With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1501233
34 BCBUSINESS.CA JULY/AUGUST 2023 3 3 UNDER C L I N T O N L A R G E AGE: 29 Founder and CEO, Large Tutoring Inc. LIFE STORY: Before travelling to Costa Rica last summer, Clinton Large made a six-page spreadsheet to plan out the trip. "I don't think I've always been entrepreneurial, but I think I've always been good at organizing and logistics," he says. Providing evidence to his claims of being "very Type A," Large recalls, in high school, arranging a protest against budget cuts in Mission's School District No. 75. And, in his final year of undergrad studying applied science at UBC, he organized the inaugural National Engineering Month Gala, raising some $8,000 in scholarships for gender diversity in engineering. After working as a tutor for nearly three years, Large launched his own business in 2020. His first student was his mentor's son, who hated physics before meeting Large. "I would go over once a week and help him for about an hour, and then we'd have dinner together. And that was my payment," Large says with a chuckle. That student ended up earning a gold medal for academic achievement. With classes ranging from high school math, science and languages to university-level courses, Large Tutor- ing serves everyone from elementary kids to post-secondary adults, many of whom are struggling with learning disabilities like ADHD and dyslexia. As a queer small business owner, Large feels compelled to create safe spaces for his students and 24 employees. To establish a trusting environment, he begins his classes by asking students to share something fun from their week that has nothing to do with school. His business offers sliding-scale options to people with financial difficulties and Large himself dedicates around one to five hours in pro bono services every week. BOTTOM LINE : Large Tutoring projects revenues of $220,000 for 2023 after bringing in $150,000 in 2022. According to Large, its online and in-person lessons (which are charged hourly) have been able to help 400 students across B.C. and Ontario earn spots in reputable universities like UBC and the University of Toronto. –R.R. S A R B P U R E W A L AGE: 29 Vice president and chief operating officer, Seven Horses Transportation Ltd. LIFE STORY: As a kid, Sarb Purewal was always curious about what his father was up to. Growing up in Langley and Surrey, he saw his Punjabi immigrant dad start out as a truck driver and work hard to build his transportation and logistics company from the ground up. "I was always able to see his weaknesses and strengths and would try to see if I could be his partner in crime or something," says Purewal, who started working in the family business at nine years old. Some of Seven Horses Transportation's oldest employees still remember Purewal doing payroll and administrative work first as a child, and then as a teenager, when he would work before and after school to help his dad out. Despite hearing warnings about family businesses, Purewal came on board straight out of high school. "It's only hard to work with family when you make it hard," he maintains. The company rebranded from Davinder Enterprises to Seven Horses in 2010, with one of Purewal's first steps being to automate many of the company's processes. As an asset-based company, Seven Horses owns all trucks, trailers, facilities and properties related to the business. As VP and COO, Purewal backward-integrated the supply chain by developing warehouses and outdoor spaces where clients can store product. That move oiled the company's systems well enough to accelerate growth in a margins- focused industry by attracting big international clients. Now, as a group (aside from its land-development arm, Pure Develop- ments), Seven Horses is generating $40 million from sales. BOTTOM LINE : Since 1999, Surrey-based Seven Horses has grown from a team of 10 to over 100 employees. It runs a fleet of 100 trucks and over 200 trailers, and has two additional arms of the business: Pure Developments to develop large-scale industrial land for business use, and Campbell Heights Warehouse and Storage to help high-end clients (like Walmart) to store product. Some of Seven Horses' biggest projects include developing the Lafarge Exshaw plant in Alberta and the Walterdale Bridge in Edmonton. –R.R.