For those who don't know, my company Fire and Steel Inc. was featured on season 19, episode 7 of CBC's Dragons’ Den. This officially aired on Nov. 7, 2024. It's been a few days now.
For anyone who hasn't seen the episode yet, it's available on CBC's online app, CBC Gem. For Canadians, I'm told it's free. You just have to get an account to login. For any of our other followers outside of Canada, you'll have to get a bit more creative.
If you don't want to be spoiled, stop right here. Go watch the episode. The rest of this post will cover my reactions, including explaining scenes that may have been missing context.
You've been warned!
If you're still here, you probably have a lot of questions. This post is my way of answering as many as possible. Mostly things like - what was the process like? How are you feeling? What was cut out? What was it like to meet the Dragons?
So to start, I run a sword company named Fire and Steel Inc. We have a location in Mississauga and we attend the convention circuit across Canada. I've been named RBC's startup woman of the year 2023, and one of Canada's Next 36 Founders 2022. There are a few other things, but you get the point.
Going through this whole Dragons’ Den process, I still don't know how to take it all in. In truth, I probably went through every emotion possible.
I know many of you watched the episode in the past few days. For me, though, a lifetime already passed. This was filmed back in May, one week before one of the busiest conventions of the year, Anime North. I've been keeping the results to myself for the past 6 months. When you film, they make you sign an NDA so I could not reveal anything to anyone.
So for 6 months, you start questioning the reality you experienced. Like you start by thinking, “okay I think it went well.” It progresses slowly to doubt: “Did I do well?” It then progresses to “maybe I'm crazy and I imagined it.” It's funny because usually you can talk to your peers to corroborate your experiences, but no one else was allowed to be in the pitching space with me that day.
I didn't apply to Dragons’ Den in the traditional sense. One of the producers heard about us through the grapevine, reached out and encouraged us to apply back in January or February of this year. I said no. I thought, ‘no way. I don't want to embarrass myself.’ I've already been on TV before, at least twice: once for CBC’s Canada's Smartest Person (more on this later, because I met the dragon Arlene on that show) and also for Discovery Channel’s Canada's Greatest Know-It-All, season 2. These were filmed back in my early 20s. There were some highs and lows from those experiences -- mainly highs -- and I had so much fun and met lifelong friends, but I didn't necessarily need to replicate those experiences again. Spoiler alert, I did not win those shows... I got nervous, had tunnel vision, flubbed some math, dealt with some serious blow-back for it. So I knew firsthand how bad the internet can tear you a new one if the editing is unkind.
So by the time the producers at Dragons’ Den reached out, I thought no thank you. But that's when they turned around and said the following:
“Wait, before you say no, what if we told you there will be a guest dragon this season who is an A-list Canadian Hollywood action star? He's been in recent movies and he has an investment company to help Canadian businesses.”
He. They said he. Canadian A-list action star.
I hesitated. My mind was racing. I went through the possibilities: Ryan Reynolds! Ryan Gosling! Simu Liu! Keanu Reeves! The funny thing is I don't normally get starstruck. However, meeting any of these men would be a dream come true! These are all top names that I've seen in movies growing up and looked up to.
My mind was racing. I thought: Could it be Simu Liu? He has the CBC connection through his time at Kim's Convenience. But Simu Liu doesn't have an investment company, does he?
I quickly ruled it out.
Meanwhile, Keanu Reeves and Ryan Gosling seemed to be very private people.
That week, there were news reports about Ryan Reynolds possibly investing in more Toronto-area businesses and even getting a building in the Toronto-area, and possibly even investing in the Ottawa Senators NHL hockey team.
Suddenly, I had figured it out. It made complete sense.
I said to the producer, “Oh my gosh, it's Ryan Reynolds isn't it?!”
The producer said he cannot confirm or deny. I have to go on the show to find out.
So there I was, having an existential crisis about whether I wanted to potentially humiliate myself on one hand. On the other hand, there was the shining star of possibly meeting one of these Hollywood mystery men.
How much was that worth to me?
Okay, let's do the math. At comic cons, there's celebrity guests you have to pay to meet. It's not free. A lot of the time, celebrities who are available to be at a convention are either lesser known or have fewer recent projects. They have more time to travel the convention circuit. Even still, these celebs can sometimes demand hundreds of dollars just for an autograph or a selfie. Not only that, you sometimes feel herded like cattle because the security handlers want to get through as many people as possible. The celebs often don't have time for idle chit-chat.
So how much was meeting Ryan Reynolds, Simu Liu, Ryan Gosling or Keanu Reeves worth to me? Apparently, a lot. Because away I went.
As a side note: If any of the men I've listed above see this post one day, I hope you know, I was totally willing to embarrass myself on national television for you. I hope you all treat your power with great responsibility.
After the airing, one of the questions I got asked is how do the producers figure out who is the most deserving to be on the show?
I obviously am not a producer or casting person, but personally I don't think it has anything to do with who is most deserving.
I went through an actual audition process where I had to be interviewed by CBC producers on Zoom. They wanted to know more about me. They ask you basic questions, almost like a job interview. The standard, “tell me about yourself” and, “why are you applying to this show?” I'm not sure how they evaluate who they invite on the show, but if I had to guess there must be some considerations for variety of business types, and things like how comfortable you are on camera. It's a TV show after all, and you might have the best business but there's no point if you can't communicate that on camera.
So my advice to anyone who applied but didn't get invited to pitch: don't give up. Maybe try to diagnose what you could improve on. Maybe work on how comfortable you are on screen, for example.
After this, I was told in a phone call in March that I was being invited to pitch on the show. I was ecstatic! Once you're invited to pitch on the show, you're assigned a producer to oversee you. Mine was named Sam and he oversaw a few other pitchers too. Pitchers are never told who else had been selected, so the main person I was talking to was Sam.
The format of Dragons’ Den is that you do your 1-minute elevator pitch, and then there would be a 50 minute question and answer period for the Dragons to ask questions, and to dissect your business if the need arose.
Planning for the pitch process was stressful because I never did what's called an elevator pitch before. I didn't go to business school. However, I at least knew that an elevator pitch is the concept of distilling your business down to a one minute long pitch, about the time you are potentially standing in an elevator with an important person before they arrive at their floor. The idea is that if you do an elevator pitch properly, you can entice that important person to be interested in learning more or investing in your idea.
As a former scientist, I thought it would be great to cram in a lot of facts, figures, and data into my initial pitch. The dragon's would surely appreciate numbers, right? So I practised in front of Sam.
He was so kind and patient.
Sam essentially said: “huh... uh huh... okay I mean... good... start... except just delete this, this, this and this.”
Basically everything. Just redo everything.
....Okay that's not entirely true, but that's how it felt. He said forget the numbers, that stuff will come out in the Q&A part. He said focus on why people buy swords, how they feel when they hold them. Okay. Great. That's easy, I thought. I trusted the producer was not tricking me. I pretty much deleted what felt like 95% of my pitch and just went with why people would buy swords.
As April rolled around, Sam had scheduled a film date for me. It was mid-May. I had about one month left before my pitch. At around this time, CBC also asked if I could do a sword demo on the show before my actual pitch. I said yeah, I can perform with katanas but they thought it would be better to get two other people, Andy and Shane, from a local martial arts school, HNIR Toronto Kenjutsu Kai. They were extremely motivated and choreographed a short fight segment to showcase our products.
I met the two of them in person for the first time on the day of the pitch. CBC gets you to just drop off your products and everyone who is not performing or pitching has to leave the premises. My partner, Johannes, was unable to accompany me even though he helped drop me off that day and helped unload the products. Instead, he wished me luck and spent the next few hours at a Tim Hortons nearby, super anxious for me.
Andy, Shane and I were ushered into a cement grey, backstage area. We immediately saw what looked like an undergarment company and a hockey-related company congregating in the open space.
One of the questions I get asked is, do you get to talk to the other companies waiting to pitch? The answer is no, not really. CBC segregates us somewhat so that we only get to see two other companies in the waiting area (and no, I did not see the infamous Bobba company at the time when I was there). CBC didn't explicitly tell us to not talk to each other, but that's what ends up happening out of respect for each other. I could tell the others were practising, going through their pitches. I didn't want to disrupt them.
I got a general time of when I should show up for my pitch, but we don't know our actual order of who's going when. In broadcast, there's the inside joke “hurry up and wait.” So for about 2-3 hours I was sitting around, playing with swords that were supposed to be a part of my display. Luckily, I had Andy and Shane to talk to, but they were mostly going through their demo choreography. I was actually just on my phone working, sending out emails. At one time, I remember CBC started going through what we should expect. Sam came out to check on me and was like, “Laura, are you even paying attention?” Because I was on my phone. I said yes, don't worry, Sam.
Sam looked worried.
It was my time to go up. CBC asked me in advance how I would like the swords to be displayed. They took the display away and had staff to set it up for me. I was asked to stand behind a giant curtain while Andy and Shane did their 30 second demo and then a stage hand ushered me out. Andy and Shane weren't allowed to see my pitch, so everything that happened that point forward was between me, the Dragons, and the CBC crew that filmed that day.When I walked out, the first thing I noticed was that the celebrity Dragon was not Ryan Reynolds, Ryan Gosling or Keanu Reeves. It was Simu Liu. A wave of excitement washed over me seeing him sitting there, in person, in a dapper beige suit. As one of the four celebrities I guessed it could be, it was an extremely happy surprise.
Simu Liu's demo with a sword from Fire and Steel, Image courtesy of CBC.
Simu Liu is one of those Hollywood celebrities that I've always felt closer to in a six-degrees-of-separation type of way. I've heard a lot about him over the years because we're both around the same age, involved in the Asian-Canadian community, and he grew up in Mississauga, a suburb of the Greater Toronto Area. I have a friend who is a family-friend of his, another close friend who went to school with him for six years. Simu and I both trained wushu kung fu under the same sifu, Alan Tang, who is currently the stunt coordinator of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Netflix show. Over the years, his name kept being brought up and the connections kept coming.
The other Dragons for this season include Arlene Dickinson, Michele Romanow, Brian Scudamore, Manjit Minhas, and Wes Hall. To say that each of them are impressive is an understatement. Each Dragon deserves their own article. Their wealth spans venture capital companies, beverage empires, junk removal empires, among others.
When I first walked out, the Dragons all reacted by saying “okay you're not what we expected.” They probably thought the company owner would be older, probably male, probably a bigger guy. Not a younger Asian woman. They commented that they liked the confident way I strode in.
In truth, I was so nervous! But I was ready.
My actual pitch was about 1 minute long and focused on how it feels to hold a katana sword, like I practised with Sam. I talked about when you hold a sword, you get to feel like a hero for a day, you get to feel a piece of history or pop culture in your hand. What you see in the final edit is probably only 1 line from my actual pitch. It's the line about everyone having a warrior spirit.
I asked for a 10% equity stake in Fire and Steel Inc., in exchange for 1 million dollars. The Dragons collectively balked. They thought I was insane. I stood my ground confidently and nodded.
You always end the pitch by saying, “Okay Dragons, I'm now ready for any questions you may have...” which essentially is the start of an hour-long dissection of your business. The Dragons ask you a really specific gauntlet of questions about the company, your financials, your motivations.
My Q&A ended up being close to 2 hours, which is probably way longer than anyone anticipated. I'm told most people only get 1 hour. As I said, you don't have a choice over what they decide to include in the final airing... anything and everything you say is fair game.
I was expecting the Q&A part to be the scariest part of being on Dragons’ Den. In truth, the most surprising thing for me is that I found the Dragons to be super approachable. I think doing conventions for the past 10 years really helped make me feel comfortable talking to random people from all walks of life.
When I started the Q&A, I started by saying, “Hello Dragons! Hi again, Arlene.” She was like, “Hi again? I'm sorry?” She was confused. She didn't remember me and that was understandable, given she must have met thousands upon thousands of people in the past 10 years. Arlene looked as if she hadn't aged a day. She is the ultimate vision of a boss-lady, someone that businesswomen everywhere could look up to.
I explained to Arlene I was on Canada's Smartest Person 10 years ago – it was a game show-style program on CBC evaluating multiple intelligences, including visual, social, musical, mathematical intelligence, among other types of intelligence. As you were scored on each type of intelligence, a pie graph fills up. The higher your score for a type of intelligence, the bigger your piece of pie for that particular category.
Arlene was a guest judge for evaluating social intelligence. I told the other Dragons, I did not win the show, but not only that... Arlene gave me zero for social intelligence. According to Arlene's score, at the tender age of 23, I was completely and utterly socially inept. I won't lie, this is something that I laugh about to this day in a tragic-funny sort of way. The rest of my intelligence score was just fine, but my entire social pie was missing, both hilarious and sad at the same time. I told the Dragons this and we all shared a laugh about it. I said it was a very humbling experience. I've had 10 years to learn and grow as a person and I thanked Arlene for being a part of that experience.
It's very rare you get to meet someone of Arlene's caliber not once, but twice in your life at very critically different time periods. It was an honour to be in front of her again. She said to me something along the lines of, “A nuclear physicist. I always knew you were a smart cookie.” Those kind words meant so much to me.
After that they asked me, why swords?
Image Courtesy of CBC.
I explained how my parents had lucrative careers in China and Hong Kong, my mom in sales and my dad as a technical draftsman. They left these jobs to give my 3 sisters and I a better life in Canada. When they came over here, they started in odd-jobs working in the Chinese restaurant industry, before eventually landing their full time jobs. My mom worked in the packaging department of a pharmaceutical company and my dad in Canada Post.
I told the Dragons proudly that my sisters and I all ended up graduating with university degrees in highly technical fields. I got a job in the nuclear sector, but I knew that that wasn't my true calling.
Growing up I watched a lot of martial arts films and action movies. I really loved martial arts, but my parents were fairly traditional and told me girls don't do martial arts, they do dance. In any case, though we weren't poor by any means, we certainly weren't rich enough to afford things like dance classes or art classes, let alone martial arts classes. It was all a moot point. All those things needed money, and we didn't have that kind of money.
I told the Dragons about how as soon as I started making my own money when I was in high school, I signed up for martial arts classes. Of various types. I've tried karate, taekwondo, kendo, krav maga, but the one I truly fell in love with was wushu kung fu. This is the type of martial arts you see in movies like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and more recently, in Marvel's Shang-Chi.
I told the Dragons I've always believed that whatever you do, commit to it fully. Do it well. Learn from the best. I looked up the best wushu kung fu school in Mississauga: Sunny Tang Martial Arts. The main instructor is Alan Tang, who is a world champion kung fu stunt actor, who choreographs stunts in Hollywood movies like Shang-Chi. I wanted to learn from the best. I wanted to learn from him.
I threw myself into it. I was training sometimes 3 hours per day, 5-6 times a week. The training schedule was intense. There's a lot of acrobatic kicks. And one fateful day, I did a jumping crescent kick and I heard a crack in my knee when I landed. I landed with my leg straight down, knees locked. This is the absolute nightmare scenario for any martial artist or dancer. This meant that the force of the jump could not be absorbed upon landing.
In that moment, my ACL tore. My time in wushu kung fu was over. I was told I would never get my splits back, I would never be able to train the same way again. This was devastating.
Fire and Steel Inc. was my way to feel connected to the martial arts I knew and loved.
I told the Dragons how I founded it back in 2012, but for about 6 years I was doing it alongside my full time job in the nuclear industry. But something never felt right, it felt like I was meant to be somewhere else, to do something else.
Simu asked me what my parents think of me quitting a job as a nuclear physicist to sell swords.
I told them the story of how I told my mom when I was quitting my full-time job. How I knew she was super upset because she cleans when she's upset. She was vacuuming, and vacuumed the same spot over and over again. I've never seen a carpet that clean. She was so angry. She could not understand how I could justify leaving a stable, reputable job for a life as an entrepreneur. She was likely thinking oh my gosh... I'm going to have to support my daughter until the day she dies. No one will buy this stuff. Laura is going to be homeless.
All the Dragons laughed. I felt then I was just talking to my friends. They didn't feel like scary Dragons to me.
Image courtesy of CBC.
This is something the CBC staff members later commented on. They told me I was so casual with the conversation, and the Dragons seemed so comfortable talking to me. That was apparently rare for them to see.
They then asked me more hard-hitting business questions. Sales revenues, inventory numbers, sales projections. Nothing was off the table. They asked me profit margins, manufacturing details, supply chain questions. I told them about how we are monetized on social media, we sell online but we also sell at conventions and at our shop in Mississauga.
The Dragons asked me about conventions, and what brings people to buy swords at all.. I explained that sometimes swords are for display, sometimes it's for cosplay and sometimes it's for collectible reasons. They asked me to explain conventions and cosplay.
I said firstly, you might think it's adults in Halloween costumes. Manjit said that's exactly what she thought it was...
I said it's not. That's a misconception.
Cosplay is a type of expression, just like how some people express themselves through dance, visual art or music. Cosplay is like art that you wear and for a day you get to feel like a star, all eyes on you and celebrating you! Whoever you are. That is beautiful and wonderful. I said comic conventions are oftentimes the places where people of all walks of life can feel safe, because it's okay to be a bit weird, geeky, and have fun.
When you buy a sword, you are not buying a sword. You're buying an idea. You're buying the concept that sword embodies. And in that sense, I said, when you understand this, you can understand our customers better. Our customers are not buying swords, they are buying what the swords represent.
I was speaking to the Dragons with passion. I could tell I was starting to reel them in.
I said my time as a physicist helped me be a better business person, because you need to take a mathematical and data driven approach to decision-making. I told them I knew I was the right person to run this company because I understand our customers, because I am one of our customers. I am a proud geek!
Though I felt confident with what I was saying and the answers I was giving the Dragons, it was this strange concoction of confidence with nervousness. I felt like this came across in the aired version when I interrupted myself to say something along the lines of “sorry, I'm a bit at a loss for words right now because I'm standing in front of Simu Liu.”
I made a personal connection early on in the pitch to Simu, because I brought up that we trained under the same kung fu sifu. So we started to talk about our training, our childhood, and he was so easy to talk to and extremely charming. It got to the point where the other Dragons were saying “you guys, this is nice and you guys are bonding but we're still here you know. We're still trying to do a show.” That's around when he said his comment about how we're two kids from the 905 and I was like his twin.
When it became clear after I was answering all their questions about my financials and facts and figures, Manjit cut in and asked me a very direct question. She said, “How do we know you're going to continue to grow? What amount is in your bank account? What amount is in your bank account right now?”
As I said, no question is off-limits.
I answered her honestly, which is something that will be between me and the Dragons. It was an amount that made their collective jaws drop.
It was enough for Manjit to slam her notebook down on the floor in complete shock.
She said “Guys, why are we even here? Laura doesn't need us. She doesn't need funding.”
I said good question.
Michele agreed. Why was I there?
If I just wanted money, I could go to the bank and get a loan. I'm obviously not at the bank.
I recalled back to my story about how when you do something, do it well. Learn from the best. When I went to wushu kung fu, I learned from the best, to be the best. To run my business, I wanted to learn from the very best.
They are the best.
I said what was way more valuable to me was their knowledge, their guidance, their connections. That to me is worth way more than 1 million dollars.
They fell silent.
Wes was the first to offer me 1 million dollars in exchange for 10% stake in Fire and Steel. That was exactly what I asked for.
One question I get asked is why I didn't take the first offer right away. After all, as I said, it was exactly what I asked for in my pitch. I think at that moment, I had an out-of-body experience and I was in a state of shock.
While I was still trying to process what just happened, the other Dragons seemed interested in making offers of their own.
Without missing a beat, Simu said he thinks he can help me with licensing deals with Disney and Marvel but before I could even respond properly, he turned around and said “Guys guys, okay it's clear that Laura wants to work with me.” At this point he gets up and stands beside me and you see that part where I'm further shocked, asking, “what is happening?”
What you don't see in the final version that is aired on TV is the following crazy exchange.
Simu added, “I want you all to explain to me and Laura why you deserve to be a part of this deal.” All the Dragons turned around and said, wait, can he do this? He can't do this!
The format of the show suddenly changed.
One by one the Dragons took turns, from their seats, pitching to us why they were the right fit to partner with Simu and I. Michele said she had experience with e-commerce and marketing, Brian said he has connections with comic conventions, Arlene and Manjit said they have marketing experience. And Wes at that point said that the dragons are DRAGONS.
If you're pitching to Laura, then it means that Laura should be a dragon, not the other way around. Laura is not a dragon, he explained evenly.
That was when Wes said the line about my fellow dragon's being desperate, so he'll let them have it. He said he offered me 1 million for 10%, but it was clear I was here for someone else. He was out.
In the end I chose Simu and Michele because Michele had that background in e-commerce and Simu seemed confident in helping me gain licensing deals. For me, that was worth paying a little bit more to get two dragons on board.
However, when Simu asked for 15% in exchange for $1 million, that was something I did not expect. I considered walking away. But in the end, Michele made a valid point. She said: Laura, if we grow Fire and Steel to 100 million dollars eventually, will you really care about those few percent?
As I said, this was a valid point. I paused and considered what they were saying. On one hand I wanted to be cooperative, but I wasn't going to let the Dragons dictate the final amount. That's not the type of relationship I wanted. I asked for 12%.
They agreed. Hands were shaken.
The entire experience had so many ups and downs.
I'm happy it finally aired so I can talk about it.
After the airing, I've been flooded with messages of support from friends, family, fellow convention attendees, and customers! I get asked all the time why did Arlene cry? What was it that made her say I'm unique, because that was unclear from the footage that was aired. I'm not Arlene, so you would have to ask her for her actual answer. I personally think it was a combination of several things:
Upon closing up the Q&A, I thanked all the dragon's for the wonderful experience. I said they were all so great and inspiring. I actually didn't even want to leave the room!
After you walk out, CBC deconstructs your product display and leaves it back in the same waiting area. I was so pumped and riding such a high... Sam came out and congratulated me for how well I did. Sam confessed to me he wasn't expecting it to go so well. He said it was the best pitch of the season for him. I had other CBC staff members telling me that was the craziest two hours they experienced.
My partner Johannes was waiting for me downstairs, and I went outside in shock. He was bracing for the worst. When we closed the van door, he said, “are you okay?” I was stunned, mouth gaping still.
“It was amazing,” I said. “It was amazing.”
As I said, there are moments in time that feel a bit like a blur.
In the months that followed, you go through a due diligence process to finalize the deal which can take many, many months. As of writing this post, we are still in the middle of this process.
Around October, I was told I would be in episode 7, airing Nov. 7.
We booked a public watch party at the Cineplex Junxion, extremely last minute. I honestly imagined no one would show up. I was so pleasantly surprised that friends, family, fans of ours on social media, my bank advisors, and even crew members of CBC showed up to support us! When I was watching the episode, I was so anxious because even though I lived through the experience already, I didn't know how it would be edited or how other people would receive it.
The first thing I noticed when my segment aired was that many parts were cut down for time.
Image courtesy of CBC.
Andy and Shane's performance was completely cut out, and I was devastated on their behalf. This is one of the things I'm most sad about being cut from the final edit. Those two worked really hard to choreograph the sequence, practised it and performed it in front of the Dragons. The first people I messaged after the episode aired were Andy and Shane. I expressed my sadness and said I wanted them to have their moment in the spotlight. They told me they were sad about it, but understood that we knew we didn't get to choose what was cut or left in the final version CBC aired. Nonetheless, I am still grateful I got to experience the process with two people who began as strangers, and ended up as my friends.
Other than that, I thought what aired was a fair portrayal of what happened, albeit a shortened version.
As of writing this, I have slept very little. My phone has been blowing up with messages of support and I'm so grateful. People are so kind and uplifting. My thumbs hurt from responding and I don't even mind, but I realized that I should write a post in hopes that it saves me from answering the same questions on everyone's minds.
If you've somehow made it this far, I wanted to take this moment to thank everyone for taking the time to read this. They do say no one can achieve success alone, and that's extremely true. Though I was alone when I pitched that day on Dragon's Den, I felt the weight of all the support I've received from everyone around me: my wonderfully talented team at Fire and Steel Inc., my friends and family, my advisors, mentors, supporters, social media followers. Every person who takes the time to read this post. Every person viewing one of our videos. Every person who greets us at a comic convention. Every person who held open a door for one of our team members. Every person who has smiled and brightened our day. Every single person matters so much and helped create the solid foundation leading to this point.
And that includes you. Yes, you. You, the person reading this post.
The simple act of reading this post means that you have become a part of forging the greater story of Fire and Steel Inc., one cog in the giant machine that keeps chugging towards the future.
I don't know where our story will next unfold, but I'm truly excited to share this with you. All of you!
-Laura
Leave a comment