MEET THIS YEAR'S 30 Under 30 WINNERS
With their drive, creativity and confidence during a pandemic year, the class of 2021 showed the rest of us how to handle tough times
If B.C. has been through the wringer, you'd almost never know it from looking at our eighth annual 30 Under 30 list. Many of the winners found ways to grow their businesses during a world-changing pandemic. For some, that meant the proverbial pivot; for others, it was time to double down on a Covid-friendly product or service.
With multiple co-founders from several organizations making the list, we're honouring 37 people this year. The winners, who represent industries as disparate as finance, esports, cannabis and fine art, hail from diverse backgrounds, too. Several are immigrants, while others have overcome learning disabilities that would thwart someone less determined. We know you'll find their stories inspiring—and remember, this talented group is just getting started. Congratulations to all.
KATIE FORSYTH + CLAIRE MCLOUGHLIN AGES: 28 + 26 Co-founders + co-owners, Friendly Composting
LIFE STORY: Becoming roommates in Kamloops soon after meeting through recreational volleyball, Katie Forsyth and Claire Mcloughlin realized that their adoptive city lacked a program for diverting food scraps and other organic waste from the landfill. So Ladner-raised Forsyth and Campbell River native Mcloughlin decided to start one out of their apartment, each putting down $500 to buy their first recycled compost bins.
The pair launched Friendly Composting just as B.C. went into COVID lockdown, but their timing was right: with homebound Kamloopsians cooking more than usual, the business grew quickly. “We built pretty much our whole program off our social media channels and word of mouth,” says Forsyth, who's earning a bachelor of general studies in education from SFU and previously did education and advocacy work for the Heart and Stroke Foundation. Now completing a master's in environmental economics and management at Thompson Rivers University, Mcloughlin spent a couple of years as an associate with an investment firm.
Friendly Composting, which offers subscriptions online, visits residential and commercial customers once a week to swap full bins for clean ones. “These people are paying to have their organics taken away because they care,” Forsyth says. To turn food scraps into soil, the company works with two farms, in Kamloops and Salmon Arm. Last summer, it added a delivery service offering bread, eggs, vegetables and meat from local producers.
BOTTOM LINE: As of early June, Friendly Composting served 615 homes and 16 businesses, hauling away 3,000 kilograms of organics each week. The business also had 24 food delivery partners it promotes on social media. “We're telling their stories firsthand,” Forsyth says.
She and Mcloughlin, who employ one full-time staff member, will have about a dozen part-time workers this summer. “If we can scale this up,” Forsyth reckons, “we're hoping to implement it in rural communities or small towns or cities that don't have municipal programs.” –N.R.
NISHAL KUMAR AGE: 29
Founder + CEO
No Days Wasted
LIFE STORY: Nishal Kumar was pushed into studying medicine in university by his love for the TV program House and its eponymous foul-mouthed genius of a doctor. But it wasn't to be–after three years in chemistry and biology at UBC, the West Vancouverite decided to switch to a geophysics major with a minor in commerce. Shortly after school, Kumar spent time at a couple of companies, including working as one of Tesla's first Canadian employees, and created his first venture, a coathanger for electric vehicles. He scaled that up to a six-figure business that “mostly runs itself these days,” he says.
Kumar used some of the proceeds from that venture to shift his focus back to the health realm with Vancouver-based supplement maker No Days Wasted and its hero product, DHM Detox, which is designed to reduce the effect of hangovers.
BOTTOM LINE: With help from celebrity endorsements by the likes of hockey player-turned-podcaster Paul Bissonnette and Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver and Abbotsford native Chase Claypool, No Days Wasted and its seven employees hit seven figures in sales in 2020. Kumar also appeared on Dragons' Den late that year. Although one of the judges called him a “snake oil salesman,” he scored a deal with Dragon Michele Romanow. Perhaps Dr. House said it best: “If nobody hates you, you're doing it wrong.” –N.C.
HAYDEN JAMES + JOSH BAKER AGES: 28 + 26 Co-founder + CEO Co-founder + CTO
Fraction Technologies
LIFE STORY: After Hayden James and Josh Baker met through a mutual friend four years ago, they started working on an idea to build a Hootsuite-type social media automation business for independent professionals and entrepreneurs. Their startup was housed in the Vancouver office of U.S. conglomerate Century 21 Real Estate on nights and weekends. There, they quickly learned about about the residential property industry from realtors who would come and go.
“Our question was, How do you bridge this gap between homeowners who have a lot of equity but don't necessarily qualify for traditional credit products and can't or don't want to make monthly payments, and these investors that want access to the residential real estate market?” James asks.
The answer, it turns out, was a debt product whose interest rate is based on a home's appreciation and gives owners access to $1.5 million in equity. “It acts like equity, but it's structured like debt, so it's cheaper than it would be otherwise,” explains James of Fraction's Appreciation Mortgage. “It's a very Vancouver story. I don't know many other places this could have been
born out of, based on the dynamic.”
In an industry like Vancouver real estate, any change to the status quo was going to ruffle some feathers. “I'm not going to name names, but yeah, we definitely had some people who were unhappy with us when we went to market, because we were taking away some of the profits,” Baker says. “But we're developing a product that helps maximize fairness–you have to balance both sides.”
BOTTOM LINE: James, Baker and third co-founder Rayan Rafay raised $289 million earlier this year, and 13-employee Fraction had $90 million worth of inquiries in the first 90 days after its product hit the market in February. –N.C.
ACACIA PANGILINAN AGE: 29
Executive director
Kamloops Chamber of Commerce
LIFE STORY: From a young age, Kamloops-raised Acacia Pangilinan volunteered at school and in her hometown. “It made me realize that I wanted to help the community that supported me so much, and I didn't really know what that looked like,” recalls Pangilinan, who also won the Miss Kamloops competition at age 15.
She began her career in politics, working for local MP Cathy Mcleod while earning a bachelor of business administration at Thompson Rivers University. After a temporary job as an events coordinator with the Kamloops Chamber of Commerce became permanent, then–executive director Deb Mcclelland showed Pangilinan the impact the Chamber could have. “I just got hooked after that point,” she says. When Mcclelland stepped down, Pangilinan applied for her job– twice–and got it in 2019. She credits her volunteering, work and school experience, and role as a community ambassador with preparing her for the role.
BOTTOM LINE: With its three staff, the Kamloops Chamber of Commerce serves about 650 members.
“The last year has been so focused on saving our membership,” Pangilinan says of COVID. She emphasized communication during the pandemic, advocating strongly for businesses, inviting government experts to talk about grant and loan programs and jumping on social media to explain eligibility. As chair of the professional development committee for the provincial BC Chamber Executives society, she also held biweekly coffee chats.
Pangilinan, who thinks chambers and other business groups need to modernize, says she takes an inclusive approach. To her, that means supporting solopreneurs and gig-economy workers as well as traditional businesses and their employees. “That's something that I'd like to see done at a national level.” She's also boosting the Kamloops Chamber's online presence. “I think there's so much opportunity for chambers to use their digital channels to be champions for business.” –N.R.
ALEX MILLER AGE: 27
Owner + operator Pelvic Floor Strong
LIFE STORY: If you attend group fitness classes in Vancouver, you might recognize Alex Miller as an instructor. Miller, who spent eight years working at numerous local studios, also started a business teaching mindful movement to kids aged five to 12. The South Surrey native found herself at a crossroads in early 2019. “I was burnt out, and I wanted a next step,” Miller recalls. She thought of opening her own studio–a move that could have been ruinous after COVID struck. But two friends who host the 7 Figure Entrepreneur podcast introduced her to recent guest Emily Lark, a U.S. entrepreneur who created a popular back pain program.
Deciding to build a similar business around her passion for pre- and postnatal wellness, Miller did a three-month online mentorship with Lark. Over the next year, she crafted the materials and marketing for Pelvic Floor Strong, an exercise program aimed at women aged 40-plus whose benefits include better bladder control. Although Miller had no marketing experience, the business took off instantly when she launched it last May. “So I quit my job at the studios, and it's been full-on ever since.”
BOTTOM LINE: Mostly thanks to U.S. customers, Langley-based Pelvic Floor Strong saw dramatic sales growth in its first year. Miller, who became a mother in April and has started creating an umbrella brand called Alex Miller Wellness, plans to launch a pre- and postnatal program for women in their 20s through 40s. –N.R.
JOE PARENTEAU AGE: 29 Co-founder + CEO
Fable Home Goods
LIFE STORY: After growing up in Regina with a janitor father and warehouse worker mother, Joe Parenteau knew he just had to go somewhere the weather was a bit better. So he followed a golf scholarship to William Woods University in Missouri, where he studied accounting. He then came directly to Vancouver (again, weather), thinking he'd get a job in his field and call it a day. He did, kinda. But Bench Accounting isn't exactly KPMG or Deloitte, and Parenteau was soon taken with how the online bookkeeping service did business.
“A lot of autonomy is given at Bench,” he says. “Tons of entrepreneurs are going to come out of there, just the way they operate it–it fuels entrepreneurship. It's technically a bookkeeping company, but it's really more like a tech startup.”
Parenteau already had an idea–realizing how much easier it was to shop at Ikea than at Williams Sonoma or Crate and Barrel, he sought to modernize the high-end dinnerware buying experience for millennials—and partnered with tech workers Tina Luu and Max
Tims to launch Fable Home Goods in 2019. “We see it progressing into a home décor brand,” he says of his digital merchandiser. “While we sell dinnerware today, that's not where we're going to end; we're just getting started. I think you'll see us look into other components of the home– planters, wall art, rugs. There's a lot of space there.”
BOTTOM LINE: Since last August, Fable has grown from the three founders to 16 employees and raised well over $1 million in funding. The only hitch? The company keeps selling out of product. Fable opened a Burnaby warehouse in April (Parenteau's been relying on his mom's expertise) that should permanently solve that problem. There are plans to add a storefront to it, too. –N.C.
MEG O'HARA AGE: 29
Founder + CEO
Meg O'hara Creative
LIFE STORY: When Meg O'hara was 16, she sold her first painting for $100–to her late grandmother, after whom she's named. “It was the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me,” recalls O'hara, who grew up in Toronto in a family of lawyers and judges.
Other childhood memories aren't so happy. Unable to read until Grade 3, O'hara was diagnosed with dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). “As a kid, I would always get pulled out of class,” the Whistler resident says. Told by teachers to aim low and embarrassed that fellow students thought of her as dumb, O'hara now says her learning disabilities gave her grit and creativity. “Art was always my outlet,” she explains. “I could express myself in art, but I couldn't in writing.”
O'hara moved west to ski–and to earn a BFA in art history and theory from UBC while painting on the side. After trying to work a regular job, she decided to paint full-time, building a client base by word of mouth. O'hara began focusing on landscapes for the ski industry when Banff's Sunshine Village commissioned some work in 2018. Soon she was painting for ski resorts, heli-ski lodges and private chalets throughout North America. “I have very strong relationships with clients, so a lot of them will end up being repeat clients who refer me to others.”
When ski resorts shut down during COVID, O'hara started to panic. But she quickly attracted a whole new group of customers: affluent collectors in Canada and the U.S., including nostalgic former ski bums who wanted her large canvases for their homes.
BOTTOM LINE: O'hara, who recently hired her first full-time employee, saw revenue more than double last year. After she tapped the American private market, her international clientele quadrupled in 2020. O'hara's five-year goals include topping $10 million in revenue, being represented by New York-based David Zwirner Gallery, participating in international art fairs and having her work at Christie's auction house. –N.R.
LEEJOO HWANG
AGE: 22
Co-founder + director of business development
Meaningfulwork
LIFE STORY: Leejoo Hwang is either lying or being overly humble when says he was “just a normal kid growing up” in Surrey's Fraser Heights neighbourhood. In Grade 9, Hwang became super invested in the PC video game League of Legends, starting up a 20,000-follower Facebook fan page well before the esports boom.
“That gave me the confidence to do other things,” says Hwang, who started venturing to Vancouver's Downtown Eastside with a pen and a notebook to ask its residents questions. “How did you get here, where did you come from, stuff like that,” he recalls. “I guess it was insensitive, to be quite honest, and pretty naive. But people were very open to talk to me about some of their family issues, drug abuse, financial issues they'd gone through, mental health problems, and I got to learn in-depth about the issues around homelessness in Vancouver and poverty.”
That led Hwang to do community work in his own Surrey neighbourhood. Enlisted to help the city plan its Canada 150 celebrations, he got invited to Ottawa for the occasion. “It's my passion to build strong communities with a sense of purpose,” he says. In the pandemic, that manifested itself in the form of Meaningfulwork, which he describes as “Linkedin for people looking to volunteer.”
BOTTOM LINE: Meaningfulwork is based out of SFU'S venture program, where Hwang graduated in 2020 with a double major in business administration and environmental sciences. The company has 16 employees, and its online platform has supported more than 100 nonprofits. Hwang hopes to start fundraising soon. –N.C.
COURTNEY PETERS AGE: 29 Co-founder + CEO Supercrush
LIFE STORY: Courtney Peters found her way to business by way of banking and medicine. Although the Surrey native comes from an entrepreneurial family, she had no plans to head in the same direction. Peters, who got her first job when she was 13, began working as a teller for TD Bank while earning a communications degree at SFU.
She became a branch manager and got promoted to events and communications at the corporate office, which also gave her an opportunity to learn about business. Peters then took a similar position with advocacy group Doctors of BC, where she moved into marketing and learned that she enjoyed it. What's now Supercrush began in early 2018, when she sewed a few scrunchies with some girlfriends and posted the results on
Instagram. Friends and family asked about buying the scrunchies, so Peters recruited her mom, Shelby, a lifelong sewer, to help with production. “We had zero intention for it to become a business,” she recalls.
But demand was so strong that they hired a local home-based sewing team before quitting their jobs in September 2019 to work on Supercrush full-time. Keeping manufacturing in its hometown is important for the Vancouver company, which sources all fabric for its hair accessories locally, Peters says. “That's always been at the heart of what we do, as well as giving back to our local community.” Supercrush started making face masks during COVID, giving a portion of sales to the Union Gospel Mission; so far, it's donated $27,000.
BOTTOM LINE: Revenue has grown dramatically each year, even though Supercrush did no paid advertising until last fall. About 70 percent of its customers are Canadian, with the rest in the U.S. “In 2021, we're focusing on building a solid foundation for future growth,” Peters says of the business, which now employs 10 contract sewers on its team of 13. The company pays its workers a fair wage, uses recyclable packaging and minimizes production waste. Among this year's goals: expanding stateside and getting into more brick-and-mortar stores, including larger retailers. Supercrush also plans to release a haircare product this fall. –N.R.
CALVIN HO + ALBERT KIM AGES: 27 + 28 Co-founder + COO Co-founder + CEO Greenline POS
LIFE STORY: Albert
Kim doesn't have a lemonade-stand story from his childhood–not quite, anyway. In high school, Kim, who grew up mostly in Richmond after immigrating to B.C. from South Korea at age five, made $400 by creating registration software for Model UN conferences. But he didn't know that entrepreneurship was an option until well into his studies at UBC, where he earned a computer science degree.
Being in Vancouver got Kim curious about the cannabis industry, and with legalization looming, he saw an opportunity. He and Taiwan-born Calvin Ho, a high-school friend who was doing architectural drafting after completing a BSC in physical, environmental and human geography at Uoft, developed point-of-sale software for a couple of cannabis stores. Figuring they could build a real business, the pair launched Vancouverbased Greenline POS in 2018.
Ho and Kim both consume cannabis, but that was just one motivation for starting the softwareas-a-service company, which also helps retailers stay compliant with regulators, manage inventory and protect their data. “I like people who make businesses, and because of that, I like the people who started the retail business,” Kim says.
BOTTOM LINE: Having stared down its big, well-capitalized rivals, Greenline is now one of the largest POS providers in the Canadian cannabis space, with 500 stores signed and $2.56 million in booked revenue. The company, which has 32 staff, aims to triple its business for the second year in a row.
Eventually, the co-founders hope to expand into Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and perhaps Europe, Kim says. “I like to share the story of Greenline because I think it shows that in cannabis, you don't have to be a mega-raise, mega-spend type of corporation to make something work.” –N.R.
RUMI TEJPAR AGE: 29
Founder + CEO
Be Ultimate Apparel
LIFE STORY: A competitive squash player growing up in Vancouver, Rumi Tejpar turned his attention to Ultimate Frisbee when he left the city for Mcgill University. Tejpar, who would eventually represent Team Canada at the Ultimate world championships, was serving as president of Mcgill University's Ultimate team when he went to Singapore in 2012 for a co-op internship with a sourcing company.
“We weren't that busy, so my boss said, Rumi, if you have an idea, feel free to explore it,” Tejpar recalls. “And I thought, OK, I'm having to buy jerseys for this team. Why don't I try and source a kit for them?”
That spark of an idea led Tejpar to designing and sourcing jerseys, shorts and other paraphernalia (hats, socks, hoodies) for Ultimate teams around the world. “I realized that there wasn't really a company out there built for athletes in the Ultimate sphere,” he says. “You go play football, there's Nike, Under Armour, Adidas; all these companies are athlete-focused. In Ultimate, we've never really had that.”
BOTTOM LINE: Be Ultimate Apparel is in 10 countries and sells some 30,000 garments a year. Tejpar estimates that the company, which has 10 staff, owns 7 to 8 percent of the global market for Ultimate Frisbee apparel.
“There's still so much growth to come in Ultimate,” he says. “Eventually this will be an Olympic sport–in the next 10 years. And if we can play a part in building the legitimacy of the sport and then also be outfitting the teams that go there, that's an ultimate goal for us... And I did not mean to make that joke.” –N.C.
ALEXANDRIA MACFARLANE AGE: 28
Founder + CEO
Truly Lifestyle Brand
LIFE STORY: Even as a child in Abbotsford, Alexandria Macfarlane was highly entrepreneurial, selling old toys and Halloween candy to other kids. Having watched her mom and dad run businesses–a bridal store and a defence technology manufacturer, respectively–she knew she'd start her own one day.
But first, Macfarlane gravitated to social media and entertainment, spending several years as a TV producer and host with Shaw Communications and dabbling in the influencer world. She then became a social media manager at Prospera Credit Union, where her supervisor asked what she wanted to be doing in five years. “I was like, Honestly, I don't know. I don't want be here,”
Macfarlane recalls. “In that moment, a light bulb went on. I was like, But I love skincare.”
Launched in 2019, Truly Lifestyle Brand specializes in skin, hair and body products created with natural ingredients. Macfarlane started out making the original skincare line herself, but as the business expanded, she turned manufacturing of its smartly packaged offerings over to a local formulator. Asked how Truly stands out in a saturated market, she explains that she's built a community by treating customers like best friends. “I love talking to people,” Macfarlane says. “What mostly sets us apart is our connection with everybody who uses Truly.”
BOTTOM LINE: Truly's revenue quadrupled during its second year in business, cracking seven figures. The company, which moved into a Surrey warehouse in late 2020, has three full-time and three part-time employees. The bulk of its business is domestic, but U.S. trade is picking up, Macfarlane says. Although most sales take place online, Truly is in 27 boutiques throughout B.C. and Alberta, and several big retailers have shown interest. –N.R.
HARSH RATHOD AGE: 29 Co-founder + CEO Niricson Software
LIFE STORY: Harsh Rathod was working toward a PHD in civil engineering at Uvic in 2016 when he learned that a bridge on the busy Mumbai-goa highway that some of his family members often used had collapsed, killing almost 30 people. Fortunately, his relatives were unharmed. But that disaster changed everything for Rathod, whose doctoral work focused on using robotics and computer vision to assess the condition of dams, bridges and other infrastructure. “I was doing research to address this exact issue,” he recalls.
Rathod hadn't thought about business applications for his work, which aimed to replace antiquated techniques. Even today, inspectors typically climb a structure and hit it with a hammer to check the concrete. “We're still using 18th-, 19th-century methods,” says Rathod, who came to B.C. from India in 2014.
Over the next several years, he developed drone-based software that makes infrastructure inspections faster, cheaper, safer and more accurate–and uses signal processing to detect subsurface damage. Rathod created a business plan, too. “I was a geeky researcher, and I literally had to transform myself.” Luckily, he had some role models. His mother's side of the family works in real estate, and Rathod's father and his four brothers, who supply auto parts to the Indian Army, built their business from scratch.
When Rathod co-founded Niricson in 2020, the year after he finished his PHD, the company was accepted into the prestigious Techstars-arcadis accelerator in the Netherlands. It also landed several dam inspection contracts with BC Hydro and Power Authority. Niricson, whose name means “inspection” or “detailed investigation” in Sanskrit, is a data analytics business, Rathod explains. Rather than fly drones itself, it contracts out that work or helps clients set up their own programs. “We basically enable them to collect proper data using our technology,” says Rathod, who sees a huge potential market.
BOTTOM LINE: Now working with other utilities and building a software-as-a-service product, Niricson will have 10-plus multinational clients this year as it moves into bridges and tunnels, too. The 16-employee company is also pursuing more capital after raising about $800,000 in 2020. –N.R.
SELENE DIOR AGE: 23 Founder + CEO Vitae Apparel
LIFE STORY: Selene Dior was born in China, but she moved with her mother to Richmond when she was 10 months old. The pair stayed in Canada for five years, with Dior's mom working two or three jobs and getting the landlord to check in on her at night. When she was six, her family decided to head back to China, only to return when Dior was in Grade 10 because her mother wanted her to attend university here.
Dior had other plans. She had swam competitively in China, and although her family didn't have the funds to keep her in the sport, she became a lifeguard and quickly identified an issue. “I would see so many women in the summer come off the slides and diving board, and their bikini top would fall off,” she remembers. “It was embarrassing for them, and it happened all the time.”
She began designing swimwear and looking into manufacturing– something helped by her time in China and fluency in Mandarin and Cantonese. She launched Vitae Apparel–named for the Latin word for life–in December 2016 while she was studying for her first-year finals. Dior dropped out of school (“my mom was pissed,” she laughs) to focus all of her efforts on the company, pivoting it to athletic wear in 2018.
BOTTOM LINE: “Community has been the biggest factor of our success,” says Dior, noting that Richmond-based e-tailer Vitae now has 15 employees and blew past $1 million in revenue in 2020. “They love our brand, what we stand for, what we do, the fact that we're transparent. We have a 40-percent customer return rate–that's pretty high for a clothing brand.” –N.C.
ANAMIKA GIOIA AGE: 26 Founder Sacred Foods
LIFE STORY: Trying to sell colourful rocks to neighbours in her native India may not have worked for Anamika Gioia as a child, but it's a good thing it didn't dim her entrepreneurial spirit. A few years later, at 13, Gioia moved to Canada and discovered that her favourite snack–popped lotus seeds–wasn't available anywhere.
Knowing she'd eventually launch a food company selling the snacks, Gioia patiently waited, developing skills in digital marketing and website design as a freelancer. At a certain point, though, enough was enough.
“I spent a lot of time taking other people's ideas and using my skills to turn their dreams into reality,” she recalls. “When I was 23, I thought, Do I want to spend the rest of my life doing this, or do I want to go do it myself?”
Gioia launched Sacred Foods and its four flavours of popped lotus seeds in May 2020, right in the swing of the pandemic lockdown. The seeds are popped in India and shipped to Vancouver, where Gioia is the lone full-time employee and sells 120-gram bags for under $5.
BOTTOM LINE: Was the timing with COVID-19 secretly serendipitous for Sacred Foods? We'll never know, but it's in 184 stores across Canada and saw sales in the high five figures for its first year. Hey, it beats selling rocks. –N.C.
VICTOR NICOLOV AGE: 28
Founder + CEO
Anvy Technologies
LIFE STORY: There's no doubt that more than a few business ideas have been born out of Uvic parties. But it's likely safe to say that not many of them have made Time magazine's annual list of the top 100 innovations of the year. Alas, Victoria native and engineering student Victor Nicolov was peeling potato skins when he got the idea for Sepura. “I had a big party at one point–cut, like, 40 potatoes and threw a bunch of peels in the garburator,” Nicolov recalls. “The whole thing got clogged; it was a disaster.”
In the process, Nicolov learned a bunch of things about garburators. “They're bad for the environment and bad for cities–they don't only cause clogs in your building but also further out,” he explains, noting that the devices are banned in many municipalities across Canada and in several European countries. “A lot of the time when you see the city digging up pipes outside, that's maintenance for clogs that cost millions of dollars a year.”
So Nicolov set about creating a better garbage disposal that, instead of grinding kitchen scraps, separates and collects the solids in an odourless bin that lives under the sink. Then the user simply pours the waste into their compost bin.
BOTTOM LINE: Partly thanks to the Time nod, Nicolov quickly sold out of pre-ordered units. He and Anvy's five staff hope to ship the first 2,000 Sepuras–at $580 a pop–in the next few months. –N.C.