One Airbnb Condo Turned Into $1 Billion In Real Estate | Ep. 441 with Sky Mitchell Founder and CEO of Everwild Nordic Spa & Hotels

0:00The biggest learning was, at the very beginning, all the banks said, no, no one wanted to finance me. We now have over 700 investors because we have many. This is Sky Mitchell, founder and CEO of Ever Wild Nordic Spa in hotels. Fired 30 days into a six-figure job. She started with $19,000 and one Airbnb, bought a 99-room holiday in and turned it into 400 employees and almost a billion dollars in real estate. Every bank in the country said no, so she found another way. I just took that BMW I mentioned I bought for $38,000. Right back to the dealership with a whopping 500 kilometers on it and said, I need a refund and use that as the deposit for the first base camp resorts in Can one. We've since raised over $100 million, just in think. Your ability to have success sum it up with one rule, what would that be? The only way to grow. So Sky, I was just watching a video around how people are especially in the

1:1130s and below, maybe even 40s and below, they don't want material things like before they want experiences. And I think all the changes with technology and such people want to go somewhere and they want to disconnect and they want to have an experience. How have you seen that change in the last 10 years? Well, someone once said more money, more problems than I would say it's more things, more problems. And so I couldn't agree with you more that people aren't interested in owning bajillion cars and houses and all this stuff and having a million monthly payments. They want to take that money and spend it on something like our offering at Everrad Nordic Spa, for example, go out, spend a lot of money on nice food, nice wine, an amazing thermal cycle, a great hotel room. And that's why you see all these luxury hotels are really taking off because the experience is so much more important than it used to be where it was like, where can I find hotel for $119 a night and no more than that? And I think this trend is going to lead to exceptional opportunities and

2:14hospitality. And you obviously saw the mixture of the hospitality piece with the health wellness and longevity piece. Are you seeing that morph now where people want to do all of those things when they stay somewhere versus what you said, I just want to go to a hotel because I want to find a bed to sleep in. Correct. The experience and to top that up, the experience in health and wellness is, you know, so important. You'll see all the big brands are trying to team up with different spa experiences, introduce new spa experiences, build new spa experiences, sonas are popping up on every street corner. And I don't think this is a trend. I think this is here to stay, which is really exciting. So let's go back to when you got fired after 30 days. What happened? Well, like you see in the movies, I was handed this cardboard box, the one from Staples or Home Depot or where they buy these things, put your stuff in here and you're out. And I was under probation. So I had no choice. Not that you have a choice when you get fired anyway. And off I went, I couldn't believe it. I they had just pulled me from another job offered me this fancy office,

3:17six figure salary. I had just bought a brand new little BMW for $38,000. Like I thought this was it. I'm an executive. Everything's going to be amazing. I'm going to go and buy a house and get married and have kids and do all the things you're supposed to do after you get an MBA. And instead 30 days later, I was sent packing and I cried so hard that the basement tenant in my house thought like, you know, someone had died. Wow. Okay. I was so upset. I was so upset. It was terrible. I imagine that I've been fired twice. So I know the feeling of we think it's a secure job, but not realizing that there is no job that secure. Did you think at that moment, okay, I'm going to go into business or did you think I need to go find another job? Oh, no. I knew I was never going to work for someone again. I had two job offers, just, you know, through the industry, real estate development. And I couldn't do it. I was like, there's no way I can go and, you know, give up on my dreams to slave away for someone else's. Well, it worked.

4:17People don't realize when you go into business, you think I have freedom. Did you realize though early on that the definition of freedom is different? Oh, absolutely. It's not like do whatever you want, whenever you want. You're married to that business. Like you can, I might be on the beach, but I'm on the beach on my headphones on the business on the beach. Let's go back to when you started with $19,000 and in one Airbnb condo, which has now turned into almost a billion dollar in developments. When did you realize that this is going to be huge? I don't think I ever did to be honest. I was just like blindly hustling because when I got fired, the $19,000 was a down payment for my Airbnb condo that I had been running on the side while I was working. So then here I am with no job. And I'm like, well, I'm going to rely on this Airbnb income. I'm going to go couch surfing. So I start staying with my friends. And then I'm going to go out Tinder and see if I can find a boyfriend stay with him instead. So then I meet this guy Tim. And all the while while I was working, I had actually bought another house in

5:20Calgary that I was renovating and I'm like, Tim, nice to meet you. You're carbon to your great. How about you finish my house renovation at that point I get fired. And hey, I've known you for like two months. Let's build a hotel together. So it was all just very serendipitous. How it all worked out. We're now married. So it's not just this random guy anymore. But yeah, it was really just taking that Airbnb model, having two Airbnb's that I was running while I had a job getting fired, then relying on the Airbnb income and staying wherever I could find somewhere to stay and then deciding I was going to start a hospitality company. So when you started, you had to refinance your car to put it down payment for land. Did you think that was going to be reckless or did people tell you that, Hey, Sky, this is, this is super reckless. I didn't tell anyone because it was just so out there. I just took that BMW. I mentioned I bought for $38,000. Right back to the dealership with a whopping 500 kilometers on it and said, I need a refund. And they're like, this isn't Costco or Walmart. We don't issue refunds on brand new cars.

6:21But the guy was a great salesperson and he said, however, since you paid cash, I'll upgrade you to a $75,000 car, give you a loan. And at the time, it was 1.9% financing for $75,000, which in turn got me the 38 grand that I went to the bank, whoop, check out the door and use that as a deposit for the first base camp resorts in Canmore. So there's very creative ways to raise funds essentially. I think we always think, okay, I just need to raise money from venture capital, private equity. I need to go get an SBA loan, depending on where you're at in the world. But it sounds like you found very creative ways to enable you to have the funds to start up. Did you ever think that maybe I need to just go the traditional route of fundraising? Never. No, I met a ton of family offices, private equity firms. At the beginning, when we were doing base camp resorts, it was basically a purpose-built

7:22Airbnb. They were town homes, but they were a hotel. So anybody institutional was like, that's not a hotel. That's a townhouse. That's multi-family. No, it's not. It's actually a hotel and it's branding the Airbnb experience. So you don't get like jack's basement suite with like pillowcases or Susie's house where the air conditioning breaks and you have no one to call. At base camp, you get the multiple bedrooms, the laundry room, the multiple bathrooms, the full kitchen. And hey, you can call base camp if something goes wrong. So that was the initial thesis. Nobody wanted to invest to his institutional or as you say, like the traditional route. And I'm so happy they didn't because it would have made my life a nightmare. I've always loved the retail investor. Our average check size is $127,000. It started with friends and family and grew from there. How did you come up with this idea? Because you were very early on and it was very unique. And many times these ideas go bust. It's almost harder, I think, to do something that has never been done before than to take

8:23what's already being done and just tweak it. Well, as I mentioned, I had these two Airbnb's and I was doing everything. I was cleaning the toilets. I was doing the bookings. I was paying attention to the customer profile, to the feedback. You know, it's all about the customer. Everyone says that, but I was like neurotic. What can I offer or what can I do different? Do they want to bamf parks past? Do they want some cookies when they show up? Like all these little things, right? And this was just my side hustle. I never in a million years thought I would end up in this full time. But as I was watching the trends at the time, I could understand why people didn't want to stay at like the best Western or the super eight. Nothing against those brands, but they wanted to have the kitchen in the larger room and all that. But again, I had been on Airbnb and I had Jack's basement with the cases and I had Susie's kitchen with the mouse in it. And I've had those experiences where there's nobody to call. And I was like, I never want my customers to feel that feeling that I felt in those moments. So I'm going to offer this hospitality product. That's a branded Airbnb experience that they have.

9:25What they always endless towels for the hot tubs, 24, 7 front desk service, like the things you want at a hotel. But here's your code. Here's your door number. Call me if you want. Don't call me if you don't want. So it's really optional. And people like to call it. So it was at the time, it would look like people were going this remote key, you know, no front desk and it's not, it didn't work. It was a fail. Like we had no front desk and we had to add a front desk. Wow. What were some of the biggest learnings beyond just that one that you thought it was going to be this ended up being something different. The front desk was the biggest one. We had this thing called the backbone. And it was like, oh, I don't want the backbone. I don't want the backbone because we didn't have a front desk at the beginning. It was like a hot potato throwing this phone around who's going to answer the phone this weekend. Because people would call like 24, 7. We had 32 townhomes and you know, they were two and three bedrooms. So you add up all those people. That's a lot of people to call. So no one wanted the backbone. And the other thing was the average length of stay was 2.4 nights.

10:25So I thought with these larger, you know, two to three bedroom townhomes, people would stay five to seven nights. No, it was actually 2.4 nights and it's gone down since then. I'd ever run spots 1.7 nights. So people are in their out there moving on, shaking around. So that was a really big learning. The biggest learning was at the very beginning, all the banks said, no, no one wanted to finance me. It was so hard to get investors. I have never hustled so hard as I did on that first deal. I was scraping pennies together to get it built. I painted the railings. I did all kinds of stuff just to get this thing off the ground. Oh, I saw that you couldn't raise from traditional. You raised over 100 million starting with Instagram. What was that first post? Well, that was a little bit along the way. So we did our first base camp and then we did a bunch of other hotels and, you know, like most industries, once you're in it, you're kind of addicted, right? You like the deal, you like the business. We're hiring people. The guest experience was what people were looking for. So we bought this hotel in Canmore. That was a holiday in its 99 rooms.

11:27And I said, let's turn this into ever wild Nordic spa and hotel. This obviously it's a way longer story than that, but to cuts at the chase here, let's turn it into this. We need $25 million of equity. The rest will be funded by debt, Bing boom, renovate the rooms, add the Nordic spa. And this is going to be, you know, the best asset in our portfolio and the best asset in Canmore. So we had 18 million in this private equity company comes in really small shop and says, we'll give you the last seven, which, you know, my private equity standards is like not very much. And we say, great. And so we go through due diligence with them as though we were like getting a billion dollars. Six months of time, they approved it internally externally. We're basically cutting the check and the guy calls this is, I just can't wrap my head around the spa business. What is this Nordic spa? What is thermal cycle? What is wellness real estate? Like we have done all of our ticks and all of our dotted eyes and all of our teas in this spot. That thing makes no sense. And I couldn't believe it. I was on the side of the highway. I'll never forget where I was sitting. And I was like, are you for real? Like I am, I have spent all the money.

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14:30Wellness real estate. We're opening every wild nordic spot in hotel. Thinking, I don't know, 50 grand, 100 grand. Even if we only got a couple hundred grand out of the ad, it's worth the effort. We've since raised over $100 million, which is in theme. When I think back to that moment of calling Jeff and being like, we're so desperate, I'm in tears. The business is going to fall apart. Everyone's going to say, I told you so. You took on too much. You grew too fast. All these things you always hear as an entrepreneur. And we did it and we're still doing it. Now we have a team and there's a ton of conflions involved in that. I should say that very clearly. This was not just done on a whim. It was at the beginning, but now it's very controlled. We've got in house general council. We've got a team. We've got conflions of the in Yang. But we are looking to launch the United States in the next six months, six months with the retail investment structure. What was it like when that first person invested? Oh, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. I was like, how does somebody click this button,

15:32like find out about us and then take their harder and dollars and invest them through the internet. But if you take a step back, it makes total sense. We'd been doing this at the time for six to seven years. I had a local reputation. All of our investors had made average returns of, you know, 18 to 22% IRR. So our track record was good. The word on this street was really good. People can come and have a guest experience at any of our properties at the time we had seven or eight. So as an investor, they could do all these like, you know, little checks on us and we're real and we're here. And at the beginning, I was taking the phone calls and the phone was ringing off the hook. I was like, I can't do this. This is like the back phone all over again. I've got to like hire people. So then I start hiring people to answer the phone because not only was it shocking when someone wrote a check, it was shocking the amount of people phoning every day. We had to like create new phone lines, get new phones. We're like building the canoe as we're, you know, going down the river. The internet, the website broke this. Oh my gosh, so many people want to invest.

16:33We've got to do something. It was it was a wildest wildest thing. I like the analogy instead of the plane, you're building the canoe. That's very Canadian of you, right? Yeah, building the canoe as you're going down the rapids of the river. I think do you find that people are more apt to invest because they can experience it. You think of like all the things that people can invest in, whether it's like stocks or apps. You can't really always experience the thing that you're putting the money into. But this though, if you invested in something, you could go and actually experience it. Do you find that helps people? Absolutely. And you know, if you haven't heard of wellness hospitality or wellness real estate, you're basically living under a rock. Like this is such a prominent trend. And when we decided to build this Nordic spot, wasn't, you know, all over the place in your face. But now it is and people really want to be a part of it because once you come and you do hot cold rest, repeat. So for example, sauna, cold plunge, rest, do three times. There is nobody who can look you in the eye and say they don't feel better.

17:35Nobody. So it's, it's like a tangible feeling. And when you have it, you want it more. And it's good for you. I know, you know, I used to do a lot of cold plunge. And then when I stopped doing a cold plunge, I tried to go back. It was hard. I feel like the more I did it, the more, the more I wanted to do it. But you do, it's a rush. Like you're saying, when you do those hot cold, it's amazing. It's the best feeling. You almost went bankrupt three times, which one of those times nearly broke you? I would say the first one. So back it back it up again to base campers or it's number one. I take the car loan. I get the cash. I put the deposit and I needed two million dollars of equity to get a five and a half million dollar loan to build a seven and a half million dollar building, which for like the record today, this would cost like 22 million. So that's how much costs have increased since, you know, 2016. Nevertheless, we had a term sheet in a commitment letter from a real bank,

18:35not the private lender we ended up going with. And at the 11th hour, when I had already spent all of the investor equity, the bank says, this one little thing in the commitment letter doesn't really line up with this little thing over here. And I had used a broker. So I was a 100% relying on the broker. And the bank said, no, we're not doing it. Although all along the broker had said, oh, it's all good. We're good. We're funding. Everything's great. I couldn't believe it. I had spent other people's money, which is like, you know, the biggest responsibility of my life is their money. Trusted this broker who was recommended to me that this loan was going to fund. And then it didn't fund. And then I had to hustle to find five and a half million dollars. And I didn't know anyone. Like I didn't come from parents who have money and all their like high-fluten country club friends. I didn't know anyone to call. And so I was like, oh, my goodness, we got to find a private lender because no A bank is going to finance a purpose-built Airbnb hotel. I couldn't even call the investors and tell like there was no way I was telling anyway.

19:38I was like solving this or I was disappearing off the planet because there was absolutely no way I could ever tell any of those $2 million dollar investors. We don't have a loan and we're have foundations in the ground. It was horrific. The best moment in my entire life after getting the private lender was they advanced the first draw, which was a million dollars. So we had spent the two million and then we needed a million to start paying the trades and keep the project going. And then they fund and you know draws there after. I got that drawn. I cried. I'll never forget where I was. I was like, wow, that was close. And you know, when you start something, there's so many people saying, what are you doing? Get a job. You're crazy. This is nuts. Go do something else. Why'd you get an MBA to go do this? Go get a job. Go make some money. Oh my gosh, every day. I finally stopped telling people what I was doing because I was sick of the naysayers. Does it inspire you though or motivate you to have naysayers or is it more about people that believe in you?

20:39Now it's about people that believe. At the beginning, it did inspire me because of course, I was young and I'd never done this before. I had approved you wrong. I don't need to prove anyone wrong anymore. You know, we just need to surround ourselves with people who are who are positive and inspirational and who are supportive. And it's always great to ask questions and want clarification, but to just put people down is outright awful. That's that's the tough part about being an entrepreneur. And I think when you add on social media and expectations and you, you're down and out, but you see everyone else, they seem like they're having the best life ever, even though they're probably down and out seeing you thinking you have the best life ever. It's really funny. Do you believe that desperation though really pushes people to solve problems maybe more so than not? Absolutely. If I had rich parents and they were cutting me million bucks a month to, you know, make this work and I didn't have to hustle. I don't know if I would have the same, you know, grit as I do.

21:43Like I had to do this all and there was nobody to help me. There was nobody to hold my hand. It was all on me. And of course, I have a team now and that's different. But at the beginning, it was me, my dog moose, the living room floor and like make this happen. And like I said, I had other people's money. I finally found a private lender, which was like a miracle to fund this, this building. And then not only do you have to get a bill, which is crazy at the time. And there's like not very many women in real estate and construction in this part of the world. And then on top of that, we had to open, we had to accept customers. And then like, what do we do when they start calling? What do we do when they show up? We got to find housekeepers. We got to clean the rooms. We got to have systems and processes and it was this wild. If you could tell yourself all the things that you just said right now back in 2016, do you think you would have just gone to get another job? No way. Not a chance. No, it's like for me, if you're an entrepreneur, you know it.

22:44Somewhere in like the depths of your soul, you just, you know that you're meant to be an entrepreneur. And you know, you're meant to create jobs and grow the economy and all that stuff. But really you're, you're just meant to move mountains. And I would never be able to get another job. I think, I know, I think that call, I think we're unemployable. Yes. Oh my gosh. Yes. You're absolutely right. Yeah. I'm one of you. Yes. But you fall in love when you're in a sauna. If I'm not mistaken, you were in the sauna and you realize that you love the sauna and you want to do something more with this. Can you tell me that story? Yeah. So there's actually a Norfolk spa 45 minutes from here. And I knew it had been quite popular since it was open and I was like not a sauna person. So I'm the first person to say like when someone tells me they hate sauna, I'm like, I used to hate it too. So I can relate. And now I love it. And I am like going to build Nordic spa all over North America.

23:45But I didn't like it. Tim, my husband, who's the, you know, the boyfriend from Tinder who turned into my husband, he always loved the sauna. So we have a sauna in our basement. He would always use it and I never used it. And finally I kept hearing about this Nordic spa down the road. So off we go to the Nordic spa and then I start kind of using the sauna a bit in the basement. And I'm like, ah, maybe this isn't so crazy after all kind of feel good. And so one thing led to the next and at the same time as this like sauna experience was evolving for me personally. We bought that hotel that holiday in that was 99 rooms and we wanted to rebrand. And there was this extra piece of land that came with it. And we were originally just going to build, you know, more hotel rooms. Why wouldn't we? That's what we do is run hotels. And I said, stop the plans. Sauna's in Nordic spa is where this industry is going. We're building a Nordic spa and everyone's like, Oh, here we go again. Another pivot as an entrepreneur, you've got to be able to pivot by the way. And I'm like the master at pivot. And so we pivot. We turf the plans that had cost us 50,000 or $100,000 to build this next hotel and building a Nordic spa.

24:47What enables you to be able to pivot unemotionally? Not having a private equity partner. That's what. But no, it's also, it's it's it's it's it's going to sound really corny, but it's an instinct. Everything starts with an instinct and then gets back by facts, numbers, research, all of the, you know, smarter than me people things. But I start with like this makes sense. There's a business case here. I could tell that the customer was looking for the experience that you mentioned at the beginning of this podcast. People were after COVID just choosing to get out and to do things together and to have a social experience. And I'm no longevity expert. So I'll never say I am, but I know that you need to socialize. And that contributes to longevity. And so I was like, let's take wellness into its simplistic form of the thermo cycle and social. And let's put this all together and have a social wellness experience at our hotel.

25:48And that's how ever Rob was born. So you think intuition and gut feeling are something that some people just really can hone in on and others cannot? Absolutely. Because it sounds like that's what you're saying. If somebody could have you sum it up, it might even be hard to explain because it's a feeling, but you're really almost analyzing everything subconsciously and then coming up with a reason. Because I looked at what separates other people from doing the same thing. I always think about that. It's a risk thing. Most people see an idea or hear an idea and see risk right away. Like my dad, you know, I tell him an idea and right away, it's like, this is risky. This is risky. This is risky. Where's my exposure? And it's like, you're never going to do this idea. Like the sun's talking about something else. But for someone like me, I see the idea. I see all the reasons to do it. And then of course, I bring in, you know, we have a finance team now to do the performers, bring in the risk analysis and all that.

26:50But all the ideas start with there is like a million ping pong balls in my brain going, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big like the bingo thing. Right? And I'm doing all the analysis in my head. And then you combine that with it, got feeling and outcomes. This great idea. And have there been, you know, not so great ideas along the road? Absolutely. But the big ones have been pretty good. And I really believe in the Nordic spa idea, the Nordic spa future and the future of our brand ever wild. Let's go back to your childhood. Because I feel like the person you are today is because of something in your childhood. What happened in your childhood that's enabled you to be this person? There's so many things, but there's one thing that is like particularly clear and explains the madness. And that's my mom was a real estate agent before I was born and then she went back to her previous career as a teacher and my dad was a mechanical engineer by trade and ran an engineering department at a company.

27:53And my mom marched my dad and and me around to these open houses on the weekend. Let's buy this house and renovate it. Let's do this. Let's go over here and buy a different house. Maybe we could buy this piece of piece of land here in Belgrade duplex and we looked and we looked and we looked and my dad, who I mentioned was very risk averse and analytical, could find every reason in the world not to do these ideas that my mom was coming up with. And I genuinely think that had they done those ideas, I know that they would have been, you know, pretty rich, but that wouldn't have been the point. The point would have been my mom would have been so good at it. But my dad really couldn't wrap his head around all of the risk. And so as a small child, I watched this every weekend, why can't we do this deal? Why don't we do that deal? Why wouldn't we do all of these ideas? And they never did it. And I think I always had this fire inside me that, you know, we'd looked at real estate for my entire life and never did anything. And I was like, I'm going to do something. I'm not going to let all these ideas that were great and market timing that was fabulous.

28:57You know, go down the drain like my parents did. So here we are. And all goes back to our childhood, right? It does. Let's go to the conversation with Tim. So you meet Tim, Tinder date, you tell him about your dream hotel, all of a sudden, like five. I almost want to say many people would think that's too soon to tell someone. You know, many, it's like, it's too soon to tell someone I love you or the things about the future. But you're like, no, I'm building this dream hotel, Tim. Are you on board? How is the conversation like? Yeah, we dated for. Oh gosh, not long, a few months. I get fired and I'm like, Tim. We're building a hotel. And he was a carpenter at the time and he's still a carpenter, but he was doing renovations. He has own little like, you know, one guy in a pickup truck kind of thing. And he's doing renovations, bastard renovation and kitchen renovation. And I was trying to be this, you know, corporate goddess at these real estate companies. And and it was fun.

29:59It was so much fun. It was great for like five minutes until I got fired. And then I'm like, Tim, we're building a hotel and he looks at me. OK, which is very dim. And then he's like, well, maybe we should form my brother. He's rich and he's an L.A. And he's, you know, got a lot of money producing commercials and doing the whole Hollywood dream thing. And so we phoned up Jeff who I'd never met and and pitched him on why he should invest into this hotel. And I don't know. Jeff's like, sure, let's do it. So Jeff was our first investor for 250 grand of that original two million we needed to build the hotel. And Tim's carrying on doing renovations and Jeff's in L.A. You know, doing the L.A. thing. And I'm by myself trying to get this hotel off the ground and and we did it. And when when I think about it, I'm like, it's a good thing that I met Tim and not somebody who was risk averse because how to met someone who had, you know, a house and a job and an orderly, you know, career path, so to speak.

31:01They probably never would have gone for this. They would have said, get a job. But Tim didn't know what he didn't know. And he said, why not? We like to have nothing to lose. And it was the perfect time we had nothing to lose. How did you get over the fear of raising money? Because I think a lot of people don't raise because they have this fear around raising money, the process. Like you said in the beginning, the responsibility now that comes along with that. But at the same time, we know without money, many times you really can't scale. Correct. And I never had that fear. I don't know why. Maybe that's like, you know, a personality defect or a personality, not defect. I was never afraid of it. I knew it was the only way to get this done. And I knew that if I could get it done on time, on budget and start making money, these people would make money as they did and they would reinvest as they did. It's all about making people money. If you make people money, they will come back. And even if they don't come back for, you know, whatever personal reason,

32:03that story will bring other people in. And we now have over 700 investors because we have made people money. And I will always prioritize my investors dollars over my own. I guess it's almost like crowdfunding, right? I guess it's accept our minimum check size is 50 grand, not like, you know, 200 bucks or whatever. But still like the model of instead of just like friends and family, then they go institutional route. It's almost like crowdfunding at a certain level, but opening it up to more people in the ability for people that you don't know. I think a lot of people are looking for different types of ways to invest their money, but they don't always know where to put it or how to even access the places. Like how would they find out about your future things that you have going on? Well, they would find out either by staying at our hotels, you know, we have little tent cards in the rooms and information at the front desk and we have ads all over the place, Instagram, Facebook, all those places. And you nailed it.

33:03You hit the nail on the head with people want to invest in private placements and they don't know how. They don't know where. And this is available. We work with accredited investors. There's a lot of accredited investors in Canada and the United States. And even accredited investors, they don't get, you know, deals on their desk every day, especially deals in real wellness real estate, which is, you know, a very prominent industry right now. And so when they see like, oh, I went to Everwild, I can own a piece of, you know, the next Everwild Nordic spa asset. Let me know. And then they call and you know, we have a team of four people on the line all day every day. What did getting fired teach you that success never could get in fired taught me. I guess it's back to that whole feeling, right? It taught me rejection. It taught me, you know, to be humble, don't ever take anything for granted to your earlier point. You think you have this job, you think it's secure.

34:04You think that, you know, every two weeks that paycheck number is going to keep coming. And it also taught me that life education is so much more important than an MBA, than real education. And I think in business, that's becoming more and more apparent. I don't, I don't know if I even look for people's, you know, letters behind their name, if they're applying for a job as much as I look at like what have they done? Where have they been? Are they an interesting person? Because it's the experience and, you know, the school of life that really matters. In fact, I set my kids up two days ago on Main Street in Canmore and I said, we're going to sell popsicles and we're going to learn all about how much it costs to buy these popsicles. How much can we sell them for? Oh, what's that? It's your margin. Like, and they're getting it and they're understanding. I'm like, don't sit in those chairs. Get up, walk onto the sidewalk and ask someone if they want to buy a popsicle. They kept saying, Mom, mom, you do that. You do it. And I said, no, no one was a buying popsicle for me.

35:06You guys are five and seven. It's super cute. They want to buy a popsicle from you. And they started doing it. And I think that's so much more important than like, Oh, hey, you know, why is a river winding? I don't know, whatever you learn in school, you know, Hey, I was always upset because I could never get a job at Apple, for example, but our Microsoft, neither one of those two would hire me because I did not have a college degree because I dropped out. And I always got angry because I'm like, these companies were started by people that didn't go to college. Yet you won't hire me because I don't have a degree, but I have so much experience. It drove me crazy. And I think like, why? I think we're, I think times are changing now that maybe people are less looking at education. What do you think? I mean, I know for me, I look at it less. That's really too bad that they wouldn't hire you because you don't have an education. You know, to me, I think the experience and really the, the, the vibe you get when you meet someone is the, is the most important.

36:06So let's say there's a woman out there watching this right now. She was just fired or maybe her business was just shut down. She had something in her life that was not successful and she's feeling down and out. What do you want her to hear? For me, of course, it's cheesy, but I would say like, pull up your socks and you can do it. Think of the next idea, make a plan, write it down and change the voice in your head telling you that you can't do it because that's what's going to stop you. And I think that's the biggest thing for, for everybody, women, whoever, you know, if you tell yourself you can't do something, you can't do it. Right? And I think that's where I say I didn't have that fear of raising money because I just didn't, I knew I could do it and I knew I was going to make people money and that I was, it was like in my soul. And so you just really have to have your idea and live it, breathe it all day every day. It's like you manifested. Yes, yes, I know that sounds crazy, but it's true. And I do all my ideas. I think about them all the time.

37:09I wake up in the night and I think about this stuff and all the time. I think about too many ideas. My wife always yells at me like stop thinking about so many. I sometimes have to stop myself because I need to do one. I need to fulfill an idea first before I go to the next idea. That that's one issue that I have. How do you know when to add on something or when you know, when it's not too soon or not too late? You know, like everything in business, it depends. It depends on what you're trying to add on. It depends what you're trying to pivot to. It depends how much money it costs. It depends if it makes sense for the customer. There's been times where I'm like, oh, we got to do this and this and this and this and this. And luckily now I have a team, you know, I have 400 employees and someone says, you know, that's good. But next year or that's good, but wait six months. So I have a sounding board now. Whereas at the beginning, it was just like, oh, steam ahead. Nothing's going to stop me. So now I have people who will like bring some, you know, degrees of reality to my idea. So I think it's really important to have a team or to have a mentor or to have, you know, like for a husband or somebody like at the beginning,

38:14they had the dogs. She didn't really talk, but you know, went along with what I said, you need to have support. Like I said, social is really important. So I'm going to talk to someone to trust. Like it's, if it's your business, you know what's right. You just do. Do you think organizations like, I know you're part of YPO young presidents organization. We also do a lot with entrepreneurs organization. Do you feel that these have enabled you to grow more because you are surrounded by those people? And many times it's hard to find other entrepreneurs. Absolutely. I don't know if you know, why peel has enabled me to grow more. But the people I have met through why peel have been integral in my success. Like knowing other entrepreneurs, hearing other people's stories, being informed together and seeing that, you know, to your earlier point, it's not all like roses on Instagram. Like other people have struggles and other people have financial hurdles and challenges. And all of that is okay. And just meeting other people and through YPO, the people that you meet, you know, you wouldn't meet if I, if you were in, in YPO.

39:21So for me, it's been one of the best parts of this whole journey. Final question for you. If you can sum it up, you're the, your ability to have success or you're success. If you could sum it up, maybe with one rule, one statement. What would that be? One statement about this. Maybe a rule that you live by something like that. I would say it's build the team around you because while it was just me at the beginning, and that's the way you start something. As you grow, the only way to grow is to surround yourself with the strongest possible team and grow together and grow in the same direction. Sky, I'm super inspired. Thank you so much for joining us. I mean, starting from being down and out, being fired now, 400 employees, billion dollars in real estate development, skies, the limit. I mean, you are just scratching the surface of an industry that's just the great thing is I was just talking to someone.

40:24This industry is so booming because you have so many people right now on podcasts and such that are talking about this industry, like wellness and, and, you know, so so many people now that are educating the consumer for you on your behalf. That's great. It's fabulous. It's the booming time. So I can't wait in a couple of years from now when you're, I mean, you're going to be unicorn. Or you already might be when you become a billionaire, but you personally become a billionaire. I hope to have you back on the show, but I appreciate you. I look forward to it. I look forward to it. Thank you so much.