 What was the, the point of what you wanted to start the company? Was it, was it just a personal issue you were having in terms of finding things that just didn't fit your lifestyle? What was the impetus for starting? Yeah, for sure. I had been following a, for 20 years, a low-fat diet, and I, you know, had been running and then doing marathons and even doing Ironman triathlons as I juggled single mom, busy life. I had a executive, marketing executive job and doing lots of traveling and trying to kind of balance everything. And by my mid 40s, you know, that type of diet and the lifestyle really kind of led to some health issues at cardiovascular. I had IBS, my tummy was upset all the time. And then I read a book and the book was written by Nina Tichols and it basically said that, you know, we got it all wrong in the last 20, 40 years that we should be embracing fats and cutting out sugar and carbohydrates instead. So I was on a plane on my way to Natural Product Expo West and I was doing consulting and I kind of had in the back of my mind, I wanted to start my own brand one day, but that book was really the lightning rod for myself to change my diet pretty much instantly. After 20 years of not eating fats, I'm like, okay, I need to do exact opposite of what I've been doing. And then I walked the show and I realized that, you know, there's undercurrent of fats here, but there's no beacon brand that says, you know, eat and enjoy good fats. And so that's kind of where it started. I said, you know, if I, if I want to drive change, I could write a book or I could, you know, help promote, there's all these different books now on low carb diets and higher fat diets and low sugar diets. But a better way to kind of get the message out is do what I've spent my career doing, which is build a brand and have the brand carry the message. So I kind of gave it a shot. When you decided to launch, did you immediately raise capital? Did you bootstrap? Because given your experience, you probably knew exactly what was required to penetrate in a big way. Well, I pretty much knew because I had, you know, I was a single mom, I managed to keep, you know, my home despite kind of the challenges and the costs in Toronto of doing that. And I had managed to put together some savings and my kids kind of school savings and stuff. So I kind of had like the three reasons for 35 years as to why I hadn't started my company. They all kind of were being checked off the list one by one, like I had an idea. I had enough savings to start, but not enough to kind of keep going, but enough to kind of seed, seed, seed and, and bootstrap off my credit card. I kind of had, you know, I had time. So my kids were a little bit older, still not old enough, but certainly older that I kind of literally went from 5am to pretty much 9pm, seven days a week for two years. And I kind of had like the three circumstances came together. The idea was really, really good. So I shopped the idea to probably 200 people. And it went kind of from, hey, I'm doing consulting. Can we chat? Oh, by the way, I have this little idea checked under my arm. Everyone wants to hear about the idea. And then the meeting wind up being, you know, 55 minutes on my new brand idea and five minutes on, on this kind of consulting stuff I was doing to pay bills. And so very quickly it became like, well, like not only is this a good idea, but when you're looking to raise money, you know, just call me back. So at first it was all scrappy. It was all my, you know, all my money to pay every single bill, all the samples, all the packaging, everything. And then once I kind of had samples, prototypes, I think we had over a hundred different prototypes initially, when it kind of became time to like, okay, Whole Foods wants to list me and UNFI and Purity Life, the big distributors in Canada. And then, you know, kind of you'll go into 50 stores and then a hundred stores and then eventually 600 and 1600. Then I wanted to raise capital. So my first raise, we raised $396,000. And again, it was just me, you know, employee of one, but employee wasn't being paid. So I was living off my savings. And, you know, being very, very careful, you know, the sale sheet was, you know, not spending more than $400 on a little kind of sale sheet. And it was me going everywhere. And I had my 12 year old car and the AC had been busted for my little Honda Fit. So I had to buy a little, you know, cooler from Home Depot to keep the bars cold because it was super warm in the summer. So I'm driving around, going literally store to store, kind of saying, Hey, you know, we're listed at UNFI and you can kind of place an order and, and raising some funds. And it pretty much stayed, you know, we were, even though we grew really fast the first four months, we had a couple hundred thousand in sales, but then we had 5,000 percent, 5,500 growth the first year, another 500% growth the second year, very kind of stayed close to being, to bootstrapping. The one exception is I was always very generous with sampling because we, we just had a product that tastes so, so different. So at first I went to every single store manager that this, you know, the head office of the natural health food store listed us and then I would go into the store when they had the product or I'd bring samples and then I had my iPhone and you know, my, my Facebook is, if you look at the first videos, it's every single kind of store staff would try the bar and I'd be like, I'm going to, I'm going to turn the phone on. Is that okay? And then they would taste the bar and they're like, what if I don't like it? I'm like, you'll like it. And, and they were, they were all blown away. So it was kind of fun. You know, it was all very scrappy, just authentic kind of first trial and, and kind of go from there. I want to ask you this question. So we have a lot of people who want to jump into entrepreneurship in terms of our listener base. We had one founder on who was having a baby. And so she was raising capital while pregnant. And I got to ask her, what is this like, you know, we see a lot in the news, females, it's a little bit tougher to raise money. And so I was like, how do you, how are you, what's your mindset going into this? And she said, I have the right team. And so she's like, not even concerned. I just love that answer. And it's an answer that a lot of people don't hear enough, right? It's like, there's so much fear. There's so much of your own thought process that holds people back male or female. But I think there's always the question for female of what happens when I have kids. And I love to answer who's so direct in your position. Here you are, you're a single parent with two kids. And so I really want to hear your answer as to, you know, obviously we as entrepreneurs do a really good job of burying all the difficulties. And it sounds like in your answer, you just put it aside, but it's brutal, like it's brutal. Fundraising is really, really tough. And, you know, I was a team of one. I had a board and some advisors that were helping. But at the end of the day, I had to hit the pavement and I had to kind of pretty much every single $10,000 was, you know, me reaching out and what about this? What about that? Another person, another person. And I'm also in Canada, you know, and everyone tells you initially, you know, there's only one route, which is angel funding, right? You can't just kind of snap your fingers and get $2 million from institutional. It's really friends and family. I'm like, well, I have no friends or family that have, you know, even $5,000, right? So, but it is the angel funding. And I tapped into all of kind of my prior relationships that, you know, I've been kind of this busy single mom going to work, turning around this brand traveling. And I hadn't felt that I had prioritized networking that much over the last 20 years. But I kind of still, you know, went in the Rolodex and it's $10,000 at a time. And then some, you know, some investments took 10 meetings to kind of get. And it's really, really hard. A year or nearly two years into it, I had kind of, we were a team of five, but even then, you know, you're kind of five people and the fundraising was just me. I had board members that were helping, but you kind of really have to, you know, you're pitching your brand and you know your brand day and day out, you know your results. Canada is really tough. So I don't know if I had known how tough it is. I don't know if I would have stepped into it. It's just, you know, I think the US market is a little bit different. And I think the statistics of funding that goes to women founders and CEOs versus men speaks for itself. The numbers are very dire in terms of the funding that women founders can are getting versus men. And it's tough out there. So in Canada, there's not as many VCs. There's not as many options for founders. So I have, you know, hundreds of acquaintances that I've met through the last three years. I was in a little incubator program and we were 16 of us, but I think there's been a hundred brands in that incubator and thousands and thousands of applicants. And you're kind of, you're just hustling to try to get 300,000, 400,000. We wind up being very fortunate because I raised 400,000 in the first round and then I raised, you know, I raised kind of five rounds, 10 million, another 10 million, another 12 million in debt. So I think we're smashing records for Canada, but in food were the exception. Like there's not a lot of money. And my advice to Canadian founders is to not underestimate how hard it is. So you have to bootstrap and count every penny and try to get the velocities because as soon as your brand is on the shelf and is selling, then doors open. But if prior to that, it's really, really tough because most of the startups don't, you know, don't kind of make the returns and many don't make it. So it's not an easy world. Hey, everyone, thanks for checking out that clip. If you enjoyed it, be sure to hit the like button down below. And if you're interested in hearing the full episode, it's out right now on our YouTube channel. We've had a lot of great guests come on this show before and we've got a lot of great guests coming up in the future. So hit subscribe so that you don't miss a single episode. In one final note, we're always looking for new ideas and new companies feature on the show. So if you know of someone or know of a company, write us a comment down below letting us know who they are and what they do. We'd be happy to have them on the show. Until then, I'll just be here waiting for your comments. So, uh, see you later.