John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire

0:00 why we succeeded is we tried to find a product we could run and run the hell out of it, as we would say. We're by far the largest wild blueberry perfect as we Sit here today we're processing carrots. We're the largest carrot processor in Canada, so we learn how to do it and do it well. And then just run it as much as we can. And then we do battered products and

0:25 And we try to do the same thing there. So stick to your netting, do what you can do. And do more of it. And try and grow it. Don't try and do everything. So many people

0:38 Fail my Getting successful one and then think they can do everything. Welcome to the Knowledge Project. I'm your host, Shane Parrish. In a world where knowledge is power, this podcast is your toolkit for mastering the best what other people have already figured out. If you're listening to this, it means you're not a supporting member. Members get early access, no ads, my personal reflections at the end of the conversation. hand edited transcripts and so much more. Check out the link in the show notes for more information. My guest today is John Bragg, the blueberry billionaire. From humble roots, this entrepreneur that you've never heard of has grown Oxford frozen foods into the world leader in harvesting and processing wild blueberries. And if that wasn't enough, he also started and grew North America's largest private telecommunications firm, East Link. And all of this from a small town with a population hovering around 1200 people. I traveled all the way to Oxford, Nova Scotia to hear his story. How did he start? How did he grow? From the early days of picking wild blueberries with a rake to huge acquisitions across the border. We cover it all. This is one of my favorite conversations

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2:36 That's join overlap. dot com I wanna start with your childhood. Take me back. What was that like? Well, I grew up in a village of three hundred or three hundred and fifty people. As I remember it we had a sports event of some kind going all the time from

2:54 time I was five or six years old, we'd have a spongeball game and so a lot of sports activity and Skating on Schwamps and hockey games on Schwamps and In grade eight we had a new regional school in Oxford, brand new school with a gymnasium, which was a Just a a wonder for us because we'd been playing baseball on hayfields.

3:18 And uh to get a gymnasium and and a gymnasium teacher What's just Fantastic for us. So uh became a big part of our life. I was a member of four H and

3:31 Yeah. Winning calf. And all those little things, uh, you know, I guess you build on them. Through the years. What kind of values and principles did you learn from your parents? They were both very sh straightforward.

3:45 My father grew up in a country store. You had to have repeat clients, small community and people didn't travel. So you had to treat people with respect. And and honorably if you tell somebody you're gonna do something, you're gonna do it. And if you say you're gonna be there at seven, you're gonna be there at seven or before. Very straightforward values, you know. Good base to build on. So you started collecting wild blueberries in high school? I did. Uh uh my very first year I was fifteen. So I had to hire somebody to drive the pickup truck and and we had four or five pickers. And pick four thousand pounds of blueberries. When you think today we do a hundred and fifty million pounds.

4:29 Quite quite a different. It was the beginning of an entrepreneurial Career, I guess. And you use that to pay for university? My last year of high school I actually uh made four thousand dollars picking blueberries because that w uh had developed. And it cost twelve hundred to go to Maure. The game was I could pay my way.

4:51 And although my parents could afford to and then by the end of university I was doing a lot better than that. have a choice to Teach school for thirty eight hundred dollars on an extra hundred if I'd coached the basketball team and I had made uh Several thousand more than that picking blueberries that year. So

5:11 I knew what I was gonna eventually do. So you built an apartment building during university. Yeah, you're well informed. I forget about that, but But it was a great venture and a great learning curve for us. And you ended up owning that for like fifty years. Owned it a long while. Yeah, and and finally when we were We're doing one of our major cable acquisitions. We said that we would sell some non core assets and that was a non core asset and

5:44 And went along with some other. Non core. Items. But after Mount A you went to Dalhousie Law School. Went to Dalhousie Law School. Which was kind of interesting because I didn't ever plan to be a lawyer. A friend of mine was going and

6:00 So then I had to talk my way into law school. At the last minute. But I was only there about three weeks when I realized it was for lawyers. But it was a great education. I met some great people, good friends. Was Probably that my best education was first year law. And um how did that help you in the business world after Where it helped me was the principle of

6:24 of a fair deal on both sides of the table. We'd like to think that when we've completed a purchase or a an a deal of any kind. that the other side's happy and we're happy. You can't always do that, but it's it's a good objective. So you left and then you went into the blueberry business. I Came back to the small village and and decided that my father and brother were in the sawmill business that I could help them.

6:52 But that I could pay my way with the blueberry business. All right. Then in nineteen sixty eight we had a real turning point when there were big crops in Maine and and the grower price went down and uh in some cases I had already made a decision I was going to be in the blueberry business and I decided if I was Gonna be.

7:17 grow blueberries, I better have my own freezing plant. So I built a freezing plant and nineteen sixty eight when I was twenty eight and didn't have any idea what it was doing. It just uh just uh Focus. Who taught you the blueberry business? Like how did you even start to build a frozen plant? On the farming side, the Department of Agriculture in Nova Scotia had

7:39 Some very good extension workers. And a commitment to try and grow the blueberry industry in Nova Scotia? And so I kind of came along with that. Uh it was truly a cottage industry at that time. And then the frozen food side, we were fortunate to find some consultants in Pennsylvania that

7:59 Had done work in Maine. So we hire these consultants to design We we built that with our own help. But Really, we're naive. There's no question we're naive.

8:11 You know, if you're dedicated enough you can make it work. reasoning for the frozen plant. Like why go frozen? You're picking wild blueberries. Picking wild blueberries. Well in sixty seven we we couldn't sell them and if we did we felt we were giving them away. Not a good base to go forward on if you try to grow the industry but you can't sell them. I decided I should become master of my own destiny. Yeah to you know.

8:39 Wasn't easy. The first year we had a complete crop failure, the only one in the history. We've had poor crops and good crops, but that year we had a disaster. And that was right after all the factory investments. And all um Gear it up to run. Two million pounds, and we ran

8:58 I don't know, a hundred thousand. There just was no crop. Th they knew it wasn't something we did wrong. It was Mother Nature. And so we got through it. How do you handle uh inventory.

9:12 Do you save some when the pricing is bad so that you can release it when the pricing's bad? Sometimes you think that that's what we should do. But when there's an opportunity to sell and get the cash, I guess you take it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what we do.

9:28 No, that's not say we don't carry inventory over Stratically, you know, if the market's too weak, we We might carry some what we're hoping. The market. Well far.

9:40 At what point did you realize the blueberry business could be as big as it's become? I don't think I ever really understood that we could grow it to what it is and that it would be a base to grow other things and other companies and other businesses. You know, we've had good years and bad years, but We made it work. When I started in the industry, the wild blue ray industry was forty million pounds in total, and I hope to do two of that. And today the industry is over three hundred million, getting closer to four. And we do half of it. We couldn't see that

10:16 Growth. Yeah, we made a major acquisition in nineteen eighty three in Maine. We bought one of the two largest operations in Maine. And then more recently we're developing a lot of land in the Acadian Peninsula. But it's Probably pretty mature now.

10:33 Wha why did you buy more land? The the A V two acquisition, the more you bought more land as it's come up around Oxford, is that control supply? Yeah, I think we have a lot of money invested in the factories. Our ideal position would be to grow half them on our own farms and buy half from farmers. If you took the extreme and bought them all from the farmers, then you could be pretty vulnerable to competition running the price up too much or the growers ganging up on you. I mean they're all great guys, but You don't wanna be a hundred percent in there when you have all the money tied up in the factories. And the other side is we don't want to have a hundred percent of the industry. That wouldn't be good politics. You know, we need a good farming community and we enjoy working with the farm community and we've got

11:22 Friends we've had for Fifty, sixty years. Well, talk to me about that a little. You do a ton of research and you make it available to your competitors, you make it available to farmers. We do. We we developed a quite a while ago a philosophy that says

11:38 If it's good for us. Why don't we share it with the farmers? A lot of them deal with us and bring us their fruit. If we can make them more efficient that keeps us in business and we're continually saying to our own farm people and to the farm community We have to be more efficient. We have to compete in the world. We're competing with all fruits and all foods. So if you're gonna do that, you have to grow more pounds per acre and do it more efficiently. So that's uh the way you stay in business. Th what's the agriculture of wild blueberries? Uh my understanding is they're not planted. You're right. There's different bases in Nova Scotia on abandoned farmland on the back roads where people moved out, I say, in the thirties when rural electricity went through.

12:25 didn't go to every back road. Now when we're talking about wireless And internet we have to be in every back road. It doesn't matter whether there's just a camp there, they they want internet. Compare that with rural Electrification Which did the back roads but not the real back roads. And so a lot of people

12:45 when electricity went through. Uh moved off the back road farms. Farms eventually became blueberry feels they revert to nature.

12:56 Spruce trees grow on them, blueberry plants grow on them. Usually thirty years after they were farmed by a farmer. And so They're not plant though, they're naturally And in many cases

13:09 Some of these farms had already been taken over by spruce trees, whether quite thick or scattered, and we went in cut the spruce trees down. And we're at Blueberry Field. Now the industry in Maine uh which is the mother of the industry at about a fifty fifty ratio between old farms Which tended to be smaller than they were here. But then they had the blueberry barrets, which were big

13:36 fields that were a pine forest originally. And then through forest fires they became uh you know, there's history written about them. picking blueberries in the seventeen hundreds on these barons. They've been.

13:50 Over the years. And so that's a different industry. And now in New Brunswick On the south side of New Brunswick again it's old farmland, but on the north shore It's um uh pine forest that we're clearing We're really excited about the potential in New Brunswick.

14:09 We're gonna have more acres and blueberries than the Brunswick has in potatoes. So it's gonna change the Acadian penancial and the economy there. What is it about? My understanding is Quebec mean Nova Scotia. New Brunswick. Those are the basically the only places wild blueberries really grow. Not quite right. Nova Scotia Maine is the mother of the wild blueberry industry. But Lake Saint John is also quite a big prod production area.

14:36 And eighty three, when you did the Cherryfield acquisition in Was that the big step up For Oxford. Yeah, I would say uh eighty three was kind of a transformative year. It's also the year that we bought control with Stuart Rast of Halifax cable.

14:53 It took us from being operating small rural towns to having the major uh city. And so th those were bases that we've built on. We weren't that well financed, so lots of borrowing and lots of convincing banks we could do it. So eighty three was a big year. Y you've never shied away from using debt. We haven't shied away from using debt.

15:18 Although today our balance sheets are in great shape. But through the years we've always been What I would say almost fully levered. The food business We were levered, but we had good assets. The cash flow wasn't as consistent as you'd like, but in the cable business we were buying cable companies uh all over Atlantic Canada and out West and Ontario.

15:42 But The the cash flow was pretty consistent. You could budget it and see where you're going. So I wasn't afraid of that. And I think that separated me from, you know, the original cable owners. There were lots of them. As the industry developed And fiber came along and we started tying them together and there was a lot more capital involved.

16:05 Lots of the uh small town operators just decided that it was time to move on. They didn't want lever themselves the way it was required. So we started buying small systems and tying them together. And then we had the opportunity to get Hellvacs and eventually Uh darkness. basically all of Nova Scotia, except Glaze Ban, a little bit, and Cape Breton.

16:29 We just kept levering and levering and buying and buying some more. Yeah. Uh it was hardly year that we didn't have an acquisition. I want to come back to East Link in a second because you you own one of the largest I mean the largest private telecommunications company. Private. Yes, by far.

16:47 What are the input costs to blueberries. I think one of the big ones is bees. The biggest single cost are are the rental of honey bees for pollination. You know these berries they're fifteen hundred blueberries a pound. Every blossom has to be visited by a B to get a blueberry. So we we require a lot of hides. And I was reading an article this morning on on the Canadian economy.

17:12 And where Scotia Bank had put out a report that said if we would eliminate the borders within our provinces that it was something like two to seven billion dollars. of efficiency so it would come to Canadian. So in our B business We're stuck with with r restrictions. We can bring bees from The Okanagan Valley all the way to New Brunswick.

17:36 And we have to get permission through event, and we get the permit we bring But when it comes to the Nova Scotia border, no. So Nova Scotia and PEI are the only jurisdictions in North America that have restrictions. It's in historically It was about protectionism. Some

17:56 local beekeepers got together and lobbied the government and said, We don't want others coming in here. This is our market. But that's a small business compared to the blueberry business. So we're held hostage by By uh a lack of pollinators. And Nova Scotia. My understanding is like there's a Almost like a team of

18:16 Uh moving Pollinators in the US. They start on the west coast and they sort of like go across the country to Florida and then up to North East Yeah, I asked one of the guys about their business model and they said A B C Almonds, blueberries, cranberries. Then they go to Florida for the winter.

18:35 And then they go back to California and the Almonds and they do the road over again. And it makes them quite efficient. Where in Nova Scotia W what can you do? You s have to stay within the borders. We have a great junior hockey team in Halifax, the Mooseheads. And it's like saying you can play in the queue, but you have to use only Nova Scotia inputs. And you can't bring anybody in. It's not only bees, there's just restrictions all over the place on on border crossing.

19:04 And there's been panels and People studying it, Harper had a study group. And Everybody finds the same thing. It's kind of ridiculous. But

19:16 That's the country we live in and And the but there's always hope. Do you have a professional beekeeper on staff? We do. We we're the largest beekeeper. In Nova Scotia by far. And one of the largest in Canada.

19:31 Because w f we couldn't get the bees, so we had to start our own apry. We still don't have enough. And the farmers don't have enough. And what difference does the B make in yield? Like the pollination process.

19:46 No honey bees imported and relied on Um Local pollinators that you might get a thousand to fifteen hundred pounds. If we use four to five hives, which is

20:01 Considered. Hi. But we can grow eight thousand or nine thousand pounds. So it's tremendous difference. And with a research We've been sponsoring research with Doctor Percival at Yeah, cultural college.

20:14 And he's really taught us how to to grow Plants that are. More productive. And with fungicides and fertilizers and we do have the basic

20:26 crop there, but then you have to get it pollinated. It's a real problem. And this year was particularly bad. The farmers lost In many cases fifty percent of the bees overwinter.

20:39 should be taking those bees to Florida maybe in the winter time. So then they didn't survive. Well If you want to raise bees in Nova Scotia, you know there's a second market in New Brunswick. The Canadian Peninsula is ten days later than Nova Scotia and a microclimate. So we could pollinate here and then take them to New Brunswick, but we can't do that. So

21:10 Our biggest input cost are B so if the total It's two thousand dollars or thousands uh the thousand of it's in B's. So it's a big, big factor and a big issue. And a big disadvantage to Nova Scotia farmers. Tremendous disappearing.

21:26 And when you started you were pigging blueberries with rakes manually. That's right. Yeah. And how has that process evolved to today? There have been all kinds of people trying to Uh develop a mechanical harvester.

21:41 And my brother and a mechanic looked at some of these uh efforts that were done in Maine and other places and they said we can do this and we can do it better. So it took them quite a while. Because we really weren't focused. It would be something that We'd say in July, oh, we should get that old machine out and see if we can pick bluberies with it.

22:03 So the only thing I brought to the table was I got them a dedicated tractor. And so we're gonna start working on this in January. And they did. And they solved the problem. It took couple of years maybe, but very talented. And the same basic principles being used today that they

22:21 developed back in the eighties. So Uh it was a big effort. Uh Cost some money. But again we made it available to the farmers. But it's still the standard.

22:33 There are some other Um Harvesters that are made by local farmers or a mechanic. But But the

22:41 One that my brother and Lloyd Wetherby developed. is um it's kind of the standard. It was nice that you made it available to everybody too. That could have given you such a competitive advantage because labor is obviously expensive. We not only have to have our own farm sufficient, we need the farmers sufficient. I like how you think in in terms of the ecosystem. Hm. A lot of your competitors have sort of come and gone over the years. Why has Oxford survived?

23:08 was the cottage industry when I started it. People were we're operating it like a cottage industry and it's the requirement for more capital and more capital and and bigger operations came. Most of the existing people really weren't up to Mortgaging what they had.

23:27 And and they were a different generation. And so I'm a young guy that says I wanna do this the rest of my life. And I wanna grow the industry. So It was m more of an attitude, I think. I just fell into an industry that needed to be developed.

23:45 And so uh in some ways we provide it the leadership for that. Do you think that that long term sort of approach to it helped you? Yeah, we're big uh Big uh

23:58 believers I'm looking at the horizon. I should have Famous quote by think it was Dave Hammershall who said that that only those who look at the horizon find the right road, if you

24:10 Look at your sh uh at your feet, you'll stumble. So we're big. lookers at the horizon saying, How can we do this? And a private business allows you to do that. One of the interesting things about Oxford from my point of view is you never got into formulated sort of

24:26 Products which would be naturally pretty easy in the frozen food market. Probably have higher margins. Why not? You'll spend ten million dollars on a factory, but nothing on marketing. But our real business It was business to business as we call it, to selling to jam manufacturers in Europe and by manufacturers.

24:55 And if you're a pie manufacturer you're gonna go where the apples are because they're Fifty percent of the pies are apple. Or if you're in the jam business you You know, uh yeah, have to have a whole variety. So Oxford didn't have anything to offer.

25:12 blueberry jam in North America would be maybe five or six on the popularity. Lest. We're a provider to manufacturers and whether it's smoothies or Whatever uh So there's no economies to scale. I remember

25:29 Yeah, we have this great golf course uh Cabot down in Cape Breton. And the industrial commission of K Inverness. It'd be four.

25:38 Ben built Cabin. came to see me to see if I would make blueberry jam and inverness. Well You know, their intentions were great, but it made no economic sense to try and like Blueberries to Cape Britain. Make jam and then

25:53 Bring everything else, whether it's raspberries or whatever, strawberries and Arias. I've so many people chase these higher margin products and they lose focus. That's exactly right.

26:06 That a lot of people do that. why we succeeded is we tried to find a product we could run and run the hell out of it, as we would say. We're by far the largest wild blueberry producer. As we Sit here today we're processing carrots.

26:23 With the largest carrot Certainly care processor in Canada, but maybe in North America. So we learn how to do it and do it well. And then just run it as much as we can. And then we do battered products and And we try to do the same thing there. So Stick to your netting, do what you can do.

26:43 And do more of it. And try and grow it. Don't try and do everything. There's so many people. They are. Getting successful one and then think they can do everything.

26:54 was the rationale for carrots to sort of use the factory more? Because my understanding is like blueberry season ends sort of mid September and then carrot season starts. We said what can we do in the fall? extend the season. Because we start the first of August running twenty four hours, seven days. And and the minute bluebirds are done we move to carrots. It's taken us quite a while.

27:20 to learn how to do it and do it really well. And which we're doing now. But that was exactly it. And then we wanted to to have a core of people in the wintertime and so we started making battered products. For McCain foods. That was the onion rings? Onion rings. And cheese sticks and cauliflower and

27:41 But onion rings primarily. Talk to me about that deal with the McCains for the onion rings. Well, very interesting. Uh I would say uh typical maritime uh Deal. I went to see. Wallace McCain. This is

27:56 Over fifty years ago. Yeah. Said look, I need something to Keep my people busy. And have you any ideas?

28:06 And he threw me a file on onion rings that they had looked at and but it didn't fit because they were doing french fries year round. And he says, Well, maybe you can do it. So Needing needing something to do in the wintertime and off season. Uh we took the file. And and we had a one page agreement, which I still have, which gave us the exclusive right to make onion rings under the McCain label in Canada.

28:35 And we've been doing that for over fifty years. And I would say only in the Maritimes, you know? And and then of course we've had our ups and downs. But in all those years I never once went back to Wallace or Harrison and said, I need help, your guys are Give me a hard time.

28:54 I always worked it out behind the scenes. Because I thought I could go to them once and I was gonna save that. But if I became a nuisance to them then the relationship would disappear. So We've worked all these years and I never had to ask a favor. We've done it on a pure commercial basis.

29:12 And I think it's worked well for both of us. simple one page agreement over a handshake. Yeah. But at the time you entered that you had no idea how to make onion drinks. Didn't know how to make onion ring. The deal we made is

29:26 is still going, still one page, but it's uh altered in many ways. Of course over time with investments and so on. Yeah, we didn't know how to do it, but we We didn't know how to do Blu rays either. What gave you the confidence to figure that out? Other people in the world are doing it. There must be some way you can learn how to do it. It can't be that complicated. But this is back in the day before Google or anything. That's right. Searching how to make onion rings. Suppliers love to talk, so you talk to the people make batter and say, Well

30:01 You know, what kind of battery should we use? And what So they'll tell you more than they should sometimes. It was difficult. But and And our objective wasn't to make good onion rings, it was to make onion rings exactly the same as the competition. Because then it's an easy sell. You don't have to have something unique. Not as easy as you would think.

30:23 Okay. And we could make Better tasting one. And a blind test and ours would win, but they were a little different. And the objective was make the same as the other guy. What's necessary to be successful in a commodity business if you're making the same product in a very similar way that other people are making it, what gives you an advantage?

30:44 How do you create an advantage? You have to be the low cost producer. And you have to beat top quality. There are establish grades and so on so battered onion's a little different because there was only one major competitor and we were trying to compete with

31:04 With that. By and large, you have to be a low cost producer. And and have top quality. And And top quality doesn't has necessarily cost. In fact quite often

31:17 It's cheaper because you have Less product on the floor and Less shrinkage and you're doing it all right. And uh End product become better.

31:27 Top quality, low cost is a pretty good motto. There seems to be a natural entropy in business as you become successful. You start spending more money, you start doing things that are are different or you know, getting a fancy office or doing these things, but how do you maintain that low cost over fifty years.

31:49 Hopefully we are, but we strive every day and we have a culture Oh every year trying to do it better. There's always changes we can make in the manufacturing Line or on the farm? And so we have a real culture of

32:06 Um being open to doing better. Tomorrow. Could list five or six things that I know we're gonna do better next year.

32:17 And from some of the things we learned this year. And uh Yeah. Yeah, improving the mechanical harvester, improv um proving how we Unload the

32:28 Product and How we deal with the farmers, and There's there's always steps that you can do. And you can't be satisfied with the status quo. You know, we could sell forty million pounds of blueberries, wild blueberries kind of as a specialty item.

32:46 But when you want to sell three or four hundred million pounds now you got to compete with with cultivated blueberries and with strawberries and marmalade. Raspberry. To be better. And and they get our cost down.

33:02 What's the difference between wild blueberries and cultivated blueberries from uh Pragmatic? Oh tremendous difference. First of all the the health benefits, uh the antioxidants are double in Wild blue arrays. The flavor is much better. The uh cultivated blueberries.

33:20 They're a fine product. But but if you have them side by each. Anybody will choose the wild for flavor. And that's a big A big help.

33:31 We have l like jam manufacturers that one of the biggest in the in the world is Andros in France. And they'll only use European blueberries? which are a different species again are our wild booberies. And the Europeans can't compete with us'cause they're still a c cottage industry. So they're gradually disappearing. But there are lots of people who will will change the recipe and maybe use fifty percent cultivated. Uh

33:59 So so it's big competition. 'Cause it's more expensive. Wild blueberries are more expensive. Historically more expensive. And we could get a premium. But it's becoming more difficult. So our objective is to be the low cost producer even against cultivated.

34:16 What are the key sort of performance indicators or metrics that you look at. The food business is uh It's very difficult to put down on paper.

34:29 Yeah. You know, you're fighting The weather. And And

34:34 All kinds of weather conditions. Yeah, Currency's a big issue. Labor supply is uh is because we're seasonal. food business and the blueberry business in particular.

34:49 We just have to put all the inputs in. Do it all at the right time, the exact day for the sprays and so on. And then hope. that mother nature gives you a break. And doesn't take it away from you.

35:02 Like for instance this year We think the Acadian Peninsula has great potential for wild blueberries. And it catches uh showers because it sticks out And the water. And the Bay Shores on one side and

35:17 And And uh Yeah. A either Maramachi Bay or whatever is the other. But They normally uh catch good show and have good rain. This year they didn't get any rain.

35:31 And we had a tremendous crop. And you go to see it the day before it harvest and they're just little wee blueberries that Hardly weigh anything. And as a result we had less than half a crop. And so we did everything right, all the conditions were right. So

35:48 Very difficult to project. But But what you need As a farmer. Yeah.

35:56 somebody else to be in trouble with their crop. And your crop work out well. But you're always looking at the right. So what's it what's the cottage industry and what's the c crop in Lake Saint John? What's the crop in Maine? What's the cultivated crop?

36:11 So you're always looking for somebody else to have trouble. All you can do is farm through the cycles, keep putting the inputs in, do it everything on time. Professionally. And hope you hope you get the break. our advantage is that we are in three m three different micro climates like

36:30 I mentioned that we had a poor crop in the peninsula. But we had a very good crop in Maine. And so just a different micro climate. most businesses you can kind of project and do a business plan, but in the food business weather plays a big part. Let's switch gears a little bit to Bragg Communications, which became East Lank, but it started way back in nineteen sixty eight.

36:55 Right after You just had a crop failure. You just invested all this money. into the factory that you can't use. Right. And then you bought

37:05 Your first was it a television license? It was a cable television license and we didn't really buy it. The license were owned by the federal government. And so they accepted applications for different towns and their philosophy at the time was to have local entrepreneurs do local Television.

37:26 But that got taken over by technology with fiber and And where you could tie. ten small systems together and have a good size one and And a lot more capital and When we started you know, we had two American channels that we were offering and

37:43 And uh I remember when we were upgrading Halifax from six channels to twelve. our engineer at the time said nobody'll ever watch twelve channels. Mm. And that's all of my time. So we built twelve channels and of course with a short time that was outdated. We had to rebuild. So we didn't pay for the license. The license we applied for. And nobody else applied. This is sort of average Nova Scotia. We built a system and with

38:13 Coex cable and put up a big master antenna to get the signals out of Halifax. And then we got microwave. American channel Sam. But it was tough. It was really tough. I mean again we didn't know what we were doing.

38:28 Is it true you used to boss in tapes from New Brunswick? That's it. That's uh I wasn't gonna mention that. It was so terrible. We built a tower down at Mount Shamcook on the US border. And we received

38:43 The Bangor channels there. Hate them. Put them on the bus and of course Halifax got them first. Time we got them in Amherst, they were two weeks old. But the sitcoms were okay.

38:54 But the Boston Bruins two weeks later or Not quite so good. So we were selling these uh US channels, uh two weeks old. Yeah. Then eventually we got a microwave system that brought them in directly.

39:12 Yeah, it's still off Mount Shamco. And now of course all this stuff comes by fiber. And So tremendous changes in that business. Was it capital intensive back in sixty eight as you're building this out? So where did the capital come from to build that out? Well, it was a small town.

39:29 And so Yeah. You know, it didn't take a lot of capital, but But we borrowed the money from the bank of Nova Scotia, or most of it. And we worked hard. It's amazing how it's developed. But then we could see that you could tie them together with fiber and we kept and they kept

39:48 m more capital was required. So a lot of the other towns, the guys Just decided they didn't want to put more capital in. So For sale. And by corporate lawyer at the time, George Kane said, John, there's something interesting here.

40:02 All these towns come up, there's six buyers, but you always get them. And it was basically we became easy to deal with. And we always lived by our word, and we always paid top price. And so we just kept picking them off. Wonder Time.

40:19 And and made it easy and didn't over over negotiate. We gradually picked up a lot of towns and and And then you know We bought Company out of Newfoundland that had

40:35 systems and Sudbury and and British Columbia and Alberta we just gradually bought'em. But there's nothing to buy anymore. I think about this. We have both our cable and food business that were both quite rapid Rose. Businesses from really small cottage industries to to professional companies. We've played that game and the

40:57 Both good businesses, but But I don't see the next big step. They're kinda mature businesses. Yeah, and all the bigger companies have m you know, are public companies. And uh And they're not gonna sell.

41:11 At one point you were losing A lot of money every month. You went to see your father and your brother. That's right. I guess maybe it was eleven thousand uh these numbers, you know. Grow or shrink over fifty years.

41:27 I think it was eleven thousand a month we were losing. But that's on a that's like hundreds of thousands today. Thought we should have a little family meeting on it. Uh Look, we're losing it and I'm cutting costs everywhere. We did. Cut cost.

41:43 All the extra people out. Uh huh. I can see a light at the end of the tunnel, but I'm not really sure where we're going. I think we could s sell to some of our neighbors. Or maybe we could buy one or two.

41:59 'Cause they were they were everywhere was struggling. My father said, Well, we spent a lot of money on your education. We shouldn't throw it away. Pretty wise advice. And I said, Chase, I don't know whether we'll ever get it back or not, but But it turned out it w it was right. It uh w had an expensive education and we learned how to

42:21 How to go on it. Sometimes you get a little wisdom, uh Take shall wrong way. How important was scale? Well, scale ended up being very important in in that business. And uh and that's why in eighty three when we got Halifax and we're able to tie

42:37 We couldn't really afford to have professional engineers we're relying on uh suppliers to give us the technical advice uh But Scale is absolutely important. And so as you you expanded this, you've done I think hundreds of acquisitions effectively in East Link.

42:56 Why the reputation for paying The most. I don't think we paid too much, but we were prepared to pay at the top of the cycle. Again we were looking at the horizon. If you paid a little too much and you're a private company. You just have to live a little longer to make it work. My brother used to say about buying a woodlot.

43:19 Well, maybe we're paying too much, but if we live long enough it'll be a good deal. So this was the same with cable. It just meant that instead of uh And the big scheme that was The right thing to do.

43:35 Is that something private companies can do easier than public companies? Oh yeah. Absolutely. I mean we're still doing all kinds of land development and this development we have in the food business on the peninsula. It's all twenty year old Horizon types that

43:53 to get the land cleared and developed and get a productive Uh But It's unique. And nobody else's gonna have it. So there's lots of

44:03 Um Projects like that. What are some of the other uh other projects you have going on that you could do privately that you couldn't do publicly or advantages of just being private versus public. I think there's tremendous advantages to

44:19 If you have good management and we'd like to think we have good management, we work hard at that, but there's just uh all kinds of decisions that we're making that Of course if it's Efficiencies in the factory. We wanna have a two or three year payback. But

44:38 Sometimes you have to make motherhood statements. You have to say, Well Well look we build a hundred and fifty million dollar factory in in the Acadian peninsula. That's a motherhood statement. You couldn't say well it's gonna be a three year payback. It's not gonna be but But it

44:55 It's a good long term asset. For the area to good at long term asset for us. But so there are some What I call motherhood decisions you make to Keep yourself efficient and And gone.

45:10 Are there a other ones that come to mind? The land development we're doing up there is is the same thing. Uh We We bought about three thousand acres of carrot land in the Anaplas Valley.

45:25 at premium prices. Why would you pay premium? We need to secure the base. That's where we grow our carrots and and we More.

45:36 you know, doubling the production of carrots, so we need the land base in some case paying twice what the market was. But it's only available once, you know. She don't. Yeah. Buffett talks about well I want all my managers to run their businesses as if they owned a hundred percent of it. Right. And then you would do these things where it's like, Well, this might not make economic sense for ten years, but it makes economic sense over fifty or hundred years. And I'm not sure Buffett would agree. I mean he he buys going companies with with existing revenues and

46:11 He I don't think he's done much start up and Yeah. You know, he gave up on on Berkshire. Which was the right thing.

46:20 But he he's He's buying companies all over the world that are already cash flow positive and making money and he can measure that. My business of Food and cable. And even inland.

46:33 Startups and growing them. And uh Maybe we're just lucky, but we've made that work. But You know, we could see that we c we could do that. So it's a little different than Buffett. Now that we have mature businesses

46:49 We'd like to find something That fits Buffett's model. Find something w already has good cash and good management. And we're looking every day. And uh

47:00 We almost closed on a significant one, but But at the end of the day we should Well, we've reached our limit. We can't pay that price and we could have. Could have quite easily. But

47:13 We'd rather buy more buffet stock than And pay too much for an operating company. We were talking about this earlier, you took one public company private in two thousand seven, two thousand eight, which was AM Telecom. Yeah. M telecom and

47:29 And Southern Ontario. We got some real efficiencies by taking it private and it you know, became a branch plant. As compared with a separate head office, separate accounting, separate I don't know how much it wasn't that big a company, but we probably took three or four million dollars of overhead out of it.

47:50 Which is part of the cost sort of of being public in a way. It's costly to be public. And it slows you down and you're Uh And you're a target.

48:00 For everybody. Yeah, I've been a director of a one of the major banks in Canada. And I've been a director of many other companies that were public.

48:14 But it Seems to me that you know, living in Oxford and running a private company or under the radar. A lot. Compare with

48:24 public and public filings and And And regulations. And we have them all and we like our food business. We run top quality and I used to have this discussion with Donald Sobey, who

48:37 encouraged me to to to go public because it gave liquidity for the shareholders. But I'd like to think we could solve that problem without going public. But it's really cumbersome, there's no question. And very hard to make long term. Twier decisions. One of the things that you never got into with

48:59 Eastlink to my understanding was really buying programming, which seems to be the whole nature of the last ten or fifteen years of the business where you have You know, the bells and the Comcasts and everybody's sort of like trying to buy up the programming. Right. Why did you guys ever get into that? I think it's They were paying a lot for this programming. And do you think Bell are happy that they spent a lot of money buying programming now?

49:27 I don't think so. It really hasn't worked out well. Were we lucky? We thought a lot about it and there were programming we could have bought. I guess w you know, we felt we had limited resources, we'd rather buy another company than than by programming.

49:44 How do you think about Something like Starlink now with rural internet access. He has Hundreds of millions of dollars invested.

49:55 And physical assets delivering internet. Mm. When it comes to the technology business

50:05 I'm the wrong one to to try and answer that. It's very difficult to So Be better than a good fiber system. in rural Nova Scotia or rural areas because you have s so many options with it. In fact we're doing business w with Starlink because when they get down they wanna have fiber that they can feed people. Are they a competitor, are they a customer?

50:31 Uh I'm not sure where that's going. And there's limited capacity in these uh satellites too. Certainly there's gonna be competition. But I take it Little different view. We've got the customers. And so our job is to be efficient.

50:49 Provide good service, make it easy. And And can we do that? I mean, are we gonna carry Starlink? Are we Uh we're a distributor of other people's products, so I think having the fiber

51:05 the fiber network in in our office in Halifax on the wall We have a picture of our fiber network. It's really amazing. And I think it's an asset that's not recognized by the financial advisors and so on of the big companies, but

51:23 You look at our map, we have fiber from Ireland to Bermuda. To the w to the east coast. And then we have fiber going west through through Chicago and Detroit, through Toronto and up north. And all the way to British Columbia. And

51:40 A lot of this we own, some of it we trade, we might have Forty eight fibers in an area and somebody wants twelve of them. We'll say, Sure, we'll give you twelve in a rural area, but we need two to Detroit, or to Chicago. So we either own or have trades a fiber network that's really amazing when you see it on the wall.

52:01 I remember I went to lunch in uh Stockholm with the Ericsson guys when we were first getting in uh Sell business. And I said, Will you put us out of business Will you put my cable business out of business eventually? He said, Look, we've got to get off those towers and into fiber as fast as we can.

52:22 So you know, you think of it's all cell, but it's really coming to you from fiber. And wherever the cell is, there's fiber to another node and And you're picking it up. I think the cell network is a big asset for a lot of years. But Voice is changing all the time. Talk to me a little bit more about the fiber and the asset nature of it.

52:43 more valuable than people think because it's Harder to get permits to put new fiber in? Is it more valuable'cause it's super expensive to put new fiber in? I think it just gets more expensive all the time. And by now there's a lot of fiber networks built. So who's going to build another one? You know, there's a lot of competition. But we've got this. It's plowed in capital that's there that's gonna be a big asset for a number of years, I think. Why did the name change from Bragg Communications to East Lang?

53:13 Originally we called it Central Cable in Amherst. And that was to keep her name off it. But then we had a holding company and w somebody's named it Bragg Communications holding company that was was not in the public at all. Some way as we bought companies the brag name became a little more

53:34 But in most cases we still ran under the original name, whether it was in Sydney or Summerside or Charlotte. for financial and so on had to Put them together. The holding company named Bragg Communication.

53:49 It sort of got out there. But it was never on on the walls of any of our buildings'cause they were all run as Halifax scale or whatever. It was truly a holding company and then And then we moved it on from there. But those were

54:05 I w I wasn't paying much attention to or didn't care much about w We're always uh rejigging the financial structure. You said something interesting there, which was you didn't want your name on there. Most people I think would almost be the opposite. They do from an ego perspective. Yeah, well we don't have our name on the food business.

54:27 Oxford's a good Classical name around the world. One of the best marketing tools you can have is use your own name. People Catch on McCain should be a great example. Everybody knows McCain French fries, but I was determined that from a family point of view and If my grand grandson or granddaughter wanna have a Just a normal job?

54:50 in the business or outside of the business, they don't need the burdens of of the name being everywhere. So I was quite determined to keep our name off it. But security, you don't need a high profile in these Small towns and And I think

55:08 I think it's uh Just makes a better family. situation if you don't have your name plastered over everything. But I can understand why people do it. But

55:20 But in my case I prefer not to do it. You like the low profile? Yeah, I like the low profile, no question about that. My son Matthew and I were looking at a Cottage that he was talking to buy.

55:33 It was former cottage of Alex Coval, who is the famous artists from Mount Allison, my university. And it was for sale, and we thought it would be nice on The covel card each, and

55:47 And we were there and there were some other people showed up looking at on a Sunda afternoon. And I said, Oh, we understand it's for sale, we understand there's people interested. But Matthew and I were there They had no idea who we were. And and they were talking this as if

56:03 You know? Maybe we We'd know who might be buying it. Yeah. It's just nice to

56:11 have nice low profile and be able to get around and not have the burdens of People. And Not as much for me as for my Children and grandchildren.

56:22 When you were acquiring all these companies, whether through Oxford or through East Lank, Did anybody ever ask for equity? Yeah, we've had uh from time to time There's been that discussion, and I face it head on. And say look, family companies are great to work for.

56:41 And we're gonna pay you well. And you're gonna feel very comfortable here. But there's no equity available and And too complicated with with some finance structures if you start giving it away and then if they want out and

56:56 I just didn't need that complication. In my life, I think historically. Uh there's a lot of good family companies. And especially in Europe, there's tremendous uh generation that's and And people are comfortable. I tell the story about a young guy that

57:14 was a basketball player and he was recruited to run Run uh The athletic department uh Saint Evex University. The president of the university said

57:26 I'm probably only gonna pay you half of what you're earning today. But I'm gonna give you a job with twice the satisfaction. And that's the most important thing in life. He took the job and he's got great job satisfaction. And

57:40 You know, there's more to life than than just the pay envelope. Yeah, having a good civil place to go to work and good fellow workers and Yeah. And and the sense of working together is trying to

57:54 Yeah, the hand. Of the other guy all the time. It's work for us. We've had great employees. Just tremendous employees. Dedicated. That's what we are. Talk to me a little bit more about the culture inside the companies and how you shape it. Probably the best thing we've done on the culture side.

58:13 Is Everybody is dedicated to doing it better next year. And open to that. respond with a new idea with a negative comment to start with. That's human nature. But they get through that with the end of the day.

58:31 And then they're the m the great team leader. Having a culture that you can just bring up ideas and And There's really no room for naysayers around the table. You've gotta just say we gotta do this. Don't tell me why it's difficult to do it.

58:48 You agree it has to be done. We should be better than we are. So Well. Let's get together and and I always say to my team I say you're smarter as anybody else. Why can't you figure out how to do it?

59:00 Mm. Yeah, that's a good challenge. But they're as smart as anybody else, you know. We don't have to bring people from Toronto or A what? to decide how to solve problems at Oxford. There's a culture of hard work and

59:14 All all of those uh Basics and and And civility and respect. I think it runs highly through the business.

59:25 And uh And we say to people look If you can't be respectful or if you're not happy here, please. You know, find a place where you can be happy. How do you think about incentivizing sort of the leaders of the company? And and they seem to work. If I had my drrothers, I'd rather

59:49 pay you a million dollars and just expect you to work hard than to pay you Five hundred with a five hundred bonus. And send of seemed to be a way of life. But a lot of people We'll perform without without incentives. Certainly we have incident programs and And

1:00:06 They do seem to motivate people. Well, John, if you want to hire me for a million bucks a year, I'm available starting tomorrow. There you go. See? Mm.

1:00:16 Without a bonus. No bonus necessary. How do you manage it all? We're rec um recording this in a in uh my so called head office. Which is only two hundred yards from our food processing plant. But it's an effort

1:00:32 for me to get away from the food business and let the professionals run it. We have a very small head office and we're running Several operating companies and and a few years ago we started uh portfolio which is I think quite significant today. I read Where

1:00:50 So and so's running two billion dollars and three billion and we're doing more than that. And so we've got big portfolio that's done very well for us. So we try to streamline it and keep it simple. And let the operators Run the business. And

1:01:06 They have to deal with the people problems. We work at it. Who makes the investment decisions for the public? Companies. Uh We have a very small team here in our head office. I'd say three of us, uh

1:01:21 Um And we're not we're not traders. We're not trading all the time. We're trying to Like. A lot of buffet and we're just hanging on to it and Probably I'll have it ten years, although I read uh

1:01:34 An article on the weekend of Contrary in View, but Buffets maybe Brookshire's not doing so well. But they compare it with Apple and Like we're soft and some high flyers that have done extremely well. We're buying Buffett for a ten or eleven or twelve percent return. We're not looking for twenty or twenty five percent. We just like to buy good solid investments and

1:01:57 Uh And let'em grow. How how do you think about that when they're so liquid? Like if they got overvalued, would you sell them or would you just sort of like hold on? Basically we would just hang on. You know, uh you wonder whether Berkshire's overvalued today or not.

1:02:15 He says he buys the stock when it's um One point two tight bull. But he's actually buying it at one point five times. And buying it consistently. So he knows something that we don't know. So maybe you should sell the stock. But

1:02:30 Uh they're gonna grow. We have good stocks. Some will be up, some will be down. But uh We don't really

1:02:41 pretend to be able to pick the high flyers that Not really our objective. Sm modest portfolio. But when Interest rates were down to where we could borrow money for one or two percent. We said look, this is an opportunity. We should get at this and so we did. Borrowed lots of money to buy good stocks and it's

1:03:02 Been the right thing to do. used to go to the Berkshire Hathaway meetings. What are some of the lessons you took away from Munger and Buffett? I don't know, I there's so many So many basic lessons I say to my kids every once in a while.

1:03:18 Would Buffett do that? Yeah. And th they think well well I guess he wouldn't. So that's the answer. We d we don't have to have a big discussion. We're looking at a company recently and my son said Well, I think I'd rather have more Berkshire.

1:03:33 Yeah. And so it's a good test. And so he just brings value to our every day everyday life. Uh uh All the time. What would Warren do?

1:03:45 What would Warren do? That's uh Or Charlie. W what are some of the lessons you've learned from investing in public companies? Buffett would say that that if you're a businessman and investing in your business, you're probably a better stock picker.

1:04:01 Because you use the same principles. But if If you're An investor It will help you in your business because you're using the same principles in your business. So it's just like I said, my son

1:04:15 This company we're looking at. Not not a very big company, but it would kind of fit. And my son says well. I'd rather buy Buffett. That's a pretty good benchmark. So you use that every day and he grew this business by buying ch

1:04:30 other companies, but he hadn't charge money to do that. You know, uh, He he always says he doesn't doesn't borrow money, but he But some way he's he's borrowing the insurance money. Cash available to buy'em.

1:04:45 In my case, I've built businesses from scratch. And that's different and you have to have some different philosophies. than than he would agree with. Yeah. No, he wouldn't have believed the way I did. He would have

1:04:58 would have used as charge money. But he doesn't call that leverage. one of the differences that strikes me from your past and and his, and they both obviously worked out exceptionally well, is that After the sixties he basically seemed positioned For success no matter what happened. Different businesses, right?

1:05:17 But like look at today, they have three hundred billion in cash on the balance sheet. So if the economy crashes, he's gonna win. If the economy keeps performing, he's gonna win. And if it stays the same, he's gonna win. It sounds like he's almost positioned not predicting the future. Right. Whereas when you're levering up, you're you're making a prediction, it might be reliable. Because your revenues are constant and you you're borrowing against that. It is different because he's relying on the market. If the market crashes, my cable business doesn't change. People still watch

1:05:50 cable or still use cell phone. It might go down some, but it's basically If the market crashes, people are still gonna eat blueberries. Well might be. might be tough going, but they're not gonna stop eating. And you might have to take a year or two when you don't make any money. But

1:06:07 But you know. And Was it seventy eight when interest rates were eighteen and twenty percent? I did a cable business and finance. And the interest rates would

1:06:20 Kill him. But we just hung in there and cut the cost and And I remember saying, Well, if we can survive in this situation We'll be in pretty good shape going forward. I understand Buffett, but I'd I'd I don't always agree with him. Yeah.

1:06:35 that money and see as a long term investor Mm. Having that money set in In cash. Uh

1:06:45 I don't know, he's got a crystal ball that nobody else has. I'd be investing it in And good stock. Because the stocks go down, it doesn't matter. But I guess he's waiting for the opportunity to buy them cheap.

1:06:59 Yeah, and and he's m creating cash, so he Obviously anticipating quite a correction. Like he does lever up some businesses there, like not to the point of a lot of people, but like the railroad business has that the Especially with the predictable revenues. What are the key indicators you look at?

1:07:18 for your businesses on a regular basis to Gau they're doing. Conrade to Buffett were a big ebet, uh believer. uh the cash they generate. Uh

1:07:31 If it's Through depreciation, that's all right. How much cash were we generating and And how can we service the debt and what can we buy with that cash? And as a private company. And that's work for us.

1:07:44 You know, when we were building the cable business there was lots of depreciation, but the cash flow was good. And still is. The same in the food business as we invest in factories and so on. And we also you know, try to work the angles on on the tax situation and use our depreciation. Warner said in the past he's not a believer in Ebet Dow but But we are.

1:08:09 We think it's the cash that the business generates that And so we're always saying, Well, what's the multiple on Eva and So we know what cash is coming.'Cause You can you can usually cut back on your capital if you need to. We're always trying to measure how much free cash business uh generating.

1:08:29 What do we have? So Either pay down debt or to buy Five More buffet stock or or something similar.

1:08:38 How would you classify your management style? Historically uh a lot of hands on. I really don't find the day to day operations as much fun as as I do the investment of the funds and So

1:08:54 I'm enjoying moving to a head office role as compared with But I still like to monitor uh We still have monthly meetings with all of our major investments. So Probably a little people would say a little

1:09:10 too much detail and so on, but When you're signing the checks and the notes You wanna know what's going on. And so I would rather be well informed up front So that I can help if there's a problem.

1:09:24 That come to the problem late. Operating without surprises is It's pretty important to me. There's a a trend in business sort of like getting away from the details as you move up in the organization. That was years ago.

1:09:45 But that's really basic. You know, just what are the key items? Is it Revenue, is it sales is it margin? And and cosh. I'm a big believer in being a low cost producer.

1:09:58 Doesn't matter what you're doing. There's no excuse. To waste money. Your low cost. Y you're gonna stay in business in the tough times. The key points are different in every business. So

1:10:11 I would say for instance in the food business, all about costs'cause you don't know what the revenue's going to be. 'Cause we don't whether we're gonna have a frost or whether the currency's gonna change or Or whether somebody else got a big crop or a poor crop. But if we keep our costs in good shape. We'll be all right in the long run. And I would say in cable You know, you always have bull of it cost, but capital probably the biggest thing in in the cable business.

1:10:37 'Cause you can make big mistakes and And You don't know And then I will say a billion dollars to get into programming and that just didn't

1:10:47 Work out. I would say every business has You know, the five points might be different. You're eighty four now? eighty four.

1:10:58 And you're still working full days. I try to. Ha. Yeah, I do. I do, I enjoy it. And I work a little every night. I'm always reading about

1:11:07 Stocks or reading. There's a stuff. Yeah, I guess I'm not working quite as much as I used to, but I could share with you I given some money to an entrepreneurial school at University of Prince Hill Rhode Island.

1:11:21 Catherine Colbeck, who's a former premier there and the and the business school's named after her And she was a friend of mine at university. And uh A great person. And so

1:11:35 We gave some money to the to an entrepreneurial school. And I said, On the condition that you put seven oh on the wall. What seven oh? That's the hours entrepreneurs have to work every week. I love it. Not fifty, but seventy. And entrepreneurs do work seventy.

1:11:53 What role did Judy play in all of this? I'd say she's a great mother. She's been a full time mother. We have four children. I don't know whether she didn't have an interest in the business or I didn't want to share it. But I do like going home and not talking about the business. Yeah, we have four great children and we have eight grandchildren. She's been Just a very supportive mother. I traveled the world for years. And

1:12:18 She brought up our children. Her role is a supportive role. But not directly in the business. Is there anything looking back that you would have done differently? Probably if you said sure I have done differently, uh Maybe but on the other hand I was very comfortable doing what I did.

1:12:37 And I worked hard. But You know, I we bought our first cottage and Theory was that Judy could be at the cottage for the kids and I could work.

1:12:48 Which Work out well. Basically uh our uh our philosophy of life and so on, I wouldn't change. What Live the

1:12:57 low profile on a rural community and And And at the same time had the ability to do whatever we wanted to. What role did Focus play? Focus in business is a big deal.

1:13:11 when it comes to business principles, there w there isn't one A bigger than focus. Should Stay at it and work at it. It's amazing. How hard work brings you good luck after a while. Focus is absolutely critical. Probably the biggest

1:13:29 Maybe the biggest single principle you can have in business. Is there anything about decision making that you've learned that you think most people miss or would benefit from Your knowledge. I've seen

1:13:45 a number of friends or associates who Made the first May in. And then thought they knew how to make the second with ease and they would Get off focus, go buy another company that they didn't know anything about. Uh and just

1:14:03 Just Not focused on on what they knew. I think it's fine to to Diversify. But you have to be careful how you do that. Frank Sobey when I was in university

1:14:16 Reading a Financial Times, I don't know which one. And um I read a quote where he says, Always keep the back door open. So

1:14:26 So although we were levering through these formative years The real debt load was in cable where the cash flow was quite consistent. The mistake many people make is is the have a business and they make the first million dollars. And now they get into things they know nothing about.

1:14:45 In too big away. I mean, if you want to test the water so that's one thing. I'm a a Great believer in and Um Not having all the answers.

1:14:55 I always say the guy that asked the question looks better than the guy that has the answers. And so I'd like to have the questions and But people. Yet they have the answers, you know. You we've all been around uh

1:15:10 Associates that Once they make a little money they They know more than the next guy. D in your experience, how often have those people self corrected after they've started to go down that path? I

1:15:23 I haven't seen much self correction. A guy that's really doing well when he speaks up. Uh you listen to'em. When he goes broke, nobody listens to what he is saying more. So making a million didn't make you smarter and losing it didn't make you stupid. Talk to me about the role of patients and long term thinking in terms of your success looking back over the last Fifty, sixty years. Patience is a real virtue.

1:15:50 But But I've had to have a lot because We we Built her team. We have lots of

1:15:59 imports now, but in the early days we built her team on On locals. But you know, didn't have as much experience as people from away and And some of them turned out to be great entrepreneurs and but you had to have patience, bring them along and

1:16:18 And get them uh Exposed. Because I was I was trying to point out. The way I wanted to report and the guy says Yeah, but John, you're outside and seeing all these boards and reports.

1:16:32 We don't see that. Although he's smart. Just didn't have the imagination. But today tremendous, uh Exactly. But it does it does take a little time and

1:16:43 Patient Respect. Sevel Dave, those words or Yeah. Big on our culture.

1:16:50 One of the things that you said that I was most intrigued about that gives me a lot of hope. Is that most fortunes are made after fifty. Well I was a member of YPO like lots of other entrepreneurs and you get rocked out at fifty. And I remember saying, you know, for me this just the beginning'cause I built a base now. I haven't really made any money, but I built quite a base. And now I've gotta take that base and m move on. most of my real equity the way you would measure it.

1:17:20 Has come after sixty. uh but before that I was building land bases and factories and people and And but it didn't show up on the bottom line. But I was building a real Base of assets.

1:17:35 I could say that After seventy we've got a lot better still. Good for Got the base going and And like the

1:17:43 portfolio we have, I didn't really get started until seventy five, maybe. And We played a r I shouldn't say played around. We had maybe a significant portfolio on some people's mind, but But Not one that

1:17:58 You would see written up in the New York Times or something. But when I Decided when we're going to be able to do When these interest rates were so cheap. Mm.

1:18:07 You didn't have to be a genius to Or one or two percent. Best in dividends at five. So we did it. Could have sat back and done nothing.

1:18:17 And not everybody was doing that. We have a board. Um I was explaining to them What my Way.

1:18:27 Yeah. And what the downside was Well, we've just plugged away at it and we Got a couple of billion of equity or more now and

1:18:39 Yeah, and the portfolio. All that came late in life. What role does the board play? I don't wanna downplay the board, but one of the great things the board does is bring discipline to our management team. The team love to have the board come and like to present. But they also have to be professional about it. So it's It's forced our team to be more professional.

1:19:04 wise comments too, but the the discipline that they bring by the board the the different leaders coming before the board presenting what they're doing, answering the questions. That's that's Great discipline. I use the board uh different people on the board at different times, this listening post. I wouldn't go without it. I'm I'm a big fan of private company boards. I don't think they slow us down in decision making. But we won't make a big decision. We don't like to surprise the board.

1:19:35 It might be you know, smaller decisions we just make and move on. But if it's significant, we like the board to be Primed in advance as to what we're thinking about. Try to operate.

1:19:49 But so The surprises? You've mentioned interest rates a few times as somebody who's lived through Basically the highest interest rates and the lowest interest rates we've ever seen. H how do you think about interest rates and How they

1:20:05 Should or shouldn't be. Well they're they've been a big, big factor. I mean I was I'm paying eighteen or twenty percent at one stage for Shape. Yeah, these these rates uh

1:20:23 have been exceptionally shaped and And then when they get to be six percent, everybody says, Oh, it's too expensive. Geeze, I never dreamt that I'd ever see six percent. Certainly I didn't allow that to slow me down. Because you know, it's kind of normal, but now we're coming back. Uh

1:20:41 It does allow leverage and and uh Uh Fects the w the portfolio sum. You You might buy few more dividend stocks if the money's cheap, if if the dividends twice what

1:20:55 What the cost of funds are. You can get a return without Without too much risk pretty easily. It's obviously it's my cost of puns. How have you learned to deal with success? I don't know. I d my lifestyle's not much different now than How have you kept it that way? There's no yachts, no mansions, well We have a few too many homes for

1:21:20 We don't abuse that. And certainly no. Uh You know, hate to admit it, but we have a plane, but that keeps me working. I couldn't be. Travelling around of

1:21:32 the way the airports are my age and my Help. One beauty of living in a small town. We're an hour and a half from downtown Hell like I can be going to dinner every night now, in fact.

1:21:44 But the beauty of living here is I just put on the invitation, sorry, my sentence. My executive assistant sends it on. But the wear and tear of Going to dinner and going to receptions and Yeah. Takes time away, huh? That goes back to focus. That's exactly right.

1:22:05 I don't feel any different about myself now than I did thirty years ago. Because we have a place in Hawaii and so on and we're next door to the Americans. I would say that the business community in the US If they make ten maybe They spend like they have a hundred. And

1:22:24 Canadians make tan, they hide it. Yeah. Seems to me the culture of the US is making money to spend it. I

1:22:34 I've never thought of it that way. I'd rather You know, we have a significant foundation uh Yeah. typical estate freeze, but I kept a portion of Myself that

1:22:48 that is going to the foundation for public good. And so That's one of the reasons I keep working is to is to be able to really really leave a foundation. And at the same time the children will have more than they need or more than they should have probably, but

1:23:06 But we're gonna have a significant foundation and And to work for that as compared to work for a big yacht. I don't know how you measure those things, but But it'll give me satisfaction anyway. Are there any policy changes you would make to encourage more entrepreneurship and business in Canada? There's so many roadblocks at every turn. Uh

1:23:29 My friend Wallace McCain uh one of his sayings, Well don't let the bastards get you down. Well, I don't know who the bastards are, but there's somebody out there trying to slow you down every day. Yeah. So you have to work through that. Tax policies in Canada aren't bad.

1:23:48 Jurisdictional. Hold up the the border, you know, with all these Or Deals is uh terrible. I'm an environmentalist. We have big woodlots and and

1:24:00 And I'm really an environmentalist, but But if you're not careful they'll take it over. You know we had a Wood Light. When you

1:24:10 This particular case it was a thousand acre woodlot. And we were building roads through it to do silver culture work. Great for the future. And I went to s see where they put a bridge in. And it wasn't a bridge, but it w Half bridge and a half rock.

1:24:27 Ended up costing seventy five thousand dollars. When I was there there was no water in it. And there was only water in it maybe in the month of April when it came down off the hill. So there's no fish in it. Yeah. Way

1:24:43 Do uh things that are absolutely No common sense to And we could have had a nice rock way that you just traveled through. But uh you know so there's just Things like that. That's a minor issue, but it's irritating.

1:25:00 Yeah. So there does seem to be general lack of common sense and and Most regulations around the world at this point. It's like sediment, right? It started out with good, but it keeps adding and adding and adding and Nobody would have chosen to get to the place where we're at, and yet here we are and we keep

1:25:18 sort of adding sediment. comment that you get. From the civil servants is but this is the regulation. Yeah. Don't talk to me about common sense. This the regulation. Yeah. You know, when the people wrote the regulations, they couldn't envision everything. But then the regulation covers everything.

1:25:40 Just bypasses common sense. And I've heard that Well, this is the regulation. You know, we're just going by the regulation. Drives you crazy. John, I really appreciate the time today for this conversation. We always end on the same question, which is what is success for you? Success for me is is the development

1:26:00 Oh a great team. And in many cases We have people that worked in this factory uh through high school and university, came back to work with us and are now running the company. That's to me real success. We have the same thing.

1:26:17 in our other businesses where we develop at least think we have home grown leaders that are uh competing with the with the world. And doing it very well. And so real s success is

1:26:31 is developing people so that they can add value my my My philosophy how can we add value today? Or if you can develop good people. Uh They can add value.

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1:28:03 Until next time.

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