Greg Pendura is a testament to the power of positive thinking.

An admirer of positive-thinking guru Tony Robbins, the former social studies teacher has taken the entrepreneurial world by storm.

Even when Pendura’s initial venture, Master Tune auto centres, fell by the wayside after a decade, the hard-driving Edmonton entrepreneur chalked it up as a valuable learning experience and pressed forward, co-founding Resin Systems in 1995.

Pendura steered Resin through some rocky times that threatened the company’s survival. But now the CEO believes the chemical- technology company is on the verge of a breakthrough to profitability, and on the road to becoming a major player with billion-dollar-a-year revenue within a decade. 1. How do you think coaching high school sports helped prepare you for the role of CEO?

Jack Dagley, for Business Edge
Resin Systems CEO Greg Pendura sees potential profits for his resin in composite utility poles and hockey sticks.

“I think the educational background helped me with learning to prepare in an organized manner. It’s a good experience to get focused on the concept of team building. I think being involved in competitive sports taught me a lot about sticktoitiveness.”

2. Why did you choose to leave your teaching career to enter business?

“A year before I left teaching, I started what I thought would be a small business venture (Master Tune auto centres) so I could accumulate enough funds to take a doctorate program. But the business went very well, and then the teaching lost out and the business won out. That really caught my fancy, and it just exploded from there. That business lasted for about 10 years. We had nine locations, we were into a pretty aggressive expansion mode and, interest rates being pretty high in those days, the expansion was too fast and it sort of imploded on me. That taught me the basics for my business career. You’re involved in everything – from land development to construction to building a business.”

3. What was your motivation for starting Resin Systems with Brian Carpenter in 1995?

“Brian came across a resin technology which at that time could be utilized for an exceptional industrial coating product for chemical environments. It was an environmentally (friendly) product and also used recycled tire rubber, so it had two kicks to the environmental side. That caught our attention. It was a U.S.-based technology and, after marketing that product in Western Canada for about a year-and-a-half, we eventually got the worldwide rights. So the first phase of resin was really an industrial coating material which was a hybrid of the resins we use now for fibreglass production.”



4. Why did the company run into difficulty under your predecessor, former CEO John McCrae, who resigned in 2001?

“He was the CEO of a large steel company and just couldn’t grasp the start-up concept going to industry. He was more familiar with working in an environment where he had a pre-set business in place and was in more of an operational mode. He had a hard time coping with bringing a new product to market and developing the infrastructure from scratch.”

5. What got you through the rough times the company endured in 2001?

“We’ve had a few people that had worked for this company for a good number of years and we had a strong shareholder base. It’s almost a family here. Coming in second just wasn’t an alternative. We had to carry this thing through. The attitude was that you just couldn’t lose because there was too much riding on it. I’ve got a few more grey hairs now. If you’ve got the support of family and co-workers, that’s a powerful ingredient.”

6. What’s the major focus of the company now in terms of the products you’re marketing?

“Our focus is on ownership of projects such as our composite utility pole projects, whereby we supply the resin and end up making a better product and also be involved in the manufacture, sale and distribution. We’ll be doing that in various divisions. The first one is with the poles and next will be the composite hockey shaft, which we’re just taking to market now. We’re putting in place an infrastructure to make each of our divisions a world-class opportunity. We have the ability to replace existing materials such as wood and steel concrete, so the big applications for our technology will be in infrastructure such as bridge decking or construction.”

7. What do you foresee as being the hottest market for your resin system chemical technology?

“Right now, the utility pole industry is a huge industry. The replacement market for utility poles in North America alone is about $8 billion a year and about $20 billion a year worldwide. We’ll have a product here that is much lighter than wood or steel. There are other composite poles in the marketplace now, but they’re a niche market component because of their cost. We’ll be able to bring a composite pole, which is about 40-per-cent lighter than what is in the marketplace now, at a far less expensive price. So we’ll definitely change the composite utility pole marketplace.”

8. What makes you believe your hockey stick shafts will be successful on the market?

“Our resin system is one which a lot of large multinational chemical companies have attempted to bring to market, but they’ve been unsuccessful. So we’re fortunate to have been able to do that. We’ll bring to market a composite hockey shaft which is about the same weight as the top-end hockey sticks today, but testing done at the University of Ohio has shown that it is anywhere from three to five times stronger than the composite shafts in the market.”

9. What’s your vision for Resin Systems?

“We’re going to be a multinational company very soon. We’ve got a 1,000-day plan for each of our divisions. From a sales figure, I probably won’t say what the 1,000-day plan is because you’ll probably say it’s blue sky. It’s very aggressive and we’ll have sales in the many hundreds of millions of dollars by the thousandth day.”

10. What is your 1,000-day revenue target for the pole division?

“Our actual target is $250 million (annual revenue). With our other (prospective) divisions, we’re just finalizing two things which are required before I can say (the target), and that’s geared for the last week in April. If that comes together as we’re anticipating, there will be a relatively large announcement. Those markets are quite different from the power-pole market and they’ll be two totally different venues which are of the magnitude of the composite power poles. If this all comes about, we’ll be in a different league. We’ll be building our infrastructure faster and we’ll be involved in some other technologies related to ours. It would be sort of like a merger/acquisition mode, if you like. We see ourselves as a one-billion-dollar-a-year company between a five- and 10-year period. (Near term), the company will become profitable this year. By late fall of this year, we should be into profitability.”

11. How long do you want to remain CEO?

“I think as we become more operational, we’ll be recruiting active CEOs to more or less co-ordinate each division on its own.

“I’ll be involved in creating that infrastructure. I don’t foresee myself being that individual (CEO) as we move forward from an operational point of view.”

12. Are you looking at moving Resin on to a senior stock exchange (it currently lists on the TSX Venture Exchange)?

“Yes, we are. We want to get on a U.S. market because more than one-quarter of our investors are U.S.-based and a big focus of our customers are U.S.-based. We’ve just started to get on an OTC (over-the-counter bulletin board) listing and we think that we’re going to qualify for the Nasdaq small-cap index by late summer or early fall.”

13. How would you describe your management style?

“It’s definitely not autocratic. I like to surround myself with a lot of people who know what they’re doing and allow them to get to the finish line. Once I have confidence that they know where they’re going, I support them in that endeavour.”

14. What do you need to do to become a better leader?

“In this endeavour here, I think I need to have a better familiarity with how technical big business works. That’s a totally different ballgame than retail or sports. It’s a different mindset. So I’m relying on key people from that background in developing the infrastructure with ourselves people-wise.”

15. Are you concerned about the repercussions for Canadian companies resulting from the federal government not supporting the U.S. in the war in Iraq?

“I think it’s going to have a short-term negative effect. Politically, I don’t agree with the stance that some of our politicians have made. I think a little more support should have been shown for the U.S. I think in the short term, it’s going to have a negative impact on some of the Canadian exports to that marketplace, but I don’t think it’s going to have a long-term effect.”

16. Have you been able to strike a balance between your business life and personal life?

“Unfortunately, the balance hasn’t been the way I’d like to see it. It’s been a little more one-sided towards business than personal. But I always find time for my wife, son and daughter and we like to enjoy active vacations together where we do some things such as scuba diving. We’d like to get some balance in that fold. Unfortunately, it’s usually only for a couple of weeks of the year and the rest of the time is focused more on trying to get us over the finish line here.”

17. What’s your best advice for a young entrepreneur?

“Believe in yourself, believe in the project that you’re involved in and don’t be afraid to ask for advice. In my earlier career, I should have asked for a lot more (advice). As you’re doing it a lot longer, you see the light. You can save a lot of time by relying on other people’s advice. You don’t necessarily take it at face value, but you need to listen to what they’re saying, evaluate it and keep an open mind to other people’s advice.”

18. How do you deal with stress?

“I have the capacity to deal with it pretty good, but normally, if it’s a bad time, I talk it through with my wife (Alice), who has been a good sounding board. Sometimes, talking it over gives you a little spark of how something can be done differently. Then, the next day is a new day and you start all over again.”

19. When you reflect on your business career, what do you regret?

“I think the inability of having a circle that I could rely on, like a sounding board, really slowed the process down. There was too much trial by error. Sometimes, a group consensus is good. I probably could have saved a lot of time getting to where I got if I’d have had a sounding board.”

20. What are your goals beyond business?

“I’d like to get Resin to a point, probably in about two or three years, where it can be set up to go well beyond where I can take it. At that point, I’d like to devote a few years to travel. I’d like to spend some time in the countries that interest my wife and myself. I’d like to have about three different condos in different areas and rotate between them. I’d like to do that for a few years and then who knows what? But in the next two or three years, I’ll be pretty ingrained in what I’m doing here. Maybe there will be the odd golf game, but that’s about it.”

THE COMPANY: Resin Systems
* Brass: Greg Pendura, president/ CEO; Brian Carpenter, chairman; David Slaback, vice-president.
* Profile: Resin Systems is a chemical technology company that owns environmentally friendly resin formulations for use primarily in two areas – composite material under the Version brand name and industrial coating under the Uniseal brand name. Product applications include utility poles and hockey stick shafts.
* Highlight: Resin completed a private-placement financing worth $3 million in January.
* Recent Stock Price: (RS-TSX Venture): 95 cents (year range, 31 cents-$1.56).
* Website: www.resinsystemsinc.com
* Head Office: 14604 115A Ave., Edmonton, T5M 3C5.
* Phone/Fax: 780-482-1953, toll free 866-482-1953;
780-452-8755.

IN PROFILE: Greg Pendura
* Born/raised/age: Edmonton, 55.
* Title: President/CEO, Resin Systems Inc.
* Family: Wife Alice, two children.
* Education: Bachelor of Education, University of Alberta; Master of Education, University of Arizona.
* Career: Pendura began his career as a high school social studies teacher and coached high school sports. His first major venture in business was Master Tune auto centres. After other business ventures, he
co-founded Resin Systems in 1995 and was president and executive vice-president before assuming the CEO role in 2001.
* Passions: Golf, travel.