Welcome to episode 224 of the Business Development Podcast.

And today I sit down with Kalea Carrington, a trailblazing clean tech entrepreneur and blockchain leader whose story took this podcast in a direction I never expected.

From unimaginable setbacks to leading national innovation.

This episode was absolutely powerful and left me impacted for hours.

You are not gonna wanna miss it.

Stick with us.

The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years.

Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more.

This is the Business of Development Podcast, based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get expert advice, tips and experiences and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs and business development reps.

You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by Capital Business Development capitalbd ca.

Let's do it.

Welcome to the Business Development Podcast.

And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Hello.

Welcome to episode 224 of the Business Development Podcast.

And on today's expert guest interview, I bring you Kalea Carrington.

Kalea is a trailblazing technology entrepreneur and advocate hailing from Alberta, Canada.

As the co founder and CEO of Absolute Combustion International aci, she has revolutionized the clean tech industry with groundbreaking solutions that span sectors such as aerospace and oil and gas.

With over a decade of experience in designing and developing innovative industrial combustion technologies, Kalea has led ACI to the forefront of environmental sustainability, championing reduced emissions, lower fuel consumption and enhanced safety measures.

Beyond her achievements in cleantech, Kalea is a prominent figure in Canada's blockchain ecosystem.

She serves as the Executive Director of the Canadian Blockchain Consortium CBC and co founder of the Canadian Blockchain association for Women, cbaw, where she leverages her expertise to foster collaboration among industry leaders and government bodies, building the nation's largest blockchain community.

Kalea's dedication to merging technology with social good has made her a powerful force in advocating for a fairer and more inclusive tech industry.

Her passion for uniting diverse voices behind a common goal resonates in her roles as an influential public speaker, writer and community volunteer.

Raised in a family that valued business and innovation, Kalea's vision and leadership are rooted in lifelong commitment to pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo.

She stands as a testament to the power of resilience and innovation, inspiring others to join her in creating a sustainable, prosperous future with a relentless drive to make a positive impact.

Kalea Carrington is not just shaping industries.

She is shaping the future of Canada.

Kalea, it's a pleasure to have you on the show today.

Whoa, that's an intro.

My God, I hope.

I.

My gosh, my.

I.

I screwed up my last intro to you, and it's so funny because I fixed them all, so nobody will ever know.

But my last one that I did to you, my throat, by the time I get to the end of, it's like, you guys gotta stop being so damn successful.

I need you to quit being so successful, okay?

Whatever you wrote, I gotta use as my bio.

And they start introducing me for, like, public speaking things.

Oh, my goodness.

I have wanted to have you on the show for quite a while.

I think we chatted, I want to say, like, back in April.

I want to say was when we first talked about having you on the show, and we've had a couple reschedules, you had a.

A tragic, crazy accident on vacation.

Thank God you're alive.

Yeah.

But, my goodness, it's.

It's great to have you here today.

And, you know, you have been called the woman, Elon Musk.

And so, you know, honestly, reading your story in Mike Mack's book.

Yeah.

I might have to agree with that.

You're quite the impressive person.

I love that.

I wish I had Elon's money.

So I don't think I'm quite there yet.

Like, you know, maybe one day.

Well, it'll catch up.

I'm fairly confident at that.

So talk to me.

You know, you have done so much, Obviously, I know a lot about you.

I've read your book.

I know your background.

But, you know, for our listeners who are just meeting you for the first time, you know, who is Kalea Carrington?

Oh, goodness, that's.

That sounds like one of those existential crisis kind of questions, like, who am I as I go?

Poise that to the universe, but just help me frame it.

Like, what.

What would you like to.

Where would you like me to start?

Yeah, take me back.

Take me back to the beginning.

You know, like, you've been.

You grew up in an entrepreneurial family.

Your father was an extremely successful entrepreneur himself.

You know, take me back.

What was it like growing up in.

A family like that?

Well, you know how I actually like to preface this story, because my.

My dad's story is an important part of how my story kind of came to be.

So my dad was raised in bc, young black family.

And my grandma used to.

I don't know if you ever saw the movie the Help, but my grandma would have Been one of those women.

She would have been one of the ladies that came in taking care of children, cleaning, and to make supplemental money, she had her kids get into music.

My dad was actually a musician most of his life.

Didn't finish high school.

And then when he got out of music, he ended up meeting my mom, and my mom got pregnant with my sister.

And my dad was just like, oh, God, how am I going to make money?

I think he was just doing construction at the time.

And he just.

I don't know.

He was a bit of a visionary even back then.

He tried to figure out how to become a Fortune 500 executive without having to go back to school or work his way up a corporate ladder.

He's like, there must be a shortcut to this.

And so he did this, like, diagram and figured out that the one thing that everyone had in common that was a Fortune 500 executive is when they would come into town.

At that time, when you're talking, like, early 80s, there'd be a concierge service.

They wouldn't really rent a car, they would rent a driver.

And so my dad ended up getting a loan from the bank and deciding that he was going to create a ground transportation company, but he only wanted to drive around the Fortune 500 executives.

By the time I was born, my dad had ended up raising, I think, close to $2 million.

And again, you're going back to the 80s.

So it was a decent sum of money and started his whole fleet.

I think by the time he was done, he had like 13, 13 limos and drivers.

And he toured around everybody like CEO of Coca Cola, Fortune 500 execs.

And they would actually keep the partition on the window down because he would just ask them all these questions.

So over the eight years, it's like he went from having no education to a master's in business.

By the time I was three, my dad realized he's like, okay, I don't have anyone to talk to.

There wasn't like a CEO forum back then where, you know, today you can go meet with other CEOs and talk about your problems.

I think I was just like a really quiet, compliant kind of child.

So my dad was like, I'm just going to talk to you about all the things that I'm learning.

I know you probably won't understand it, but I need someone to talk to you, and it's going to be you.

So I started getting this, like, interesting education in business.

Just like everything that happened to my dad in the day.

And then by the Time I was five, my dad realized he wanted me to be in business, too.

He's like, I think this is a really good path for a girl, but if you're going to be a woman in business, you also have to learn how to be a lady.

So he started putting me in etiquette classes by the time I was 5 years old, because he's like, I just wanted to make sure that there was no room I couldn't sit in or door I couldn't open based on my manners.

By the time I was 8, my father was contemplating, like, selling his concierge service.

And anything that my dad did in terms of, like, education and training, he always brought me with.

I was kind of like his little shadow or a little protege or something.

So I just remember him bringing, like, financial people to the table, and they would talk all about everything from, like, fiduciary responsibilities and compounding interest rates and scaling and selling and public companies and all these different things.

And again, I didn't know a ton, but I knew that if I save, like, $25 a week at my age, I, by the time I was, like, 25, I'd be a millionaire.

And it really fascinated me that you could save that much money from 8 and just be, like, super well off.

Not that that happened.

Like, I'm pretty sure by the time I hit 15, I was just like, I can go shopping.

And yeah, I remember When I was 11, my dad had gotten out of the concierge business, and he really wanted to be, like, an international public speaker.

And there was a gentleman at the time.

His name was Jim Rohn.

He was very influential at the time.

He actually turned out.

Turned into Tony Robbins.

That was his mentor.

So if you.

If you ever go to Tony Robbins, and he kind of talks about his origins.

My dad and Tony were in the same classes together.

Like, they both did the same thing.

And I just remember being a kid and I'd be in these weekend workshops with Jim Rohn and, like, 50 plus other business people.

And I realized by that point I wanted to be in business.

I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I just knew it had to involve business.

And I remember my favorite story about this.

I was, like, feverishly taking notes throughout the entire weekend workshop.

And then by the end of it, like, I think he must have noticed how much notes I was taking.

And I was guaranteed the youngest person in that room by a farmer.

Asked everyone, like, okay, raise your hands and keep them up.

Like, how many of you took, like, Five pages of notes.

And then, you know, so many people had their hands up.

10 pages of notes.

How many people dropped their hands?

I think by the time I was.

I was the only one with the hand left up.

And he asked me to come to the front of the room with my little notebook.

And I'll also preface that my writing at 11 was trash.

And I'm pretty sure that it would have equated to maybe an adult handwriting five pages of notes.

But, like, I was very eager.

And So I had 16 pages of notes.

And he just made a comment to me.

He's just like, you know, she's 11 years old.

She came in for the entire weekend.

She paid attention the whole time.

Like, this girl's gonna go places.

Like, she took more notes.

And every one of the adults in this.

And I was just like, I just remember this, like, feeling of pride.

Like, yes, I'm going to be in business, and this guy thinks I could be successful.

And by the time I was 13, I started my first company.

Now, mind you, it wasn't like anything special.

It was like a lawn mowing business.

My dad let me take classes for something called Corel Draw.

I mean, way back before you had all these amazing tools today that you can make any graphic you want, you had to literally learn how to make your own circle and color it on.

So I made my own little posters and went around my entire community posting them.

And I was making 20 bucks a lawn, and I was even getting offers, like, three communities over to, like, mow all these different lawns.

And I made, like, a lot of money that summer, and I was super proud about it.

I just, like, walk around with my lawnmower and a gas can and sometimes even get my dad to do free labor.

He thought I was very saleswoman, considering it was his equipment and his gas and sometimes his energy that I was making all the money.

He's like, it's not normally how business works.

I was like, I know, but, you know, young entrepreneur, help me start off somewhere, right?

And then by the time I was 20, to my dad's, a bit of my dad's chagrin, I ended up becoming a young mom, very young mom.

I was engaged at the time, and my dad ended up having this entire, like, I think he just went through a whole other crisis.

Like, the first crisis was, dear God, I'm gonna be a father.

The second crisis, like, dear God, my daughter's gonna be a mother.

Around that time, I think Al Gore was doing a lot of discussions around climate change, and we Were, you know, just.

I think he was a lot more conscientious of what that could mean than I was at my age.

And he was very concerned, like, is there going to be clean air?

Is there going to be clean water?

Is there going to be, you know, like, playgrounds that weren't previously landfills?

Like, what's, what's the world going to look like for, you know, his grandchild when the time they hit 20?

And so my dad decided that we were going to start a business.

The business had to be a technology based business.

That technology had to benefit the environment because if it benefited the environment, it would benefit the people in it.

And I'm 20, I barely passed high school.

I don't think I knew what I knew, if that made any sense.

Right.

Like, granted, my father had been talking to me since I was three, but it's not like I had all this real world experience to think we could start a tech company to do what my father was wanting to achieve.

But we tried partnering with a lot of different inventors.

Like, my dad was really good at, you know, business consulting.

He'd been doing it all around the world.

He was making like really good cash at the time.

So he understood business.

He might not have understood tech, but he's like, I could help these guys get their, their tech to market.

And I definitely realized that.

Trying to work with engineers, I like to describe it like trying to work with that Gollum character from Lord of the Rings.

You know, it was just like that, that tech, that ring was their precious.

And that ring was never getting off your finger.

It was never ready for market.

But it was also everything was always a billion dollar idea.

Even if they hadn't made a penny for it, it was still sitting in their garage.

And I think after a few years of that, my dad and I were like, I don't know how this is supposed to work.

Like, not for lack of trying, but this is becoming a difficult endeavor.

And we are.

I have a bit of a unique cultural background.

So, like, there's indigenous, there's African American, there's Irish, French, and from the indigenous side, it's like it's Choctaw from Oklahoma.

And my dad's elder was in Calgary.

My dad went to our indigenous elder and he's like, okay, I have this idea.

Like, I really feel called to like support the planet.

I don't quite know how.

Here's my struggle.

And so the elder did a sweat with him.

So like an indigenous culture, like, you can kind of have like a vision quest through doing, like, a sweat.

So basically you just go into, like, a teepee and it's very, very, very hot.

Now, my dad definitely had a vision, or he was heavily dehydrated and hallucinated, but we're gonna go with vision.

And he ended up seeing, like, his spirit animal in.

In this sweat, which was really quite beautiful.

It was a wolf.

But within 24 hours of having this sweat, I just remember him, like, waking me up in the middle of the night.

He just had this insane dream and he wrote it down on paper.

And my dad couldn't draw a stick figure on a good day.

So it was very confusing trying to figure out what he wrote down on this piece of paper.

But he's like.

He described it like he was sitting in a holographic projector.

Now, mind you, we like Star Trek back in the day.

And he was like.

He saw the internal workings of a combustion burner system.

He didn't quite know what it was, but he saw this, like, basically internal device.

He describes it like it was being downloaded to him and he couldn't wake up until he had literally memorized everything.

Every striation in the nozzle, everything.

And he was like, I really feel called, like, this.

This is something.

So we went to a woman that was part of, like, a spiritual group.

My mother and father and I did a lot of, like, you know, emotional self development as a family, trying to just, you know, move through whatever our generational traumas could have been.

And this woman my dad sat down with, he explained his vision and she literally just wrote a check and handed it to him for a hundred thousand dollars.

And she's just like, I just.

I know I'm called to give this to you.

And from there, I think we ended up raising about three and a half million dollars to start.

While my dad was.

Was still alive.

We went to this gentleman who ended up being our head of R D.

And my dad asked him, he's just like, okay, what do you think this is?

And he's like, well, it looks like a nozzle.

He's like, okay, well, what do you think it goes to?

He's like, well, I think it goes to a burner.

Which is really interesting because, like, we didn't have any background in that.

And what it ended up being was the nozzle system to a burner that came, became one of the cleanest burning systems in the world.

It had 100% combustion, produced zero carbon monoxide, zero nitrous oxide, and can reduce carbon dioxide by 44%, at least up to 72.

And so I ended up getting a bit of a crash course in everything to do with combustion and oil and gas, and you name it, spent 17 years of my life in this.

My father, unfortunately passed away in 2014.

And at that time, the tech hadn't been out of a lab, but we had gotten it to a point where we'd fully automated.

We'd worked with Nate, we'd worked with Alberta Innovates, we'd worked with nrc, irap, we'd worked with Alberta Innovates, and we'd done funding, we'd done shred, we've raise money.

And it was a fully automated forced air 3.5 million BTU system that CL was going to do a field trial with.

And I remember the month he passed away, my dad won Canada's top energy innovator award for what he had done.

And we were putting it out into the field.

Unfortunately, after I think like a month or so of it operating the oil and gas prices kind of, it crashed, right?

So it was right around the time where everything kind of went to crap.

And I was like, I just lost my dad.

We couldn't keep our field trial going because it was.

It was very successful in terms of the trial.

Like, we'd actually proven to them we could reduce their fuel emissions by the same amount.

We could also increase their production.

So we could increase their process by like 99 or something barrels per hour, which was massive.

Or we could reduce their overall fuel and energy cost by 4,44.

So it was a really versatile, phenomenal technology.

But because of the fact that it didn't have this massive track record of being purchased, it was like, you know, and everything was cutting budgets.

It took me probably 18 months to find a new company that was willing to trial it, commercialize it.

It was.

Yeah, it was an interesting crash course.

I had to learn how to raise money.

I had to learn how to do all the R D.

I had to learn how to try and get a product to market, developing out all these relationships.

But my dad had done me a really big solid when I was working with him, and he sent me all around North America, and I got to learn from guys like Jay Abrams, George Ross, Eric Trump, Nito Cabane, all around, like branding and partnerships and relationships.

And I'd been mentored since basically I was three.

And I never stopped being mentored.

So I got to go to this woman in leadership lunch, and I saw a woman named Suzanne west speak.

And funny enough, this is how I got into crypto.

If anyone's Ever curious how I got in.

This is how I got in.

And it was my very first time trying to socialize and network.

I was kind of nervous.

I wasn't exactly an extrovert.

But Suzanne spoke and I just.

I just knew.

I was like, I'm going to work with her.

I have to work with her.

I don't know how I'm going to work with her, but I'm going to work with her.

And she taught me this really powerful message when she was talking.

It was.

And not.

Or it was like, you can be a woman in business and you can be a mom.

Like, you're not limited, right?

You're only limited by your belief system, but you're not limited by what you can do just because of the fact that you're.

You're a woman or you're a minority or whatever it is that, you know, you feel your Bailey Wick is.

So my dad's really good friend at the time I found out, was her chief marketing officer.

So he helped me get a meeting with Suzanne and I showed her, like, the technology.

I showed her videos of my dad.

And I just remember he called me like, one night, like, I think it was like 10 o'clock at night after watching a video about my dad talking about his.

His vision quest, the sweat, the tech.

And she's crying and she's just like, your father was my soul brother.

Like, I know that we were meant.

We were meant to do this together.

I'm so sad I didn't get to meet him.

But I'm going to invest in your technology.

I'm going to invest in you personally.

I'm going to commercialize it for you.

So we'll buy your first unit and we'll set up a contract to help you, like, get this out there.

Like, she's like, we're going to partner.

And I was like, I was just in tears.

I was like, oh, my God, I can't believe this happened.

Like, I just.

I knew it was meant to be.

And over the time that we were partnering and we're commercializing this technology, you know, she talked a lot about this idea for an organization she wanted to kind of kick off called the Alberta Block Chain Consortium, like the abc.

She really wanted to see how this blockchain, from an enterprise technology perspective, could revolutionize the oil and gas industry because she was very focused on, like, environmental stewardship, like the three Ps, people, planet profit.

And my dad was like, planet People, Profit.

So I was like, we're so aligned on that.

Just maybe A little bit different in, like, what.

What we put first, but it was just.

It was a phenomenal opportunity.

And then it was.

It was very devastating.

It was like the week that she turned on the tech, she ended up.

Her investors at the time thought that she was just way too kind of like, woo woo out there, way too focused on clean tech, not enough on, like, traditional oil and gas production.

And she got removed from her company, and they basically shut down the 17 clean text that she brought in.

Everything just got removed.

I got my tech back, and it was really disheartening because they even ripped up my.

Like, I had a contract for 17 units worth $4 million.

And they basically just told me, like, so sue me.

I was like, you sue an oil and gas company, you're never going to get business in this industry again.

So I just knew it wasn't worth it.

But I was pregnant at the time.

I didn't know quite what I was going to do.

And then she ended up dying of a very aggressive brain cancer within three months of being removed from her company.

And I just remember hearing the news and hitting the floor, and it just felt like losing my dad all over again.

It was like the first time I got to have a female mentor.

You know, I just.

I was so honored to be able to work with this incredible human being.

And all the conversations she was having about blockchain really got me into it.

But again, from, like, an oil and gas kind of energy perspective.

And I was really fascinated on, like, digital asset mining and how that would, you know, support the oil and gas sector.

And so a gentleman named James Graham, who works with a company called Guild One, took me out for shots of tequila and said, hey, Kay.

That's what he would call me as K versus my whole name.

And he's just like, you know, I really think that you should take on Suzanne's legacy and, like, do something with the abc, like, you're growing your name in the community.

Like, I was actually, like, doing free lunch and learns and stuff like that at the time, trying to teach people about, like, how to do their own due diligence about, like, what crypto really is about, like, the parts of it that were securities, about, you know, the history of money and economics.

I guess, you know, people were like, yeah, we.

We'd love to see you do this.

I was like, really?

Okay.

So I.

I reached out to my lawyer just to ask.

Like, I wasn't really sure because I'd never talked to Suzanne about something like this.

And I was like, is it Incorporated.

Is it a business?

And so we did a nuanced search and had never been incorporated.

There was no website.

I was able to buy the domain, Domain Name Incorporated.

I wanted to make sure it was a not for profit.

I was like, if we're going to keep her legacy going, like this can't be a for profit.

This needs to be not for profit.

It needs to, you know, follow her legacy.

So every time we host an event, everything we did, we just wanted to make sure everyone always knew about Luke Suzanne, the work that she did, what an incredible human being she was, and follow through with the things that meant the most to her, like our charitable give back and stuff.

And I think from there I was kind of trying to do two things at the same time.

Interestingly enough.

Like I was, I think I was like five months pregnant and I had incorporated the abc.

But I got a phone call from the Alberta government asking, hey, would you be interested in coming along on a trade mission with us to Japan for an aviation conference?

And since oil and gas didn't really seem like it was going to be, you know, work out for me, I was like, okay, but you need to bring someone from aviation over to see the tech.

I don't know how these two things relate at the time.

Sure.

And I know my friend Kimberly Van Vliet was talking about like she was starting this conference called Convergex and it's all where industry lines blur and how, you know, technologies can work across multiple industry sectors.

And I was like, okay, like I'm very open to it, I just don't understand it.

So he brought me the VP of the Edmonton airport who's now their current CEO.

And he brought me the chief pilot for Canadian North Airlines and an engineer and someone that worked in the Alberta government, been in the aviation division.

And they saw it and next thing I know they're like, I, I think we just saw the future of space travel.

Like they were so impressed with the technology and they said, look, we'll work with you, but you have to come to Japan.

So I was like, oh my God, how am I going to make this happen?

I knew my baby would be nine weeks old by the time this trade mission would happen.

So I packed up my kids, I packed up my husband at the time, I packed up my sister in law.

I even packed up my friend who was a doctor.

I was like, I was like, I'm traveling with a nine week old.

I was a little freaked out.

I was like, we're going to Japan, guys.

Like, we're going to look for opportunities.

And I remember they walked me around the trade show floor and they showed me this, like, very antiquated in their minds, very antiquated system for heating up aircrafts.

And they're like, can you take your technology and do something with it to help re, like, make this better?

And I just automatically said yes.

I had no freaking clue.

But I was like, absolutely, yeah, we could figure this out.

And we ended up 75% of the people that came on that trade mission with us.

With the Alberta government invested, we got a partnership with the Edmonton airport, where we spent four years designing and testing with Canadian North a brand new piece of ground heating equipment that would save 72% on fuel costs and emissions and was able to heat an aircraft up to temperatures of like minus 50 without them having to turn on their engines and burn more fuel.

Like, it was revolutionary.

And we did such amazing work with them.

We're so honored for the partnership we got.

And the, the week we launched, like, I think we launched on a Monday, and sometime within that week, Trudeau stood up and said, we are canceling all flights across the country.

COVID pandemic.

And I was like, what?

So everything that we had done for four years to build relationships with aviation, all the partnerships we had, the funding opportunities, you name it, you know, watch that just go up in smoke.

But at the same time, my Alberta blockchain consortium, we've been doing like a lot of in person things.

We just did our first Alberta blockchain week.

We're hosting summits and symposiums.

We're bringing in like the top bitcoin experts from all around the world to come and speak.

Like, we're growing it.

And everything was growing based on being in person.

So now I'm not allowed to host events.

My product line in aviation has gone to the absolute pooper.

I had a three year old child, two kids, a husband, a mortgage, people to look after.

I was like, oh my God, oh, my God, oh my God.

And I ended up having like a bit of a major health crisis at this point because my stress level was somewhere through the roof.

So the Alberta blockchain consortium went digitally, basically overnight.

We launched as a Canadian blockchain consortium and we just started putting out webinars every single week.

We were like, all right, let's find a new innovative business model.

What can we do?

What's going to make sense?

And it we exponentially grew.

It was absolutely incredible.

Like, we went from having like 20 members, we're now, I think like 85, growing to 100 and we just completely shifted our value proposition due to Covid.

And then with the, with aci it was a bit more, a bit more sad.

Like we, we definitely tried to give it a, a kick at the cat.

Aviation was not going to recover for a very long time just because they lost 100% of their revenues.

They're not like government funded agencies.

We, you know, did more R D and tried to get into the oil and gas space but unfortunately it was or not oil and gas or a construction space but it unfortunately was just too hard of a road to keep climbing.

And it was one of those experiences where I felt like it's like pushing a boulder up a hill and watching it crush you on a daily basis, but then keep pushing it up a hill.

And I did 17 years of it and finally I was like, okay, I think we're, I think we're just being told no.

And what was happening with the consortium was just really, really growing in such a beautiful way and everything just seemed to be going so well and the relationships that I had built from like basically my energy and tech background or just coming in so nicely to, to the space I'm in right now.

And so I've been doing I guess since like 2017 ish.

I've been in the digital asset space and of course I'm still with CBC and now we're launching a brand new company in partnership with it which is an association.

It'll be the world's first association based captive insurance company specifically for digital asset businesses.

So you know, can't stop, won't stop.

Always on this path of like being an entrepreneur and keeping things going.

I wish I could have kept my dad's legacy with his tech going.

Not for, for lack of trying and all the funding.

I, I had even sold my house to try and keep it going.

But it was like, okay, I'm being things like, wow, it's just not, not working out the way I would love it to.

So yeah, so where I'm sitting today is like I'm very excited about the work that we're doing in the digital asset space.

You know, we have grown the largest and long, longest running industry association in Canada.

You know, we have amazing relationships with government, with regulators, you know, major heads of industry and yeah, we're just keeping going.

Your story is amazing and I can't wait to talk to you about Blockchain because it's something that I like talking about.

We talked about this before the show.

To me it seems like magic.

It's like how does this thing work?

What does it all mean?

And I know I'm not alone in that, so I'm hoping at some point we can do a little bit of a crash course.

I know we talked about this.

There's, there's plenty of different ways to look at it depending on how you're.

You're applying it, which is interesting, and I didn't know that.

But, you know, before we get into that, Kalea, one of the things that really stood out about your journey to me that I wanted to talk to you about is that you were like the queen of resilience.

You were like the queen, queen of resilience.

Like, the amount of, of adversity that you have had to overcome in your entrepreneurial career is absolutely unbelievable.

You know, when I was just kind of looking at the timeline, obviously losing your father in 2015, right at the same time, heading into obviously the worst oil and gas, you know, turn since, since 2008 for Canada.

We went through, I think, I don't think we've ever completely recovered from that.

It was a total mess.

I was in the inspection industry in that time, oil and gas inspection, and that company that I was with was frankly just lucky to make it out.

We had some great contracts that rode out because they had maintenance needs.

But many companies died.

Many, many, many service based companies died at the 2015 downturn in Alberta.

And it's come up multiple times on the show.

But to go through that, come out and, you know, have, have 2018 come where things were looking really great for you, 2017, and then losing your mentor and having your contract torn up at the same time, like how, like how, how are you able to keep going?

Like, why?

I think so many people would have just been like, I can't do this, Like, I can't do this.

But I have a feeling that you, you didn't give up because it is frankly a part of your blood.

I really think for some people, they just are entrepreneurs through and through and come hell or high water, come failure after failure, they just don't give up.

But I want to know your, your, like, talk to me in those experiences.

Obviously, losing any family member is horrible and tragic and going through loss like that, three years apart, two major losses, the loss of, frankly, you know, the business that you've been working on as well.

Walk me through this.

Like, what was, how were you able to come back from that?

Well, there's also like divorce, near bankruptcy, near death.

I mean, I think I, they said I had six of the seven major life experiences within like a three year period.

But I would say that, and this is what gets me into being a big, big champion for mental health.

I started when I was 20 or 21, actually.

My son was about 4 months old.

I knew I was going to be, you know, a single mom.

And I really wanted to make sure that I could support my child.

You know, like, I wanted to be a better parent.

Like, not that I didn't have amazing parents, but, like, I wanted to make sure I could be the best parent that I could be.

And so I started trying to figure out how to, you know, just work on myself.

I had.

I know I didn't get into this in this podcast, but I was, I was raised in a cult.

I had a lot of kind of like, trauma growing up in my background.

Even though I had a lot of, you know, amazing opportunities with my dad, there were still a lot of things that happened from being like, raised in the cult.

And, you know, I got into drugs when I was a teenager because, you know, of things that happened in my past and, you know, going through heat rehab and all this kind of stuff.

So I was like, okay, I need to be a good person.

And I started doing this work with a Gemin named Honre McKinnon.

And it was all around learning how to, like, feel your feelings, right?

Like, a lot of people think about feelings and they're like happy, sad, angry, and they don't kind of really get into it, and they're not.

And it's scary to get into those places where it's like, I'm unlovable, I'm worthy of all these different feelings.

And really they teach you how to feel it, to heal it, right?

So it's like whatever traumas you've gone through, fusion with your mother or your father, abuse, whatever it be.

And I was really grateful my parents actually dove into it with me.

They're like, as a family, let's heal.

And I think every year for about six years, we did about 1600 hours together of these, like, workshops.

So it was very, very intense.

On top of it, my mother was very into spirituality.

So we were doing every alternative kind of thing you could imagine from like, Reiki healings.

And we would do like, like past life generational therapy.

Like, you name it, we were doing it.

And then I found this amazing woman, I think my son was 4, and her name was Sue Casey.

And she does this work called Belief Repatterning.

And what I loved with the combination of, like, working with and really learning how to, like, go through these Feelings and learn how to move through my traumas and learn how to kind of recognize and take this radical account like self acceptance and self accountability.

But I kind of felt like I was getting stuck in the mud in some places.

And with Susa's work, she would actually help you re reprogram your neural pathways to become your own best selftalk coach.

So it's like, where you think you're unworthy, how are you worthy when you think you're unlovable, how, like, get you to a point of being lovable, Always focusing on making decisions from what she calls the upside of the line.

And it's like a form of cognitive behavioral therapy.

And I just dove into that.

And to this day, I work with her every single week.

I.

I strongly believe that if you're going to be an entrepreneur and you want to have resilience, you need to learn how to navigate anything and everything and learn how to move through things, not get stuck in things.

Recognize where it's at.

I did a lot of work with this woman named Byron, Katie, and she really focused on.

It's an is, it is what it is.

Like, you know, shoulda, coulda, wouldas, they do not matter.

You just focus on, okay, this, this experience happened, and how do we navigate, how do we move forward, how do we talk positively to ourselves, how do we emot.

You know, make sure that we're.

We're meeting our own needs.

So I think, like, I did a mental health summit a couple years ago, and I tallied close to 12,000 hours worth of just personal development work over the last 18, 18, 19 years.

So I'm a very big component to that.

So when people go, like, how have you navigated all these different things?

A lot of it is like, I have failed, fallen on my ass, nearly hit bankruptcy about twice.

You know, I've been divorced twice.

I, you know, like, it's like some people think, like, oh, you're so lucky.

It's just like, I'm resilient.

I'm willing to work my butt off.

You know, I can recognize where I have failed.

And, you know, I constantly describe, like, do better tomorrow than you did, you know, the previous day.

Like, just waking up and being grateful.

Like, every opportunity, even the smallest win, it's like, I am.

I am so grateful.

I'm grateful for this meeting.

I'm grateful for this kind interaction.

I'm grateful for this.

Just this good email and just, like, working to make sure that I live my life in a state of, like, gratitude, you know, and.

And positivity wow.

Wow.

Yeah.

It's like, I just remember reading your story and just like, I.

I, like, immediately was like, how in the world did she keep going?

Like, it was just.

It seemed so challenging.

But it's so much about mindset.

But, you know, like, as a guy, I know we've struggled a lot.

I've struggled a lot in my life with.

With getting in touch with my feelings.

I'm one of those people just.

I just shut down and, you know, and I.

I love my fiance.

She's an amazing woman, and she's called me out.

You know, she's probably put me through more of my own, like, self growth than anybody that I've.

I've ever been with or known.

Because she'll sit down and be like, okay, like, you're shutting down on me.

Like, she knows my feelings better than I know my feelings.

But I've definitely struggled with dealing with a lot of my challenges.

And I think, you know, 2020 really Covid.

Really opened up that door to say, like, you know what?

It's okay to deal with your mental health.

It's okay if you're feeling a certain set of ways, right?

Like, I was one of those people just shoved it all down.

I'm tough.

I'll figure it out.

I'll.

I'll come out the other end of that.

But it's like, my gosh, like, I started to realize there are some really negative consequences to just burying everything that comes your way.

And I know as a guy, I'm trying to do better at this, but, yeah, it is a struggle for sure.

And I thought, you know, talking to all my men out there, guys, I know, I know you're tough.

I know you're tough.

But, like, it's.

You don't have to hold it all yourself.

Like, therapy is amazing.

I've done therapy.

I'm sure there's a lot more therapy and a lot more things like that I need to do and should go do.

But I will say it's not as scary as you think.

It definitely isn't.

Like, I'll say this, like, when you really, truly start diving in and learning about yourself, you know, it's like there are parts where you're like, I'd rather not look at that.

But if you're willing and, like, have the courage, because the other side of that is just.

It's.

There's peace, you know, there's.

There's happiness.

Like, happiness is not a destination.

It's not.

If I do this, I'll be there.

It look at it like a train ride, and there's many stops along that before you get to the end of your destination, which is like, you know, the end of your life.

It is.

You're gonna go through ups and downs and tunnels and, and hills and all kinds of things.

It's.

It's a journey.

And it's okay to have moments on that journey that you're like, am I going to make it through this tunnel?

And it's so.

And it's amazing to have moments on that journey where you're like, you know, I'm so excited.

I can't believe this is happening to me.

Right?

And it's like.

And all things are okay.

It's just.

It is what it is.

You're going to go through feelings and.

But if you're willing to take accountability and look at yourself, you're only going to benefit your own life and, and that other people around you as well.

Like, you know, when, when men and women are both committed, like, you will never go through more emotional challenges than you will when you're in partnership, right?

Because when you're alone, your stuff doesn't come up.

When you're in partnership, all the stuff gets brought up.

Your abandonment issues, your fear of rejection, your fear of, you know, if she really gets to know me, will she still love me?

Right?

And everyone's trying to.

They have different masks on.

Like, I'm a mother, I'm a father, I'm a this, I'm a that, as opposed to just trying to figure out who they are as people, you know, and just.

It's a journey, it's a part of life.

And I'm, I'm grateful.

I kind of pushed myself into it at a young age and can't stop, won't stop.

Like, I've tried everything from like, PTSD therapy, emdr, brain spotting, traditional therapy, alternative therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, energy frequency therapy.

Like, one of my favorite things right now is actually I'm at this place called nirvana.

And they do a form of how to describe this properly, but they map your brain and they figure out exactly where your brain is sitting.

Like, how is, how is the left side communicating with the right side?

Is there inflammation in your brain?

How are your neurological functions.

Functions happening?

And then they actually help you to rewire your brain so it works.

It's like a, it's like a reset.

Like, it works optimally.

And I've done probably 30 something sessions over the last year.

And I remember having a partner when I started and I think three quarters of the way through it's like my own energy, my own frequency, it just shifted so much that both of us are like, you know, I think great people, but who I was when I met you and who I am now, not really aligned, but we can be friends, you know, and you really start to kind of.

It just.

It resets your brain to really come back to a place.

Because I still had anxiety.

I was still like, you know, very nervous about relationships, and am I good enough?

This and that.

And after doing all these sessions that, like, it just kind of reset my head to be like, there's no more anxiousness.

There's no nervousness.

Like, all the.

The.

The brain talking that wouldn't shut off.

You know, I was like, wow, that was a really amazing thing.

And the guy who leads that is like, you know, a lot of people who.

Who've done work like you for, like, 20 something years, you just kept kind of questioning, why isn't it sinking in if your body and your brain aren't in line with your emotions and your energy?

It's just like.

It's just.

It's so holistic how you have to.

To kind of look at.

I know we've kind of gone off in a weird tangent.

It's not about blocks.

No, that's okay.

That is a part of entrepreneurship.

You gotta get your mind, your body, your spirit, everything aligned.

At the same time, you're trying to move.

Move it, Move your business forward.

And when those two things are in sync, you know, like, beautiful things happen.

Well, and it sounds to me like you've been.

You've gone down this path for so long that you've.

You've come.

You've been in it long enough to know that these are important things.

Right?

I think, like, for younger entrepreneurs or, like, you know, I mean, just take me, for example.

I've only been an entrepreneur myself for four years, so in the grand scheme, I'm young, like, yeah, you got many, many, many years on me on that front.

But, you know, entrepreneurship, the one thing that I've really learned along the way is it is hard.

It is a roller coaster of emotions, and it does get very lonely at times because, you know, if you don't have a lot of entrepreneurial friends or family, you can really end up in this weird place yourself where you're like, who do I talk to?

Because you don't want to drive your.

Your fiance or your wife, your husband crazy.

It's a really interesting journey that I feel like it's a unique journey that unless you are an entreprene yourself.

It's really hard to understand.

But like, emotionally and mentally it can be really, really hard.

And, and the last thing that you can think about sometimes is how am I physically?

Like, I, I've hit many days where it's like, no, we're putting physical on the back burner and we're just dealing with the mental challenges that I have to deal with today.

But yeah, it's like, it's real.

Balance is really hard and it's come up plenty of times on this show.

And you know, that was something.

I wanted to spend some time with you today because when we talked initially, one of the feelings that I got was you did eventually find a balance.

And so many people that I've talked to, they never find the balance.

And I say balance looks different to every person, right?

So the elusive work life balance.

Like there's times where it's like, okay, I'm gonna be on.

Like, I remember like from probably March until March, April and May, it was like non stop travel, constantly gone, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy.

And then I was like, okay, I'm gonna be home for at least six weeks.

And in that six week period, it's kind of like my reset.

It's like, okay, I'll take my meetings, but now I'm gonna, if I'm gonna travel, it's gonna be with my kids.

I'm gonna do less meetings.

So it's not like you're gonna have times you have to be on and then you're gonna have times where you have to pick your down times.

And if you don't kind of book in your own down times, for me at least, this is my strategy.

I book in my downtime times so I don't burn out.

Because I've had it where it's just like, you're going 12 months of the year, you're never stopping.

But then what's the point of life, right?

Like for me, I love hunting, I love my horses, I love riding in the mountains, I love dirt biking with my kids, I love camping, I love gardening, I love homesteading.

You know, I love making my own things, like my own body butters and my own condiments.

And I like canning, I like freeze drying.

So I was trying to find like, okay, the things that really bring me joy are all of this.

And when I'm, when I'm able to actually take the downtime, all the.

It's amazing how many wins come through.

Like, I remember I was on vacation, I took three weeks off and I was like, okay, it's my 40th.

I'm going to Costa Rica and Panama.

Just about every single day that I was away, it was just like invoice was coming out.

It was just like, hey, we'd like to join as this member.

We'd like to come back in as this member.

We want to renew with this member.

And I was like, yeah, that was pretty sweet.

And then like, even in Jamaica, it's just like, you know, I let like I was gone and I probably did, you know, 50 plus K in invoicing.

It was like, you know, this is like so your business doesn't stop just because you take time off.

And I think that's a big fear for people and that why they don't find work, life, balance.

But, you know, if you set things up well and you find that balance and you find that time to just rejuvenate yourself, it's like the work will always be there, you know, like, you don't have to pause your life, pause the things that make you happy in life to be successful in business.

Like, you can do both.

But it's.

What does balance look like for you?

Mine is kind of go hard for a few months and then take a bit of a break and really reconnect and then go hard for a few months.

But that's just me.

Yeah, that sounds amazing.

It also, it also, like, I know when we talked before, you're like, Kelly, typically I put in, you know, roughly about a four hour workday at this point in my career.

And it's like, I think everybody's just like, that would be amazing.

Like, if I only had to work four hours, that would be absolutely amazing.

And sure, like, I'm sure you're killing it for that four hours, but I think that that is something to inspire, to aspire to.

That's the right word.

That is something to aspire to.

And you know, talk to me a little bit about that.

How did you manage to eventually achieve that?

A really, really amazing executive assistant.

You really need to have a team.

It's, it's teamwork makes the dream work.

And like when I say like four hours, like there's times where I don't get to do four hours.

Like there's time where I could do zero work and still be pro successful.

And there's times where it's like four hours.

And then there's times where it's like, okay, you're gonna be on like, I did a whole week trade mission in July where I'm pretty sure it was 14 hours.

For six days straight.

I like there was no way around it, but it was like, it was a lot of in person things, right?

So.

And I make my own schedule, I make my own work.

And then outside of that, it's just like, okay, you know, a couple hours here, a couple hours there.

But it's how, how I got there.

It took a lot because originally it was like, how do I get to a place where I can focus on the things I'm really, really good at and get support for the things that I'm not?

I'm not a lawyer.

Why am I doing my own legal, I'm not an accountant.

Why would I do my own books?

You know, like I have ADHD to the max.

It' called Squirrel and it's really freaking shiny and it's, you know, I need a lot of different things to keep me active.

So if it's a low dopamine task, the likelihood of it getting done is about 5, 8 of F all.

So having can help me do those low dopamine tasks.

And now it's like a tag team.

It's like, okay, I'll have like, you know, six hours, sometimes four hours, sometimes eight.

Like it really kind of depends of just like non stop meetings.

But while I'm having those meetings, I'm able to message her like, hey, I need you to get this.

Hey, I need to do this.

Right.

And so like we're just tag teaming on everything things.

By the time 5:00 rolls around or 4:00, whenever I'm done work, it's like, all right, done.

You know, I don't have to try and figure out how to get all these other things done because there's such a good team to help, you know, keep things on track.

Yeah, yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.

Like, I completely agree.

I think with a lot of people, like that's the, that's the feedback we've gotten plenty of times.

Right.

Like put a good team around you because it makes all the difference.

I totally agree.

Agree.

I think, you know, I think a lot of companies, that's the dream.

It takes a little while to get there.

I think it's, it's easier to do things yourself or you feel like it's easier to do things yourself for quite a while and then it's like, okay, wait a sec, you got to stop doing this because you're never gonna grow if you do everything yourself.

Definitely a realization we've come to.

You definitely don't like the microman, the need to micromanaging stay in control, I think is probably the death sentence to any business.

Like, you need to give people.

You need to put the kind of people that you can trust that are competent.

You know, trust, but verify always.

Like, don't completely ignore your business, but be on.

If you're going to be the leader of your business, be on your business.

Don't be in your business, and be a leader in your business.

Like, it's very, very important not to be a boss.

Nobody wants a boss.

Nobody wants someone who's just, like, telling them what to do.

And I am.

The great I am.

And listen to me, you pleb.

You know, it's very, like, I wouldn't ask my assistant to do something I wasn't willing to do myself.

And my dad taught me that.

It's just like, I don't care.

You will all.

You don't.

You can be the CEO and you'll still clean that toilet, right?

It's.

Everybody is equal.

There's no one better than or less than.

You need to be able to trust that people are competent to do the job.

If they prove that they're not, then, okay, you learned.

And maybe you learned in your hiring process, and maybe you learned in your policy process, and maybe you learned in your communication process, but you learn something so that next person that comes is going to be even more effective.

Like, I tell you, like, I definitely went through a series of assistance where I was like, oh, my God, like, and I learned from each one where I was like, okay, is it my communication?

Is it my policies?

Is like, what is it to get to a point where I could find someone who was like, I can collaborate with you, and I want you to feel like you work with me, not just for me, you know, and understand, here's my working style.

Here's how I can be at times and really kind of explain myself.

She explains herself and we find a way to, like, work, work together.

But I have to give her tasks and trust that they're going to get done, you know, and follow up sometimes when needed.

But there's no way I'd be where I'm at right now.

Sorry, excuse me.

Tickle my throat.

There's no way I'd be where I'm at right now if I didn't.

If I wasn't able to delegate and have other people support the work that I'm doing, too.

Yeah, no, no, absolutely.

Absolutely agreed.

You know, Clay, I wanted to get into the Canadian Blockchain Consortium.

And the reason is like it to me.

I want to know the story here, like, and I get it, it was you and your mentor and you'd spent some time together.

But like, how do you, how do you make that connection?

You go from essentially an inventor, a technology inventor, and I get that they are still technology.

But walk me through the connection.

Where did the passion come from for Blockchain for you?

Oh, goodness.

Okay, so I would say this is actually a multifaceted story because it's not just like one origin point, right?

So when hearing Suzanne talk, I was just like, I loved her enthusiasm.

I wasn't exactly from hearing her talk go like, I need to be in crypto, right?

What kind of got me in was two things in tandem.

One, I saw my mother post on Facebook, if you want to buy bitcoin, let me know.

And I just sat there and I was like, oh, my effing God.

I was like, mom, what are you doing?

What is this?

I didn't know about it at the time.

I was just like, oh, crap, what are you in now?

Like, Jesus, Mom.

Yeah.

And so I show up at her house, and next thing I know, my freaking, like 70 year old aunt and my mom in her 60s are sitting there with this old man, like, white haired old man.

Well, he's trying to explain to them why they need to give him cash to buy bitcoin, where he makes like fricking 15% off of it, and then turn around once they get that bitcoin and invest in something called USI Tech.

And because I'd done so much in fundraising and I understood, like securities law, right?

I was like, hold on.

Why would you need to buy bitcoin, which is like anonymous, and use that to buy into this company?

You're not a shareholder at that point.

You're like, it just.

Red flag went off for me.

But my mom and my.

They invested.

Luckily, they lost everything.

They invested.

It's not like they lost all their money.

Like, they, they were at least cautious, but.

But, you know, it was like a good ten grand between the two of them.

And I was so frustrated because I was like, this kind of crap shouldn't be happening.

Like, this doesn't make sense to me.

And then at the same time, I had a company reach out to me that want to invest in my company.

And they're like, yeah, we'd like to invest.

We're a bitcoin company.

And I was just like.

And they were talking about, like, you know, investing like $3 million for some percent of my business.

And I just remember like leaving that, going like, are you Giving me, like, actual money.

Is this, like, funny money?

Like, do I supposed to do with the declines?

Like, I'm not giving you this much in my company for whatever your Internet fund money is.

And I called my lawyer immediately, and I was like, I just had this meeting.

I don't know what it means.

And he's just like, well, that's really fascinating.

Let me go do some research on the company.

Which they weren't very happy that I had my lawyer look into them for some reason.

But, hey, you know, But I asked the guys that ran this company.

I was like, could you just give me some kind of information?

Like, just point me in the right direction?

What is this?

And I, I go to one of their events that they're hosting, and this guy named.

I guess I probably shouldn't say his proper name, but this guy was there and I, I asked, I was like, hey, could you teach me about bitcoin?

He's just like, nope, this guy could, though.

And this guy's like, hey, I'm in bitcoin.

I got like 25 grand in this pocket and like 30 grand in this pocket.

And like, I, I, I do crypto.

And I was like, sir, you are a very skinny white man.

Like, I would not say this in public.

You are going to get robbed.

Like, why are you telling people you have this tax.

What is going on?

I was like.

I was like, do you, do you teach classes on this?

He's like, yeah.

I was like, okay, great.

Can I sign up?

So I signed up for his classes.

And I was like, so.

Because I have a tech background, I just didn't get it.

Like, he was trying to teach me about trading.

And, you know, look, look, on this Trade View site, if you see this go up, like, this percentage or margin and like, like, buy in on this, like, everything about it was like, is this what this.

Is this, like, Internet funny money?

You know, I just, I, I'm not a trader.

I can't get into trading.

So it didn't make a lot of sense for me.

I was like.

And then all of a sudden, this.

This guy shows up.

His name is Russ.

And at the same class I was taking, because he knew this person, and he started talking to me about bitcoin mining.

And I was like, so there's like a side of this that isn't like, finance, where you don't have to, like, try and play with funny money.

And he's just like, yeah, no, this whole component to it about mining.

And I was like, could I, could I buy one of these mining, like, devices and figure it out.

So he sent me the bitcoin white paper I bought.

It's like a seven card GPU rig.

He set it up and from there I was just like, okay, mining white paper.

What is cryptography?

Went through the.

Like, because I'm adhd, I'm also a type.

I have to research absolutely everything.

So the entire history of encryption traffic, cryptography, learning about Phil Zimmerman, learning about the Enigma machine, everything, I was like, that is so fascinating.

And then the mathematical component to it, right?

Like, what are merkle trees?

What's the whole, like, math and science behind this proof of work mining concept?

And I got so, you know, kind of like a little obsessed with it.

Ended up retrofitting my entire basement to have these, like, about 250 GPU devices running in tandem mining, you know, all these different coins.

I was reading every white paper we were staking, we were mining.

We're doing all these different things.

And I was like, I was working on HDI during the day on my combustion company, and then at night I'd be sitting there in like a freaking bathing suit trying to like, modify these miners because they're so hot.

And my kids were upstairs, like, it's too hot in here.

I'm like, trying to figure out how to do cooling.

And like, oh, my Lord.

My obsession was.

It was, it was, it was epic.

But from there I realized after reading, like every white paper I could find, I was like, oh.

Oh, my freaking God.

These are securities.

Like this, like 90% of this is a scam.

Frick.

And I just felt called.

I was like, I don't want to get my mom scammed like other people to get scammed the same way my mom did.

So I literally started just like publicly posting free classes like, learn how to build your own mining equipment.

Learn how to do your own due diligence.

Don't treat crypto, you know, in a different way than you treat, like, a public stock.

How to do your own safety classes, all kinds of stuff.

And then I started really getting into the economic side.

So I host.

I started hosting really big events.

Like the blockchain technology symposium was my first, like, really, really big one.

And I brought in like, ministers from the NDP party.

I had Alberta innovates there, Nate There, all the AI companies, IoT companies, blockchain kind of companies, really focusing on the tech.

And it was great.

It was like 350, like C Suite executives, like, let's dive into what this technology is and what it can do.

We flew in safety And a moose to do a keynote.

We had guys like Francis Pier and Rodolfo like, talking about like privacy and security and bitcoin and all this stuff.

And like, you're talking like 2018 hosting this conference.

And like, I just remember like safety and giving, like the ministers, like his, his book, like the bitcoin standard.

And I just dove in.

I was like, everything about economics, like, after I learned about energy and proof of work and everything computational, then it was all economics.

I was reading everything I could by like Marm Rothbard.

I was studying Keynesian Vers and Austin economics.

I was like flying and taking classes by safety.

And I was like, okay, this, this now makes sense.

Well, at the same time I was asked, like, because I was.

Guess I was building a name for myself in this space.

Would you take on Suzanne's legacy and create this abc?

And so I will tell you one thing.

This is not a very well known story, but part of my willingness to do it was one I definitely wanted to keep Suzanne's legacy going.

But on the other hand, I really want ACI to be successful.

And I was working with an emotional intelligence coach at the time around kind of like emotionally intelligent marketing.

And when I was working on like, what's my life goal?

I was like, I'm having a very difficult time because I'm a salesman.

Like, when you're a salesman within your own company, who wants to answer the phone to a salesman?

Like, you see a 1, 800 number, you block, you delete you.

You know, like, if you know you're being asked something, you're not inclined to take that call or want that meeting because you know you're going to be asked something.

And when I worked with her and I saw that this was an opportunity, I was like, you know, I could really rewrite, reposition myself.

I could find a way because there's already like an Iot group, there's already AI, but no one's really taking on blockchain and really doing something with it.

And because of the ties into energy and the fact that I'm designing technology in kind of like energy, aviation, etc, I was like, I think there's enough of a crossover that if I do this really well and strategically position myself, I could become an influencer in this space.

I could become someone that you come to because you, you want access to either a network or knowledge or whatever it is.

And the way that I built the consortium was I did a.

Because I've had so many years in therapy as well.

It was all around like, Emotionally, intelligently, how to build a community.

Right.

Like, how do you bring people to the table?

How do you get buy in?

How do you motivate and inspire people authentically?

Like, not doing anything that, you know, I didn't feel was best for the community.

But at the same time, it's like, how do you build and grow something that could create a grassroots movement that could propel you to become someone influential enough that one day an oil and gas company would come to me and be like, hey, we're really interested in this.

And at the same time, I could go, hey, blockchain.

And.

And hey, here's my tech.

At the same time, right.

Like now you're kept me and I have two pitches.

Sure.

So it's kind of like it was a great way, like synergistically or I guess intentionally congruently, I was able to build my own brand and profile so I could be seen as something other than a salesperson.

Keep the legacy going of two people who are near and dear to my heart, which was my dad, who, you know, with the technology, and Suzanne, you know, with her vision, while at the same time wanting.

Like, I found a way to help create a credible enough organization that people knew if you worked with any single brand that's listed on my website, those are people I would tell my mother to do business with.

And my mother does.

She has accounts with these exchanges because I can trust them because I vetted them and I've helped build a credible ecosystem.

So now there's a place where people can go to get education, real education.

You're not being pitched anything.

No one's being asked.

You're not being asked of anything.

You're not getting investment advice.

You're learning, you know, specifically about the space, how to keep yourself safe in the space and who, you know, who are people that are worth partnering in the space because, you know, they're all so reputable.

Incredible.

So, like, it does fit within everything that I was doing.

Yeah.

So it's kind of a long, drawn out backstory.

No, I love it.

I love it.

And so you kind of led into the Canadian blockchain consortium.

But can you just once again go a little bit deeper?

Who is it for?

Is it for companies?

Is it for individuals?

Who are the people who become your partners?

Walk us through the whole kind of ecosystem as to what it is and how it works.

Okay.

So I would say that what it's evolved to now is it's very much like if you're a company.

So if you are a digital Asset mining company.

And you are looking at, you know, either coming into the country or you're currently in the country.

Reasons why you'd want to be a part of us is, you know, we will help with connections for you, we'll help you make the right connections.

If you're coming into the country, we act like a consulate.

Do you need, we'll support you with legal, we know all the lawyers that you could work with, accounting, all the accounting firms that you could work with, consulting.

Do you need access to power companies, utility companies, you know, regulators, government officials that support with these particular files, all the concierge work.

Plus, you know, do you want to expand your brand within this country?

Do you want to speak at different events on key topics?

Do you want to get embedded with the executives within this entire ecosystem?

Is there particular provinces that you're focusing on or is it just nationally as strategy as a whole?

So companies that come in, we basically act as like business development, marketing, ecosystem, building connections, consulate.

That's kind of where it would look from the finance side.

Very, very similar.

But like, are you looking to, you know, are you regulated?

If you are regulated, what are some of your key issues?

Do you want to get involved in the industry responses?

Are you looking to get better, you know, better relationships with banks?

Are you looking at, you know, bolstering up your cyber security?

You know, we have alignments with, you know, know, law enforcement, with banks, with regulators, with you know, again the law firms, consulting firms, accounting firms, etc.

So it's very corporate driven as well.

Like, so corporately that's why you'd want to join.

And at the same time we also build the ecosystem through events.

So we host events in every single province in Canada each year.

We call it a mini summit series and like just kind of bringing in the ecosystem, like talking about what's kind of prominent within different provinces.

You go to Quebec, you know, bitcoin mining on Hydro is a big conversation.

Let's have events on that.

You go to Ontario, Toronto, a little bit of mining, but you know, you have Bay street, it's very, very focused and exchange heavy.

You come to Alberta, it's a balance.

It's like the major custodians for digital assets are here, the miners are here and exchanges are here.

Right.

You go to BC, it's, it's more of a web3 community, more focused in on like the NFTs and the artists and you know, the metaverse, token, asset tokenization and stuff like that.

Right.

So there's so much going on all across the country.

And we're here to support building that ecosystem, creating that credibility and really finding this balance between bringing government regulators and industry to the table to make sure that there's alignment, you know, for any kind of policies and legislations and, and what could be impacting the industry long term.

And then there's the public relations side, right?

It's like, how do we help educate the general people who aren't very aware of this and make sure that they understand as a whole, this industry is actually positive.

Right.

Like, I know they get a lot of the negative narrative from the mainstream news, but that's because the mainstream news is all about clickbait.

It's like sensationalizing a story and negativity sells, which is very unfortunate.

So, you know, the PR to help educate, here's the jobs and economic growth and value it brings.

Here's how it's going to transform the finance industry.

But here's why it's important for you.

Here's how it's going to transform the energy sector, but here's also why, you know, for the general person and what it could mean for you.

Right?

So helping with that kind of messaging and then, you know, a big component of what we do is also charity work.

Right?

So partnering with, you know, charities and different organizations and doing fundraisers that are going to support the local communities that we're going into as well.

Okay, well, now, now my wheels are turning because I think I have a much better understanding.

But honestly, the further you go down this path, the more I'm like, okay, like, what does this really mean, like, to somebody who goes to the store and I tap my debit card to buy something?

The question for me comes in, how does blockchain or crypto integrate with the world we live in today?

Right?

Like, how.

What is the connection between the energy industry and blockchain?

What is the connection between, I guess, like, traveling or buying things at the store and blockchain?

Like, it sounds to me like you have such a different, a futuristic view that we just can't understand.

It's.

It's almost like you're living 15 years ahead of the rest of us.

And so can you, like, and I know I'm asking a lot here, I'm asking a lot of ukulele.

Bring us into your future.

What does it look like?

How does this all integrate?

What happens?

Well, let's start on the.

So I live in Alberta, the province of Alberta, and we are the third largest energy resource in the world.

So let's just kind of talk about what does that mean?

Right, in terms of equalization payments?

If you're in any other part of Canada, Alberta is the reason why you receive equalization payments.

We mine these resources, but we can't seem to get these resources to Tidewater.

Right.

Like we can't seem to get them on a boat.

Yeah.

Our Alberta resources are very, very landlocked.

Like America is our largest purchaser.

But again, as the third largest reserve of heavy oil in the world or energy in the world, we're not utilizing this to the max capacity that we could that would actually support Albertans.

Albertans don't have to pay for health care right now and we don't have a provincial sales tax because of the royalties that are paid by the energy companies that produce the cleanest energy in the world.

So I know there's some people that go, oh, dirty oil and gas.

If the concept that somehow you're going to be able to run an entire country on solar and wind, that is the equivalent of thinking that you're going to run it on unicorn piss and fairy farts.

It's not going to happen.

Renewables rely on hydrocarbons to actually be able to operate.

And here's a really good example.

In Alberta, when we had that rolling blackout where we had to borrow 150 megawatts from Saskatchewan, it was because the wind farm in Alberta was not operational due to the cold temperatures because of the climate that we live in and we had to go borrow power.

Now what does this mean for digital asset mining?

Well, it means energy security.

If you can't get your energy on a boat, you can't get it on a pipeline and you can barely get it on a train and you're landlocked.

How do you use those that energy supply?

You can sell it, you can sell it through fiber optic cables, you can sell it through the Internet.

And the royalties that you make off of being able to sell it through the Internet provide value to the province.

Now here's another one.

Miners, when they come in and they do off grid mining.

So this isn't trying to connect to your grid.

This isn't.

Oh, we don't have enough power in our grid to sustain it.

We completely fully understand and know that we're not trying to come in and take away grandma's power.

What we want to do is place these miners in an area where there's stranded resources that are currently not making it to market, where they can basically utilize the power, the resources of that region and create a commodity that's basically sold on the international market, which is bitcoin, and then be able to participate in what you would call curtailment or demand response.

So because they build their own power generation sites, if the Alberta government said, hey, we need 150 megawatts and you have a 1 gigawatt site.

Yep, happy we can shut down this many miners within three seconds, put that power to the grid and make sure that nobody has to turn off their stove, nobody has to turn off their washing machine.

So you actually can create energy security while utilizing and mining resources in an environmentally sustainable way.

Because natural gas is one of the cleanest power sources in the world.

Right.

They can be involved in our tier program.

You know, they can pay their royalties which benefit the Alberta government and they create mortgage paying jobs.

Right.

Like we are a lot of like we have tradesmen and we have like engineers and lawyers.

It's kind of like what we're known for here.

And we can take tradesmen and we can teach them how to, how to manage these data centers.

Bitcoin mining is really just a data center.

And the Alberta government wants to create, you know, an entire ecosystem to attract the Nvidias and the Googles and all these other major ones in the world.

But most of what they don't realize is these companies, they're not power producing companies, they're companies that are going to go to power producers and be like, hey, we need to wrap this many GPUs.

What do you have for me?

I need like this many megawatts and it's generally great grid connected.

So you need miners who are willing to build off grid facilities that can manage this.

Right.

To be able to attract them.

And by attracting miners, which is a multi billion dollar industry that can invest in this province, you'll attract, you know, the whole metaverse ChatGPT AI, which is where the world is going, which is a multi trillion dollar industry.

Right.

So what this could mean for all burdens in terms of jobs, economic value, you know, being able to actually harvest our resources that are forcibly being landlocked, like there's no reason why they shouldn't be on a boat.

There's no reason why we shouldn't be supplying the entire other half of the country with clean energy.

And to the carbon comment, it's like we have one of the largest forests across this country and each one of those trees captures carbon.

We don't emit as much carbon as these trees could absorb and capture.

Right.

So it's a very clean, sustainable, reasonable way of being able to utilize resources, support energy abundance and security.

Create more jobs and create more wealth for this province.

So that's a good way to, to me to look at it.

But from there then you, okay, financial side and you can look at Bitcoin.

So that's like a whole history of money that we don't have time to get into.

But as a really, really quick reference, right, right now the way that your money is being produced, it is, it's followed by what you call Keynesian economics, which is spend theory, right?

And with spend theory, the government believes they need to inflate your money by two to three every single year.

And by inflating the money and increasing the amount of money in supply, your M1, M2, M0, all these different ways that they metric this, they encourage and stimulate the economy.

So here's what that means to every single person that doesn't study economics.

You have one of the most valuable resources, which is your time.

You cannot recreate it, you cannot double spend it, you cannot do anything but store it.

And you store it through spending your time working and receiving money as remuneration for it.

And you store that time and that money in your bank account, right?

You exchange your time for money.

That money goes into your account and ideally you want to use it towards, you know, things that you're able to, you know, reimburse it for down the road trips and travel and things that make you happy, right?

That's the exchange of goods and services, your time for money.

When the government increases the money in supply every single year, that means that the value of your spend, right, your spend power with those dollars that you're saving when you're, you know, giving up your time for it, go down by two to three points per year.

Now when Bitcoin came out, it was in response to the 2008 housing crisis, right?

What happens there is when you have, you know, sub interest rates out there, 0% down, you know, you've basically inflated your money supply.

Interest rates are kind of through the roof.

People, when I think it was like the Dow Jones something dropped.

I think there was like a 700 point drop in the stock market on a Friday, Monday opens up.

Everyone's just like, oh my God, what's happening here?

People are having to foreclose on their houses because when the value of their dollar dropped, the value of their home was like, okay, we gave you a $500,000 mortgage for a house that was really only worth 450.

We gave you the extra 50.

Put that money into the economy, go buy a truck, a car, whatever you're encouraged to spend, right?

You are not encouraged to.

So when there's a call and it's like your home is now, you know, worth less than what you owe on it, and now the mortgage lenders have to call that money back in and you don't have the money to pay for it, what happens?

You have really no choice but to abandon your home.

And there were some states that one in every four homes was being abandoned.

We need something called sound money.

You need something where your money cannot be hyperinflated by the government, cannot be double spent, cannot be manipulated.

Because right now the government, your money, isn't really real.

I mean, if you think about it, your money's been losing value since the 1950s, since they've taken it digital with the invention of like the checkbook.

And then you had the credit card and then you had Interact.

Now your money is all kind of ones and zeros.

And the bank doesn't have to hold your money.

They do what's called quantitative easing.

So if you put 20 bucks in the bank, they can loan that out a hundred times over, right?

So if you think that if anything was going to happen, you're going to get 100 of your money back, you'd be lucky to get 10, 10%.

Realistically, 5%.

The Federal Reserve doesn't have to hold zero, right?

The Canadian government maybe holds 5% of your money.

And the craziest thing about COVID was Covid, the government increased the money in supply in Canada.

I mean, the entire money that was circulating in Canada was increased by 200 times in 18 months.

You have not felt the effects, truly felt the effects of the inflation.

It's not oh, maybe 5%, maybe 7%.

You're talking about like a 20 jump within a singular year, right?

That is a massive increase that you still haven't seen the effects of.

That's why the housing market is going nuts.

It's not just the carbon tax and everything else.

It's the fact that you now have an unlimited supply of capital.

It was coming in at three or four billion dollars a week with a limited supply of goods.

Supply and demand, unlimited capital.

The goods, what happens to the goods?

They start to cost of.

Everything's going through the roof, right?

So what does that mean for why Bitcoin, right?

Like what, what does that mean for you?

If you're storing your time for money and the government is basically robbing you of that by inflation, which really is theft and then they're adding taxation to the inflation, you need some way of Storing your money that is actually going to be able to either be stable and maintain value or increase in value over time.

Now I get that for a lot of people when they think of bitcoin they think oh my God, this is very scary.

It's very volatile.

But if you look at it from 2009 when the first bitcoin was mined, from the first Genesis block now being confirmed to now, you're going from absolutely zero value, not a concept of value to what?

$90,000 Canadian per coin.

I'm telling you, in a very short period of time that is an exponential gain long term.

Like it's.

It's not a get rich quick scheme.

That is not bitcoin.

It is sound money.

It is digital gold.

It is something that is.

You cannot replicate it, you cannot double spend it, you cannot inflate it.

There will never be more than the $21 million in supply.

So to me, if a country actually either held this asset on its balance sheet or backed their digital dollar by bitcoin, you, you need an asset to back your dollar buy.

We don't have that.

We have what we call GDP like gross domestic product with basically the gross domestic product is people.

So when you do your census report, they determine what tax dollars they have available based on how many people.

That's why you're required to do it.

And they figure how much debt they can take on based on the amount of taxation dollars they can get over a long period of time.

Currently Canada's debt to GDP is 385 times.

So I mean corporate debt, government debt and personal debt is 3, 385 times that of what we can bring in to pay it off.

Greece wasn't this bad like France wasn't this bad.

We are the worst in the G7.

Your dollar is going the way of Venezuelan petro.

It is just absolute trash at this point.

And the current federal government are not helping this situation.

Interest rates will not fix this situation.

Your cost of living is only going to get got worse.

I will not hold fiat currency anymore because of this exact reason.

So I want to encourage Alberta to be the destination for bitcoin mining and for the digital asset industry.

Because I would like to see the Alberta government put Bitcoin on its balance sheet.

I would like to see, you know, an incredible abundance of this industry in this province to help educate our people on.

You need an alternative form of money.

You, you need a way to save.

I don't want to see people when the dollar finally collapses.

And to me I know this is going to sound kind of doom and gloom, but how does your dollar not collapse when your debt to equity ratio is, is, is that bad?

Like Venezuela, Zimbabwe, like all of these different places that have had this exact same issue.

It's because of the same thing.

When you have too many dollars, when your government has nothing to base it on, right?

You, you don't have any value.

Like the Nigerian President was telling people to drop the US Dollar.

You're now seeing in the Middle east they're not willing to renew their contract to transact in the US dollar anymore through their Federal Reserve.

If the US dollar goes, the Canadian dollar follows with it and we're already 35 points below what they are.

So to me, the digital asset industry is like a safe haven asset class.

And I don't mean crypto, I mean bitcoin specifically.

I don't, they don't hold other cryptos for this exact reason.

All the most.

The reason why I don't like the other cryptos is most of them follow a Keynesian economic principle.

Right.

It's like they're constantly producing more of it.

You know, like I just not a big fan of it.

Same problem, money, silver, gold, you know, things that aren't replaceable.

Interesting thing about gold is, you know, it's an unknown scarcity.

Right.

When we had the gold standard, at least when governments could only spend what they had as a backing for gold, there was a lot more economic prosperity.

Right.

Or when kings and, and queens could only spend what they had in their coffers, it's either you had to tax people to get access to the gold, and if you overtax them, you had a very minimal population.

And back then the population would kind of cut off your head if you, you know, over tax the capital.

Then they started.

Yeah.

So there was some accountability with the government there.

Right.

But when you had the gold standard and people trusted their money, they saved to buy a whole house, right?

They saved to buy that car.

They, they saved for the things that they needed, right?

And they, they left what they had.

They built generational wealth.

The second you started quantitative easing and you started taking things off the gold Standard, World War I did that.

You had Roosevelt give us the American Greenback in the 1913s and the American government gave the right to produce money to the Federal Reserve, which is not an American government corporation.

It's a private entity which is basically the central bank.

So you have private industry printing money, loaning it to the government, the government, government taking that loan and then forcing you to pay Taxes to pay off their debt.

And what are you getting.

What are you getting to spend your money for?

Like what?

Your taxes.

What are they going for?

I still have potholes in my road.

The education system is trash.

Where is this going?

Yeah, so I think that, you know, through supporting the, you know, adoption or not adoption.

Bizarre.

But like supporting.

Harvesting our resources to support the soundest money the world has ever seen and then.

And encouraging our financial system to adopt sound money principles and showing the value of things like Bitcoin or at least getting people to learn how to store, you know, in this asset class.

I think there's huge value to that because I'm looking at the financial landscape in Canada right now, and it's like, it's.

It's scary.

Your children's children's children won't pay off the debt that this current prime minister has.

Has put us into.

That's probably not the.

But if that's kind of why I'm so passionate.

So sorry.

You'll get everything from mental.

No, no, this is.

Okay.

I was, I was literally going to ask you before, before we went on this tangent.

I was going to ask you, do you think this is something that the average person should get smart on?

Now, I know the answer is absolute.

Resolute.

Yes, 100%.

We need to get smart on the future.

On the future of.

Of all money.

For the most part.

For the most part.

And economics.

But, you know, obviously one of the challenges with Bitcoin or crypto or anything along these lines is that people don't know where to go.

If people haven't started this journey, they're hearing this for the first time.

You scared the bejesus out of them, by the way.

There's a lot of people that are like, oh, my God, right now.

But if they're in that moment and they're freaking out a little bit, do you have like a book or something that you can recommend?

Safety in a Moose wrote the Bitcoin standard.

It is the Bible.

It is the reason that Michael Saylor and he publicly.

He publicly said this.

This.

The reason Michael Saylor got into Bitcoin is he read the Bitcoin standard.

Safety is a brilliant, brilliant man.

He is a PhD economist.

Right.

He has taught.

His book is brilliant.

The Bitcoin standard is where you need to go.

You can get it on audible if you don't like to read.

He's also wrote in the Principles of Economics and he wrote another book on fiat currency.

I highly recommend.

That's a starting point.

Understand the history of money.

Because if you understand your history, history doesn't repeat itself, right?

We're just, it's an interesting thing with human beings.

We just, every generation we seem to keep repeating the same patterns.

Understand the history of money because what we're experiencing today is something that has been experienced for centuries.

A lack of sound money has collapsed every major civilization around the world.

People who live in western economies because you haven't been in the Nigerias and the Venezuelas and all that kind of stuff, we really, truly sit in privilege.

And because of that, we cannot conceive of the way that we currently live life changing and altering.

But I travel around the world, I've been in so many countries.

I have seen the devastation of bad government and bad money.

And understanding economics has really helped me to know how do I protect my children, how do I protect, you know, myself, how do I encourage people to start seeing what could happen?

I'm not doom and gloom going, oh my God, the world's gonna blow up in World War III and nuclear bombs are gonna drop.

And right, like, it's not that.

It's like just look at the history of money.

See what's happened around the world.

Look into what's happened in Italy.

Look at like Asia right now.

Like in, in China, they just lost 20 banks.

Do you know how many banks are going under in America right now and people are not able to access their bank accounts?

Do you know how many places around the world right now, like Australia is not letting people pull out cash?

The, the UK is telling people that if you spend more than a thousand pounds in cash in a single transaction.

Now in the gray market, why are they forcing you to go cashless?

Right?

Because it costs so much money to print it.

If you don't have to print it, you don't have to back up by anything.

It's just ones and zeros.

And then they can introduce the central bank digital currencies because everyone's in so much debt.

China increased their money in supply years ago, years ago, by 2%, which was trillions of dollars.

Nobody noticed.

And guess what they did.

They just ones and zero increased their money in supply and then they started loaning it out.

America owes China money, Canada owes China money.

Like they're printing your money and then they're loaning the money and then we're stuck paying for this debt through our tax dollars and we're getting tax on through the teeth.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's.

I agree.

I think any way that we can figure out how to keep more of Our money in our pockets.

I'm on board for that.

Like, you're absolutely right.

In Canada, our taxes are bonkers, our inflation is through the roof.

You know, we have a family of six going to the grocery store at this point.

Might as well be like paying a mortgage.

It is absolutely ridiculous what has happened in the past few years.

Yeah, I agree completely.

So if there are ways, Matt, this is, I have to say, in 224 episodes, Kalea, we have not had an episode like this.

This is, this started off so differently than the way that it ended.

I did not see this coming at all, listeners.

I did not see this coming at all.

This is, but you know what?

I think that this had to happen.

This talk had to happen.

And I really appreciated having you come on today, Kalea.

And I think, you know, like I said, if there's the ways that we can help people, well, even if it is just to protect yourself and your assets, even if nothing's going to happen in the next 50 years, 100 years, does that mean that you shouldn't try to protect yourself?

I, I, I don't think so.

I think, I think you should protect yourself regardless, because we never know what could happen.

You know, honestly, I'm a big fan of sovereignty.

All right?

So, like, the whole reason I'm in everything that I do right now is, like, I think that people should have the right to take care of themselves, the right to bodily autonomy, the right to, you know, financial prosperity.

And there's different ways to get there.

And the more educated you are about your financial system, your health care system, you know, your government systems, you know, the, the better you are to navigate.

It doesn't mean that, like, I'm not trying to scare anybody.

I don't want to put you into depression.

I don't want you to feel defeated or deflated, right?

I want you to have an opportunity to go, okay, X, Y and Z could happen.

And if it does, do I have a strategy?

Do I have a game, game plan?

Am I willing to open my mind to new perspectives?

Did what I say make you angry?

Did what I say make you afraid?

If so, if you're triggered, how come you're triggered, right?

And look into that a little bit further.

Be willing to explore it.

Be willing to open your mind to the fact that there's other ways to view the world than maybe that you're currently seeing it.

That does not make me completely accurate.

I'm going to tell you right now, I am more than happy for people to come back and Say, you know, I think what you have to say is absolute trash.

It's like, like, and, and, and so be it.

If that's how you want to take it.

That this is my perspective.

Right.

That's all it is.

It's not the word of God.

It's just, this is what motivates me and what it drives me and what I'm passionate about.

And if it resonates with some, great.

If it doesn't with others, just drop it, leave.

It doesn't need to be for you.

Yeah, I agree.

I think, I think people are going to have a lot of reactions.

I agree completely.

I think there's people that, that scares the bejesus out of them, especially when they've been investing in, you know, in.

Or they've been saving their money their whole life.

They haven't necessarily been investing it.

Maybe they've just been saving it and keeping it a bank account.

The idea that that's gone or that that could go, I think is very triggering for a lot of people.

But.

Sorry, I just want to say.

Sorry, go.

Specifically not go.

I mean, your, your ability to, like, if you have 100 grand in your bank account, if you had that back in the 1920s versus today, what does that $100,000 get you?

So it's not so much the money's going to go, it's just, what can you do with that money?

Money.

Yeah.

Right.

Take a look at what you.

Sure.

Ten years ago at the grocery store.

Two years ago at the grocery store.

Like, nothing I'm saying isn't things that you could research, but you're spending power with those dollars.

Right.

There's ways to preserve your assets, and that might be alternative currencies such as Bitcoin.

We're buying land because, you know, or, or real estate, those tend to appreciate in value quicker than other things.

I don't know.

Canadian real estate markets in a bubble.

So that kind of concerns me.

But, you know, just, just, just being mindful and, and paying attention, what could I do?

Can this be fixed?

Do you think a new government's going to come in and somehow eradicate what's, what's gone on?

All this new money that's been introduced and supplied.

Very unlikely.

Right?

So you're going to be in a situation where you're going to see inflation for a while.

And what does that mean?

And is there a way for you to protect yourself?

Just start looking at it.

Yeah, no, I, I love it.

I love it.

Yeah.

Essentially, shrinkflation is a real thing.

Like you're seeing the sizes of everything in the grocery down and charging the same price for it, right?

Like that's they're hiding it.

And very, very, maybe not hiding it, but it's not observable.

If you're not paying attention, you're not seeing what's happening.

But even like you look at your pack of bacon, it's gone down to like 375 grams from 500 grams, like.

Right.

It's little things like that that you're just not quite seeing, but that's how they're hiding it.

But yeah, it is, it is interesting and I think we are seeing it and we're trying to figure out kind of how to handle it.

But I think you're right.

Anything that can preserve your money long term firm is going to, going to be the way to go.

Kalea, we're talking to a lot of entrepreneurs today.

You have been an absolute lifelong rock star entrepreneur.

You've been in rooms with people that are absolutely next level since you were 11 years old.

What's the best piece of advice you could give to some of our new entrepreneurs who are listening today that either maybe they're on the fence, maybe they haven't quite launched their company, or they're right in the beginning stages of it?

What is the best piece of advice you can give them to inspire them to keep going?

If you're passionate about what you're doing, you'll be successful, right?

So I heard this a long time ago.

Make money doing what you love and if it feels like a job, it's going to be hard to stay motivated.

But if you're passionate about it and you believe in it and you think that there's going to be value created from it, do not stop, right?

Like I can tell you now, you can get 5,000 no's, and every one of those no's can feel deflating, like a slap in the face.

And you'll wonder if you'll ever be successful.

It takes one, yes, right?

Learn how to create that yes.

Read books on the art of negotiation, right?

Learn how learn about yourself so you can learn about how other people think, right?

So you can understand how to go into those conversations to create those yeses.

But do not take those no's as, as complete nut of rejection that you're not valuable, you're not worthy, what your, your idea, you know, can' successful.

You need to, you know, if you believe in it and it has value, just, just keep going.

It just takes that one.

Yes.

Amazing.

Just takes the one.

Yes.

I agree.

Kalea, thank you so much for joining us today.

This has been episode 224 of the Business Development Podcast.

My gosh, was that an episode?

Until next time, we'll catch you on the flip side.

This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialist.

For more, we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca.

see you next time on the Business Development Podcast.