When he was eight years old, Peter Knapp spent a summer with his father hiking Canada’s longest footpath, the 800-kilometre Bruce Trail, becoming the youngest person to conquer the famous route.

When he was 12, he and his father bicycled more than 4,000 kilometres from their home town in Owen Sound, Ont., to Key West, Fla.

No wonder Knapp simply shrugs when quizzed about the challenge he faced in building his own company while in his 20s.

Knapp is 30 now, but the former oil and gas buy-side analyst already sounds like an oilpatch veteran as he gathers momentum in growing Iradesso Communications on the back of a booming junior oil and gas sector.

1. How do you think your monumental boyhood challenges shaped your character?
“I think doing those things were a pretty important part of my childhood in terms of building self-esteem and confidence. I think they got me aiming high.”

Shannon Oatway photo, Business Edge
Peter Knapp got off to an early business start and hasn't looked back as Iradesso Communications' president.

2. What were your early entrepreneurial and leadership experiences?
“I was president of my high school and put a lot of time into that. But I realized I wasn’t making any money. So I thought: ‘Gee, I could be doing this kind of thing and making money.’ So I started organizing dances at the community centre with a partner. We’d count our money the next day and we’d make a couple of thousand dollars each for one night’s work, which was fantastic. I also entered some speech competitions, which was kind of a dorky thing for me to do according to some friends. But I ended up (winning) second in a Canadian speech competition and making some money.”

3. What sparked your interest in the oilpatch?
“Back in university (McMaster in Hamilton), I had a good friend whose father came to visit her. She had to go off and do something and left her father with me. I didn’t know who this guy was, but I kind of entertained him for a while and he ended up offering me a summer job. That was Bob Lamond (the renowned oil and gas entrepreneur) who is currently the president and CEO of Diaz Resources. He also runs Humboldt Capital, a small oil and gas fund. I ended up working for him.”

4. What was Lamond like to work for?
“I worked in the field, driving a pickup truck around, mowing grass and painting wellheads. Little did I know that that was a pretty important experience, because now I understand how the field works, to an extent. Bob has been quite influential through the years. He’s so knowledgeable about public companies. I’ve learned a heck of a lot from him. He also knows how to have a good time and that’s something I like, too.”

5. After university, what was your role in the oil and gas business?
“I started working with Humboldt Capital. I did the buy-side research, figuring out which emerging junior oil and gas stocks to buy. After six months there, I travelled Asia for four months. When I returned, I could’ve returned to work for Bob Lamond but I didn’t, just because I felt I had to have a job where it’s not because I knew someone. So I went to work for Energy Communications for two and a half years, doing road shows. I travelled across Canada with CEOs, meeting with brokers and analysts. It has really been beneficial to me to have great access to presidents of oil and gas companies.”

6. What motivated you to start your own business at age 26?
“My wife (Laura) was in university when I started this business and we had to pay the tuition. But there’s never a good time to start a business. My wife and I have talked about this. There’s never a good time to have babies and it’s the same with a business. So you may as well just do it. Back in Owen Sound, I knew an entrepreneur who had some outdoor equipmentstores. He was in his late 50s and he’d been in business about 10 years. His words of wisdom to me were: ‘Start when you’re young, because you’ve got to put in a lot of time to get the business to the point where you’re being rewarded.’ That encouraged me to say that I would get my business started when I was in my 20s.”

7. Being so young, was it tough getting respect in some circles of the oilpatch?
“I’ve never openly seen it, but I guess sometimes people will express that they’re shocked that you’re so young. But I think people get over it quite quickly and are generally quite fair, as long as you’re open and up front about what you know and what you don’t know. As a younger person in this business, there are certain viewpoints that I can offer that somebody in their 50s probably cannot.”

8. How has that experience helped you in your business?
“Just having conversations day after day with people who eat, sleep and drink oil and gas was so beneficial. When you went out to dinner with these guys, you’d talk about old stories of what happened in different eras, about the cycles in oil and gas and about specific wells people were drilling.”

9. I’m the CEO of Boom Boom Energy and you want to
represent my company. How do you sell me on that?
“First, I’d recommend a change of name. Then, I’d clarify the fact that we’re not a promotional company. We don’t promote companies in order to get your stock up for a brief period of time or anything like that. We help you do all the communications that Boom Boom has to do with its shareholders. That includes the good things that are going on and maybe the bad things. The other thing I’d want to emphasize is our principles, which are honesty, integrity and professionalism. Our services are based on trying to save our clients’ time. Because we’re dealing with the presidents, CEOs and CFOs of companies, time is their most valuable asset. If we can save them a couple of hours a week, that’s worth a lot to them.

10. How many oil and gas clients do you have?
“We work with nine junior companies, including two oil and gas trust companies that are a more intermediate size. We also work with a number of other companies outside that realm. We’ve kind of established ourselves as the experts in junior oil and gas investor relations by doing our research reports on the sector. That (oil and gas investor relations) will remain the most important part of our business. We also do corporate communications, including areas such as writing, design, marketing and advertising.”

11. How has the consolidation in the oilpatch in recent years affected your business?
“It means that there is going to be some turnover in clients that you have no control over, because somebody who was a client gets bought by another company. A lot of times when that happens, it means we did our job pretty well. It’s OK, because when one company gets bought, you’ll see different people from that company form two or three new companies. If we did a good job, which so far we have, then the business will keep coming back to us.”

12. What major challenges have you had to deal with in building Iradesso?
“One of the biggest challenges is getting the right people around you. I feel really good now because I feel the team that we’ve got is extremely strong. But I went through a period of time where I’d hire somebody and two months later they’d give me their notice, saying they wanted to go to something else. Probably, it was because I wasn’t paying them enough, but they also weren’t the right fit. With some of those decisions, I wasn’t too disappointed. Yet, it’s frustrating because you’re not getting the right people. We now have a core of six people and we’re hiring a seventh now.”

13. What’s the most important lesson this business has taught you?
“Persistence. You have to be very persistent in this business. There are times when you wonder why you’re doing this. I’ve had a number of job offers while building this company to make more money in investor relations and in the brokerage industry. They’re jobs where you think you’ll be less stressed with more reasonable hours.”

14. So why did you persist?
“This is so much fun and the opportunity is monstrous here. This is what I want to do. I really enjoy building
something and I especially get a kick out of seeing things happen in this company that I don’t do myself. That means the company is taking on a life of its own and it means it will continue to grow. I feel pretty lucky being a 100-per-cent owner of this company because I’ve been able to get through some key times when it was tempting to issue equity to other people.”

15. What kind of a job do you think the oilpatch as a whole is doing in terms of investor relations?
“I think it’s getting better. I think there was a period of time where the oilpatch did a pretty crummy job, particularly the juniors and intermediates. I think the larger companies have always been fairly strong because they’re big enough to hire a communications department. I think what happened in the juniors a little bit, from my understanding, was that there were promoters doing pump-and-dump (promotions) for some companies. The stock would do well, they would get out and the company would flop. That created a really horrible reputation, not only for the sector, but also for the investor relations business, which wasn’t really investor relations. We do hear from people interested in that (pump and dump) but we basically tell them that that’s not what we do.”

16. Do you personally invest in companies with which you’re associated?
“No, not anymore. I actually did when I started out. The company that was my very first client went bankrupt. They were a great bunch of people, but they made some wrong decisions. Lucky for me, I had enough other clients to make it through that and it didn’t reflect too much on our reputation at Iradesso. It didn’t hurt us all that much, but it was a fantastic learning experience. I owned a bunch of shares, but I got into a situation where I was an insider in the company and couldn’t sell my shares. We have a policy where employees of our company don’t buy stock in our client companies. As we get more and more clients, it becomes more difficult (to find non-client companies to invest in) because there are less good companies to pick from. And I’d rather spend most of my time understanding our clients rather than understanding another company that isn’t a client of ours. Once again, it’s a matter of principles.”

17. Do you anticipate the hot junior sector can remain hot and, if it cools down, how do you prepare for that?
“We’ve been on the higher end of the cycle for a year and a half or so. “When commodity prices go down, it would be good for the sector in some ways and in some ways it’ll hurt investors a little bit. We’ve been doing a portfolio of our work that is not related to oil and gas. It’s important for us to have a portfolio of that nature so that when the rainy day comes, there will be other work that we can do. But even in a down cycle (for oil and gas), some of our services will be even more valuable because it’ll be even more important for clients to communicate with shareholders. Of course, companies will also be more stringent or cheaper in terms of what they want to pay us. A good investor plans for the possibility of oil and gas prices going back down to $3 (US mcf). If you’re invested in the right companies, they’ll take advantage of (lower commodity prices) because of attractive buying opportunities that help them grow their companies.”

18. What’s your vision for Iradesso?
“In two years, we’ll have doubled in terms of revenues (now about $500,000 annually) and employees. It’s easier to have a two-year vision than a 10-year vision because things could change so rapidly. I would like to continue to grow the company to a point where it gives me a little bit more freedom personally. I think what sets us apart from other companies is our understanding of both the oil and gas sector and the investment community, and our attention to principles like honesty and integrity. We talk about those principles a lot in the office.”

19. What in your mind makes a great leader, and what do you need to learn to become a better leader?
“I think it’s important to have a vision of what you want the future to be and to be able to communicate that to your employees or investors. I also think principles are key. I think competency is important. People aren’t going to work with a leader that they see screwing things up. I think that I need to improve my ability to delegate tasks and leave them with somebody without even thinking about them. It can be hard to let go of things. I’m still managing our computer network, but I shouldn’t be, at this point in time. I should be giving that to somebody else or maybe suck it up and pay somebody to do it.”

20. What do you see yourself doing 10 years from today?
“I see myself running Iradesso. I’m not in a hurry to sell this company. I want to really build something that is a platform to be able to carry on different business deals in different areas. I’d also like to be able to spend more of my time travelling, but it’s not something that my wife and I can do right now.”

PETER KNAPP
* Title: President/owner, Iradesso Communications.
* Born/raised/age: Owen Sound, Ont.; 30.
* Education: McMaster University (Hamilton), Bachelor of Commerce; graduate of Canadian securities course.
* Family: Wife Laura.
* Career: Knapp founded Iradesso Communications three years ago. Prior to that, he worked in the oilpatch as a buy-side analyst with Humboldt Capital and as an investor relations specialist with Energy Communications.
* Claim to fame: Knapp hiked the Bruce Trail in Ontario at age eight, the youngest to conquer the 800-km footpath.
* Passions: Being a Big Brother, hiking, bicycling,
skiing, snowboarding.

IRADESSO
* Profile: Iradesso is an investor relations and corporate communications firm that specializes in the junior oil and gas sector. Services include communications through financial reports, corporate profiles, press releases, websites and presentations. The private company also provides online research known as the IQ Report that compares financial and operating results of junior oil and gas companies.
* Clients: Acclaim Energy Trust, Crescent Point Energy Trust, Connacher Oil & Gas, Delphi Energy, Energy North, New North Resources, Purcell Energy, Ranchgate Energy and Zapata Energy (Connacher and Ranchgate are featured in this issue's Pro’s 3 Stars).
* Iradesso Stat: A $100,000 investment divided evenly among 61 Western Canadian junior oil and gas companies at the start of 2003 would have returned $163,500 (+63.5 per cent) by year end.
* Website/E-mail: www.iradesso.com/contact@iradesso.com.
* Address: 400, 816 7th Ave. S.W., Calgary, T2P 1A1.
* Phone/Fax: 403-503-0144/403-503-0174.

(Gyle Konotopetz can be reached at gyle@businessedge.ca)