Douglas magazine June/July 2016 by Page One Publishing

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Synergy’s jill Doucette on the green economy 10 YE D

Jun/Jul 2016

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Issues and innovations shaping our Island

Makers & Shakers Move over craft brewers, hello spirit distillers

How corporate intimacy affects company culture PITCH PERFECT Get inside the minds of investors

Willing to Fail: Local entrepreneurs talk business beyond failure

Travel like a pro with the latest Gear, tools and apps VIATEC’s Dan Gunn was on the first Douglas cover in 2006, and 10 years later, Dan is still cover material.

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Jun/Jul 2016

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Contents

Running water and flush toilets were added to the tent city in May, earning praise from advocates and concern from critics that the camp will be permanent.

Features

departments

32 A Decade of Douglas

6 FROM THE EDITOR

Then. Now. Next. Issues and innovation shaping business on the island.

40 Makers and Shakers

Move over craft brewing, the Island is entering the age of artisan spirits. BY CINDA CHAVICH

46 WTF: Willing to Fail

11 IN THE KNOW

The royal treatment at The Empress, how Victoria got cool, the Prince of Whales launches a new vessel and local businesses feel the impact of tent city

17 PEOPLE IN BUSINESS

Diehard entrepreneurs donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t throw in the towel when the going gets tough. These business owners share their lessons from the ventures that failed.

The who, what and where of the business scene

BY SHANNON MONEO

18 TAKE THREE Travel like a pro

4 Douglas

22 IN CONVERSATION

Jill Doucette of Synergy Enterprises and her mission to turn the Island into the greeneconomy hub

INTEL

[Business Intelligence]

54 Money

BY DAVID LENNAM

Should climate change affect your investment strategy? By STEVE BOKoR

26 THE BIG IDEA

56 Sales and

Why Jordan Bower believes your company needs to get intimate to succeed BY ATHENA MCKENZIE

62 LAST PAGE

Marketing

Marketing in an emoji-driven culture BY MIKE WICKS

58 Entrepreneur

Growing entrepreneurs

How to get inside the minds of investors

BY ANNEKE FEUERMANN

BY PETER ELKINS

“With the multidisciplinary nature of our team, I provide sound, practical, and effective solutions to my clients’ environmental needs.” Ashley Adamache, B.Sc., GIT Environmental Scientist, Victoria Office

2015 Lease Renewal Due Diligence Assessments – Vancouver Island Facilities Schnitzer Steel Certificate of Compliance Application The Azzurro Greater Victoria Rental Development Society

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Jeffrey Bosdet/Douglas Magazine

From the Editor

It’s about time, wouldn’t you say?

This issue of Douglas really is about time — 10 years of it, all the way back to 2006 when the first issue of the magazine launched on the local scene. Back then, I was the co-owner of a creative agency, I liked my Blackberry and I loved being an entrepreneur, but I loathed Victoria’s stuffy blue-suit business culture where entry was often based on how much you golfed and how you voted (or said you did anyway). For business inspiration, I read Fast Company and Wired and hung out with other young entrepreneurs who were also tired of the old Victoria and having Vancouverites or Torontonians tell us how it should be done. So the launch of Douglas was exciting, not only because it was a shiny new business magazine — it was our shiny new business magazine. Douglas helped to awaken the selfesteem of our local business culture, something we badly needed. It told the stories of who we are and what we could accomplish. Notably, Douglas’ launch converged with the rise of the tech sector (which is why VIATEC’s Dan Gunn was featured on the first Douglas cover). Old business conventions were being shown the door. We all became a little less reverent about “the way business is done.” We began to make new rules or to throw out some rules altogether. It’s almost hard for me to believe that 10 years ago I was often the only woman in a senior role at corporate board meetings. It’s also hard now to believe my business partner and I had to have our husbands co-sign for our business loan. Sheryl Sandberg had not yet written Lean In, but I was leaning in anyway, and so were many women in business, including Lise Gyorkos and Georgina Camilleri, publishers of Douglas. Little did I know back then that I would one day work for these two gutsy, entrepreneurial women — who made it exciting for me to go from entrepreneur to intrapreneur. I follow in the footsteps of previous Douglas editors Carolyn Camilleri, Norman Gidney and Brian Hartz, each of whom has put his or her own unique stamp on this magazine. This goes for the entire Douglas team who gives it their very best, issue after issue. Douglas is a culture driven by ideas and a connection to our readership, not by seniority or job description. That’s the beauty of being an independently owned magazine. Because we don’t report to corporate boards or shareholders, we have the advantage of working in a flat, open organization where ideas fly fast and furious — and we’re fuelled by the same thing that fuels our readers: the pure drive of entrepreneurship. In that entrepreneurial spirit, we’re excited about the future of business on the Island and to be part of a community that is embracing our Island brand of business, finding out what we’re really capable of — and going for it in a big way. It’s definitely our time.

We all became a little less reverent about “the way business is done.” We began to make new rules or to throw out some rules altogether.

— Kerry Slavens kslavens@pageonepublishing.ca

6 Douglas

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Positive Kerb/Curve Inside When all of these safety features are not enough, and a driver is pushed too far out of a corner, modern paved runoff areas will allow the driver to correct and return to the track. Only in the most extreme cases will a purposely designed gravel bed perform to slow the vehicle before it would be stopped by the Tilke patented 6 pack tire barriers and guard rails. As an aside, we will assemble over 20,000 tires into our tire barriers using over 120,000 high strength nuts, washers, and bolts. While members or corporate clients drive, they can always be certain there is a team of marshals and instructors watching over them, supported with the most sophisticated track safety features and equipment available today. A network of track cameras will be combined with digital safety flags. This will allow the track marshals to react to any incident and to quickly advise and alert following drivers of the possible danger ahead. One of our values will be to always provide every member with the most fun and excitement combined with the least amount of risk. For more information visit: www.islandmotorsportcircuit.com P: 778.406.1380 ext. 456

www.douglasmagazine.com Volume 10 Number 4

We believe the ultimate measure of our performance is our client's success. It has guided our approach for over 30 years.

Publishers Lise Gyorkos, Georgina Camilleri

Editor-in-chief Kerry Slavens

Creative & Technical Manager Jeffrey Bosdet

Production Manager Jennifer Kühtz

Editorial Designer Jo-Ann Loro

Associate Editor Athena McKenzie

Editorial Assistant Anneke Feuermann

contributing Designer Janice Hildybrant

Contributing Writers Steve Bokor, Cinda Chavich, Peter Elkins, Carolyn Heiman, David Lennam, Shannon Moneo, Mike Wicks

PROOFREADER Vivian Sinclair

Contributing Photographers Jeffrey Bosdet, Simon DesRochers, Jo-Ann Loro

Contributing Agencies Thinkstock pp. 36-37, 43

Advertising Representatives Vicki Clark, Lory Couroux, Cynthia Hanischuk

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Advisors you Trust. Advice that Works.

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Advertising Inquiries sales@douglasmagazine.com Online www.douglasmagazine.com Facebook DouglasMagazineVictoria Twitter twitter.com/Douglasmagazine Cover Dan Gunn, executive director of VIATEC. Photo by Jeffrey Bosdet. Rebecca Swivel Chair in organic wool, courtesy of PARC Modern Interiors. Published by Page one Publishing 580 Ardersier Road, Victoria, BC V8Z 1C7 T 250-595-7243 E info@pageonepublishing.ca www.pageonepublishing.ca

Printed in Canada, by Transcontinental Printing Ideas and opinions expressed within this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of Page One Publishing Inc. or its affiliates; no official endorsement should be inferred. The publisher does not assume any responsibility for the contents of any advertisement and any and all representations or warranties made in such advertising are those of the advertiser and not the publisher. No part of this magazine may be reproduced, in all or part, in any form — printed or electronic — without the express written permission of the publisher. The publisher cannot be held responsible for unsolicited manuscripts and photographs. Canadian Publications Mail Product Sales Agreement #41295544 Undeliverable mail should be directed to Page One Publishing Inc. 580 Ardersier Road, Victoria, BC V8Z 1C7

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10 Douglas

Inn o v a t i o n | D e s i g n | B u s i n e s s | S t y l e | P e o p l e 

“It’s not a renovation, It’s a transformation … The Fairmont Empress will come on to the world stage in May of 2017.”

Royal Treatment T

o appreciate the vision behind the ongoing transformation of the Fairmont Empress, one only need look to the branding of its new spaces. The Q Restaurant and Q Bar will open this June as part of phase one of the $30-million+ renovation — that’s “Q” for queen, by the way. “The whole focus for us is putting a modern twist on royalty,” says general manager Indu Brar, who joined the Fairmont Empress this

April. “It’s targeted to the younger royals, but there’s a nod to Queen Victoria, who will be showcased in the space. It’s a restoration back to 100 years ago when the hotel opened, which was an era of glamour. The vision is about honouring the past and being really focused on creating our future.” Brar’s impressive resumé includes key roles at other iconic Fairmont properties, such as her

— Indu Brar, general manager, Fairmont Empress

time as hotel manager at The Plaza in New York and as general manager at the Battery Wharf in Boston. Most recently, she was the general manager at the Fairmont Waterfront in Vancouver. Along with 235 refurbished rooms and the new Q Restaurant and Q Bar, a Lobby Lounge will be unveiled this June. During the day it will be home to the new tea service; in the evening it will transform into a glam

cocktail lounge. The Bengal Lounge will be converted into a private event space, but will maintain its famous character. The second phase of the renovation begins this October and will see upgrades to the lobby, pool, spa and remaining rooms. The big reveal is in the spring of 2017. “We are just half way done,” Brar says of the new spaces. “This is just a peek of what’s to come.”

Jeffrey bosdet/Douglas Magazine

[In the Know ]

Business in Action

Victoria Got Cool

Lugaro and Rolex are launching a new luxury Rolex space at 1102 Government Street in Victoria in midJuly. The launch marks an expansion of Lugaro’s relationship with the Swiss timepiece maker, which dates back to 2009.

In a potential boon for local tourism, global tastemaker Vogue recently deemed Victoria the “perfect spot for a cool Northwest getaway.” As the article points out, the city has traditionally been left out of regional “cool talks” that focused on Seattle and Portland. But that’s changing. An article in New York magazine talks about our “coastal cool” and a Toronto Star article observes that “somewhere along the way, Victoria got cool.”

Cascadia Liquor Stores has opened its sixth Island location. The new View Royal Cascadia is across from Victoria General Hospital in Eagle Creek Village alongside Quality Foods, Starbucks, Tim Hortons, Forbes Pharmacy and a satellite YMCA-YWCA.

Victoria-based Redbrick will launch the newest version of its desktop software analytics technology, DeskMetrics, on June 8 in Tel Aviv, where it does the majority of its international business. Realstar Hospitality has announced the opening of the Days Inn – Victoria Uptown, a rebranding and conversion of the Travelodge property at 229 Gorge Road East. The revamped property features 73 guestrooms, a restaurant, a sports lounge, and meeting and events space. The hotel continues to be owned by Mayfair Hotels & Resorts. St. Jean’s Cannery and smokehouse in Nanaimo has sold a majority share in its business to NCN Cannery LP, owned by a group from the Nuu-Chah-Nulth First Nation. It’s the first time in 55 years the cannery has been owned by someone from outside the St. Jean family. GM Steve Hughes will replace Gerard St.Jean as president.

12 Douglas

— Travel & Leisure magazine in 2015, Tourism Victoria’s Facebook page reached an audience of

7,973,986 while its Instagram saw

209%

Jo-Ann Loro/Douglas Magazine

Clipper will launch its new downtown-to-downtown passenger ferry service between Victoria and Vancouver next spring rather than this summer. “Getting this right for our customers and our tourism partners is of critical importance,” says CEO Merideth Tall. “Expansion at this time will not come at the expense of excellence.” Riverside Marine BC also plans to launch its passenger ferry service in 2017. Its vessel, the Famille Dufour II, is in Victoria now for a refit.

#19

World’s 30 Friendliest Cities

growth

Editorial placements in travel and lifestyle media increased from 311 in 2014 to 350 in 2015.

he media’s discovery that Victoria is actually cool wasn’t just serendipity. According to Tourism Victoria president and CEO Paul Nursey, the organization has four staff dedicated to content, travel media and lifestyle marketing — and he thinks they’ve been hitting it out of the ball park. “The Vogue article was one of the over 300 pieces of coverage we got in the past year, around the world, in travel and lifestyle media,” he says. “That article specifically came to pass with our team’s work with the Magnolia Hotel and their high-powered PR team. We invited five really highend lifestyle-media journalists, and we put together an amazing program to show Greater Victoria in a different way.” Bill Lewis, general manager of the Magnolia Hotel, points to all that’s

12,788

“... where Old World businesses coexist alongside hip new shops and restaurants ...” New York Times

“Whether your idea of fun is cavorting outdoors or cocooning inside, the gorgeous B.C. city has you covered.” WestJet Magazine

“Victoria has a collegetown vibe ... a bevy of coffeehouses and indie shops that outnumber the Starbucks outlets and retail chains.” Washington Post

happening in tech in the city, as well as the food, wine and micro-brew scenes, as contributing factors to the city’s cool cred. “To have something as high-profile as Vogue take that stance puts a halo on the market here,” he says. “We’ve had a lot of great pieces over the years, but we’ve never seen referral click-throughs from Google analytics like the Vogue story. There were hundreds within the first 10 days, where a good media article usually gets a few dozen.” It’s a good sign for the upcoming summer season, which looks to see last year’s significant growth in visitor rates. Nursey, who started at Tourism Victoria in January of 2014, believes the industry, and Tourism Victoria itself, has become “high-octane.” “It was kind of a country club,” he says of the changes that have taken place over his two years at Tourism Victoria. “Now it’s all about results.”

Seattle travellers who booked a trip to Victoria as a result of the spring’s Victoria Beyond Words campaign, with an economic impact of $5.9 million. The increase in visits represents a 78:1 ROI (the industry norm ranges from 12:1 to 20:1).

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Douglas 13

Prince of whales

to launch new Adventure Vessel

luxurious new purposebuilt whale-watching vessel will have its maiden voyage in June when Prince of Whales, a Victoriabased whale-watching operation, launches the Salish Sea Dream. The 24-metre vessel, designed locally by Gregory C. Marshall Naval Architects and built by Armstrong Marine of Port Angeles, will carry up to 94

passengers and their luggage. Interior and exterior seating will allow Prince of Whales, which already has 12 vessels and 75 peak-season staff, including four certified naturalists, to extend its operations into the shoulder seasons, from May through October. The new tours, originating from both Victoria and Vancouver, include an Ultimate Day Tour, a Butchart-Gardens-to-

“

Douglas Reads

as an adventure boat, the vessel is meant for people who want to go well off the beaten path.

Vancouver tour and more. One of the tours takes passengers through Sansum Narrows and Porlier Pass, areas previously only accessible by private boat. “As an adventure boat, the vessel is meant for people who want to go well off the beaten path,” says Alan McGillivray, who founded Prince of Whales in 1995. “It’s for those who want to be up and about and looking at things from the decks, having an adventure and seeing wildlife.” The new vessel, says McGillivray, reflects a growing customer base eager to learn about the oceans and state of the earth. “Many of our customers’ only concept of the ocean,” he adds, “is a big blue open space.” And that’s a perspective he’s passionate about changing.

Written in the business-fable style of Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Customer Dreams by Victoria entrepreneur Alex Glassey is essential reading on how small businesses can embrace the aspirations of customers. Glassey, founder of StratPad business planning software, walks business owners through the process of getting out of the “transaction box,” which, he says, “squeezes cash, limits creativity and increases conflict” with customers, competitors and ourselves. In Customer Dreams, you’ll meet Sam Brooks, an entrepreneur striving to revive her lagging flower business. Her journey back to profitability is a lesson every business owner will want to learn. Customer Dreams is available as a hardcover or ebook at alexglassey.com.

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Recruiting the Competition The road to continuing growth for two successful Island HR consulting companies means joining forces. According to Christine Willow, a partner at Chemistry Consulting Group, the recent partnership between Chemistry and TallSky Consulting Group will bring a unique depth of knowledge and a comprehensive list of services to their clients, including executive search, staff recruitment and project HR, as well as outsourced HR and outplacement services. “We have this wonderful resource within this larger team to be able to satisfy clients without

2.6% The amount minimum wage will increase in B.C. in Sept 2016. Another 40-cent increase takes place in Sept 2017.

1.5% Percentage B.C.’s tax rate

them having to look for another consultant,” says Eileen Harper, principal and founder of TallSky. “Separately we can be very competitive in nature, but now we can suddenly turn around and go into the next office to find a resource, talk to people and work together. That’s a rare opportunity and it’s going to benefit our clients.” The partnership comes in a milestone year for Chemistry, which is celebrating 10 years in business. Founded in 2006 by Willow and business partner Frank Bourree, it is considered a leader in business, HR consulting, conference management and international recruitment.

“This is not just about the three [partners] working together. It’s about the two teams coming together. Clients can come to us and find just what they are looking for.” Christine Willow, Chemistry Consulting Group

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2016 VIATEC Awards The VIATEC awards celebrate the achievements of companies and people responsible for the growth and vibrancy of Greater Victoria’s tech industry. June 24, 4:30 pm-9 pm | Victoria Conference Centre | viatec.ca

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Douglas 15

Jo-Ann Loro/Douglas Magazine

Businesses Feel the Impact of Tent City But Some Say They Fear Speaking Out

By Carolyn Heiman

With the summer season here, emotions are heating up over the tent city that has risen up on a small corner of a city block, on provincial land adjacent to the Victoria Law Courts. Emotions span the spectrum: Despair. Curiosity. Pity. Frustration. Disgust. Sympathy. Mad as hell. But one sector that has been notably quiet on the issue of what to do about the tent city is local businesses.

ver the months, as the camp has grown, the business sector has been largely absent in public debate. The reason, says Bruce Carter, outgoing CEO of the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce, is “the more you talk about it, the worse it is for business.” As well, some individual business owners fear reprisals from tent city residents or poverty advocates if they speak out, Carter adds, pointing to the incident in April where a 16-yearold organized a protest on the lawns of the Legislature only to be confronted and drowned out by tent city supporters. “Everyone is allowed to have an opinion and perspective. When advocates for something take the position of trying to crush someone else’s opinion, we have lost our way as a community and society. It is a respected dialogue around options that leads to good solutions.” But after months of the Chamber quietly working behind the scenes “putting pressure on all the relevant players,” Carter is speaking out on behalf of business because his office has been inundated by its members with demands to talk about it. “Businesses aren’t feeling supported by anyone. By council. The province. Or the courts. They are feeling left to languish and told not to say anything, told to increase sales but feel like 16 Douglas

they have no input and no rights. If you talk to residents in the area, they would feel that way too … We don’t feel respected.” Carter says the impact of the tent city on downtown businesses is very real, driven by the increased concentration of homeless people in one pocket. “It has increased the amount of vagrancy, panhandling and property damage in the area and downtown.” Meanwhile, Paul Nursey, CEO of Tourism Victoria, recently told a Victoria City Council meeting that security costs and incidents related to the tent city have created issues for downtown hotels — particularly small boutique hotels and B&Bs. He cited a survey done by the Hotel Association of Greater Victoria that showed security costs and incidents related to the tent city have jumped by 500 per cent. The businesses reported an increase in activity, including “scenes” and confrontations, was creating difficulties for their customers. Nursey told council he was “very reluctantly” commenting on the negative impact the camp is having on businesses yet commended the City for its “hard work and compassion on this complex issue.” Asked later if he felt the City and mayor were supporting business, Nursey said in a statement:

Since last year, calls to Victoria police regarding the three-block radius around the tent city increased 46 per cent. In contrast, overall city calls were up 3.6 per cent.

“We have full confidence in the Mayor of Victoria and know she is working with the provincial government to bring order to the site and ensure surrounding neighbourhoods are safe.” As for damage to Victoria’s reputation, Nursey wrote, “As an organization that cares deeply about our city and its reputation around the world, we don’t want to ignore the situation, but we also don’t want to exaggerate it. “The encampment is limited to one city-block on provincial land around the courthouse and does not broadly affect downtown, the Inner Harbour or areas frequented by tourists. We are confident visitors will have an excellent and safe experience in Greater Victoria.” Meanwhile, Mayor Lisa Helps takes issue with any suggestion the City isn’t supporting businesses, pointing out that she sent a texted meeting invite to two downtown merchants as they were presenting their concerns at a recent council meeting. “I shouldn’t likely be texting during the meeting,” says Helps, adding she couldn’t stop herself from “immediately leaping to action.” As well, the City has requested that Victoria police deliver crime prevention information to Fort Street merchants, and on May 20, Victoria council voted to increase the police budget by $113,000 to allocate more police presence for the tent city. Helps says the City continues to work with the Province to get the encampment closed. The mayor does agree that “amplifying” the issue will damage Victoria’s reputation without producing anything constructive. “This is my biggest concern and my biggest frustration. Yes there are challenges, but there are challenges in every city across the country” she says, citing diminished spending on affordable housing by the federal government since 1989.

Inn o v a t i o n | D e s i g n | B u s i n e s s | S t y l e | P e o p l e

c-suite news

Awards Distinguished Entrepreneur

Catherine Holt has been hired as the new CEO of the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce. Holt, a small business owner and management consultant with Sage Group for 17 years, says she plans to focus on “building membership, making the Chamber attractive to its members and making sure they get value.” She succeeds Bruce Carter who ends his 12-year CEO role with the Chamber in June.

Linda Hasenfratz, CEO of the Guelph-based global manufacturing company Linamar Corporation, is the Peter B. Gustavson School of Business 2016 Distinguished Entrepreneur of the Year (DEYA). Hasenfratz joined her father’s company in 1990, working her way from the ground floor to CEO. She has grown the company from an $800 million enterprise to a company worth more than $5.2 billion. She receives her award at the September 12 DEYA gala.

Turn a trusted relationship into intelligent investments.

Jim Hayhurst has received the Colin Lennox Award for Technology Champion leading up to the 2016 VIATeC Technology Awards. The award will be presented on June 24 at the awards ceremony at Victoria Conference Centre. Hayhurst, a well-known startup founder, investor and advisor, is CEO of Pretio Interactive, a Victoria-based mobile advertising company that engages with consumers via real-world rewards.

Community Service University of Victoria President and Vice-Chancellor Jamie Cassels has received the Chair’s Award of Distinction from the United Way of Greater Victoria. Professor Cassels, QC, joined UVic’s Faculty of Law as a professor in 1981 and became dean of the law school. He’s been active in many community organizations including the United Way. Since becoming UVic’s president in 2013, Cassels has continued the legacy of supporting the United Way campaign on campus. Since 1994, UVic has raised almost $4.8 million for the United Way.

Emilie de Rosenroll is the new executive director of The South Island Prosperity Project (SIPP), an economic development organization built on a framework of regional collaboration. Victoria-born de Rosenroll has been a lead consultant to the Nova Scotia government, implementing its new regional economic development model. In 2013, she was recognized as one of Nova Scotia’s top 25 leaders under age 35. Mike williams is the new president of Ring Partner, the Victoria-based pay-per-call exchange. For three years, Mike has served in a variety of roles at RingPartner, most recently as VP of Marketing & Operations. He will work with Todd Dunlop who continues as RingPartner’s CEO.

Tourism Leadership Svein Haugen, now retired as director of properties and land management with the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, is the recipient of Tourism Victoria’s 33rd annual Miracle Award. The award recognizes outstanding leadership in the development of the tourism industry in Greater Victoria. Al Clark, founder of Northwest Deuce Days, is the recipient of Tourism Victoria’s 2016 Life Member Award, which recognizes an individual’s exceptional contributions to Tourism Victoria, the tourism industry and the community.

On the move Thom Klos has joined Hemlock Printers as account manager for Vancouver Island. Klos was previously senior marketing advisor with Business Examiner Victoria.

Jodi McKeown has joined Prosperity Business Centre, a West Shore office and board room rental centre created using smart growth and green building design. Previously with Coast Capital Savings Credit Union, she brings 26 years of experience in client service to Prosperity.

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“A lot of people feel the most important and academic talent are achieving r. Valerie Irvine, co-director of the aspect of conferences is the people part, the excellence across many dynamic industries. Technology Integration and Evaluation networking part. It’s not what goes on in the If you’re worried about what’s involved (TIE) Research Lab, in the University of sessions: it’s what goes on between and after in putting together a conference, don’t be. Victoria’s Faculty of Education, knows how the sessions.” You’ll have support every step of the way. it feels to be like Gwen. She was local chair In Victoria, networking happens Our local host program is coordinated by of the 2013 ED-MEDIA World Conference naturally. The small-city Business Events Victoria, on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia, size stimulates a deeper a collaboration of Tourism and Telecommunications and recommended Victoria is an dimension of networking. Victoria and the Victoria Victoria and the Victoria Conference Centre. incubator for an People connect here in Conference Centre. The It was a huge success: almost 1,000 people entrepreneurial ways bigger cities can’t very best conference from around the world attended. culture of innovators, professionals in the city accommodate. “The organization was thrilled,” says Dr. “It definitely was a Irvine, despite initial worries about the extra doers and dreamers. will be available to you. great strength that you’re We’ll even help with little trip between Vancouver and Victoria not stuck in some dead downtown area your promotional material and create airports. “It actually turned into a non-issue. where you don’t feel safe walking,” says post-conference vacation ideas to boost Not a single person had that complaint and, Dr. Irvine. “People felt safe in Victoria and attendance to record levels. in fact, they were quite happy to have gotten there were things to do as “Everything is sort of taken care of. out of the rain of Vancouver.” you broke out to informal They’ve got the planning and execution staff. “People really enjoyed Victoria’s smallnetworking groups.” They’re polished and they know how to Victoria,” she says. city size naturally take care of conferencing business,” says Dr. Something they really stimulates a Irvine about the Victoria Conference Centre. liked was how much there is Victoria is a mixology There’s yet another reason to feel good to see and do. deeper dimension of business and leisure about bringing your meeting to Victoria. “The location of the There are more reasons of networking. Conferences are a tremendous boost to our conference centre being to host conferences in local economy. From the businesses and right downtown with the gorgeous views and Victoria. People who attend conferences organizations providing conference support the ability to explore and have things to do here come back, some on holidays and to the people working for them, when you within walking distance was a very nice plus some to stay because, as you well know, host an event here, the whole city thanks you. for people,” says Dr. Irvine. Victoria supports a lifestyle that’s the And because we recognize the importance Attendees loved the Inner Harbour and perfect balance of leisure and forward of your support, we’ll give you one per cent walking in nearby parks and many asked thinking. It’s an incubator for an of the hotel guest room revenue.* about getting out on the water. And then entrepreneurial culture of innovators, Bring your next conference to Victoria there’s the restaurant and bar scene. doers, and dreamers, where some of and be a leader — just like Dr. Irvine. “That was another plus,” says Dr. Irvine. world’s most advanced research facilities

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In conversation with jill doucette ■ BY David Lennam ■ photo by jeffrey bosdet

The [Renewable] enErgy of Jill Doucette Jill Doucette is determined to turn Vancouver Island into a green-economy hub known worldwide for its sustainable approach — and she talks a compelling language that business people understand and are buying into in increasing numbers.

wo years before she left the University of Victoria with an undergrad degree in biology, Jill Doucette had already launched her own business in sustainability consultancy, co-chaired the World Student Environmental Summit, worked with a PhD team to draft academic papers concerning the clean-technology sectors in Canada and Brazil, started a non-profit called Common Energy, run her own painting and stucco company and placed first in the national Nicol entrepreneurship competition. Since then she’s grown her company, Synergy Enterprises, into a promising Victoria firm with six employees, an increasingly global portfolio of clients in tech, property development, tourism, retail and hospitality, a satellite office in Vancouver and a partner in Mexico City. She also founded the Synergy Sustainability Institute, offering a Green Business Certification Program, has written three how-to books on sustainability and has seen business triple in the past year. And she’s yet to turn 30. “I want to be in the world of harnessing business to create positive change,” says Doucette. “So that’s really where Synergy came from, standing between two disciplines and seeing that these two weren’t talking to each other, it seems. It was, literally, a synergy

22 Douglas

between business and the environment.” Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps calls Doucette a business leader with the sort of big-picture thinking to grow our economy. Ana María Peredo, UVic professor in Sustainable Entrepreneurship & International Business, says Doucette is a natural leader. “Since I first saw [Jill], she struck me as somebody who pursues her vision with a deep enthusiasm that is highly contagious.” Charismatic but humble. Passionate but focused. Someone who brings people together. A doer. They’re all descriptions you hear when Doucette’s name comes up. And it comes up a lot these days as the 29-year-old works to make business into champions for the environment. Why have you defended the business community against criticism — much of it from environmentalists — that says business is the problem?

At school, I really noticed that business was pitted as the enemy of environmentalism and of nature. I saw this great disconnect. But business is really where we have the greatest ability to have a positive impact and negate climate change. Given the gulf between the two camps, how do we do that?

We need to harness business and create solutions. I’m a big believer in the triple-helix

model of academia, business and government working together to create solutions. On Vancouver Island we have those three. One thing missing is that we have so many innovative small and medium-sized businesses here that hide under the radar. We make heart valves in Saanich. We manufacture planes for Malaysia. We make world-class yachts. If we pull that together and concentrate on creating solutions, products and services that can be sold to the rest of the world, we’ll be one of the strongest economies in Canada. What has been the driver for businesses to become sustainable?

We surveyed all our clients and asked why they’re really doing this. We discovered there are four main drivers. First is ethics at the ownership level. [Owners] feel it’s the right thing to do. Second is marketing, being relevant to the new consumer. In order to be competitive, this is something they had to get underway. Third was staff retention and engagement, which was also surprising. Attracting top talent and getting another level of engagement from employees. It’s a morale booster to work somewhere they can be really proud of how it’s operating. Fourth was cost savings and I was surprised this one was at the bottom. It’s number one as a barrier in the way of sustainability. The program will only sustain

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I want to be in the world of harnessing business to create positive change.â&#x20AC;?

Jill Doucette wears a Silver Bomber Jacket with gold details by d.Brand ($320), High-Waist Barbara Super Skinny Jean in black by Hudson ($190), a Sequence Tank by Nu ($178), and A Wren and Glory Moonstone Cuff ($96), all from Frances Grey. Makeup by Melodie Reynolds, Elate Clean Cosmetics.

Douglas 23

if there’s cost savings involved and it doesn’t compromise the bottom line ... We started Synergy in a recession so we had to be cost conscious. The Vancouver Island Green Certification Program (VIGBC) has 85 local businesses involved in an annual certification process where companies earn the right to display decals based on their sustainability rating. How does it work?

Every two years the criteria are revised to become more challenging, adding more progressive environmental actions. We just partnered with the Surfrider Foundation to introduce an additional decal for “Surfrider Approved” businesses that take action to reduce plastics. In fall 2016, a new criterion for spa and salon businesses will be released. Businesses can review the checklist for their sector online and establish their preliminary score. They then contact VIGBC and arrange a site visit. A local verifier reviews the business operations and makes recommendations for improving their score. The business then has two weeks to make additional changes, and they receive their final score. VIGBC is an annual certification process, and many businesses increase their score each year. Where do we stand post-Harper in trying to meet the targets that came out of the Paris climate talks (COP 21) last December?

The [new] prime minister is already trying to bring those commitments down to a regional level by getting provincial buy-in and laying the groundwork for provincial action. That’s the next big challenge, to create continuity between the layers of government and create action. Not to be pessimistic, but that can take a long time. Every biz will have to reduce its carbon footprint in order to hit the targets that came out of COP 21.

sometimes a “prove yourself” aspect of being a young woman in business, but if you hold your own, that’s fine.

a biology student]. And Synergy ended up winning it.

Was sustainability ever part of the dinner table conversation growing up in Grand Forks?

[Hesitantly] I think we’ve played a role. There was already an underlying will. We just helped turn that will into action. The desire to make Victoria a more sustainable city was already there. We helped deliver the metrics and the solutions to make that happen. I’d say we’re a catalyst but wouldn’t say we were the impetus.

No, I wouldn’t say it was. My dad owns a highway-maintenance company. Both my parents are small-town entrepreneurs, very self-sufficient in how they make a living, so it always seemed like why wouldn’t you want to start your own journey? Entrepreneurship was at the dinner table, but it wasn’t called that. It was just work. It’s a Doukhobor town. Everyone is kind of doing it themselves. My mum kept bees and made her own honey. Just where we lived, we were really in nature, but we weren’t environmentalists. So who has inspired you?

Amory Lovins [American physicist, environmental scientist, writer and chair of the Rocky Mountain Institute], who I saw at the Globe Conference in Vancouver. I was in total fan mode. Ray Anderson [known for his advanced and progressive stance on industrial ecology and sustainability], who was inspired by Paul Hawken. He took Hawken’s work and literature and put it into action. Capitalism and the environment, and how the two awkward worlds are mashed together to create solutions. Any locals in that group?

I’ve had the good fortune to have amazing mentors who have spent a lot of time with me: Deirdre Campbell from Tartan Group is so generous with her time, and Mia Maki, a professor at UVic who encouraged me to enter a business-plan competition [while I was

Does your young age work against you?

I think if you feel like you’re too young to be there, then you are. I kind of had an issue with these “women in business” things you always hear about. That’s like saying “a brunette in business.” It’s irrelevant. It shouldn’t be a thing. Neither should age. I do think there’s 24 Douglas

Are we moving fast enough on the Island?

There needs to be more urgency in our city around sustainability. Targets set by government go a long way. Vancouver has set aggressive targets. They’ve committed to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2050. And they’ve asked businesses to make a climate pledge, committing to reducing their carbon footprint and shifting towards sustainable energies. We should make a similar statement here and set goals. We don’t have that now, and I think that’s a weak point. Where do you see us going with all this?

My vision for Vancouver Island is to be a green economy hub that’s known to the world. We have the tech geeks, the entrepreneurial and the maker communities. I see the Island as the next mecca of the green economy to rival Denmark and Germany. We could be branding ourselves as the place to come to get solutions and grow our local economy. But you’ve said you’re not a visionary?

Visionaries inspire me to action. I’m an initiator, maybe. I love that startup mode. I think I’m more a practitioner than a visionary. If there’s visionaries and doers, I’m on the doer side. I’ve heard you take three months off every year. Wow! Is that true?

Is there a movement here amongst younger business people toward sustainability?

Yes, definitely. The universities are really encouraging that. Their role is incredible in instilling that in young people in business. We get a lot of resumés from business grads. It seems young people in business, or young people in the workforce, are thinking about sustainability and creating value in more ways than just money for themselves. That speaks to the local business community looking to hire from that talent pool. How do you become relevant? Put those actions in value into your workplace.

Do you feel pivotal in the greening of Victoria?

Greening Your Business To turn sustainability into doable strategies for businesses, Jill Doucette has partnered with green business experts, including Lee Johnson and JC Scott, to co-author Greening Your Office and Greening Your Hospitality Business (both from SelfCounsel Press).

It’s critical. I think I’d suck at my job if I didn’t. It keeps my head clear to strategize. We encourage that for all our staff. We’re not lazy, though. We work hard while we’re working so we can take big chunks of time off. You have your critics, those who say you’re promoting “weak sustainability” that takes tiny steps.

It’s understandable that some [people] would become impatient with the rate of change, when climate change is so imminent. However, the results speak for themselves. We have worked with businesses that have cut their emissions in half after four to seven years, which is ahead of any government-set targets. Those results are due to many small, incremental changes and some larger ones. Slow, steady change creates big results. We do need to see real reductions in carbon emissions, but for business to be resilient, that change needs to take place systematically and incrementally. ■

Does intimacy belong in your business? Why Jordan Bower believes your company needs to get intimate to succeed

orporate intimacy is a term that comes up frequently in conversation with Jordan Bower. It’s a concept he acknowledges can be confusing: “Some people think it’s making out on the photocopier,” he jokes. At its root is his belief that in today’s tech-heavy world people are desperate for real connection. By enabling intimacy through the power of sharing stories, Bower helps businesses better communicate, whether the end goal is a story to focus and align a team’s work, or a story to draw a brand’s customers into the corporate mission. His sessions encourage businesses to recognize that people process their world through emotions, and to incorporate qualities of human relationships such as trust, honesty and vulnerability in their messaging — theories at the core of his talk at the 2015 Future of Storytelling Summit in New York City. While Bower knows the corporate world is clamouring for coaches, he’s reluctant to use the term to describe his work. He considers himself more a therapist — “not that different from marriage counselling for your business” — who brings a story-building approach to his process. “It’s group therapy or training in corporate intimacy,” Bower says. “It’s all about helping people work through their real issues in a way that they can then turn it into something tangible and tactical. So it’s not just talk therapy; it’s talk therapy that becomes an action plan and an agenda for a group of people.”

making connections In trying to explain the importance of intimacy in the corporate sphere, Bower points to cell phones.

26 Douglas

“Because of these, all of us have become totally accustomed to engaging with the world on our terms, and in a certain sense that is a very immature, self-centred way of engaging with the world,” he says. “And correspondent with that there is this deep sense of loneliness which comes from operating exclusively in this space ... Corporate intimacy is a way of compensating organizationally for that. At a very fundamental level, it’s sitting face to face as opposed to transacting through [devices] ... It’s also understanding that because of these devices and because of the way the marketplace is going, brands and businesses have a much greater need to stand for something. People value their emotional experiences, and they value their brand experiences, so there’s billions upon billions of dollars out there invested into telling stories around authentic experiences.” Bower’s method helps companies tell their brand stories by undergoing a discovery session to uncover those authentic qualities and turning that around to create processes or campaigns that emphasize those intimate human qualities.

The Age of Loneliness Bower’s road to “strategic storyteller” was literally travelled on foot. In 2010, heartbroken from a breakup, he set out to walk from Vancouver to Mexico. Outfitted with a backpack, a tent and a Therm-a-Rest, he spent 316 days on the road, meeting “thousands” of people. “Because I was, and am still, so earnest in every conversation, I wanted to go deep, and I found myself over the course of these thousands of conversations learning how to hear people, not only how to listen but also in terms of

the big idea BY Athena Mckenzie photo by simon Desrochers

People can grow up and find fulfillment in a corporate environment — it doesn’t take quitting your job and moving to Thailand. You can be empowered, find satisfaction and potentially success within that organization if we can have these kinds of conversations where we build a foundation of cooperation, trust and productivity.”

Douglas 27

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the way they present themselves and the way that they carry themselves,” he says. “It turned into what I do. At the beginning of the trip, I was insecure and heartbroken, and by the end of my trip I was looking everybody in the eyes so intensely. And what I heard from people was that they felt lonely and disassociated and were looking for a place to belong.” Drawing on his business degree and his “acute emotional literacy” as a listener and taking what he saw as a fundamental shift in the world — what he calls the “age of loneliness” — Bower set out to help businesses understand this shift and learn how to transform it into something useful and valuable. This led to his process of helping nurture corporate intimacy. He points to a Google workplace study that explored what made a productive, successful team. Over two years the company conducted more than 200 interviews with Google employees and looked at more than 250 attributes of more than 180 active Google teams. They learned that there are five key dynamics that set successful teams apart, but that psychological safety is far and away the most important factor and was in fact the underpinning of the other four, which are dependability; structure and clarity; meaning; and impact. “Psychological safety in my language is akin to intimacy,” Bower says. “When we trust each other, we are way more likely to step across our preexisting boundaries and then start to change; if we’re working with the stuff of change, which of course every business on earth is doing right now, then we need to feel trusting with the people that we’re working with.” Bower believes that when an organization’s people sit together to collaboratively discover and build its story, that story becomes the foundation for its culture, strategy, design and communications. It can also form the relationship between a business and its market.

real-world results His unique story-finding and process design methods have benefitted a range of clients, including Alcazar Capital, The Robert Bateman Centre and Advocis, the Financial Advisors Association of Canada. An example of the Bower method in practice is his recent work with Tourism Ucluelet. The agency was in the process of rebranding its website but was having difficulty finding agreement on a marketing strategy that worked for the people in the community. Residents were worried about attracting the right kind of tourists but they also wanted to maintain their unique identity. Bower was brought in to run a two-day focus group with 27 community members. “Imagine this if you can,” says Brent Hohlweg, president and founder of Steam Train 28 Douglas

Creative, one of Tourism Ucluelet’s partners. “You have a small town, and the people have been here since the late 1800s, so there’s a lot of history in the area, and Jordan has to bring a cohesiveness to our message and bring a story out of a community that has a lot of different stories and a lot of different points of view, as any town will have. He took all these great voices from our community and history, and managed to work us through an entire process where late in day two we were able to understand what we were bringing to the world. “It wasn’t just the Wild Pacific Trail,” he adds, “but the opportunity to escape the bustling city. We’re a stress-free zone. All these people have chosen to be here. Let’s trademark that. We’ve built entire campaigns around that. Our new feature video, our new website — everything is built around the messaging, ‘Choose to Be Here.’ All of that because of Jordan.” The Choose to Be Here campaign will launch this summer. Bower believes the authenticity of the message will resonate with Ucluelet’s potential market. And so far it seems

he’s right. A “StressFree Zone” billboard, which came out of the storytelling seminar, went viral on Facebook in April. “It focused with laser precision on the message we needed to tell to the world,” Hohlweg says. The session in Ucluelet was so successful that the locals are hoping for another community session with Bower to tackle issues facing the district, beyond tourism — something Hohlweg calls “huge for us as a town.” And it lends credence to Bower’s selfidentifying as a marriage counsellor for organizations. “If you want to really work with someone’s inner potential and their fear of expressing that inner potential, then you have to be able to sit with them and work with them, both oneon-one and as a group,” Bower says. “So I definitely think there’s something therapeutic about my process.” ■

When chairs and creativity don’t mix, participants in Bower’s session are encouraged to get comfortable as he guides them through exercises designed to prime creative sensibilities.

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A decade of douglas Douglas magazine hits the double digits this year. That’s right, the Island’s business magazine is 10! The story of Douglas is really the story of our business community, its challenges and growth. “We walk in step with the community,” says co-publisher Lise Gyorkos, “so the magazine not only reflects that, but we also shine a light into the future to inspire the incredible potential of Island entrepreneurs. We’ve all come a long way together.” by Kerry slavens

Ten years ago in Victoria, the Johnson Street Bridge was still an intact landmark, the 20-storey Astoria was the city’s tallest building (and debate raged about city height restrictions), gas prices were about the same as now, and at the tail end of the year, the turbulent Pineapple Express caused power outages, ferry cancellations and flooding. And to really put it into perspective, there was no iPhone in 2006 and the world economy hadn’t yet collapsed and struggled to rebuild. Yes, there were early rumblings of economic trouble ahead, but the weather still looked quite sunny for business. Tourism had just outperformed the B.C. economy for the fourth year in a row, tech was emerging as a major sector, and a heady realestate-development market meant cranes dotted the skyline across the region. That same year, a new glossy business magazine launched onto the local scene. Douglas, the

32 Douglas

brainchild of two local publishing entrepreneurs (see page 39), gained immediate acceptance in a community hungry for stories about the who, what, when, where and why of local business. Today, Douglas is in demand throughout the entire South Island, from Sidney to Nanaimo. Tech has become Greater Victoria’s leading industry, and tourism still rides high, having partially peeled away Victoria’s “more English than the English” veneer to showcase a city focused on its future while still celebrating its past. Can you imagine our Island in another 10 years? Will we be driving over our new Johnson Street Bridge by then? Will there be a bridge to the Mainland? What new sector will emerge to disrupt everything? One thing is certain: Island entrepreneurs will continue to make a significant mark, not just here at home, but beyond our shores to the world at large.

Douglas 33

What Does Our Future Look Like? On our 10th anniversary, Douglas asked business leaders to share their aspirations and predictions for the next decade. Tech Sector Takes Off During the past decade, Victoria’s tech sector has gone from a fresh idea to a successful tech hub. Today, says Dan Gunn, executive director of VIATEC, the sector knows what it is and knows its potential, something reflected in the city as a whole. In the last 10 years, says Gunn, Victoria got comfortable in its skin and with its identity. “I think we’ve learned to say, ‘No this is who we are and we’re legitimate ... I reject what you think about our city because you visited your grandmother here in the 90s.’” “Victoria had patriarchs of our community,” he adds, “and they didn’t comfortably pass the baton to the next generation, so I think

we had a bit of a gap ... We ended up with not a lost generation but a lost group who didn’t know where they fit. Then time passed enough so a bunch of 35 to 40 year olds who didn’t know who the old patriarchs were, and didn’t know to ask permission, just started doing stuff.” The result? A city being reshaped for growing success. Gunn predicts tech sector revenues will reach $6B by 2026, almost doubling. He also predicts those directly employed by the sector will expand from 15,000 to 23,000 in the next decade, an increase of 66.7 per cent. Attracting and keeping talent, he adds, means ensuring Victoria is a vibrant, livable city. And that means dealing with the city’s pressure points: keeping

transportation and housing affordable, ensuring a walkable, safe city with the infrastructure to support healthy growth. “In the next 10 years we need to get this right,” he says. “Look at Austin. It’s a capital city, a university town known for entrepreneurship. They grew so quickly they broke a lot of parts of Austin ... If we don’t get it right, we’re going to be like many of the cities before us that had their opportunity and missed in some key areas.” It’s not about becoming a new version of Silicon Valley, he says. “We’re going to define who we are and promote that authentically, and if we do it

right, then the right people will respond. There’s no point in trying to convince people. One of my core values is: ‘If people don’t want to live on a Pacific island in Canada, they shouldn’t come here. Stay where you are. I loved Victoria 15 years ago, and I can’t believe how much I love Victoria now.”

Changing the Way We Attract Tourists Paul Nursey has clear aspirations for tourism’s future in Greater Victoria, and as CEO of Tourism Victoria, he’s focused on evolving our tourism industry from a commodity to a high-value experience. Nursey says the world of travel is so big, with opportunities so

Douglas Time Machine What Changed in a Decade…

(2006)

AMALGAMATION ANGST

Now  (2016)

34 Douglas

The citizen group Amalgamation Yes keeps the issue at the forefront. 75% of Greater Victoria voters give the nod in a 2014 non-binding referendum to further exploring amalgamation. By 2016, lack of political movement leads to impatience and cynicism. In March, the Province puts out a Request for Proposal for a consultant to gather info from the mayors. And still we wait.

The Canadian Pacific Railway and Rail America give the E&N Railway to the Island Corridor Foundation.

THE RAILWAY THAT NEVER REVIVED Saying it has “lost confidence in the day-to-day operations of the Island Corridor Foundation,” Nanaimo’s Regional District terminates its agreement to give $945K to the foundation for passenger rail. Voices emerge calling for a change in vision, from a railway to a bikeway.

Estimates vary, but there are likely 600 to 700 homeless people in Victoria. No tenting is allowed in parks but it soon will be after Victoria’s parks regulation bylaw is amended in 2008 following a B.C. Supreme Court decision. HOMELESSNESS IN THE HEADLINES

Vancouver Island/Coast incorporations: 3,863 (Capital Region, 2,186; Nanaimo, 778). BUSINESS INCORPORATIONS FOR THE ISLAND

The B.C. Experience opens in Crystal Garden and closes within three months. The search for another anchor tenant begins. Crystal Garden

Vancouver Island/Coast incorporations: 3,526 (Capital Region 1,988; Nanaimo, 747).

victoriabuzz.com

THEN 

With a mission to press forward on amalgamation in Greater Victoria, the “Less Gov” group forms, chaired by former Chamber president Myrna Borleske with a board that includes Payless Gas founder Allen Vandekerkhove and developer Gordon Denford.

A Point in Time survey estimates 1,387 homeless in Victoria. A tent city on the Law Courts property divides the community. Some #yyj residents are “mad as hell.” Meanwhile in Nanaimo, a fledging tent city is bulldozed before it gains ground.

Having taken over Crystal Garden in a land swap with the Province, the City of Victoria conducts a search for anchor tenants before deciding to make the facility an extension of Victoria Conference Centre for trade shows, award shows and more trade shows.

immense, that Victoria must be diligent and deliberate about strategy and market segments. “It’s not just about the number of travellers we attract, but the quality of travellers and how they engage with the community. For us, that means looking to a higher-educated and higher-spending demographic.” As for lingering complaints that Victoria no longer has attractions like the Wax Museum, Nursey is blunt. “That’s a generation-out-of-date concept ... that’s kind of old Victoria negative self-talk — still ruminating that the classic car museum isn’t here. People have to get over that because ... if the customers wanted it, those businesses would be viable.” “Keep in mind,” he says, “that great experiences for travellers are great experiences for locals, whether it’s completion of the David Foster Harbour pathway, better cuisine, better neighbourhood markets, more interesting retail — it all works hand in glove.”

Evolving the Retail Experience When Darlene Holstein looks at the future of retail, she sees a world in which the consumer is in control. “We’re probably undergoing one of the biggest changes we’ve ever seen in terms of the way we consume,” says the general manager of The Bay Centre. For retailers, the pressure is on to meet consumer needs. That means being omni-channel and continually communicating a coordinated brand message. “A more relaxed approach may work for small markets or one-of-a-kind boutiques, but the reality is that retail has to evolve to keep with an increasingly sophisticated 24/7 consumer,” says Holstein. Despite online shopping, Holstein doesn’t see shopping centres or districts going away. Instead, she sees these centres

as hubs where people seek to connect and enjoy tactile experiences. She foresees walking into a shopping centre that, because it knows your data, can instantly tailor your shopping experience. Imagine a store that has a 3D imprint of your body so you don’t have to try on clothes unless you want to. “People don’t think this stuff exists, but it does,” she adds. “It’s just not mainstream yet.” And the level of marketing is only becoming more sophisticated, she adds. “With stores that are vertically integrated, they’ll put stuff on their websites only and track it to see how consumers like it — or they may only put a product in certain stores to see if it sells or not. If it does, they put it in the system and have it made faster.” “It’s all you as a consumer telling retailers what you want,” says Holstein. “That’s the future.”

 Douglas Web Extra Read these Web Extra interviews at douglasmagazine.com

 George Hanson, president of the Vancouver Island Economic Development Alliance, talks about the Island’s changing demographics, the business future of First Nations and shifts in some of the Island’s key industries.  Dr. Kate Moran of Ocean Networks Canada talks about how her organization’s research is informing the way coastal communities handle climate change — and how the business sector can help scientists gather data.

and What Should Have Changed But Didn’t Greater Victoria attracts 186 ship calls in 2006, with about 340,000 passengers. The sharing economy isn’t on anyone’s radar except the most visionary. There is no Über or Airbnb. Sharing Economy No one is sure how many Airbnb units operate locally. Tourism Victoria has heard through operators there were between 5,500 and 7,500 stays transacted in 2014. “All of us understand the sharing economy is here to stay,” says Tourism Victoria CEO Paul Nursey. “However, the original intent of sharing an extra room in a house has morphed into an uncontrolled and unregulated machine ...”

Cruising on in Ogden Point is Canada’s busiest cruise-ship portof-call — 227 ships will call here this season, with about 533,000 passengers. Each cruise ship call brings an average of $40,000 in direct spending to the region, according to Greater Victoria Harbour Authority.

In 2006, it appears a new treatment plant for the region is nearly a done deal. Former Douglas editor Norman Gidney even writes: “Soon we’ll be treating all the sewage in the region, and those superior Seattleites won’t have a pretext for staying away from Victoria.” More crap, different year When Esquimalt refuses to rezone the McLoughlin Point land for a seaside facility, the sh-t hits the fan; we’ve been arguing ever since. Meanwhile, Seattleites still complain, and with more than a $60M spent on the now-defunct Seaterra project (including $500K to buy out the contract of Seaterra’s project boss), the CRD strikes yet another project committee that sounds suspiciously like Seaterra.

About 1,400,000 passengers travel through Victoria International Airport in 2006, an increase of 5.4% over 2005 and setting a new record. airport growth soars

Victoria’s airport draws 1,710,825 passengers in 2015, an increase of 22% over 2006. It is Canada’s 10th busiest airport, and B.C.’s second busiest, in terms of passengers.

In 2006, the average price of a single-family dwelling in Victoria is $521,450. IS THERE A REAL ESTATE BUBBLE By April of 2016, the average price of a singlefamily home in Victoria is $684,000, an increase of 17.7% in one year. Many worry we’re becoming overpriced and overrated. Lower Mainland home seekers begin shifting attention to the Island and foreign-buyer interest heightens.

Bamberton Properties, which purchased the Bamberton site in 2005, plans to build 3,200 homes there. Hampered by the Cowichan Valley Regional District, the company restrategizes to add more light industrial. In 2015, it sells the land to the Malahat First Nation. BAMBERTON IN LIMBO

Steelhead LNG announces plans to install floating liquefaction platforms off the coast of Bamberton in partnership with the Malahat First Nation. The environmental objections begin.

Douglas 35

A Decade of Downtown #YYJ Revival In the past decade, almost

n 2006, Douglas writer David Lennam wrote, “Here we are a year away from Victoria’s 150th birthday and we’re still wondering ... is downtown dying?” new units Despite ongoing concerns about empty storefronts, have been a host of new developments and businesses are reviving added to key areas such as Yates Street, Chinatown and the Old downtown Town area near the no-longer-blue bridge. Victoria. One man who has carried the torch high for downtown throughout the decade is Ken Kelly of the Downtown Victoria Business Association. Kelly retires in June after 12 years as downtown #yyj’s booster. His successor, Kerri Milton, formerly of the Downtown Penticton Organization becomes the new DVBA executive director in July.

3,000

OLD DISTRICT, NEW LIFE Townline’s development of downtown’s Hudson District is heralded as an urban-renewal success, bringing vibrant commercial spaces such as Victoria Public Market, and adding much-needed downtown market and rental suites at The Hudson, Hudson Mews and the new Hudson Walk One.

Jo-Ann Loro/Douglas Magazine

Downtown Victoria Residential Development

THEN  (2006)

For further information about changes to downtown Victoria, visit InvestDowntownVictoria.ca

Morguard Investment begins the teardown of the aged Town & Country Shopping Centre with plans to build Uptown Shopping Centre.

After years of calling for something to happen to improve Victoria’s Inner Harbour, the marine gateway to Victoria seems mired in bureaucracy and surrounded by parking lots.

The 2006 VIATEC 25 lists the top tech companies headquartered on the Island as having combined revenues of $794M and employing 2,441 people. Overall revenues are estimated to be near $1B.

SAANICH GETS NEW SHOPPING CORE

INNER HARBOUR ACTIVITY HEATS UP

TECH TAKES TOP PLACE

Uptown Shopping Centre is a 865,518-square-foot centre attracting about 23,000 visitors a day. Its anchor tenants include the highestgrossing Walmart in Canada, plus Shoppers and Michaels — and it is set to become the first Island location for a 40,000-square-foot Whole Foods.

The Wax Museum is gone; some people still miss it. Undersea Gardens is gone; no one misses it. A renovated Steamship Terminal welcomes the Steamship Bar & Grill and Robert Bateman Gallery as anchor tenants. More recently, Belleville Terminal improvements have begun, two passenger ferries plan to launch in 2017, a luxury marina is in the works and Harbour Air has barged in a new seaplane terminal. Now, what to do about those parking lots?

Tech replaces tourism as Victoria’s largest privatesector industry. Annual tech sector revenue is now estimated at over $3.15B, and the sector directly employs 15,000 people, according to VIATEC.

Now  (2016)

36 Douglas

In the past decade, 2,982 new residential units have been added within the boundaries of the Downtown Victoria Business Association. “This is a remarkable transformation,” says Kelly, “and a wonderful tribute to our development community who, through thick and thin, has brought us to the point that the very nature of our downtown has been transformed ... with more to come!”

After a long, costly zoning battle, approval is granted to demolish to old Oak Bay Beach Hotel and replace it with a 120-room resort.

Number of storefront marijuana dispensaries in Victoria in 2006: zero. TEMPEST IN THE TEAPOT

Shawna and Kevin Walker lose control of the hotel. It goes into receivership in 2014. In May 2016, receivers Ernst & Young approve its sale for $62M to Noah Holdings.

MARIJUANA MEETS MAINSTREET Number of storefront marijuana dispensaries in the City of Victoria at press time: 35 and counting. The federal government says it plans to introduce legislation in 2017 to legalize marijuana in Canada.

InvestDowntownVictoria.ca

DOUGLAS STREET

DISCOVERY STREET

CHATHAM STREET

DOWNTOWN RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT SINCE 2006

CALEDONIA AVENUE

24 Project Location

HERALD STREET STORE ST.

16 21 CORMORANT STREET

PANDORA AVENUE

ALT RO AD

PANDOR

JOHN

SON ST .

A AVEN UE

RE RF ST

ST.

YATES STREET

LANGLE

BROAD

Y ST.

WHA

20 22 VIEW ST REET

ST.

BLANSH

FORT ST REET

Inner Harbour

ON ST REET

BROAD

BEL

LEV

ILLE

STR

EET

GORD

COURTN

9 TON ST REET

EY STRE ET

S STREET

BROUGH

751 Fairfield Road

2006

2 Belvedere

788 Humboldt Street

2006

3 Monaco

610 Johnson Street

2007

4 Juliet

780 Johnson Street

2008

5 Leiser

524-534 Yates Street

2008

6 Renaissance

566 Yates Street

2008

7 Aria

737 Humboldt Street

2009

8 Falls

707 Courtney Street

2009

9 SoMA

732 Broughton Street

2009

10 Hudson

1701 Douglas Street

2010

11 601 Herald

601 Herald Street

2011

12 Morley Soda Factory

1350 Waddington Alley

2011

13 834 Johnson

834 Johnson Street

2012

14 Oriental Hotel

562 Yates Street

2012

15 The Sovereign

608 Broughton Street

2013

16 Union

532 Pandora Avenue

2014

17 New England

1312 Government Street

2014

18 Hudson Mews

780 Fisgard Street

2014

19 Waddington Alley Flats 1310 Waddington Alley

2015

20 ERA

728 Yates Street

2015

(Under Construction)

DOUGLA

GOVERN

MENT ST REET

ARD ST REET

23 ESQUIM

FISGARD STREET

Date

1 Astoria

21 Hoy Sun Ning Yung

540 Pandora Avenue

2016

22 Dominion Rocket

700-block Yates Street

2016

23 Janion Building

1612 Store Street

2016

24 Hudson Walk One

700-block Caledonia Avenue

2016

Source: Downtown Victoria Business Association, 2016

The Victoria Chamber takes over as economic development lead from the City of Victoria, resulting in the Greater Victoria Development Agency.

In 2006, Langford has a population of about 22,000. It becomes known for its welcoming business policies and openness to development, including big-box stores.

Colwood’s Capital City Centre, a 14-acre development on the Island highway in the heart of Colwood, is first proposed by the League Financial Group. Touted as the Island’s largest development, the vision is for 4 office towers, 12 residential towers, other residential and commercial spaces and a public space.

The year 2005 sets a record for film production in Greater Victoria, with over $15M in direct spending.

The Queen of the North sinks, prompting calls for safety reviews. The Ferry Commissioner approves the biggest fuel surcharge yet. Construction starts on three Super C-class “Coastal” ferries.

Lights, action, success

BC Ferries & fare FEISTINESS

EC/DEV LEAVES THE NEST

LANGFORD THINKS OUT OF THE BOX

colwood IN THE NEWS

The Victoria Chamber helps facilitate the creation of The South Island Prosperity Network which focuses on regional approach instead of a city approach. Eleven of 13 municipalities get on board.

Langford is named the CRD’s fastest-growing municipality in 2015, with a growth of 3.9% over the previous year. Today, the population is about 35,000.

By 2012, half of the Colwood Corners shopping area has been demolished to make way for the mixed-use development, but before long the project goes dark as League Assets collapses. Downtown Colwood is left with a mess of concrete and rebar. In 2015, Onni Group of Vancouver assumes ownership of the development for $15.5 million. It plans to build a scaled-down residential and commercial-retail complex.

Buoyed up by a 5% provincial tax break, 2015 is another record breaking year for the Greater Victoria’s film industry with 24 productions shot locally — including The Boy, a horror filmed at Craigdarroch Castle — resulting in over $18M in direct spending.

Ferry fares cause sticker shock, leading to record “walk ons.” Many rates more than double on the Tsawwassen-Swartz Bay and Nanaimo-Horshoe Bay routes from 2006 to 2016. Over 10 years, rates have gone up by: • Adults: 60% • 5–11 yrs: 56.5% • Passenger + vehicle: 49.5%

Conflict surrounds the Bear Mountain Resort as protestors charge that the construction of the resort community is destroying the landscape and desecrating sacred First Nations caves on their property. BEAR MOUNTAIN BROUHAHA

Despite going into bankruptcy in 2011 under the watch of former CEO Len Barrie, the resort, by all accounts, has thrived after the 2014 purchase by Ecoasis, which recently signed a 4-year partnership for Bear Mountain to become the official Canadian training centre for Team Canada’s National Squads in golf.

Douglas 37

jeffrey bosdet/Douglas Magazine

Behind the scenes at The brick building tucked away in one of Victoria’s light-industry-meetsdesign-studio neighbourhoods looks serene from the outside, but inside it’s deadline day at Douglas magazine. The Lumineers are on the stereo, the editorial department has put a sign on the door that asks potential visitors: “Are you on fire? No? Then we’re busy.” Meanwhile, publisher Lise Gyorkos is briefing her sales team on the next issue of the magazine and her co-publisher and business partner Georgina Camilleri (who is also the magazine’s art director) huddles with the designers and photographer, talking about a last-minute photo change. “It has to be right or we don’t use it,” Camilleri says. Everyone agrees. Douglas is created by passionate perfectionists. It’s exhilarating. It’s crazy-making. It’s strategically creative. And it works. This could all drive the Zen-crowd crazy, but Gyorkos and Camilleri love the buzz of getting a magazine to press. They’ve been doing it since 1998 when they co-founded Page One Publishing, a custom magazine publishing company focused on the tourism niche. As young entrepreneurs, they were eager to learn and grow, but found Victoria’s business community in silos, with little synergy between sectors, and the remnants of an Old-England mentality that didn’t reflect the new entrepreneurial vibrancy on the horizon. 38 Douglas

By 2005, they were ready to change things up. “We thought, ‘well, we know how to create magazines, so why don’t we launch a business magazine that really speaks to entrepreneurs like us?’” recalls Camilleri. “We felt Victoria was ready for a glossy, vibrant entrepreneurial magazine that talked about business in an exciting way.” “We knew if our city and region was going to move forward,” says Gyorkos, “it needed a magazine that drew the business community together and championed more collaborative ways of doing business.” One year later, they launched Douglas. The feedback so was positive, they knew the magazine had struck a chord in the business community. Creative Control, Business Expansion While Douglas was definitely created to fill a market need, Gyorkos notes that for Page One, publishing their first advertising-based magazine was necessary for the company’s development. “We were great at publishing custom magazines for others,” says Camilleri, “but all our eggs were in someone else’s basket. We wanted more control from a business and creative perspective.” A decade later, Douglas continues to grow, with 30 per cent growth in 2015 alone. Today, it is the most widely read business publication on Vancouver Island, with an expanded territory from Sidney to Victoria to Nanaimo.

How Douglas Got its Name “We wanted a name that felt familiar to people in our region, that they would instantly recognize and identify with,” says Lise Gyorkos, co-publisher of Douglas magazine with Georgina Camilleri. “We began to think about the name Douglas,” says Camilleri. “It’s the name of Victoria’s main thoroughfare, it has historic significance with Sir James Douglas, and there’s Mount Douglas, the Douglas fir ...” From the start, says Gyorkos, many people seemed to identify with the name. “It has personality. We could have called it something generic like Victoria Business magazine, but the name Douglas spoke to the personal connection we wanted our readers to feel to their business magazine.” She was surprised to discover some people just call the magazine The Douglas. “We take it as a compliment,” she says. “It’s not just any magazine to many of our readers — it’s The Douglas and we’re honoured to publish it.”

jeffrey bosdet/Douglas Magazine

Douglas magazine Douglas also opened the door for Page One to expand its portfolio. In 2009, the company launched YAM, Victoria’s lifestyle magazine, as an insert in Douglas. YAM’s popularity exploded so fast that within three inserts the publishers decided to publish it as a standalone magazine. In 2012, they launched Salt, a glossy magazine celebrating the best of Vancouver Island for readers in the Calgary market. Since then, Salt expanded to Vancouver as well. “Some people ask why we’ve expanded if the print industry is in decline,” says Gyorkos. “But high-quality and hyper-local boutique magazines aren’t dying. MagsCanada studies show growth. And personally, we see growth.” Talking about their success doesn’t come naturally to Gyorkos or Camilleri, mostly because they’ve spent the past decade behind the scenes, putting the spotlight on other entrepreneurs through Douglas and its 10 to Watch Awards, an annual event that celebrates the Island’s best new businesses. But the fact is, Page One has been very successful. Its success is especially laudable given the company is a local independent publisher in competition with some pretty big corporations. “I think people really like the David and Goliath story,” says Gyorkos. “How are we growing when big media corporations are shrinking? Being a small independent company

keeps us agile and it keeps our ear to the ground — there’s no barrier between our customers and us.” Learning Curve Ahead With characteristic transparency, they note that in launching Douglas, they embarked on a steep learning curve. “We probably lost one hundred grand the first year,” says Gyorkos. “That’s tough even though it’s normal for magazines to take a few years to be profitable.”

their perfect education in business. “We figured if we felt that way,” Camilleri says, “there were probably others who felt the same. There wasn’t really anything back then to help business owners improve their knowledge and skills, or to share successes and mistakes.” They laugh when they recall their first attempts at business networking. “We went to some chamber mixers. “There were only a few other women and hardly anyone from our age demographic,” says Gyorkos who today sits

“We created The magazine we wanted to read.” A key issue was switching from being a contract publisher to an advertising-based market magazine publisher. As Camilleri says, “It was a whole different animal, a different model. We had to learn to adjust.” They admit they ran their business too topheavy during the first two years, with far more employees and infrastructure than necessary. “We didn’t even have a whole sense of our overhead because we’d been so project driven,” says Gyorkos. “We basically said if the lights are on we’re OK.” But they learned fast. “We discovered we needed agile thinkers who understood small business,” she adds. “We grew up as business owners during the first years of Douglas.” Launching a business magazine proved to be

on the Victoria Chamber’s board of directors. “Local business culture has come a long way. It evolved — and it will keep evolving.” “And Douglas magazine keeps changing to reflect that,” adds Camilleri. “You can’t rest on your laurels in the magazine business. Innovation is the name of the game.”

(Above left) The Page One Publishing office in Victoria, where Douglas magazine is published, is always a hub of activity, especially as deadline day nears. Page One co-owners and publishers Georgina Camilleri (left) and Lise Gyorkos brainstorm business strategy, the way they’ve been doing since they co-founded the company in 1998.

Douglas 39

makers

jeffrey bosdet/Douglas Magazine

Move over craft brewing and VQA wine, the island is entering the age of artisan alcohol.

by Cinda Chavich

and Shakers It’s an explosion in distilling not seen since the

end of Prohibition. From DIY home stills to an ever-expanding league of legitimate artisan distillers, we’re experiencing a bit of a booze boom in British Columbia. But this isn’t your granny’s bathtub gin. We’re talking select spirits, handcrafted to the highest standards. And some of the finest new craft distilleries are right here on Vancouver Island.

A GAME CHANGER Every province has its own regulations when it comes to distilling, but it’s generally agreed that the B.C. legislation is most favourable to small craft distillers, resulting in more small operations here than in other parts of the country. The province created its “craft distillery” category in 2013, waiving government distribution fees that gobble up to $30 for every bottle sold. It was a major game changer that put B.C. in the forefront of small-scale distilling. According to the new rules, a “craft distillery” is one that uses “100 per cent B.C. agricultural input to ferment and produce its own product on-site while falling below a specified production volume,” says Viola Kaminski, senior communications officer for the B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch (LDB). What that translates into is this: if you make your liquor from scratch, at your own production facility, start with local raw materials (whether you’re fermenting and distilling barley, wheat, apples or honey) and keep production below 50,000 litres of alcohol a year, you can sell direct to bars, restaurants, private retail stores or consumers, saving LDB fees.

Douglas 41

That’s a huge deal. Before the law changed, small distillers followed the same rules as big commercial distillers. That is, they had to sell through LDB stores and pay the government taxes and shelf-stocking fees, a situation that only makes economic sense for companies with massive sales. “Before the law changed, it was a 167 per cent markup for LDB shelf space,” says Tyler Dyck, CEO of Okanagan Spirits Craft Distillery and president of the B.C. Craft Distillers Guild. “Basically, the government was taking $28 from a $40 bottle to put it on the shelf.” Direct sales suddenly made the business viable for small distillers, but it’s why most B.C. spirits are not sold in government liquor stores. The new regulations led to the rapid proliferation of new distilleries, some 31 active craft distilleries in the province as of mid-March 2016, with 12 applications pending. That’s about half of the craft distillers in Canada. It’s a drop in the bucket when you look south — there are more than 600 craft distillers and counting in the U.S. — but the volume of B.C. craft-made spirits is rising rapidly, from just about 29,000 litres in 2013 to nearly 139,000 litres in 2015. Still, not all small spirit producers operating in B.C. qualify as craft distillers. Several small distilleries, including Victoria Distillers, Arbutus Distillery, Island Spirits and Shelter Point, use imported agricultural inputs or NGS (neutral grain spirit), so they work outside the craft rules. They have formed the B.C. Craft Distilling Association (BCCDA) for distillers who use pot stills and

produce less than 100,000 litres of absolute alcohol annually.

DISTILLING WITH A MODERN FEEL

the volume of B.C. craft-made spirits is rising rapidly, from just about

29,000 litres in 2013 to nearly

139,000 litres in 2015.

e h t l l i re w

whe

r e z a l b ed

? r e h ake

Victoria Distillers’ eponymous Victoria Gin may be the most familiar artisan spirit in the city, and the trajectory of this local brand mirrors the evolution of distilling on the Island. Started in 2007 by Bryan and Valerie Murray, the company was recently sold to Grant Rogers of the Marker Group. It reopened this spring as Victoria Distillers in Sidney, in an expanded oceanfront space Rogers owns next to his Sidney Pier hotel and condo development. A wall of glass opens to a picture-perfect waterfront view and the new facility, with its sparkling new copper still and dedicated lounge, takes the business beyond alcohol production and into the realm of destination tourism, complete with tours, tastings and a cocktail bar. Peter Hunt, still manager and master distiller, says the brand is changing to reflect the company’s plans for larger production and wider distribution. “We’re still leading with clear spirits, but we will be expanding our whisky production here and selling Victoria Gin in the U.S.,” says Hunt, pointing to a new slender bottle and clean label, the young Queen Victoria no longer part of the brand narrative. “Most people didn’t recognize her anyway and it made the product look more traditional,” says Hunt. “This has a more modern feel.”

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Another ambitious new multi-faceted operation is the Victoria Caledonian Distillery and Brewery, set to open this summer in a 17,320-square-foot warehouse next to the Patricia Bay Highway in Central Saanich. Company president Graeme Macaloney has hired a team that includes longtime Diageo distiller Mike Nicolson and former Lighthouse brewmaster Dean McLeod, who will run the craft brewery side of the business, and create the base for their malt whisky. The facility will include a brewpub, growler refilling area and shop for onpremise whisky sales, says McLeod, with regular tours, tutored tastings and a five-day distilling school for the 200-plus “founder-owners” who have invested in the new venture. For $4,800, whisky enthusiasts can also pre-order their own personalized 30-litre cask to be aged on site.

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It’s generally agreed that the B.C. legislation is most favourable to small craft distillers, resulting in more small operations here than in other parts of the country.

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The distillery is designed to “produce premium branded whiskies for international sale and distribution” and the craft brewery will provide cash flow while the whisky ages in the facility’s 600-barrel cask room, says Nicolson. With $2.4 million from Agriculture Canada, the company will employ innovative “rapid maturation technology” to produce a B.C.sourced single malt it plans to export to 25 to 30 countries around the world within the next three to four years.

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SPIRITED EXPANSION There are now 10 small distilleries on Vancouver Island, including Sheringham Distillery, run by former chef Jason MacIsaac and his wife Alayne in Shirley, north of Sooke; Arbutus Distillery in Nanaimo; and Merridale Cidery in the Cowichan Valley, where heirloom cider apples are distilled to create spirits from brandy to vodka and gin. Wayward Distillation House in Courtenay uses honey as a base for all of its spirits — marketing its Unruly vodka and gin with the tagline “Fundamentally against the grain.” Ampersand Distilling Co. in Duncan is at the other end of the small distillery scale, focused almost exclusively on its flagship product, Ampersand Gin, although the distillery recently

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Forest Gin, infused with grand began producing Per Se distills its vodka to fir and cascade hops, distillers Vodka as well. 90% alcohol in copper are distinguishing themselves Father-and-son team stills imported from with gin. Stephen and Jeremy a Scottish distiller. “White spirits are something Schacht concocted their to build a business on, to small-batch business The vodka is made build cash flow,” says Hunt. plan to capitalize on their from 100% B.C. grain “Vodka sells 10 times more shared strengths — a and naturally filtered than gin, but gin has so much five-acre organic farm aquifer spring water. more character. That’s why we in the Cowichan Valley started with gin.” and degrees in chemical At de Vine Spirits in Saanich, engineering — and make the base for their Vin Gin is a spirit distilled pure spirits in a 500-litre column still that they from its own Pinot Gris and Grüner Veltliner designed and built themselves. A classic gin, grapes. Its New Tom Gin is aged for two months made with organic B.C. soft white wheat, in used bourbon barrels and de Vine’s Sloe Gin their own spring water and organic botanicals, is infused with locally-grown sloe berries. Ampersand fits the company’s marketing Meanwhile, B.C.’s fledgling craft distillers are moniker: “Gin, defined.” just starting to release their first whiskies. They’re small, producing just 250 bottles a Okanagan Spirits Craft Distillery released week, with plans to increase production by 50 1,500 bottles of its Laird of Fintry single malt per cent this year. whisky in 2015. More than 4,500 people entered “Islands attract creative people, and the a lottery to buy one bottle, and a similar lottery smaller the island, the more creative it gets,” is planned for this year. says Jeremy Schacht. “Vancouver Island has Victoria Distillers has had one limited release a lot of artisans and craft people who want to of its Craigdarroch Whisky, with plans to do things for themselves, and I think that’s the major reason why there are so many distilleries here.”

WHISKY IN THE JAR Every distillery has its own story, but it’s probably safe to say that it was the love of whisky — especially imported single malts — that lured many into the small distilling business. Still, with Canadian law requiring that whisky be aged in barrels for a minimum of three years, we haven’t seen much local whisky on the market yet. Instead, there’s been a bit of a gin boom, as small distillers work on building their brands by creating white spirits infused with unique flavours. From Merridale’s Cowichan Gin flavoured with native “trees, ground cover herbs and roots,” to Phillips’ Stump Coastal 44 Douglas

There’s a definite market for whisky. Okanagan Spirits released 1,500 bottles of its Laird of Fintry single malt in 2015. More than 4,500 people entered a lottery to buy one bottle. A similar lottery is planned for this year.

increase whisky production in its new Sidney distillery, while many craft distillers are still waiting, anticipating releases in the next one or two years. The Shelter Point Distillery near Campbell River may be the largest single malt producer on the Island to date, with stunning copper pot stills imported from Scotland and an impressive facility to tour. While its whisky has been “technically ready” to release since 2014, it remains in the barrel, with a line of flavoured single malt vodkas currently available for sale. Ken Winchester, winemaker and distiller at de Vine Vineyards and Spirits, hopes to release the first bottles of his Glen Saanich single malt by the end of this year, a unique whisky made with barley grown and malted on Vancouver Island. “It’s a Scottish seed, grown here in Saanich,” says Winchester of the barley grown and malted in small batches by local farmer Mike Doehnel. Most other B.C. craft distillers are using malted barley from two main sources, Gambrinus in Armstrong or Canada Malting, he adds. “There are only two places in B.C. where barley is grown and everyone is using the same barley. This will show both variety and terroir, how a Saanich whisky will taste.”

THE ISLAND ADVANTAGE It’s a little more expensive to run almost any business on the Island, and in the distilling business, added costs include those associated with raw materials, transportation and importation of other supplies and equipment. There are other challenges, too, including costs related to waste-water management and treatment for whisky distillers in the Capital Regional District (CRD), says Hunt. But the flip side of the Island equation for small distillers is a captive and committed market — customers willing to pay a little more to purchase something made locally. There’s also the Island’s $1.7-billion tourism industry, which attracts visitors year-round. Small-scale distilling is impacting other Island businesses, from Metchosin farmers growing Red Fife wheat for Sheringham Distillery to the state-of-the-art distilling system at Victoria Distillers built in Saanich at Specific Mechanical Systems. Matt Phillips recently opened his own malting plant, Phillips Maltworks, behind his downtown brewery, the first Canadian microbrewery and distillery to malt its own local grain. It’s all about being “100 per cent Island,” says Phillips, something customers here consider a priority. “People are really strong supporters of local here,” adds Hunt. “They like to feel a connection to their producers.” ■

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Douglas 45

Photos: jeffrey bosdet/Douglas Magazine

WTF

Adam

Gant

46 Douglas

Grambart

Mark

[ Willing to fail ]

by Shannon Moneo

Failure hits everyone. When a business leader is battered, the fallout ripples through to employees, investors, shareholders and family. Are lessons learned? Does recovery happen? Diehard entrepreneurs donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t raise the white flag when theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re drowning in red ink. They acknowledge what they learned and use the knowledge to go forward, typically replacing huge leaps with smaller steps.

Gerry

brimacombe

Todd

dunlop

Douglas 47

“It’s hard to break away ...” Most Victorians know the story of League Assets Corporation and the failed Capital City Centre project in Colwood. When League, a REIT (real estate investment trust), ceased to exist in early 2015, it had almost $370 million in outstanding debts with an array of creditors.

to raise about $41 million via a Quebec pension plan. But League’s complicated bookkeeping system, for more than 100 companies it owned in Canada, caused League to miss the deal’s deadline, Gant says. The lesson learned? Excess legal entities create massive complexities. It took too long to produce League’s 600-page prospectus for the Quebec deal. “We ran out of liquidity,” he says. Today, Gant runs his new company, REAfe Advisory, where he advises B.C. and Alberta companies on growth, real estate acquisition and how to start from scratch. “People get to the point where they’re embarrassed. They feel bad, don’t believe it could be fixed and throw in the towel,” he says. “I figure I know something and can help some companies.”

Recovering from failure isn’t always fun. Vancouver corporate coach Victoria Brown says the first arrow comes from someone or something else (the cause of failure) and the second arrow (selfcriticism) comes from ourselves. “We make it personal, think it’s us,” she says. “But many factors come into play. We need time for grieving. There’s such a stigma about failure. As adults, we think we have to look good. But think of kids — they fall off and get back on.” Almost all successful business people say they have failed, Brown says. To fully learn from failing, you have to embrace it, says University of Victoria business professor Mia Maki. “Unboxing it, although painful, and talking about it, takes it to a deeper level. You can extract much more,” she says. While success stories are nice to note, they often go in one ear and out the other because the narratives don’t resonate on a personal note. “Learning from the

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or League co-founder Adam Gant, 36, a Victoria resident, his company’s failure had its genesis in confirmation bias, the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms your beliefs while ignoring alternative ideas. “We were a victim of it; once you start a project, it’s hard to break away from it,” he tells me. As League grew, the decision to break ground in Colwood was based on the heady days of 2007 and belief that the good times would continue. But in 2008, the financial downturn hit, and by 2009, Gant was asking, how would the Colwood project remain viable? In hindsight, he admits the project was too big. In 2013, League attempted

The Other Side of Failure

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48 Douglas

failure of others tends to be more powerful,” Maki adds. Adam Gant, former CEO of League Assets, admits that if a business expert would have sat down and talked to him for 30 minutes when major League was heading for the minor leagues, it would have been valuable. “In 2007, I was young and naive,” he says. “I thought everyone was fair and honest.”

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“There were dark days ...” Gerry Brimacombe’s business finances began to suffer in 2008. At the time he was CEO of Sector Learning Solutions, a Victoria techtraining company he’d purchased four years earlier. When the global economic crisis hit, Brimacombe’s employees dropped from 11 to two. “I should have sold then,” he recalls. But taking a page from the Book of Perseverance, the married father of two chose to buckle down with the belief that cash flow would improve and he’d emerge stronger. That didn’t happen.

y October 2013, Gerry Brimacombe realized he had to sell Sector Learning Solutions. “We were bleeding money,” he recalls. The same month, he accepted a ninemonth contract in Calgary as a business analyst for a federal commission.

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He sold the company in March 2014, but Brimacombe’s troubles weren’t over — he still had to get a handle on his outstanding business debts. On the verge of bankruptcy, he made use of a support network, which included his longtime business coach, the advisory board he assembled for Sector, his lawyer, a debt counsellor and his wife. He negotiated a deal to break his lease and avoid paying $77,000 in rent for space no longer needed, and he remortgaged his Gordon Head home and consolidated his debt. The BMW was sold. “I went through the process with shaking hands and terror,” he admits. “There were dark days. The antidote was action. But you can’t do it all on your own. It’s important to have support.” In March 2014, Brimacombe launched Lightlever Systems, a consulting firm. Business is good, he says, but it will take three more years to clear Sector’s debt. He is frank in his analysis of where he faltered. “You need a really tight management of finances. That was an area of weakness before. I had a hard time understanding a balance sheet or income statement. I’ve now got a really good system to manage personal finances and credit cards.” Today, Brimacombe, no longer seeks instant gratification, such as buying a new laptop even though his older one was fine. “Spending money made me feel like I had lots,” he says.

saying, ‘F*ck it, we’ll do it live.’ This new conservative approach did not serve me well and was soul-crushing,” he says. “It just wore me down. I’m an entrepreneur by nature.” While the damage wrought by one word wasn’t exactly Dunlop’s doing, he took it as failure and accepted responsibility for not crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s. But one day he snapped out of it and realized that what he’d learned was more valuable than what the lawsuit had cost him. “Now, if I have to deal with a couple of mosquitos, I swat them. It seemed kind of a big deal at the time, but it was an annoyance.”

Always pushing forward, RingPartner owns two patents, an area in which Dunlop now treads very cautiously. “We had deals, related to patents, that have fallen apart because they left us open to potential liability,” he says. And he offers one more riff on the F*ckup theme: “During a visit to the 1-800-Got-Junk office, I noticed a meeting room labelled WTF. But it didn’t stand for what you would traditionally think,” Dunlop says. “Instead it stood for ‘Willing to Fail,’ which I believe is an empowering attitude when it comes to leading a team.”

“It just wore me down ...” As one of the three gut-spillers at VIATEC’s first F*ckup Night in January, Todd Dunlop confesses that his woes came out of the blue. “I found myself involved in a lawsuit concerning a company I had sold years earlier,” recalls Dunlop, 36, who is now president and founder of Victoria’s RingPartner. “A single word out of a 50,000-word legal document allowed a patent troll to sue my previous company. Then, in turn, the company attempted to sue me. In the end there were no winners, except the lawyers.” For roughly half a year after the lawsuit, a demoralized Dunlop was very cautious in his business decisions. “Those who know me know that this is not my personality. It’s common for me to be heard around the office Douglas 51

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Getting down at In January, Victoria’s first-ever F*ckup Night was a sell-out. The VIATEC-organized event drew 120 attendees and generated a wait list of 40. Given the hunger to hear about downfalls and screw-ups from local entrepreneurs, VIATEC decided to continue the confessionals every three months, says the organization’s CEO Dan Gunn. F*ckup Nights started in Mexico City in 2012. Instead of wallowing in business failures, it was a chance for entrepreneurs to swallow their pride, share stories, reveal what they had learned and how they bounced back. Since the Mexican launch, F*ckup Nights take place in more than 100 cities, in over 35 countries. At each Victoria event, three “f*ckuppers” have six minutes to spill their guts, followed by a 10-minute question-andanswer session. “In a city

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focused on entrepreneurship, wins get celebrated. That might present a false picture of what entrepreneurship is like,” Gunn says. “We want to make sure entrepreneurs go into it with their eyes wide open.” At one time, business people in town typically shared disaster stories with a close associate over coffee or beer, but doing it in front of dozens of people requires a great leap of faith. “But that’s the secret-sauce element of Victoria’s growth, the candid ability to share operational knowledge,” Gunn says. The willingness to share is because Victoria has such a varied business scene. Headto-head competition is fairly rare because companies are relatively different from one another. One oft-mentioned cause of business snafus is bad timing, but in the case of F*ckup

2016-05-05

Greg Miller

F*ckUp Nights

Nights, good timing brought success. “Maybe we’re not the first ones thinking of it, but we were the first ones doing it. A lot of people contact us saying they had this same idea, even the same name,” says Yannick Kwik, F*ckup Nights coordinator for international development. The catchy name and short, easily digested talks are why F*ckup Nights have taken off, Kwik says from Mexico. “And we promote the drinking of beer

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52 Douglas

during all our events, which makes the evenings even more enjoyable.” Mexican stories tend to mirror Victorians’ tales. “Most people in this country run out of cash before earning enough to keep the company alive. It is sad to abandon a new car because of running out of fuel,” Kwik says, “but it happens all the time. Contract issues and problems between business partners are also very common.”

 JUST BEING TRANSPARENT Tim Cormode, Jim Hayhurst and Scott Lake shared their stories with a sold-out crowd at a recent F*ckup night at VIATEC in Victoria.

“We should have waited...” Mark Grambart is former CEO of Contech Enterprises. In 2015, Contech, which designed and sold non-toxic products for the pet and gardening sectors, went bankrupt, an event that had its genesis in 2013 when Contech bought a company at the wrong time — right at the start of the ultra-busy gardening season.

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t wasn’t that the company Contech purchased didn’t fit well with their established line of products. The new acquisition made raised garden beds, after all. The problem, which quickly became apparent, was that Contech’s distribution system couldn’t keep up with the big jump in orders. “We should have waited one more year. We would have seen the flaw in the system,” admits Grambart, 44, a mechanical engineer. At VIATEC’s first F*ckup Night, Grambart told the crowd that Contech, which had 75 employees (18 of them in Victoria), tried to manually fill the orders, but the company eventually had to shut down the online site. The lost revenue made Contech less profitable so it secured financing with a New York bank, but the ensuing legal battles led to the dissolution of the company. “I believed we could have managed it, but I didn’t foresee the problems working with our unsecured creditors,” says Grambart. Grambart’s biggest take-away was that more time should have been spent investigating the deal, and that purchasing a company right at the start of its high sales season is not wise. Like Gant, Grambart is now an advisor. As executive-in-residence at VIATEC, he coaches early-stage technology entrepreneurs to help them grow. “It’s a ton of fun,” he says.

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Douglas 53

INTEL

54 Money

How Investors Can Ride the Climate-Change Wave

56 Sales And marketing

Marketing in an Emoji-Driven Culture

[business intelligence ]

58 entrepreneur

How to Get Inside the Mind of Investors

Burnaby-based General Fusion has created the Magnetized Target Fusion prototype, which uses powerful magnets and pistons to heat and crush the plasma. Their aim: clean, abundant energy from nuclear fusion.

money by steve bokor

Should Climate Change Affect Your Investment Strategy? Just about everyone agrees we need to take drastic steps to deal with climate change, but is it smart for investors to put their money where their ethics are? Our â&#x20AC;&#x153;Moneyâ&#x20AC;? columnist brings up some important questions to consider.

54 Douglas

s Canada gets on the climate-change bandwagon, there will be increased costs for some and opportunities for others. Certainly as an investor you need to know how the changes are going to affect the profitability of businesses in Canada as federal and provincial governments work to implement business and social policy (taxes) in order to redirect financial capital toward reduced or carbon-free technologies and clean energy solutions. Investors have the right to direct their investment capital toward ethically motivated alternative solutions to support climate-change solutions. But they also need to realize the unintended consequences of such actions. This is especially true when you consider the impact of globalization and free trade. We could debate the merits, costs and benefits of shipping fossil fuels to foreign markets via different conduits, but we need to recognize that in a competitive landscape, the end user will

start with looking at the individual tend to look for the cheapest securities in each of the ETFs and alternative, not necessarily the mutual funds in the SRI space. most environmentally friendly Sophisticated investors who have one. In the long run, how good will our economy and society Canada is one risk capital can also look at the be if no one chooses to buy our of the world’s holdings inside venture-capital funds and perhaps discover nextproduct because we have lost our five largest generation clean-energy solutions. competitive advantage? energy producers For example, there’s a BurnabyUnfortunately, this change and is the principal based company called General is coming at the worst possible source of U.S. Fusion. As the name implies, time for Canadians. According energy imports. this company is working on the to the U.S. Energy Information ultimate clean-energy (controlled Administration, we are “one of nuclear fusion) alternative. Its cutting-edge the world’s five largest energy producers and technology may still be decades away from the principal source of U.S. energy imports.” commercialization and only available to highThe best time to enact economic policy net-worth individuals, but this technology change is when the industry in question might reward the right investor in the is generating maximum profits. Instead, pocketbook and solve a portion of the world’s Canadian consumers and corporate Canada energy needs. will face increased costs (taxes) at a time when Another possible private company to GDP and employment growth are at decade consider is Terrestrial Energy in Oakville, lows. So how do investors protect themselves Ontario. It is in the process of commercializing and profit under this scenario? Integral Molten Salt Reactor technology. Think of a closed-circuit nuclear fission reactor How green do you want to go? that could be smaller and safer than today’s The solution or strategy will depend upon conventional nuclear energy facilities. the degree to which an investor desires to On March 7, both companies were awarded participate in the spectrum of climate-friendly grants from Sustainable Development offerings. Do you want to look at low-carbon Technology Canada (SDTC). According or clean-energy solutions, or sustainable to John Barrett, president and CEO of the investment strategies or Socially Responsible Canadian Nuclear Association, “This funding Investing? For example, do you want to avoid all demonstrates that next-generation and oil and gas companies or focus on the lowest advanced-nuclear is both an innovative and carbon players in the sector? strategic asset for Canada in meeting its For some, the use of Socially Responsible COP21 targets.” Investing (SRI) strategies will soothe their Compare that to two Canadian power consciences and benefit their retirement producers (Capital Power and TransAlta Corp) portfolios simultaneously. Maclean’s and with interests in coal-fired facilities that will Forbes put out an annual list of the best SR phase out their production in the coming corporations. With the help of a financial years. Not only will it negatively impact their adviser, or perhaps on their own, investors earnings and balance sheets, but job losses could realign their portfolios to include a will extend to the miners and ancillary service selection of climate-friendly companies. providers. We could be looking at a new Alternatively, investors can construct a generation of ghost towns. portfolio using mutual funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs) that historically have making critical decisions? performed favourably against their broad market indexes. For mutual funds, I recommend If social and government policies reduce the profitability of businesses and industries that investors look at IA Clarington’s fund or NEI emit higher levels of carbon, or represent a Ethical American Multi-Strategy. significant cost of raw materials, then over the long term, those companies will suffer. what is your risk profile? In contrast, SR corporations, clean-energy For passive investors in Canada who want to alternatives and low-carbon players will use ETFs, the list includes the iShares Jantzi experience higher profit margins and better Social Index (XEN). For U.S. and international access to financial capital. exposure, I recommend that investors go to As I said, there are costs and benefits. www.etf.com or www.etfdb.com for a list and Increasing your knowledge is essential as description of SRI ETFs. Cross-border taxation you strive to get the best for you out of your and currency exposure need to be considered, so consult with your accountant before making investment portfolio in a way that meets your ethical requirements. ■ investment decisions. For high-net-worth investors and/or those who want to direct their investment capital to Steve Bokor, CFA, is a licensed portfolio manager with PI Financial Corp, a member of CIPF. specific investment initiatives, the process can

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Douglas 55

Sales and Marketing by mike wicks

Marketing in an Emoji-Driven Culture Ancient Egyptians got their messages across using hieroglyphics, a “language” that took centuries to develop. Today, millions communicate using a pictographic system that has developed in less than two decades. Yes, the age of the emoji is here, and marketers dismiss these quirky little icons at their peril.

rofessor Vyvyan Evans of Bangor University’s linguistics department is an expert on emojis. In 2015, he told Newsweek, “Today, [the] emoji is incontrovertibly the world’s first truly global form of communication.” If what Evans says is true, and it’s widely held to be so, the impact emojis will have on the way we communicate and market to consumers will be staggering. It seems only recently I was using :-) or :-o and LOL in my emails. Know what I mean ;-). Now emoticons and shorthand are going out of fashion quicker than Taylor Swift’s dresses. Taking their place are emojis, those mostly cute pictograms spreading across social media, ads and promo campaigns like crabgrass in a vegetable garden. Originating in Japan, emojis were first created by telecom worker Shigetaka Kurita in the late ‘90s. They didn’t become popular elsewhere until 2011, when Apple made the emoji keyboard we all know — and some of us love — available internationally. Emojis were always on the iPhone, apparently, but only

visible to the Japanese market. By mid 2013, Android operating systems also featured the keyboard, and so these little characters took off like a wildfire. Why Are Emojis So Popular? People have incredibly short attention spans (only eight seconds, according to a Canadian Microsoft study), so immediate gratification is today’s name of the game. We used to wait several minutes for photographs to slowly load on a web page in the days of dial up. We’d go and grab a coffee while our computer booted up. Today, we expect everything to be immediate. If a web page is slow loading, or if making a purchase takes more than a click or two, we move on to another site. The biggest reason we like emojis, according to a survey carried out by Emogi (a company that helps customers relate their feelings about specific advertisements using emojis), is that these symbols are a fast, efficient way for us to send messages that carry more emotion and are actually a better fit for what we want to say than words are.

World emoji day is

July 17

There are

1,624

emojis (including all sequences) encoded into Unicode, with 79 new ones being added in 2016, according to unicode.org

92%

of the online population use emojis. 60% of women report using emojis frequently as opposed to 41% of men

We think 10 is pretty awesome.

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This means that in a commercial environment, customers can quickly identify what they want to purchase or what action they want to take. Boston-based InMoji has taken this one step further and developed clickable brand icons. These InMojis reside in a message and can connect people to a company’s offer via their brand icon without the user leaving the messaging. Brand messages become part of consumers’ text conversations. Emojis: Cute or Corporate? Think emojis are just a cute way of saying you’re sad, happy or in love and have no relevance to the real world of marketing? Think again. Domino’s Pizza allows registered Easy Order customers to order pizzas by clicking on and texting, or tweeting, a pizza icon. The lesson here is that consumers want things to be easier and quicker. The days of filling out long forms and entering credit card numbers is old school. Want a pizza? Set up Easy Order and Domino’s provides seven ways you can order your pizza überfast, including clicking on an emoji. “Click It — Buy It” is the new online purchasing mantra. It’s not just about making it easy for customers to purchase what you are selling; Chevrolet issued a news release announcing the 2016 Cruze entirely in emoji language, making a decoder available a few days later. Around the same time, Ford announced, “We’re adding new characters to the emoji alphabet, providing Ford fans with another way to communicate with each other.” They also launched a free Ford Focus emoji keyboard for iOS and Android devices. Seriously? Emojis? You might think this gimmicky, a flash in the pan, but I don’t think so. Emojis are a valid new form of communication, one that transcends languages, cultures and generations. Put aside any negative feelings you might have about the “pile of poo emoji” or the recently released levitating man in a business suit (I’m not kidding) for a moment and consider: 92 per cent of all people online are using emojis, according to emoji. com. Need more convincing? The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year in 2015 was the Face with Tears of Joy emoji — NOT an actual word! It’s the first time a pictogram has ever been chosen. Facebook recently created five new emoji “reactions” to help users emote more accurately when commenting on someone’s post. Turns out the “like” feature just wasn’t enough for people — let’s face it, who “likes” it when your friend posts something really sad? Emojis are steadily moving beyond the basics and allowing us to relay far more meaningful sentiments without having to fiddle with the tiny keyboard on our cell phones, which is where 90 per cent of frequent Facebook users access this social media icon.

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It took Mark Zuckerberg’s team, with the help of a social psychology professor, more than a year to narrow down what could have been 20 or more emojis to six, including the existing upturned thumb. Now you have the choice of a heart, a laughing face, an “I’m amazed” face, a sad face or an angry dude (i.e. like, love, ha-ha, wow, sad, angry). What’s interesting is that Facebook provides a list of who used what emoji on each post; this offers new insight into what everyone else is saying about any given post. A simple emoji it may be, but which one we use says a great deal about our opinion on a multitude of issues. I wonder who will use that information and how. Understanding emojis is going to be a focus over the next year or so. A major new television series in the wings is called The Great Emoji Challenge. Contestants will compete to translate emoji messages correctly in order to win a one-million-dollar prize. Domino’s has published a series of emoji flashcards to help you learn this new “language.” And if all else fails, you can turn to Emojipedia or one of several English-to-emoji translation websites. Emojis, the U.S. Election and More In 2016 and beyond, emojis will be staring back at you wherever you turn. Sony Animation is currently

In 1862, the first smiley face emoticon was reportedly used. In the late 90s, true emoji graphics began to appear on the web

Emoji Dick an emojisonly version of Moby Dick, now being shopped on Kickstarter

working on an emoji feature film. CNN and the Washington Post are using candidate and election emojis. Tim Hortons, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Starbucks and thousands of other household names have developed their own branded emojis (or inmojis). Burger King has a complete set of emojis to promote its chicken fries, and McDonald’s is using emojis in its advertisements. Soon, you may be using a series of four emojis instead of your bank card PIN — a U.K. online banking app already uses them. Apparently, emojis are more secure — not to mention easier for people to remember. And contrary to what you might think, emojis are not used specifically by the younger generation. In fact, they tend to be less age specific and more gender specific — 60% of women report using emojis frequently, as opposed to 41% of men, according to emoji.org. Get Emoji-Savvy No matter the size or sector of your business, you would be wise to start developing an appreciation for this new communication tool now because emojis are going to be an integral part of the marketing mix for the foreseeable future. ■ Mike Wicks is an award-winning author, blogger, ghostwriter and publisher. He is president of Blue Beetle Creative Media.

entrepreneur by Peter Elkins

B.C. entrepreneur Mark Ameerali raised $10,000 with his UBCO Financial Literacy club via Change Heroes’ video-powered, friend-tofriend fundraising platform — enough to fully fund a school through their partner Free The Children. After completing his fundraising, Ameerali traveled to Kenya last year to help build the school with the community, alongside members of the Change Heroes and Free The Children teams.

How to Get Inside the Mind of Investors Looking for investment for your company? Our “Entrepreneur” columnist gives you a valuable peek into what private-equity investors are looking for, from a powerful pitch to the ability to pick the right leader.

ttracting investment requires much more than having great ideas. In fact, I’d say the notion that “ideas get funded” is a somewhat naive point of view, especially in reference to non-patentable technologies like software-as-aservice. Why? Because ideas are everywhere! So if having the “big idea” isn’t the thing that turns the heads of investors, what is? I thought a lot about this at the recent Victoria stop of the cross-Canada Fundica Roadshow. This annual event is designed to educate entrepreneurs on funding opportunities, but it’s also an event where investors can see pitches in action. This year’s winner was Change Heroes, a peer-topeer fundraising company that has a platform for people to raise funds to build schools and

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libraries in Third World countries. Their pitch, delivered by COO Mike Tan, was clear and compelling enough to win them three months of office space in San Francisco, round-trip airfare to pitch to investors in the Silicon Valley, plus a host of business services. Delivering a Winning Pitch So what are the basics of convincing an investor that you are worth investing in? Start by picturing your pitch as an iceberg. There’s the stuff that’s above the waterline that investors need to see to get them interested in the idea — and then there’s the deep stuff

below the waterline. This deep stuff is what prospective investors are after, so they tend to dive down and explore whether or not their their investment will really be in good hands. Above the Waterline Getting my attention begins with the robustness of the pitch. That’s why every startup seeking investment needs a strong pitch deck, a compelling elevator pitch and a concise executive summary. Creating these tools is a valuable exercise, forcing you and your team to work through tough questions before you end up in front of investors who will

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expect concise answers — and believe me, they will! So here’s a rundown of the key pitches you need ready so you can present at the drop of a hat. After all, you never know when you might meet an opportunity. The Elevator Pitch Think of the elevator pitch as the answer you would give when you coincidentally meet someone in an elevator and they ask: “So, what do you do?” The idea is to deliver the desired answer before the elevator ride comes to an end, which means you need to do it in less than 30 seconds with maximum impact. The Pitch Deck Also referred to as a slide deck, a pitch deck is a short, powerful slide presentation that includes information about:  who your potential customers are, what “pain” they are experiencing and how you plan to alleviate that pain  your go-to-market strategy  what makes your offering unique  how you make money — or plan to  your competitors, team and accomplishments to date  your financial projections, key metrics and valuation  how you will put the investment to use and how your investors will benefit. Executive Summary This should be no more than one page (yes, really!) and include summary information on your business, challenge/opportunity, offering, target market, go-to-market strategy, business model, competition, competitive advantage, project status, company profile, contact information, financing stage, management team and current investors, if any.

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In a pitch, investors challenge you under pressure to explain who you are and what your motivation is. They also want to find out if you present well and can answer questions. Being authentic and speaking with honesty matters. Entrepreneurship is not about sales — it’s about being super honest. It’s also vital to know your numbers. One investor I know always wants to know a company’s pre-money evaluation. He doesn’t really care what it is — but he wants to know you know it. In the end, I always ask myself the question: Is this somebody I would recommend to someone else? That’s a gem that inspires me to take the conversation deeper. DIVING Below the Waterline Going back to my iceberg analogy, the investor can see now what’s above the surface because you’ve got a strong pitch deck, elevator pitch and executive summary. Presumably, you’ve also studied up on how to make a great presentation so you come across as sincere, passionate, committed and honest — and you know your numbers. Now it’s time to dive beneath the waterline. At this level, leadership becomes very important. I guarantee that if you don’t have the right leader, you don’t have a chance of getting the investment you want. The right leader has a winning attitude. This is not the “I don’t get out of bed for $10,000 or less” attitude or “I won’t leave my day job or move to execute the idea” attitude. Nope, the right person is a rock star. Any startup founder who has attracted outsider funding probably bears a lot of similarity to a rock star. This is a compelling leader who inspires confidence and has the traits and skills to back it up. Stewart Butterfield of

Mistakes When Pitching To Investors

1 YOUR Elevator

Pitch Is Longer Than One Minute

2 YOUR PowerPoint Is Too Long 3 YOUR Executive Summary is not Factually Supported 4 YOU Overlook a Realistic Exit Strategy for Investors 5 YOU Ask for a Non-Disclosure Agreement 6 YOU FAIL TO SHOW STRONG, INTELLIGENT LEADERSHIP 7 YOU BRING UP Valuation Too Early in THE Negotiations 8 YOU FaiL to Listen — AND ARGUE INSTEAD OF PERSUADE

Slack, who has an Island connection, is a great example of this. So is Stuart Bowness of MediaCore, Matt Harris and Brad Van Vugt of Sendwithus, Jason Morehouse of Checkfront, Charles Lavigne and Kevin Oke of LlamaZOO, and Alex Mendelev of TinyMob. So is University of Victoria graduate Mike Tan of Change Heroes, winner of the Fundica Roadshow. Rock-star founders typically have the following traits: ■ Integrity Decisions have to be made all the

time in startups, especially ones that affect people. It’s important for investors to sense you will do the right thing. ■ Passion Investors want to know you have

the passion to attract others to your project and to take the team through hard times.

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and background? Personality isn’t enough. ■ Domain Knowledge Investors can

always find key staff to fill out the team, but exceptional domain knowledge must be intact with the founder(s). ■ Skill Investors want you to have the skills

to lead the team that will acquire the first 100 customers. ■ Leadership Startups are very challenging

for the first dozen or so employees, and great leadership may be what makes or breaks it in the early stages. That’s why a “servant leader” is preferable to a dogmatic leader. ■ Commitment The founder’s commitment

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must show through right away and remain constant. ■ Vision A founder needs a robust vision that

will attract people to his or her big idea and sustain them for years to come. ■ Realism A founder also needs realism to be

able to accept situations as they are and move through them with emotional intelligence and wisdom. ■ Coachability Coachable traits include

humility, action bias, purity of purpose, willingness to surrender control and faith.

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If you have a great idea but you’re not attracting investors, it’s probably because the above qualities aren’t shining through. My advice is to consider bringing on a co-founder who is a rock star. As painful as this may seem at the time, I absolutely guarantee you will thank me when you get the investment you need. Investment Success Now you know much of what investors like me look for, on the surface and at the deepest levels. If you can get these things right, you will dramatically increase your chances of getting the investment you need. Why not tip the odds in your favour? ■ Peter Elkins is co-founder of the Capital Investment Network, Kick Accelerator and Business As Unusual. He is passionate about driving Vancouver Island’s entrepreneurial economy.

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Startup Skool has ignited an enthusiasm for entrepreneurship and innovation in more than 4,000 students. Through the program, kindergarten- to grade-five students learn to monetize their passions early — and they raise money for charities in the process.

How to grow entrepreneurs by Anneke feuermann

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How do we influence the next generation to think more like entrepreneurs? Start by giving 18 classes of kids from kindergarten to grade five $100 each in microloans and see what they are able to do with it to raise funds for charity. That’s what Gustavson School of Business alumni Kim Cope did. The result? From selling birdhouses at a local market to making bracelets and selling them to fellow classmates, the students collectively made over $18,000, enough to build two schools with the Free the Children Foundation. As schools across Canada began teaching the program, Cope decided to launch summer entrepreneur boot camps for kids. Startup Skool is a social enterprise

focused on educating youth on entrepreneurship, design thinking and technology through school programs and intensive weeklong summer boot camps. Taught by university students and graduates, and working with local companies such as LlamaZoo and Flytographer, the camps encompass everything kids need to know to start their own businesses, from financial skills to digital literacy. After a week of hands-on activities and field trips, the kids finish with their own websites that profile everything they’ve accomplished and learned. One 10-year-old Vancouver boy asked for a micro-loan after noticing the hipster obsession with terrariums. Within 10 minutes of selling his own hand-made

terrariums on the street, he had sold out and made a profit of $180. “Students have a natural inclination to entrepreneurship,” says Cope, adding that the entrepreneurial terrarium builder has since approached Startup Skool to create a financial literacy toolkit to help other kids. “It’s not just about learning to build a website or run a business,” says Elton Pereira, co-founder of the Victoria-based tech firm ParetoLogic and also co-founder of Startup Skool. “It’s equally important to give students the opportunity to lead, collaborate, gain confidence and have fun.” Startup Skool takes place this summer in Victoria, Vancouver, Kelowna and Burnaby. Visit startupskool.com ■

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