The Wealthy Barber Podcast - #10 — Arlene Dickinson: Dragons’ Den, Her Early Career Struggles & The Current Economic Climate

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

Our guest this episode is none other than Arlene Dickinson—famed businesswoman, investor, author and the longest-serving Dragon on CBC’s "Dragons’ Den."  In this episode, Dave and Arlene reminisce about their time on "Dragons’ Den" together and chat about everything from Arlene’s early career struggles to the potential US tariffs to the current economic climate for Canadian entrepreneurs and much, much more. Don’t miss this fantastic episode!  Show Notes (00:00) Intro & Disclaimer (00:55) Intro to Arlene Dickenson (02:46) Dragons’ Den (04:26)  Handling Online Criticism (08:21) Arlene’s Early Career Struggles (16:13) How Did Arlene Become a Dragon? (19:46) Reflecting on the Impact of Dragons’ Den  (24:24)  Two Lessons Arlene Taught Dave (23:29)  The Time Arlene Accidentally Got Drunk on Dragons' Den (25:53) The Current Economic Climate for Canadian Entrepreneurs (30:03) Potential US Tariffs (33:48) Younger Canadians Are Frustrated (36:08) Taxes & Government Spending in Canada (37:56)  How Do We Build Up the Canadian Entrepreneur Ecosystem? (42:46) The Impact of AI (47:12)  Arlene's Closing Message for the Audience

Hey, it's Dave Chilton, the wealthy barber and former dragon on Dragon's Den. Welcome to the Wealthy Barber Podcast, where we'll be hosting some of the top minds in the world of personal finance. Yes, that's to balance me out. The podcast is about making the subject not just easy to understand, but dare I say, even fun, honest. Whether you're trying to fund your retirement, figure out how to build a down payment,

save for your kid's education, manage debts, whatever, we'll be here to help you do it. Before we jump in, a quick but important note, nothing we discuss here should be taken as investment advice. We don't know you and your personal financial situation, so we're not here to tell you, we're specifically to put your investment dollars.

We're here to educate, get you thinking, and we hope entertain. But please do your own research and or consult with your financial advisor before taking any action. Hey, it's Dave Chilton, the host of the Wealthy Barber podcast. Big understatement to say I'm excited today. I'm hosting, I would say one of Canada's most famous people, certainly one of

our most famous entrepreneurs and business people, but one of her most recognized faces. Wherever she goes, good friend, incredibly wise person, Arlene Dickinson, little bit of a background. Arlene, obviously very accomplished. She's written three best-selling books. She's a very successful entrepreneur. She's currently the general partner with District Ventures. We'll talk more about that. She's involved in all kinds of other initiatives tied into the Canadian military, very involved in charities, wonderful mother, et cetera. I mean, I'm just a big fan. She's a true star.

But what's most interesting as you get to know Arlene is that she's never really felt that way. She stayed humble. In fact, she will admit openly she stayed somewhat insecure. She's overcome a lot of adversity in her life through grit and resilience. We'll touch on all of that today. But let's start with why do you still think to some extent you haven't made it? What has led to the insecurities and have they been positives in your life to some extent? Well, yeah, I think insecurity drives us all, Dave, Dave. I think a little touch of insecurity is always better than too much hubris. And so, you know, for me, it's always been feeling that I'm more comfortable in the kitchen

helping the people who are doing the serving than I am being the person who served at an event. It's just who I am. I relate more to that. And so when I'm in those other situations where I'm You know feeling like I'm somehow special or different I doesn't sit well with me because I grew up with nothing and I still relate to having nothing and and I think my mindset is one of feeling like just

Normal well, that's good. I think it really has helped you because it makes you very authentic and very relatable. I mean, I don't think anybody would argue maybe you would because you are humble, but you're the most popular dragon certainly in the history of the show. Well, I'm the longest serving dragon, but you know what's fascinating is because you're on. Yeah, that's true. That's true, but you know people don't remember how big that show was in your kind of season four or five to season nine,

10, when it was airing in two prime time spots per week, plus the daily reruns at five. I mean, two and a half and three million Canadians were watching that every week at the time, total views. It was absolutely astonishing what it did for your level of awareness in society and your brand power and everything else. But what were the negatives? I mean, all of that attention can be tough. You know, I would say that I'm really glad that it happened when I was older.

I don't know how I would have dealt with it if it had happened when I was younger. Because I think, you know, so I often think about, you know, people who find some level of fame and candidates with, you know, celebrities, a small C for sure. But I think, well, unless you're Drake or, um, you know, Celine Dion or, you know, maybe, maybe that's maybe, maybe there's Canadians that that's a big, big C. But, um, I, I think for me, I was already in my, you know, like 40s, early fifties when I went on, I was like late forties when I went on the show. And so I was already kind of clear on who I was. And so it was very, it was like so foreign to me. And I just couldn't let it go to my head

because I just think I was old enough to know and understand this was a moment in time. And also Dave, I never thought the show was gonna last more than the season. So every year it was like, what they're gonna do it again? Oh, okay. That's funny. Well, you're actually quite shy. I mean, I think people

wouldn't know that about you because you're out giving speeches and obviously you're on stage and on camera all the time. But really you're quite shy. Even when we used to go to the charity events together, you were kind of a slip out the back door type person after you'd said all of your hellos and made your contributions, et cetera. I'm very much the same way. In fact, I can remember going to one with you where I walked down the red carpet with you, went inside the facility and went out through the kitchen, out the back door and I went back to the Royal York.

But when you're a little shy and a little reserved, then all of that attention, all of the online criticism can be a bit tough to take in. How did you handle all that? It's funny, like, you know, being able to make small talk, I think, is actually a really good skill set to have because there's something about small talk that allows you to understand what's going on with people and actually just get close to them.

And I just get so uncomfortable. I'm much more, I could talk to 10,000 people just like you can. And get on stage, talk to 10,000 people, totally cool, but then get me out afterwards and trying to get me to socialize with even 50 people. And I'm like, ah, I don't know what to say. I'm not sure. Because I'm conscious that they're looking at,

for some reason, it's much more personal. And so the insecurity of, I think it's a physical insecurity. I said to you before we started today, I went, oh my gosh, like I didn't know this was video too, and I'm feeling a bit sick, and I didn't put my makeup on, and I feel like I look like shit, you know? Sorry if I can swear on you podcasting. You can't, go ahead, fire away.

And then I thought, so what went through my mind was what always plays in my mind, which is do it anyhow, Arlene. Do it anyhow. And so I think you just learned to, as you have, either to be able to slip out the door or to just get through it. You know, it's interesting. You gave me some great advice

when we first dealt together on the phone. They were talking to me about coming on DragonStand and I don't love taking a lot of online criticism. I mean, at the time I was very concerned with that. And you said to me, you'll never grow in to handling that well. You have to flip a switch and be able to just say, that's not a part of my life. I'm not going to let it bother me. I did a horrible job of following that advice in year one.

Horrible. I actually got back to some of the trolls and I was the worst. But then I thought, okay, Arlene's bang on here and you're too. I smartened up. Much tougher, I would argue for a woman. You're going on there as the only woman in panelists. You take observations about your physical appearance. We don't. Your outfits etc. How did you grow into handling it or did you have to flip that switch early? I don't think they could say anything to me that I didn't already think about

myself. These insecurities are a positive. Yeah, you're right. I mean, yeah, okay, I'm fine. I'm not, you know, I'm not this or that. I mean, and so it wasn't like it was reinforcing my negative opinion of myself, but I just, first of all, I really am very careful not to spend a lot of time in the comments because they can, it's crippling. It can be very difficult. It's abusive.

It's, it's the trolls and the bots and the people who are more courageous because they're behind a keyboard, like they can just like literally take control of your life. And so I'm very selective. I will answer a few people because I want to engage and I want people to know I am reading comments when they're nice. But even the ones that aren't nice, I've got a long story I'll share

with you another time, which could, cause it could take your whole podcast. About the other day, I actually engaged with a woman who was really being very personal in her attacks. I mean, I thought this doesn't make sense. Like I don't even know this person. I reached out to her and I started to have a conversation and I realized, um, what is, what does that say? And it's not, it's not me, it's you.

Right. So true though, you know, it's you. It's definitely not me. So true though. It's so true. We all get hit by it. Again, I'm not great at it, but I'm much better thanks to your advice. Mark Cuban has talked about how hard he found it early and how he used to feed the trolls. He used to argue with them and realize there's no win there. That's just not the path to take.

Okay, let's get away from dragons then. We'll maybe get back to it, but I want to go back to your early life. You know at age 31 before you and I had met you found yourself divorced, you're a mother of four, you don't have a big income at this point. For some reason people assume that you grew up with a silver spoon in your mouth. It was more like a lead spoon. You didn't have a lot growing up as a child etc. How did you overcome that? They say optimism is a gene you're born with and I was always a Bit of a pragmatic optimist. I always believed that I was and I had was raised to believe I was lucky to live in Canada

I was lucky to have my health I was lucky to have a roof over my head and you know all of those things that was just ingrained in me that You know gratitude was so important So even grad gratitude and generosity were the two things that I would say my my parents taught me was just ingrained in me that you know gratitude was so important and so even grad gratitude and generosity were the two things that I would say my my parents taught me to be grateful for what we have and to be generous with whatever we have and that didn't mean like us having like a lot it meant right helping others with our time with our energy with with our emotional

support and so I think we all do what we have to do because we're parents, because we're, you know, trying to take care of ourselves because we don't want to, you know, be burdens on others and etc. So I think it was more just when people say to me, how did you raise four kids and do all those things, I go, but I didn't have a choice. So that's true. You know, like what else would I have done? So I had to figure it out. And so the optimism, and then I'd say I'm, I believe in hard work. I am a hard, hard worker. Nobody will ever take that away from me. I think I work really hard. But I also know that good timing and good luck could play a role in where we land in life.

For sure. And you're not, every civil luck doesn't exist. You make your own luck. good timing and good luck could you play a role in where we land in life and You're not every civil luck doesn't exist you make your own luck Yeah, sometimes good timing is good luck, you know, like you would come up with an idea that agree, right? So this notion that there's no such thing as good luck there is and so I had a little bit of good luck and a lot of a little bit of good timing and a lot of hard work and a Good attitude I sound like a sound like a a... No, but it's all very true. And I've always said luck and timing play a role. I've only had one good idea in my life for heaven's sake

because I've milked it for pretty much my entire career. So I'm right with you, but also you and I both were lucky to have good parents. And they obviously instilled some great thinking in your mind about optimism and generosity. And I really do want to give you credit. I mean, you are not a hypocrite, you have been very generous. You are involved in all kinds of charity initiatives, always giving back in ways

that have helped the community etc. So well done. So you're 31, you've got the right attitude, you think you can do it but the attitude alone doesn't fix things up. How do you find an income? Did you become an entrepreneur at that point? What was the next step? I'm 31, I'm fired from my job at a TV station because I don't think entrepreneurs make good employees anyhow. I need it. And I got asked to go and join a company that was in existence already called venture communications and joined as a partner, which meant could you come

and sweat equity because we couldn't pay you anything. All right. And I, and I, and I worked there for two years without any pay and lived off credit cards and lived off my, you know, I borrowed from my dad who had very little money either. So it was, there was no other door to walk through, Dave. Right. Like, you know, when that offer came to me,

I was lucky that I took it because there was nothing else I could have done. I mean, I was prepared to go and do any job to be honest with you, but that happened and I said, okay, what have I got to lose? And so I did it. And did you see at that point, the end game was that you may eventually buy out the company and take it to higher heights or no?

No. What happened is I worked, you know, like I had two partners that were older than I was and I started to really love it. I didn't realize I had that entrepreneurial kind of spirit in me and so I started to just really love it. And in loving it, I started to find my ambition and my ambition became insatiable. I wanted to build something with it because I really loved what I was doing. My partners didn't want to and they were fighting all the time. Buying it out was something that happened after being in the business for about nine years. That's when I went to the bank to see if I could borrow money to buy them out.

They looked at me and said, I said, I want to buy out my partners. They said, who are they? I told them, they said, well, are you going to bring in some other male partners because you should have other male partners around you and I went I try to get rid of To get rid of my male partners and and I and it couldn't get any money So I did what we always say on the show you what you like you use your working capital and you know Like that's just dumb and I did I did everything we tell people on the show not to do I use my credit cards I used working capital and cash flow to to buy them out when we couldn't really afford to but I was determined to grow it and

I never looked back from that moment when I took on the control of it because I was in it was now in my Power and I was and I didn't have to have somebody else Permission to do anything and yeah, I did. And did they give you some help with vendor financing or did they force your hand to go find everything? Oh, geez. Nothing, nothing. So that had to be super tight. And now you've got forced growth.

You better start growing this thing. Now tell our audience, what was it? So you've got venture communications, but what was it? Was it an advertising agency? Yeah, it was a marketing communications firm and it did PR and it did sports marketing and it did crisis communication and it did production and we were a little bit of everything and I say all those things that we were five people. We did everything but we never said no to any job that we weren't

expert at or didn't tell people we were expert at and so we did all of that and then by this but when I bought it out we were expert at. And so we did all of that and then by this, but when I bought it out, we were about 25 people and we were starting to grow. That's a big agency at that time. That's a very big agency. It was located in Calgary, but you had a Toronto office then as well? No, we started off just in Calgary and then we actually went, opened an office in Winnipeg to serve as a client and then we opened an office in Ottawa, did an acquisition in Ottawa, then we did move to Halifax and opened an office there. I don't know, like, a smart person would have said, let's open in Vancouver or let's open in California or Hawaii. Winnipeg is not the next choice on most people's expansion list, but I do love

Winnipeg, but it's not the next choice usually. Yeah but I you know we did it to serve as clients and so they asked us to service them from there and so we did and I learned about what it's like to run remote offices and I learned about acquisitions and I learned about the challenges that come along with those things and I did a couple acquisitions I did some growth strategies, and I was like, I was learning, I was building the plane as I was flying it, man. I was like, not sure what I was doing, but I was having fun doing it. And the big move, obviously, in terms of brand exposure came when, as we mentioned earlier,

you jumped onto Dragonstand, and now all of a sudden, you've got all these eyeballs, seeing you weekly, and you come across as very intelligent, very marketing savvy. Did that help that business to grow? Did you start gaining clients because of the exposure on the show? No, I'd say the opposite. Really? Yeah, because what I found is I'd get invited to a lot of, like I could get a meeting and I can get a meeting, as soon as you're on the show, you could get a meeting because

people were curious about the person on the show, right? But then you had to still get the business. And most of the times they really weren't looking for an agency, they just wanted to meet me. And so it was like, oh, okay, this is going to turn into business. But it certainly helped with my credibility though, and it helped with the profile, and it helped with name recognition. So yeah, I shouldn't say no so quickly. Of course it would have helped but nobody came to me and

said hey here's a multi-million dollar contract because you're on a TV show. Yeah it doesn't work that way sadly. You know I'm curious how did you get on the show? Like how did they find you and how did that whole process go? I'm sure you get asked that a lot but it is actually quite interesting. So you started off talking to me about how I'm very introverted and I don't like attention, which is all very true. And my PR person, my PR lead had put me down on a list for some list of women female entrepreneurs. I think there were three of us in the country at the time. There were very many back then.

And I got on some list of female entrepreneurs. And I had said to her, don't do it. I don't want to be on this. I don't want to be any attention on me. I'll put the attention on the business. And got on the list. And I guess somebody from CBC saw the list and called me up and said, we'd like you to audition for the show.

And I did not want to audition. I was in marketing. I knew what TV was all about. I'd like you to audition for the show. And I did not want to audition. Like I was in marketing. I knew what TV was all about. I didn't want to audition for it. And they talked me into it. And then so I did it. And what was your biggest strength on the show in your mind? I think it's the same today as it was then,

which is I genuinely, again, going back to what I said about being more comfortable, talking to the people, working the event versus attending the event, I really relate. I can listen to those entrepreneurs and I can, I genuinely empathize with them. I can feel what they're going through and I can sense and I can, their stories, you know, like you know, we don't have a lot of time with them but we have enough time with them to hear their storyline and to understand whether they have money or don't have money or where they come from or what they've done and sacrificed and I just

relate to it and so I think my strength is is that it's it's a genuine compassion and empathy but it's also I've also I'm also a good business person so I think I bring both. I do too. I think that was your unique mix and that you can be quite strong in your opinions and quite forceful, but you were an empathetic person. In fact, I remember, you remember the couple that came on and they had the wall stickers and they had lost everything.

They'd lost their house. They'd lost the whole shebang because the adhesive hadn't worked and you gave them great advice, but you were also crying and you could see the sincerity of your affection for them and what they'd been through and the empathy and everything else. So no, I do think that I also think on the show, your relationship with Kevin was a big positive. You guys had a sincere distaste for each other at times.

People always ask me, was Arlene faking that contempt for Kevin? And I said, I don't think so. Cause it existed in the lunchroom. It existed at the charity events, I think it was very much real. And I know you have respect for a lot of what he's accomplished but you guys really did have a combative relationship. Yeah I mean I think that's why they chose me for the show because he was at my audition and in sitting beside me and he did what he always does which was kind of had been very disrespectful to somebody who was on the you know was taping that day when we

were getting the auditions done and and I just my my immediate you know like Justice Worker came out and I kind of told him what I thought of him and I didn't even know him I had no idea who he was and and so I remember thinking well there's no hope in hell they're gonna ask me to be on this show because I just yelled at their guys. You shot the star down. It turns out they liked that Dave, turns out that they liked that part. Now you were great at that, you really were and we'll get back to your

relationship with Kevin later because I want to talk a little bit about the US Canadian relationships and his involvement and everything else, but you've just added great value to the show. And to me, I always look at Dragon's Den and I say the same thing every time I give a speech. Huge net positive for Canada. Whether you liked the show or didn't like it, whether you saw its flaws, it got a lot of young people thinking about entrepreneurship. We are struggling with business formation hugely in this country. The stats are bad. We need people thinking like that. You go to business schools, you go to campuses, colleges. So many young kids come up

and say, hey, I watched Dragons Then and Shark Tank growing up and that's why I'm interested in this the first place. That show had a positive impact, no question. I know this isn't about, you know, this isn't the intention but because we're not here to talk about you, but let's talk about you for a minute. You did that today. Like you were so good at amplifying the intention of the show, which was really to help people find their voice and their future and to be encouraged about, you know, building a dream. and I I Had such and to continue to have such respect for kind of you you you pick when somebody called you you called them back I I know you answered those trolls online because you do it today when people call you I know if I say to somebody here's you know, they asked for your number and you say yes You will call them back and you will spend time with them and you and you empathize with them and you understand them and you

Take the effort and and that showed up with Luigi, you know, the card, you know, like, but Ozzy, you did exactly what you said you would do. You called Hallmark, you got her into Hallmark. You did everything that you said. And so I think that show and today, and Dave, when you were on the show, you probably, it was even then, but today I am seeing so many young, I think of them as young, but entrepreneurs come on who say, I started watching you when I was eight years old.

Yeah, that's cool. I started watching you when I was 10 years old. I have been dreaming, I'm gonna sit in that chair one day and you know what they will like some of them that actually are going to and and the 20th season I imagine you're gonna see you know like something along those lines or there's gonna be the kind of it's a full circle thing and that's rewarding it's so rewarding to see these entrepreneurs who grew up watching the show come on the show and have built like hundreds of millions of dollars in

Company, um, you know like the value and have been so successful. That's like it's incredible. No, it's very cool Okay I want to talk about two lessons I learned from you in the show because I think that the listeners Will benefit from them two things you taught me both during due diligence, interestingly, you and I said yes to a food company and I did the due diligence and I kept contacting and saying wow, I'm a pretty tough guy when it comes to due diligence This is excellent across the board this this this and this and you repeatedly said to me the gross margins aren't big enough And I would say yeah But like eight out of nine things here are really positive. You would say the gross margins

aren't big enough. You need to dive into that and see if we can get them up quickly to support the needed marketing to get this food product moving or the other things don't matter. You ended up being totally right that they never got big enough. We did invest in it. We got out more or less breaking even thankfully, but they never did get where they needed to go. Jimmy Pattison is very much on your side. He always says when people do due diligence they look at 50 KPIs. There's really only three or four that matter with each business. Make sure you know how to pull the levers to get those moving. And I've always remembered when I've looked at other food companies you saying you better have decent gross margins to

support the marketing. So thank you for that. But the other one was more interesting to me. You and I got involved with Jackson and Morgan Wyatt. The two brothers that had come up with Greenlit. And I did the due diligence with Ron Duke, your good friend and right-hand person at that time and is still involved with you, is he not? Yeah, he is. Great guy. And we looked at it and we did a lot of testing, did a lot of things and decided I don't think so. And you said, no, these guys are too too sharp and so even though the due diligence hasn't gone great and you guys have come up with some legitimate negatives here they're so smart and they can sell let's go and let's figure it

out they'll pivot they'll figure it out of course they did figure it out ended up being a 10x for you and I in terms of the investment return I've invested with both of them since by the way the brothers went their own way and I've put money into both of their companies. And again, a great lesson that sometimes the entrepreneur matters so much, and they're so smart and so gifted, they'll figure out the right path and you just want to be part of that journey. They were a magical combination.

It's rare to see a family, a brothers who complimented each other so well on their skill set. And yeah, that was a great deal. But you can you can also mention Dave ones that you told me to do I think you know like let's be real there's been a couple times on the show where I might have had a couple drinks because I was being served them by the by the entrepreneurs so for those of you listening and watching we you know we get serve food we get to alcohol and of, Dave doesn't drink. So I'm like, I'm having a couple shots of vodka. I get a little bit drunk. I'm not drunk, drunk, but a little bit.

No, you were drunk the one time. For sure, you were drunk. And Dave's saying, let's do this deal, or together earlier. I'm going, yeah, let's do this deal. And then afterwards, I'm going, what have I? Like, what deal? And he said, you did this deal.

And I don't want to do that deal. And the one deal was like one of the best deals that ever came on the show. But you dropped to every attention. It was not, yeah. Right? That was classic. By five o'clock and we wrapped up that day,

you didn't even remember the pitch because you'd had all that champagne in an empty stomach. Do you remember you had to do interviews at lunch that day? Yeah. And so you hadn't eaten a thing and then we had two or three glasses of champagne and you drank so much that you didn't remember the pitch after you said,

I'm gonna have to go out on that one. And then it ended up being a huge home run. It was a huge home run. And I'll buy you lunch someday because I took your share as well. You did, but I just want everybody to know it wasn't cause I was like guzzling back stuff. I just hadn't eaten and I was tired and I now...

No, you weren't showing up there drunk. Okay, let's be clear on that. That never happened. I mean, at least to the best of my knowledge, that never happened. Okay, let's talk a little bit about the current economic situation. You're an expert, truly an expert

in what's happening on the Canadian entrepreneur front. It's challenging. You and I talk all the time about how a lot of people, including media people, still don't fully grasp the difference between small businesses and what they're up against versus the big businesses. In Canada, it's tough for small businesses to gain access to capital.

It is challenging right now. What are some general thoughts you have on that front? Yeah, I'm very worried about what's going on. Particularly, I mean, I invest in the food and beverage and health and wellness CPG space. I'm very specific in my investment thesis. Because I'm a big believer that no stick should leave this country without some value being added to it. We should commercialize the last mile and do that by standing up manufacturing facilities

and investing in our agricultural sectors. And I think right now you see there's so much uncertainty and so much fear and investment has always been tough for early stage businesses in Canada. There is a lot of capital. And now it's actually gotten, as you know, so much worse because people are standing at the sidelines wondering what's going to happen and they don't want to invest in a country that might be under all sorts of recessionary, inflationary type of challenges, given whatever

might happen with tariffs. What I have seen is that even through all that, the entrepreneurs that I talk to are so... They just can't help themselves. They still see the opportunity. They still are going. And they're just trying to figure out ways around it, which is what an entrepreneur does. In tough times, they find the opportunity. But it's challenging. It would be a lie to say that things are going to be easy for them for the next little bit. I agree. And you used the word uncertainty.

It's always uncertain, but it is uncertain times 10 right now. And therefore getting capital to come to your company is so tough. We have that gap in Canada. You get the friends and family around here that you get in the States. And frankly, in some cases, it's easier to get that here. We've had a lot of tech success. But that next round, before you've really proven your growth and found the product market fit, it is almost impossible to come up with that two and three million. And in food, of

course, beyond impossible, you've stepped in and filled that void to some extent. But wow, is it tough? Well now with people looking at potential tariffs and challenging recession days coming, it is almost impossible. But what's our answer there? Does the government have to get more involved? Do they have to start backing up some of the loans to some extent? What are the solutions to this capital access problem? Yeah, I mean listen, you're much smarter than me when it comes to creating economic solutions like that. But I can't, I mean I do understand it and I understand the economics of it. And I think in this case, what we need is more like equity type solutions as opposed to subsidy type solutions.

We need to invest in these companies and these manufacturing facilities. We need to get our resources to market by investing in them. And if that's a sovereign wealth fund of some sort, if that's, whatever it is that we need to do to attract the capital to back our resources going to market our minerals and our resources to invest in these entrepreneurial endeavors, which is innovation and to, you know, back our agricultural sectors as well as our technology sectors. And we have to do it.

I don't like the idea of saying it's all government's, you know, government's going to be the solution. Government will be part of the solution for sure because they have to take away the red tape. They have to create, it has to be easier to get projects greenlit. It has to be easier to get funding because you have regulatory easements, but you know, government can't fund everything other we end up in even more debt. So we have to find, that's why I'm saying we need equity type solutions as opposed to debt solutions. Or even debt solutions which are fine as long as they're paying a return back to the country. But they can't be subsidized solutions on everything, it just won't work. No and you get more careless spending when you get subsidies

as opposed to true investment. So I agree with all of that. You know it's so challenging to know what's going to happen with the tariffs. Are you finding that with your companies, because obviously a lot of the food firms have to be dealing cross-border, either getting inputs or sending their finished products across border, how are they reacting to all of this? I mean, I think they just want to know what they're dealing with, but right now they don't. Well, and it's funny you say that. I was looking at somebody said to me, all we really want is can you just tell us what's happening?

And the challenge is with Trump, you don't know what's happening. He's so unpredictable, which is his strategy. His strategy is to create chaos, to create uncertainty, to create division. And he does that with his lies. And he does that with how he positions things that were being subsidized, that we're not really a country without them, that what would we be? He doesn't need anything from Canada. Well, if you don't need anything from Canada,

then leave us alone. Right. But you, in fact, do need stuff from Canada. You need a lot from Canada. And I don't know any Canadians. I mean, I shouldn't say I don't know. I know some Canadians that say, oh, let's be the 51st. You know 50 for Kevin, you know, like let's have an economic union Well, that's not possible and and it's it's it's just another sound bite that sounds really good and easy

But you don't have an economic union when you're giving up everything so they can make economic value out of it and you get nothing Behind that's not a union. That's a takeover That's right. I agree with all of that. Do you think there's any positives going to come from this? You see a lot of Canadians coming together now. We're finally talking about taking away a lot of the regulations and limiting our efforts there to add, add, add. And maybe we're going to do more things on various fronts that'll be more pro-business, including lowering taxes in some spaces. We're seeing more people thinking buy Canada, all of those types of things, and we've got to figure out ways to get our resources to a wider

variety of buyers than just the US. Do you think this push will stay up and do you think we can do that in a timely fashion or does the bureaucracy of all this slow that down so it won't happen in a meaningful way? I choose to believe that it will happen. I think we will see inter-provincial trade barriers coming down. I believe that that will happen. I believe that the Canadians are now saying they want, for the first time you've got provinces, cities, and the country saying, let's put pipelines in place, let's get electricity to market,

let's get crude to market, let's make sure that we are less reliant on anything coming from anywhere else, given we have all the resources we should be able to defend for ourselves now, and always have been. And so there's a political will that never existed before in this country. Great, totally. And so people can say, well, hey, why didn't we

do it 10, 20 years ago? I can tell you there's lots of reasons. You can look at any side of the political spectrum, And so people can say, well, hey, why didn't we do it 10, 20 years ago? I can tell you there's lots of reasons. You can look at any side of the political spectrum, and you will see people who were against putting pipelines in. So it's always been about protectionism. How do I protect my province? How do I protect my city?

How do I get more for myself? And what we're now getting into is, how do I protect the country? How do I get more for this country? How do I protect what we have and what we need to continue to have? So I think we're seeing a galvanizing and a resolution that hasn't existed in this country ever. Maybe when we, you know, maybe in 18, was was 1812 when we, when we fought the- I wasn't alive then. Yeah, I've heard, there's some historical thing there. But I, yeah, I hope Canadians just push as hard

as they possibly can because when Canadians push, that creates political will. And when political will exists, that creates change. And the bureaucrats have to get out of the way. I do not want to be the 51st state. No. You know I am a proud Canadian I like the differences between the two countries. I like the US by the way visit there regularly so I don't have any animosity towards the US not thrilled at the recent behavior on the high end but in general I've got

great relationships with US friends but I don't want to be the 51st state. I find 80, 90, 95% of my friends and colleagues don't either. I think some younger people are more open-minded to it because they're frustrated. They're frustrated with how difficult it is to buy a home. They're frustrated with the cost of living in Canada, the taxes in Canada, so they're a tad more open-minded than our generation is and in between generations are. Do you think that's right? Do you think that assessment stands up? Yeah, I think you're 100% right. I think we have done a very bad job of instilling patriotism in our children and so I said to you earlier that my dad taught

me to be proud, you know, like be grateful that I'm Canadian and I think I tried to talk about that with my kids, but I think the next generation after my kids, because my kids are adults now, is lacking any sense of connection to the country. And like you say, they're feeling abandoned. They don't feel, they can't get a home. They can't, you know, there's so many challenges financially

for young people to be able to feel that they can serve, you know, not just survive, but thrive. And so, and that's not just a Canadian issue. No, it's not. You're seeing in Australia, you're seeing in a lot of the Western nations, pockets in the US, pockets are not that way. But no, you're right, it's not just a Canadian issue, but it's certainly exasperated here when you look at the debt relative to disposable income, etc. I mean, I said repeatedly during other podcasts, to episodes episodes that we are battling a situation where without help from parents you probably can't buy a home in

most geographical spots. Well that's unfair. That's not good for any of us and what happens is that that high cost ripples through in so many ways even when people do get in they can't afford to do any proper saving. There's not risk capital available to fund businesses to invest in that type of thing. People are taking fewer chances. All of those things flow from that. So housing affordability is a complex issue,

not easily resolved, but it's one we have to start addressing more successfully than we have. I wouldn't want to be a politician though, because let's be honest, when you talk to your friends and colleagues, whether they're 40, whether they're 60, they love the fact that their house is way up in value. It's a part of the retirement planning, nobody cheers for their asset values to fall.

So this is very, very tough stuff. And managing the supply and managing the costs, it's tough. Taxes are definitely playing a huge role, as you know. I mean, you put up a million dollar house in some of these cities, 305, 310,000 of it is going directly to taxes. And in other parts of the world, it's 12 to 14 percent not 30 to 31. Well that puts us in a tough challenging situation there. I mean taxes are high in Canada nobody can argue that and it's are

we getting full bang for the buck and at these levels of taxes are we going to have enough left over in the economy to do the things we need to do? Where do you stand on that? Do you think we've got to free up more capital for individual citizens and risk takers? Yeah, I think we definitely need to rethink corporate tax for sure, especially, and we need to rethink the incentives that we give to people who invest in entrepreneurs. And then how the tax happens for entrepreneurs when they first start to make money so that they can reinvest in their business. So there needs to be all levels of different tax incentives and tax changes. I absolutely think that's true and again that takes

political will and you know balancing a budget in that circumstance when you're a small country relative population wise or a huge country geographically. We're a very small country population wise but we have a lot of infrastructure to cover, but there is waste in government, and that's true for any government. Absolutely. Like, there's waste, like we actually could use a DOGE here. Yeah, you know, like every country should have oversight over its budgets. Do you know any business that doesn't have a board of directors that looks and says, what are you spending, why are you spending that much here,

why aren't you looking over here for that? Well we should be doing the same thing with government spend. Absolutely, no absolutely and the savings would be significant. Right. How do we build up the entrepreneur ecosystem? I mean remember in the old old days we had certain incentives where if your capital gains was achieved for example investing, investing in a Canadian company, you paid a lesser tax, etc. We had mandated approaches to how people would invest their RSPs. I don't love that one. But just ideas to keep some of the capital here and to give preferential treatment to gains made in this country.

Do you think we go back to that on the tax code front at some point? Yeah, I think there's two things that we have to be really careful of right now. I think the Canadian... Gosh, I can't think of the name of it right now, it's called the Canadian Invest, Canadian Investor Act, right, and where it talks about foreign control. And the reason I mentioned that in answer to your question is is that it's going to be critical that we are very careful that we don't allow foreign ownership to come in and take and invest in the businesses or buy the

businesses that aren't getting money from us. So we have to protect our companies and the only way to do that is to not allow foreign ownership to come and grab them while they're on sale because our dollar is so low. So we need to think about that and then on the other side of that we need to encourage investment by offering some sort of tax incentives to people so they will invest in Canadian companies and in Canadian entrepreneurs. And everyone I know who's in business is smart enough to understand that if you can find a way to drive revenue and you can de-risk it through either some sort of a sheltering mechanism or some sort of a tax saving mechanism or some sort of a tax, you know, saving mechanism or something.

You will find a way to do it because that makes sense economically. So we do need that. And it's not... I just want to say, because I think people might hear this and say, well, that's just lining the nest of the people that have money. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about, you know, helping entrepreneurs reinvest in their own businesses by giving them tax breaks, helping earlier stage companies get investment because the investor gets some sort of an incentive to help those companies, and then helping them with their ongoing costs

of doing business, whether that's through tax breaks for the supply chain of what they're doing, whether it's your manufacturing facilities. There's lots of ways that we can help. It's complex. That's one thing I've learned the most through this and I thought I understood the complexity. It is incredibly complex and it gets distilled down, Dave, on social media into these very simple ideas. Just do this and that'll solve everything. But you pull over here, and it creates a problem over there. So there's this highly integrated, complex kind of structure that exists that is not

as simple as just do this. But in some cases, build pipelines, like cut red meat, get the interprovincial trade barriers down, buy Canadian, invest in Canadian. It is simple. No I agree with all of that you're right I mean you pull one string and it does some unraveling over here and you have to have second and third order thinking but we can't let that freeze us. We have to do some of these things we know will work and you made such a good point we're not talking here when we look at some of these tax ideas about lining the pockets of the already

wealthy we're talking about the HVAC operator right and how does she gain access to capital to grow her business that type of thing that's where we've been very weak on a lot of the small business fronts they haven't had a chance to gain access to growth capital. You see a lot of funding institutions in the US, but you see almost none in Canada. That pocket is really an important one and we don't have anything servicing it. So you and I are not talking at all about necessarily the big telecommunication companies. We're talking about local small businesses. We're talking about the company that's proven themselves in Kitchener-Waterloo and now wants to

spread its wings across the rest of the country and internationally, how do they do it? They need access to capital. Yeah and sometimes that involves a preferential tax treatment. Right because it's easy to say well just sell to Europe, sell to Asia, okay great I want to help me get there because it's going to cost money and I don't have money right now but I've got a great business I'm doing 10 20 million dollars and five million dollars in revenue here and I could export to Asia the ready market for it but I need capital to grow I need growth capital where do I find that well you go

to anybody you know any financial institution or a lender or a VC or PE firm and they'll say oh you're too small. That's right. That's right. Now the BDC and the EDC do some interesting things and I think one of the things we can do a better job is educating business in general about the value adds that they come in and often provide. Sometimes through matching and other people have to be playing as well but I think that they offer some good services. Okay let's switch gears here before we let you go. And FCC. Absolutely and the FCC too., let's switch gears here before we let you go. Pardon me? And FCC. Absolutely, and the FCC too.

So let's move past that for a second. AI, I'll tell you a huge cultural difference I noticed. When I'm down in the States, it is the topic of conversation. When you're with business people, it's on the top of their minds 80% of the time. When I'm up in Canada with business people, even before the recent tariff, guffaw,, etc. much less attention being paid to it. I'm fascinated by the whole

space. How do you see it playing out? Is it impacting any of your businesses yet? Are you paying a lot of attention to it? I am. AI is so rapidly changing too. It's so quickly becoming ubiquitous in everybody's lives without them even understanding. Like, you know, you update your latest iOS system and you're seeing what is available to you in terms of information and, you know, helping you with presentations, helping you with business planning, helping you with like just the basic fundamental levels of AI, let alone the robotics and the other elements of AI that you know are going to change the way we live It's funny. I'm asked you find AI exciting or intimidating and I say both. Yeah, it is I mean, you know the potential what it could do in the medical field the education field. It's overwhelmingly positive

But of course you're intimidated. It could lead to a lot of job challenges for people It can be misused in many instances We use the new deep research tool last week that OpenEye put out, ChatGPT, and we did it to look into potential buyers for a firm that we had helped to sell a couple years ago to see if the research that it came up with was comparable to ours.

Was it as good as ours because it was producing it, what we did in weeks, it was producing in minutes. It was way better than ours, way better. So anybody who says, yes, this is going to be very impactful soon, it's impactful now. If you know how to use the tools and you're open minded using them, but again, that could be a big challenge for jobs. So, you know, somebody in my life had a partner who worked at one of the major insurance companies, put in group RRSP proposals together, going out to the Canadian companies and they had nine people in the division. Well, I mean, that's going to be replaced by chat GPT

doing the rear research creating a proposal you'll still have a few people editing it making sure it's bang on looking for hallucinations but again all of this is quite intimidating if you have young kids you've got to get them looking at this and starting to get a feel for all of its potential all of its possibility because they're going to be using these tools in their everyday lives. A thousand percent. I mean, learning how to do prompts and chat GPT or

using EI is like a, it's a career now because how you frame the question, how you think about the question, what you give as input into the, you know, the output so that it can actually really give you what you want is an art. And for sure it is. And I know too many people who throw things into chat GPT and it spits something out and they go,

well, it came out of chat GPT, it must be right. And they don't fact check it, they don't look at it, they don't analyze it, they don't realize it's based on their search, on their own results, on their own searching, on their own patterns. And so they just get, again, more of their own biases and more of their own views coming back at them in some ways ways shape or form

So it's it's I'm with you. It's frightening and it's exciting and it's The job market is gonna look so different in ten years from now Like not a hundred years from now like in oh, you know people like Ray Kurzweil I mean literally one of the smartest people in the world saying that general practitioner doctors are going to be in huge trouble Going forward that lawyers are not going to be a big part of our society going forward. Maybe they'll be wrong but these are really intelligent people making these forecasts and again to your point they're not talking 10 or 15 years from now they're talking two, three, five. Now going back to your point

about feeding in the prompts I went on to chat GPT and I said I'm having Arlene Dickinson on what would you suggest chatting chat GPT and I said I'm having Arlene Dickinson on, what would you suggest chatting with her about and it said once drank too much on Dragon's Den. That was seriously first comment that's what you're most well known for even in the world of AI. I miss your humor Dave. When people ask me all the time you know who do I miss on the show I miss you on the show. You made me laugh every day but you made me think every day. And you genuinely, you are one of the smartest people I know.

Your mind in terms of math is like outstanding. You have, although you did brag a lot about passing the security test off of your class a lot, like you bragged about that a lot, but you are, you're just a, you are a true Canadian icon and gem and I, I miss talking to you. I, I've really enjoyed this, having this conversation with you. No, it's been a lot of fun. So let's wrap it up. I know you've got lots in your plate, but I want to ask you one more question.

Corny, but if you could leave the listeners with one thought, you look back on your life with its ups and downs and early challenges, especially what's the one thing that you think could help people to hear? I think it would be now along the lines of, you know, don't block shadows. In other words, do the hard thing. Like go for it. Try it sooner in life. I think we hold ourselves back so much, so very, very much. And I think it's believing in yourself and giving yourself the grace that you can fail and that's okay. That to me, I wish I had tried harder sooner than I did. I was too afraid. That's well said, and it's interesting that a lot of the experts on parenting say that that's one of the most important things that your parents can do for you is to teach you not to fear failure.

Let you fall down. And nowadays I'm not sure we do that well. Hey, I said that was the end but I wanted to say one more thing. You know something you should be very proud of? Your first book, and not that your other books didn't go over well, but your first book really helped a lot of people. People loved that book. Thank you. And spoke about it very highly. And I think a lot of people really got motivated by it. And you touched on a lot of areas that, yeah, that was a solid, solid book. How long ago did that come out now? That's gotta be over 10 years. We're getting old.

Yeah, it's about 10 years. I think the last book I did, I did that. Then I did All In and then I did Persuasion, then All In, then Reinvention. Reinvention also really resonated because it was right around COVID and so people were you know people were figuring out what they want to do with their lives and they were afraid for their lives and so it was a good it was good timing but yeah it would have been at least 10 years ago now. Well remember with reinvention I had a couple

people come up to me at parties say oh you're the wealthy barber and I thought they're gonna say something nice they said if I get you my copy of reinvention can you send it to Harley-Dixon and're the wealthy barber, and I thought they're going to say something nice. They said, if I get you my copy of Reinvention, can you send it to Arlene Dickinson and get her to sign it? And remember, I did that twice. I actually tracked it out and said, all right, whatever, and I sent you the book. I was generally getting girls coming up to me saying, can you introduce me to Dave Shelton? I go, like, what?

Anyway, it was great having you on. You're a lot of fun, as always, very informative, and really, really nice of you to find the time. I'm sure our listeners will enjoy it immensely. Anytime, Dave, for you and me. Okay. Thank you to find the time. I'm sure our listeners will enjoy it immensely. Anytime, Dave, for you and me. Thank you. Bye-bye.