BCBusiness

36 B C B U S I N E S S . C A A P R I L 2 0 24 UNDER UNDER Jastej Choong Prab Mangat running digital ads and handling social media channels. For Wang, it's a win-win—interns gain valuable expe- rience, but also provide vital insight on trends, tech and even slang. Slay. B O T T O M L I N E : Since its founding in 2019, Tiny Planet has grown to a team of eight and taken on 18 post- secondary students as interns. The company's offerings include digital marketing consulting, social media strategy, email marketing, influencer outreach and more. To further break down barriers for small businesses, the company hosts a sustainable growth contest that offers a prize of $5,400 in marketing services to organizations that are aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. –A.H. JACOBO LOPEZ CHAVEZ Age: 26 Vice-president of finance and operations, Black Tusk Research Group; co-founder, Arc Biosystems L I F E S T O R Y : Jacobo Lopez Chavez never thought he'd go to university, let alone work in health care—he just wanted to start his own busi- ness in Mexico City. "There are people that do what they love and then people that learn to love what they do. I always thought that I was going to work in a 'boring industry' or something that didn't necessarily nurture my soul, but I would learn to love what I did," says Chavez. It was a co-op opportunity in 2018 with Vancouver-based Black Tusk Research Group ( BTRG) that changed his thinking. The site management organization specializes in clinical trials: it helps health authorities and B.C. universities with coordination, project management and regulatory support for academic and pharma research. At the height of the pan- demic, BTRG helped local hospitals and long-term care facilities perform COVID rapid testing. "It was really cool to have a direct impact on something that was affecting the world, and an incredible feeling to have my work be reflected in something that could help a lot of people," says Chavez. Chavez graduated from UBC with a commerce degree in 2020, then became BTRG's new VP of finance and operations the follow- ing year. It's a sensitive business— "you have to cross every t and dot every i," Chavez admits—but it's also highly rewarding. In fact, in 2020, he was able to launch a spin-off company, Arc Biosystems, with BTRG CEO Lynda Lazosky and chief medical officer John Boyd to work with firms on pharma research directly. B O T T O M L I N E : Arc is currently working with three pharma companies around the world. BTRG, meanwhile, has scaled from five to 40 employees since 2018 and partnered with 10 pharmaceutical companies in that same period. Its research spans 10 illness types, including respiratory, endocrinology and neurology. –R.R. JASTEJ CHOONG and PRAB MANGAT Ages: 24 Co-founders, Generateagentleads.com L I F E S T O R Y : High school friends growing up in Surrey, Jastej Choong and Prab Mangat had dreams of being a physiotherapist and an emergency medicine physician, respectively. Then they stumbled upon real estate marketing. "We scoured the internet and started getting into marketing as a service," recalls Mangat. "We knew some real estate agents—started working with them and helping them with their marketing." The duo started Gener- ateagentleads.com in 2018. That year, they brought in low five figures in revenue. By the next year, they were in the high six figures. By 2020, the company had worked with some 1,000 real estate agents and was raking in seven figures in annual revenue. Eventually, they started licencing their platform. "A lot of our [realtor] clients would say, 'I made a lot of money with you guys, I'd like to do what you're doing,'" says Mangat. "At the time, we didn't know if giving that away was a good idea, but we decided to go into the licencing model—sort of like franchising, but a bit different." Choong and Mangat trained their clients to become coaches for other realtors and, voila, a new arm of the business opened up. "A lot of it is e-learning—we sell courses and consult," says Mangat. B O T T O M L I N E : The Surrey-based company has worked with over 2,000 clients and is on track to hit eight figures in revenue this year. The company has 16 employees. "We want to start acquiring companies, particularly our clients' companies," says Mangat, "and teach them how to build a business using our frame- work. We're looking at getting into that space, ideally."–N.C.

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