How Two Newfoundlanders Built Atlantic Canada's Virtual Heavy Equipment Marketplace | Eastern Frontier

0:00We are excited to be announcing our newest presenter sponsor, Payzant Building Products. Payzant Building Products has been providing contractors and builders with the supplies necessary to complete their job since 1964. They've built a reputation on honest, helpful, and quality service, serving the HRM for the last 58 years. Now with seven locations in the HRM and one in New Brunswick, we look forward to having Payzant Building Products on the podcast in the near future. Okay, welcome back to the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Today we have with us Eastern Frontier. Eastern Frontier is

0:38Atlantic Canada's one-stop shop for buying, selling, sourcing, and evaluation of heavy construction equipment and other industrial assets. We have John Adams and Harold Druken, co-founders — some fine gentlemen from Newfoundland here with us today. Yeah, excited to chat with you guys, and thanks for being here. Thanks, Dan. And we did not bring the storm — just to let you know something. We bring the heat, but we bring the storm. So by the time this episode drops it'll be post-Fiona, and Cape Breton's gonna get hit

1:11hard. And so are we here in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland — PEI a little less — but yeah, we're just hoping that the sites around the city and in the different provinces are buttoned up and everybody's safe. Yeah. We usually like to start with a little bit of background. I know since you guys got things off the ground, which is amazing, so I'm sure it's exciting times and things seem to be going well. But just personally, maybe we can start with you, John — just a little

1:37background for you, your journey in the industry, and sort of how you landed here. I know that's hard to do in a matter of a couple of minutes, but especially for me — Harold will tell you that I don't mind talking. Yeah, no, cut me off. I come from a construction background, I guess you can say. I didn't start in construction, but I ended up in it, and I ended up in construction project management. We're

1:59building timelines on nickel mines. And then one day I took a phone call, and that phone call got me out of that business and into sales. I didn't think I was in sales, but you come to that point when you make a realization. And then that led into another opportunity that put me into one of the positions I'm pretty thankful for — it was another auction house in Canada, one of the largest ones. And I ended up being, I guess you could say, the sales director for

2:24Eastern Canada. So I was in charge of Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, all those areas, and Atlantic Canada stayed my baby. And I hired Mr. Druken — he came on board as a sales rep for the Newfoundland market. And then, yeah, partners in crime for a while. Yeah, we have been. It came through — it's funny how you meet people. The referral with Harold came back and forth; it came from a friend of mine that went to high

2:49school with me, and I was looking for a guy in Newfoundland. He gave me this guy and, sure enough, we formed a relationship that I basically say was a match made perfect, buddy. You know, he understands me, I get him. We put the model in place with the business when we started thinking about it. We both are the type that like to spitball — that's our favorite word. We're just spitballing, and we do a lot of late nights and early mornings. He works the same way that I do. We're not

3:15afraid to work. We're up at the crack of dawn and we go to sleep at different times — usually early in the night because we're not the night owls. And that worked well with him and me. And then Eastern Frontier came, and just the name — Eastern Frontier — I think we went, it had to be at least a month throwing stuff around. Oh yeah, it's a tough decision. Everything — like names, how to put it, different things about it, just the overall logo, how we came up with

3:40that — that must have been... what's the story behind that? It's a good logo, yeah. It's got a Newfoundland-based aura about it. Well, it's right across Canada. So if you look at it — and I'll just use this one here — you've got your trees, right? So you got your hills, which we're in construction, so you blast the hill to make aggregate. You have a gold line here which is actually paving, threw a couple trees

4:08in there, and then we came down here with a couple of seagulls to keep the Atlantic version of it all. And Harold and I kind of figured those are it — maybe me and maybe Harold in terms of it — but there's no droppings out of it. But then the subliminal part of it is right in here: Eastern Frontier — EFA — is right in there. You guys fit a lot into that. Yeah, we did. Yeah, well done. Who do you want to give a shout-out to

4:29as the creator, or was it you guys? Or did you hire somebody to do that? Yeah, no, it was — I had pretty much of an idea in my mind and kind of wrote it down on a piece of paper and had a gal draw it up on the computer, made a bunch of changes. You had the artistic side too, then? Yeah, yeah. Nicole Buffett actually is the one that put it into circulation. She's from Nova Scotia and

4:54works with us now as well. So she had a big input on that and, as it started going, people started to like it, so we said, yep, we'll stick with it. Yeah, no, it's a good logo. It's captivating, it's simple — and it's amazing how you can squeeze that much story and lore into something so simple. It's pretty cool. And then the name — Eastern Frontier — okay, the frontier... Newfoundland, you know, the frontier of

5:17everything. Newfoundland is what we always say. We're proud Newfoundlanders, both Harold and I. But we're also proud Atlantic Canadians. My roots are here — my wife is from Nova Scotia, you know, coming to university and doing stuff in Nova Scotia. A lot of my friends and associates are bound here, and spending close to — I think it was 10 years in Halifax — it's been fun. So the eastern part of it we wanted to have in it, and the frontier end of it is

5:38good. And it's actually evolved now — people just say, "Check out Frontier." They've actually shortened it up for us. So the name is Eastern Frontier, but people say, "Ah, check out the Frontier," and that's kind of evolved on its own. It's nice to see that, right? You've got something that people just — they'll drop the Eastern, or it's become more of a semi-household company name, and people are accepting it. So it's pretty fast — year and a half. Yeah,

6:02definitely. Give us a little rundown for yourself, Harold. Just a little bit. I know John shared a little bit about you guys working together elsewhere and stuff, but yeah, just take a little bit of your journey. Yeah, I started off in construction — I wasn't running mines or anything like that. I was more of the demolition guy. But you know, I got into it — a guy actually, Jason, back home in Newfoundland, was a business guy and he was

6:28developing another business. He took a part of building and he asked me to come down and help demolish. And so that's how I got into my construction career. But then that evolved into building houses, so I added my own crew and started building houses in Newfoundland. I built 15 or 20 houses. And then — physically and the way stuff worked out in Newfoundland when it came to the price of land and whatever — I basically made a jump to sales. I went to industrial commercial sales

6:59with Kent Building Supplies, and then that brought me to the West Coast of Newfoundland into a Friday hockey game. John's — I was there with Kent for a couple of years. And then a great place to make a sale — a hockey dressing room and a couple of beers. Oh, he's solid at it! Yeah, actually it's amazing. Did you play professional hockey? Yes. Tell us about that — we're not here to talk hockey, but we've got to bring it up. So I do have my quota of

7:29dressing rooms. Yeah, actually that's probably what I miss the most about hockey. I don't miss getting beat up. Are you a fighter? No, no. I was a forward, I was a goal scorer. Played for the Leafs and the Canucks and the Hurricanes. Okay, well predominantly with Vancouver — I absolutely loved my time in Vancouver. I actually probably loved it a bit too much, if you know what I mean. Yeah, but I think I do. Yeah. But anyway, through Jason and

7:58the realities of 10 surgeries and a new set of teeth, it was time for me to move on and start the second half of my life. What was that like — a hard transition after pro sports? It was. Yeah, the saying that "pro athletes die twice" is actually — I believe it, because I went to a bit of a time there where you just feel you weren't needed. Your whole identity is tapped into that exact thing, and you're starting over. Your body's not 100%, you know

8:27what I mean. You start second-guessing yourself. But you know, that's where I started with demolition — the guy, Jason, saw it. I was in kind of a hard way, and he said, "Come down, let's go to work." And he got me up out of bed and got me going, put me back on the straight and narrow. And ever since then it's been hammered down. Yeah, well there's lots of hockey players in the industry, and people listening — you know, not everybody played in the NHL, but

8:49they're all playing rec hockey and stuff. So it's an honor to have you, and that's awesome that you played in the league and got it done. You got the scars to prove it. And yeah, when I hung them up, I hung them up. I don't blame you. You know, you don't go out and play rec or anything? No, I don't play it. I don't watch it. I'm a fan of SportsCenter — I like my SportsCenter, just the highlights. Yeah, but I can't say it's

9:09just the way it's gone. I've totally made a complete transition away from it. Right, so now I'm trying to get out from underneath it really and make my own way. Sounds like you're doing pretty good there, too. Yeah. It's funny because we don't talk a lot about it — Harold and I have our own discussions. He's being honest. Well, he is, and that's the thing about our partnership. 20 years ago, yeah — well, you know, what did you do, what were you doing 20 years ago? Yeah,

9:33right. Yeah, no — it just happened to be in a public way. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's been our motto, the two of us — humble beginnings. You look at that end of it now as it's opened doors and done different things for him. Yeah, sure, definitely. But he doesn't make it a thing — that was hockey, totally different industry. Was he good? Yeah, he was a good player. He's well known in Newfoundland, well known everywhere. I don't say too much about it, but when you're drafted 36th

9:57overall, played World Juniors on a broken ankle — the guy's not bad, he can put a puck on the net. So that's the good end of it. And in terms of sales techniques, that's what he has: he has the drive, he has the desire, competitive nature — yeah, all that stuff comes into it. And competitive? You can't keep two of us down for competitive compatibility, I'll tell you that. Yeah, yeah. We've had Corey Bell and Devin Harnell on — Devin was talking about how he

10:22played some hockey, not in the NHL, but he was talking about, you know, how a lot of the skills playing on a team as a pro athlete or at a high level kind of transition over into who you are in your work environment. You're part of a team, and it's like the same intangible skills that kind of make you what you are as a salesman or as a project manager, whatever it might be, right? It's a lot of

10:52interplay between the two things, right — a lot of the transferable skills. It's funny, when you talk about the customers we deal with, we deal with a lot of the major contractors in town, and I consider them the pro athletes of the construction industry. Actually, a lot of these guys started — I mean, they're big multi-million-dollar conglomerates — and 30 years ago they had a truck and a tobacco. Yeah, it's amazing. And all of a sudden now they've got $50, $60 million

11:18worth of equipment, they're running 300 to 400 employees — the ups and downs and the teamwork that comes with that. Absolutely. It's — I would consider them the pro athletes. And a lot of them, you know, when you get to know them — and that's one of our keys — we like really spending time on the relationship part of it, because a lot of this stuff gets very personal when you're dealing with millions of dollars and stuff like that. Right. And I do

11:42find that these guys do come from an athletic background, because you can't run a 350-, 400-person business without having to be able to adapt and be able to work with other people — all the mental toughness that it takes. And oh yeah, we could talk about that — yeah, that's a whole separate topic. Yeah, yeah. So tell us a little bit about the team before we dive into some other things. As far as — is it six or eight members that are with Eastern Frontier

12:08right now? Currently? It's eight. We have eight on our team right now. It's broken down into two ways, and that was one of the big steps. We have — I guess you could say — our operations side: when the sale is done and completed, the real business works. Or you want to look at it the other way. So when you look at it, we have Nicole Buffett who is our EA — she handles pretty much everything that we have for

12:28invoicing, detailing, following up with registrations. Then you move into our social media director, which is Rich Pike. He handles our website development; he was the creator of it. He's the artistic side of it — his background in its own end of it, we'll just leave it aside. It's very interesting. Which was a good fit, yeah? Big thing for you guys, right, because it's online? Exactly, you're virtual. Yeah, and you're making huge sales — he's a huge part of it. Yeah, he's part of

12:54the puzzle. I mean, he was our first hire, directly, because we needed to have that — you know, you can't create what we're creating without having someone who knows their way around the website. And unfortunately both Harold and I didn't, but that's not our expertise. Our expertise is placed differently. So Rich — the history with all of our team members as we break them down: they're hand-selected. And when I say hand-selected, we spend a lot of time; we don't just go — we're looking for people that

13:15number one, understand the business. I call it "long in the tooth" — they're not young. We don't mind the youth, don't get me wrong. But these guys know the equipment; they've been in the industry for a long period of time and they know where it stands. That's your tagline — merging old-fashioned relationship-building with today's technology. Right, that's the bread and butter of it. So we build a relationship. That's the operations side — with myself, Nicole, and Rich, we handle that. And then the split

13:39between Harold and I — Harold handles the sales team. So you can speak about Lonnie and Todd and the rest of them. Yeah. When we started hiring for this, it wasn't — we weren't looking for, you know, top salespeople. We wanted individual thinkers. We wanted people that could think on the fly, develop relationships, and problem-solve. So we ended up with Todd Rollings in Newfoundland — he's been in equipment financing, very versatile in that way. We got Jody Smallman in Nova

14:07Scotia, who's very experienced in equipment and auctioneering and everything, so he adds a whole other depth. We got Chris Ritchie in New Brunswick, who can take apart a tractor and put it back together, and is new to sales — so he's a very good relationship builder and knows equipment. And then we got Lonnie Thompson in PEI, who was servicing New Brunswick, but we've transitioned him into PEI area manager as well as lead coordinator, just because of size, volume, and being able to maximize his time. So what we

14:43have encouraged — and it's what's different from big conglomerates — is we don't view our customers as numbers, we view them as relationships. Right. When you're dealing with big conglomerates, when you're dealing with Cat and all these huge companies, you've got floors of lawyers you've got to pay for in California. You know what I mean? The engine is so big, so many systems, so big that you've got to charge so much to keep that engine going. Right. So all of a sudden

15:10your customers become numbers. Where we're going to take it back a notch and say no, we'd rather foster a relationship with the customer — even if it's less volume, that's fine. We're after repeat business. And in order to do that, you've got to have trustworthy relationships. Yeah. And that's what our whole business is based on. Yeah, the one-and-done is not what we're about. And the old-fashioned relationship — when we put this company together and started thinking about it, we were listening to the customers. We were

15:37actually going, "This is what they want." And you spent years listening to customers prior to this too, right? Exactly. And being one ourselves — like, being part of construction, buying and selling equipment when I was in construction project management, you're involved in it. What does the customer need? So we took the approach: let's learn what they have to say. We took that, we put it down on paper. And to this day, a customer will call us up and say, "Hey, you should change this on

15:59your website" — boom, within three or four days we make that change. If it works for our steps down the road, we're not the type that are just going to do it willy-nilly. We're doing it when it makes sense. But when they give us that endpoint — like when someone says, "Hey, you know, your sold signs" or "we need some more of this" or "break it up so you can see Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and PEI" — already there, with a little ticker up in the right-hand

16:20corner. Yeah, that little thing makes a big difference, because if you're buying equipment and you're in PEI, you've got to pay transportation. But now with the cost of diesel, hey, I can probably find it here in PEI — I don't need to worry about going all the way. It's a good combination with any organization, I think — you know, it's an opinion — but have strong boundaries, and then be open enough to listen. And when someone's got a good idea, if they're right, think about

16:45it yourself. You know, you're flexible enough to — oh, definitely. And we treat it like ourselves. You know, the communication: what would you do if you were buying something? You want someone who's accessible. Maybe we don't know everything about the piece of equipment we're selling, but I'll tell you what we do know — we know how to put it in place. The seller has trusted us, which makes it very easy for us to say, "Hey, give us a call," and they'll add more, and we'll

17:06connect it. And that has been successful. On the technology side of it, when you say, okay, we have the old-fashioned relationship — which is Atlantic Canada, as we know. You're in Atlantic Canada, you shake someone's hand, you look them in the face — that's a deal. You're probably going to see that person again. You're going to see them at the grocery store. Downtown Toronto, you're probably never going to see that person again. But here you're going to see them, you're going to see them, like, at

17:27some corner stop, or you're going to be at a grocery store when you're loading up for the storm — you're going to run into them grabbing a bag of chips or whatever. And that's what we're about. Yeah, and that's Atlantic Canada. So when we say Eastern Frontier Atlantic, that's what we want to do — we want to connect everybody. And then when we say the technology side — new technology — well, today's changing world. But you've got to do

17:49it in such a way that you don't scare off some of the older generation that's looking at it, right? And it doesn't mean you have to lose — you know, the brick-and-mortar... that's maybe not the right term, but you don't have to lose your tagline — the old-fashioned side of things. That doesn't need to change. You can bring new technology and keep tradition. Right, you can. Well, you have to. Because I mean, when you look at it, all this technology is kind of

18:12new, where a lot of these business owners who built these multi-million-dollar conglomerates — they're 70, 65, 70 years old. Some of those guys don't use email. So you've got to be flexible enough to provide it for them, and also hit the grandson who's the engineer on the project looking at it through the computer. And they don't like talking to the cocky young guys either. No. They don't want somebody slick — they want it real. Right? They want something

18:40real. That's exactly right. And they want someone, when they dial on the phone, someone magically answers on the other side — which I find has gotten away from. No offense to the MBA students — no, but the art of the phone call is kind of dying, which is kind of sad actually. Because I know people work under the CYA: make sure it's on in digital so you can cover your own butt and stuff like that. But when you're talking to these guys and they want to be able to hear someone

19:09on the other end of the line, understand them, talk it through — and when you have that relationship, all those problems seem to be a little smaller. Yeah, you know, you can text somebody and get so many wrong feelings out of it, and you can turn around and go, "What did he really mean?" But you know what, all you need is the seven digits, call them, and say, "Hey, what's going on?" So yeah, or knock on the door. Most people need to hear that now. Especially when you think of

19:34documentaries like The Social Dilemma — I don't know if you guys have seen that — but using the term "user." We're the only other place that word is used is, you know, people who are addicted. Yeah, "users." And all the CEOs that don't use the technology that they serve, because they don't let their kids use it because they know how damaging it is. That's right. Well, that's the thing — it's making us far worse communicators than we should be. Right? To say, "Well, I put

19:56it on Facebook, well I'm not on Facebook, so how would I see that?" So they're actually limiting their audience. You're right. So we try to open up to everybody — we give hard copies, we give everything digital, hard copies. We try to cover the masses. Yeah, and it's about — like, you can't let that stuff... I guess just on the topic, like, we're a media company so we use it in our business, but personally, to control it instead of letting it

20:23control you — because it's so easy for it to get out of hand. Your screen time is going way up, you're not calling someone, you're texting them, and it just makes you lazy. Yeah. And you know, like you said, some things we did in the past — some people say, "Well, you've got to look at the new way of technology and change it." I agree, yes, you've got to evolve with it. But that doesn't mean the stuff that we did in the past is

20:43wrong — shaking hands, knocking the door, doing a sales call. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. That's good stuff, and that'll always be here. Yeah, that will always be here. And we've taken the approach: some things don't need to change. No. And what you do is you improve on them, and you use your technologies. You know, so right now, if I couldn't get a hold of you, Dan — like, you sent me a message this morning — if I didn't get a hold of you and

21:00needed something quick, I'll text you, email you, and then I'll call you. Well, you can call, text, and email, and then you can say, "Hey, I tried three ways." Yeah, now the ball's in your court. Exactly. So that's what we push to our team, that's what we push out there to everybody, and say, "Hey, we're here to answer." The unfortunate part about media is it makes it feel like you should be on it all the time on the cell. But, you know, we want to give our guys

21:20and everybody with the company some breathing room, and we're very cautious on that. We say, yes, you're always on in sales, but at times you've got to shut it off — spend time with your family. And that's the other side of the business. But when you come with Eastern Frontier, you're not only coming to do that — you take pride in working with a small company. We're very much, hey, we want everybody to have fun. And I know you hear that and it becomes just all

21:44fluff — but that's us. Our whole gist of it is, you know, we'll sit and we'll talk back and forth. We're friends, we're partners, we talk about everything. You know, he's involved in my relationship with my wife in the sense that he knows what my kids are doing, I know what his kid is doing. And that only makes us better, because we always take that approach when we talk to our employees that are friends of ours: how is your family doing? And yeah, they're happy,

22:07right? It can sound insincere to some people, but you know, when you see it — like, you see these guys, you just know they're doing it right. They are having fun. You know, they're going through hard times and good times, but they're communicating. And like, you can't have fun with your job, and a lot of people, when it's not fun anymore, it can ruin your life. Production goes down, so does your mental health and everything else, and then it bleeds into your personal life. It's just

22:32awful. Well, that's the good thing about being a small company and what we've done. So what we do now is, with my sales team, if someone needs something, that goes right to our sales team first, right? Because I've got guys in New Brunswick going through every yard, I've got guys in Nova Scotia — so they get a feel for who's got what, who runs what, who's around. So if I go to Dan, and Dan needs a dump truck,

22:55I'll say, "Hey guys, I'm looking for a dump truck," and Todd in Newfoundland might say, "I just looked at one." You know what I mean? So what we really encourage is that communication. And sometimes that's on a group text or group email or something like that, but it's always there — they can always reach out for help, whether it's through any of us, all eight of us. And I stress that when I pitch deals. Yeah, you've got an area manager here in New Brunswick that's going to

23:21look after your equipment, but if you can't get a hold of him, call me. If you can't get me, call John. Because we're all transparent — we're not hiding anything from anybody. So everything's above board, and who services that customer doesn't matter, as long as they get serviced properly. Yeah. And to further that — we're there for the customer. And when I say that, is it's that everybody says, "Oh, we're here for the customer." In terms of what we're saying, we're there, we're

23:47there to work for them. So if they want to sell and we get an offer coming in — say, $50,000 to $60,000 — and the customer says, "Look, I really need that $55,000, that's my bottom price — whatever you guys charge me in commission on the sale," we work with it. We will work with them to make sure that sale goes, because they want the equipment done and moved on. And we're not beneath ourselves though, because once you do that in any type of

24:13business, if you're willing to work with somebody to get it done, the repeat business is there. Yeah, unless you really go far out and you screw it up totally, right? And we're going to make mistakes — we know that. But for the most part, we stick to what we do: shake the hand of the person, go see them, and introduce them to technology. And our technology aspect of it — you know, we teamed up with a company called Sandhills, which is great.

24:36And they have MarketBook, Truck Trader, agriculture — they're involved in 60 or 70 different print items all over North America and in Australia. So when we teamed up with them, this is where we get some of our valuations. We go through the website and we can say, "Okay, what is your 2005 Freightliner worth?" Well, we go in, we have that technology — we can give the price of what it would be at auction, what it would be in American value, and

24:57what we suggest you list it for. And we're very transparent — some of the other companies, they just keep that, they don't tell you what it's worth. But we say, every piece, this is what it should go for. Of course you don't know for certain, but this is what it has sold for — similar item at auction — it could go lower. Here's what you should list it at. If we take it to auction, we'll cadence it down, and we can see that. And we're transparent with every piece, and that

25:19has been the success. We're not afraid to go in and say, "You know what, it's worth $50,000." "Well, I need $90,000." "Well, guess what — if you need $90,000, you've got the wrong people, because it's $50,000 and $90,000 is not going to go." And we go back with it. Yeah, and that makes a difference. You have to be realistic. You can't expect — everybody wants $90,000, but if it's only sold for the last 17 in Atlantic Canada or even Ontario for $50,000, what are you doing? It's going to

25:44be impossible — that's brand new. And if it's used, whereas the other side of it: we'll go in and some say, "Well, I need $25,000." Well, guess what — you could probably get $42,000. Because we see the projections, we see what's going on with it. And sure enough, we've done that. We've been involved in transactions where other people have turned around and said, "Oh, that's $80,000," and myself and Harold put through the numbers and said, "$42,000 to $50,000." Boom, sold for $45,000. So we know our

26:05business. We've been around long enough to know that. And it's important that you relate that to them, because very rarely can you trick one of these contractors. They've either worked on that before, they bought 10 of them before, they've sold six of them — the internet, they're not just going to spend $50,000 without knowing. And they know — a $100,000 or $200,000 machine — in half an hour they're not going to spend $100,000 when that machine is worth $50,000. Although I would love to sell it to them for $100,000,

26:31it's just not there — they'll say no, that one's too expensive, I'll go buy that one for $50,000. Right. So it's important. And sometimes delivering bad news to the customers, or to the sellers — that's part of the gig. Yeah, I know. I'm telling the truth. "I know, Mr. Customer — you wanted $190,000 for it, but I'm sorry, it's only worth $50,000." Yeah. If you say that upfront, they may say, "Okay, whatever." But if it ends up going for $50,000, then they look at you and

26:56say, "Yeah, he was right." Or if you agree with them, then it's a pipe dream, and then it shows that you don't know what you're doing. Yeah, and sometimes the worst thing you can do is agree with somebody. That's right — if you really care about them. Yeah, they will. Yeah, "I want $100,000 for that." And you look at them and say, "No problem." He'll look at you and say, "Hey, this guy doesn't have a clue what he's talking about." But if you say, "Yeah, you'd be lucky to get $50,000," he'd be

27:17like, "You know what you're talking about." Yeah, and he might listen. For $65,000? Sure, perfect. Yeah, they're always testing you. You've got to be on your toes. And that's good — these guys have been at this for years, 40, 50 years. These guys have been buying and selling equipment. What are you going to tell them about that? You know what I mean? They know. And that's the beauty of the business we're in, is that we don't always need to know what that equipment is being used for — we have to find

27:38it for them. So if someone picks up the phone and says, "Hey, I'm looking for X," not a problem — that's when we go to work. We don't really need to get involved beyond — we'll ask. Harold's great for it: "What are you using it for?" Whatever it might be — necessary to know at times, right? But if you're looking for a 325 CAT excavator, you've got a year, it's got to be between six and seven thousand hours, it's a 2012 — what do you do? Well, we know where to go, we know who the Cat people are, we go with

28:01it, "What do you got?" Right. Just for some context for our listeners, especially those who could be potential buyers — you know, buying, selling, sourcing, and evaluation of heavy construction equipment. So we're dealing with commercial, institutional, industrial, construction, building construction, civil — it could be mining, it could be forestry. I mean, across the board, right? Your revenue streams are coming from a lot of different realms. Yeah, they come — you know, when you look at it, there's, I guess you can say, the big four or five.

28:32You have your yellow iron, which is your construction, road builders, and pavers — and that includes aggregate crushing equipment and everything on that end of it. You have your forestry. We have our truck and transportation. We have our oil and gas. And you have your mining. All five of those, and then you can break up into smaller ones. And then you also have, you know, the regular guy who's just looking for an ATV or anything like that — we have that. Or you're looking for a boat, snow removal

28:56equipment — tons of it. We don't sell parts. A lot of people — that was one of our first things — we had a lot of people calling up, "Well, what about this part? Do you have a bunch of bolts to fit that?" We don't do that. We're into the heavy, because it's too small for us to be playing with. We leave that to everybody else. Yeah, we try to stay clear of cars and trucks and stuff like that. You could get whatever someone's looking for when it comes to machines — across the

29:14board. It's just — it keeps us trying to stick to our five main pillars. And we don't want to step into anybody else's lane — you know, we're looking at that and saying, "Well, that's not what we're expert at." You can be master of none, the jack of all trades. Yeah, right. And we stick to that as much as we can. We talk about it a lot. And we see potential where we can go down the road, but in due course. But when someone says forestry, you know, in

29:35New Brunswick — they're looking to move something with Irving, or you see something in Ontario — the market of it is, we're getting the calls, and people know that we're part of it. We're part of the associations that deal with that as well. And through our years of experience, all these guys picked up the phone and said, "Hey, great job on the business — you want to join the association?" What associations are you part of? Canadian Woodlands Forum, Newfoundland and Labrador Road Builders, Nova Scotia Construction Association, Nova

29:56Scotia Road Builders Association, New Brunswick — all the road builders and construction. Part of the Atlantic Professional Trucking Association. We're part of the Canadian — any maintenance, like BOMA or any of those? No, we don't, not as much. No, it's really — yeah, but they do come into contact, and a lot of those guys will buy brand new, in terms of having different regulations and some of those aspects. But we're part and parcel — we know someone who's connected. So as we grow and develop, you may see more of us

30:23branch out. Like, the big step with us in the first year — you know, we'll get everything down, get our brand, now we're moving more into that and seeing where we can go, while still trying to keep, you know, what we're true to the core: relationship-building. And what we see — so we're not limiting anything. I see us down the road... we've listed — geez, I think we listed a — oh yeah, so we've tried to sell a helicopter! And that's a different thing. How'd that go? It

30:46hasn't sold yet, but hey, that takes time. That's how I look at it. But you know what, the beauty of that is it opens it up. Paper — yes, we sold paper! Imagine that. Yeah, you did? You sold paper? We had Newfoundland in a sea can, and we sold it. Where did that end up going? It actually came back here to Nova Scotia. What happened was, a guy's business ended up closing down. They had a big — oh, they had truckloads of paper.

31:09The orders — yeah, the trucks got stopped and the paper had to go. It was $150,000 worth of paper. Holy. So, to the jigs and the reels — you just put it online and you start? If you sell anything else? Yeah, yeah, yeah. How much of your revenue do you think is from across the provinces here in Atlantic Canada from heavy civil contractors, whether big or small? Like if it's Dexter's here in Nova Scotia, or if it's a — there's so many smaller ones too that I

31:36find that are pricing more work and stuff like that. Whether it's excavators and dump trucks — Atlantic Canada is about 80% of our revenue, in terms of where we look at it. Okay. The other 20% represents global, whether it's Ontario or wherever it stands. So you guys are selling anywhere? Anywhere — Egypt, Japan, Puerto Rico, Mexico. We sold stuff from Newfoundland to Egypt and Puerto Rico in the last year and a half. Yeah, actually one real good story. And one of the things that we

32:00talked about was — I think it was in June of 2021 when we started really pushing through. Of course, like anything, you have a couple of months to get everything going and you're not selling a lot. We were coming back across the island, jumped on board with Sandhills — it was August, because we signed up in August. So we had just signed the marketing with Sandhills, and it was through MarketBook. And I was in central Newfoundland heading back, and Harold was on the West Coast — at that

32:23point of Newfoundland. And in a matter of five minutes we had like 28 phone calls. We listed this truck — this truck tractor — and we sold it. And that was really our aha moment: you know what, what we're doing is going to work. 28 phone calls in five minutes. Oh, it blew up the phone! And he was going, and when I'm talking to Harold I'm driving. I'll stop at a construction site — which is ironic. I stopped at a construction site in a place where they were putting

32:45in a culvert — one of our big supporters. He was putting it in there. We were chatting back and forth, and Harold goes, "I got another one, I got another call coming in," and they were coming in from everywhere. And I was at the phone, stopped, and he was in the office or something, and we were laughing. It was such that we realized this is going to work. That guy came up and that's been a good feeling when you're — oh geez, we're onto something. Definitely. There was a

33:04feeling that — because we always make fun of it, right? Like, we're two guys with humble beginnings that come from where it stands, and we put together this company that we're having a laugh doing. And we're born and raised in Newfoundland — yes, we were born and raised in Newfoundland. We have experience in terms of what we're doing, but it's like anything: when you start as an entrepreneur, is it going to work? In our minds, oh, that's the biggest — that's the hardest part. It's just the doubt and the

33:23uncertainty — and how you handle the uncertainty. Yeah, and that's what makes us. So when the phone's not ringing, when one of us are down, that's where we feed off each other. And that's like I said. So yes, what'd you sell to Egypt? What are they using it for? That's why when I got into the life cycle of a vehicle — of a rig, for example — the older they are, the more demand there is over in Egypt and these places. They

33:48don't like sensors, they don't like electronics. So if you gave me a 1985 loader right now, I'd sell that to Egypt in three days. But they won't take a 2015. They buy in U.S. dollars — we'll take U.S. currency outside of Canada and take it that way. That's it. What else do they give? We're not too worried about it, we'll take the U.S. conversion. What about the language barriers with these global buyers? Like, is it always somebody that is English-speaking? In terms of what we find with

34:21them — again, you know, there's usually a broker, another person on the other side that handles it. They take it back and forth. And then they take the load — or something like that — ship it to Montreal, cut it in half, put it in a container. That's how they get it through — a sea can — ship it over there across the ocean and put it back together for $200. Yeah, that's it. That's what — weld a piece of machinery like that back together for $200? Just

34:40like that. How? I don't ask how sometimes. Dad knows.

34:50Sometimes — hey, look, the money's good. Yeah, once it leaves, once it leaves — get it to Montreal, chop it up, put it in the container; when it gets there, put it back together. Boom, $200. Yeah. So that's where a lot of them are coming here to Nova Scotia, then — probably because I live close to the pier down here at Point Pleasant Park, and the sea cans are coming in every day, whether it's from Europe or New York or wherever. So they're coming in on those — the summer, coming in on

35:17those — anywhere. Yeah, our stuff is going over there in containers. Yeah, yeah. It's crazy how they disassemble those big machines to get them in those things. Yeah. If — that's what I'm saying — if anybody's listening, you've got an old loader, call me, because they're dying for them over there. Yeah, graders, loaders — they can't get them. Yeah, exactly. Not newer stuff — we're talking 2000s gear or older, where they're really desirable wherever globally they might be. Yeah, as long as you're realistic with your pricing, you're not going to get the

35:49$50,000 that you paid for it brand new. Yeah, but you'll get what it's worth as of 1985. What about a guy who wants a 20-ton or 9-ton excavator and he's got a job starting Monday? Do you get a lot of calls like that where it's just unrealistic how quickly they want it? And I'm sure you have lots of stories. Yeah, but sometimes you can't do it. No. You know what, so what I would do if you did that — the first thing I'd do

36:09is send a group text to all my guys: "Guys, I've got a hot buyer looking for a loader, he's in a bad way." And a lot of times guys will go to a contractor and say, "I got one, but I don't really want to sell it — but I can switch that one out and make it work." So yeah, I can do it. Take that one and go from there. And so, aside from Eastern

36:33Frontier and, you know, everybody being local and the way that you're dealing with relationships — all your experience and the team being in every province — what's the competitive advantage for sourcing? Like, you guys have to have such a prime network to be able to, you know, get a text like that, plug it in, and away you go trying to find something from God knows where. And that's

36:57connecting dots, and that's — yeah, you just send emails but then it gets to the phone calls. Yeah, yeah, sir — have you seen one of these in the last six months? Do you know where I can find one? You know what I mean? And they'll be honest — if they can help you out, they'll help you out. Yeah, and that's the difference of it, right? You don't get stuck in a funnel — you just say yeah, wait a second, we'll flip it right back. I

37:17get the phone call, it goes out to the team, Harold gets it — way to go. We've got Lonnie, who, like we said, is from PEI and he's our area manager in PEI, but he's also our lead coordinator. Then he jumps in and picks up. And with our sales in the last year and a half that we've started with, we have those people that we know about that are always looking for it. And the leads that are coming in — don't forget, we get two or three people doing

37:38inquiries. We take those leads, we capture that, we categorize it, and say, "You know, this is the type of guy, he's into paving." Great. We've got some paving equipment coming up. "Harold, we've got five or six pavers — we need a couple of rollers. Who do we go to?" So we'll reach out to New Brunswick, PEI, Nova Scotia: "Hey guys, you're looking for it." As early as this morning — I'll even give the story. Last night, this morning, yesterday we had a cement truck that came in. Took

38:01a picture of it, we knew the guy, called the guy — offer's gone in today. And as early as this morning, Harold and I in our meeting this morning had something come up that was listed in New Brunswick. We picked up the phone right off the bat, called the guy. I said, "Harold, I think they're looking for one." Boom — he's interested right away. So we're making those connections even before it hits our website. And that gives the competitive advantage. And what you see is, it doesn't make a difference if it's

38:24$3,500, or $350,000, or $3.5 million — we put the same amount of energy into it. And we're actually happier at the $3,500 sale. Forklift forks, for example — 46-inch forks is what we had, with a 48-inch — we sold one of those for $32. I was happier that day than we'd done a lot of other stuff. Why? A customer needed it and we had it done. Most stuff's hard to find, yeah. So for our listeners, I mean, I'm looking at your website now — mulching head, 2015

38:48Komatsu harvester, you've got a 132-inch bucket, dump trailer, sleeper truck tractor. So just because it's not on the website doesn't mean you might not be able to get it really fast? Oh, that's right. For anyone listening, because they could be checking out your website right now, or as they see clips — we transact a lot of inventory on there, but even if it's not there, we transacted four deals this week that never even made it to the internet.

39:18Easternfrontier.ca — check it out. Yeah. So Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI — do you have yards in every province where you have some of the gear sitting there? No, no. This is all a virtual sales team. It's a virtual sales team. The yard — the equipment stays in the yards of the owners. They can use it, or it can go wherever. That's where these pictures are coming from, or maybe even the site that's being used — it could be on a site. It's used

39:39for — our guys go out and take pictures. Everything is done out of that. They get as many angles as they can, they get a video shot of it. The unit can keep working, like Harold said. So the guys like that. And then we've got someone interested — you said, "Hey, I'm interested in that 320 excavator," you call Harold or you call one of the team. "Okay, can I go take a look at it?" "Yeah, all right, we've got to check and see where it is.

39:57It's on Highway 115, head up the road, take the exit the Musquodoboit way — to go." Yeah. So strictly an agency-type scenario? Yeah, acting as agent. Yeah. And the important thing to notice about that — because when you do get into big auction sites, I mean, there's a lot of money that comes in there. For example, if you wanted to sell 10 pieces and the auction was in Moncton, you'd have to transport all 10 pieces up to Moncton, yeah. It's not realistic. But it does happen because

40:22you want exposure and stuff like that. But these days, with the internet and the exposure, it's... yeah. So online auctions — do you do these monthly? We do them according to customers, right? So quite often. Yeah, right. So you might not do an online auction for one item, or is it always — well, we can take it any time. Our auctions go every week. We can have an auction every week because our whole platform — and that's the beauty of it. This is the big thing about talking about it. And the auction is a different

40:47platform than our listing. Yeah, excuse me. But the auction aspect of it is we can sell every which way. So it's Eastern Frontier — we put it in a greater auction, and the greater auction is a worldwide global one with Sandhills and MarketBook, called AuctionTime. Right. So this is where the sourcing comes in? Well, this is where the AuctionTime comes in. And that's the partner — Sandhills has a platform they call AuctionTime, and it happens every week. It's on every Wednesday. Our equipment that you sign up

41:14through Eastern Frontier, we put you in that. So at times there are 10,000 pieces of equipment, but your piece — and I'll just use this as an example — in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, or in Ecum Secum, Nova Scotia, you may say, "Gee whiz, John, who's going to look at it?" Everybody! And all of a sudden the phone rings, the calls come in, the bids come in, and you don't know it — but it's sitting next to your piece. That piece in Musquodoboit could be looking at one in Alabama. So it's part of a greater

41:40auction, but the source of it — pushing it out first — is us, into this platform. We have that platform readily available to us. So every Wednesday — so we pick and choose when. But the customer's paying for the transportation if it is coming from... well, the buyer does. Yeah, the buyer does. Oh, the buyer does. So that could be a $30,000 increase in cost, easy. Yeah, and the buyer is made aware of that directly. Or $200,000, like the... yeah. But the guys know that. Yeah,

42:04the guys know that. The guys expect that. Yeah, they brought all the equipment here and sometimes it wasn't free. That's the closest one you're going to get, right? Or the only one. Yep. Yeah. Well, the supply chain right now is a real pickle. When COVID happened, I guess you guys know the microchips are the big issue, right? So anything that had a microchip in it is well behind schedule — vehicles, trucks, anything like that. So that's when the big demand came for used equipment.

42:31Right. So now you can't get new equipment, so all of a sudden people are basically getting what they can. And they'll go anywhere to get it, because they don't want to wait. So how many buyers or potential buyers would be on an online auction? It depends — they could be from anywhere, wherever it stands. We get the inquiry. And the other part of our benefit — that other auction companies are not doing that we do — is that piece of equipment we can sell it

43:00up to a week before. So let's say we've got it listed for six weeks. Typically, when it's going to auction, it says on our website "going to auction." You can still come in and make an offer on that, but it's not going to be a low one — we know that. It would have to be a meaningful offer, because you're getting three or four people bidding at an auction. But if you need that piece of equipment today and the auction is the 28th of, say, October — yeah, you can buy that with us right now.

43:21You don't have to wait for it. So you guys are not just an online auction — it's both, right? And even if it's in auction, up until a week before that date — we have our next big auction happening in September. If it's bought before, it just comes off the auction. Just comes out. They might lose a thousand members of the auction who were looking at that piece, but you have enough. Yeah, yeah, you'll look at it too. Oh, I was waiting for that truck — oh,

43:42yeah, I should've bought it. I was waiting to try to get it cheaper. Yes, that's what the reason most people would be: "Oh, I shouldn't have waited." And then next auction you're like, "Well, I'm not waiting." Yeah, because last time I waited to get that truck, a week before someone took it. Yeah. So the variables are: flying demand, the price, and then the individual buyer's schedule — and what they have coming up, whether or not it's filled, and how soon they need it.

44:07There are a few key variables there, right? You might just want to buy it. Yeah, you might have a pickup and say — we'll say the best thing for you now is to market it for eight weeks. And you'll say, "I need this gone right away." We could do it in 10 days — it's not something we recommend, but if you're willing to just do it, we can accommodate whatever. Even yeah, the seller might want the cash too — he might say, "I need this in 10 days," or I will

44:31say, "No, well, we actually think we should wait six to eight weeks — we can get more. That'll be more marketing, more drive, that'll drive your price up." And he'll say — he might need to make his payroll next week. That's right. That happens. Which happens. Yeah, or he might say, "You know, take 10 weeks, take as long as you want. Do your thing." So we're totally flexible. Every situation is different, yeah. Every piece of gear is a little different. And some

44:53guys might have it listed with us for, you know, three or four weeks, and he says, "Hey, you know what, throw that in the next auction. I don't want to be dealing with that in the wintertime. I don't want to be going in and cleaning snow off it or sending my guys up to kick the battery. Let's get it gone." Yeah, and they move it that way. So it comes down to what's right for the customer, and what the customer says to us, and we try

45:10to make it fit. Yeah. So you guys said 80% of your sales are within Atlantic Canada — 20% not — and that could be from anywhere, from Egypt to the States or wherever. But how common is it that you're moving a piece of gear, whether it be something for paving, or snow removal equipment, or a dump truck, or an excavator, from one province to another? Like, cycling around? Or do a lot of times you get something from outside Atlantic Canada for these

45:35— well, what happens is the snowball effect. If you're in BC and you buy a forestry piece of equipment from us and you ship it out — 99 times out of 100, you've replaced it with something. So now you've got a piece you no longer need anymore because you're upgrading, right? You're going from a 2013 to a 2020. So we'll say, "Why don't we sell the 2013 for you?" He could be in BC and say, "Okay yeah, I'll list that with you guys." And then because we

46:05don't have representation in BC — but if we can develop that relationship, we can show him how to take the pictures, tell him exactly what we need for details, and get that to us. And we can say location: BC. Everything reroutes through our computer guy, he'll market it properly. Location will be seen, and we'll sell to wherever. So is there a detriment for the auctions where a lot of people buying these big pieces of equipment are going to want to take a trip to see it? Or

46:32even if it's from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia, or over to PEI, you're not doing that in the auction, right? You're there and you're — we do that with every piece. Every piece. Because they're going to want to come and see it and inspect it for themselves? No matter how much info you can give them, I would say 55 to 60% of the time they'll make sure they'll come. A lot of the time when we go back to a generally educated buyer, they know

46:54exactly what that piece is. Yeah. So if I've got 45 pictures of that piece and a video, okay, and maintenance records and everything like that, they can make a pretty good assessment — kind of like the used car industry. Right, definitely. That's a lot — a lot of times now, there's enough video, enough pictures. Even on job sites, when there's a demo or a renovation, there's enough stuff from the project manager in videos and pictures that you don't have to go to the site. It's kind of the same idea. And COVID

47:20helped us out. Still, a lot of people like to go, but we said shows are good too. Yeah, show the badge — make sure you show it. You don't want to hide that, because what happens is it gets to the destination, it's sold, and he says, "Well, what about this?" Then you're in it — and that's in the contract, right? Because that's — yeah, yeah. So we expose that. Used equipment — they expect stuff to be wrong with it. It's not going to be 100% every time; it's 10 years old. But you

47:43get ahead of it. There's always some risk. Yeah, you get ahead of it, and you expose the good stuff. You expose the badge, and normally you come to a common ground. And the other side of it — a lot of these guys, like we said, they've been around. They're buying used equipment anyway, right? Their biggest thing is they don't have the time right now. They're building — like here in Halifax, you know, 46 cranes around here. These guys are looking for equipment. You've got to

48:06find a guy to go and use the thing. This is our business. So we are here — and someone says, "You know, we're all about the customer, we're part of their business." And that's the sourcing aspect of it. The customer will say yeah, yeah, and they don't have to worry about it. Yes, we receive a — that's part of how we get paid, a commission on the seller side of it. But if you're looking for something, it doesn't cost you a dime

48:26to pick us up and use us. That's what we've got. We've got guys on the street that are in everybody's yard — we know what's going on. Unless you're making a purchase, unless you're buying brand new paying a commission fee — no, until that happens. Well, if you're purchasing, you don't pay commission to us, unless it's a buyer's fee on an auction. But in terms of it, the price is the price — we've already negotiated from the seller's aspect in terms of that commission. Wherever it lands, that part of

48:46it — that's what we like about it. But the biggest part — and this is where we want more and more people in the four Atlantic provinces to realize — look, you may have a guy that is, you know, your purchaser, or he's buying some equipment, he's sourcing it, but you've got him doing three or four different things. Hey, drop that, give us a call. We've got guys in the street — that is our business. And like I've always said to the guys, you're into paving? That's your paving business. I'm

49:08not a mechanic — I bring my car to the shop to get fixed. Yeah, I'll go out and tinker with it but it won't run the same way. I bring it to the experts. And in our end of it, that is us — that's our expertise. We're the source. We know where we're going. We're in everybody's crib, or in everybody's kitchen, as Harold says. And we're there. And another thing too — a lot of these guys have done these contracts, they have deadlines, they have to be pretty firm

49:30deadlines too, especially like — I'm assuming a lot of them are public tenders, right? We're talking thousands of dollars a day if you're late. Yeah, like if you're late you're getting charged thousands of dollars a day. So, and they're probably one- to two-year contracts typically — these aren't short contracts. Right. So what happens is you're six months in, you're almost done, and your key gear breaks down — you need gear quick, you need it now. You need to call — oh yeah, one week without it and it's going to cost you. Right, so you've got 20 guys over there

49:57waiting, right? So it's to the point where they need it. And if you can follow through and get them through that stuff, yeah, that's where the street cred comes in, and that's when the second phone call comes. Yeah, yeah, right. So do you guys do any telehandlers and stuff for construction sites, all that kind of stuff too? Right — man lifts, telehandlers, generators, heating, heat pumps, scissor lifts — yep, yeah. It's a real target market, right? So we wouldn't send those scissor lifts to the

50:25forestry guys — we'd send those to the guys who are buying service lifts. Yeah, and if we package the forestry package, we send it to all the forestry guys. Okay, we wouldn't general blast it — no, we're not going to throw it out into the general pool. We'll say, okay, here's all our Woodlands contacts in New Brunswick — make sure they all see it. There's Newfoundland running equipment like that, make sure they see it, right. Yeah, you might send 10 scissor lifts to a building envelope company or an electrician, right — you're not going to

50:49send them to a forestry guy, right. So, being a small company like that, we can target-market where we want. And we'll say to the guys on our Monday call — we meet every Monday, we have a Motivational Monday meeting. I usually bring in some guest speakers from anywhere, we try to get in depth with it. But that's when we'll all come together, right? And say — I'll say, "Okay, Jody, what do you got going on?" He said, "Well, I just signed up 10 drive-ins." "Okay, well all right, Nicole, let's plan on who

51:16we're going to target with this. Rich, let's get these into the upper United States." You know what I mean? And then we all say, "Ready, go," and we all go. And then you throw in the component: "Okay, you've got someone who's interested, he's made an offer, now he needs transportation — oh, and by the way, he needs financing." Perfect. We've aligned ourselves with different financing between here and Nova Scotia. We've aligned ourselves with the major five banks. We're tied in with a great

51:42company called Cap Equip, which is based out of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and also further. So we'll put them in touch with the financing company that can do whatever they need to do with it. And they handle it, which leaves our guys out of the financial, you know, what's going on — because the adverse effect, as well, you know, everybody when you're selling equipment... if everybody knows you've got the finances, you know, Atlantic Canada is always guarded against that. That's just our nature of who we are. So we invite somebody

52:07else in with finance — they'll take the lead, they'll deal with it. They pick it up, not a problem. Transaction is done. It takes a lot of relationships and a lot of partnerships. And, you know, like you said, you're part of so many associations, just to be that central hub for these people, as an agency, to get from point A to B — all these pieces of gear. And definitely, and then the other part of it then is the seller, you know, making sure

52:29that we keep that contact with the seller. And don't forget — okay, this is the stage we're at: we've got an accepted bid. All our bids go back to the seller. So whether it's listed at $50,000 and you get an offer at $15,000, Harold brings it to them and says, "Look, we got an offer — $50,000 listed, $15,000 offer." On a $50,000 item they're going to, you know... a lot of people sometimes, but we're not afraid to let them know. Some people take it this way: "Well, you're

52:49embarrassing them" or they feel insulted. No, it's not. If you're buying some equipment and you're the buyer, you're going to put in and try to get it as cheap as you can — that's human nature. So if it's listed for $50,000, you say, "Well, let's start from $15,000." Or usually they're not that low — they may come in at $30,000. Well, that's a starting point. Now you may say, "You know what, yes, I only paid $25,000 for it." We don't know that. We've had situations where someone says, "Well, I got it listed for

53:10$50,000, got an offer for $30,000, I paid $25,000 for it — ah, I was trying to get $40,000 but I'll take the $30,000." Yeah, yeah. So that's the communication part. And you don't get that by sending a text or an email — you get that by sitting face to face and talking to them about their equipment and understanding what they're looking for and knowing what they want. So we tie into that. So would this be a scenario where you might see within your team, looking ahead and

53:33looking for what might be popular — are you guys following things like the Trans-Canada pipeline, or the big public tenders coming out for transportation and highways, mining? And you're always watching that, right? So you know you're going to have a good year for dump trucks or whatever. Yeah, when you get a lot of those mining jobs, a lot of stuff comes naturally. So seasonal, for example — right now, loaders and plow trucks are hot, whereas asphalt

54:01spreaders are starting to slow down a bit. Right, so now we're pumping snow equipment and everything like that. And then as that transcends through winter, then spring is coming, then you're into your aggregate and your crushing. The flooring is very seasonal too, you know what I mean? So it's seasonal that way. But there's so much equipment for each season that it's just almost a natural cadence. Right. Yeah. So you take — right now, like we said earlier, Fiona is going on.

54:25You know, with what's going to happen here, the first things — our conversation this morning was, there's going to be a lot of wind, there's going to be trees down around, so you're going to have people looking at cutting the trees. In New Brunswick — well, in Ontario we had a huge hit on the forestry end of it when, if you recall, I think it was back in May and June, the big tornado went through Ontario and they had all these hectares — thousands of

54:46hectares being destroyed. We had a huge call and we sold four pieces of forestry equipment in Ontario, and it was strictly because of that. So we knew what was coming. Yeah, our — we were educating our sellers, because if we know someone's going to — hey, this would be a good fit. Yeah, you're prepared for it, right? So it might come — trying to get ahead of it, we don't know if we always get ahead. It's not easy. Yeah, it keeps us up late at night, and we don't like seeing it.

55:08We're hard to speculate too, because you don't know exactly. Right, yeah. And we don't want to see major damage. Nobody wants to see catastrophic damage. But in reality, heavy equipment is what fixes it. Yeah, you know what I mean — insurance and heavy equipment. You know what I mean? It's got to be done, whether we like it or not. That's part of your business. Yeah, well, and that's a good thing that you're there though. I mean, someone has to clean it up. The contractors are there. Yeah, the

55:32contractors are the ones that deserve a lot of the credit. Well, they're facing it head-on — you know, these trees crumpled over in power lines and everything, it's got to be done, and it's got to be done right away. Yeah, that's what we're going to see. Probably here — by the time, like I said, this is pre-Fiona. This is Friday, September 23rd. Fiona is supposed to hit around 10 tonight here in Nova Scotia. So we're — this is pre-Fiona. But

55:55it'll drop post-Fiona, and I'm sure that's exactly what we're going to see. You're going to — we have no doubt there's gonna be bucket trucks going around, there's going to be an insane amount of heavy equipment in the cleanup. Like I said, we don't like seeing it, but it's part of it. But the fact that we're here, the fact that we can do it, we can help — quicker help those contractors get it fixed up, get everything back to normal. That's how the community can look at it because of

56:17Eastern Frontier and the contractors — we can have things back to normal faster. Yeah. And you know, we're part of the solution. We don't like being part of the problems, but we're part of the solution. And the big thing with us is, okay, that's what we need to do — let's find out, let's get ahead of it. What are we going to do in the winter? You talk about mining — the mining industry is starting to lift and starting to move

56:38forward. You have that, you still have the pipeline opportunity across and stuff that you see happening out in Ontario, in BC, and Manitoba. We're watching that all the time, and even down into the States — we're seeing what's going on in that mining industry. Mining — it's just everything, in all the industries, we're pretty astute to that. And you're wondering what's going on in the U.S. — you know, with inflation, there are different things in the U.S., roads, construction — all those people coming... the currency is great. Yeah, you

57:04know, I think today it's a dollar 36 or something like that in terms of the U.S. dollar. So guess what — the Americans are calling. So how has the hike in fuel prices affected your business in the last three months? Well, it's — whoever wants to run a piece of gear that takes diesel, right? It's so... Exactly. So it helps us in weird ways, where nobody wants to run it. So all of a sudden you say, "I'm done," going on strike, "I've made my money, I don't want to

57:31do this anymore, Harold — here's 10 pieces of equipment, I'm sick of paying $1.60 a litre." Yeah, yeah. So people are selling when they're down. But then all of a sudden — well, my buddy always says we're recession-proof, but I'm not sure if that's the case. But when times are bad, people sell stuff because they need the money, they need the cash. But when times are good, they buy stuff, because the economy is good, the infrastructure is going, roads are being built, and it's just the

57:59economy is booming. So would you say since a year and a half ago, when you started Eastern Frontier, has it been a good time to start? I mean, you're kind of post-pandemic in a way, maybe a little bit in the heat of it, but things kind of started to pick up. They never slowed down, no. They never slowed down in construction. But did they slow down in mining? Did they slow down in transportation? And, but it gave us time to think. Yeah, it did. The

58:24segment changed. All right, so we deal in segments. So, you know, you deal in the yellow iron segment — the construction. You have transportation. So, okay, transportation — as you know, the fuel prices are high now, but you still have to move things. So things have to be done; people just look to bring it closer. The construction market — we did see COVID: people saying, "Well, geez, I can't get going." It did slow down a little bit with it. But it didn't hurt us at that point in time.

58:48That actually made us stronger, because we were thinking, "Okay, how do we get our message across? How do we have to do it?" So we really took the online marketing. We know how to do it live — we've been around doing it live, in the old-fashioned relationship, for years, being Newfoundlanders and being Atlantic Canadians. So we took the online component of it. It actually educated — COVID educated the buyer and the seller without us having to educate the buyer and the seller. It was what was being done all

59:12over globally. So people were then going online. So what we did is we tailored our website to make it easier, slicker, and user-friendly. We didn't want to complicate anybody, because we're not the brightest — so we took it ourselves and we said, "Okay, let's make this easy." So COVID helped us on that end of it. The part that probably, when we look at segments — okay, we had that run where we couldn't cross over the border. So the U.S. coming up and buying — okay, no problem.

59:36Well, the guys in Ontario that normally buy in the U.S. — they looked elsewhere and they came to Atlantic Canada. And what it did with us, with our model, you had a growing economy just within itself, which is huge. Because now we're not relying so much on the outside. So it's actually helped us. Right. And when COVID hit, obviously, when we get back into those microchips — you couldn't manufacture new. So our spike in truck tractors went absolutely insane, because if you were going to buy a new one, now you've got to wait 18 months

60:06to get a new one, until the chips were available to build it. Yeah. So what happened is, these companies jumped off building microchips to jump on and make hand sanitizer. Right, really? Yes, they stopped their whole operation, went to help with a global pandemic, yeah. Which put the whole microchip issue years behind. Yeah, and they just happened to have a setup that was acceptable to produce those really fast, make a quick transition. And what it did

60:31was, it set the whole supply chain back 18 months. So guys that ordered a mixer truck 12, 13 months ago still haven't gotten it yet and they still can't get a date. So that just meant everybody said, "Wait a second, we can't get new — let's gobble up all the used we can." Yeah. Until the supply chain... that's why people study for years to become experts in procurement and logistics. It's quite — what are the supply variables, therefore — it's interesting economics, supply and demand. Sure. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So you know,

61:03that's where we've seen it, we've seen it come with it. And of course, I've always looked at it — I always go back, you know, for Atlantic Canada. You have the big mothership, which is Ontario — that's where everything is, the center of the universe. Toronto — everyone believes that's it in terms of the Canadian end of it. And sometimes the four provinces don't always get the new equipment coming right away. It comes through Toronto, or gets off the boat in Montreal and

61:23stops somewhere along the way, and someone else picks it up. So our availability of having the used equipment and making it such that our guys everywhere have created, like I said, our own little ship — our own little destination — for some of the stuff that people are trading back and forth and buying. Right. And they're not good with any large, like I mean corporate companies — like CN Rail, or Amazon, for the logistics, like for their trucks and all their stuff. They ever buy used gear and then, kind of —

61:50or that's all taken care of — you're not selling to anybody that's on that level, right? Most of your clients are kind of mid-range or... Yeah, it could happen, right? It could. Yeah, it could. I mean, they just might have a gap in their logistics, right? Let's say east of Ontario or something — all of a sudden they've got to buy, I don't know, some dump trucks for transportation and they might just not be able to, you know, they

62:15can't get them. They might need 10 of them. Well, you know, you run into cases of just — paying them and putting their logo on them or whatever, right? That's it. And we see that now. You have a lot of projects that are going on, getting ready to ramp up in all of Atlantic Canada, and you're seeing that the equipment is not there because of, like Harold mentioned, some of the microchips, or just the manufacturers haven't stepped up the OEMs yet to get

62:35it done. So now the delay has affected, you know, six, seven months. Now they're turning to us and they're saying, "Hey, we're looking for five of this or six of this — we want this brought into our fleet. Can we do that?" "We've got to wait another three weeks." Three months down the road they're calling us and saying, "Can you get it?" And that's where we see the traction, and that's where we see, hey, this is moving. Because we're in Atlantic Canada. And when

62:55you say, if you've got Amazon, or if you've got Swift, or Canadian Tire — a lot of these guys buy brand new. That's their model, because there's so much liability they run through with used equipment in some aspects of it. The smaller ones — their whole business is the back end, because they're so vast that they just... but we'll take anything they want to sell — we'll bring it all in to sell on the used end of it. But they may

63:16be looking for — and again it comes down to the economics. You know, Canadian Tire — huge company, all across Canada — may be looking for a forklift in their Dartmouth Crossing branch. All right. So the manager picks up the phone: "Where can I get it?" Well, I'm not going to buy it from Ontario — I can get one here. I just need one, five or six years old. And that's when the call comes in. It needs to be this, it needs to be a Hyster, it has to have this or that. Or a machine with

63:35a plow for five of them for the parking lots in all of Nova Scotia, or something. Definitely. And then you also get — we've partnered up — and a lot of the guys that are brokers themselves, they'll pick up and say, "Hey, I can buy that from you because I've got a guy I know in Northern Ontario that I've been dealing with, and I can sell it to him and flip it and make a bit of money on that side." And

63:53when you're talking these big conglomerates, you're talking C-suite boards — and they're spreadsheet to spreadsheet. When they buy a piece new, they've already got the date picked out when they're going to sell it. They've already got that all built in. So it's a cycle — it's just part of it. Yeah, they're buying a 2022 — once that hits 500,000 kilometres, that spreadsheet of that year of vehicles, could be a thousand vehicles, "Get rid of them, we don't want them anymore." Yeah. It doesn't matter what they

64:19go for — they want them off their books. They don't want to maintain the engines anymore, they don't want to put tires on them anymore, they don't want to put inspections on them anymore. So spreadsheet to spreadsheet, sell it. And with that, that's when we take that, put it to the auction, and they're gone. You know, then they've got — well, what happens now is they can't get new rigs. Now these thousand rigs that they were expecting to come in in 2022 are not here yet. So they're keeping their old ones. And a lot

64:45of these companies, actually, some of the companies locally, are hiring individual trucks to keep them going in the meantime until the supply chain comes back to order. They'd rather hire you, give you an extra hundred dollars a day while they're waiting for their new trucks to come in, right? The history and tracking on all this gear — like you're talking about the chips, right? Yeah, like, tell us a little bit about, for just our listeners that aren't aware, how that works. What do

65:11you mean? Well, just — is that how you kind of tell where, like, the process — what the piece of machinery has been through? The job? The chips are in everything. The chips are in the phone, so it's a big massive — they're in every piece, they're in the heads. Okay, yeah. So that's just a very general... yeah. Okay. Now, so what about the background of a piece of gear? Like, is that logged every time it switches hands? Are you guys responsible for

65:36some of that too? No. A lot of these — well, these big Caterpillar and John Deere now, what do they have? Cat Telematics. So every time that serial number gets run, they can search the engine in the computer. Yes, I think that's what you're referring to when you were saying chips — you just mean generically? Just yeah, yeah, yeah. I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, we don't track, you know, where it's come from, where it's going and stuff like that. Our end of it — the innovative chips, the chip

65:58end of it, would be the microchip, you know, whether to make the system start, whether you use the hour meter and stuff like that. Whatever the IT guys do with it — I don't know. Yeah, exactly. The old make-and-break engine, that stuff I know. The new chip end of it — everything now, you know, you've got a mechanic, it's a technician now. He's got to plug in first and work it up on a laptop at that end of it. So that's

66:19that's — sorry, 80% of your revenue within Atlantic Canada. Would you say it's kind of split evenly between those four or five pillars, like you mentioned? Forestry — would you call it yellow... construction? Yellow iron. Where does that come from? Just — mostly yellow iron is yellow. Most of the construction stuff, think about it. There's a couple of orange ones. Yeah, okay. But most, primarily, the big Cats, the John Deeres, the Volvos — they're all yellow stuff. That's just — I guess that's the industry, starting with the yellow iron. We move

66:46the yellow iron, you've got your truck tractors. Yeah. So it's kind of evenly between those? Yeah, it's pretty good. It goes in timing ranges, and again that's kind of seasonal, right? Forestry might pick up at a certain time of year, construction is probably pretty consistent. Yeah, it does take a dip down in the winter, right? Yeah. For our provinces, you know — you see it go. But there's still people moving and selling. And then your transportation is in the vocational trucks — your cube vans, your

67:09flat decks, your lifting equipment, anything like that. So it all mixes in around. But province-wise and segment-wise, it's pretty well equal across the board, yeah. At the 80% — you may be higher in one than another, but it just comes across in the availability of the equipment that you have too. Sure. So it's also a lot — a lot of it's got to do with politics, you know, what kind of state each province is in right now. When you're in

67:33every province right now, it is an absolute pleasure to drive around Nova Scotia and see all the construction and things working and "now hiring" — something like that. I think that's fantastic. And not every province is like that right now. Newfoundland is in a bit of a turmoil, they're in a bit of a down. And New Brunswick — yeah, I know New Brunswick is pretty strong as well. PEI is not doing so bad as well. Well, PEI is actually in a bit of a

67:57downturn now, because predominantly the farming over there — and the price of fertilizer and stuff like that has gone through the roof. Farmers must be clients of yours? Yes, tractors and all that stuff. Yeah, but they're finding it really hard right now because the supply is very expensive — they're double and triple the cost of what they were last year. Yeah, so you might see a little lull in the farming industry right now. But so when you're talking — you have big gear and you've got big gear to sell — the buyers

68:24right now are in Nova Scotia because the work is here. Yeah, and that might totally flip in six months — that might be New Brunswick. Yeah, right. But it's our job to roll with the punches, to see where that work is coming from, and put it on a platter for the guys: "Here's what we've got available, guys. If you don't want it, great. If you do need something, call us." Yeah. How have sales been here in the province of Nova Scotia specifically? Great. Great province, Nova

68:47Scotia is a big supporter. We want to get out there more to the different contractors around, but it's a big supporter. Like with anything new, you know, you start out, you've got to build that reputation. But our reputation is seeping out there — we have a lot of people that we've known. They like the availability of where they get the equipment. We're dealing with — well, we've pretty well dealt with all the big ones here in Nova Scotia. And the

69:09relationships, sorry — when it comes to selling equipment, they're not selling a whole lot right now because the economy is so good, they're buying it. But their equipment is moving now; they need more. Yeah. The problem is Nova Scotia needs more gear and more men — they have a shortage of trades. And so they need more gear, and for those men they have the gear, they can get them in to drive them, right? It's to the point now where I'm talking to customers where they can't bid more work. They want it, so they

69:35have more licensed drivers, but they can't support the men. And then you've got other companies that don't have enough men to do their work, so they'll subcontract other companies to do their own work. Yeah. So it's a great problem to have. And not all the provinces are into it right now. So what's a month look like for you, Harold, and for you, John? Are you guys traveling a lot across the four provinces? I know you're traveling now — obviously you're in Halifax with us here in the studio. But

70:02I'm just — when you get back to the hockey background and stuff like that, you're always on a plane. Yeah, and John had his quota. John's done the outside and he's traveled around. Yeah, it's my turn now. Yeah. One year — I need a break from it after a while. Yeah. The year before COVID, I was on 95 flights out of Newfoundland. So I've done my time in terms of it. And that was just the 95 flights with Air

70:29Canada. Yeah. I know, well, you know what — it's funny because flying up here, that was the second time I've been on a flight since COVID struck in March 2020. I was in Newfoundland on a Friday and I was due to fly to Montreal Sunday night. And I remember specifically saying, "I don't know if we're going to go." It was Monday morning, 3 a.m., and I got a text from someone that said, "No, you're off — don't fly to

70:53Montreal." And that was the last time until November of last year, when I flew up to New Brunswick and landed a substantial forestry package. So for my end of it, yeah. Well, for my end of it, Harold does the trips, and that's where he has it. And he does a lot of flying. My idea of traveling now is more along the lines of brand recognition, dealing with a lot of the different major contractors, the associations. Right, he's the

71:18associations — that's my full-time job. That's my thing now. I'm boots on the ground. Johnny handles the upper business — banks, lawyers, all that stuff. Any advice for keeping us out of jail? Yeah, exactly. I didn't — I didn't know we had an idea to be possibly going down right away. But no, that's possible every day. No? Yeah, but that's why it's worked out. Oh, yeah, yes. No, the big side of it with us is we've split that way. It works well. You still got to have that operational side

71:49to keep the head office and everything like that rocking and rolling. And Harold, as you can see here in the conversation, he loves the business, he's passionate about it. Yeah, and he runs that in the veins of our sales team — they're just as passionate. The high-fives, you know, when we sit on our call on Mondays, and then Harold has a separate call on Thursdays with the guys so we can see what's going on. That much excitement and fun with the guys is

72:10great. And when you see within seconds the guys are responding — "I got it" — that's his gist of it. Travel-wise now, it's associations, provinces, landing, you know, a couple of AGMs throughout the year. Lots of those — the road builders, the heavy civil, starts in January. And you've got Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and PEI — that's the order they go. You know, that's taxing on you, just for late nights and stuff like that. But we've managed. More potholes in PEI than

72:35anywhere else, man. I grew up there, so I can say that. Sunday — I can't wait, actually. Yeah, I always enjoy my time here. I do. Yeah, yeah. I might be able to get around still — weather's pretty good. Yeah, I might be able to make it Tuesday afternoon if I can, but that's not the priority of my trip. But yeah. So, advice for salespeople — or young guys that are doing a lot of traveling and navigating everything — you guys have been doing this for a while. What's your advice?

73:01I stick to the cold beer and be honest. Yeah, it's — you can't keep up with it if you're lying. You can't keep up with those lies. Yeah. If you're true to your word, true to contractors, honesty upfront with everybody — it normally works out. If you get into back-door stuff, that's great for a while, it's just too hard to keep

73:31up with. And for the travel guys that are on the move — be first in, see the guy face to face. Yeah, there's something really special about that. You need to do that as much as you can, especially after — after, you know, when you're dealing with entrepreneurs, you're dealing with the guys that are risk-takers. Okay, a lot of cases, no matter what they are, they're the owners, they're the vice president, the president, or whatever — they're risk-takers. All right. So they're

73:54risk-takers. And the biggest thing that we say to our guys is: if you're there, and you're hustling, and you're working, and you're knocking on that door, they're going to call you. Yeah. But if you're just sending an email, dropping in every now and then, it's not going to work. It's got to be present — you've got to be present, you've got to show your energy, you've got to show your passion and presence. And if you don't, there's somebody else going to knock on that door. So what do we do? We've got the

74:13best sales guys — we've got sales guys that know this business, they're talented at it, they know what needs to be done. And they're up and gone to the job site, or they're meeting with the customer at 6 a.m., or they're on the phone with them at 9 o'clock at night trying to close something from Winnipeg. And that makes the difference. And that's what has made us successful right now in these 18 months. That's what we're doing. And that's a leadership role that Harold has instilled into the team, and we take

74:37that and we run with it ourselves. And, you know, we don't ask the guys to do stuff that we haven't done or are not willing to do. Everybody in this industry, in construction, are typically Type A personalities — okay? They all deal with heavy equipment, they're all, you know, no-nonsense, straightforward shooters. So our days can be stressful, but we have fun on the back end of it. And the customers, the buyers and sellers, have it as well. You know, we've sold stuff out west — we've

75:02still got to send some lobsters out west, actually, to Winnipeg. One of the deals was: "Yes, no problem — send some lobsters." So we're selling something and then lobsters in Winnipeg? And that's part of the sale, you know — goodwill. That's going to come from PEI in Atlantic Canada. So we're helping out that way too. And the fishermen — moving some lobsters out there even though we're moving gear. We're selling some lobster. And normally, I gotta say, in this business you're dealing with predominantly happy people. You know, when

75:26you're buying something, you're excited, you want it, you're happy. Yeah. When you're selling something and you get what you want for it, you're happy. Sure. We get our commission, we've worked hard, we get paid accordingly. It's a good experience. The guy that picks it up, the trucker we hire to ship it to Winnipeg — he's happy. Yeah. So I mean, obviously the problems do come up along the way, but generally you're dealing with people who know the business and are happy about the transaction they're about to make. Yeah. So yeah, I think one

75:55of the things I'm learning is — when you're doing anything that's difficult, I think a sense of humor is actually a real superpower to have. Oh yeah, otherwise it's just too damn stressful. Yeah, and you've got to — you know, it's a powerful thing to have. Be able to have a sense of humor, you've got to be able to switch it on, switch it off. Yeah, yeah. But you also got to be able to do it with prudence. And it's the same way as

76:19anything. You know, what do you want at the end of the day? And you call up your customers, and the guys are pros at it — that's their profession. And that's step one. One of the things with the company, Eastern Frontier, that we have and look at is that we give the guys the tools to go out and do what they're good at, and we remove the barriers. The barriers being, you know, okay, what about leads? What about finding

76:38different things, what about doing some searches on the back end? That's why we have the back-end stuff. That's why Harold and I are here. If the guys are nervous about going in and doing a sale, Harold and I will jump in and partner up with them and coach them along and do that. Yeah, and we're not saying they need it, but everybody brings a different aspect and we learn stuff back and forth. But our guys are very astute — and they're funny — and they're on

76:58each individual way, they all have their way — but they know the business and they love the business. And they're pros, they're sales professionals. Yeah, they're professional enough that you don't even realize — you know, they're having fun, they have a sense of humor, but they just know what they're doing so much. Yeah, so much experience. And when you're transparent and you're doing what you do every day, it comes naturally. They know not to come to me for computer stuff.

77:23Yeah, sure. Because I don't deal with it — I told them that. If you want an opinion on an auction piece, call Jody — Jody's been in the auction business for 25 years. Sure, yeah. Right, yeah. Or if you need a transportation thing or a fuel thing, call Lonnie — he's been out there 20 years. You know what I'm saying? So we're not too good to say, "I'm going to ask him for help with that." Oh man, that's not simple, it's simple. And we could give healthy advice, because a lot of us want to pretend that we're

77:56good at different things, and really we can only be good at a few things. We're all only really good at a few things. And when you see a team come together and everybody's filling that void, it's pretty awesome to see them run like a machine. And everybody's happy, doing what they belong doing — where they're getting energy. And not — if it's something they're not meant to do, their energy levels are going to fall pretty quick. And that's the funny part, like, you know, when you — a year and a half ago,

78:19okay, a year and a half ago we didn't have this business. All right. And we've come such a long way, from the first day to where we are now. A year and a half to even being here today — being here today and having this podcast and doing it on our own. And I imagine it's kind of like a milestone where you're reflecting, you're talking about your business. So this is kind of like, you know, it's settling in — what has happened in the

78:39last year and a half. Just because of this, we're sitting here today this morning. Okay, so we're very early risers, him and I, okay? We're early risers. Now, I never texted him until ten past eight or twenty past eight this morning, but I was up — he knew that. But we were just talking. So we went to McDonald's, had a bite to eat, and we sat in the truck and the rain was coming down, and it was a

78:57step for us. It was, like you said, another step in the growth of our company. Yeah. And we looked at each other and said, "We're doing it, we're doing it" — and we're doing it having fun. Yeah. And if I can say anything to anybody: yeah, we say it to each other. Man, there's nobody else I'd rather ride or die with than my right-hand guy here. We have fun with it. We talk about sports, we talk about life, we talk about business, we talk about what we're doing. But every

79:22step of it, we're laughing, we're carrying on. And you know what, we've had our arguments — and if you don't have an argument, how true and solid are you? The more you guys can argue, the more you can fight about things in a healthy way, the better your company's going to be. Well, yeah, I come from professional sports — we used to fight in practice. Fistfight! Yeah, like, you can't get any more passion than that. Sure. And then all

79:45of a sudden you're going to lunch with them, and I'm the lover, I'm not the fighter. You know what I mean? And Paul Maurice — that's a great thing. We had our inspirational piece — inspirational speakers — and one of our speakers was Jay Harrison. He played in the NHL for years. I played with him in Toronto, and he was talking about — he said a quote by Paul Maurice. You know, Paul Maurice — their

80:06coach. I actually had him in Carolina too, yeah. Because he just left Winnipeg last year, right? So where is he now? He's taking some time off. Right, he's a great coach. Yeah, he'll bounce back somewhere. He must have a reputation in the league for being an awesome coach. He's fantastic. Which I wouldn't know, but he does seem like a fantastic guy, fantastic communicator. But Jay relayed a quote that Paul Maurice said at our meeting, and it's kind of interesting, and it

80:30really struck home. In a team atmosphere, that person is going to disappoint you every day, because you have expectations for them. Right? Yeah. You've got to find a way to love them anyway. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, it just means — the will, the good of the other person. Actually, we said that the other day, because, you know, sometimes you do have to come down and you do have to be hard on these people. Yeah. But we just wanted to be reassured that it's

81:00not — we're not being... it's tough love. It's not — this is to help you grow. That's exactly it. We didn't get up this morning and try to, you know, invent a way to get mad at you. Yeah, right. Or to work with you somehow — it's just to make the team better. Absolutely. It's to win. And you know what, that is a good point there. About making the team better, that was it. Like, we bring in speakers — we're an eight-person company and we have Jay Harrison, who

81:25deals with the NHLPA, talking about how to run successfully. That's amazing — we're only eight people. Yeah, and we do it. And the reason why? Yeah. But to get eight people to come together on a common goal is just as hard as getting 50 together, right? Right. But what we're doing is we're not just doing this for the company — we want everyone around us to grow on that other aspect. But like, you know, Jay — the one nugget that we pulled out of that meeting, with that one

81:46— each one of our guys, each one of our team members, took a nugget out of there and said, "This is what I have." So we're bringing in that. So even though we're small in terms of size, we're large in terms of where we want to grow and what we want to do. And we want everyone that works with us and does any business with us to grow — whether you're a contractor, whether you're a subcontractor, transportation — we'll help you wherever we can. If there's a piece of business

82:08going on and we're not involved in it, hey, "there's a guy looking for it." Like today — we took a phone call before we came in here: "Hey, I want to buy this — can you set me up with a transportation company?" "Sure, not a problem." So we'll connect that with someone in Nova Scotia, maybe someone different, and that piece will be shipped out. That's what we're about. We're not about just, you know, "okay, well maybe that's an avenue we go into transport." We don't want that. There are people that do transportation, let them

82:29do it, and we'll share that in a bit. And we just connect the dots. That's it. Focus is the key. Yeah, there are so many avenues you can run down here — rabbit hole here, rabbit hole there. One bit of advice for the rabbit holes: for any entrepreneur starting out, stick with your focus, stick with what you're good at. Yes, you can expand — that's the way I look at it. Yeah. But stick with what got you here, and then look at it and go further. And

82:52that's what we're about. Brian Burke said, "Dance with the girl that brought you." Yeah, that's right, that's a funny one too. I interviewed Brian Burke — hello! Best general manager ever. I'll take it on. He's pretty good as a communicator. Well, on TV he's good too — he's on TSN. He said to me, "Druken, I love you — but the coach hates you, you've gotta go." That's it. But here's another one — when I interviewed him in terms of a position. No, this was from another one of

83:24Harold's backgrounds in sports. Yeah, John. He called me up and said, "I've got a couple of references. One I'd really like to use, but he's no longer around." And I'm going, "Who's that?" He goes, "Pat Quinn." I said, "Oh, okay, yeah." Pat Quinn to be a reference? Yeah. Okay. Pat unfortunately had passed away at the time. But that was that end of it. And we talk about it, we laugh and we joke — like you said, about Burke in terms of it. And he's got tons of

83:47stories that he can relay, both podcastable and non-podcastable, I guess you could say. But that is something else that we look at — you know, we're not leveraging what we want to do, but there are other things we want to bring back into communities. So Eastern Frontier is not just about selling equipment. We have long-term — where do you think we're going to go? We have long-term goals that we want to leverage the people that we've known and what we can

84:09do, and just bring stuff back into the communities. And that's another part of our business that we haven't even touched yet at 18 months — that is another angle out of it. And we've got technology ideas that we've got planned: we sit down and we look at it, year three, year four, year five. Sure. And the hockey part of it and what we can do — he's played hockey with the best of them. He's one of the best — played World Juniors

84:31and played with, you know, Joe Thornton. I was just watching something the other day — Thornton was doing workouts. And by the way, he doesn't have those 40 extra pounds on him now. Jumbo wasn't... pretty good, but he was doing pretty good. He's in awesome shape. What is he now, 42? Yeah, he's right actually — I'm nine months... He was drafted first overall the year I was drafted, so I played junior against him. Who's the best

84:52player and worst player you played with or against? In Vancouver? So he'd probably be the most famous, the best player. Or — I wouldn't want to say — the worst is, I'd have to really think about it. But when it comes to those guys, we all look bad compared to them anyway. You know? Yeah. Yeah, I'm looking for some good content for a quick snippet. You've got tons of it. But I shouldn't have put you on the spot. Just give me a genre

85:27and once the camera's off I'm sure you'll share a little bit more. Yeah, what are you looking for — high finance, romance, what kind of genre? No, in all seriousness though — you know, part of our mission statement... I don't really like that term, but for lack of a better one: you know, shedding light on passionate people and organizations across Atlantic Canada. It's a lot bigger reason why we started doing what we're doing. So it's been a pleasure for us — the team at the Atlantic

85:52Construction Podcast — to connect with you and to hear about the story. And, you know, just being only a year and a half in — just to be around that passion. And for us to sit and hear some stories and everything you guys are doing, it's great to hear. And we're certainly going to follow you guys and the journey that you've started. Yeah, just a real treat to sit with you both. Oh, that's good. Yeah, we thank you. Coming up here

86:17was important for us — to get a look at the markets again and see everything, but also to get the name out there and just let everybody know that, you know what, if you're looking to buy, purchase, sell, or you're just looking to see what you've got to do, give us a call. Check out our website. Call any one of our guys and area managers in any of the provinces and we'll be more than happy to help you and get you on what needs to be

86:38done. Yeah. And we'll get your links and everything like that on all the stuff that we put out, as we always do. And hopefully we can get some people coming your way that haven't before. So it's good. Yeah, exposure is good. Like I said, we've been running hard in Newfoundland, but we're branching out now. Yeah, it's something — New Brunswick, Nova Scotia — but yeah, I could really use more. Come on in, absolutely. We're coming, we're coming hard. I'm ready. Coming in

87:01hot! Oh yeah, we're coming hot. There's no two ways about it. Eastern Frontier — thanks! Cheers, guys. Cheers. Thanks for having us. Thanks a lot. This episode is brought to you by Cook Insurance, your trusted insurance broker in Atlantic Canada for 50 years. Insurance is complex, and the Cook team focuses on delivering comprehensive solutions for your construction needs, including builders risk, wrap-up liability, performance bonds, and project-specific construction. A Navacord partner since 2020, Cook is one of the largest construction brokers in Canada and offers national strength with a local

87:33touch. Whatever your insurance needs are, Cook has you covered. We would like to take this time to thank a longtime sponsor of our media platform, FCA Surety. The brokers at FCA Surety are experts in all surety bonding categories and provide unparalleled service during the bonding process. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Be sure to follow us on any podcast platform you use. You can also find us on LinkedIn and Instagram at @AtlanticConstructionPodcast. Be sure to send us a comment or review — we'd love to

88:06engage with you.