Reinventing Mining Through Electric Rail with Aaron Lambert

Reinventing Mining Through Electric Rail with Aaron Lambert

Kelly Kennedy: Were you ever afraid?

Aaron Lambert: To be honest, yes. Yes. As as, as an individual in my young twenties, never being in a mine before, I walked into some of the, some of the most dangerous mining experiences that you can actually to work on the deeper you get into a mine. And even here in Sudbury, we have some fairly deep minds with a lot of ground activity, seismicity.

And which that means is the ground stress build up. And at some point that energy has to release, so you actually have rock that blows out almost like an explosion.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more. This is the Business Development Podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. In broadcasting to the world, you'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs. And business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business, brought to you by Capital Business Development Capitalbd.ca.

Let's do it. Welcome to the The Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 316 of the Business Development Podcast. And today it is my absolute pleasure to bring you Aaron Lambert. Aaron is a mining technology innovator and entrepreneur. As the CEO and founder of RIINO Inc.

He has taken a bold step forward to redefining mining efficiency and sustainability with the development of RIINO's groundbreaking electric rail haulage system, combining deep operational expertise with a passion for innovation. Aaron has worked internationally to implement cutting edge mining technologies, driving real change in an industry that has long relied on conventional high emission methods.

His vision to create a future where mining operations are not just more efficient, but fully aligned with global decarbonization goals. Now with RIINO securing significant funding and industry support. Aaron is proving that bold ideas backed by strategic execution can reshape an entire sector. His electric rail system isn't just another mining innovation.

It's a revolution in how we extract resources, cutting emissions while maximizing efficiency. The mining world is shifting, and Aaron Lambert is at the forefront proving that the future of mining is not just electric, it's unstoppable. Aaron, it's an honor to have you on the show today.

Aaron Lambert: Thanks for having me Kelly. I really appreciate it.

Kelly Kennedy: Me too. You know, we were discussing before the show, this show I'm really excited about. Really excited about because as somebody who has essentially worked in supporting industries to the mining industry in Canada for, you know, grand portions of my career, it's something I'm very, very passionate about.

But it's also something that in 316 episodes. We have not talked to anybody about the Canadian mining industry, so I'm really excited to learn more about you, your background, how you ended up on this, this wild path, and you know, what is the Canadian mining industry even like for the listeners who maybe this is their first introduction to it.

So, uh, once again, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on this show. Take us into this, take us all the way back to the beginning. How did you end up in the mining industry, Aaron?

Aaron Lambert: Yeah. Really it has been a journey, I grew up in a small town, northern Ontario, where there was a lot of mining industry.

Um, a lot of mines locally and, and the town that I grew up in was right beside a mine. There's been that, that was the place that my grandparents had moved over from Europe. Um, back in the post World War War 2, I took the train where there was no highways in or out, and the town was built around a mine.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Aaron Lambert: So for myself growing up, I was always. I grew up around miners. I grew up around a mining town and I was never involved in mining. I never had a desire for mining. I didn't really think about it too much, but as, as I went to college and I started my endeavors on the engineering side, I realized this isn't what I wanna do.

It's. No, I, I was always more of a hands-on person growing up as a child, you know, working on toys or working on my bike and always doing things hands on. And, uh, a few years into the working field I realized that I wanna do something different. And I took a job opportunity here where I am now in Sudbury, which is a, a large mining hub in Canada.

There's ma major mining companies here and, and lots of mines. Um, they've been mining in Sudbury as well for over, over a hundred years for fair. A and that's where I got sparked. And I, this is what I enjoy doing. It's either, you know, mining or you don't from looking from the outside in. You don't understand what mining is.

But once you're in mining, it's almost a different world. There's different terms, there's different language essentially when you're talking about things or how things are done. So it became a part of me and my life and it was something that I enjoyed doing and, uh, yeah, really working hard at it.

When I walked into the industry, I, I started off you know, as a technician and worked through the roles of supervision and really understanding the insides and outs of the whole mining process.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Yeah. It's, um, like you said, from the outside looking in, it's. What are they doing right? Like how are they, how are they doing this?

You hear about the mining industry all the time, right? Like Alberta, same thing. Coal. Coal, mine, heaven, like every small town pretty well, had a coal mine here. Once upon a time. Many of them, or, uh, if not all of them are shut down at this point. Every time we go to drum Heller. We always do the Atlas Mine tour.

The boys love it. I think it's just a really cool experience to see how things were in Canada because Canada was built on mining.

Aaron Lambert: That's right. And, and so if you've ever been underground on a tour or something and, and you walk in these tunnels and you look around and if you actually stop to think about how did they build these tunnels?

Well, they've never, always been done the same way. If we look at a hundred years ago, um, they didn't use the same equipment. The mining methods were different. They didn't have the technologies we do today. Over a hundred years ago, actually, even here locally in Sudbury, they used mules to move the haul cars, the, uh, the train cars underground.

They never had vehicles with tires and ramps. The, the processes were different, but over the, the decades that there was new technologies implemented and the mining methods changed. So now over, over that course of period the way mines were built was adapted to the technologies that are available.

So that improved a lot of processes, made things safer because there was more technologies and you didn't have to be as hands on. It's more mechanized. So we entered the mechanized area between the, the seventies and eighties where, you know, safety started improving. We didn't have as many fatalities or, or injuries, um, because mining is very dangerous, right?

It's a very dangerous, changing those mining methods to accommodate those technologies. The mine itself is built differently, but the cost to mine also increased. So there's also other hurdles there to extract the, the essentially the cost to build a mine anywhere depending on, on the mine itself, but potentially could have doubled in cost compared to what would've been just because of the mining process.

You're excavating more rock for bigger equipment. So yeah, it's really, mines are built. The tools that you have available?

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Well, you know, you've been in the mining industry for 2 decades, right? Like, walk us through it. Um, how is, you know, for our listeners who this is their very first introduction to mining modern day mining.

How do we mine today? What, what does a Canadian mine look like?

Aaron Lambert: Yeah, essentially the goal of any mine site is we know it's not a forever thing. It's really we have the critical minerals or, or that we're going after, and it's how do you get to those, those deposits to extract that ore that we're looking to get.

Um, so there's a few things in the planning process is how long is it gonna take there and what's the cost and is it viable? And that's essentially you, then you develop a plan to get there and to execute it. So even when I started almost two decades ago here locally in Sudbury as a miner, hands on really every day you go underground and you drill and blast, and that is advance a little bit at a time to keep moving forward.

At that time we were actually developing underground twice as fast as we do today here in. The reason for that is the changes in the equipment as the larger it gets, the larger the tunnels get, the more ground infrastructure you need to support that rock over your head. So that process becomes longer you know, there's more safety protocols involved, and that's all built around the tools that we're using.

So the, the cost of mining has gone up significantly as well in the past 20 years.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Wow. So, so we're, you were faster when you started 20 years ago.

Aaron Lambert: That's right. And what's, when I had started I was learning from the miners, the old school miners, what you would call old school miners, where there wasn't any safety and they weren't hard and they broke ground, which means they came in, they drilled and plastic drilled and blasted, and they actually developed faster than we do today.

Wow. They knew the old school techniques to use minimal tools and do the job well.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. It is amazing sometimes how that old knowledge, uh, can sometimes bring a lot of value, especially if you're trying to be efficient at things. Mind you, just the Canadian way, right? We just put our heads down and we get it done, don't we?

Aaron Lambert: Yeah, that. That's right. That's right. Do what you need to do and get it done.

Kelly Kennedy: That's right. That's right. Man. I can tell you like as somebody who has never truly been in a mine, not, not underground, like I've seen them from the outside, but I've never been in it. I know for me, I think I would start to freak out a little bit after getting underground man.

Like I think I would be genuinely afraid of like a cave in or a collapse. Talk to me a little bit about that. Were you ever afraid?

Aaron Lambert: To be honest, yes. Yes. As as, as an individual in my young twenties, never being in a mine before, I walked into some of the, some of the most dangerous mining experiences that you can actually to work on the deeper you get into a mine.

And even here in Sudbury, we have some fairly deep minds with a lot of ground activity, seismicity. And which that means is the ground stress is build up. And at some point that energy has to release. So you actually have rock that blows out almost like an explosion.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, wow.

Aaron Lambert: And that can happen at any occurrence where you, you have seismicity and the ground is banging, like shotguns are going off underground.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh wow.

Aaron Lambert: Dust is falling and people are running. And those old miners, those old school miners would say, you don't need to run because there's nowhere to go. You just. You just go back to the safe areas because you don't wanna get hurt running for no reason either. Right? So, yeah. Some of the areas that we've gone back into underground here had collapsed and, you know, even had buried people.

So mining safety is, is a big topic these days on how do we mine safely and how do we improve things? But on the other hand, how do we do it economically? How do we make mining viable at the same time?

Kelly Kennedy: Wow, so, so, so mining is, is gen genuinely still very dangerous? People still end up in, in mine cave-ins?

Aaron Lambert: Yeah.

It still happens today. It does. Um, not just here, you know, in Canada, but globally. It's not something that we hear a lot about, but it does happen very frequently.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Like I, I don't think it's been a long time since I've heard about a mine cave in on the news. I remember like, cave ins and caves or things like that.

Like it wasn't that long ago. Those kids got trapped in that cave. Right. That's right. And then Elon Musk even like sent help down to help get them out, but you don't typically hear it in mines, which I, to me, they're either not talking about it or mines are getting considerably safer.

Aaron Lambert: No, it's, it's, um, yeah, I mean, it's all part of the mining process, right? And that's what we're here to do is to improve the, those processes.

Kelly Kennedy: What, um, what types of mines do we have in Canada?

Aaron Lambert: Um, there's both open pit and underground mines. A lot of critical minerals and also precious metals as in gold and, and other, uh, minerals like that. So there's, there's a, a wide. A variety of different minerals here in Canada.

Kelly Kennedy: What's the, um, what's the difference between an open pit, mine and, and uh, essentially an underground?

Aaron Lambert: Open pit are excavated from surface only, so that's where the large pits are created. You have to take a lot of material out to follow that ore vein or deposit to go as deep as you can.

And the underground mining is where you have an underground access tunnel or a portal and you, you excavate. Or, and the ramps to get to the or. Everything is done from underground.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Okay. Why would somebody choose one way over another?

Aaron Lambert: It's really dependent on the ore deposit itself. What's that structure?

What's the grade of that ore material? Is it high grade or low grade? And it comes down to those early feasibility studies, understanding what's the viability of the line, how do we execute developing it?

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Okay. Today, obviously RIINO is gonna be completely changing the way that we extract minerals, get it back up and down, uh, get people down and minerals up.

I imagine you know, run me through this. How are we doing this today? And, you know, where did the idea come from for this?

Aaron Lambert: Well, that's where the story starts, right? There's always a story behind something or innovation. Um.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Aaron Lambert: So mining itself is logistics. You've gotta move material in or you're moving material out.

And the biggest part of the logistics is rock material because we're drilling and blasting rock to either get somewhere underground or to bring that or material up. So really for myself, with my past experience building mines, I was actually involved in a project here for in Sudbury where the initiative was rapid development mining, and that was about 10, 12 years ago.

So I went to the project to lead the constructability of, of a system that was supporting that rapid development process. And the ability that we had was we, we were not using the large haulage trucks, we were using a smaller size equipment and we actually had smaller tunnels. So we were kind of replicating what was happening, you know?

Small tunnels, but we were doing it on grade, on an elevation. It wasn't flat. And the rapid mining development part, um, we actually started achieving rates, uh, that were four times faster than we do with tunnels that are large for, for large haul trucks. So that part, the project was very, very successful.

And that was really was just a pilot project. So taking those lessons learned and carrying that through to working with other real innovative technologies in the mining industry, I realized that there's more that could be done here. There's something that can be done for the mining industry, but it has to be figured out.

But there is potential.

Five years ago was when I decided to really start thinking about this a little bit more and putting, you know, some thoughts on paper and, uh, that's when really the, the journey began.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. So talk to me a little bit about this, because obviously we've been doing mining a certain way. You mentioned, you know, there's a big shakeup in like the seventies and eighties, and I imagine we've been doing it fairly similarly since that time.

I guess, what was the recognition for a major shakeup? Like, you know what I mean? What you're doing with RIINO isn't like, isn't like a small innovation. It's, it'll change mining forever. Like, and I know like sometimes that's, it's a big idea. Bold moves, you know, change the world, but like. What was the moment for you where you're like, you know what, like we're doing it this one way and it's working, but I think we could be doing this a thousand percent better.

And not only that I'm actually gonna take action because I think that's, a lot of people have great ideas. Aaron, come on. Ideas are easy. What you've done with RIINO, taking an idea as groundbreaking as RIINO, and in five years turning it into a feasible, real thing. That takes something else.

Aaron Lambert: Yep. Yeah, I can definitely say it is not easy.

I haven't experienced any other, technology development or anything from the ground up, but doing this yeah, it's a, it's a huge endeavor and it's definitely not ex it's not what you expected from the date that you started, as well the very first concept or thought, um, is definitely not what the technology is today.

It's understanding of what your, your goal is set at. And the, the goal that I wanted to accomplish was I wanna have a tool that allows us to do that mining process, that rapid development mining process for underground. How do we minimize the excavation we have to do, how do we make things smaller?

So really just taking, what we have in other industries. If you look out outside of mining, there's many different technologies that can be used anywhere else in the world, right? So, um, looking at rollercoasters for example, they move very fast, right? And if you look at, high speed trains. They use electric energy and, you know, the mining industry wants to move to electrification for, you know, re, re reduce the decarbonization efforts.

So we're working with leaders outside of the industry to implement and integrate these other technologies into the RIINO system to accomplish that.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay, so are you using, you're obviously using an electric vehicle. Is it, is it batteries inside of the card itself or is it gonna be an electrified track?

Aaron Lambert: There's both. So to have a lot of power, uh, you have to have connection to the grid. So if you look at subways and transit systems, they're all connected to the grid. But also mining is very unique and dynamic where we have to have that ability to move off a grid as well. So we do also have onboard batteries integrated to the system.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Okay. Yeah. And essentially, I imagine too, in case of emergency, because at the end of the day, if for whatever reason the power goes out and your people are stuck down in the mine, you still gotta get 'em out, right?

Aaron Lambert: That's right. So we're still able to operate without direct power when there's a power outage.

Yeah. To a certain, yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Okay. Talk to me a little bit about developing an electric vehicle. Like, you know, obviously you're an incredibly smart person, you have great ideas, but it doesn't sound like you came from an electric vehicle background. What has that been like for you trying to, you know, get the engineering right, which we all know is never easy?

Aaron Lambert: For something that's never been done before, I don't think there is a right answer. We haven't found anybody that can, that has the answers because there is no answer. So yeah, just starting from the ground up it's been one step at a time. We first worked through all the, the mechanical design to understand what, what is this capable of doing and how is it gonna move?

And then from there, which we're finalizing right now is all the electrical, the electrical ties into moving the mechanical components. So there's, there's a big mix between the capabilities of the mechanical components and how do we support that with the, the electrical motors and the batteries, and the speed and the power consumption, right?

Everything needs to be considered.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I can't imagine what that must have been like, you know, trying to get the engineering on something, like you said, that's literally never been designed before. You can't even, you can't even necessarily copy an idea. And honestly, dude, that was one of the main reasons I wanted to talk with you today.

First I want you to introduce the world, my world to RIINO. What is it, how is it different from the current way that we're doing this? And then I definitely wanna get into how do you take something this groundbreaking, such a disrupting idea and take it from idea to genuine real product. I, the value in that for our listeners, Aaron, is next level.

And the scale at which you're doing this, I think is maybe some of the best scale in Canada that we can even give an example to, like, it's that groundbreaking. So, for our listeners. We're hearing about RIINO for the first time, which is many, if not all. What is RIINO? How is it different? And then let's get into how do you take it from an idea, step by step into a real thing?

Aaron Lambert: For sure. Thanks, Kelly. Um, so RIINO itself is designed to move. Either material. Obviously we wanna move people and have full mine logistics to move everything in a mine. A lot of those things will happen after, once we validate the technology, the performance requirements and the safety aspects of it. But ideally, uh, the, the biggest benefit of this technology is to move rock inside of a mine.

The cost of moving rock is the most expensive part of mining. Now if difference. Rail technologies or haulage truck or conveyor belts. Rail is the most efficient means of transportation. And that's why we have heavy rails moving a lot of material because it's very efficient, it uses low energy consumption.

And since we're able to incorporate outside of mining, we can use things that are in the market already that has been tested. So really we're configuring these components. So with a typical rail doesn't climb on incline, right? Usually rail is flat because flat, we don't have traction with steel and steel wheels.

We've incorporated rubber drive tires that actually provide the traction forces at any given time, so we can travel at flat rate up to steep inclines and maintain that traction, allowing us to do the design of mine like in any configuration.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Aaron Lambert: The, but also on the other hand is when you build a technology, it has to be able to be incorporated into that application.

So on the the design side it's very modular. It, it can be installed by everybody on site that has the tools on site already. We're creating something that needs different equipment that isn't being used in a mine. We want, we wanna make sure that this can be installed and operated with what's already on site.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. So you're essentially making it very, very easy for existing mines to, to essentially incorporate this technology that it's not gonna, they don't have to buy all this new equipment. They don't have to hire necessarily a specialized company, although I imagine you still come in to consult for the project, but at the same time they can actually, essentially.

Install this themselves.

Aaron Lambert: That's right. From having the understanding of being in a mine and building mines. It has to be built for those miners, the people that operate mines and build the mines to use with what they have and the knowledge they have. So that's the intention of this.

Kelly Kennedy: Talk to me a little bit about that collaboration, because that's actually what it sounds like.

It sounds like in order to make this a reality. You really needed to collaborate with these companies to say, Hey, I'm gonna shake things up, but I get it, because if I shake things up and I don't collaborate with you, it's gonna, it's gonna receive pushback. It may not fit your needs. Talk about, uh, talk about what that experience has been like.

Did you start initially by talking to, you know, some of the leading mining companies in Canada about what their challenges were and then built this? Or did you already have a pretty solid idea when you were going to talk to them for the first time?

Aaron Lambert: Yeah, absolutely. Um, I've talked to a lot of mining companies even very early on.

I spoke to all the individuals I knew and different minds and, and different companies to get some feedback and they were very interested in it early on. But I didn't really have a path of how I was gonna develop this or build this. There were so many unknowns, but they were interested in it at the beginning and a lot of feedback is what would this look like?

So I. I took it under myself to do a feasibility study with a third party engineering firm. Um, I had an animation developed from the 3D models I had built on the computer and that really advanced a lot of those conversations and I started working with the industry and we started getting some good engagement.

And really over the past two years is when we had some involvement and we started getting backing from the industry itself. And that's really what kick started this whole thing.

Kelly Kennedy: That's amazing. So essentially, as soon as this is final, you essentially already have customers lined up from that initial discussion to say, Hey, we're gonna build this.

If we build it, will you buy it? And they're like, yeah, absolutely. We're in.

Aaron Lambert: That's right. But so we are working with industry leaders in the mining industry. Mining is funny though. Not everybody jumps in at the beginning to say, yes. We wanna, you know, incorporate this new technology into our mind because obviously mining is very expensive.

It's, it's millions and millions, hundreds of millions of dollars to build a mine. And if you do it wrong it's a huge failure. So the mining industry is very cautious, and that's why advanced technologies are slower to be integrated into mining. Yeah. But also the miners, the mining companies do understand we have to advance the industry.

So a lot of these leaders that we are working with recognize those opportunities and. We're taking a lot of caution step by step, and we're working with them to ensure that the development of this technology is suited for all their applications so we can mitigate those technology development concerns that we know the criteria we're trying to accomplish, the performance requirements.

So that when we implement this into the first operation, that it'll be successful.

Kelly Kennedy: Mines are really interesting. You know, I spent a lot of time working for a large scale oil and gas maintenance provider, um, who also supplied to mining. And I remember being in those conversations, talking with mining companies and them being like, look like we don't go down, like we don't go down.

If we do go down, it's for the shortest period possible. You know, you're talking about how every single day they're down is massive, massive losses to the company. And so everything with mining has to be done as quickly, as efficiently as possible. The maintenance needs to be done on time, on schedule.

And the funny thing is they're literally located in the middle of nowhere. So logistically, like you said, initially, logistics are super important and some of these mines are, are almost impossible to get to. And yet these things are done so quickly it never ceases to amaze me. How good we've gotten at essentially serving these mines, getting that maintenance done, getting and doing it frankly, in the middle of nowhere.

Um. They know what they're doing when it comes down to logistics, that's for sure.

Aaron Lambert: It is then, and there's a lot of planning that goes behind it. But you're very right. Everything is planned and a backup plan for everything. So if there is a failure it's a lot of money lost very fast. And that's, that's what it's in the industry and really a part of our initiative is the other side of that, to develop a mine.

If we can develop a mine in half the time, we've saved millions of dollars just to develop, you know, the capital cost of that. So.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Aaron Lambert: There, there's a lot of benefit to. Sort of initiative.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Wow. Wow. No, it's, it's incredible for sure. So, you know, I guess the next question that I have is for all of our entrepreneurs listening who, you know, have heard you talk about taking this thing from essentially a napkin into a feasible final product with even customers ready to go on a certain level, walk me through that.

Um, you know, you spent a lot of time in the mining industry, but. You've been a leader of many different companies and organizations along the way, how does that translate into entrepreneurship for you? How did that essentially help you take something from an idea? Because like I said in the beginning, it's one thing to have an idea.

People have ideas every single day. Not many are able to execute and even less are able to deliver something feasible. For our entrepreneurs listening who may be have incredible ideas and they want to emulate what you've done. Walk us through it. How did you take this from an idea into a real product, step by step?

Aaron Lambert: Yes. Um, I think the first thing I'll say is if you're an entrepreneur looking to get into business to develop something, you'll have a different perspective than if you've already done it. There is no straight path forward. There is, you can have a plan at the beginning, but that plan will change you.

From one entrepreneur to another. They all have different stories. There is, there's not one same story. And for myself, I started with I thought I can, develop a pro, well not a prototype, but you know, the concept itself, and get some investors and I'll build this thing and I'll sell it and, you know, I got a business.

It was nothing like that, five years from when I started, the initial first three years were the hardest. It was trying to get that buy-in, that feedback and really get people to, or, or get the industry to really support this. And even after getting that support, I was told, this is the next step you should take.

This is what you should do. And I would do that, but nothing, it wouldn't leap me forward. So it really turned out being one step at a time and every step I had to navigate those hurdles and really. Figure out what to do. So for myself, it was really after I got some mining companies involved to support a feasibility study of what will it take to develop this.

The next step was still unknown. We didn't know what we were gonna do next on how are we gonna engineer this? Who do we work with? As a bootstrap startup, there was no funding to start hiring engineers or engineering firms. So it's, how do we do this? What do I do? What do I do next? I don't have employees.

I'm just in my house. Yeah. So it's, it's months of trying to figure things out, months of connecting with people, putting yourself out there, really feeling uncomfortable every day, doing things you've never done, or, and having those conversations on, can you help me? Can you support me? Um, what do you think I should do?

And, and really being open to feedback. That's really what's helped me along the way.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. And it's not even like, it's a small project. Like at the end of the day, this is, you know, tens of millions of dollars in development in order to, you know, take this thing from an idea on a napkin into a, into a mine.

I think we were talking earlier, you mentioned some of these mines are a hundred million dollars in development, man. Many companies, like you said, are working, bootstrapped, are struggling with, how the heck do we take something that is going to cost something like that from an idea on a napkin into reality?

You mentioned you've done it boots, uh, bootstrapped. You haven't really received a lot of exterior, exterior investment. You did receive a grant, but only just Right.

Aaron Lambert: That's great. That's great.

Kelly Kennedy: Walk me through, walk me through that because for a lot of people, they would look at the dollars and cents on this Aaron and they would say, I can't do it.

I can't. I can't. It's too big. It's too big.

Aaron Lambert: And, and that's the part where you don't look at the, the whole picture. You have to look at it as one step at a time. You have to understand that it's gonna take a long time, and you have to tell yourself, I gotta look at it. What is my next step? I know where I wanna be.

You just have to tell yourself it's gonna take a long time to get there and you can't get frustrated and you can't give up. You just keep pushing through it. And, uh, yeah, it's really navigating those obstacles one step at a time. Now that's the business. And it's the same thing for developing a technology that hasn't been developed before.

When I brought my first partner onto support me developing this technology he's been in the innovative. Development, develop, world as well for his career. And we figured, well, we'll just start with this and then we'll do this and we'll design this. And it doesn't work like that either. Soon as you get into the technical engineering, you realize, well, I can't actually do this because the numbers don't allow us to do that.

The engineering doesn't allow us to do that, or. We wanna design it this way, but then it'll be so expensive we won't be able to sell it commercially as as a viable business. So there's a lot of trade-off studies, there's pros and cons, there's a lot of evaluation. And once you decide to go down one path, you may realize that that doesn't work either.

So you have to take a few steps back. So doing these doing these things when you're developing new technology is you have to realize that you may not always make the right choice. You may have to take a few steps back and revisit those options and reevaluate and, and keep moving forward. Not getting discouraged.

Right. It's, it's a long process.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. No, definitely. What were like some of the biggest lessons that, that maybe surprised you along the way that, that weren't so obvious?

Aaron Lambert: Um, I think the biggest thing is you don't know what you don't know. Like I mentioned earlier about the, the electrical side. I'm not an electrician.

I'm not in, that's a whole different language for me, but being in the middle of managing this, this technology development, those are things that I've had to learn along the way is the voltages and amperages and, heat rejection with thermal management systems. Those are all things that we've had to learn.

To speak to the different vendors, speak to the engineers, and tie everything together. And it's not something that we can avoid doing because we're managing this. We need to make sure it works. Right. So it's, uh, there's a lot of learning that goes into this process as well.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of acceptance that, that you don't know what you don't know.

And you have to be open to new ideas. I think a lot of people are really shut, shut down to new ideas. They're like, oh, I got it figured out, or I'll figure it out. I, I, I don't need that extra help. And one thing that I've learned as an entrepreneur is I need all the help. I need every, every bit of help available to me at any given time.

I need my community. I need government help. I need help wherever we can get it. I think that really needs to be. A lesson for entrepreneurs is that nobody can do it on their own. Not Aaron, not me, not the biggest multi-billion dollar companies. They all rely on massive networks of supporters and people and businesses to make it all come together.

Aaron Lambert: And then that's absolutely right, and you need your support network to support you through this whole process. And it's not. You can build that network in a few days or even a few months depending on what you're doing. And for this, it is really large. It does take a lot of time, and you slowly build that network out.

You find those individuals that either support you. Like I started with a few of my advisors earlier on to, you know, support me with their experiences to say, yeah, this is viable. They have, um, years in the industry and they're well respected and they standing with me saying, yeah, this is viable.

We believe in this too. Um, you know, that's, that's one part of the support network. And then the other side is financially and where do we have some financial support? And that comes from our partners and, you know, our future clients. And on the engineering side is we have to find those groups that really understand what we're trying to accomplish, that have experience, not necessarily with this said technology, but with that application.

So we've, we've found those groups as well with those subject matter experts. D areas different in the electrical, the mechanical automation to really tie this all together. So it's, um, yeah, it's a very collaborative effort.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Did you ever have any moments of like, just true doubt where you're like, I don't think, I don't think I'm gonna be able to pull this off.

Did you ever have any of that or have you've just been able to just nose through it all?

Aaron Lambert: Even yesterday, I mean, every second day. We, we have to be honest, yeah. We still don't have all the answers. Yeah. We know that we know that we have a lot of challenges going forward and I mean, we're still building this thing.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Aaron Lambert: And we know from experience, you know, installing other technologies, it's gonna be other challenges. When we get to site to put this in, we, we have to be prepared, we gotta be diligent, we gotta plan and we have to have a backup plan. Yeah, it's, it's, uh, there's a lot of dope when you're doing something like this.

Kelly Kennedy: And I think that's something that I want to talk to you about specifically because it takes a lot of determination and grit to push through that.

I think a lot of people quit right before the next big breakthrough happens. I like to say that. Before every big breakthrough is a massive dip of doubt. It's like in my mind, when you are struggling the most with what you're doing, it probably means you're the closest you've ever been to the next big breakthrough for your business.

And nothing in business is linear. I think we all like to look at it like, oh, we'd love to have this just perfect little straight upward line, but it never works that way. Right? No. Typically it's, you know, a little bit up. Then a lot of down, then a lot of up, then a lot of down, and then a lot of up, right?

Like, it's like this gigantic mountain. If you really look at the bar graph, it's never linear. It's usually pretty massive increases followed by, sometimes pretty massive down slopes as well. Walk me through the rollercoaster. How are you able to keep yourself motivated? Keep yourself excited.

Don't let the negativity, you know, essentially destroy your dream.

Aaron Lambert: Yeah. I mean, and that's the other side of negativity. There's, there's a lot of people that are watching or, or we talk to that, you know, there's not much engagement. There's only a very few that are willing to support us or encourage us, you know, until we get to the point where it's done and we're, we're done this whole thing.

But, you know, as a small group we're doing this very, as, as a startup and a bootstrap startup, uh, we have a small team and we say to each other, this is a rollercoaster ride. We have those days where, wow, this just came through. Like the funding for example. Wow, this is great. Yeah. And then the next day is, well, we can't do this with the engineering.

Oh no, what do we do now? And now it's really dark day. It's like, uh, what do we do? Yeah. Because we don't have the answers. And then we spend a few days pushing through it and, you know, doing more evaluations and yeah, we have a solution. So there's, there's a lot of up and down left and right and, uh, yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's a journey, let's call it that.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. I know you have partners. We're not necessarily allowed to name them just yet, but I do wanna talk to you a little bit about partnerships and, you know, what have those partnerships, because I think by the time this show comes out, it's probably likely there will be more publications on your partnerships.

So. If people wanna look, I'm sure they can figure it out if they dig through the internet. But what has that partnership support in, you know, or what that partnership support, um. Done to really help you take this to the next level. Like talk to me a little bit about the support of those partners and what it means for RIINO or what it's meant for RIINO on this journey so far.

Aaron Lambert: Yeah. Our partners, I mean, you can find them on our website as well but they are the end users for this technology. They're the ones saying that, yes, we recognize that we need to do something different, and this is, this isn't viable option. They understand mining, they understand technologies and they understand those processes.

They not only believe in this type of technology, but they believe as in us as individuals it's really about relationships that we have with them and showing them that we're doing what we said we would do. We're taking, support from them to say, okay, what, what do we want to design this for?

At the very beginning, and, you know, we started off with a big workshop. What are we designing this for? What do you guys need as an end user? So by incorporating that into our development plan, um, it's really, we take one step at a time. We develop you know, the, the scope and deliverables and we walk through it one step at a time, developing this technology and getting their feedback on a biweekly basis and yeah, collaborating, this is what we need to do next, or this is what we need for funding in the next steps.

We just keep navigating through that.

Kelly Kennedy: How have you been able to take that feedback and implement it into your designs? I guess like one of the questions that I have is you know, customers give feedback all the time. Whether or not we are able to implement that. Is not always possible, although we should, wherever possible.

Walk me through it. How has the feedback from these partners influenced the, your initial design to the final design?

Aaron Lambert: Yeah, a lot of the technical details, the fine details of the system are from those considerations. Uh, if we were just building this for an underground mine, for example, the design would be a little bit different than if it was for Surface.

We've. Really understand what are those applications that this is needed for? And at the beginning we realized, okay, it'll be for surface and for underground. So we're targeting both. So when we started getting into the design itself, those other considerations for surface water, rain, snow. Freezing temperatures.

You don't have freezing temperatures underground. You have thermal expansion on surface. Underground is a steady state temperature all year round. So those considerations, when we bring that into the engineering side, is a lot different. That's a lot more to think about and that design changes. So having that feedback of what the intended purpose is, is significant to the design.

If we didn't incorporate that and we built this without those considerations. It use in those scenarios?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I think a lot of people build a product from an idea, but you know, essentially they, they build a product and look for a problem instead of finding a problem and building a solution.

Right? Like you see it in tech all the time. I built this amazing thing, this amazing Wiget. Who's it for? Well, I don't know, but it does this, right? Like, then you gotta go and find somebody who might need that problem instead of, you know, essentially what you've done and said from the beginning, I'm going to collaborate with my potential future buyers of this product to build something that will actually solve their problems.

It seems obvious, but a lot of people don't do that. Aaron?

Aaron Lambert: No, I, and it's really the entrepreneur. What's, what's your intended purpose of starting a business or being an entrepreneur? Are you looking to build a widget or, or build something fast and have a business and get a big payout and you think it'd be rich in five years?

You most likely won't be.

Who's your buyers? Where, what's the industry whatcha trying to accomplish? And if you go down that road of I'm trying to solve a problem you have to look as at it as, I need to develop a solution that will work and be successful, rather than, I, I wanna build a big business, make a lot of money.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Aaron Lambert: That doesn't happen when you're a bootstrap company. Um. There's no money. You using life savings, you know, there's a lot of stress on the family and uh, yeah, you have to work through those step by step. But you know, in the long term, if this technology is successful, the business will be successful.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. You're, you're essentially sharing the risk or, or, or mitigating massive amounts of risk by building a product that actually solves a real problem and lining up people that are gonna be interested in it from day go, like, congratulations. That was very, very smart. One of the other things I really wanna talk to you about is I absolutely love your logo.

I love the name, and I love the logo, and I want to talk to you about how did you come up with the name for this?

Aaron Lambert: Yeah. How do, how do I explain that? Well, the tech thinking, my, my idea was I wanted to build something rugged, robust. For the mining industry, mining is very tough industry. So.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Aaron Lambert: RIINO is, you know, represents that. So that was really a want something robust. Um, and then the name itself, when you start actually looking at, when you're starting up creating a business name, you need a web domain, a domain name, and a website.

RIINO, R-H-I-N-O is taken and every, there is no domain name you could ever find like that. But then when you look at, you want people to easily find you. You don't, a name that you can't spell, or, you know, when you think of where's your business? Is it local or is it internationally? You have to consider people from other countries are looking for you too.

So you have to consider as a business, growing a business. Where are you gonna be targeted? So for myself, RIINO there was a, honestly a, a domain name that was available. Yeah. Because anything shorter than six characters is, you know, like premium. And there was one available. And yeah, the, the trademark was available and yeah, it, I think it was just suited well, that, you know, has a twist to it as well.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Aaron Lambert: And, uh, yeah, the logo kind of, you know, that was the very first process. Good. Getting a logo that you're comfortable with too. Yes. There's a lot of design changes just to get that logo. Something aggressive, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. And it's incredible. Like, it's probably one of the best logos and, and company names I've seen in a really long time here, so I had to ask you about it, man, it's really good.

And, uh, yeah, it sounds like you put a lot of thought into that process, and that makes a lot of sense because in my mind, you know, with all the businesses we've started as well, that was consideration number one. How do we make this as easily findable as humanly possible? Even with this podcast, it was a sheer miracle that, that a podcast named business development podcast was even available.

It was, thank God. But the moment I knew that, I was like, okay, well this is the one. If people are looking, they're gonna look for the Business Development podcast, right? That's right. That was a huge consideration and that's been really instrumental in the growth of the show because whenever people search business development, we show up number one on every platform just simply because of the name.

The name matters.

Aaron Lambert: That's right. Well done.

Kelly Kennedy: Thank you. Thank you. You as well. Aaron. I wanna talk about the grant. I wanna talk about the grant. Sure. You received a $2 million Canadian grant from the Northern Alberta Heritage Fund Corporation. Talk to me about that. That's gotta be game changing for this development.

Aaron Lambert: Yeah, I can, I can explain that a little bit, how these grants work and support the businesses. Um, yeah, I mean, these funding opportunities are there to support starting businesses and developing businesses. Um, it, it's not something that will take you from point A to point B. Obviously. There's, there's a lot of, milestones that you have to target. Um, and it's not money upfront, so to be honest, it's not like they 2 million in the account. Um, you have to spend the money and have to against it. You know, you have to provide the invoicing and you have to meet those milestones. Right. So it's project based type funding incentives to help, you know, these, these initiatives.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. How have you found essentially the Canadian support. For business. Have you found it? Have you found it easy to work through, challenging to work through? Is it obvious? I know with Alberta man, we have, we apparently have a million things available to us, but it's done through so many different branches.

Mm-hmm. You know, whether we're talking Edmonton Unlimited or Alberta Innovates or R can. It can be really challenging to navigate. And one of the, one of the goals I had with this show was to shine a big, bright light on the Alberta innovation ecosystem and interview and interview each one of these people independently to get a better idea.

But I'll be honest, man, the further I go down this path with that. The more confused I actually get as to why they don't have a more simplified system.

Aaron Lambert: Yeah. And, and it's the same in Ontario for us as well. I mean, we have provincial funding and federal funding but there is no one platform that can suit every different type of business structure, whether you're in retail or you're, you're in deep tech, like we're, or everything is different.

So these platforms aren't tailored to those different types of business or those different types. Startup startup. So startup, what I am doing has been very difficult. It's very highly capital intensive. And it takes a long time to develop a technology. You know, these incentives from the government yeah, they, they're a long process that for us to receive the funding.

The application was submitted 12 months ago.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Aaron Lambert: It's a long process, so you can't just start the business thinking you're gonna get support where. You don't wanna run outta money before you get that either. So it's kind of, it's a nice to have and you can build that into the development plan, but it's not something you can rely on per, per se.

Kelly Kennedy: One of the questions that I have, and from a Canadian to another Canadian man, I get it. Like, we wanna support Canada wherever possible. But I do have to ask you, this idea is groundbreaking. It's gonna change the world. Do you think you could have done better had you, you know, tried to look for, you know, support outside of Canada?

Or, or why didn't you? Just outta curiosity because it is, it's an incredible idea and, and I hear of a lot of companies. Frankly just starting in the United States because it's easier.

Aaron Lambert: Yeah. I, with technology, um, you have your technology readiness levels. There is money available, but more when you get to a developed technology and you're commercially ready.

The bank the BDC bank, um, a lot of VCs as well, that's when they wanna invest in the technologies. When you have something developed and proven. But to get to that point if you're, if you're developing something a lot smaller, it's, you know, you can usually do that on your own or you can get Angel investment to take you there.

But to do what we're doing, we require millions of dollars and that's not something we can find in an angel investor. Um, I've put as much money as I could into this. So yeah, that for us is a lot different than other companies as well. So I can't really speak to that, but

Kelly Kennedy: Okay.

Aaron Lambert: Our journey's been. We need a lot of capital and there's a lot of risk to developing something that's very capital intensive.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. I've also heard that like physical products, like a physical thing, like what you're building is much harder to get VC or or funding for. In general, everybody wants to support software development for SAS. Um,

Aaron Lambert: that's true.

Kelly Kennedy: Have you found that to be the case?

Aaron Lambert: Absolutely. Deep pick. So deep tech, which is capital intensive.

Money. Money. And then the mining industry is just even harder. There's not a lot of VCs, there's not a lot of investment from the private community for investing in mining as well. It's really because not a lot of people know about mining or know mining well enough to say this is a good idea because they dunno how it fits into mining.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Let's lead into that. Are you, uh, will there be a development stage at which you are going to be looking for outside capital support or is kind of the game plan to try to self fund as, as far as humanly possible?

Aaron Lambert: What, what we're doing right now is with our partners is we're developing a pilot.

We have a site that will be installing this to operate it and validate the technology into an operation. But on the business side then there's a scale up point where now we're gonna take on sales. We need inventory, we need resources, we need everybody to support this. Um, now if we have certain countries that we're gonna be, or more or less, we have a lot of sales say.

Australia or Africa, how are we gonna support that? How are we gonna service it? How are you gonna provide parts? Do we need to warehouse? Um, and then we need to scale on the production side. That's not something that could be done bootstrap. That's where we need significant investment to support, uh, developing and essentially an oem, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Aaron Lambert: A large, a large equipment supplier.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. So we're, we're talking to people around the world. There's institutions listening right now. Is that something that you would be interested in having a conversation with them about?

Aaron Lambert: Oh 100% we're gonna be there and we'll need the funding to grow this business and to take it to the next level once we have the system operate.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Amazing. Amazing. So, if people are listening, there will be links. I'll point like by the time we get to the end of the show, I'll be pointing them towards your LinkedIn, all your websites, stuff like, that'll be on every single post. If you're looking to get ahold of Aaron, it'll be easy to do.

So Aaron, I have two more questions for you before we wrap up today. One. I would love to know, dude, this is groundbreaking. It's incredible. You're right there. You're right on the the bleeding edge of the next big thing. What do you think 10 years from now looks like if you were to look 10 years into the future for RIINO?

What's happening?

Aaron Lambert: I can't even forecast the next year, but it's all goes well. We're gonna have a system that works and we're gonna be having a lot of fun. Gonna be. You know, the, the day to day, you know, grind and be having a lot more fun.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. I totally feel you. No, I, I genuinely think this is gonna change the world and I love it when Canadian technology changes the world.

I proud Canadian. I love to hear it, man. So congratulations on that. And, you know, last but not least, what advice would you give for, you know, new, inspiring entrepreneurs who want to really groundbreaking, shake up the industry, disrupt the industry in the way that you are doing? Literally gonna change the world.

What advice would you give for somebody with dreams that big?

Aaron Lambert: If you have a dream and you're willing to push forward and to do it, don't give up. Just never give up. You'll be discouraged and it may happen every day for a long time, but if you don't give up, you will get there. That's really what it comes down to.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Don't give up. Aaron, this has been absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for sharing this journey. I'm excited for you, man. I can't wait to see what comes next and, uh, really appreciated your time today.

Aaron Lambert: Thank you, Kelly. And when we have this ready to go, you're more than welcome to come and take a look.

Kelly Kennedy: I would love to, I would love to see it. I, I hope to. I hope to, for sure. Until next time, you've been listening to episode 316 of the Business Development Podcast, and we'll catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in. Sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.