one of my Mentors in Vancouver BC

Maureen:

What an incredible life partner you are blessed with , you both are the role models of what a working partnership ought to be. Thank you for showing me the way to control my greed and ego.

Adrian
Jim Pattison
Chairman & CEO, The Jim Pattison Group

Jim Pattison has an exceptional record of community service and is the Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and sole owner of The Jim Pattison Group. The Jim Pattison Group is Canada's 3rd largest privately held company and, in a recent survey by The Financial Post, The Jim Pattison Group was ranked as Canada's 48th largest company.


Heather: Tonight we welcome Jimmy Pattison, the Vancouver-based Canadian entrepreneur who as chairman, president and sole proprietor of the Pattison Group, presides over the third largest private company in the country. The empire he has built from scratch has stakes in transportation, T.V. and radio, advertising, magazine distribution, food products, packaging, financial services, aquariums and believe it or not, in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, Jimmy Pattison.

Jim: Thank you, thank you.

Heather: You didn’t inherit this enterprise and in fact, you didn’t even come from a family that was in the, in the business world who owned a business of their own. You actually came from a family that had some pretty demanding and difficult times. What was it about your early years that laid the seeds for the man you have since become?

Jim: I was an only child and, and my dad was a down and outer actually in Saskatoon. And through the church, his life got rehabilitated and he moved to Vancouver and started his life over again and so I was basically brought up, my dad worked six nights a week in a skid road mission and I used to go with my dad and my mother three nights a week. And so they instilled in me the one important thing which was always be honest. And secondly is have some compassion for people that may not be as well off as, as you are.

Heather: Do you remember difficult times as a child? I mean, were there ever times that you sensed your parents were worried about money or didn’t have money?

Jim: Oh sure.

Heather: You did?

Jim: Oh yeah. In Vancouver, we had a house. My dad was selling cars at the time, used cars. And, and that’s where I got the late cars. And we had a house, we lived in it for eight years, furnished, $25 a month. They raised the rent to $27.50 and we had to move. Because we couldn’t take the other $2 now.

Heather: What’s the first paying job you remember having?

Jim: I was the page boy in now the old Georgia Hotel in Vancouver. I started as a page boy where I actually worked from 4:30 to 8:30 at night, took my supper with me and, and you know, you know, call for Mr. Brown and I’d have a, you know, one of those Phillip Morris hats and a silver plate with your name on it. And I’d go up in the lobby and … Actually made more money taking, checking the pay, you know the pay phones, you know, people would leave like a nickel in? I made more money with, with the, collecting money, five cents out of the pay booths that people would leave.

Heather: Do you still do that today, by the way?

Jim: Not as much as I used to. It became a habit.

Heather: When you had that job, were you still at school or?

Jim: Well yes, I was in high school.

Heather: You were in high school. Your first real business.

Jim: The first real business was the car business, a General Motors franchise in Vancouver, 18th and Cambey. We had three gas pumps and a two-car showroom. And the first month, we sold 25 cars and I lost $14,000.

Heather: How old were you?

Jim: 32.

Heather: Who staked you?

Jim: The Royal Bank loaned me $40,000 to get started. And it took them three months. They had the application turned down twice. And finally, the manager, his name is Harold Nelson who’s now in Texas, said to me, he said, I can’t sell this credit, you’re going to have to come with me to see the big boss who’s name was Mr. Whitley. He is the head of B.C. and he said, maybe we can, two of us can help it. So anyway, Mr. Whitley gave us the $40,000 and I got started.

Heather: And what do you think he banked you on? How did you convince him?

Jim: Well, first of all, I had worked for a General Motors dealer for 10 years. So I knew the, I knew the business. And we had, the dealership had done very well, that I’d worked for. And we had, you know, I had a good reputation of doing a good job and a hard worker. And …

Heather: So you got the money.

Jim: And that’s it.

Heather: You got the money.

Jim: Yeah.

Heather: But first year, you lost, what did you say, $40,000.

Jim: No, I lost, I lost $20, I lost $14, $15,995 the first month. I’ll never forget that. I thought I had two more months to go and I was out. But at the end of the year, the first year, we made $29,000.

Heather: Did you work hard that year?

Jim: Absolutely.

Heather: How long until you built it into a real going concern?

Jim: It was modestly successful. We had to build a new building and they put us, and they moved me to a location in B, in Vancouver that was never successful. And so I survived it but then I, I did well enough that I struck out into radio. And that was my big, big break there.

Jim: Because I was an advertiser in the radio business. You know, we advertised, if you’re a retailer, car dealer, you know, you’re out selling stuff, you know, with commercials, so I understood everything about selling, sales staff, selling, but I didn’t know programming.

Heather: Okay.

Jim: So there was this radio station that got into trouble and the, and at that time, the BBG, now the CC, the CRTC, they cancelled their radio license. And I applied with five other people, different people, there was six of us applied and the old BBG gave us the, the license. It was an AM station. General Motors had a policy, Heather, at that time, that a GM dealer could only have one location. So I had nowhere to go. I was making money.

Heather: You needed to grow.

Jim: But I mean, I wasn’t, you know, you know, rocking the big time. I was, but we were making decent money. And I had the, I had excess cash. I couldn’t do another GM deal. So I was looking for something to do so radio wasn’t a bad, bad jump because it was sales, in Vancouver, something that, but I had to learn programming and we did that.

Heather: When you think back to that period. What drove you to go to that next step?

Jim: Oh heck, it was so much fun going to work in the morning that, you know, you, always growth is important. It’s much more fun growing.

Heather: Yes.

Jim: Than, you never stand still. You’re either going back or you’re going forward. And so I was locked into a single deal, car dealership, so this was the next step. And it worked out.

Heather: And that radio business grew to more radio stations?

Jim: And that, yeah, we, you know, and so did the car dealerships. The car dealership went, we currently, presently have 16 now. And the, that’s single radio station, we’ve now got 31 broadcast licenses in B.C. and Alberta.

Heather: And did you run the radio business? Of the partners, did you run the radio business?

Jim: No, we hired management and away we went.

Heather: And it seems to me, I recall somewhere reading, that you don’t believe in shareholders, partners or relatives in the business. But you had partners in this business.

Jim: Well, we did to start with but then I bought them out.

Heather: Ah, okay. And you still, you still standby that notion, that from your point of view.

Jim: Well, now we have some, we have partners today. We’ve got, we’ve got partnerships in a number of things and we’ve got some joint ventures. But as a general rule, I like the flexibility of having to do what we want to do and take the risks that we want to take. A lot of people don’t want to take the risks that we take sometimes.

Heather: Right.

Jim: And so it gives you more flexibility.

Heather: Where did you evolve your own thinking or was it strictly a matter of, you learned as you went?

Jim: Ah, you learned as you went. I remember my, my dad was very adverse to debt. He, because he’d gone broke in the, in Saskatchewan. He didn’t, and the crops failed, he didn’t think that anybody should have debt. So I was brought up, don’t, don’t owe any money and … And I remember on a plane, I was flying to Toronto and I decided, nope, I’m going to go for debt. I remember I, even where I was sitting, on the front seat, by the aisle and the first row. And I decided, no, I’m going to go for debt as far as I can go for it. And I did.

Heather: Clearly, there is some fulcrum, there’s some balance between being meaningfully leveraged and generating a return and putting yourself at serious risk and potentially losing it. How, how did you and how has your sense of risk evolved?

Jim: That was easy for me. I always looked at how much could I lose. And never put in more than you’re prepared to lose. And I was prepared to lose everything, for a long time.

Heather: Did you ever, come close?

Jim: Oh yeah. Sure, I remember after 10 years, I’d call my secretary, who’s named Maureen, and one day, looked out the window, I said, Maureen, we’re minus $2 million. I mean, the net worth of the company was two, minus two million after we’d been in it for 10 years. But I made a couple of, you know, minor mistakes.

Heather: What role have mistakes played in getting you to where your vision has pulled you?

Jim: Oh heck, I made a lot of mistakes. We’ve bought over 200 companies since I started. Mostly private family type companies. And I’ve liquidated 33 because I couldn’t sell them, they were, they were mistakes, they were wrong. But that never, I never worried about that.

Heather: What would you say to young entrepreneurs about that process of making mistakes, how you feel when you make mistakes, what would you say?

Jim: Don’t look back.

Heather: Don’t look back.

Jim: You can’t change what happened five minutes ago. And if you keep beating yourself up, well, I made a mistake, I was wrong, you try to learn what you did wrong. But you never look back, you look forward. All the time.

Heather: Do you consider yourself an optimist by nature?

Jim: Yes.

Heather: You think that optimism has played an important role in your success as an entrepreneur?

Jim: Absolutely. Attitude, a positive attitude, don’t look back and don’t be afraid to fail.

Heather: Do you think entrepreneurs are born or made?

Jim: I think that basically, in your, in your life, in your early life, you develop, you know, you are going to take the risks or you’re not going to take the risks. And but I think that some people, they learn that they can take risks and away they go.

Heather: You have some very strong views about having a serious passion for any business you get into, whether starting it from scratch or acquiring it.

Jim: The people that really perform are the people that have got a passion for what they believe in.

Heather: They care about it so much.

Jim: They care about it.

Heather: They just want to really do it.

Jim: They take ownership of their job when they go. It isn’t just entrepreneurs. There’s lots of people that really do a good job, have a passion for it.

Heather: What do you feel you personally need to know about a business before you get involved?

Jim: I think you have to understand, have a rough idea of how it works. But I think when it comes down to getting the job done; you need people that understand the business.

Jim: Because every business, you know, it looks simple from a distance but it’s not. There’s always twists and turns to businesses that don’t, you don’t see and you can’t beat somebody that knows the business and the industry.

Heather: Right. You employ today somewhere around 28,000 people. What responsibility do you feel you have as the shareholder and as the chief executive to those 28,000 people.

Jim: I, we feel it, we take it very seriously. Not only those people, their families in many cases, who have depended on us for a long time. Most of the business that we’re in, we’ve had a long time. And as we’ve grown them, these people have become part of our life. We know them, we know a lot of the people and we care a lot, and take the job very seriously. And we are very reluctant to downsize something from time to time when you have to do it. We try to find an alternative for people, so to make sure that they’re in the system, if we possibly can. No, we’re, that’s one thing we do take seriously is the people side of it. Everything’s people, everything.

Heather: Everything is people, isn’t that right. Everything is people.

Jim: There’s no ballgame.

Heather: What advice would you give to a young entrepreneur today?

Jim: Work hard. Be honest. And persevere. And as I said earlier, don’t quit. You see, you don’t lose when you lose, Heather. You only lose when you quit.

Heather: Is this a good time for entrepreneurship? With all that’s going on?

Jim: I’ve never seen, I’ve never seen more opportunity than there is today, in my time. There’s so many things happening. See, there’s always been change in the world but it’s the speed of the change that’s different now. And when you have change and the speed of change, it always creates opportunities. And if you’re, if you’re watching for it, they’re out there now.

Heather: Is there anything you think we could do as a country, institutionally, environmentally, that would be, that would allow us to be more supportive of entrepreneurs, if we should?

Jim: Well, I really haven’t thought what the country can do. You know, it really gets down to the ability to get financing. You know, in my early time, when I started, everything was the banks. I mean, you had nowhere to go really except the banks. And they were very tough. Today, it’s a lot easier to borrow money. So it’s really that kind of thing, it’s the financial resources that are available to you. And the risk that they’re prepared to take.

Heather: How early in your entrepreneurial career did you start getting involved in giving back or in being engaged in the community?

Jim: Well, my dad taught me, when I got my allowance which was 50 cents when my allowance came, to give 10 percent away to the church or charity. So I was always taught, from day one, to go to the, the basic tithing, if you like, where you give 10 percent to help others. And so we have followed that and tried to improve on it.

Heather: What’s the worst business deal you ever did?

Jim: Man, I’ve done so many. (laughter) That the worst business deal I’ve ever done? I think the fastest worst deal was, we did an IT deal, you know, in Vancouver Island, there’s a bunch of islands, like Salt Spring Island, there’s a bunch of, you know, people to do all kinds of funny things there. And we bought one of their companies one time. It was a new high, fancy, high tech deal and we didn’t understand it. And didn’t take long for us to understand, we didn’t know what we were doing, so.

Heather: But you were, you were seduced into it and what did you learn from that?

Jim: Stay out of the IT business.

Heather: And you stayed out, ever since.

Jim: Stick to simple stuff, yeah.

Heather: The best deal you’ve ever done?

Jim: Well, that’s easy, the first deal I ever did, which was go in business.

Heather: That was the best decision …

Jim: The $40,000 to get started at 18th and Cambey and the gas station.

Heather: Other than the passion and the willingness to work hard and the willingness to see mistakes as springboards, which I think, you said, are there some particular skills or attributes that you feel you would say to an entrepreneur, look, there are a couple things you really ought to be able to do?

Jim: Well, you have to be able to be comfortable taking risks. That’s what people like me do. The question is, how much and how, where do you draw the line and it’s too much risk or it’s too unreasonable risk. So you have to have, go to bed at night and have a reasonable chance of saying, well I, I’ve got a good shot at this and have the judgment to know when it’s too much and, and draw that line.

Heather: Do you ever thinking of taking the business public?

Jim: Never.

Heather: It’s going to be private forever?

Jim: That’s my objective.

Heather: But do you ever think, what will happen? When the time comes that you can’t run this business?

Jim: Oh yeah.

Heather: Will you, what will you do?

Jim: We’ve had that, we’ve had that locked up for 25 years, Heather. We have to make sure that the, the business is solid and nothing has to be sold and everything’s in good shape. So we review that every year, we’ve been doing that for 27 years.

Heather: And there is a plan for what would happen to it.

Jim: Oh yeah.

Heather: Post that period of time.

Jim: If I don’t make it home tonight, nothing’s going to change. You know, except the, the directors will put somebody in to take my job. I believe that a good handshake on anything important is a lot better than a bunch of legal documents. You have a clear understanding, deal with good people and shake hands, is a lot better than, than this many deep pages of agreements. And I think that the key is the quality of the people you deal with. The most important thing anybody can do in business is the selection of the people with whom you work.

Heather: And the relationships.

Jim: And the relationships that you develop, which gets down to trust, and that goes both way. You know, you always, companies always say, well, I want loyalty from our employees but then it has to work the other way, the company’s got to be loyal to the employees too. It works a two-way street. A lot of times, we just hear about people being loyal to the company but the company’s got to turn around and be loyal to them too. And it’s relationships and trust and that’s what builds the companies, is the people. It’s not the bricks and the mortar.

Heather: Your company is lucky to have you but Canada sure is lucky to have you, Jimmy. What a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Jim: Thanks, Heather, thank you. Thank you. (applause) Thank you.