July 10, 2025 • 31 mins
What does it take to reinvent yourself—again and again—while remaining grounded in gratitude and generosity? In this inspiring episode recorded in front of a live audience, I sit down with the one and only Canadian icon and my dear friend, Arlene Dickinson, the beloved “matriarch of Dragon’s Den."
We explore the extraordinary journey that shaped her into one of the country’s most respected business leaders and advocates. From overcoming tough odds—being a single mother of four with no post-secondary education—to earning her place in a male-dominated industry, Arlene’s honest reflections on imposter syndrome, self-reliance, and reinvention are both practical and moving.
But this conversation isn’t just about business. We discuss life, media, and breaking stereotypes surrounding age, relationships, and relevance, reminding us all of the power of authenticity, generosity, and not being afraid to stand alone.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a leader, or just someone looking for support (not a handout), Arlene’s lessons on curiosity, empathy, and nation-building will stay with you long after the episode ends.
A big thank you to RBC and RBC Wealth for supporting and sharing these stories of positivity and possibility.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
You have people in your life that you seem to bump into
as you go through your journey of life. One of those for me
is Arlene Dickinson. I first met
Arlene many years ago. She was the CEO of this agency called Venture.
I ran a shop called Capital C, and we shared Unilever as a client.
(00:27):
From day one, I admired Arlene for her creativity and her
capability, her confidence
and this wonderful sense of humility. She's just this
genuine human being. My parents just kept telling me that
we should be grateful for what we had, grateful for being in the country,
and we should be generous with whatever we could. And over the years, our paths
(00:50):
crossed many times. Industry functions,
conferences. We were both inducted into the inaugural
Small Business hall of Fame Canadian Small Business Awards. And a
few weeks ago, I sat at her head table as Arlene received a
lifetime achievement award. And her speech about Canada
and why it matters not only moved me, but moved
(01:11):
1,000 people in that room. Canada has a social safety
net that makes us all feel secure, which is what we love about this country.
Healthcare systems, we have educational systems. We have a lot of things that
give us protection from failure.
Well, recently I had an opportunity to interview Arlene on stage
at an RBC private banking conference. Everybody was so
(01:34):
excited to see and hear from the matriarch of the Dragon's Den.
You can always go higher. It is within you to go higher.
And what Arlene shared about her personal journey and her lessons in
life were so profound, I thought I would share them with you
today. We often wait for things to happen to us in
order to reinvent ourselves to what we really want be.
(01:57):
So let me take you to the conference floor and my live chat
with the one and only Arlene Dickinson.
Hi, it's Tony Chapman. Thank you for listening to Chatter that Matters, presented
by rbc. If you can please subscribe to the podcast
and ratings reviews. Well, they're always welcome and they're always
(02:18):
appreciated.
Everybody knows you as this matriarch of the Den and this extraordinary
individual. But I think if we rewind the clock back, what a
lot of people don't realize is that you're an immigrant. Talk to me a little
bit about those early days when your family blazed a
trail from South Africa to probably one of the coldest parts of
(02:40):
Canada. Yeah. Who's in South Africa? And then
says, let's move to Edmonton? My dad, that's who.
Listen, I'm 68 years old, and trust me, I would lie, but there's
Wikipedia. You change it and somebody changes it right back.
But when I 65 years ago, when my family came here,
we literally had no money. We were a typical
(03:04):
immigrant story of coming to Canada with $50 to our name
and the suitcases that we had with our clothes in them. It was really
challenging. I mean, these were hard times. But I say now, and I've said
my whole life, and I was taught to be just grateful that Canada took us
in. And Canada gave us an opportunity to be all that we could be
and let us, you know, work hard and continue to
(03:26):
excel as a result. But my dad decided to
take us to Canada because South Africa was going through so many social challenges
and he didn't want to raise his three girls there. And so we came here
and we, you know, lived and we went first Edmonton, then we went to Calgary
and Calgary became our home for had all my children there in
Calgary. And Calgary was a place where, you know, we worked really
(03:49):
hard to make a future for ourselves. And
it was not easy. You know, we had silk scarves for, you know,
we had knit sweaters for winter coats. We didn't have anything. And, you know,
the Salvation army was where we bought our clothes. Got a lot of things second
or third hand. So I didn't have a new dress, Tony, until I was 13
years old when I had saved enough money from babysitting to be able to buy
(04:11):
myself something. We've talked in the past and, you know, as
tough as it must have been on your parents, but everything they know is turned
upside down. But you still got some powerful lessons in life. You
talk very fondly about the fact that your work ethic and
if you're going to make it, you make it. My mom and dad,
my mother worked out of the home, which go back that many years ago. That
(04:33):
was unusual at the time, but we didn't again, we needed the money to be
able to get by. And my parents divorced when I was 13
years old. And so again, I was a very young age. I was the first
kid in my high school to come from a divorced family. But through
all that, through all the changes and all the challenges, again,
my parents just kept telling me that we should be grateful for what
(04:55):
we had, grateful for being in the country and we should be generous with
whatever we could. And so I think the lesson that it got
repeatedly given to me was that you couldn't blame anybody
else for your situation. You had to think about what you could do to
make your situation better and that it was our job to give back to the
country however we could, not relying on anyone else but ourselves.
(05:16):
And to try and get ahead and put food on the table. And sometimes
that meant, you know, food banks. Sometimes that meant, you know, Salvation army and
secondhand clothes. It's not to say that you can't take help, but it was more
about a notion of generosity and gratitude that was instilled in me. And there
was many lessons, Tony, that happened over countless times where we were,
you know, taught to just understand how lucky we were to
(05:38):
be here. And I think in today's world, when we're dealing with so much
anxiety and so much stress and everybody's down on Canada or up
on Canada or, you know, everybody's got an opinion on Canada, that's for sure. It's
important for us all to remember that we live in a country that does give
us a lot of opportunity. And, you know, you mentioned having your kids in Calgary
and another part of your life where you really had to look in the
(05:59):
mirror and say, who am I? Was? You're 31 years old, you have four
kids, and you're divorced, and without really any
education. You just wanted to be a mom. How did that feel? Because
everybody just sees you that everywhere you walk, you part water. But back
then, it must have been very frightening to realize that there was four mouths to
feed, plus yourself with very little prospects.
(06:21):
I mean, if you looked. If I was to study you and saying, are you
somebody that I think is of value to an organization? There wasn't a lot on
the paper. There was a lot in your heart. I literally had a grade 12
education. I graduated high school when I was 16 years old. And so I had
a grade 12 education and got married when I was 19,
had six pregnancies by the time I was 27, so four children
(06:42):
and a couple miscarriages. I was raising my family. And at
31, I found myself in a very messy divorce and trying to
figure out how I was going to put food on the table and a roof
over our heads and not having any skills. And this is actually one of those
lessons that you asked me about where, you know, I went and stayed with my
father and my stepmother and was on their couch for about
(07:03):
three weeks crying my eyes out. And my dad finally came over to me one
day and said, arlene, like, you know, what are you doing? And I said, well,
what does it look like I'm doing? I'm having, like, the world's biggest pity party.
Like, my life is a mess. And my dad looked down at me and said,
arlene, who do you think's gonna get you out of this And I looked up
at him very hopefully and said, you. And
my dad looked down at me and said, no, Arlene, you. And at
(07:26):
that moment he talked to me about, you know, getting up and just doing whatever
I could. And he gave me a hand up instead of a hand out. And
I think at 31 years old with four little kids and no
education and no skill at all, it was kind of do or die.
And people ask me now, well, how did you do it? And I think the
real question is, how could you not? I mean, you don't have options. You know,
(07:48):
there's something funny about being put against, you know, into a corner. You
either fight your way out of it or there's just, you can't give up. You
have children. And so you have to figure out a way ahead. And I found
marketing, Tony. And I found marketing because I was an effective
listener. And you didn't really have to have any skills to be in marketing.
Appreciate that. That's my. Not you in particular,
(08:13):
but you didn't need a degree. You needed to have a really good sense of
pop culture and what was going on and good empathy with humans and understanding what
drives human behavior. And having come from a very dysfunctional family, I
think I was a student of humans. You not only found
marketing, you found your way in. You became a partner. You became the
CEO. You were. And I remember you telling me the story of this
(08:35):
Calgary woman in those days. It was a real madman. It was a very male,
white dominated industry. It was. It is. And you
went into this boardroom with these people on this association. They're all
sitting there immediately, their biases is you're this, you know, from
a place out west. And the second thing is you're a woman while you're here.
And you talked about how intimidated were you, but you walked out of that meeting
(08:57):
realizing that your relevance was more important than theirs. Share that
story because there's times where most people would just run from that and say, I
don't want to ever put myself in that circumstance again. But you
drew on that. I was asked to sit on the board of the industry
association group. And that industry association group for marketing
agencies was comprised of a bunch of men who, who
(09:20):
had worked and were working for large corporate agencies.
So think multinational businesses. And there was very,
I think there might have been one other smaller shop, but not anyone as small
as my shop was. And there was nobody that was from a region like
Calgary sitting around that table. I just, I was like, I walked into that room
and I thought, oh my Gosh, like, I do not belong here.
(09:42):
I was so intimidated. I felt so inadequate. I felt, you know, that
imposter syndrome that many of us feel sometimes when we go into a place where
we think we're not worthy of being at the table and,
you know, sat around that table and everything that they were saying, I kept
thinking, but you don't understand. You don't understand entrepreneurs. You don't understand how people
think because they came from a place of very secure corporate jobs that
(10:04):
didn't force them into a place of understanding how, you know, some of
their business customers were, you know, thinking and going through,
listening to them. I was dismayed by it all, but I didn't say much because
I felt like I didn't have a right to say much. And I was still
young in my career. After a few meetings of that, I just kind of
went to one of the, you know, the fellow who was the chair and I
(10:25):
said, listen, I don't think I belong on this board. And he looked at me
and he said, arlene, you know why? And I said, I just don't feel like
I, you know, I don't think you're really listening to what has to be
understood from regional shops. And he said, and he said, listen, you're
always better being inside the tent than outside the tent. And I looked at
him, I said, I'm going to choose to build and put up my own tent.
(10:46):
He was quite dismayed with me. But I thought, if this is the table,
I don't want to sit at it. I went and made my own table. The
last story I'll tell on this, and because I want to move to another one,
is where relevance was your employees
was the Calgary flood. It wasn't losing a client at almost.
In the agency world, if you lose a big client, it's very precarious because
(11:07):
it's a service industry, as you know, if you lose a big client. But this
is Mother Nature that almost took your business away. So the flood in
Calgary was the. It was the largest natural disaster in Canada.
Basically took away my office and imagine, you know, like I'm on
Dragon's Den. I've been positioned as a very successful businesswoman. I was a
successful business person. But, you know, I had multiple things going on
(11:29):
at the time of which one of them was my marketing agency. But I was
doing many other things. But the marketing agency was what had raised me up
and had given me my opportunity and was very near and dear to
my heart. And the flood basically
decimated the, you know, the Business. It took away literally everything.
We lost clients. We couldn't respond to RFPs. It
(11:51):
was really difficult. And when you're a public personality
and people see you in a certain way, it's very difficult to
have the, you know, the fact that maybe you have a business that's about to
go under, be visible to the entire world, because it's not like you can hide
it. Everybody would know. And I was, like, struggling with it. The business was
struggling. I went to my banker at the time and said, listen,
(12:12):
I think, you know, after spending many days in bed and I again,
I went through a very depressed time. I didn't think I
could get out of bed. I felt so hopeless because here was a
natural disaster, something I had no control over, something that I couldn't have
prepared for. I thought, finally I got out of bed
because of the people that worked for me, of the clients that we had left
(12:35):
that trusted me. And I decided that I needed to reinvent
it and reinvent the business. So I went to the team and I said, how
do we reinvent this business to make it relevant to today's world for people
who are struggling as entrepreneurs? We reinvented every. We shaped
it around supporting entrepreneurial businesses. And then I went to the
bank, Listen, I'm going to support this business, and I'm going to put a
(12:57):
couple million dollars of my own money in to help it continue on. And my
banker looked at me and said, that's really not a very smart idea. You know,
you're just throwing good money after bad. And I said, potentially, that's
true, but my values are that I need to do everything I can to
help the people that work with me, the entrepreneurs that we can serve, and
the clients who have stayed with me. And it was the best decision I've made
(13:19):
as a result of we. I wrote the book Reinvention. We reinvented the
business, went on to create a very large
amalgamation of agencies later on through that. But it
was simply because I chose to get out of bed. You know, like,
sometimes that's the hardest thing you need to do, is just get yourself up.
Let's talk about the Dragon's Den. And at the time, there
(13:42):
was a peacock named Kevin o'. Leary. He was the Dragon,
and everybody else was just immaterial. And you
showed up, and he must have just thought, this is going to be just an
easy mark. And what I loved about the show
is how you became, almost overnight,
the most beloved person because you actually cared about the people that were in the
(14:03):
Dragon's Den versus caring about how much camera time you got. That
must have been another interesting way to play
relevance, because at the time, I have to believe the
Dragons Den quite like Kevin o' Leary as a character. He's kind of like Don
Cherry, right? He was very magnetic. He was very interesting to watch.
But how you won over both the audience and, I imagine, the
(14:26):
producers and clearly the entrepreneurs that actually were in there for advice.
Well, every story needs a villain and a hero.
In fact, one of the senior executives at CBC said to me,
you know, like, think of it like, you know, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,
you know, she said, you can name. You can name Snow White. You can name,
(14:46):
you know, Grumpy. Yeah. She said, people then struggle to
name all the other dwarfs. And she said, just remember that. And
I thought, what a weird story to tell me. Like, what is she talking about?
But I finally got it, which is that. And to me, it was just about
being myself. Like, you know, the first thing Kevin o' Leary ever said to me,
which was when I was doing the. They brought me in for a screen test,
(15:06):
and I didn't want to be on the show at all. I didn't want people
looking at me. I didn't want. It's pushed you on. Oh, they pit. My kids.
Kids made me do it because they said, mom. They said, mom. Who watches that
show anyway? You know, like. Like, what are you worried
about? Nobody's gonna see you. And I thought, oh, they're. They're right. I'm gonna be
like, I'll do it once. It'll be fine. And he looked at me.
We. An entrepreneur had come out. She came out. I was really
(15:29):
interested in what she was saying, so I was listening intently to what she was
saying. And Kevin does as Kevin does, and he says something
nasty to her. I'm a justice warrior. Like, I'm one of those people
that don't think sometimes. Like, if I see injustice, I'm gonna say something.
I. Where I am or who I'm with. And he said that. Something
nasty. And I looked at him, I said that, you didn't. You don't need to
(15:50):
be so mean. That's just awful. And he looked at me and said, what
broom did you ride in on? We had a big fight.
I left that set thinking, what a jerk. Like, I
never want to be on the show again. Because I took it very personally. I
thought, who treats people that way? They called me and said they wanted me to
do the show. And I said, what are you talking about? I fought with your
(16:10):
Guy. And they said, yeah, we like that.
And so again, my kids said, what are you worried about? Who's going to see
you? And I went, okay, I'll do it, but this is going to be
my 17th season coming up here. Yeah. Wow.
In the middle of it, if I remember correctly, you did take a break because
(16:32):
you decided to give a hand up
to entrepreneurs in the food business. Part of
it was because of the food insecurity you felt as a kid. How would you
ever imagine that now we're in a situation, a country where building
our own economy is so important. So how did
that come about? Because listen, you're making a lot of money, you're doing great
(16:54):
speeches, you've got. Everything's wonderful. Most people don't reinvent
themselves and seek that. At the age you did. What motivated you
to say, this is going to be something I wanted to pursue? Well, being on
the show, I don't know how many thousands of entrepreneurs I've listened to or
heard their pitches. I would say between the show and off the show,
maybe 10,000. I've heard so many. I've heard every type of pitch you
(17:17):
can imagine. Time after time, I was seeing these companies come
on that were in the food and beverage and health and wellness space
and they would get told by the panel that they were going to get squashed
by the unilevers and the procter and gambles and the large corporations
because they were too small and they couldn't possibly succeed. And it really
stuck with me. And I kept thinking to myself, well, this is a nation. We're
(17:38):
a nation that is like, we export some of the best raw ingredients in the
world. Like, you know, we have the, like the best raw ingredients. And surely, you
know, there's somebody investing in this space and the agri food space that I could,
you know, put my money behind. And I went to look to do that and
I couldn't find a fund that was focused on it and which just shocked me.
But there was nobody in the country that was focused on investing in
(18:00):
early stage consumer packaged goods companies. Still
today, 10 years later, there's only a couple venture
capital firms that focus on it. But back then, I was 58
years old, I was seeing the opportunity. I believed that we
needed to. My belief is that no stick should leave this country without value
being added to it. I deeply believe that. Of course, there's resources,
(18:22):
raw resources like, you know, crude oil, et cetera, that will get shipped without
value add. But you know, for the most part, we have a lot of commodity
and we shouldn't just be a commodity based economy. We have to be a
commercialized economy economy, something, you know, some a country that thinks about
that last mile of commercialization. So I went and raised at 58.
I decided to try and help entrepreneurs in that space and went
(18:44):
and raised my first fund. Wow, is that hard. Especially
when you go in and people are investing in tech funds because tech
was so sexy, you know, still is today. And you say, I'm going to
invest in food. And they go, well, what's the return profile look like? And you
say, well, it's like, like it's still really good, but it's not like the same
as a tech return. And so they kind of go, ah, it's
(19:06):
nascent. Doesn't, you know, nobody else is doing it. Nobody else, you know. And I
just got all these no's, but what I did get was a lot of people
who would see me and they would see me because I was on tv.
And so I just sold, sold, sold as much as I could about why this
was important and raised the first fund. We raised 100. We've raised $170
million so far. And that's been one of the, the best
(19:27):
blessings of my life, reinventing myself as a venture capitalist.
Somebody who focuses on a space that I think is very important to our
food security and food safety and frankly, to
our sovereignty. If we don't control our own food supply and our food chain,
we do not have sovereignty. We need to have control of our food.
I have to believe in your life, one of the things you feel the most
(19:50):
reward in is helping these entrepreneurs. Pursue these dreams,
helping entrepreneurs, helping our country, these things.
When you get to be older, you do think a lot about legacy and you
think about what is it you're leaving behind and how do you actually
make sure that your footprint is not going to get washed away by
water and, you know, by the ocean or by other forces of wind or
(20:12):
whatever. You want to leave something that's going to be lasting more than five minutes.
And the thought of, you know, we've now put between the fund
and my accelerator, we did a
economic impact study a few years ago, and we have got
$1.6 billion in impact as a result of one fund
doing and one accelerator doing what we've done. So I'm very
(20:34):
proud of that. I'm very proud of what we're doing for Canada to help
commercialize in our food space. And I'm very
proud of the team that has helped me get
here. I mean, I'M I'm just a piece of it, you know.
When we return, Arlene and I talk more about
(20:55):
what matters to the people that matter most to you.
And in her case, that's every Canadian. Maybe I'll
run for politics one day. I don't know.
Hi, it's Tony Chapman. Investing in Canada, well, that matters
to our RBC. $500 billion in sustainable financing
(21:17):
to combat climate change. 500 million for future. Launch
a 10 year program to prepare youth for the jobs of tomorrow.
Helping to discover the next generation of Olympians. Artists
monetizing their talents. Woman entrepreneurs pursuing their dreams,
supporting mental health and so much more. Investing in Canada,
well, that matters to rbc.
(21:40):
Whenever I say to people, they'll say, do you know Jan? And I'll go, yeah.
And they go. And all they do is want to talk about. They get the
same thing. It's the same thing. I know a
little bit about your personal life, but our audience doesn't.
I've had boyfriends and I've girlfriends. It was very confusing for
my parents. But it's funny how we, over 60
(22:00):
women in particular, I think, feel very like we're
not worth it. I don't feel that. I never felt that. Well,
clearly not. I don't feel that. I mean, I've had a crush on
George. Honestly, I've had a crush on you for forever. I'm
very honored and thrilled by that. Are you? I think that's the
nicest blow off I've ever heard. That's not a blow off. My guest today is
(22:23):
the one and only Arlene Dickinson. Many know of her as the matriarch
of the Dragon's Den. I know her as a dear friend who I know
I could call on at any time if I needed
anything.
You've always been so personal. Today, you know, I'm 68 years old. You've never
hidden, you've never shied away. And now you've got a new show called Arlene
(22:46):
is alone, a YouTube show. If you haven't watched it, it's
absolutely hilarious. It's almost like. And don't. I hope you don't take this
wrong. I take this as a compliment because one of my favorite shows, it's almost
Golden Girls, like in the sense you guys are sitting back.
But it's all about human insights. It's about relevancy, it's
about the fact that you can be alone and still matter. You're really
(23:07):
just doing it just to remind a lot of people that there's life after 60.
Well, I'm waiting for RBC to sponsor it.
The world is really evolving, and many of us are single. Like,
many of us are single out there. You know, we're going through divorces. We are
choosing to be single. We're going through different stages of our life. And
I thought, why does anyone ever talk about that? You know, like, I've been single
(23:30):
for a long time, and I'm not embarrassed by that. I don't feel shame in
that. I love Tracy traveling. I love going out for dinner by myself.
I'm a bit of an introvert, and not a bit. I'm quite an introvert.
I thought, I can't be the only person that wants to talk about what life
is like and how you can be relevant in the world even though you're single.
Because I was tired of people saying, well, you know, we're having a dinner party,
(23:51):
but it's, you know, it's all couples. You want to bring somebody? No, actually,
I don't. I'm happy to come by myself, but I don't want to bring somebody.
And so I thought, you know, again, you can be relevant in
a world that expects you to have social norms that says you must look
a certain way, act a certain way, and be in a certain type of relationship
in order to be relevant in a conversation. And I just don't ascribe to
(24:13):
that. I think we all have our own, you know, value in life, and we
can all be relevant, no matter our age or stage. And so I decided to
talk about it. And honestly, the la. The last episode, latest
episode, dropped today, and it's got Jan Arden. And if you need a good laugh,
listen to it because she's just hilarious. But
I've loved doing it. I. I talked to George Strombolopoulos today, who
(24:35):
did a show like, it's so many great people that I know
that are prepared to talk about kind of what their lives are like, giving a.
Lot of people permission that they can walk with their shoulders
straight, that they don't have to deal with society's norms. With the
10,000 entrepreneurs that you've seen and your curiosity
and everything that you've done in life, what do you look for in
(24:56):
people? That you go where trust is built, where
people feel there's truly a symbiotic relationship, how does
relevance apply in that to you? That you go, that is somebody I'm
willing to invest time in or capital in, or giving them a
hand up? I look for authenticity, and I believe that the best
relationships start with a genuine curiosity about what the
(25:20):
other person's saying and why they're saying it. And so in the roles that
you all play, where you're talking every day to people who are trying to live
their dreams or are worried about what's going on, going on in the world and
are concerned about their security in the future, the gravitas
of the impact of our finances in our lives
is so important. And so when you see people who are entrepreneurs
(25:42):
coming to you, who have worked so hard and risked so much
and have a little bit of money that you might go, it's a small piece
of business or it's not a big book or whatever you might say, I'm not
sure if I can help them. I would tell you to help them and help
them by listening to them. And when you listen to them, you will actually learn
something about what actually keeps them up at night, what actually drives them,
(26:04):
what actually they want to have to build something meaningful
in their lives with. You know, we all take risk in life, but an
entrepreneur takes a different type of risk. They don't get paid for many years.
Generally they've worked for 10 years sometimes before they start to even, you know,
really pay themselves. They, they finally have an event where they sell something
and they generally are lost, like, what do I do next? Because they've defined themselves
(26:25):
through their business. There's so many things that are going those people's minds.
So I think on the show I'm looking for somebody who's
genuine, somebody who's honest and somebody who believes in a win win. You
guys should make money as a result of what you're doing for your clients and
they should be rewarded as well in terms of, you know, some sort of benefit.
And you don't want to just get a deal. You want people that you have
(26:47):
relationship with and that means really caring and that means
taking time. And my final question, because you're very
nonpartisan, but when Canada called you up,
you were part of the rally. And I think you're spending every day
telling Canadians what your dad taught you, having
gratitude that we're part of this great country. Is politics in the future
(27:09):
for you or is like, where are you going to take this? Because we're in
a world now where if I love this person, I must dislike that
person. I mean, social media has herded us into these castles with like minded people,
like minded content and we validate ourselves by liking us and not
liking them. And you're finding something that's so important again, which
is the middle ground where consensus and collaboration and
(27:30):
creation happens. Versus at the edges where a
lot of anger and frustration, inertia happens. We are a good example
of that, Tony. We sit on opposite sides of the fence in terms of who
we think is the right leader for the future. You voice your opinion, I
voice my opinion. But yet we have respectful discussion about it.
I have no problem with people disagreeing. I think civil discourse
(27:53):
is all about being able to disagree. But, you know,
find what it is that we have in common. And what we have in common
is we all want a strong, safe, you know,
prosperous future for our country. We can pull apart
policies and platforms, we can look at all those things, but at the end of
the day, we are going to choose whoever it is we believe is the right
(28:13):
person. And so for you and I, like, I've always
respected your perspective because you don't come at it angrily,
you come at it it clearly with clarity and you're clear headed about what it
is you believe. And I try to do the same thing. And I think the
middle is something that is getting hollowed out in Canada.
I think it's very important that we try to think about what really matters
(28:34):
and not get hung up on single issue voting. Single issue voting
is very dangerous. And think about instead what we want for our nation,
for the future. Nobody's perfect, no party's perfect. And
right now we're getting torn apart for, I think, all of the wrong
reasons. And a lot of it is bots, A lot of it is
trolls. A lot of it is. I'm seeing an increase on my
(28:56):
platforms. I'm seeing an increased number of really
negative people like I've never seen before ever. Like
it's, it's crazy and, and you have to shut it out
and listen. If you decide to start a party with the middle ground. I'm giving
up my podcast. I will put up lawn signs for you. Well, maybe you
could be my running mate today. I'll be your running machine. Anyway, I always end
(29:18):
my podcast with my three takeaways. I always want the
listener to walk away because what mattered to me, I hope might matter to you
as well. And the first one is this sense of
hand up versus handout. It's very easy for you to even be.
We're in the business of handing out money. But I think when you turn that
from a transaction to something transformative, we're there to give somebody a hand
(29:41):
up so something magical happens. And I want to build on that with
my second takeaway. This sense of curiosity which has
always driven you. And I think the thing I admire the most in people
is they're curious, they're not just one dimensional. I'm really
interested in Arlene's point of view and why she's made a decision
because it might shape my point of view and I think curiosity and open minded.
(30:04):
And I can tell you that social media is working every day to close our
minds and to put blinders on us because the longer they have
you feeling negative and anxious, the more they monetize. This is why they're getting
sued all over the world. This is the algorithms to keep us
hooked. Because humans are wired for negativity. When we have that
ability to foster curiosity and open mindedness and really care
(30:25):
about what the other person's point of view, I think is a fantastic lesson in
life. And I think the third lesson that I've always taken because I've
admired Arlene initially because we competed against each other, but
all through my life, with such gratitude and empathy,
willing to put your hand up and say, if I'm needed,
I'll get involved. And it doesn't have to involve a
(30:47):
paycheck. So for all of that and more, I think this wonderful
iconic Canadian deserves an extraordinary round of applause.
Once again, a special thanks to RBC for supporting Chatter that matters.
It's Tony Chapman. Thanks for listening and let's chat soon.
You have people in your life that you seem to bump into
as you go through your journey of life. One of those for me
is Arlene Dickinson. I first met
Arlene many years ago. She was the CEO of this agency called Venture.
I ran a shop called Capital C, and we shared Unilever as a client.
(00:27):
From day one, I admired Arlene for her creativity and her
capability, her confidence
and this wonderful sense of humility. She's just this
genuine human being. My parents just kept telling me that
we should be grateful for what we had, grateful for being in the country,
and we should be generous with whatever we could. And over the years, our paths
(00:50):
crossed many times. Industry functions,
conferences. We were both inducted into the inaugural
Small Business hall of Fame Canadian Small Business Awards. And a
few weeks ago, I sat at her head table as Arlene received a
lifetime achievement award. And her speech about Canada
and why it matters not only moved me, but moved
(01:11):
1,000 people in that room. Canada has a social safety
net that makes us all feel secure, which is what we love about this country.
Healthcare systems, we have educational systems. We have a lot of things that
give us protection from failure.
Well, recently I had an opportunity to interview Arlene on stage
at an RBC private banking conference. Everybody was so
(01:34):
excited to see and hear from the matriarch of the Dragon's Den.
You can always go higher. It is within you to go higher.
And what Arlene shared about her personal journey and her lessons in
life were so profound, I thought I would share them with you
today. We often wait for things to happen to us in
order to reinvent ourselves to what we really want be.
(01:57):
So let me take you to the conference floor and my live chat
with the one and only Arlene Dickinson.
Hi, it's Tony Chapman. Thank you for listening to Chatter that Matters, presented
by rbc. If you can please subscribe to the podcast
and ratings reviews. Well, they're always welcome and they're always
(02:18):
appreciated.
Everybody knows you as this matriarch of the Den and this extraordinary
individual. But I think if we rewind the clock back, what a
lot of people don't realize is that you're an immigrant. Talk to me a little
bit about those early days when your family blazed a
trail from South Africa to probably one of the coldest parts of
(02:40):
Canada. Yeah. Who's in South Africa? And then
says, let's move to Edmonton? My dad, that's who.
Listen, I'm 68 years old, and trust me, I would lie, but there's
Wikipedia. You change it and somebody changes it right back.
But when I 65 years ago, when my family came here,
we literally had no money. We were a typical
(03:04):
immigrant story of coming to Canada with $50 to our name
and the suitcases that we had with our clothes in them. It was really
challenging. I mean, these were hard times. But I say now, and I've said
my whole life, and I was taught to be just grateful that Canada took us
in. And Canada gave us an opportunity to be all that we could be
and let us, you know, work hard and continue to
(03:26):
excel as a result. But my dad decided to
take us to Canada because South Africa was going through so many social challenges
and he didn't want to raise his three girls there. And so we came here
and we, you know, lived and we went first Edmonton, then we went to Calgary
and Calgary became our home for had all my children there in
Calgary. And Calgary was a place where, you know, we worked really
(03:49):
hard to make a future for ourselves. And
it was not easy. You know, we had silk scarves for, you know,
we had knit sweaters for winter coats. We didn't have anything. And, you know,
the Salvation army was where we bought our clothes. Got a lot of things second
or third hand. So I didn't have a new dress, Tony, until I was 13
years old when I had saved enough money from babysitting to be able to buy
(04:11):
myself something. We've talked in the past and, you know, as
tough as it must have been on your parents, but everything they know is turned
upside down. But you still got some powerful lessons in life. You
talk very fondly about the fact that your work ethic and
if you're going to make it, you make it. My mom and dad,
my mother worked out of the home, which go back that many years ago. That
(04:33):
was unusual at the time, but we didn't again, we needed the money to be
able to get by. And my parents divorced when I was 13
years old. And so again, I was a very young age. I was the first
kid in my high school to come from a divorced family. But through
all that, through all the changes and all the challenges, again,
my parents just kept telling me that we should be grateful for what
(04:55):
we had, grateful for being in the country and we should be generous with
whatever we could. And so I think the lesson that it got
repeatedly given to me was that you couldn't blame anybody
else for your situation. You had to think about what you could do to
make your situation better and that it was our job to give back to the
country however we could, not relying on anyone else but ourselves.
(05:16):
And to try and get ahead and put food on the table. And sometimes
that meant, you know, food banks. Sometimes that meant, you know, Salvation army and
secondhand clothes. It's not to say that you can't take help, but it was more
about a notion of generosity and gratitude that was instilled in me. And there
was many lessons, Tony, that happened over countless times where we were,
you know, taught to just understand how lucky we were to
(05:38):
be here. And I think in today's world, when we're dealing with so much
anxiety and so much stress and everybody's down on Canada or up
on Canada or, you know, everybody's got an opinion on Canada, that's for sure. It's
important for us all to remember that we live in a country that does give
us a lot of opportunity. And, you know, you mentioned having your kids in Calgary
and another part of your life where you really had to look in the
(05:59):
mirror and say, who am I? Was? You're 31 years old, you have four
kids, and you're divorced, and without really any
education. You just wanted to be a mom. How did that feel? Because
everybody just sees you that everywhere you walk, you part water. But back
then, it must have been very frightening to realize that there was four mouths to
feed, plus yourself with very little prospects.
(06:21):
I mean, if you looked. If I was to study you and saying, are you
somebody that I think is of value to an organization? There wasn't a lot on
the paper. There was a lot in your heart. I literally had a grade 12
education. I graduated high school when I was 16 years old. And so I had
a grade 12 education and got married when I was 19,
had six pregnancies by the time I was 27, so four children
(06:42):
and a couple miscarriages. I was raising my family. And at
31, I found myself in a very messy divorce and trying to
figure out how I was going to put food on the table and a roof
over our heads and not having any skills. And this is actually one of those
lessons that you asked me about where, you know, I went and stayed with my
father and my stepmother and was on their couch for about
(07:03):
three weeks crying my eyes out. And my dad finally came over to me one
day and said, arlene, like, you know, what are you doing? And I said, well,
what does it look like I'm doing? I'm having, like, the world's biggest pity party.
Like, my life is a mess. And my dad looked down at me and said,
arlene, who do you think's gonna get you out of this And I looked up
at him very hopefully and said, you. And
my dad looked down at me and said, no, Arlene, you. And at
(07:26):
that moment he talked to me about, you know, getting up and just doing whatever
I could. And he gave me a hand up instead of a hand out. And
I think at 31 years old with four little kids and no
education and no skill at all, it was kind of do or die.
And people ask me now, well, how did you do it? And I think the
real question is, how could you not? I mean, you don't have options. You know,
(07:48):
there's something funny about being put against, you know, into a corner. You
either fight your way out of it or there's just, you can't give up. You
have children. And so you have to figure out a way ahead. And I found
marketing, Tony. And I found marketing because I was an effective
listener. And you didn't really have to have any skills to be in marketing.
Appreciate that. That's my. Not you in particular,
(08:13):
but you didn't need a degree. You needed to have a really good sense of
pop culture and what was going on and good empathy with humans and understanding what
drives human behavior. And having come from a very dysfunctional family, I
think I was a student of humans. You not only found
marketing, you found your way in. You became a partner. You became the
CEO. You were. And I remember you telling me the story of this
(08:35):
Calgary woman in those days. It was a real madman. It was a very male,
white dominated industry. It was. It is. And you
went into this boardroom with these people on this association. They're all
sitting there immediately, their biases is you're this, you know, from
a place out west. And the second thing is you're a woman while you're here.
And you talked about how intimidated were you, but you walked out of that meeting
(08:57):
realizing that your relevance was more important than theirs. Share that
story because there's times where most people would just run from that and say, I
don't want to ever put myself in that circumstance again. But you
drew on that. I was asked to sit on the board of the industry
association group. And that industry association group for marketing
agencies was comprised of a bunch of men who, who
(09:20):
had worked and were working for large corporate agencies.
So think multinational businesses. And there was very,
I think there might have been one other smaller shop, but not anyone as small
as my shop was. And there was nobody that was from a region like
Calgary sitting around that table. I just, I was like, I walked into that room
and I thought, oh my Gosh, like, I do not belong here.
(09:42):
I was so intimidated. I felt so inadequate. I felt, you know, that
imposter syndrome that many of us feel sometimes when we go into a place where
we think we're not worthy of being at the table and,
you know, sat around that table and everything that they were saying, I kept
thinking, but you don't understand. You don't understand entrepreneurs. You don't understand how people
think because they came from a place of very secure corporate jobs that
(10:04):
didn't force them into a place of understanding how, you know, some of
their business customers were, you know, thinking and going through,
listening to them. I was dismayed by it all, but I didn't say much because
I felt like I didn't have a right to say much. And I was still
young in my career. After a few meetings of that, I just kind of
went to one of the, you know, the fellow who was the chair and I
(10:25):
said, listen, I don't think I belong on this board. And he looked at me
and he said, arlene, you know why? And I said, I just don't feel like
I, you know, I don't think you're really listening to what has to be
understood from regional shops. And he said, and he said, listen, you're
always better being inside the tent than outside the tent. And I looked at
him, I said, I'm going to choose to build and put up my own tent.
(10:46):
He was quite dismayed with me. But I thought, if this is the table,
I don't want to sit at it. I went and made my own table. The
last story I'll tell on this, and because I want to move to another one,
is where relevance was your employees
was the Calgary flood. It wasn't losing a client at almost.
In the agency world, if you lose a big client, it's very precarious because
(11:07):
it's a service industry, as you know, if you lose a big client. But this
is Mother Nature that almost took your business away. So the flood in
Calgary was the. It was the largest natural disaster in Canada.
Basically took away my office and imagine, you know, like I'm on
Dragon's Den. I've been positioned as a very successful businesswoman. I was a
successful business person. But, you know, I had multiple things going on
(11:29):
at the time of which one of them was my marketing agency. But I was
doing many other things. But the marketing agency was what had raised me up
and had given me my opportunity and was very near and dear to
my heart. And the flood basically
decimated the, you know, the Business. It took away literally everything.
We lost clients. We couldn't respond to RFPs. It
(11:51):
was really difficult. And when you're a public personality
and people see you in a certain way, it's very difficult to
have the, you know, the fact that maybe you have a business that's about to
go under, be visible to the entire world, because it's not like you can hide
it. Everybody would know. And I was, like, struggling with it. The business was
struggling. I went to my banker at the time and said, listen,
(12:12):
I think, you know, after spending many days in bed and I again,
I went through a very depressed time. I didn't think I
could get out of bed. I felt so hopeless because here was a
natural disaster, something I had no control over, something that I couldn't have
prepared for. I thought, finally I got out of bed
because of the people that worked for me, of the clients that we had left
(12:35):
that trusted me. And I decided that I needed to reinvent
it and reinvent the business. So I went to the team and I said, how
do we reinvent this business to make it relevant to today's world for people
who are struggling as entrepreneurs? We reinvented every. We shaped
it around supporting entrepreneurial businesses. And then I went to the
bank, Listen, I'm going to support this business, and I'm going to put a
(12:57):
couple million dollars of my own money in to help it continue on. And my
banker looked at me and said, that's really not a very smart idea. You know,
you're just throwing good money after bad. And I said, potentially, that's
true, but my values are that I need to do everything I can to
help the people that work with me, the entrepreneurs that we can serve, and
the clients who have stayed with me. And it was the best decision I've made
(13:19):
as a result of we. I wrote the book Reinvention. We reinvented the
business, went on to create a very large
amalgamation of agencies later on through that. But it
was simply because I chose to get out of bed. You know, like,
sometimes that's the hardest thing you need to do, is just get yourself up.
Let's talk about the Dragon's Den. And at the time, there
(13:42):
was a peacock named Kevin o'. Leary. He was the Dragon,
and everybody else was just immaterial. And you
showed up, and he must have just thought, this is going to be just an
easy mark. And what I loved about the show
is how you became, almost overnight,
the most beloved person because you actually cared about the people that were in the
(14:03):
Dragon's Den versus caring about how much camera time you got. That
must have been another interesting way to play
relevance, because at the time, I have to believe the
Dragons Den quite like Kevin o' Leary as a character. He's kind of like Don
Cherry, right? He was very magnetic. He was very interesting to watch.
But how you won over both the audience and, I imagine, the
(14:26):
producers and clearly the entrepreneurs that actually were in there for advice.
Well, every story needs a villain and a hero.
In fact, one of the senior executives at CBC said to me,
you know, like, think of it like, you know, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,
you know, she said, you can name. You can name Snow White. You can name,
(14:46):
you know, Grumpy. Yeah. She said, people then struggle to
name all the other dwarfs. And she said, just remember that. And
I thought, what a weird story to tell me. Like, what is she talking about?
But I finally got it, which is that. And to me, it was just about
being myself. Like, you know, the first thing Kevin o' Leary ever said to me,
which was when I was doing the. They brought me in for a screen test,
(15:06):
and I didn't want to be on the show at all. I didn't want people
looking at me. I didn't want. It's pushed you on. Oh, they pit. My kids.
Kids made me do it because they said, mom. They said, mom. Who watches that
show anyway? You know, like. Like, what are you worried
about? Nobody's gonna see you. And I thought, oh, they're. They're right. I'm gonna be
like, I'll do it once. It'll be fine. And he looked at me.
We. An entrepreneur had come out. She came out. I was really
(15:29):
interested in what she was saying, so I was listening intently to what she was
saying. And Kevin does as Kevin does, and he says something
nasty to her. I'm a justice warrior. Like, I'm one of those people
that don't think sometimes. Like, if I see injustice, I'm gonna say something.
I. Where I am or who I'm with. And he said that. Something
nasty. And I looked at him, I said that, you didn't. You don't need to
(15:50):
be so mean. That's just awful. And he looked at me and said, what
broom did you ride in on? We had a big fight.
I left that set thinking, what a jerk. Like, I
never want to be on the show again. Because I took it very personally. I
thought, who treats people that way? They called me and said they wanted me to
do the show. And I said, what are you talking about? I fought with your
(16:10):
Guy. And they said, yeah, we like that.
And so again, my kids said, what are you worried about? Who's going to see
you? And I went, okay, I'll do it, but this is going to be
my 17th season coming up here. Yeah. Wow.
In the middle of it, if I remember correctly, you did take a break because
(16:32):
you decided to give a hand up
to entrepreneurs in the food business. Part of
it was because of the food insecurity you felt as a kid. How would you
ever imagine that now we're in a situation, a country where building
our own economy is so important. So how did
that come about? Because listen, you're making a lot of money, you're doing great
(16:54):
speeches, you've got. Everything's wonderful. Most people don't reinvent
themselves and seek that. At the age you did. What motivated you
to say, this is going to be something I wanted to pursue? Well, being on
the show, I don't know how many thousands of entrepreneurs I've listened to or
heard their pitches. I would say between the show and off the show,
maybe 10,000. I've heard so many. I've heard every type of pitch you
(17:17):
can imagine. Time after time, I was seeing these companies come
on that were in the food and beverage and health and wellness space
and they would get told by the panel that they were going to get squashed
by the unilevers and the procter and gambles and the large corporations
because they were too small and they couldn't possibly succeed. And it really
stuck with me. And I kept thinking to myself, well, this is a nation. We're
(17:38):
a nation that is like, we export some of the best raw ingredients in the
world. Like, you know, we have the, like the best raw ingredients. And surely, you
know, there's somebody investing in this space and the agri food space that I could,
you know, put my money behind. And I went to look to do that and
I couldn't find a fund that was focused on it and which just shocked me.
But there was nobody in the country that was focused on investing in
(18:00):
early stage consumer packaged goods companies. Still
today, 10 years later, there's only a couple venture
capital firms that focus on it. But back then, I was 58
years old, I was seeing the opportunity. I believed that we
needed to. My belief is that no stick should leave this country without value
being added to it. I deeply believe that. Of course, there's resources,
(18:22):
raw resources like, you know, crude oil, et cetera, that will get shipped without
value add. But you know, for the most part, we have a lot of commodity
and we shouldn't just be a commodity based economy. We have to be a
commercialized economy economy, something, you know, some a country that thinks about
that last mile of commercialization. So I went and raised at 58.
I decided to try and help entrepreneurs in that space and went
(18:44):
and raised my first fund. Wow, is that hard. Especially
when you go in and people are investing in tech funds because tech
was so sexy, you know, still is today. And you say, I'm going to
invest in food. And they go, well, what's the return profile look like? And you
say, well, it's like, like it's still really good, but it's not like the same
as a tech return. And so they kind of go, ah, it's
(19:06):
nascent. Doesn't, you know, nobody else is doing it. Nobody else, you know. And I
just got all these no's, but what I did get was a lot of people
who would see me and they would see me because I was on tv.
And so I just sold, sold, sold as much as I could about why this
was important and raised the first fund. We raised 100. We've raised $170
million so far. And that's been one of the, the best
(19:27):
blessings of my life, reinventing myself as a venture capitalist.
Somebody who focuses on a space that I think is very important to our
food security and food safety and frankly, to
our sovereignty. If we don't control our own food supply and our food chain,
we do not have sovereignty. We need to have control of our food.
I have to believe in your life, one of the things you feel the most
(19:50):
reward in is helping these entrepreneurs. Pursue these dreams,
helping entrepreneurs, helping our country, these things.
When you get to be older, you do think a lot about legacy and you
think about what is it you're leaving behind and how do you actually
make sure that your footprint is not going to get washed away by
water and, you know, by the ocean or by other forces of wind or
(20:12):
whatever. You want to leave something that's going to be lasting more than five minutes.
And the thought of, you know, we've now put between the fund
and my accelerator, we did a
economic impact study a few years ago, and we have got
$1.6 billion in impact as a result of one fund
doing and one accelerator doing what we've done. So I'm very
(20:34):
proud of that. I'm very proud of what we're doing for Canada to help
commercialize in our food space. And I'm very
proud of the team that has helped me get
here. I mean, I'M I'm just a piece of it, you know.
When we return, Arlene and I talk more about
(20:55):
what matters to the people that matter most to you.
And in her case, that's every Canadian. Maybe I'll
run for politics one day. I don't know.
Hi, it's Tony Chapman. Investing in Canada, well, that matters
to our RBC. $500 billion in sustainable financing
(21:17):
to combat climate change. 500 million for future. Launch
a 10 year program to prepare youth for the jobs of tomorrow.
Helping to discover the next generation of Olympians. Artists
monetizing their talents. Woman entrepreneurs pursuing their dreams,
supporting mental health and so much more. Investing in Canada,
well, that matters to rbc.
(21:40):
Whenever I say to people, they'll say, do you know Jan? And I'll go, yeah.
And they go. And all they do is want to talk about. They get the
same thing. It's the same thing. I know a
little bit about your personal life, but our audience doesn't.
I've had boyfriends and I've girlfriends. It was very confusing for
my parents. But it's funny how we, over 60
(22:00):
women in particular, I think, feel very like we're
not worth it. I don't feel that. I never felt that. Well,
clearly not. I don't feel that. I mean, I've had a crush on
George. Honestly, I've had a crush on you for forever. I'm
very honored and thrilled by that. Are you? I think that's the
nicest blow off I've ever heard. That's not a blow off. My guest today is
(22:23):
the one and only Arlene Dickinson. Many know of her as the matriarch
of the Dragon's Den. I know her as a dear friend who I know
I could call on at any time if I needed
anything.
You've always been so personal. Today, you know, I'm 68 years old. You've never
hidden, you've never shied away. And now you've got a new show called Arlene
(22:46):
is alone, a YouTube show. If you haven't watched it, it's
absolutely hilarious. It's almost like. And don't. I hope you don't take this
wrong. I take this as a compliment because one of my favorite shows, it's almost
Golden Girls, like in the sense you guys are sitting back.
But it's all about human insights. It's about relevancy, it's
about the fact that you can be alone and still matter. You're really
(23:07):
just doing it just to remind a lot of people that there's life after 60.
Well, I'm waiting for RBC to sponsor it.
The world is really evolving, and many of us are single. Like,
many of us are single out there. You know, we're going through divorces. We are
choosing to be single. We're going through different stages of our life. And
I thought, why does anyone ever talk about that? You know, like, I've been single
(23:30):
for a long time, and I'm not embarrassed by that. I don't feel shame in
that. I love Tracy traveling. I love going out for dinner by myself.
I'm a bit of an introvert, and not a bit. I'm quite an introvert.
I thought, I can't be the only person that wants to talk about what life
is like and how you can be relevant in the world even though you're single.
Because I was tired of people saying, well, you know, we're having a dinner party,
(23:51):
but it's, you know, it's all couples. You want to bring somebody? No, actually,
I don't. I'm happy to come by myself, but I don't want to bring somebody.
And so I thought, you know, again, you can be relevant in
a world that expects you to have social norms that says you must look
a certain way, act a certain way, and be in a certain type of relationship
in order to be relevant in a conversation. And I just don't ascribe to
(24:13):
that. I think we all have our own, you know, value in life, and we
can all be relevant, no matter our age or stage. And so I decided to
talk about it. And honestly, the la. The last episode, latest
episode, dropped today, and it's got Jan Arden. And if you need a good laugh,
listen to it because she's just hilarious. But
I've loved doing it. I. I talked to George Strombolopoulos today, who
(24:35):
did a show like, it's so many great people that I know
that are prepared to talk about kind of what their lives are like, giving a.
Lot of people permission that they can walk with their shoulders
straight, that they don't have to deal with society's norms. With the
10,000 entrepreneurs that you've seen and your curiosity
and everything that you've done in life, what do you look for in
(24:56):
people? That you go where trust is built, where
people feel there's truly a symbiotic relationship, how does
relevance apply in that to you? That you go, that is somebody I'm
willing to invest time in or capital in, or giving them a
hand up? I look for authenticity, and I believe that the best
relationships start with a genuine curiosity about what the
(25:20):
other person's saying and why they're saying it. And so in the roles that
you all play, where you're talking every day to people who are trying to live
their dreams or are worried about what's going on, going on in the world and
are concerned about their security in the future, the gravitas
of the impact of our finances in our lives
is so important. And so when you see people who are entrepreneurs
(25:42):
coming to you, who have worked so hard and risked so much
and have a little bit of money that you might go, it's a small piece
of business or it's not a big book or whatever you might say, I'm not
sure if I can help them. I would tell you to help them and help
them by listening to them. And when you listen to them, you will actually learn
something about what actually keeps them up at night, what actually drives them,
(26:04):
what actually they want to have to build something meaningful
in their lives with. You know, we all take risk in life, but an
entrepreneur takes a different type of risk. They don't get paid for many years.
Generally they've worked for 10 years sometimes before they start to even, you know,
really pay themselves. They, they finally have an event where they sell something
and they generally are lost, like, what do I do next? Because they've defined themselves
(26:25):
through their business. There's so many things that are going those people's minds.
So I think on the show I'm looking for somebody who's
genuine, somebody who's honest and somebody who believes in a win win. You
guys should make money as a result of what you're doing for your clients and
they should be rewarded as well in terms of, you know, some sort of benefit.
And you don't want to just get a deal. You want people that you have
(26:47):
relationship with and that means really caring and that means
taking time. And my final question, because you're very
nonpartisan, but when Canada called you up,
you were part of the rally. And I think you're spending every day
telling Canadians what your dad taught you, having
gratitude that we're part of this great country. Is politics in the future
(27:09):
for you or is like, where are you going to take this? Because we're in
a world now where if I love this person, I must dislike that
person. I mean, social media has herded us into these castles with like minded people,
like minded content and we validate ourselves by liking us and not
liking them. And you're finding something that's so important again, which
is the middle ground where consensus and collaboration and
(27:30):
creation happens. Versus at the edges where a
lot of anger and frustration, inertia happens. We are a good example
of that, Tony. We sit on opposite sides of the fence in terms of who
we think is the right leader for the future. You voice your opinion, I
voice my opinion. But yet we have respectful discussion about it.
I have no problem with people disagreeing. I think civil discourse
(27:53):
is all about being able to disagree. But, you know,
find what it is that we have in common. And what we have in common
is we all want a strong, safe, you know,
prosperous future for our country. We can pull apart
policies and platforms, we can look at all those things, but at the end of
the day, we are going to choose whoever it is we believe is the right
(28:13):
person. And so for you and I, like, I've always
respected your perspective because you don't come at it angrily,
you come at it it clearly with clarity and you're clear headed about what it
is you believe. And I try to do the same thing. And I think the
middle is something that is getting hollowed out in Canada.
I think it's very important that we try to think about what really matters
(28:34):
and not get hung up on single issue voting. Single issue voting
is very dangerous. And think about instead what we want for our nation,
for the future. Nobody's perfect, no party's perfect. And
right now we're getting torn apart for, I think, all of the wrong
reasons. And a lot of it is bots, A lot of it is
trolls. A lot of it is. I'm seeing an increase on my
(28:56):
platforms. I'm seeing an increased number of really
negative people like I've never seen before ever. Like
it's, it's crazy and, and you have to shut it out
and listen. If you decide to start a party with the middle ground. I'm giving
up my podcast. I will put up lawn signs for you. Well, maybe you
could be my running mate today. I'll be your running machine. Anyway, I always end
(29:18):
my podcast with my three takeaways. I always want the
listener to walk away because what mattered to me, I hope might matter to you
as well. And the first one is this sense of
hand up versus handout. It's very easy for you to even be.
We're in the business of handing out money. But I think when you turn that
from a transaction to something transformative, we're there to give somebody a hand
(29:41):
up so something magical happens. And I want to build on that with
my second takeaway. This sense of curiosity which has
always driven you. And I think the thing I admire the most in people
is they're curious, they're not just one dimensional. I'm really
interested in Arlene's point of view and why she's made a decision
because it might shape my point of view and I think curiosity and open minded.
(30:04):
And I can tell you that social media is working every day to close our
minds and to put blinders on us because the longer they have
you feeling negative and anxious, the more they monetize. This is why they're getting
sued all over the world. This is the algorithms to keep us
hooked. Because humans are wired for negativity. When we have that
ability to foster curiosity and open mindedness and really care
(30:25):
about what the other person's point of view, I think is a fantastic lesson in
life. And I think the third lesson that I've always taken because I've
admired Arlene initially because we competed against each other, but
all through my life, with such gratitude and empathy,
willing to put your hand up and say, if I'm needed,
I'll get involved. And it doesn't have to involve a
(30:47):
paycheck. So for all of that and more, I think this wonderful
iconic Canadian deserves an extraordinary round of applause.
Once again, a special thanks to RBC for supporting Chatter that matters.
It's Tony Chapman. Thanks for listening and let's chat soon.
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