OYP Episode 51: Akeem Gardner

Akeem Gardner, Co-Founder & CEO of Atlas 365, Inc. and Founder & CEO of Canurta Inc., tells us about how channeling mindsets developed as a high level athlete, investing in a physical space dedicated to work, and the willingness to outwork everyone helped catapult Akeem down the path to launch a real, natural solution for inflammation in order to solve the one of the world’s biggest health challenges – preventing and managing chronic disease effectively and safely.

Interview

Peter Szczerba - Welcome back to the Own Your Potential Podcast, where you'll hear stories from leaders across the globe about how they've taken control of their career growth, and lessons on how you can too. I'm Peter Szczerba, and today, I'm extremely excited to be sitting down with Akeem Gardner, the CEO & Co-Founder of Atlas 365, Inc and CEO & Founder of Canurta Inc. Akeem been looking forward to this one for a little while we go way back, I think this is gonna be a great conversation. But let's let's jump right into it. Can you take us through your career journey leading up until this point?

Akeem Gardner - No, thank you, Peter. I'm very excited to be here and show people how I've owned my potential, especially over the last four years, it's been a crazy journey. I'm Akeem gardener. I'm CEO of Canurta Inc. We're a Canadian based biotech company. Today, we're actually raising a $2 million seed round to develop novel first class therapies that promise to eliminate the problem of chronic inflammation and disease. But how I got here being a former athlete growing up in Brampton, and not going to school for any science at all, it's been a crazy journey. You alluded alluded to it. When you told me a couple years ago, you saw me on a on a farm with a pitcher in a hat, some farm equipment, what was I doing there? Right? Who knew I was going to be on this journey years ago on and I'm excited to share how I got here today. So um, I grew up in Brampton, Brampton, Ontario, right out in the GTA, we played basketball growing up, we went to high school together, before I left, you went to St. Margaritaville. And that's where I sort of started to take basketball a little bit seriously, almost in this golden era of Canadian basketball race, right. As you know, a lot of the people who grew up with us in the Peel Region, got the opportunity to play basketball at the professional level. And it was really nice in a good world experience for us getting these experiences knowing these guys seeing their journey because it almost gave us a little bit of an inside peek as to what the world of sports and the business of sports looks like. That's right. I didn't I didn't get the height. So I ended up going to play basketball at University of Ottawa, right. But an amazing experience there. I was a GG for three years where I got my degree while playing. I did psychology and philosophy. After that, I just spent two years from 2013 and 2014, coaching basketball, spent two years at Ryerson. And then I really said I thought to myself, like I don't really think coaching is the thing that I want to do. But maybe something like more of a general manager typisch job would be better suited for me, you know, something to bring people together, you get to, and I thought something that I would even get to maybe travel a bit, right? So maybe something like an Olympic Committee, if you will, right? What do all GMs have? Well, they all seem to have a lot of degrees. Well, I have an opportunity now maybe to go to law school. And from back in the day, I had heard that people were able to take their Canadian degrees and go to law school in Europe. So I said, You know what, I'm 25 at the time, maybe this will be like one last adventure for me, I get to go to school, do all the things that I never did when I was playing basketball at University of Ottawa and get this legal degree and see where that takes me. So from 2015 to 2017, I hopped across the pond, went to the United Kingdom, and got a really, really nice degree in legal analysis, I got my Bachelor of Laws. And it was really interesting time when I got my degree as well because in 2015, we had the Paris Climate Accord 16 We had Brexit. So like, as the world was going through things I was learning at live from the British perspective. So that was really cool and really innovative for me. 2017 I returned home to Canada, and everything changed, right? I now have this new experience this new perspective. And things that were going on here in Canada were seemed to make sense to me now. The big thing was the legalization of marijuana, right? That was everywhere. That was a big opportunity to me, and something that I thought maybe we could leverage take advantage of right. The other thing that was going on as I kept on hearing these words, smart contracts, right? And that kind of scared me because I was like I just spent all this money to go to law school. Right? Don't tell me some AI contract is going to come take my future job like I got it. So smart contracts is blockchain technology and that comes up a little bit later in the story. But back to back to the marijuana angle. When I come back home, come back home. My best friend, business partner, Randy, he was running a sports management company, right? He was working with some of these athletes that we had grown up with bringing them marketing branding deals. And I said to Randy, you know, I'm Randy, because I have this out of country law degree. If I want to get a legal job somewhere on base Street, I'll probably have to start as even like a legal assistant or a legal intern or maybe a paralegal or something right. And not even I would have I would be at a disadvantage because I didn't come from a Canadian law school, right. So I'm not we're not doing that. Right. I had a part time job that I had to work that was really good to me. I worked at the Woodbine racetrack. Right. I'm like, I don't think I have it in me to go and do like an internship again, right. But Randy, maybe I can work with you to see if we can like turn your management company into an agency. Manuals like a team, you know, what come this do all the work we can I get deals all the time. I don't have capacity. Let's work on it together. Right. And I said, Cool. One day, someone called Randy from the states guy who was looking for football players, CFL players, because he had heard that marijuana was about to be legal in Canada, and he wanted to get some of the guys involved. Randy immediately, immediately, no hesitation. No, we can't do this. What are you talking about? Get guys involved with tweet? No. I was like, Randy, hold on a second. Let's hear the slideshow. Something's going on. And I know it's not legal yet. Right. But if we pay attention to what's going on right now, and if we position ourselves the right way, we're going to legalize here in Canada before they do in the States. Right. Right. And this is it puts us in any Canadian board athlete at an advantage because if you look at the NFL and the NBA, they're not going to make things. They're not going to normalize things until the federal government legalizes it all the way around. Yeah. Could be state to state but the NBA, the NFL, the MLB, whatever League, they operate across all states, right? That's right. So I said, something interesting is going on here. The other thing that I thought to myself was, if we look at this, like a like alcohol prohibition back in the day, um, fast forward eight years, nine years, alcohol companies are the partners of all of the major sports league. They're all over the place. They're normalized, right? Beers normalized. The same thing is going to happen with marijuana. So Randy, maybe if we can take the opportunity to really dive in here, see what's going on. We could prepare ourselves for a better tomorrow. Randy was like, Yeah, right. He was the MBA will blackball me, we could not do if he figured this space. You know what, Randy? It's okay. I just learned that this thing called separate corporate personality, maybe we started a new company. Let's co found one together and let me go investigate what's going on in the space. Right? When I figure it out, then you come back in and then you bring the athlete so Randy was like, Alright, cool. And that's how that's how I turned into an entrepreneur.

Peter Szczerba - Plausible deniability.

Akeem Gardner - Exactly right? He has separately uh, he keeps doing whatever he wants to do. But if he figures it out, we can bring the athletes perfect. So this is that was the moment the conversation or how I became an entrepreneur. And at that point, it was on me to sort of figure out what was going on. This was around January, not January, June, July, August of 2017. And the first thing that I started off by doing was calling all the major companies, the major LPs and saying, Hey, I work with professional athletes. We've heard about CBD, the therapeutic benefits, and we want to get involved. And everyone sent their CMO, their marketing person, a brand new person to come visit me and to have the conversation. And with this, I was learning a lot about what was going on, right. But I also was doing my homework myself and learning about all these unique things, these new unique words, phrases that I was hearing in the industry, every time there was an event, I was downtown meeting with people. And actually, you know what I used to learn a lot in the early days, I used Twitter, I actually went on Twitter followed all these different industry leaders, and turned on my notifications for just those people. Right? Well, that every time I would look upon my phone, I knew exactly what was going on. Because again, we were in the midst of legalization, and I want to see what was going on. I was learning a lot. And one day I learned or I learned that about this plant called the industrial hemp plant. And this plant fascinated me because I was learning that one it had no THC, right? So that's bingo. Get that Out of the way, right to the hemp seeds were very nutritious. People were eating it as part of a plant based high protein diet. Children were even eating hemp seeds. And this was music to my ears because I was like, if children are eating hemp seeds, the NBA is never gonna say no to it. They're going to allow people to make this has to be first, it's not going to be recreational marijuana. And at that point, I said, Hey, throw marijuana aside, let's just focus on hemp. It also had the additional advantages of two things that I was extremely excited about. Because I again, I just went to law school in a country that is impacted by climate action, climate change, I should say, right? The hemp plant not only absorbed carbon dioxide at high amounts, they say one acre of hemp, it absorbs carbon dioxide at four times the rate of an acre of trees. But then when you cut down the hemp plant, you can use it, its fibers for things like plastic recycling, clothing, rope, so on and so forth. And the herd, the woody core of the plant can be used for sustainable building materials, carbon neutral green building materials. This idea fascinated me. The first reason was because I knew that climate action and climate change was a big, big thing. And if we can build climate resilient housing for the future that would benefit all of us right to when I was at law school, I had seen or learned about treaties, what they mean and how member states need to go back to their sovereign states and enact legislation to keep up with what was in the treaty. So it was very interesting to me when I came back, and I saw that the Canadian government was actually enacting laws to keep up with what it had signed on to in the Paris Climate Accord. Right, right, right. And the one thing that I learned that took me was that at the year 2030, all new buildings built in Canada need to be carbon neutral. By 2050, all buildings need to be retrofitted to be carbon neutral. And here I was now learning about this plant that could provide not only food, medicine and clothing, but also potentially our future building materials for climate resilient, carbon neutral future. This is when my head exploded. How's it going? Hey, we have to do something here right? Now, at this time, I was still going around networking and meeting all these different LPs and I was asking all them he Do you have anyone involved in the space do you do do anything with hemp and no one did anything with hemp. They just wanted marijuana and CBD right. So one day on there, forget I was walking my dogs at night, the stars where else Sometimes I walk home, look at the stars in my head, right? And it just hit me, right? Why am I trying to sell my athletes to these other companies, if I can build something myself, I get to keep the athletes they become our value prop, right. And this is when I when it clicked we got to figure out how to build the industrial hemp supply chain in Ontario. So what I took a flight to Calgary, Alberta, and went to meet all the innovative companies and people over there that were involved in the supply chain all the biggest stakeholders and I met a company out there that was doing something really unique that again, impacted me they were making a load bearing structural hempcrete block manufacturing in a facility. They were doing it semi semi annually and they weren't up and running and it wasn't this big amazing plant. But when I looked at it and saw the materials, I was the key. This is coming to Ontario one way or another right? And Terry's like yes, and I'm like Terry, what do I need to be able to bring this to Ontario like I want to be involved I want to be there. Again, this is in 2018 head. Now we're in 2018 heading into summer of 2018 Terry said a keen while you guys need more hemp at that time, we had done about 900 acres of hemp in Ontario, you need about 10,000 acres to be able to run one of these manufacturing plants so I was like Alright Terry, cool me sense. On the flight home. I get this crazy idea. And King got to grow hemp. Great. Timing plays a big part of my story because things seem to always line up for timing for me and I don't know how or why it's like Universal Intelligence, or God looking out right. And around this time, one of the unique things that had happened was my mom had a or I had my line of credit that I used to go to law school and my mom said a key a king the remortgage is coming up, right, the refinance is coming up, I can take care of your line of credit. So we ended up doing Right I think we did it like two three to three months before. So when on my way home I said to my mom, hey mom, you see all the work I've been doing running around I've been doing I think there's an opportunity here cannabis. CBD is not legal yet. But I think if we grow the plant if we grow the industrial hemp plant, which has been legal in Canada since 1998, that could be our window when we can get involved in this industry before legalization hits. And I have to be able to sell the product when it hits. Right. So my mom, like the mom, she is always supportive Kim, if you think you can do it, go out and do it. So what I do I teach you drive up, take a couple of trips up north of the city to Orangeville and whatnot. 560 acres of land, put a lease down a three year lease down and I take my law school education and I turn into a farmer. It's what happens right? Now, at this point, I have no clue what I'm doing right. I've never farmed a day before in the life. So I go driving around to other farmers in the area and ask them if they can help me get my hemp in the ground great. I applied for a license a license at Health Canada. My late last school it helped me to navigate the systems and be able to properly prepare myself silently, so on and so forth. But in regards to the physical work, no clue what I'm doing. I didn't know though, that I was an athlete, a former athlete, I'm used to working hard working with my hands and feet. So how hard could farming be is what I thought. I didn't realize the problem wasn't getting the hemp in the ground. It was getting it out. Right. So that year I got my ass kicked me by my parents, my best friends and everyone we went out there in the farm every day, with a four by four truck some garden garden clippers, we did ended up seeding 30 acres of hemp, the seeding of it when went well, but we had to cut it out with our hands and our feet. We got our ass kicked in the field, but it was the best thing that I ever could have done. What it did is it showed people in Ontario, the industry that a keen wasn't only the guy with the big vision, the guy who wanted to manufacture these blocks here and build the supply chain, but he was actually willing to go out and work every day for it. And this is something that changed the trajectory and allowed me to be here. That year when I come I made an impression on the gentleman from OMAFRA re the Ontario Ministry Food and Rural Affairs, right. He had come to my farm he saw what we wanted to do with our hempcrete building materials. And he seemed to take a liking liking to me. So the next year after 2018 and I'm SPOILER ALERT didn't sell any hemp. Like it was a bust. Right? How did I find prove that to everyone but didn't sell anything? So we had to figure out okay, how are we going to make our way out of this right? How are we going to find money to continue to cashflow the business? Well, luckily we were able to bring in an angel investor what Anthony Bennett shout out to him, came and gave us some money to continue to learn and investigate what was going on. And and that brought us into the year of 2019. Now in 2019, I'm feeling pretty good. I have other farmers around me that I've proven myself to now we're going to grow together almost in sort of a co op, right? And get the hemp seed in the ground. We're going to try to get a customer again. That year, we actually had a customer heading into the year but by the end of the year, they fizzled out but it's okay it happens. Part of the story. Now back to the call I got from the gentlemen out oh my friend. In our second year, he had said to me a keen there's some professors at the University of Guelph and what they want to do is do some research, some r&d to make a natural health product but something that's not CBD. And I was like What do you mean, what else is there? What's not CBD? And they're like, Well, it came I think there's a patent around it, but I'll introduce you to their professors and let them tell you that's when a light bulb went off in my hair. There's a patent. I want to know what's going on. Mahindra, tell the professors come to the farm take all the hemp they want because that's my into building a relationship with these professors, right. When they get there I meet the professors and they start to educate me on other things that are going on in the cannabis hemp plant, particularly around a novel group of molecules called flavonoids. And in particular one molecule called Ken Flavin. Now this molecule was interesting because though it's been identified since the mid 1980s, it's been extremely rare and scarce to come by. It's usually found in under 0.014% of the plant. So hard to get to, from the 1980s to now in a world of prohibition, it didn't make commercial sense to go looking for it because you couldn't commercialize the molecule anyways, right? But in The 1980s What they found was that that molecule was had 30 times the anti inflammatory powers as ASC, the active ingredient and aspirin. This molecule is also non toxic, non toxic, non psychoactive. And later on in 2014, it was proven on equivocally that these molecules were dual inhibitors of the body's pro inflammatory pathways. Essentially, if you can shut down both pathways to inflammation, you set it down at its source normal, right? So these molecules had high therapeutic value, but no one had ever done anything before. Right. But now in 2019, a couple months after legalization in October of 2018, the professor's were on my farm, right place, right time, looking to work with me to develop technology to extract these molecules. And that's what they did. In 2019, late in 2019, the professor's filed the patent for these molecules. And though we were in a research contract, that was one of their partners supplying them biomass. They had eyes on a different firm that they were going to work with to commercialize these molecules. And I said, Okay, that's fine. I get it. I'm a startup, I don't have deep pockets. This is like biotech is gonna cost a lot of money. But if anything happens, I'm here, right? If anything happened, just call me. Yeah. The we were able to stay in communication. I went down to the university, I took some visits, they showed me what was going on, and everything was great. As it was, at this time, I was still looking to seek my help building materials. Plan, I had a plan with Ontario farmers to grow maybe like 500 to 1000 acres in Ontario, we wanted to do a big build a house right here, so everyone can see what I'd seen out on the West Coast. And then in March of 2020, COVID, hit destroyed everyone. Right? Destroyed everyone's plans, right? No one was financing anything anymore and can't go to Farm Credit Canada can't go to RBC with our, our package, a keen, who's gonna buy all this hamper. No one's knows what's going on in the market, etc, etc. I thought everything was over. And at that point, it was very scary for everyone. But for us, I was still a growing entrepreneur, a budding entrepreneur, I was still resilient and gritty. And I knew that somewhere somehow, all the things that I put together over the last three years at that time, there had to be some value in on what we had built. And I said to myself, you know, there is the professor's with that Pat of rank. Yeah, well, they told me in December, they were working with someone else, they must have been affected by COVID as well. And I haven't seen any news since the since December. So I picked up the phone and I called the professor's and I made my pitch my plea. Hey, Professor, I've been hearing for months that you guys want to do these with these molecules. And I'm out here busting my butt trying to make something happen with the supply chain. If you give me the patent, I'll make sure this thing happens, right. COVID hasn't affected us, we're still in the same place. And we still have people that want to hear about what we're doing. But I need you guys to work with me, I need you to educate me on the science. And if the science is what you say it is, if it's as strong as an anti inflammatory it is I'll get the players on it. We'll bring Randy we'll get it. We can do this. We know that, right? But I need you to work with me, I need you to teach me what's going on. Thankfully, for COVID, again, put us in the right place right time because it seems like COVID must have kept the professor's out of the lab for just long enough to force them to sit down in here and see that I was willing to do whatever it took to take their innovation and use it to build here in Ontario. At that point, we made a deal with the professors that they were going to work with us we were going to be their commercialization partner. And over the next couple months, we were able to put together a deal that would allow us to acquire our first piece of intellectual property, an extraction technology that allows us to extract these novel can flavanones out of the hemp plant, unique from CBD, none there to create a new natural health product, something that can help people around the world deal with their inflammatory related disease their pain in a non non toxic, non psychoactive, non addictive way, right. With this over the last two years from 2020 and up to this year in 2021. We've been able to grow as a company growing through a PC phase acquire two more patents to in our portfolios with related molecules, allowing us to produce commercially these can flavanones I've been spending all my time reading research papers learning about mechanisms of actions in the body See how it works, inflammatory related diseases, anti cancer related diseases, neuroprotective properties of these molecules, what drug development pathways and and things of the like, are Ebell, I've been using my legal experience to understand what go to market strategy is regulatory strategy in Canada in the US how to deal with Health Canada, deal with the FDA, and use this experience to make sure that we have a good plan that we can defend to investors as we tried to raise our seed round. And I've been using all the skills that I learned in basketball to build a really, really awesome team that has grinded with me hustled with me and really carved itself into a team that I really believe has the ability to win a championship in the space, right. So this is what my last four years have been like. Since I've took the leap into entrepreneur ism. And it's been a crazy journey. A lot of ups and downs, a lot of lessons learned. But if you asked me, Peter, when we were sitting in class in grade nine, if you ever thought I was going to come here or be scientists or doing something like this never would have thought, right? No, because that's how the ball bounces sometimes right?

Peter Szczerba - 100%. And I think that this is exactly why I wanted to have you on here to talk through this because this journey is just so exciting for me to dive into. I have so many questions just even as a recap it right and to point back in grade nine, first day of high school, you and I the only people that we know in that high school together, we're in a program called IB, French class 9am, right, I'm sitting in the back corner teacher looks at us, we're both six foot three, six foot something mustaches. And she's like, I think you guys are in the wrong class. This is a great nine class like we are looking at grown men, right? And then you know, from a basketball perspective, to your point, we became a little bit vertically challenged over the subsequent three, four years where our lead skill sets required seven to 10 more inches and it is what it is right? It happens. But what exactly but what I love about this is right is even as you navigate the story around you play at a pretty high level in Canadian college basketball, right? Geez, you have a great career there. Okay, fine. So a professional career is not on the table for you. Even though obviously you myself, anybody who played at a high level like we did surrounded by guys who did make the week, right, Anthony Bennett, Andrew Wiggins, Tyler in this right, these guys at that time making it into the league, and to your point, an explosion of of skill in the sport, if Canada, from our city. And yet, we're not able to have the same success fine. But then you pivot, now you're looking at coaching. So you do that at a high level at the collegiate level. That's not easy to achieve either, right? But you're not finding a passion there. So then you pivot once again, and just the grind and the hustle, right? You go in you do the legal degree, you're prepping yourself for a successful career afterwards and laying a foundation right you have the work ethic. Now it's about getting the accreditation and the education that's going to lend itself well towards some sort of business. Future, right? You won't you have connections to athletes, right? We grew up around these guys, Randy and Rosae management and his company, right, lots of opportunity. There's got some major clients in the NBA, there's something there, right. And then obviously, you see the opportunity and the timing around the entire cannabis legalization in Canada ahead of the US, etc, etc. At every point, I just see, you know, you grinding and looking at the opportunity and be like, Okay, if it's not going to be this, let's figure out the next step. Right, not a lot of wasted time. And then once we hit the last four years, I mean, listen in grade nine, if I looked at you and then fast forwarded, you know, everybody loves Raven style, too. Sorry, whatever that family channels show was right and see you in a farmer's hat, right? Surrounded by plants. You I would have died laughing but you are to reality. And now you're at the helm of companies doing really exciting stuff, owning IPs, right. I love this story. And I think it's unconventional, but at the same time, it's something that people should listen to and be like, okay, if I'm stuck in something I'm not necessarily happy with, there's opportunities out there that I've never even thought of that may be in front of me that I just need to be prepared to seize once they land there. That's, it's really what it is. Right? And so, you know, I really want to jump in and talk about, you know, where you started talking about, okay, so it's not going to be CBD based candidate cannabis type opportunities because the opportunity is just too early for the types of athletes you're involved with. Got it? Again, that's another example of you being like, okay, let's pivot and then you learn about hemp. Right. Then you talked about the fact that you were going to events, you were flying out to Calgary you were reaching out to companies. This is all right, on a part time job you mentioned right. This is you Investing your own time your own money, right? was really just exploring an area that you just believe very strongly has opportunity time a little bit about that, that specific stage, right? Like, how are you reaching out to these companies to these people and getting the foot in the door? Because I think a lot of people might have ideas, but they have no idea to achieve kind of the exposure that you did in the learning that you did.

Akeem Gardner - This was very fun times for us, right? Um, it's almost like, you know what they say you have to act the part before you get the party, right. Like, I was putting myself out there, not as an agent. But as someone who knew these people knew they wanted to get involved. And sometimes just using the right keywords, me being six foot four, six foot five, looking like I run with them, like was able to get me in a lot of rooms. What's actually interesting is in college, I used to hate my height. I love on the basketball court. But I when you go to like clubs, or you're going, you're out, you don't want to be seen you make yourself smaller. You know what I mean? Sure, I hate to be out in a bar or something. And everyone can see me because I'm over over there, right. But now in the world of business and networking, I was able to use this to my advantage. put myself in a room, make myself look big. Just look around, someone's gonna catch eye contact with me. And then we could start a conversation. Right? Right. It was it was a it was complete opposite of what I used to be in school and use in school, I remember used to have answers never would put up my hand to give answers right, would sometimes do work at work. Oh, I would do all my work on paper didn't like to talk because of a stutter. That happened that carried with me from high school through to university the first time. But when I said to myself, I was going to go to law school, I said, hey, it came every opportunity, you have to pick an oral assignment versus a written assignment, you're doing the oral assignment, that's huge matter, right? Like you're going to school and you're doing everything that you never did the first time, right? To train myself. So now when I'm back out of it, and I'm networking, having ideas, even if I stutter, talk fast, I'm too excited. Whatever it is, I'm just putting myself out there to get the reps getting the practice. And that's just like basketball, you know what it means to get a good jump shot, you got to put in the reps, you got to do the work. If you miss a shot, it's okay. You go back playing defense, you get the rebound, you come back, you hit the next one was just having that attitude continuing to put myself out there to new people not being scared to pick up the phone and call right. And then it's a bit of luck. Because as you continue to work hard and do things, things bounce in your lap, someone says, Hey, let's go do something right. Be having friends like I'm like Randy, he was able to introduce me and put me in front of a lot of people probably way earlier than I was supposed to be in front of them. But just being able to do that. Not being scared that someone was gonna say no, I was able to build up reps, momentums and my ideas, my innovative mind and everything was able to flourish, nothing was too much nothing was impossible. It was like were in this massive world of opportunity am I going to find the value to be able to bring forth the last thing that I'll say here's what also motivated me especially to start in 2017 is that no one I knew that looked like me was doing this, there was no people in it that ran their own company that was providing opportunities for people like us. And that was one of the things I said if he if we start now pre legalization by the time legalization hits, 510 years in, we're going to be so ahead of the game in regards of expertise, having done it before knowledge base, so on and so forth. And that would allow me to be a mentor to the youth, you know, growing up, we've been through it before you don't get paid to coach the younger generation, you have to go back and volunteer your time, right? Then those youth grow up and then they go back and volunteer their time. And it's like a habit to train the next generation and I wanted to do the same thing as an entrepreneur as someone in the world of cannabis hemp. And that also motivated me to keep going.

Peter Szczerba - Right? I think as a you know, because I think it's really important to understand what your internal motivators are, right? And I think it's also really important to own those motivators. If I think about myself. My motivators very much are our recognition, impact and then monetary, but they're not in the traditional sense of those words, right? If I think about recognition, I don't need anybody to give me a pat on the back. I don't need somebody to outwardly say Hey, Peter, you've done a good job, what I need is an objective, understanding that whatever it is that Peter's doing, he is exceptional at it, right? That's the recognition, I want object objectively for people to recognize that when it comes to impact, I want to look back on my career 510 1520 years from now and be able to objectively look at what I have achieved and know that was of significance. Right? Again, there's that objective piece, and I know that those two things require a ton of work. And if we look at my three motivators as an equation, you have those two on the left, and then on the right side, you have the monetary reward, right. I also know early in my career, I have to disproportionately, you know, over index on the impact and the recognition piece, and then the financial rewards gonna, it's gonna, it's gonna lag, but it'll come and eventually that equation will balance out, maybe there'll be disproportionate in the other direction, right. But it's, it's okay to own those three motivators and know them. And so what I like about what you talked about is you had a very philanthropic, you know, altruistic motivator, that was nestled in between what I have to imagine are also very business oriented, Legacy oriented motivators, right, like you wanted to start a company, you want that company to be successful, you like to make a name inside of an industry that wasn't being touched in the moment, right. Those are great motivators. And then you pair that with something so altruistic, that's going to really drive you, I think that had to be an accelerator for you.

Akeem Gardner - Well, that was the biggest piece. Because in all of this, well, as I'm doing the numbers, as I'm doing the work, as I'm understanding different industries, especially with what we're doing now with kurta, these things, my understanding of what my impact is going to be to people, health wise, community, family wise, societally wise, is going to be amazing, that is motivation enough to do what I'm doing, right. But I also see what that means for me, my family, my shareholders, the people who have invested in me, whether it be $500 $1,000, whatever it is, up to the biggest investors in us, but also the people who invested their time in me, I don't get here today, where I am without a lot of people investing time, energy, work working for me with me, mentoring me, so on and so forth. And the return on investment to those people, as well as the economic return on investment for me, my family, and the social impact. Just for me, it was it. These are the things that pushed me every day, good or bad day, to know that something that I'm doing something that I fell into, are worked myself into, because I did work really extremely hard to get here gets to fulfill all the needs that I have. And it like, what more can I ask for?

Peter Szczerba - Well I mean, there's you have no choice with motivators like that, you just have to, you have to work hard, you have to achieve right. And what I wanted to circle back on also, and I don't want this to get lost in this conversation is you made a very conscious decision, you said, Hey, I've been struggling with a stutter, right? And I've been, you know, subconsciously, sometimes consciously making choices to hide from it. Right, as opposed to overcome it, then you had a second half to your academia that was going to set you up for your future. And you decided, well, no, no, this time, I'm going to do differently, or push myself outside of my comfort zone that way that I would have been comfortable doing in sports. And I'm going to force myself to overcome this. And now as we speak today, and you know, the first 20 minutes is conversation, you told an unbelievable story about the career journey that led you to here. And you know, it was enthralling, right. And I'm sitting here and smiling and nodding the whole time, and I'm sure the audience's as well. That is evidence of a good decision that was made. But I think that takes a level of maturity that different people hit at different times to realize that something like that's necessary. I mean, you know, from from here, I definitely after commenting on that want to want to talk a little bit more now about you breaking into essentially and making a decision that you're just going to invest, right, and you're going to close HAMP, you're going to solve the supply chain, right in Ontario. And that's a crazy idea. That's a big, hairy, audacious goal, and you immediately did it right. But from there, I think it was probably a differentiator for you because you think about other startups, technology startups, people have an algorithm, they have an idea. They have an app, they have a small prototype, right? And that's what they shop around. You can't smell that you can't touch it. You can't walk amidst it, right? You can't put boot to soil on an app or an algorithm for you. You invited people out to your farm, and that's a concrete thing, right and had to be a big difference maker.

Akeem Gardner - It was amazing for my confidence. It was amazing to do the work. It was amazing to see the reception of people to when they came on and said, I remember one of our one of our high school friends came up and he was saying to another high school friend, like who would do this? Yeah, of course, the king would rate us again, right? And just hearing these things. I'm like, yeah, like, I've always had it in me a little bit to take risks, think a little bit different, so on and so forth. But when we made the decision to lease land, we're gonna go do this and figure out a way to make it happen. Right? It was just manifesting manifesting in a way that I never done before. So far out there on my own, right. On my own accord, like, again, for me, that was so risky, because I took the money that I fortunately, we just got it paid off and said to my mom, hey, can I use this to go build on a farm? Right, and my mom was crazy enough to let the farm but my mom said, uh, Kim, do you think you could do it? And I said, Yes, I know. I can figure this out. Right? I'll work outwork everyone. I had actually got Peter I'll show you here on my iPad. I saw Diddy post this one day outwork everyone since that day in 2017. It's been on my computer, I love that I knew that this is the only way that we we can get to where we were we were gonna get I had to work 365 Or when we founded the company in 2017, meaning that Atlas 365 Because Atlas the Titan the pillar of the world, being a sustainable pillars what I wanted to do and but I knew I had to work every day to be able to beat these other companies. Right. That's how we got the 365.

Peter Szczerba - I love that. And I think you know, I the idea of outworking every everybody. That is such an easy concept to just to internalize and then just make it real, right. Like it's something that is a choice outworking is a choice, let's, let's circle back to sports. You know, offensive talent is something that you're either born with, or you can work towards. But it's it's not as much of a choice as defenses defense is hustle. And it's effort. And ultimately, somebody who's not athletic, who's not big. You know, that's Matthew Dellavedova, perfect example, high level defender, right? But that dude looks like a blogger, right? And yet, he's doing in the finals X number of years ago, right? That's a great analogy of the same thing. You can outreach, your capabilities so far by just doing the work, right. And I think that's an important thing. And the fact that you decided to have that as a background, look at it 100 times a day for years on end, because that's going to be a reminder and a driver. That's a conscious decision that anyone can make, and it can have an impact on how they work. But this other idea of every day, I mean, when we were talking prior to doing the podcast, you talked about, you know, the physical space that I look at you you're in right now, right? You have an office you use you got an office together with Randy, and you talk about the fact that you've been in there every day, no matter what rain or shine with you wanted to not talk about the type of impact that that has had over the last four years as you tried to grow this business.

Akeem Gardner - Well, that is that has been one of the most powerful things I think for myself when I was able to convince Randy to go halves on on previously it was this little closet in a region of this building. We were back to back but I was like Randy, we need to go halves on this we need somewhere to work. Because if we have somewhere that we can get out of our house and come in and lock in. It'll do wonders for us. Thank God Randy came visited he said yes. And we were able to do it. Because having that as my space like I said to everyone rain or shine, tears wanting to quit or happy as I can be. I'm here right? There's so many days is sick or whatever it is Randy will walk in the office I'll be here sleeping. Maybe I'm droopy. Oh, Felix today, Randy secure What's wrong, you know, I'm going home. But I came to the office is that important thing? Exactly. Because it just puts me in the habit of feeling good. And then you realize that you know, regardless of what's going on, this is this is your office, this is your space. You worked yourself into position to be here you have the tools that you need to figure out whatever is going on, go home, go to sleep, come back the next day, boom, you're back at work things right? And you know what I mean? For me, this is has been an incredible motivator. An incredible tool, especially in COVID Because having your own office meant I can go into my office, socially distance by myself. The quiet get work done. Again, just for me is accelerated my growth in a way that I You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of back in University of Ottawa actually, in college when you have 24 hour library. So after this, you can go to the library spend all night you might doing your work, being able to get myself in an environment where I could do that here. Yeah, worked wonders for me with all the habits we've picked up over the years.

Peter Szczerba - Yeah, and, you know, I love that because it's one of the biggest things that I personally a person who thrives on in person interaction when it comes to my professional life. You know, I have really, really missed over the last two years, and you know, people adapt. And I think that, you know, I've learned to do that well, but, man, I can't wait to have what you described, right? Where you know, the transition from home to Office, as you get there, everything turns on the synapses start firing differently, because you're in a different air, you're in a different space you're in, and, you know, use an energy around you, and your channel that helps you get work done. And I think that understanding that and making a conscious decision to to solve that for yourself is a big thing.

Akeem Gardner - Tell you a funny thing. Um, as well, when I was learning about green buildings earlier, I had found that Harvard had done a study that said, people who work in green buildings, they have increased cognitive scores of I think, 36%, the work in a, in an enhanced green building that could be up to 50%, something like that, based on they did, they did a study, and those probably work efficiencies of people who are working in LEED buildings, certified buildings versus people who are working in buildings with bad air flow, filtration. Interesting, interesting. I just did this years ago, years ago, when I was focused on the green buildings. But now Interesting enough, is we're in a LEED building here. I picked it on purpose. So I think also, the green building helped to boost the my product.

Peter Szczerba - Like you're channeling it ever, in every part of your life, after you decided that you were going all in on this idea. And this path, even in the place you decided to have your space probably made it more expensive, right? You still took the risk, and you made sure you know what if I'm going to be building a future with a material that can help build, you know, green buildings? Well, I'm going to get into green building and see what the benefit is like, right. So I think even that making that conscious decision, like it's just an example of the fact that you need to be making these conscious decisions along the way that set you up for the future success that you want, right? Even if that success manifests in a different way than you expect it to, it's about being prepared to take advantage of whatever opportunities come your way, right? And so from here, right, I want to talk a little bit about the fact that you know, okay, so you're building, you're growing hemp, right? You're, you're doing something real concrete, you have something, and then you starting to get a couple of connections, you get involved with these professors from University of Guelph, but now you get into the space of seeing opportunity in IP, that is a shift again, right away from simply growing something that you're going to solve supply chain issues with? No, no, now you're talking about innovating technology, space, biotech, more Moreover, talk about the shift to that. And you know, what, how did you figure that out? Right, because that's something you did on the fly as well. And, you know, let's, let's get into that a little bit.

Akeem Gardner - Again, everything always comes back to the ability that we learn. Growing up as a student athlete, you know, every year when you get put on a new team, you have to blend with new teammates learn to work together to again, win a championship. So once I realized that this is what our goals were, this is what I was contracted to do, or else I would lose the IP. My instinct initially turned to core the people that I'm going to build this with the people who can help me do the physical part of extracting taking the same time we got on the farm, but now extracting out these molecules that we're looking at, fortunately, again, I had the law school degree. So I was able to look at the patent application and understand what was going on how I had to defend this, what the next key dates were to get things in by. So that I was able to do and I was able to ask informative questions to lawyers, that were able to help me make smarter business decisions. I leaned on the professors again, I need to learn what's going on. Can you help me it was like I was getting a PhD or a postdoc on the go right? Or all the time I was calling them, hey, what does this mean? What's this mechanism of action? So what's this right I had a really good mentor, mentor that was very helpful to me. She helped break down what the early stage of the business development opportunity could be how to look at this in relation to what was going on with CBD and then how we could use that foundation to build a business plan upon after So, again, for me, everything always goes back to the things that we learned as kids growing up in basketball. We want to win this championship. Who are the best teammates that I'm going to pick? To be able to work with that are going to be able to elevate me and allow me to do the things that I do best, while also managing them to get things done so that the company can move forward. Right? It was about doing that. And then the biggest challenge was, how am I going to fund this? Because now I just made promises to the professor of I'm going to get into a research contract. We're going to file this we're going to commercialize scale of manufacturing, where am I going to do this? I don't have the space so on and so forth. So again, back to street hustle. Talk to everyone you can all your friends and family. The people that you know the former clients that you know people that even plopped on deals on us in the past, hey, I'm doing this now are you interested in that I was able to use to set my tunnel wide and then just narrow, narrow, narrow, continuing to dig on the right people. push the right buttons here there wherever I needed to to get things done. So in January, we acquired Well, the phone call with the professor's happened March of 2020. We acquired the IP in June of 2020. spent the rest of the year building with our team taking the IP from lab skill extraction, where it had been done before and doing it on our own as a company to be able to get an investor in some of our friends and family are more of a strategic partner investor and our friends and family to commit in December, January precede us we were able to raise about $560,000 to get things going at that point. After that we were able to raise a little bit more money in Atlas 365. To keep things going in again over the last year. It's been continuing to build continuing to network we added a really, really good Senior Medical Advisor, one of the leaders in the cannabis space and Dr. Ethan Russo. Today we're working with the University of Alberta, principal investigator to explore molecules for drug development characterization and what they can be in the future. doctor named Dr. Neil Davies. Dr. Russo and Dr. Davies are unique because both of them are our scientists, doctors, leaders in their respective space. Dr. Russo working for GW Pharma, the only company to have an FDA approved CBD medicine one of the preeminent leaders, right in medical cannabis space. I like to call him the Michael Jordan of cannabis. That's Dr. Russo to bring him on to our team. And then Dr. Neil Davies. You know, when you go to school and you go to class to learn something, our science class, Dr. Russo wrote the book on flavonoid pharmacokinetics, the book that you would get at university through Okay, so we couldn't ask for anyone better to take our molecules at the University of Alberta and explore what these can be. So the Scottie Pippen now got to me like this is the south things seem to be coming together, we have a really good group of strategic investors now a really good team of people to help us execute. And we're continuing now, in the midst of our $2 million seed rate round to look for strategic advisors, partners, people who can help us build a business and take the next step. I love this journey, because all of the things that we're doing, we're learning how to do them. We're learning very fast, we're being able to execute and we continue to get violent validation as we grow. And when you hear the story of where we come from, and all the work that we have to do to get here, for me, it's so encouraging when people see what we're doing now, because they're like, Wow, first look how far you've come right to now look how far you can go with the right resources, the right mentoring, where this company can go.

Peter Szczerba - And what I love about this, you talk about where you've come from, right. And that's it. Let's say for example, you're out there and you're pitching your story or trying to get investors. Like, if they get, for example, here, the fact that once you bought this farm, you took this risk, you believe so strongly in it, or you lease the farm, I should say, and then, but you had no idea how to plant and extract and essentially work the farm. So you drive around to neighboring farms, and simply ask that level of I'm just going to figure it out and do whatever it takes. I think you'd be crazy not to draw confidence from that, where X number of years later, you now as an individual who's partnered with no, let's forget major players, the Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen have the space you're in right now that that has to be a really strong confidence instilling thing right, and so on. I just wanted to highlight that because to me, even when you said that I was like, that's nuts, that's nuts. Let me invest the next three years of my finances in my life and something that I had no idea how to work. But I believe in deeply. And I'm just gonna do whatever it takes to find out how to do it. And you know, I think again, now I imagine you not just in a in a farmer's hat standing in a field, but now I imagine you walking from farm for farm, you know, trying to figure this out. And it's just like, I love where, where it started where it is, I think anyone who's listening to this, like there's nothing but inspiration to draw from this and to apply these same type of mentalities into your day job doesn't matter if you're a corporate doesn't matter if you're a medical, if you're an academia, these are completely transferable. And that's what I love about this. And I think boundless is, is absolutely correct. I mean, you know, let's, I want to ask you, you know, as we kind of come to close on the conversation is, let's say 2030 years from now, right? What what do you want alysus 365 to have become? And kind of what is the impact that you wanted to have left on the world? I know, you talked about paving the path for your community, right around being entrepreneurs, but But you know, for your legacy around what you're building with this company? Where does it where does it go?

Akeem Gardner - Two things 2019 heading into 2020. Me and I might might our team at Atlas we did a an exercise where we set our next decade goals, right, right. Where do we want to be in 10 years. And the first goal that I wrote down was that in 2013, in 2030, Atlas turns 13 years old, or I think it would be 12 years old, because when we were incorporated, but you get the point, right? Right, we're alive in 10 years. That's goal number one. And for us to be alive, that means we would have had to impact the world in every single way, that our mission statement laid out, building sustainable solutions with industrial hemp to help make the world a better place. Now, a little bit like we talked about today, that has to do with what we're doing with cornerto. And our building materials, our building materials we'll probably get to in the latter part of the decade. Because if there's anything I've learned as an entrepreneur is you have to be have be focused, if you don't have deep pockets, work on one thing at a time, execute, build investor trust, shareholder value, get to your exit, make your impact. And then the next venture that you start will become easier, you'll make less mistakes, so on and so forth, right. So how I see this playing out is Atlas is sort of like our parents, our holding company. And we will have multiple different ventures ventures that I've incubated that we've worked on over the last four years that we can slowly but surely roll out. Now, in regards to kurta and what we're doing there, this is a very, very big mission that we're that we're on, and a huge problem that we're solving. Inflammatory related diseases kill are responsible for 50% of all more, all human mortalities. Everything starts as systematic chronic inflammation then turns into heart disease, tumors, arthritis, neurodegenerative disease, Alzheimer's more, right. So if we can solve that problem and chronic inflammation, we'll be able to help a lot of people and drug development takes a long time, but it's a path well worth it, especially with the roadmap that we have. The ability that we have to do this in a safe way is extremely exciting, because not only can we help people deal with their inflammatory related diseases, but also deal with their pain. And in North America, and around the world. We're just now coming up out of an opioid crisis. A lot of people have been using things like oxy cotton, heroin, fentanyl, we know that overdose deaths are rising. Because people are in pain, and they need solutions. And unfortunately, the become addicted. One of the things that we're most excited about our molecules is their safety profile, the non toxicity of it. All the historical literature and information that we have tells us that these molecules should be able to help people in a safe way, right? flavonoids and Polyphenols are an all of our fruits and vegetables and in the countries that eat the most fruits and vegetables and polyphenol diets in the world. They have longer lifespans than we do in North America. Right? So I know that even just in Canurta, the mission that we have the amount of work that we have to do this is going to be great on its own. If we're lucky enough to be able to build this and implement some of our other ideas, the next 20 to 30 years are going to be the most fun time of my life.

Peter Szczerba - Okay, I don't know With how to describe this in any other word other than inspiring and I think that anyone who listens to this will feel the same way. It's been an absolute pleasure. I appreciate your time and helping tell the story and just all the learnings that people can take a lot of this learnings I've taken out of it. And honestly, I'm I'm just excited to do this again a year from now or whenever to see where you're at what success is the advancements that that have kind of come to fruition since since today? I don't know what else to say. But thank you. And, you know, let's let's check in in a bit and see where we're at.

Akeem Gardner - Thank you, Peter. I appreciate you having me. This was fun. We'll definitely do it again.