Transcript: Best Business Advice

Ian Portsmouth: I Guest: Robert Herjovac, Bruce Poon Tip, Michael Lee-Chin

I: Welcome to the 100th episode of the Business Coach Podcast, an advice-oriented series that tackles the top issues and opportunities facing Canada’s small businesses. I’m your host, Ian Portsmouth, the Editor of PROFIT Magazine. And we’ve developed this podcast in cooperation with BMO Bank of Montreal.

In this special 100th episode, we’re going to uncover the best business advice and secrets of success of three of Canada’s very best entrepreneurs. Robert Herjavec of Dragon’s Den fame, Global Sustainability leader Bruce Poon Tip and billionaire, Michael Lee-Chin. Here is the twist. Every question will contain the number 100. First up, Robert Herjavec. Robert Herjavec is an entrepreneur, TV star, bestselling author, marathon runner and competitive race car driver. You probably know Robert best from his two TV shows, Dragon’s Den on CBC or Shark Tank on ABC. And his book “Driven” was one of the best-selling business books of 2010. But Robert is also a serial entrepreneur. His most recent business, the Herjavec Group is Canada’s largest network security integrator with $80 million in revenue.

Robert, thanks for joining this special episode of the Business Coach Podcast.

R: You don’t look a 100 Ian.

I: Nor do you, thanks very much. So Robert, what are you looking for in the first 100 seconds of a pitch on Dragon’s Den?

R: Does it captivate me? There is just something about people in the first 100 seconds, do they get your attention?

I: What is the smartest thing that an entrepreneur can do in the first 100 days of their business?

R: Make sure the doors stay open. Stay focused on the next 100 days. At the beginning, it’s guerilla warfare, you got to make sure to survive, you have to kill one animal, then you have to kill another one and another one. People have too long term a view in the first 100 days.

I: In order to get your work day off to a great start, what do you do your first 100 minutes in the office?

R: I make sure that I separate the truly urgent from the really important. Every day, I have 100 important things to do, but I guarantee you only three things are urgent and those three things have to be done to move the ball forward.

I: An important milestone for a lot of companies is hiring their 100th employee. What should business owners be cognizant of as they approach this stage of their growth, where they transcend small business to medium size business?

R: Funny you ask that. I used to have that goal, “When we get to the 100th employee”. Then a friend of mine who was very successful said, get that out of your mind. Employees can be cost. You want to run a lean business that provides tremendous value regardless of the amount of employees. So I think what you have to be careful of as you expand is cost. People are cost, people are value, but you got to be careful you don’t have a lot of cost.

I: So you are saying that you should try your best never get to 100?

R: I think people get infatuated with hiring. I think people say, my friend has 120 employees, I need a 110. You need the right amount of employees to service your customers whatever that number is.

I: Is your business significantly different when you have that 100th employee than it is when you had your 5th or 10th employee?

R: Absolutely. But your culture has to stay the same. So we have 150 employees now but I don’t have 150 employees. I have 7 people that I deal with, that I give direction to and management and then they have 7 people and so on. It’s like the shampoo commercial.

I: You’re a sales guy, you take pride in being a sales guy. Which way do you lean on sales compensation? You have two choices: 100% commission or 100% salary?

R: Neither. Anybody who works for 100% commission is inevitably going to end up doing something desperate, simply to survive. And we are in a very high value, high touch business with long-term relationships, it doesn’t work. Anybody who’s 100% base isn’t in sales.

I: Finally, if you had $100, 000 to invest in an emerging industry or a market, what would that be?

R: Computer security or Green Tech. That’s what I am telling my kids. I am telling my kids that Green Tech is the internet of their generation.

I: Robert Herjavec, thank you for joining the special episode of the Business Coach Podcast.

R: Thanks Ian.

I: My next guest is Bruce Poon Tip. In 1990, Bruce Poon Tip founded Gap Adventures to deliver authentic experiences to travelers who craved adventures beyond all-inclusive resorts. Since then, Gap Adventures has grown to become a world leader in adventure travel offering more than 1000 small group experiences on all 7 continents to more than 100,000 travelers annually. Gap’s revenue now exceeds more than $160 million dollars. Among Bruce’s many business awards are Canada’s Top 40 under 40 and Entrepreneur of the Year. Profit named him one of the Top 10 entrepreneurs of the decade and Gap Adventures appeared on the Profit 200 ranking of Canada’s fastest growing companies for 6 years in a row.

Bruce, welcome to this special episode of the Business Coach Podcast.

B: Thanks for having me.

I: So Bruce, how did you make your first $100 in business, either as an employee or as an owner?

B: I had a paper route when I was 12 years old, back in the days when papers were delivered to homes. You have to collect papers from people, that would have been my first $100.

I: Based on your experience, what is the smartest thing an entrepreneur can do in the first 100 days of their company’s existence?

B: I think in the first 100 days, you have to be fueled by a lot of passion and you have to love what you do. In order for someone to buy any product from you or buy your service, you have to love and show some passion for it. So the pre-planning is critical but the execution of that has to be passion. And you know, I also encourage people to do something that they love.

I: When you started Gap Adventures, you obviously had just a hand full of employees. For many companies, a big milestone in their growth is that 100th employee and a lot of entrepreneurs sort of point to that as a point where the business changes in some way. What advice would you give to a business owner as they are moving towards hiring that 100th employee in terms of managing the culture, managing the growth of the company?

B: I think by the time you hire your 100th employee, you’re a little bit more seasoned. I think when people originally hire people, it’s not easy to hire people and it’s not easy to know what you need when you first start a business. I think some of the best advices I can give people is when you start hiring people is, it’s very difficult to hire people that have skills that you don’t have, because they are not naturally people that you are drawn to because they have skills that you don’t have. So by your 100th employee, hopefully, you’re quite seasoned and you’re clear on what your weaknesses are. And you find someone that fills in those gaps and your weaknesses. Too many entrepreneurs hire people that they want to have a beer with or that they can be friends with. But coincidently, those people have the same skills as you usually. And that’s one of the biggest mistakes I think entrepreneurs make when they are really stretching their budget sometimes to hire their first few employees.

I: Would it be fair to say that once you get to that 100th hire that you need to start thinking about your business in a different way and start thinking about delegating and structuring things more than you would when you only have a hand full of employees that you have very close contact with?

B: I think at 100 employees, you can still lead by example and I think it is small enough still to manage. But that is the tipping point where it’s no longer personal with the employees. Up until a certain point, you can still have people in your backyard for a barbecue, you can still go for a movie or you know, everyone works late, you order Chinese food and all that stuff and you kind of have that bond of leading by example and working closely like that. Once you hit that 100 employee mark, it takes a different style of leadership, where you are more of a coach as opposed to a lead by example leader and you have to be able to get the best out of people. You have to be able to build teams that are winning and that are successful. And you have to be able to make that transition. And it’s kind of, it’s about admitting your weaknesses, you know, and filling the holes that you don’t have. And that’s the turning point for a lot of entrepreneurs.

I: If you had $100,000 to invest in an emerging industry or market right now, what would you invest in and why?

B: $100,000, I would probably drop it in social media, probably wait until Facebook went public. I believe Facebook is going to be bigger than Wal-mart, Apple, all of them put together. But that is just my personal opinion. So I would probably put it somewhere in social media or some of these, you know, Four Square, some of these gamification kind of sites that are kind of engaging consumers in changing the marketing spend. Some of the — you know, it’s changing the whole industry at the moment. So I think it has a lot of legs in terms of investment.

I: Bruce Poon Tip of Gap Adventures, thank you for joining the special episode of the Business Coach Podcast.

B: Thank you.

I: Our final guest for this special episode of the Business Coach Podcast is a legendary entrepreneur, Michael Lee-Chin of Portland Holdings. I can’t do his full biography justice in the time we have so let me choose a couple of highlights. When Michael acquired AIC Limited in 1987, the mutual fund company had assets under management of less than $1 million. Before long, that figure had grown to $15 billion and AIC was servicing more than 1 million Canadians. In 2009, Michael sold AIC’s retail fund business to Manulife Financial making Portland Holdings one of its largest shareholders worldwide. He remains involved in AIC as lead manager of its Flagship Advantage Fund. Today, Portland includes companies operating in sectors that include financial services, insurance, telecommunications, tourism and media.

So it’s my great pleasure to be in the company of Michael Lee-Chin of Portland Holdings. He is a legend of entrepreneurship not only in Canada but in the Caribbean as well. I can’t do his biography full justice in the time we have, so let me choose a couple of highlights. When Michael acquired AIC Limited in 1987, the mutual fund company had assets under management of less than $1 million. Before long, that figure had grown to $15 billion and AIC was servicing more than 1 million Canadians. In 2009, Michael sold AIC’s retail fund business to Manulife Financial making Portland one of its largest shareholders worldwide. He remains involved in AIC as lead manager of its Flagship Advantage Fund. Today, Portland Holdings includes companies operating in sectors such as financial services, insurance, telecommunications, tourism and media. Michael, thank you for joining the special 100th episode of the Business Coach Podcast.

M: You’re most welcome Ian.

I: So Michael, how did you make your first $100 in business as either an employee or as an owner?

M: Well, this is back in 1977, I had gone to the airport to meet my mom, she was coming from Florida and the flight was late. So I thought, where am I going to get people to see because that is the essence of success in the selling business. And being 26 years old, I knew no one who was wealthy. So I thought, let me just drive around the neighborhood and think about my prospecting list. So as I was driving, it was spring, I saw all these people tending to their gardens. So I thought, there they are Mike, so next person you see, you are going to put your foot on the break, grit your teeth, close your eyes because you’re nervous as hell and then come out and make a presentation, which I did. So I did cold call, I had beginner’s luck. Of 6 people I approached, five gave me appointments. So the first month, I made $10,000.

I: Excellent work. Now, based on your experience, what is the smartest thing an entrepreneur can do in the first 100 days of their new business?

M: The smartest thing an entrepreneur can do in the first 100 days of their business, certainly establish goals and make sure that every day you wake up and your goals are firmly planted in front of your face. Having obviously goals, you develop a plan of attack, and execution, execution, execution.

I: You are one of Canada’s most successful entrepreneurs. Typically, successful entrepreneurs have habits, the proverbial “seven habits of highly successful people”. What do you do during the first 100 minutes of your work day that helps you be successful?

M: I have a philosophy that success begets arrogance/complacency which begets failure. I don’t want to be a failure. So therefore, my habits today are the same habits I had when I was really just got started in business and I was really bright eyed. So I get up every morning at 5:30 and I work out, I read, I have my breakfast, then I go to work.

I: And finally, if you were asked to invest $100,000 of your own money today in a new emerging business or industry, what would that thing be?

M: It would have to be a business that I understood. It would have to be an industry that I understood. I would have to be an industry that has long term growth prospects. It would have to be an industry or business that whereby the product cycle is long and hence the cash flow emanating from that business is relatively predictable.

I: Michael Lee-Chin, thank you for joining the special 100th episode of the Business Coach Podcast.

M; You’re most welcome Ian.

Well, that’s it for the 100th episode of the Business Coach Podcast. I hope you enjoyed our unique approach to the success secrets of some of Canada’s greatest entrepreneurs. Be sure to check out other episodes of the Business Coach Podcast which you can download from BMO.com/coach, Profitguide.com and iTunes. For other tools to help you build your business, visit the BMO Smart Steps for Business community at BMO.com/smartbusinessowners. Until next time, I am Ian Portsmouth, the Editor of PROFIT Magazine, wishing you continued success.