Back in March of 2013, Robert Rae, owner of Canada Hemp Foods, and his sister Diana (who handles the company’s finances) decided to take a chance and audition for the Dragons’ Den (Canada’s version of the popular US show, Shark Tank).

Figuring we had nothing to lose, we showed up at 601 Cordova Street (Waterfront station) in Vancouver at 5:30 am on Saturday, March 2nd to make our pitch.

There was a lot of waiting time beforehand to talk to all the other entrepreneurs. It was a terrific atmosphere with lots of excitement and well wishes to and from everyone there.

Although we were extremely nervous pitching to senior Dragons’ Den producer, Molly Middleton, we felt the audition went rather well.

Three weeks later we got the call from Matt Falkner, one of the show’s producers! We were off to Toronto to face the Dragons themselves on April 8th.

We spent the next three weeks preparing our pitch for the Den. We had to determine our company’s numbers, and write and rehearse our presentation. We watched a lot of Dragons’ Den reruns to get some tips from other pitchers who were successful in landing a deal. For the final rehearsal we invited a bunch of our friends over to act as the Dragons.

Toronto was fantastic! The whole experience left us in awe. We arrived at the CBC studios at about 6 am. Everyone at the CBC, our producer Matt Faulkner, the production crew, the make-up artists and all the others in between were extremely helpful and supportive. They gave us a tour of the set, showed us the position of the cameras, the lights, and where we supposed to stand. It was all very surreal, impressive and exciting!

They then showed us and the other entrepreneurs to the waiting room. While we waited for our turn to pitch our business to the Dragons, we all had fun practicing on each other, until we were the last two in the room.

Finally our turn to face the Dragons…

So how did it go? You’ll have to see for yourself when our web pitch airs on the Dragons Den website. Go to www.cbc.ca/dragonsden/ to watch us in action with Arlene, Jim, David, Bruce and Mr. Wonderful!