From dream-caught kid in Grande Prairie to founder, director and software serial acquirer
At SureSwift Capital we acquire profitable businesses, aggregating cash flows for investors across multiple funds.
The motivation to succeed has always been in me. It still burns strongly within, every day. It’s a driving force—a key part of my happiness, along with family and friendships.
Perhaps I fear that everything will disappear. I did have a recurring dream as a child that I returned home from school to an empty house, furniture gone, no car and no family.
An early book I read was Wealth Without Risk for Canadians by Charles Givens. A key takeaway for me was the benefit of having multiple streams of income. This stuck with me and became integral to the fabric of my being. Another informative read was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. The message there that really stood out to me was to seek knowledge and put yourself into a state of readiness for the right opportunity.
I’ve held onto those learnings.
Maybe it was the modest home we were all crowded into with one bathroom shared among us. Maybe it was the endless tomato sandwiches because there was nothing else. Maybe it was all the years of fantasizing and dreaming about one day owning a car with power windows and door locks. To me, they were so shiny and interesting…and yet so far away.
I recall walking down the street through Grande Prairie’s Smiths subdivision with my childhood friend Terry, stopping at every nice car to admire their interiors. Especially the Lincoln Town Car that had keyless entry. It was extravagant, and sooo cool. Here I was, this little dream-caught kid, leaving lip and nose marks on driver’s side windows from gawking around the interiors of these magical machines. It didn’t ever seem possible for our family.
Nope. We had a 1972 Chevy Malibu.
And then there was the 1971 Chevy pickup—brown—that my dad bought second-hand for $700.
I remember the day he bought it. I’d have been about ten then, so that takes us back to 1979. Pat Gouchie was the seller. A local realtor in Grande Prairie, he had a bargain brown truck to sell, but there was a catch. (There’s always a catch.)
On the back of this truck was a monstrosity of a homemade trailer. It weighed two tons, I’m sure, mashing the shocks and comically pressing the truck right down to the pavement.
Trailer goes with the truck, or no deal.
My dad tried not to show his excitement. I think this was the exact trailer that he would’ve built himself, but hey! With the truck, it was free! Done deal.
We sure didn’t have much, but boy, did this wheezy brown truck with its planet-sized trailer ever fuel my desire to one day have more.
The advice I received from my dad through the years was based on his own experiences. He didn’t want me to go to university. He told me it was a waste of money, pointing to the fact that he made more as a 20-year pulp mill laborer than his manager did, who had a freshly minted college degree. My dad wouldn’t budge on his conviction that university studies were unwarranted. So at 17, I moved out, went to work, and paid my own way.
My dad, bless his narrow view, was only able to advise from the place of his own believing.
That Malibu, there’s a story around it, too. Alberta licence plate JLN 760. I remember silly things like that, phone numbers of friends back then, licence plates, the price we paid for each house we lived in, their square footage, you name it. I liked numbers. Kind of like the kid in Jerry McGuire who emphatically states that the human brain weighs eight pounds.
That Malibu just wouldn’t start. Even though my dad was a self-taught mechanic who was rarely stumped, he just couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t go. He tried and tried. Months went by—winter months, where we didn’t have a working vehicle. And strangely, every couple nights some man would come to our door asking questions about the Malibu. He always said the same thing: that this was the exact car he was looking for, and that he’d pay my dad $200 for it. Not a penny more.
“Nope,” my dad told him. “Besides, it won’t start.”
With a half-cracked smile, the stranger said, “That’s OK. Two hundred dollars. I’ll pay.”
We never did sell the Malibu to that man. It was abundantly clear that he was the reason, somehow and in some way, why that car wouldn’t start. Eventually, my dad broke down and had the car towed to the local mechanic. Turns out a hose had been cut.
In business, it’s no different. People have their own agendas, personal ones, individually crafted by their own unique experiences, their personal goals and desires, their sometimes contorted interpretations of right and wrong. Ethical thinking seems to be…different for some. Some actors will do things to impede your progress and to further their own interests. Anything that advances their goals may be considered just fine, with little regard for the possible consequences.
Especially today, social media is a minefield to navigate. Actual facts; the truth: both so elusive. There is so much to decipher, to research and to filter out. It takes energy to do research and substantiate someone else’s claim. But that takes time, and who’s got that? It’s so much easier to just believe.
Don’t fall in. Ask questions, lots of them, and seek the truth, especially if it involves your finances.
I started a company 9 years ago that does things differently, on purpose.
We put investors' interests at the forefront, and then we become investors too.
SureSwift has a different fund structure that is clearly better for investors and is for accredited investors only. Founders can roll equity into a SureSwift fund along with receiving a life-changing cash payout. Rolling equity diversifies ownership into a small basket of profitable, growing high-quality businesses—wonderful businesses just like their own. Staff bonuses are based on profitability and growing distributable cash flow. Everyone follows the same North Star: profitable growth is really important. When monthly profits increase, asset values also increase in lockstep. Everyone is aligned, and everyone is made better off as fund profitability increases.
Raising capital is difficult at the best of times for funding an acquisitions strategy. Maybe it’s the currently accepted incentive model for buyout funds that’s part of the problem? Private equity buyout funds typically charge 2% of assets under management plus a 20% incentive fee (or thereabouts). If the business’s objective is to acquire already profitable businesses, how can this possibly be considered fair to investors? Fees based on assets under management reward “selling the pitch” to investors and attaining committed capital. It doesn’t reward achieving or maintaining profitable performance, or making prudent acquisition decisions in the first place.
Buyout funds should be incentivized on maintaining profits and on growing those profits consistently over time. Here’s the solution: management fees that are based on a percent of monthly fund profits. And the only way to grow those management fees is to grow the acquired businesses—and specifically, to grow monthly profits available to investors. This would be alignment.
Looking at the numbers, we can see a clear inconsistency with the current model. Sure, fees based on assets under management may be important to keep the lights on for the private equity fund, for a time. But that’s only in the early days. A few years in and with a bit of success, PE firms would be better off aligning investor interests with their own by only charging management fees as a percentage of profits. The focus would then turn to consistency, efficient management, operational efficiencies and a careful, watchful eye on every expense. In short, operational excellence. At SureSwift we’ve defined this playbook as our Exceptional Operator Framework (EOF).
In fact, we seek to learn and do all that is possible to efficiently allocate capital with respect to our serial acquisition strategy.
I plan to share my experience on Substack, often looking back to my personal learnings and memories of whatever I feel relates to an idea or point that I want to make about my journey. There will surely be references to serial acquirers, compounders and multi-baggers too.
The book I wish had existed in the 80s or 90s? 100 Baggers: Stocks that Return 100-to-1 and How to Find Them by Christopher Mayer. I highly recommend it. The concepts are ingrained in me.
As I try to find these elusive investments, I will also seek to build one.