Episode 295 · 23 April 2026 · 52:17

295: $30M to $2M in 18 Months: How to Lead When Everything Falls Apart

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The $30M to $2M story: A warning and a deep learning period
interview#startup-failure #business-lessons #entrepreneurship
The origin story: A Toronto basement and a cannabis problem
interview#startup-origin #cannabis #entrepreneurship
Building the business while still being students
interview#student-entrepreneurs #building-business #early-startup
The hockey-stick growth: $1.5M to $30M in 12 months
interview#growth #scaling #startup-success
The unpaid labour of younger brothers and recruiting Kira
interview#unpaid-labor #family-business #hiring
The management gap: 'We're gonna get into it'
interview#management #leadership #organizational-structure
Therapy, coaching, and investing in yourself
interview#therapy #coaching #personal-development
Slow down to speed up and the deep learning period
interview#acquisitions #slow-down #learning
The 'right' team: Kieran finds his own replacement
interview#team-building #hiring #succession
Purpose balance over work-life balance: Losing his dad
interview#work-life-balance #purpose #grief

Show notes

$30M to $2M in 18 Months: How to Lead When Everything Falls Apart

Truth, Lies & Work — Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott sit down with Aedan Fida, CEO of Blade Air, for one of the most candid founder stories we've ever hosted. From sleeping in his car to build prototypes in a Toronto basement, to a $30 million revenue peak, to watching 93% of it disappear in 18 months — Aedan shares what it actually feels like when the company you built starts falling apart, and the "deep learning" that came from leading through the collapse.

Top 3 Takeaways

The people who got you here won't always be the people who get you there. Growth demands different skills at different stages — and sometimes the most loyal team members are the first to recognise they're becoming the bottleneck.
Slow down to speed up. When revenue dropped from $30M to $2M, Aedan's instinct was to push harder. The real turning point came from coaching, therapy, and building systems — not grinding.
Stop chasing the goalpost. "When I close this deal, then I'll be happy" is a trap. Aedan learned the hard way that the life you're living now is the one that matters — not the one you're postponing for.

Connect With Us

Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect

Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14

Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.

Full transcript

Expand full transcript

Leanne ElliottToday's episode contains some strong language and conversations around controlled substances and bereavement.

Al ElliottAedan Fida's company turned over $30 million in 2021. By 2024, that was down to $2 million. And somehow that's not even the most interesting part of his story. Hold on, did I get this right? You said $50,000, $1.5 million. Did you go $1.5 million to $30 million in 12 months?

Aedan FidaYep. We're going to get into the mistake period, or not really the mistake period. That's not fair. We'll call it the deep learning. And so in 2023, we did $10 million in sales. In 2024, that number dropped all the way down to $2 million. So 2021 is $30 million. 2024 is $2 million. And so we just are struggling here. The pressure from the different sides. Trying to balance that pressure while keeping your eyes clear and straight ahead.

Leanne ElliottAedan is the CEO of Blade Air, Forbes 30 Under 30, EY Entrepreneur of the Year, and one of the most honest founders you'll hear talk about what it actually feels like when the company you built starts falling apart.

Al ElliottToday, he tells us how he went from sleeping in his car building air purifiers to a $30 million company, to watching his revenue drop off a cliff. And what leading a team through that actually looks like. But did he give up? Of course not. This is Aedan Fida we're talking about. He rebuilt and had the humility to learn the lessons and rebuild Blade Air so it's poised to revolutionize the industry yet again. Do not bet against this man.

Leanne ElliottMaybe you're a founder, maybe you work for one, maybe you're thinking of becoming one. Either way, what Aedan shares today is the stuff most founders only admit in private. If at all. Hello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Lianne and I'm a Chartered Occupational Psychologist.

Al ElliottMy name is Al, I'm a business owner, and we are here to help you simplify the science of work. Our guest today, Aedan Fida, is the CEO of Blade Air, a Canadian clean air technology company. He's He started it in a basement in 2017 with his brothers and a business school friend, building carbon filters for cannabis growers. By 2021, he had a $20 million school board contract— not for growing cannabis— 25,000 square feet of manufacturing space, and a team that had managed to scale building 50 units a week to 1,250. And then the pandemic ended.

Leanne ElliottWhat follows is one of the most candid accounts of founder life we've heard on this show. The acquisitions that nearly broke them the moment revenue dropped 93%, the employees he held on to for too long, and the lessons he only understood after losing his dad.

Al ElliottSo after this quick break, we're going to go right back to the beginning. A Toronto basement, a cannabis odor problem, and 2 students with absolutely no business starting a manufacturing company. The dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.

Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all. Every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.

Al ElliottNice. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

Aedan FidaI am the CEO of a company called Blade Air. And if I might be famous for something, it could be the Forbes 30 Under 30, could be EY Entrepreneur of the Year, could be Globe and Mail 5th fastest growing company. However, if you ask me, what I'm most known for is my eyebrows. Makes it really hard to forget my face.

Al ElliottBest answer we've ever, ever had. I love it. Look, I want to take you right back to, I think it's going to be sort of around about the beginning of 2017. From my You were working in the tax office at the time and Blade was just a thought in the back of your head. Tell me the story. How did Blade come into existence?

Aedan Fida2017, second year of university and living downtown Toronto with my older brother Joe. He is going to what is now known as Toronto Metropolitan University, then known as Ryerson for chemical engineering. I'm going to Schulich School of Business for business. And going back to the eyebrow story, in case you couldn't tell, I do have an Italian heritage as well as the British one that we previously discussed. I grew up down the road from my grandparents, and Joe, being the eldest male child in my family, spent a lot of time there. And so when we were in university, the way that he used to cope with the stress of engineering was to grow plants. Started out normal, some cherry tomatoes, some cucumbers here and there. And as the stress of engineering got harder and more, the plants he started planting got weirder and weirder. We're talking, couldn't open up a closet without seeing cherry pits germinating in plastic baggies. And so very quickly realized that in Canada, we don't have enough heat and light to grow tropical fruit plants. Looked into buying a growth locker, which at that time was most commonly used for cannabis, and saw the price tag, said, screw that, I'm an engineer, I'll build my own. And during that design phase, he realized the inefficiency with the carbon filter. And the carbon filter was used for odor control. And he was looking at this like, what an inefficient solution. Called his friends who were growing other tropical plants. at the time who needed the odor control and said to them, hey, what is this? Why do I want it? What's going on? And is there something better? They said, you absolutely need it if you don't want your parents and the cops to know. And no, there is nothing better. It's just been this way for the last 20 years. This is the most common solution. And so he looked at that and said, well, screw that. I'm an engineer. I'll build a better one. And that's when he came to me when we were living together, knowing that I had always had a dream of being an entrepreneur. Our dad was an entrepreneur and said, hey, I have this great idea. Is this something you'd be interested in looking at with me? And 2017, cannabis legalization for recreational use is right around the corner from us. And we know that all of these new facilities that are getting licensed are going to have huge regulations that they need to adhere to. And so we know that there's high potential already without even really digging into this. And at this time, I'm in my second year, and my best friend from business school, Giancarlo, who just so happens to be our other business partner, he and I had already been looking to start a business together for over a year. So I said to Joe, sure, there's one more person I want to bring into this. And really, that's how we got started, was the idea of the world's first zero-waste carbon filter. focused on efficiency, logistics improvement, and as a baseline, better air quality. And the company has always been focused on the idea of impact, sustainability through the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit. And that's how it really got started. Not where we are today, nowhere close. However, those are the true origins. Cannabis odor control.

Al ElliottI was gonna ask you whether, so it's legal now to grow cannabis for yourself in Canada?

Aedan FidaYeah, up to 4 plants at home.

Al ElliottSo we're gonna come much more into the future later on, but just to give people a taste, how has it changed from 2017 to 2026?

Aedan FidaWe don't really sell carbon filters anymore. We still work in odor control, funnily enough. Uh, however, what started with, uh, in-room purification and, and odor control has now transitioned to, uh, whole building energy efficiency solutions through HVAC filtration.

Al ElliottWhat were the What were the businesses you were looking at before this? You said you were considering opening another couple.

Aedan FidaWe were looking at cleaning services. We were looking at building this type of realtor website for students trying to find housing and anything and everything. For us, it's always been about building and never— and being about entrepreneurs and what that means to build something meaningful and impactful rather than the specific solution itself.

Al ElliottBasically, you, Joe, Giancarlo, you're all like, right, cool, we're building this thing. You're a year in. Are you still in the basement or have you got premises?

Aedan FidaOh no, no, we're still in the basement. We're students. Come now. 2017 to 2019 is really when we were all still in school doing this during our summers, using all of our, like you said, when I was working for CRA, using all of the money that wasn't going to living expenses, getting pushed into the company. And one piece of advice for any future entrepreneurs out there, If you are a student and have absolutely no money, don't try and start a manufacturing business right away. It needs capital, especially if you wanna build a domestic product. And so 2017 to 2019 was our money and any little savings that we had, and $85,000 in non-dilutive funding raised through pitch competitions, grants. And fortunately, there were quite a few opportunities at both York University, Schulich, and Toronto Metropolitan that we were able to leverage that gave us a little bit more momentum, gave us a little bit of that early capital to build some prototypes, get some IP, attend some trade shows, and start building some interest around what we were doing. So 2019, we all graduate, and we raised $350,000 from investors in a friends and family round or an angel round, whatever you want to call that. And we started working with a local contract manufacturer, so didn't have to get our own space and waste those investor dollars. The basement was great. You had good cell phone service. There was some natural light that came through the small windows up top. What else could you be looking for in a startup? And we, 2019, we brought in our first round of inventory and really started building up this momentum that we had kind of collected from 2017 and 2018. And brought that right to a head in 2020. And that's when we had our really big inflection point because the pandemic hit, cannabis markets completely bottomed out. All of our pipeline basically disappeared overnight. Projects were canceled, they were put on hold, commitments were pulled back. And so even if our pipeline didn't entirely get erased, we had absolutely zero confidence in delivering anytime soon. Because people just didn't know what they were going to do. And that's when we were put into this position of really trying to decide, do we double down on this carbon filtration or do we lean into the ethos of what we were trying to build, which was focus on efficiency, focus on logistics and waste reduction, improved air quality. And again, really going back to that concept of triple bottom line, people, planet, profit. And those kind of key value elements as a result of it. And we chose the latter and just lent in that way and brought air purifiers to the market that were locally built, trying to be a part of the solution to the pandemic, trying to create local jobs, service the local community with our technology, and create this kind of cyclical effect to help people come back to work. Really, the idea started with, we need our clients to go back to the office so we can sell them more carbon filters. It didn't end up like that. However, that was the original intention.

Al ElliottWhat do you mean it didn't end up like that?

Aedan FidaWe did exactly what you're told not to do in marketing class. We're like, well, we want people to buy our, our cannabis clients to buy our HEPA air purifiers so that they feel safe going back to the office. And they didn't end up buying them. Because the markets tanked on them. People didn't realize that it was going to be the most successful years for cannabis that we had ever seen to date because they were just sat at home smoking weed all day. That wasn't really the early understandings of the pandemic though. And so we asked ourselves, well, who can use this technology? Well, everyone can use this technology. All the businesses are closed. Let's target everyone. Waking up at 4:00 AM, walking down Yonge Street, which is one of our main streets here, plastering. And we had these accordion-type folders where if you were a church or a worship center, if you were a dentist's office, if you were a small business with a retail center, you were a quick-service restaurant, we just changed the logos and the messaging a little bit and put a different flyer on your door. We started cold calling after that. And we did have a good idea at one point after that terrible idea that didn't work at all. And that was to target private schools. We're like, hey, these people are going to care. Those parents are going to care. What are they doing for air quality? And that's where we really started to see that early success in what we were doing there. Started delivering to private schools and then was able to transition and leverage that into driving success within the public school sector, which is really what kind of lit a fire under what we were doing there and helped us to scale very rapidly. For some context here, in 2019, we did $50,000 in revenue in carbon filters. In 2020, we did $1.5 million in air purifiers. And then in 2021, we grew that up to $30 million leading into 2022, where we did $25 million. And we did get our own place in 2021. That's when we officially moved outta the basement.

Al ElliottHold on, did I get this right? You said $50,000, $1.5 million. Did you go $1.5 million to $30 million in 12 months?

Aedan FidaYep. Honestly, it was a lot of luck. A lot of luck. And luck to me really means when opportunity meets preparation. And what we were doing at that time was building air purifiers, sleeping in our cars at our manufacturing partners to build air purifiers nonstop. And the agreement that we had was, I said to Giancarlo, listen, we can't all be building air purifiers all day. You are much more of a people person than Joe or I. And you're a great salesman. You go hammer the phones for the first half of the day, and then we'll build units, and then you come back and join us. So we keep on track of what we're trying to do and we don't lose momentum and opportunity. And it was truly Giancarlo's persistence that drove this opportunity for us because the first major contract that we got was with one of the local school boards where they came in, looked at what we were doing, wanted to support young entrepreneurs, wanted to support a business that was building in the local community to give back to the local community instead of buying something that was frankly being shipped in from China or somewhere else in Asia. And because our technology was meeting the same standards, if not higher standards, with better airflow and better ventilation rates while also being incredibly price competitive, They said that they wanted to take the chance on us and gave us that first opportunity. And that was in 2020. And that drove a significant portion of that $1.5 million. In 2021, then we ended up winning a $20 million contract to install 7,000 lights over 7 months. And I remember so distinctly being sat at one of my employees' condos. And we had this ongoing joke where we're like, if this works, you know, you gotta project manage that, right? And she went, if that works, don't worry, I'll project manage that. And then 2 months later, it's like, you said that, you remember that, right? You now have to project manage this. And it was just this incredible journey of exponential growth simultaneously while delivering this monstrosity of a contract. for doing an induct technology and actually doing the single largest retrofit to a school board in North America, 260+ locations, 7,000 lights over 7 months, $20 million contract value. We were still pushing our air purifiers, and we went from building 50 air purifiers a week and pulling an all-nighter once a week to building a team out of people around us That scaled our production capacity from 50 units a week to 1,250 units a week. And so we just, we outgrew that first space from 2021 that was 2,500 square feet to by the end of 2021, moving into a facility that was 25,000 square feet. And it was just nonstop go. It was incredibly fun. It was exciting. It was challenging and very stressful. However, just so rewarding to see everyone pushing and the growth that we were able to attain and being able to deliver something to the market that we were truly proud of. And it was the air purifier sales that actually drove the 2022 revenue number up to $25 million again.

Al ElliottI wanna go back to this first employee. Was this the same employee who said, I will project manage, but you, Define first employee.

Aedan FidaAre we talking free unpaid labor that happens to be your younger brother, or are you talking paid employee? Because if it's paid employee, yes, it's probably her. And she's still with us today. Her name's Kiera, and she is phenomenal. Phenomenal.

Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast, that's us, by the way, and the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both We actually have a lot in common.

Al ElliottWe both use behavioral science to help people do better at work.

Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.

Phil AgnewAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good looking.

Al ElliottAnd you're not gonna say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s— the HubSpot Podcast Network.

Leanne ElliottThe audio destination for business professionals.

Aedan FidaSeamless. Seamless.

Al ElliottTell us about your latest episode, Phil.

Phil AgnewWe've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.

Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good show. Of course, course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?

Phil AgnewIt can.

Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?

Phil AgnewI am.

Al ElliottGo and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.

Leanne ElliottBut come back.

Al ElliottYeah, come back.

Phil AgnewDefinitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back.

Aedan FidaI'll cut that.

Phil AgnewKeep that in.

Al ElliottTell us more about Kira. She, why did you, why, how did you recruit Kira?

Aedan FidaThis is where I reflect back on my life and I truly think that I have been just so fortunate because the connections that I have made and where those connections have taken me. And so it was the friend of an investor. It was, sorry, it was the niece of the friend of an investor in our business is how we got introduced to Kira. She had been working as a kind of an entrepreneur within a recruitment agency and was headhunting in hospitality, and hospitality took a worse beating than cannabis did during the pandemic, especially in the early days. So she was looking for a career change. She had exceptional sales skills. She was exceptionally hardworking. And she really helped to start give us a little bit more professionalism, push us a little bit more to be more focused and aligned, and was the type of first employee who you absolutely need because she was willing to do anything and everything for the business. You want her to go and build units? She said, I'll go and build units. You want me to sell this? I'll sell that. You want me to sell this? No problem. We need to take on this task. You need me to project manage a 260-school deployment? with 2 different types of vendors on something that I've never done before? Yeah, I'll execute that flawlessly for you. It's just that type of commitment and the growth that we've seen from her as the organization has continued to grow over the last years has been incredibly rewarding because she really does embody that ownership mentality that we ask for. The next hire truly was actually paying my younger brother. He had just graduated from school at this point, and we needed to build out production capacity. And he started doing that for us. And again, echoing the exact same sentiments towards him as I do towards Ciara, just an exceptional attitude of ownership and making it happen. And we needed people who were going to help us build without needing us to be there to do it for them. And so his own growth has been truly exceptional, and that's been an incredibly rewarding experience for me as well. Hiring him and then hiring honestly more friends and family to the production side because we needed people we could trust. We weren't built out to handle that type of revenue. We didn't have the financial structures in place to truly have the type of management that you would expect for a company at that revenue. And so we needed to have absolute trust in the people who we were working with. And that led to us hiring a lot of people who we had grown up with, people who we could trust, and people who we knew were going to be hard workers and help us push towards that ultimate vision. A lot of them have transitioned out of the company now and are pursuing careers more aligned to their own passions. However, a lot of them were early grads during the pandemic and recent grads during the pandemic and were struggling to find work. And so They saw what we were doing, saw that we had an opportunity where they could help us out and get paid for it. And it just became a mutually beneficial exchange as employment should be.

Al ElliottWas that tough seeing people from the early days leaving the business to go and do something else?

Aedan FidaYes and no. As I've focused on growing myself as a leader, my attitude on this has changed quite a bit. In the early days, watching them leave was really hard. Now I look at like how Reed Hastings from Netflix kind of talks about employment and it's like dating. It's dating, not marriage. We're here to have a good time. We're here to help each other grow and achieve great things. And at the end of the day, if it's a long-term relationship, great. If not, let's both move on and be better for it. And especially right now with where the business is at, as we come back into a new phase of scaling, I'm really trying to adopt more of a mentality towards what the business needs first. I held onto part of the mistakes that you're talking about is I held onto employees for too long, especially when we had years after those huge success years, we had very, very poor years. And part of that learning process was learning to let people go sooner because I needed to prioritize the business need and the business health for the benefit of the many. rather than preserving my own feelings of trying to help out one or two individuals who I knew the organization no longer needed. It was that idea of chasing, trying to create opportunity, and when that opportunity wasn't being created, not pulling the plug fast enough and ultimately causing more damage to them and more damage to us while doing it. And that has been one of the biggest learnings and takeaways that I've had over the You mentioned just a little while ago, you said we weren't quite ready for management structure.

Al ElliottSo did that come a little bit later, having all the management, the traditional management stuff?

Aedan FidaOh my goodness, Al, we're going to get into it. So my entire full-time employment is limited to internships as a student and then running this business. I had never built a team. I'd never run a team. I'd never managed a team. And I'm very much of the attitude of, you were hired to do a job, do your fucking job. Like, it's that simple. I'm not— if you were hired to do the job, if you're asking me to do the job, we got problems on that front. And that's just to the idea of delegation and not being a micromanager because it's— you were hired to alleviate headaches, not cause them. And I have no interest in doing your job. You were hired because you can do it better than me. You tell me what to do in this situation. And so that was definitely one of the hardships post-pandemic. Pandemic was not a problem because the revenue was constantly there. All we needed to do was execute on opportunity. We didn't have to go hunt for it. It was out there. It was readily available. We didn't have to create new. Post-pandemic, as we Started transitioning out of that, looked at our technology lineup, weren't happy with where we were, needed to bring in our own induct technology for whole building solution. 2023 through 2025 was, was that really hard learning period. And that traditional management structure that you're talking about, we had created a leadership team, we had assigned roles. However, the goal setting and prioritization and management and future planning, those were the key elements that were missing. We had functional leaders, we had sales, we had engineering, we had operations, and all of that was more of that day-to-day. It wasn't really that forward-looking side to things. And that's what was the most exciting part of 2024 was when I started doing Started investing in myself a lot more as a leader and started trying to be more forward-looking. We had just completed an acquisition, our first tuck-in in 2023, and we were planning a second one already in 2024 to take complete and total ownership of the supply chain and manufacture of the new technology that we had bought the IP for. And that's when we started using a system called the North Star, Operating System, which is from my CEO coach, Scott Chisholm, and the Highland community that he started. And I'll give a shout out to Scott here and to any entrepreneurs listening to this who are looking to take that next step of growth. I highly recommend this program. It has been the single best investment I have made in myself as a leader to create clarity, create structure, create operating rhythm and flow, And give my team conviction and confidence in what we're doing, where we're headed, and why we're headed there.

Al ElliottSo we've got North Star in place. You're investing in yourself. Just real quickly, tell us, how did you change as a person or as a leader before Highland and then after you?

Aedan FidaI see a therapist weekly. I work with an executive coach, Rob, who is phenomenal and highly recommend as well. And I really was focused on stress management, reframing, and trying to find different ways to approach problems. It's all been about mindset. And that's what Highland is too. It's mindset. It's not giving you a prescriptive program. It's giving you tools on framing and ways to think about your business. And my business partner, Giancarlo, he had always been into self-development. He was always reading these these books. And candidly, I used to be a little bit scornful of it, and I used to poke fun at him, like, How to Make Friends and Influence People? Like, what are you reading? And now I can't stop myself. I devour content. Here's the best thing I've learned. We rise to our ambitions and we fall to our systems. How are we continuously investing in ourselves to make sure that we are not the bottlenecks to the growth of our business? And that was the question I needed to answer for myself. How am I not going to be the bottleneck to this business? And the answer was continuous development, a commitment to development. And that attitude is really what changed things for me, was just having that realization that I either needed to get out of the way or I needed to move faster. I did not want to get out of the way. I wanted to be a part of the solution. And so my biggest mindset change has really been focused around this idea of abundance instead of scarcity and how you attract things and resiliency. We have been through some incredibly tough periods. I've been through some very hard times with investors getting frustrated that we didn't pay out dividends during our successful years because we knew that we were going to go through a period of relearning and growth and wanted to leave the capital in the company. And listen, I wanted a dividend too. I'm one of the largest shareholders. I benefit the most. And we made those hard choices and made the sacrifices not to take those things for ourselves and to focus on the business needs. And because of those sacrifices, I didn't want those to go to waste. And that was kind of a key element is We needed change. As the leader, I needed to be the one to drive that change. And so I just chose change.

Al ElliottSo you didn't wanna be a bottleneck, so you either get outta the way or you speed up. I think most people would, most entrepreneurs are sped to 110% already. So how did you manage to speed up?

Aedan FidaSlow down to speed up. I have this conversation with entrepreneurs all the time. We need to get out of our own way. And this is going back to that idea of abundance versus scarcity. I don't have enough time to invest in myself. I don't have enough time to do this. I don't have enough time to do that. No, we have the time. We have 24 hours in a day. We got lots of fucking time. It's how we choose to invest that time that matters. And that has been a huge learning for myself as well as I don't have time for this. I don't have time for this. I don't have time for this. No, own your choices. Extreme ownership from, from, from the mindset of we make our own choices and we have to be responsible for them. How I choose to invest my time is ultimately a reflection of what I prioritize. Do I prioritize the long-term and do what needs to be done for the business and investing in myself and investing in the business's continuity and future? Or do I invest in the immediacy of the business? And there has to be balance. Of course, it's finding that balance. That is the real struggle for entrepreneurs, because I wake up at 4:00 AM, I go to the gym, I start work at 6:30, and I finish work at 6:30 most nights because I put a firm line in the sand. Well, firm. line in the sand so that I can give myself a few hours of decompression, cook dinner, spend some time with my girlfriend and my dog, and then go to bed and start again the next day. I don't believe in work-life balance because when you're an entrepreneur, that idea becomes so hard to understand and to justify, and it actually just creates more confusion and feelings of frustration. At least for me, it did personally. And so the way that I've reframed that out is purpose balance. How much of my time is spent doing the things that I love versus how much of my time is spent on bullshit? And if I can have a really good balance, then I have a great life.

Al ElliottHow often do you get the balance right?

Aedan Fida2026 has been great. 2025 was a huge progression. 2023 and 2024 were fucking awful. That's where that idea of chasing constantly came from. 2024 is when I really started taking that investment in myself more seriously. It's when I started in Highland, got that framework for, for really clarifying the vision, the mission, the values, the 20, 10, 5, 3, and 1-year goals, how to create goal structure with YGOs, OKRs, whatever we want to use, call them, how to set up your meetings and create this operational flow. Just constantly this idea of kaizen, one step forward, one step forward, one step forward, one step forward, instead of trying to, to Accomplish the end goal. Focus on the next step. The end goal will come. Focus on the next step. It's still a hard lesson to accept. It's stop chasing, be present, because if you chase, you're going to spend your whole life chasing. And a big part of that balance to the point was choosing happiness now. I had to, instead of looking at these goals that I had for myself and hitting those goals and then setting the next target right after it, it's, I'm going to enjoy my life Right now, I'm living the dream that I set for myself as a kid, and I and I wasn't taking the time to appreciate that. It was constantly when I hit this level of success, I'll be happy. When I hit this level of success, I'll be happy. When I close this next contract, I'll be happy. And the goalpost is constantly fucking changing. It's just taking that step back to appreciate the fact that I get to live my best life and my dream life every single. day while still pursuing those long-term goals with intention, focus, purpose, and joy in my life and joy with the people who I get to share that with too.

Al ElliottSo let's just quickly talk about your acquisitions, because if I've understood this, then you are essentially taking 2 companies and folding them into Blade Air. That doesn't sound like it's going to be particularly easy.

Aedan FidaWe're going to get into the mistake period. Or not really the mistake period. That's not fair. We'll call it the deep learning. A personal mantra is no regrets, only lessons. We can't go back and change the past. We can learn from the past. And if we aren't learning, then what the hell was the point of the mistake? And then we're getting no benefit from it. And it's just going to be something that we have to live with. So 2020, at the end of 2022, by mid-2022, we saw the pandemic coming to an end. People were told they could take their masks off. And then if you tried to sell air quality after, let's call it July of 2022, people basically told you to get out. They did not want to talk to you. They did not want to hear from you. It was way too sore of a point. And now we're starting to see air quality come back. And then in like December 23rd, 2022, it was like the last day that we had our offices open. It's like, 6 o'clock at night or something like that. I get a phone call from the founder of that business who says that basically they're in a spot of trouble with one of their existing investors. Would we be willing to invest? Because they know how happy we are with the tech. And I look over at Giancarlo and I go, no, we wouldn't be interested in investing. We would be interested in buying it. And so we purchased the company in 2023. Completed that acquisition and holy hell, that one was like pulling hairs. How many frustrating afternoons we had. And this comes back to small business owners and the value they see in their own business versus the value that's actually there. And I'm sure I'm guilty of it myself to an extent. It's all passion. It's all good. It's all passion. It's all love. It is extremely frustrating to deal with in the moment though. And We purchased the IP. They don't really have any significant clients at this point because they were still a startup too. So we purchased IP, we purchased margin, and we purchased the potential of a few deals that they have in pipe. And the single largest shareholder of that company just so happened to be the manufacturer of the technology itself. And so 2023 was just an asset purchase agreement. We only took one of the staff members over. Everybody else was let go. So the integration was was relatively seamless. 2024 represented a much larger challenge in the acquisition front. And basically the company Inerico, as they were previously known, Inerico Environmental, the owners came to us and said, we believe in what you guys are doing. We love the vision that you have for the technology and where you want to go. CleanAir AI was our succession plan. We would love to bring you on as the succession plan now. And so we start negotiating, and in 2024, we buy the manufacturing. Now, this is a mom-and-pop shop manufacturer. They're doing like, they actually have clients, they're profitable on their own, they're doing not bad. However, they didn't want to invest the time and energy to scale it to the degree that we did, and they were ready for retirement. So they said to us, like, this is why we want to give you this platform and this opportunity. And so that represented a much harder acquisition because of having to integrate all the systems, integrate all the people, go through this deep learning process of removing information silos, removing information dependency on key individuals within that organization, all while trying to maintain and introduce a new culture. The staff there, absolutely phenomenal. I think we actually had 100% retention of everybody from that team, and we're still operating just with improvements now. And again, going back to that idea of deep, deep learning, it was truly immersing ourselves in their operations, getting to understand the ebb and the flow of the business, the way in which they were building, and then going back and assessing that and That idea of kaizen again, how do we make small improvements, small refinements, improve profitability, improve unit throughput? Because the existing manufacturing process is, is not going to work for what we want to achieve. And while managing these 2 self-funded acquisitions, we absolutely shit the bed on revenue. We had no idea what it was going to take to introduce a disruptive technology into a mature industry. We're looking at the results, 75% fan savings, 225% improvement to air quality. You have to be crazy not to install this. Well, people did not install it. And the way that we kind of bring it back is to liken it to high tech. When you introduce new and disruptive technology, you need to find your innovator clients who are willing to test new stuff. who want to be a part of the future, who want to try new things. And so we, in 2024, going back to this learning process, finally start figuring out the process of how we want to do this. And I actually relied very heavily on the book Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore to understand this process. And so find our innovators, turn them into champions, champions into early adopters. And in 2025, it took us 3 3 years really to get this right, to really figure out that who's buying, why are they buying, what are their motivating factors, and how do we need to, what do we need to leverage to drive that success? We spent 3 years building social proof. We spent 3 years continuously demonstrating the same results of 15 to 40% HVAC efficiency improvement, which translates back to 6 to 18% whole building efficiency improvement. We built out ROI calculators, we did paid pilots, we did unpaid pilots, and we did everything we could to keep building our brand, keep building momentum. And it's this constant struggle, right? You're burning through your cash that we stockpiled from the early success and trying to manage the risk of completing 2 self-funded acquisitions while also losing money. And so in 2020, 3, we did $10 million in sales. Most of that was driven by the replacement HEPA filter orders. And 2024, that number dropped all the way down to 2. So 2021 is 30, 2024 is 2. And so we just are struggling here, the pressure from the different sides, trying to balance that pressure while keeping your eyes clear and straight ahead and This is where I say like, you have to be willing to invest and digest and learn faster because if you fight against the truth, then you're fighting against yourself and you're fighting a losing battle. And 2025, we pared back a lot of the team and really just focused on who is buying, why are they buying, what are their motivating factors, following with curiosity the traction that we had. We thought it would come from education. It didn't come from education. Our ideal customer profile is the person who is responsible for delivering energy efficiency savings. It was that simple. And people need the time to accept that for themselves, come to understand how and why. And that's where the educational component of what we're doing has become really quintessential to our success.

Al ElliottTalk to us about your team, Right now. So you said, unfortunately, in the last 18 months, you have had to make some layoffs. Where are you up to with your team right now? Who's there? What's Kira doing?

Aedan FidaSo Kira is our VP of Biz Dev. Giancarlo, my business partner, is our Chief Revenue Officer. So he's really working that with her while also managing revenue operations, managing customer success, managing marketing. And so where we're at today is we have a very, very strong team. Kieran, my younger brother, he is still with us as well. And this was an incredibly proud moment for me as both a boss and a brother for him was he came to us last year recognizing the growth trajectory that we were on and said, I'm not your guy. I don't have the experience. I don't have the knowledge and I do not want to be the bottleneck and I can't learn fast enough. We need someone who has done this before. And he went out and started a search to find his own manager. And that, that was so rewarding to have that because as we talk about startups and scale-ups, who got you from 0 to 1 isn't going to be who gets you from 1 to 10. And that's not going to be who gets you from 10 to 100. And in most cases, it won't be. And again, I'll go back to this. This is mine and Giancarlo's first real business other than, you know, the Schulich Cigar Club. which had 2 members, he and I, and had 3 meetings. And so what we're really focused on right now is we have some incredible people with us. We know we have some skill gaps that we need to keep filling and keep growing because that product market fit validation that we got last year has now gave us the confidence we need to go to market and scale. And that's the next phase and that's the next chapter. And so we're looking at who can help continue to develop our younger management team. And is it an advisor? Is it someone who is going to get placed above them and they can chase out of a job and learn under? Or what does it look like? And that's the real question we're asking right now is the team is growing, the talent pool is growing, and the requirements are taking a step forward. And that, that's a hard part of the, the, the navigation is you want to keep the people who have been loyal to you and who have given you loyalty and who have given you dedication and, and, and execution through the past while also helping them to understand that they need someone to help guide them because Giancarlo and I don't have this experience. We haven't scaled a company before. We can't tell them what they need to do. We're still learning ourselves and, and we need leaders who are able to identify what the company needs based off of the goals that we've agreed to and execute on that independently and come to us and say, hey, here's what needs to happen in order to drive this success. And this is going back to that delegation thing is it can't be us. We can't be the only people that doesn't scale. We need people who are forward-looking, who are visionaries and who understand what needs to happen. And we have a lot of that in our team. Kira is absolutely crushing it right now. Kieran and Wayne, they're absolutely crushing right now. The revenue team is operating at a level we haven't seen. Our engineering team is operating at levels that we haven't seen before. And so it's really about how do we— AI is something new that we're introducing to the company. It's new to the world. So how are we managing that? Who's leading that? Who's driving that integration?

Phil Agnewcreation.

Aedan FidaAnd again, who's gonna help us to reach those next levels of scale and market success?

Al ElliottTalking of people who've been there and done it, you alluded to at the beginning that your dad was an entrepreneur. So we've got, what's your dad's name, by the way?

Phil AgnewMike.

Al ElliottSo we've got Mike, Joe, Aedan, Kieran. I know that 3/4 of those people are amazing people because you've just told me all the things that they've done. Tell me more about Mike. What was— how did he inspire you? What would Mike think of where you are right now?

Aedan FidaSo I lost my dad in 2023. Oh, I'm sorry. It's— we got 8 extra years. He had a severe brain aneurysm 10 years ago now. And when he passed away in 2023, those were 8 extra years that we truly felt that we were lucky to have. My dad inspired me from, from a young age to be an entrepreneur. And I really hope that he would be proud of where we are today. And I know he would be. He told us many times before he did pass away how proud he was of everything that we had done. And to give you context, my dad was the first one to say, don't be an idiot. Don't start a manufacturing business. You have no money. What are you doing? And then as soon as I graduated school, had no income because we weren't pulling salaries off that $350,000. He said, okay, here's your monthly stipend, go make it fucking happen. So this is what he's saying up here, and this is what he's doing down here. And when we did push forward, he gave us the learning lessons. Watching my dad was inspiring to see how he cared about his customers and how he built trust. He worked in the automotive industry as a service center, and it's a renowned industry for for being untrustworthy. And my dad's customers, the way that they spoke about him to me and the way that they told me how he was such a good man, such an honest man, such an honest business owner. And then aside from his customers speaking about him like that and seeing how he genuinely cared about them and wanted to help them, to his staff members where it's literally known as like the band of misfits. He wanted to give kids who were struggling in school, who had, you know, like weren't necessarily the most academically successful or had stuff going on at home. He gave all of them chances and he became like a dad to all of them. And his staff, some of them who we still have the family business, they've been there for more than 20 years and they looked at him as a father too. And so the way he treated his staff, the way he treated his clients, and cash flow was king are the 3 biggest lessons that I'll forever be grateful for from him. And the final one is post-brain aneurysm. It was this idea of focus on what really matters in life.

Leanne ElliottMm-hmm.

Aedan FidaAnd that learning that I talked about earlier with regards to that purpose balance, It wasn't until I lost him that I truly understood what he was talking about. And, you know, like, that, that's where that idea of, of, uh, lessons, not regrets, it comes from, from losing him. Because I have so many lessons that I learned in losing him, of him saying, hey, go home, Mike, you're not going to fix this problem today, go home. And me saying, like, be quiet. I'm working like I need to get this done, of being so focused and so tunnel vision and scarcity lenses, right? You can't see anything else around you. To someone who had the perspective of he worked himself into an early grave, the stress, the smoking, that's what gave him the brain aneurysm. And then having that ability to pull back and in the last 8 years of life truly focus on what mattered to him— experiences, family. Um, spending time with loved ones. That, that to me was the big one of, of purpose balance. And that was a lesson that, uh, it unfortunately took losing him to, to really accept and understand.

Al ElliottThat was Aedan Fida. And in 295 episodes, this is one of the most real conversations we've had on this show.

Leanne Elliott3 takeaways for founders and anyone who leads people. The people who got you here won't always be the people who get you there. And that's okay. Aedan's brother went and found his own replacement. His first employee, Keira, grew into a VP. The goal isn't loyalty for loyalty's sake. It's building a team that's honest enough to tell you the truth about what the business actually needs.

Al ElliottAnd secondly, slow down to speed up. When revenue dropped from $30 million to $2 million, Aedan's instinct was to go harder. What actually turned things around was doing the opposite. He invested in himself. He got a coach, he got therapy, and he built the management structures he'd been too busy to create during the good years.

Leanne ElliottAnd lesson 3, Aedan said it himself, getting into that thinking trap of when I close this contract, I'll be happy. When I hit this number, I'll be happy. Purpose balance over work-life balance. Be present for the life you're already living.

Al ElliottBlade Air continues to grow successfully and amazingly, and you can find more of it at bladeair.com. And we'll obviously link to Aedan's LinkedIn profile in the show notes. I hope you've enjoyed this story as much as we have, and it is ultimately uplifting. It's honest, it's heartbreaking, but it's also so massively inspirational.