John Corcoran: 11:20
What is that? Solar bollard?
Sean Bourquin: 11:22
Well, like a three foot tall post with a light on the top. You know, like a kind of a glorified garden light. Really? Okay, okay. And so, you know, once you start looking for them, they’re all over the place.
John Corcoran: 11:34
Yeah, but they’re not.
Sean Bourquin: 11:37
So I said Dave like, hey, I think we should make this. He’s like, I would have made that years ago. So that was like, all right. You know, that was the context to go, you know, a sort of a, a jump and, and so we jumped. Which was crazy because I had four kids.
Well, at that time I had two kids with a third on the way. No money saved. Yeah, no, nothing like we just jumped. Wow. And so it was a great exercise in being very action oriented. So the plan was since we didn’t have any money, we couldn’t go make a product. So, well, how are we going to get money? Well, let’s be consultants. So you know, we met a guy.
John Corcoran: 12:20
Classic way of doing it. Yeah.
Sean Bourquin: 12:23
Oh, man. You know, knowing what I know now, what I’ve done, I don’t know. But I met a guy at a trade show in New York, a Colombian. And so I went to Colombia and with him, we won a pretty large project for the company I was working for. And then while I was down there, I went down there like four times over a pretty short span.
And we started talking about, you know, like there might be some opportunity here for LED lighting in Columbia and solar. So, you know, and then he had some ideas about some, some energy services stuff that we could do in Florida. And so it seemed like, okay, we could do some consulting work here. This could be a good way to get started. So we jumped and then within, I think a month or more or less, maybe a little more.
We had to pivot because it just wasn’t working like we could see immediately, like the idea of like, oh, let’s do this work and we’ll get paid and it’ll be great. It’s like, no, no, that’s not how it was working. These projects had a longer sales cycle than immediate, which is the time frame. We need it to be working. So we’re like, oh, like we’re in trouble here because we had to mortgage this to pay and lines of credit, all these things that were just sitting there as obligations.
So we had to make money immediately. Yeah, we just got out the rolodexes and started flipping through business cards and started reaching out and hustling. Yeah, immediately. Which ended up being fortuitous because The largest shareholder of the company I’d worked with. I developed a bit of a relationship with him at a trade show and hit him, and they hired us very quickly to market research, report for them on LEDs and LED lighting, and make recommendations on who to invest in.
So it was a fantastic way to sort of deepen my market understanding and get someone to give us some money while we did it. Yeah. So it was, it was, it was. And then, you know, there were some solar programs that were booming. So we were doing solar power system design consulting, which my co-founders, Frank, I was doing lighting design, strategic marketing, anything someone would give us money for.
John Corcoran: 14:28
And how long did it take.
Sean Bourquin: 14:28
It takes you? Do you eventually get into manufacturing and designing your own products? Okay. So how long did it take you to get out of that consulting and advisory work and into actually what you wanted to do, which was producing your own product lines?
Sean Bourquin: 14:43
Yeah. Good question. It was a bit under a year. So what I’d done is gone back to Dave, my mentor, and said, hey, you know, what do you think about investing in us? And it was about a 20 minute conversation, you know, no pitch deck or anything.
It was like the most basic. Yeah. Pitch. And he’s like, okay. You know, and he kind of cut us a check and, and at that time, it was $100,000. And it’s like, all right. Got $100,000 to get this first solar baller designed to market. Let’s go. And that’s what we did. So my how.
John Corcoran: 15:25
Did that work out? Was that enough money? Did you run out of money? Did it.
Sean Bourquin: 15:29
No, it was good. Shocking. It wouldn’t be enough. It wouldn’t be enough today, that’s for sure. But
But we made it work. Like my co-founder kept doing solar consulting, which was paying the basic bills. So the 100,000 I could pull in, you know, an embedded system, hardware design or a firmware guy. mechanical guys that could just bring in all the people that we needed. And I basically functioned in my product manager way where it’s like, I know what the thing needs to be.
I know what it needs to do. I know where it needs to be priced and just pulled in a little team to help me bang it out. And, you know, we get to the end. And I thought it was pretty ugly. I didn’t really like it, I didn’t love it.
Yeah. Well it is what it is. Yeah. You know, and this has got to be good enough for now. And we launched it, and it was an interesting year or so after that because, you know, I don’t know how many people do like consulting and then launch a product and then, you know, you’re in a balance.
John Corcoran: 16:30
Both. Yeah. Yeah. So you’re trying to sell the new product. And so did you. Were you selling B2B? Were you selling this commercially? You were.
Sean Bourquin: 16:37
Yeah. Yeah. B2B. Luckily from the work we had done before, we had some good relationships. You know, and potential people who were interested in and distributing, repping the product that we had made.
So that was pretty good. And then but what ended up happening is like we needed more like in the lighting industry, commercial lighting, you know, you tend to go with manufacturers, reps, agents that are regional, sign them up and then the rep in your product and you know, everything goes well. You sell some stuff. And what we found is it was easy to sign up rep, but the sales just didn’t happen. You know, we were able to get some sales using people we knew, which was good.
It got us going like we won a nice US Army deal in Louisiana of all places, and won some cities in Florida. So that was great. Won a custom project in the Bahamas that was pretty cool with a big hotel down there and but the reps just weren’t making it happen. So then we’re like, okay, you know, it was an important lesson around sales. Yeah. You know, and for me, the lesson was no one cares more about what you’re doing than you do. Yeah. And then it empowered us to take responsibility for that.
John Corcoran: 17:48
So what did you do? Did you stop using reps and build your own sales force or what?
Sean Bourquin: 17:53
Yeah, we kept, you know, some of the reps. But we started knocking on doors ourselves. And, you know, over time, our ability to do prospecting, lead gen and segment and run campaigns just got better and better and better. And I think it’d really become the thing that allowed us to grow really predictably and strongly and profitably. You know, where we did like, you know, it’s hard scaling a sales force. We didn’t have tons of bodies. Like even by the end, I think I had ten, 8 or 10 people.
John Corcoran: 18:24
Yeah.
Sean Bourquin: 18:25
Not a lot. But the, you know, bringing sort of an engineering, problem solving curious mindset to lead gen was, was transformational, you know.
John Corcoran: 18:37
And how did you figure out this is such a specific product? Right. Like you mentioned, like a hotel or like an army base. Like, how did you know that the timing was right? How did you decide on who to target? You know, you could knock on a lot of doors, you know, in malls and commercial facilities and stuff like that without getting any sales.
Sean Bourquin: 18:57
Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was an interesting one. That’s where Dave came back in. It was 2012, and we’d sort of shut down the consulting because it’s like we got it. Like the product is the future.
It’s the thing that can allow us to really scale. Like I find consulting, you know, a difficult and people who can make consulting work and an admirable business model. But for me, it wasn’t wasn’t my thing. So, you know, we were talking about Dave, it was 2012. We’d had a I think we’d lost money that year.
And we’re talking about all the lessons we’ve learned about stuff. And Dave’s like, enough with the lessons learned. He’s like, you gotta find the pointy end of the stick. Like, what’s what? And, you know, it sort of bugged me that he was poking us and then went away and thought about it.
It’s like, yeah, the pointy end of the stick in our case was municipalities, Municipality. Cities, towns and cities. That was the pointy end of the stick. And the reason it was the pointy end of the stick is to your point. We knew they had outdoor lighting problems.
You know that our problems were well suited to solve. We knew they had a budget, and the coolest thing from a lead gen perspective is they were easy to find. You know, and if my memory serves correct, or I think there were, at that time, 4800 towns and cities with populations above 5000 in the US. Right. Like we just got good at, like, getting online, like, let’s list them all.
And then we knew through our work who are the titles that are most likely to be interested in what we’re doing? Okay. Director of Parks and Rec, public works people, streetlight people. And then we just craft communications and hit them with them, you know, and learn over time. At first, it was all spreadsheets and things, and then getting the CRM and then automating and then just just refine, refine, refine. You know, it’s like, I love it because I don’t know who said it, but I found that sales is 80% science and 20% art. You know, So it helped me as an engineer because I worked with a lot of likes, really.
John Corcoran: 20:46
Some engineers make great salespeople because they build these systems and then follow through on these systems.
Sean Bourquin: 20:53
That’s and that’s that’s what I did. Like, when I was a product manager and a sales engineer before that, like I would be a, you know, kind of a wingman for salespeople. You know, if they go into a meeting and there’s some like, you know, engineers like, we’re the worst because we’ll want to poke holes in someone’s story and, you know, be skeptical. And so all right, so we go into the sales guys, go into the meetings, and the engineers start poking holes in what they’re doing. And then I would come in and okay, I could deal with the objections and I could work at their level and I could win their confidence and what we were doing and why we’re doing it. So that ended up working. But it’s like I didn’t want to sit in on every sales call. Yeah. Like that. That doesn’t scale.
So then it became your to your point like systems and structures and messaging and and just, you know, iterating. It’s a style. I like that you know, we did that with our products too, right? It’s like that first product that went to market was kind of ugly. We iterated on it.
You know, I don’t like the casting. Does this. Let’s make the casting do that. Oh, go from sand casting to permanent mold. Let’s get the cast out.
Let’s make it look better. You know, and just that, I think as entrepreneurs, sometimes it’s hard to know how good is good enough. You know, like, get to wherever good enough is. Just get there. Right. Get in the market, be it sales or be it with the product and just learn.
John Corcoran: 22:16
So any other things that you think you did during this time period, you had seven years of 35% or more growth. That’s just insane. Anything else that you did during that time period that led to that kind of growth?
Sean Bourquin: 22:33
I think a lot of it was also paying attention. Like we started with one product, you know, and just paying attention and listening to, you know, the people that we are working with. To the customers and looking at, you know, building out that right portfolio of products. You know, like a bollard wouldn’t have gotten us there. You know, we had to go into other applications.
And just so very intentionally thinking about like, okay, what other applications could we address with this product? And, you know, it turned out the same set of customers also needed those products. So it’s really just trying to expand, you know, the share of wallet that we would have with our customers, you know, and help them. You know, I think, you know, like why I think we were successful is like I wanted to help these people. Like, I knew that solar lighting, well executed, was the best choice for them.
And, you know, the other thing we did that was different in solar lighting is most solar lighting people, though, you know, you’ll ask me, oh, how much will I save if I do the solar lighting? And then the normal answer is, well, it depends on your situation. We got to do some modeling. We got to do this stuff. It’s like I never answered the question that way.
I would answer you, John. We’re going to save you at least 50% up front on capital costs. And if we don’t, don’t do it. And, you know, there’s another thing in there, too. Solar lighting is annoying. Like, you know, where you are. You know, you can go buy solar garden lights. Maybe they’ll work for you. You put them on the north side of your house, maybe they won’t. You put them under a tree.
Maybe they won’t. You know, in a commercial context, right? Reliability is really important. And so, you know, the variable nature of solar is problematic. You know, like it can be a very engineered solution on a per project basis.
And it’s like I knew that wouldn’t scale. So using my sort of my type of engineering, computer engineering, specifically embedded systems engineering, like I like coming up with systems and making things smarter, making things easier. So what we did with the solar lights, I think that really changed the game is we made the lights think for themselves because it’s like, hey, John, you know, you tell me. Oh, I gotta put one of these lights in my driveway. It’s like, well, I don’t want to have to do modeling about what your driveway is going to do from a solar energy perspective, and then configure a product and send it to you.
And you have to make sure you put it just in the right spot. Like, imagine a five mile trail where there’s some trees and trees and it’s just like a nightmare. So you know what knows best. You know, that was one of the early things I figured out when starting first light is like, solar lighting will never scale unless solar lights are more like regular light. You know, they’ve got to be easy or easier than hooking up to the grid.
And so, yeah, we made the lights smart and the light thought for themselves and made their own decisions about what makes sense. And it just made them on par. You know, like or on, on the whole perform better than other solar powered products and were a lot easier to deal with than other commercial lights. So the fundamental product was easier to deal with and quite distinct, which is great from a marketing perspective. It’s easy to pitch because it’s different.
John Corcoran: 25:38
Yeah.
Sean Bourquin: 25:39
You know, we had very clear reasons as to why we made it that way. So that was that there was a, you know, there’s product reasons, there’s a route to market reasons.
John Corcoran: 25:49
So because you’re adding this functionality into the light, I imagine your cost point has to be a bit higher. Did you have to deal with other competitors moving into the space you know, from abroad or whatever with some kind of downward price competition?
Sean Bourquin: 26:09
Yeah, the market’s interesting in that way. You know, there were a lot of sort of incumbent brands that weren’t like strangely. We made these solar bollards, three foot poles, three foot poles with a light on the top, essentially small little products, glorified garden lights. But they are actually the hardest technical problem to solve because you have a small amount of solar. So to make a useful light out of that, you really need to dial in performance. So to your point, like these aren’t typically consumer products there.
They’re definitely professional lighting products, and people will need to really care about performance and longevity to buy them. And the funny thing, though, economically, is those products were way cheaper than competing wired solutions. And most solar lighting companies didn’t come down into that space. So it’s a bit of a, you know, analogy, like a blue ocean versus red ocean.
John Corcoran: 27:01
Yeah. I was going to say you found a blue ocean for yourself. Yeah.
Sean Bourquin: 27:04
Yeah. And even by the time, you know, 14 years later, there is very little competition in that space now. So there was a commercial tier of manufacturers in the United States, Canada, Europe. And they were playing in normally larger scale solar lighting applications there. There’s been some consolidation, but they mostly still exist.
And then on the bottom end for sure, we’ve had, you know, Chinese products come into the market claiming all kinds of things. But luckily, I think for us the lighting industry has gone through low cost LED lighting products coming into the market, claiming big things and people suffering, suffering, reliability and quality issues. Just and they, you know, our customers and the commercial side, municipalities, cities, they just didn’t want to deal with it. So they kind of knew.
John Corcoran: 27:53
Yeah.
Sean Bourquin: 27:54
Like don’t go with the low cost option. It’s going to cost you more in the long run. One of our sales guys always said buy once, cry once. Like I didn’t really like that, but all right, whatever.
John Corcoran: 28:05
So I want to ask about you and your co-founder who ended up falling out. This is around 2019. Take me through what that was like.
Sean Bourquin: 28:16
It was an interesting time. 20 yeah. Summer 2019. You know, within the span of a few weeks, our business relationship blew up, his marriage blew up, my marriage blew up like it was just everything blew up.
John Corcoran: 28:31
All of that cheese.
Sean Bourquin: 28:32
All of it. Yeah, it was a classic. You know, I think in hindsight like the although the business was successful, profitable we’re kicking out dividends. Things were good. You know, there was just something wrong for all of us.
And it just all came to a head. It really, you know, was one of the reasons I joined the Entrepreneurs Organization, you know, where I’d done a lot of business work, you know, learning. I joined an organization for tech company CEOs where they were really focused on, you know, adopting a scaling up sort of methodology and really driving systematic growth of your business, which worked really well for me. But I’d neglected my own mental health for sure. And I think my co-founder did, and it all kind of came to a head, and it triggered just a series of difficult times that ended up with a shotgun, a shotgun scenario going wrong in the sense of ending up in court. Covid happened, shut Cortes down.
John Corcoran: 29:35
So for those who don’t know what a shotgun clause is in a partnership agreement, can you explain what that is?
Sean Bourquin: 29:41
So, you know, we at I think we’d come to the place where it’s like I don’t want to do this anymore with you. Like, I would like, you know, and Dave had invested in our company with our angel. Dave and I were, like, trying to buy out the co-founder, and we couldn’t get that done. And so I’m like.
John Corcoran: 29:59
Is this his original 100 K still or do you put other rounds of investment in.
Sean Bourquin: 30:04
He did one other round. Not much. Okay. Yeah. No, we got her going with not much money. So we tried a buyout that didn’t work. And honestly, mentally, I was at the point where it’s like, I can’t. I can’t do this anymore. I need an out. And Dave’s like, well, let’s just use the shotgun.
So we triggered the shotgun just to force it. So it gave a 60 day window where, you know, we offer up our shares for a price. He can accept the offer and take us out. Or if he doesn’t, we take him out. But I think with about three days left in that election period, he filed an injunction against us because he wanted a bunch of information that, in our perspective, wasn’t part of the deal.
John Corcoran: 30:49
Okay.
Sean Bourquin: 30:50
And so before we got to hear that issue in court, Covid happened and shut our courts down for like five months.
John Corcoran: 31:01
So you’re kind of in a state of suspended animation here.
Sean Bourquin: 31:06
Yes. In that process, the business kept growing. And so then we because.
John Corcoran: 31:12
Then of course, like in during Covid, a lot of people started doing these home projects and things like that. Well, this is a commercial. You did more commercials, but you found that the business was still growing.
Sean Bourquin: 31:22
Yeah. We grew. It was crazy. We weren’t sure if we were going to even exist. Things were looking grim at first, but then we found a way.
And so we grew through that. And then we ended up in our provincial Supreme court, which then, because the courts had shut down for five months, it took another like ten months to get a decision from our provincial Supreme Court, which we won. And then months went by, and then there was an appeal to our provincial appeals court. And then they won, which, you know, was a stunning learning around the court system and lawyers, you know, that, you know, you know, one judge can interpret it totally this way for sure.
John Corcoran: 32:00
Yeah, yeah.
Sean Bourquin: 32:00
Another judge totally that way. Yeah. Same same facts. Yeah. So it’s like wow. Like, you know, don’t go to court. You know, it’s like.
John Corcoran: 32:09
Well, yeah, I’m a recovering lawyer, so I’ll say that for sure. Don’t go to court. Not worth it. You’re gonna lose a lot of money.
Sean Bourquin: 32:15
It was tough. Like I think that was tough learning. But when it all started. Right, I pinned a lot of this on poor mental health on my co-founder and my side. Like, you know, this is not something that probably should have gone down that path, but at the moment, it just felt like it was the only way.
John Corcoran: 32:31
So how did it all go? How did you resolve all this? How did you come to some kind of resolution?
Sean Bourquin: 32:35
So we ended up waiting in line at the Supreme Court of Canada. And while we were waiting in line, I went on retreat with my, you know, my EO forum, my group forum. And I came back with that with three goals, you know, and one of them was like, I, you know, I just wanted to put this to bed with my co-founder, like, like I’m okay walking away. Like, instead of, like, I want to fight for that business. I was like, I want to be done with my co-founder and move on. And I had a couple of other goals. But, you know, based on that, Dave and I ended up just settling and walking away.
John Corcoran: 33:12
You said waiting online. Were you literally waiting in line and you went over and talked to him? Or you mean, you know, you’re waiting for it to be appealed to the Supreme Court?
Sean Bourquin: 33:21
Yeah. We took leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. And then you wait in a virtual line. Okay. And then in our court process, I don’t know how it works in the United States, but in our process, you know, you don’t automatically get to go to the Supreme Court.
Yeah. They, you know, so we weren’t sure if they were going to hear our case or not. We thought it was going to be a really interesting case to listen to. But then for me, it’s like just waiting. You know, we’d spent three years by that time in this process.
John Corcoran: 33:49
So in the meantime, you basically you, you and your business partner came to an agreement on a settlement to resolve it.
Sean Bourquin: 33:57
Yeah. And 2022 we saw and started 2023.
John Corcoran: 34:02
What. And so you’ve since started a new company full of lighting, which is a really high performance, very strong mountain bike light. So if you thought solar lighting for commercials wasn’t enough of a specific niche, we’re going even more specific with a very expensive mountain bike light. So talk a little bit about why I imagined or you are crazy about mountain biking and you wanted to combine that passion. Or how did you decide on this new niche?
Sean Bourquin: 34:31
Definitely. I’ve been a mountain biker my whole life, and I’ve found my bike life has been pretty poor and I hated night riding. But you know, with four kids and a busy professional for a lot of years, I really didn’t have a choice. If I wanted to ride, it was going to be at night, you know, through the fall, winter, early spring season, at least up here in BC. And you know, when I start something like the solar lighting Company, I picked a solar bollard, a weird product category, you know, but there’s opportunity there, you know, and it’s quite narrow, like, I like, I like picking a pretty pointy problem to start with, and then I go broader.
So Full On Lighting I picked again, like the bollard, was the hardest technical problem to solve in outdoor lighting because it’s so tight and compact. Mountain biking on the cycling side is the hardest technical problem to solve. You know you’ve got people going real fast 2025 miles an hour through trails where trees are zinging by. Or, you know, all sorts of bad things could happen very quickly. So creating good vision for people is difficult.
And so I wanted to start there. And and you know, as a product manager, one of the things I’d always wanted to find is a problem that I personally was experiencing. And, you know, I’ve made a lot of products over the years, but none of them were for me. They were all for, you know, like it spent time in the market talking to customers, understanding their needs and figuring out problems that would address their needs. This one was one that I intimately understand and you know, could solve.
So you’re right. It was a nexus of like, hey, I want to. I’ve got a bunch of these business skills, I got a bunch of product skills, and I love writing. So let’s mock them together and we’ll go. We’ll go from there. So fallen exists.
Our purpose is broader. We exist to help people work and play better in the dark. So this is the first product category. Mountain biking. For most people, no doubt. For Canadians, $495 is an expensive light. The most expensive light I’ve bought personally is $2,000 out of Germany. Oh, yeah? Yeah. And you can spend, you know, 20, $30.
So there’s quite a continuum there. But certainly we’re priced in the premium thing and really like what our light knows the goal. You know it wasn’t a particular number of lumens or anything like that. The goal was to create a situation where someone can ride just like it’s day without limitations, without holding back. So our product, this first light we’ve made, really lets people, you know, three things: ride faster, be safer and have more fun.
Right. It’s a pretty simple emotional connection I’m trying to make with people, you know, compared to anything else you can possibly buy. Yeah. And I think the thing that’s been fun is we started shipping in January, and when I get lights in people’s hands, I’ll personally go night riding with demo groups in our region at least here. And to have people be like, whoa, like that blew my mind. Yeah, like it makes me feel good as a product person to like, okay, like, this is what I hope is going to happen. And to have feedback come back better than I expected, you know. Feels really good.
John Corcoran: 37:49
Yeah, yeah. Especially if you come riding along and you come across a bear or a mountain lion or something like that. Ever have any of those types of experiences or. No.
Sean Bourquin: 37:57
Yeah. There’ve been lots of situations, especially in, you know, like the scenario like most people with their flashlights can identify. Our camping lights are kind of a spotlight, you know, and then there’s darkness kind of in your periphery. And so what we’ve created fills your whole field of view. For there’s a lot of good reasons that you want to fill your field of view. But with those spot lighting things, like sometimes you’ll look around and there’ll be glowing.
John Corcoran: 38:19
Lights.
Sean Bourquin: 38:19
You.
John Corcoran: 38:20
See the glowing eyes.
Sean Bourquin: 38:21
Glowing.
Sean Bourquin: 38:21
Eyes, and then you can’t tell what it is. And then your mind. You know, I’ve ridden a lot by myself in the woods here. You know, you’re right. We’ve got bears and, you know, cougars or mountain lions here, and I don’t know. I, you know, normally most people will say like the mountain lions, they’re seeing you, but you’re probably not seeing that, right?
John Corcoran: 38:41
That’s true. That’s true, I have yeah.
Sean Bourquin: 38:43
I’ve had bear encounters a lot. Somehow they just seem less scary to me. And most of them.
John Corcoran: 38:51
Those I agree with. Mountain lions to me are petrifying. Probably because there’s a lion in the name. That’s probably why.
Sean Bourquin: 38:58
Well, they stalk you and you don’t know.
John Corcoran: 39:00
Oh, yeah.
Sean Bourquin: 39:01
You know, like there’s every year on the island, like I think Vancouver Island, where, where I live, we have the highest density of mountain lions in the world.
John Corcoran: 39:09
Wow.
Sean Bourquin: 39:09
You know, and I have yet to see one. And, like, that’s crazy. I’m pretty sure they’ve seen me, but every year there’s stories that come out about, like some kid on a bike getting followed by a cougar. Or people. The heart attack. Which is sad, but yeah, it happens, but it’s scary.
John Corcoran: 39:26
So, Full On Lighting is your new company, but you also have a chemistry company. So I know your background as an engineer. But tell me a little bit about that. XLYNX Materials. You decided to do that as well.
Sean Bourquin: 39:40
Yeah, I like materials. It’s a really interesting company focused on molecular crosslinkers, which really are, these are products that allow you to bond really hard to bond materials like different kinds of polymers, you know, that are low surface energy and don’t tend to want to bond any other way. This is a pretty unique chemistry coming out of a mix of our local university and then a serial entrepreneur. And, you know, as Dave and I were looking at, you know, leaving at first light, he introduced me to an old colleague of his. They started a number of companies together back in the 70s.
They’re part of the first generation of tech entrepreneurs in this area. And so, you know, I met, you know, his colleague Peter. And, you know, I liked Peter. And, you know, Peter is looking for the next generation of people to sort of help him, you know, lift his ideas off the ground. You know, these guys are very entrepreneurial, very idea focused. But, you know, I think they’re in their 70s now. So. Peter. Yeah. But Peter is an ideal guy.
He’s always innovating, always finding new ideas. And you know, with the skills I developed at first, like going from nothing to a decent sized company seemed well suited to help this company on the business side. Yeah. Which for me was a cool experiment because most companies I’ve been in, I had a pretty good understanding of the technology, you know, and could go, you know, sort of lead from that perspective. But this one, no chance. Like the people doing the chemistry were postdoc chemists. And I’d done like one first year chemistry.
John Corcoran: 41:18
Course, a new challenge for you then something, something very different. Well, this has been great. Sean, I want to wrap up with my gratitude question. So I’m a big fan of practicing gratitude and giving my guests a little bit of space at the end here to acknowledge anyone that they want to acknowledge for helping them in their journey. And you mentioned Dave’s name a couple of times. That’s probably one. Anyone else you know? Anything further you want to say about Dave and any anyone else you want to add?
Sean Bourquin: 41:46
I think Dave was just a really, you know, cool guy to, you know, very strong entrepreneur, but also very empowering, you know, and I think just to have someone believe in you, you know, and put their money where their mouth is and then just be that supporter for you. Like it was really cool for me. Like I knew he didn’t care necessarily about the financial returns, which worked out well for him, but I don’t. I know that’s why he wasn’t doing it. He just cared and he thought I was doing something good and I really appreciated that support.
And then fast forward, you know, my partner Tracy, we’ve been together almost five years and she’s sort of, you know, seen me go through the last bit of first light, you know, through some of the like the end of those legal challenges to then resetting, beginning again with full on and XLYNX. You know, just having someone there, just being like an awesome supporter, that’s been super nice.
John Corcoran: 42:41
Yeah. Sean, where can people go to learn more about you and learn more about Full On Lighting and XLYNX and connect with you?
Sean Bourquin: 42:48
Yeah, you know, LinkedIn is a good one, but I’m on all the social channels, you know, social media stuff. fullonlighting.com or xlynxmaterials.com or the company websites. And yeah, I think both of these businesses keep your eyes open. I think there’s lots of cool things in store.
John Corcoran: 43:05
Cool. All right, Sean, thanks so much.
Sean: 43:07
Thanks.
Outro: 43:11
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