In this episode of Worth Owning, Krystyn Harrison talks with Brett Chang, co-founder and CEO of The Peak, who built one of Canada's most read business newsletters from three unemployed founders at home during COVID to $2.3 million in annual revenue with 30% net margins and 165,000 subscribers before selling to Zoomr Media for a reported $5 million in 2023. The remarkable part: he intentionally designed it to run without him, sold it, then bought it back.

Brett shares the hard lessons of his first exit—why catching "lightning in a bottle" during a rising tide gave him false confidence in his abilities, why the power of compounding matters more than he understood at 28, and how reading The E-Myth on a plane completely changed his approach to building systematized, sellable businesses. He reveals why he now believes there aren't many buyers for media companies anymore, and how that's actually freeing—because when you build a great business focused on fundamentals, you create optionality to either sell or hold forever.

If you're a founder who's built something working but wondering whether to optimize for exit or optimize for ownership, or if you're building in a category where valuations have crashed but fundamentals still matter, this conversation will reframe how you think about what's actually worth building—and worth keeping.

Worth Owning is a podcast for founders who want to build real wealth- without burning out to get there.

Hosted by Krystyn Harrison, cofounder of Horizon Advisors, the show features unfiltered conversations with entrepreneurs at every stage: the ones deep in the build, the ones who've exited, and the advisors who understand what it actually takes to win.

We believe healthy founders build more valuable companies. Not "build at all costs" - build with intention.

Each episode covers the stuff that moves the needle: pivots, plateaus, psychology, mindset, and the path from operator to owner. Whether you're scaling, preparing for an exit, or figuring out what comes after- this is for you.

In this episode of Getting to the Deal, Krystyn Harrison talks with Alan Wood, founder of Rally Beer Company, who built Canada's first electrolyte-rich functional beer from a $2,000 garage setup to $1 million in revenue in just 27 months before selling to Muskoka Brewery for approximately $2 million. The remarkable part: he raised only $920,000 while competitors were raising $20-100 million, and everyone on the cap table got their money back.

Alan shares the hard lessons of his first exit—why raising money felt like success when he should have focused on unit economics from day one, why strategic exits are sometimes better than optimal exits, and how "beautiful naivete" helped him move fast despite minimal validation. He reveals why he struggled for 18 months with the fear of "touching fire again" before building his next venture, FRAPS Institute, with no outside capital, better margins, and 100% optionality.

If you're a founder competing in an impossible category with limited capital or feeling underfunded compared to competitors, this conversation will reframe how you think about capital efficiency, sustainable growth, and building a business where everyone wins—even when you're not the unicorn in the room.

In this episode of Getting to the Deal, host Krystyn Harrison sits down with Peter Hwang, a serial founder who has built and exited four companies across five industries, including the $263 million sale of Newstrike to Hexo and the private equity exit of Global Faces—two deals that closed within just 12 months of each other. But Peter's most defining moment wasn't an exit at all—it was the 2008 collapse of a company with 15,000 customers, a $15 million run rate, and a signed term sheet to go public that vanished overnight when the housing market crashed, leaving the business $3 million in debt and personally with a double-mortgaged house and his wife six months pregnant. Peter shares how growing up in a first-generation immigrant family where his parents worked 365 days a year in retail shaped his relentless work ethic, but also reveals why being "the hardest working person in the room" made him "the dumbest person in terms of execution" early in his career—a realization that forced him to shift from building lifestyle businesses through sheer effort to building for optionality and scale. He walks through his framework of always building companies to exit rather than scale forever, explaining why optionality means creating something someone will want to buy, and how he rebuilt after bankruptcy by focusing on strategic partnerships and surrounding himself with people smarter than him. Peter opens up about the arrival fallacy—the shocking emptiness he felt after achieving the success he'd chased for decades, checking his phone at 2 AM only to realize nobody needed him anymore, and how his wife asked if he could ever just turn off his brain. He shares the hard-won lesson that founders must let go of the illusion of control, stop holding on too tight, and accept that things won't go perfectly because the reality is they just won't—a mindset shift that's "crazy important for founders" who are constantly stressed and second-guessing themselves. Peter reveals how having a co-founder 20 years younger with the "calm and patience and maturity" to settle his anxious founder brain has been transformational, emphasizing that your success is only as good as the partners who can help you see things differently when you're convincing yourself of things on the ledge. If you're a founder who's grinding harder than everyone else but not seeing the scale you want, or if you've already exited and felt unexpectedly empty afterward, this conversation will challenge how you think about control, partnership, and what success actually feels like when you finally reach it.

Show Notes:

00:00 The Journey Begins: Peter Wang's Early Life

02:44 Lessons from Hard Work: The Immigrant Experience

06:06 The Scarcity Mindset: Shaping Entrepreneurial Spirit

08:51 The Hustle: Early Sales Training and Identity

12:03 Resilience and Hard Work: Keys to Success

17:53 The Collapse: 2008 Financial Crisis and Its Impact

26:21 Resilience in Adversity

31:40 Learning from Failure

34:43 The Quiet Phase: Consulting and Reflection

38:11 Market Timing and Business Growth

43:36 Keys to Successful Exits

46:07 Building for Optionality

57:33 Advice for Founders in Challenging Markets

01:07:30 The Three-Year Gestation Period

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This episode is brought to you by Exit Horizon. Our mission is to help strategic founders build systematically toward fulfilling exits using proven methodology from entrepreneurs and advisors who've actually navigated successful deals. We compress the learning curve so you can build with the end in mind from day one, not piece together exit strategies when it's too late. Apply now to join our next cohort or book a quick call to learn more about what might be the right place to start for your business. Visit exithorizon.com.

In this episode of Getting to the Deal, host Krystyn Harrison sits down with Miranda Lievers, co-founder and former COO of Thinkific, who took her company public in one of the most compressed IPO timelines in Canadian tech history—five months instead of the typical 18 months, reaching a billion-dollar valuation with only $6 million raised. Miranda shares the unexpected reality of scaling from four people around a table above a taco shop to 500 employees: the hardest challenges weren't strategic decisions but mundane problems like where to put people when you don't have enough desks, because as she puts it, "code is easy, humans are not." She reveals her framework for navigating the messy middle—being directionally correct rather than perfect, weighting the dice to be 60-40 instead of 50-50, and remembering you're the only expert on your business regardless of who's throwing advice at you.

The conversation takes a profound turn when Miranda opens up about what happened after achieving the ultimate entrepreneurial gold star: she bought the dream home, filled it with dream stuff, then sold it all after realizing she was no more happy in paradise than eating white rice in a tiny Bologna apartment. She unpacks the arrival fallacy that plagues founders, why the five-month IPO sprint gave her everything while ringing the bell felt hollow, and how she spent her post-exit sabbatical discovering what she actually enjoyed after decades of only knowing how to work hard. If you're a founder who's collected all the gold stars but questions whether you're chasing the right destination, or if you're planning an exit and want to understand what actually matters on the other side, this conversation reveals the emotional reality of achieving the dream and discovering the journey was always the point.

Show Notes:

00:00 Introduction: $1B IPO in 5 Months

01:01 From Selling Crafts to Co-Founding Thinkific

05:04 The Build Story: Scaling from 4 to 500 People

09:47 The IPO Decision: Why Public Made Sense

16:32 Living in the Matrix: The 5-Month Sprint

21:05 The Most Surreal Day: When Trading Started

24:11 An IPO Is Not an Exit

25:14 Post-Exit: Figuring Out What's Next

30:22 The Arrival Fallacy: Collecting Gold Stars

34:51 What's Next: Helping Founders Scale

38:01 Advice for the Messy Middle

40:16 The Dream House Paradox

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This episode is brought to you by Exit Horizon. Our mission is to help strategic Canadian founders build systematically toward fulfilling exits using proven methodology from entrepreneurs and advisors who've actually navigated successful deals. We compress the learning curve so you can build with the end in mind from day one, not piece together exit strategies when it's too late. Apply now to join our next cohort or book a quick call to learn more about what might be the right place to start for your business. Visit exithorizon.com.

Most founders discover the frameworks for successful exits too late. Julie Ellis, co-founder of Mabel's Labels, learned them the hard way—and she's sharing exactly what she wishes she'd known before selling to Avery Label after 10 years.

The Story

Four mom co-founders turned a basement operation into one of Canada's most celebrated women-led exits. They built Mabel's Labels from scratch, scaled to 40 people, and navigated a five-month acquisition process. 

What You'll Learn

Julie delivers powerful honesty about both sides of the exit equation:

The IQ Side (What Most People Prepare For)

• Why two years is the "magic time" for tax planning and structural setup
• How their 17-18 tab due diligence spreadsheet revealed gaps they didn't expect
• The reality of normalized EBITDA add-backs and financial preparations

The EQ Side (What Nobody Tells You)

• The identity crisis: selling meant selling friendships and community with it
• Going from four co-CEOs to employee status overnight
• The principle that changes everything: "you have to add before you subtract"
  

The Journey After

Julie shares her path through the post-exit darkness—from a three-day "vacation" to jumping back into transition chaos, taking an interim role at SnuggleBugz, and building a coaching practice to help founders prepare for the entire exit journey, not just the deal itself.

Who This Is For

If you're building toward an exit, working with co-founders, or wondering whether you're creating a job versus an asset, this conversation arms you with the hard truths about partnership dynamics, real preparation timelines, and why the finish line is actually just the beginning.

Show Notes:

00:00 The Birth of Mabel's Labels

06:05 Navigating Co-Foundership Dynamics

12:00 From Idea to Market Success

17:57 Scaling Operations and Strategic Planning

23:48 Preparing for Acquisition

29:53 The Exit Journey and Lessons Learned

31:05 Navigating Financial Normalizations

34:03 The Acquisition Journey

39:47 Transitioning from Founder to Employee

42:39 Cocooning and Finding New Purpose

48:56 Preparing for an Exit: Emotional and Practical Insights

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This episode is brought to you by Exit Horizon. Our mission is to help strategic Canadian founders build systematically toward fulfilling exits using proven methodology from entrepreneurs and advisors who've actually navigated successful deals. We compress the learning curve so you can build with the end in mind from day one, not piece together exit strategies when it's too late. Apply now to join our next cohort or book a quick call to learn more about what might be the right place to start for your business. Visit exithorizon.com.

In this episode of Getting to the Deal, host Krystyn Harrison sits down with Narbe Alexandrian, founder and CEO of Define Capital, a permanent capital firm that's rewriting private equity rules by acquiring vertical SaaS businesses to hold forever through a 40-year fund, not flip in 3-5 years. Before founding Define, Narbe served as president and CEO of RIV Capital, raising over $150 million and surviving three changes of control in just 16 months—experiences that shaped his radical philosophy: "We don't do deals on spreadsheets anymore. We do deals on trust. The price gets the headlines, the alignment builds the legacies." Narbe shares the pivotal conference encounter with a founder whose traditional PE buyer tripled prices, gutted R&D, and destroyed his earnout, crystallizing the question: what if private equity preserved legacies instead of extracting value? He reveals his strategic framework for evaluating companies (90%+ gross retention, diversified customer base, founder independence), why he walks away from businesses where founders do everything themselves, and his counterintuitive post-acquisition approach of spending 90-180 days observing with a magnifying glass before changing anything. The conversation explores why "building for the next 90 days destroys the next 10 years," the critical question he asks every lower mid-market founder ("if you have great economics and 25 years in business, why aren't you $30M?"), and his practical advice: take every inbound buyer call to get free consulting on what makes businesses valuable, then systematically prepare for founder independence. If you're a founder who's built something valuable but feels burned out, or you're worried about what happens to your team and customers after exit, this conversation reveals there's a different path—one where culture matters more than spreadsheets, relationships trump transactions, and your legacy can thrive for decades beyond your involvement.

Show Notes:

00:00 Redefining Private Equity: Building vs. Flipping

06:54 Narbe's Journey: From CPA to Private Equity Leader

15:05 The Evolution of Venture Capital and Market Dynamics

22:06 Understanding the Private Equity Landscape

29:46 The Importance of Culture in Business Transactions

36:59 Navigating Post-Acquisition Success

43:53 Advice for Founders: Preparing for Exit

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This episode is brought to you by Exit Horizon. Our mission is to help strategic Canadian founders build systematically toward fulfilling exits using proven methodology from entrepreneurs and advisors who've actually navigated successful deals. We compress the learning curve so you can build with the end in mind from day one, not piece together exit strategies when it's too late. Apply now to join our next cohort or book a quick call to learn more about what might be the right place to start for your business. Visit exithorizon.com.

In this episode of Getting to the Deal, host Krystyn Harrison sits down with Marcus Mitchell, founder of Shire Capital Management and former CIO of Bonnefield, Canada's largest farmland manager. Marcus has overseen more than a billion dollars worth of farmland acquisitions and made the bold decision in 2021 to leave his institutional role to start his own firm focused on healthy food production. His first acquisition - British Columbia's largest organic blueberry farm - has tripled in value since purchase, demonstrating how values-driven investing can deliver both financial returns and societal impact.

This conversation reveals Marcus's three-pillar deal evaluation framework: premium product focus, geographical moats that prevent oversupply, and bulletproof operator partnerships. He explains how the buyer's mindset differs fundamentally from the VC approach founders typically encounter, why he prioritizes evidence over promises, and how he's evolving from real estate ownership to operating business acquisitions. If you're a founder planning your exit and want to understand how strategic buyers think, Marcus provides an insider's perspective on deal evaluation, relationship building, and value creation beyond the initial acquisition.

In this episode of Getting to the Deal, host Krystyn Harrison sits down with Tyler Handley, co-founder of Inkbox, who transformed a jungle discovery into a $65 million acquisition by BIC in seven years. Tyler shares how a personal frustration with temporary tattoos led him to Panama's jungles, where tribes using fruit-based dyes inspired the breakthrough technology behind semi-permanent tattoos. He reveals the strategic pivot that made Inkbox irresistible to acquirers - repositioning from a tattoo marketplace to a replenishable beauty accessory - and discusses his unconventional negotiation tactics, including using an "alter ego" to overcome Canadian politeness during deal discussions. Beyond the mechanics, Tyler opens up about the mental challenges of exiting, from the eight-month process of stress leaving his body to untethering personal identity from business success, explaining why 75% of founders regret their sale within a year. If you're a founder building a consumer brand or planning your exit strategy, this conversation provides tactical insights on positioning for acquisition, negotiating from strength, and preparing mentally for life after the deal.

Show Notes:

00:00 The Birth of Inkbox: A Unique Tattoo Journey

03:01 From Idea to Market: The Kickstarter Launch

06:06 Scaling Challenges and the COVID Boost

08:59 Navigating the Exit: The Acquisition by Bic

11:59 Life After the Exit: Transitioning to a New Reality

15:00 Finding Purpose Beyond Business

18:02 Advice for Future Founders: Balancing Work and Life

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This episode is brought to you by Exit Horizon. Our mission is to help strategic Canadian founders build systematically toward fulfilling exits using proven methodology from entrepreneurs and advisors who've actually navigated successful deals. We compress the learning curve so you can build with the end in mind from day one, not piece together exit strategies when it's too late.

Apply now to join our next cohort or book a quick call to learn more about what might be the right place to start for your business. Visit exithorizon.com.

In this episode of Getting to the Deal, host Krystyn Harrison sits down with Jacqueline Dinsmore, a multi-exit entrepreneur who went from Bay Street lawyer to three successful exits in under a decade. Jackie shares her deeply personal journey from leaving Blake's law firm to care for her mother during cancer treatment, to co-founding FlapJackKids - a family business that scaled to thousands of stores before its strategic exit in 2019, just months before COVID would have devastated their brick-and-mortar heavy model.

Jackie reveals the raw truth about building with aging parents as business partners, the emotional reality of the "success hangover" that follows a liquidity event, and why most entrepreneurs fail because they try to sell businesses without proper documentation, clean financials, or organized data rooms. She breaks down why buyers smell desperation, how relationships matter more than pitch decks, and shares her investment philosophy of backing "the jockey, not just the horse" - including why she'll pass on founders who ghost her emails.

From professional services to consumer products, Jackie unpacks the critical differences between exit structures, why running due diligence-ready from day one is non-negotiable, and her three-pillar framework for successful exits: build relationships over pitch decks, take care of yourself first, and run your business as if due diligence starts tomorrow.

If you're a founder wondering how to navigate the emotional complexity of family business partnerships, prepare systematically for multiple exit scenarios, and build the relationships that actually close deals, this conversation offers the battle-tested wisdom you've been missing.

Show Notes:

00:00 Introduction to Jackie Dinsmore

06:13 Building Flapjack Kids

12:19 Building Relationships for Success

18:17 Preparing for the Transition

26:35 Navigating Exits: Professional Services vs. Consumer Products

32:37 Investing in People: The Jockey vs. The Horse

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This episode is brought to you by Exit Horizon. Our mission is to help strategic Canadian founders build systematically toward fulfilling exits using proven methodology from entrepreneurs and advisors who've actually navigated successful deals. We compress the learning curve so you can build with the end in mind from day one, not piece together exit strategies when it's too late. Apply now to join our next cohort or book a quick call to learn more about what might be the right place to start for your business. Visit exithorizon.com.