now all the energy and they almost couldn't like handle how much.
David: Right.
Jerrid Grimm: focus I was putting into that. And it was something I had to learn with was you have to direct this energy somewhere. And if you have nowhere to direct it, is probably the biggest challenge. Is just it has nowhere to go, right? So how did you end up what was the first thing that you were able to like redirect, you know, if you came out of maybe like learnt to deal with the why you were depressed and what your identity was. How did you feel that move? When what was the thing that kind of I guess your next thing that that maybe fulfilled you in that way.
David: Well, I mean, I... I'm a big believer that you don't solve these things in one hot flash, right? And I don't know that I understood that at the time. In my mind, at first I was like, I need a quick cure, right? Like what's the magic pill or the magic this? And I think it's a series, first of all, I needed to change some my habits. I started... eating differently, I started exercising better, I started meditating, which became mindfulness became a huge part of my life. You know, this is 10 years ago. I still do it regularly. And that really helped me stop. That probably was one of the single biggest things that impacted me positively of everything I've done that that really stopped. was I was I used to ruminate quite a bit. And and I think that really helped me quite a lot to be able to compartmentalize and shift and be able to calm myself a little bit. And it's not one of these things that happen overnight, it's one of these things that happen over time through consistent practice. And then, you know, I just, I jump back in and maybe not in the best ways. You know, I would probably do it differently if I had to do it all over again, but. I put one foot in front of the other. mean, I know that's cheesy to say, but it's kind of how you do it. Like, I don't know that there's, I don't know another way. You just sort of show up. And so I started looking for new things to do. I made some investments. I joined an investment group at the time with Christine Day, who had ran the lemon for a while, and some other partners. that didn't, you know, we made some investments, but that I was only an investor and sort of an advisor. give me an that wasn't enough. was and anyway long story short I was looking for concepts to invest to build what I was going to do next. I ended up noticing you know as my diet changed the healthy fast food sort of explosion at that time in the states led by sweetgreen which today is so many different concepts and felt there was nothing quite like it in Canada so I built a concept called mad radish. You know the food business really, really hard. The way I describe it is like in tea, the young person behind the counter can really only screw up the service. can't, you know, can't do much else. In restaurant business, they can screw up the service, the product, your margin in one fell swoop.
Jerrid Grimm: Right.
David: So, you know, very, very different business. Took me a long time to figure that out. Ended up you know, with a great partner, we're 12 stores in, it's called Mad Radish, healthy fast food. The partner I have there runs it and is incredible. that's growing. like, you know, I had to spend way more than I care to admit, and it took way longer than I ever would have thought to even get to a place where it's sustainable. And then I started a tea concept with my best friend, Harley, who's the president of Shopify. We also have a podcast called Big Shot together. And anyway, Fire Belly Tea. You know it we don't use any flavorings like the secret in tea is it's all natural and artificial flavorings and even the natural flavorings are kind of a lot of chemicals So this is just pure tea. It's the tea I drink we still have it today We have we have CEO running it a partner running it who's doing a great job And we do really really high quality loose leaf teas herbal teas whatnot and you know fire belly sells sells wholesale in a grocery sells on direct-to-consumer But neither of them were big enough You know, a certain amount of time went by where I realized I'm now in the prime of my career. I, you know, I'm in my 40s and I have a lot of knowledge and I want to. build something big. I want to, you know, I want to. So I ended up becoming a customer of Highbeam. Highbeam is a banking and cash management platform for consumer brands in the U.S. Now, what does that mean? Banking and cash management? Well, banking is pretty obvious. It's the way you think about banking. You know, you have money, we give you yield on your cash. We have a series of automations to make you more money on that on that cash, on that float that you carry, streamlining your accounts payable, credit cards, cash back, term cards, capital. But then what's happening, what's so fascinating about that space, what attracted me to it is a few things. One, I just got fed up with my bank. I I was getting 0 % yield on my cash, no intelligence on my data, clunky software, bureaucratic service. I just got to a point where I'm like, there has to be something better. I ended up discovering Highbeam through an industry newsletter. I called up the founder, was really impressed with him, took a leap of faith, became a customer, was blown away. Product was great, service was great. And I kept thinking, wow. You know, when you think about AI and what it's going to do in banking, it's going to completely redefine, and this is what Highbeam is doing, the value proposition of what a bank does for you. a bank, if you go back 100 years ago, a bank was your partner. They knew you, you shook hands, they helped you, they understood your business. Then in the ensuing decades, it got commoditized, right? You
Jerrid Grimm: Mm-hmm.
David: have a 1-800 number, you press one for English, two for French or Spanish and whatever. and they don't really know you or your business. And it's basically a necessity and a cost center. then now what's happening is, know, cash management is really the name of the game, especially with consumer brands. So consumer brands, mean, businesses that sell physical goods. So when you sell physical goods, number one, the banks don't lend to you because there's no hard assets. So it's all private credit mostly.
Jerrid Grimm: Mm, yeah.
David: until you get to a certain size where they're willing to lend your own money back to you. So at the end, RBC would lend to David C because we had so much EBITDA that, yeah, sure, you deposit 30 million with me, I'll give you 5 million in credit, right?
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: But for most of the market, most of those Shopify, Amazon, Walmart, Costco brands, the lenders are either merchant cash advances or they're asset-backed loans, but it's all private credit. One, you need to navigate that ecosystem so your partner understands it and can help you help facilitate the right product for you at the right time on the on the lending side. Two, you're turning money into inventory back into money. So you can be profitable and broke in that process, depending on how good you are at buying inventory and how well you negotiate your supply chain so that you don't have so much time between when you pay for product and when you sell it. And so you need to be able to manage your cash flow really well. And that's really hard to do. There's a lot of moving parts, right? And it's all done in these clunky spreadsheets. I mean, I had like 10 people at David's Tea doing all kinds of manual work figuring this stuff out. And so what Highbeam does is we automate cash forecasting, scenario planning, and a host of other financial workflows to help you analyze and make decisions in minutes and hours, what used to take days and weeks. But then the best part is we also have the banking core, so we can streamline the money movements as well, right? So the whole thing becomes automated. So when to borrow, when to pay back, what to do with idle cash when it shouldn't be sitting in a 0 % account, who to pay, when to pay them, when to expect your
Jerrid Grimm: Mm.
David: accounts receivable. So it's really exciting time. where we're able to add tremendous value and turn this into a profit center where we can fundamentally be deflationary. So the same business like a David's tea that used to take 10 people to run and whether you're a one million dollar business or a 200 million dollar business or anything in between the supplies, you can run the company with way less finance resources. And I think it's a really exciting time where, you know, if you think about it, Shopify and Amazon and they made it so it's never been easier to start a business. But what HighBeam is doing is making it so it's never been easier to make money from a business.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah, definitely. I could see I was like, how do how does the guy that basically creates the T category get into software and banking? It kind of reminded me of, you know, they I know a lot of entrepreneurs that have built a business and then they they're like, what is the opposite of this business? I personally feel that way. I'm like, I've been doing marketing and advertising. My first business idea I had after was to start a flour mill. Right? Like the opposite. What is the opposite of being on a laptop? it's like grinding flour and putting it into parchment bags. Yeah, kind of idea, right?
David: Right.
Jerrid Grimm: Well, but it's start it's kind of making sense. It's like, hey, I I lived this life, right? I I understand what happens with consumer brands. I understand what's happening with the banking. I I did hear, I'm gonna I'm gonna call you out on something from from 2021. So you're on my first million, right? And there's this great quote where they're asking you, right? They're asking you like why you stay in these like difficult consumer physical product. Cause I think you just started Firebelly around that time. And you say, Software is a great business, but I don't love software, right? I love that because that's several years ago though. And I'm curious what changed in that time. Like
David: Well, it's funny even hearing you call HiBeam software. Because
Jerrid Grimm: Great.
David: in my mind, I don't view it like that. HiBeam is a platform. So when you think about it, we're your most trusted relationship. We have your money. We're your bank.
Jerrid Grimm: Right. Yeah, yeah.
David: So what I have gravitated towards, what I love about what I'm doing right now with HiBeam is I get to talk, I mean, I talk to over a thousand... brands a year, just me, nevermind my team. We have process of over 15 billion of transactions, we have 7X the business. We service this ecosystem of entrepreneurs whom I identify very strongly with. I am one, I was one. I'm still a high beam customer through FireBelly. I love working with this community. mean, these are people taking risks. know, entrepreneurship is very much a lonely journey a lot of the time. It's a personal pursuit disguised as a business pursuit. You learn so much about yourself. You know, you have to face tremendous mental adversity. Anybody who's done it knows this, regardless of what you build. And I love being there to support them. and grow these businesses and we become a really trusted relationship for them across their financial stack. so, know, yeah, okay, do we have a part of our business that's monetized through software? Yes, you know, there's also deposit spreads and card spreads and card. So it's a full platform. so I, what I like about it is that I feel I'm in the game. I see so much. I'm exposed to all these amazing entrepreneurs all day long. I'm with them constantly. And, you know, what could be better than that? And I still have my hand in the game with Firebelly and I'm still involved in it. So, you know, I kind of get the best of both worlds and I think I've kind of hit a speed that works for me. What's great about iBeam is, you know, it's growing really fast. It's on the verge of becoming a really big company. And I like the mental challenge of it. I feel like I'm growing, you know, I'm learning. And in the two years I've doing this I feel like my game has gotten better and you know that's really exciting I mean that's that's part of sort of the the human condition is sort of to feel like like you know you went back to like the the NBA analogy you know I want to see how far I can go Right? Like how many cylinders do I have that I can kick into? Like I don't want to be 30, 40 years or whenever I'm in a proverbial rocking chair as an old man, hopefully one day. I don't want to feel like I underachieved, like I left something on the line. And so I, you know, this was something that I naturally gravitated towards as a customer. And then I dabbled in consulting with Highbeam and investing a little bit. then ultimately, you know, made the decision, of course, you know, in partnership with the founders to come in as the president and work with them as we try and build out this team and scale what we think is going to be a generational company.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. I've thought about this lot where you have this prime. You said you're like at the prime of your career and people don't always realize that sometimes people think, well, you have the most energy in your mid-20s. Well, sure, but you
David: Right.
Jerrid Grimm: have like virtually no experience at that point, right? So you're just like running really fast in all directions. And then maybe in your like 70s and 80s, your energy probably isn't there. Maybe you just you you don't care that much about that part about like building it, but right in this like Same we're we're relatively similar ages, like mid 40s. It feels like you have all of the experience. You have all like the scars that you need in that time. You still like as long as you're eating healthy and and in the gym, like sure, my my knee doesn't work as well at hockey as it used to,
David: Yeah
Jerrid Grimm: right? But you kind of are in this like key thing, and it does feel like it's it's almost like a shame to waste it, right? Because
David: Exactly.
Jerrid Grimm: yeah, That really relates well to me. And I think it relates to a lot of people that are in this point of their career probably. what do you think is the learning that you've taken from your past experience that makes you the right person to be the president of High Beam? And then what do you think is your biggest thing that you'll learn over the next few years?
David: Look, I understand the customer about as good as you possibly can. I I've operated as a $1 million company in five, 10, 20,
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: 50, 100, 200 million. You know, I've seen the stages of growth that consumer brands go through. So I think in that regard, you know, it's a perfect fit. And I understand it. you know, I ran the buying group at David's Tea. I handled the real estate. you know, I was in the CFO's office every day. I'm oriented towards understanding every aspect of these businesses and what it takes to grow them and how Highbeam truly can unlock material savings in both dollars and time. So that's the first thing. The second thing I would say is, you know, I love selling and I understand how to do it and I've been good at it since I sold running shoes. so, you know, that just comes naturally to me and I'm used to leading teams. You know, I've been doing it my whole life. What am I going to learn over the next two years? I mean, I've... I didn't know what the word GTM meant until I started at Hybeam. It means go to markets, a fancy word for sales and marketing. So, you know, there's a lot of how to scale a technology platform is a new frontier for me in many ways. You know, I'm a quick study, I'm picking it up fast. You know, I've not been doing it for two years. I, you know, but... And I have a host of great mentors around me. I mean, mean, no further than my buddy Harley, who. you know, my God, I mean, look what he's done and and and everybody at Chubb Toby on down. mean, they've they built talk about a generational company. mean, so, you know, fortunately, I turn to him for a lot of advice. mean, he's done such an incredible job there. So I get mentorship from a variety of sources. And yeah, I love that challenge. I'm up for it. I mean, I think about it day and night. I you know, I don't there's no off switch on that. And I Yeah, so I think over the next two years, being able to hyper scale is really where I will pick up a lot of learnings. I'm sure we're gonna hit a lot of obstacles that we'll have to overcome together.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. I think it's really interesting when you have so you had, you know, David's T and you understand that con you have Firebelly, Mad Radish, so you understand businesses, you understand how they can scale all the way, and then you use that to be able to be a voice of a c of a customer within High Beam, right? like, you know, Shopify, the the founding story of that is the snowboard shop that Couldn't find software, right? We couldn't find software to do it. I think didn't Harley have like a t-shirt thing or something like that at one point. Like he was a Shopify customer, I think, at one point as well, right?
David: Correct. That's right.
Jerrid Grimm: So it's these interesting stories of like just solving a problem that you have. You understand the problem really well, and this solution comes across. I love that you found High Beam in like an industry newsletter and then reached out to the founders of it and kind of went from that point. Just a really interesting there's all these whys in the road that your life takes, right? Like you don't see that newsletter, maybe you just never reach out to hybrid. Maybe this doesn't become a part of your story at all.
David: Well, I actually think that's a great insight. mean, opportunity doesn't come with a bow on it. It doesn't work out in a nice little package the way you think it's going to work out. You have to be receptive to having, know, when it's coming your way. And it's not always obvious. You know, you have to sort of sniff it out. And it involves difficult decisions, difficult... changes in your life that you maybe didn't anticipate making. know, one thing I know for sure is it never goes according to plan.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. You have this unique situation. So I interviewed Jamie Schmidt of Schmidt's Naturals. Her name is on the deodorant. She's not involved anymore. Sold it to Unilever, right? You have David's tea. Your name, whether you liked it or not, is is the name of the tea, right? You are David of David's tea. I actually have a we had these cups that I have that we got from David's tea. I used to we it was our Christmas blend, right? Like Davis to me, to me, is Christmas because we'd always get the Christmas blends. It would be in the stockings, we'd all have tea, Christmas. Yeah, very sure. I could switch over very easily.
David: We'll get you on Firebelly now, Jared. Don't worry.
Jerrid Grimm: but you're forever going to be a key part of that. And it's such a massive success, right? But it occupied, let's say, 10 years of your life. And it's almost been 10 years since you have that, right? Like
David: Right. Correct.
Jerrid Grimm: there's a so and there was 10 years before that, and there will be 10 years after. I'm curious if you if you've thought about this, you know, maybe when well when you're meditating, I don't think you're supposed to really think I should meditate more so I understand it a little bit better. I know a lot of the breathing stuff, but when you're thinking about you're you know in the rocking chair, 70 or 80 years old or 90 years old or whatever it is, and you look back at all the things that you've done in life, like how how do you want to be remembered for that life, or how do you want to remember what you did? And maybe you don't have to go all the way till you're in a rocking chair, but over the next ten years, what is it that you would like to accomplish?
David: I mean, I am all in on making High Beam a massively successful company. And of course, you know, I'm still involved in other companies like Mad Radish, like FireBelly. And I'm blessed to have incredible partners there helping me build those as well. But High Beam is where I think I can have the biggest impact. It's where I think we can help some of the most important people in the economy, i.e. the people creating businesses, creating jobs, making investments, help them be successful, and be able to do that at scale. That's really, I'm laser focused on that, and when I'm not laser focused on that, I'm having a good time with my wife and kids. so that's really... That's really where I'm at right now. I'm trying not to go too far ahead of myself. I'm just looking at the putt that's right in front of me, you know, and yeah, I think that the opportunity is right there and I just, I put my head down and I pursue it.
Jerrid Grimm: I mean a lot of people in their second act, the biggest challenge I find when I'm speaking to people that had a company and they sold it is they know how much work it takes to build a business. Like
David: yeah.
Jerrid Grimm: the incredible amount of focus, the length of time, like these are never one year things. These are always like 10 to 20 year like
David: That's right.
Jerrid Grimm: I watched the Odyssey the other night and I was like, that's a journey. And I'm like, that's what business feels like sometimes. It's just
David: Cheers.
Jerrid Grimm: It's just so it's gonna be a long time. So I don't know if everyone realizes that when you make a commitment like this with High Beam, you're not thinking like, Hey, I'm gonna do this for six months. You're thinking like I'm taking this through, I already see 10 years in the future where it could be and how big that could be. I think someone like you needs that potential out there of it to be able to kind of like satisfy so that you aren't the athlete, you know, that balloons up the next day. You need to be able to keep going after something. I'm I'm super excited for it. Yeah.
David: So long race, 100%, long race. And yeah, and I think the people that are the most successful are the one, look, 80 % of the value in most companies is often created towards the last, call it 20 % of the race, right? If you look at any company, you look at their market caps, if they're public or, I mean, most of the value is created. know, later on in the company's existence, there's a lot of foundational work and growth. if you, you know, that's just the way compounding works, right? Like you have to hit that hockey stick part of the curve. And so, yeah, I mean, you're, getting validation along the way. Don't get me wrong. It's not just blind, blind faith, but like, It's one thing to triple the business from 10 to 30. It's another thing to triple it from 300 to 900, right? So you need to put yourself in the position where you start to hit that exponential curve. yeah, know, Harley and I have this podcast called Big Shot. We're both Jewish. We interview these older Jewish entrepreneurs who had built these monumental companies. Incredible entrepreneurs like Izzy Sharp who built the Four Seasons Hotel, David Rubenstein, a huge Carlisle group. We just did Jeffrey Katzenberg who is Steven Spielberg's partner in DreamWorks.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah.
David: Some incredible, we've done 30 of these interviews. Some just heavy hitters, unbelievable wisdom. And what's amazing is the way they talk about decades in one sentence. It'd be like, and then the 70s was tough and I almost lost the business.
Jerrid Grimm: Right.
David: You're like, what? Izzy Sharp was 50 years old. Not many people know this Canadian. He's unbelievable. Izzy Sharp is the founder of the Four Seasons Hotel. He's in his 90s now. Canada celebrates Terry Fox. Izzy Sharp is literally the guy who made sure Terry Fox got known to the country. And Betty Fox, Terry's mom, says without Izzy there would have been no Terry. He was instrumental in that. Anyway, he tells us the story on Big Shot of his building of Four Seasons Hotel. I he was 50 years old and he had three hotels. I just think about that for a sec. The Four Seasons, one of the greatest hotel chains in the world. And he'll be like, yeah, in the 70s I almost lost Vancouver.
Jerrid Grimm: Right.
David: And you're like, wait a minute, like that's a whole decade.
Jerrid Grimm: Yeah. Yeah.
David: So these people, you see them at the end of their careers, you realize the adversity, they didn't just build over the course of weeks or months or even years, they build over the course of decades and they hit major tricky times where they had to surmount enormous obstacles. And so anyway, just, I became very inspired through Big Shot and the podcast. You start to realize, you're like, wow, okay, I should be thinking in terms of decades, not even years.
Jerrid Grimm: you do small things every day and they a they compound into these like incredible things over a long period of time. Where would people be able to find High Beam? How would they best reach out to you? we got a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to this show, right? A lot of marketers, a lot of entrepreneurs. I don't know if we have all the finance people. I don't think we have the controllers really that interested in it yet, but where would where would you suggest they they reach out to you?
David: I mean, you can go, we're on LinkedIn, you can go to highbeam.com, you can go to High Beam Instagram, you can go to my Instagram, Tmaverick. T underscore maverick, Yeah, you can check us out. I'm also on LinkedIn, David Siegel. Yeah, you can find us in all your usual stompin' grounds. Yeah, exactly.
Jerrid Grimm: All the places. You're in all of the places. Well, I think you've found you found something to do, right? You've got you've got some people to love, right? And it
David: Exactly.
Jerrid Grimm: really sounds like you've got something to look forward to. So well, whatever your friend told you about Nalin life, it sounds like you're you're hitting on it. All cylinders right now, to use your own term. Awesome.
David: Thanks for having me, Jared. It's been a ton of fun.
Jerrid Grimm: Great to chat with you, David.
