Behind the Brand®

Knowing Your Purpose and the Evolution of Entrepreneurship in Canada with Arlene Dickinson from Venturepark

Arlene Dickinson is a legendary figure in the Canadian business community and star of the hit CBC show Dragons’ Den. Arlene’s story is an inspiration to millions of Canadians, and she continues to push the boundaries of what is possible. In this episode, Jeff Adamson and Arlene discuss what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. Arlene takes a deep dive into an entrepreneur's “why?” and explores the importance of having the right goals and motivations when starting a business.

Listen to the full episode here:

Spending Money on a Business Venture

Jeff: What's keeping you busy these days?

Arlene: I'm busy building out Venturepark, which is a business growth ecosystem to support companies and early-stage companies in the food and health, and personal care space. That's been keeping me pretty busy.

Jeff: You've spoken openly about your upbringing and some of the challenges that you faced prior to joining Venture Communications. When you think of these challenges, what stands out as formative in who you are today?

Arlene: I think growing up as [an] immigrant and [living] in poverty probably created a foundation of values and work ethic that I might not have gotten otherwise. Coming to Canada without any money and growing up without any network of support around us, no real family around us, no understanding of the culture, you have to rely on yourself a lot. You have to figure out how to fit in quickly and get yourself motivated. I think those things were probably foundational to who I am.

Jeff: You run a very successful number of ventures, and everyone says you have to spend money to make money. How do you think about frugality when it comes to things like marketing, which is quite expensive.

Arlene: Marketing is an investment, not an expense. Let's start there. I started in business in 1988, which was through a recessionary period. I bootstrapped. I think bootstrapping is undervalued in startups, that everybody thinks it's getting a lot of capital and raising a lot of money. Timing is everything about raising money, but too much money can be a death sentence to a business. It doesn't always create the right types of behaviour. It creates excess and allows people to be frivolous and not [be] as thoughtful about their spending.

Frugality helped me think differently about how to invest. Investment turned into thinking about how to invest in myself and make sure that I was able to grow the business. Money does beget money. There are no two ways about that, but to get success, you don't always need an abundance of money. You need an abundance of vision and support around you with people and be able to make a dime into a dollar. Those things will stay with you forever and your business, even when you do end up with lots of money around you.

Jeff: Even in our past, when we were building SkipTheDishes, we were a couple [of] people from the prairies, [and] no one had ever heard of food delivery. It [was] around when the iPad was first invented. When we talked to restaurants, they [were] more interested in looking at an iPad than in actual food delivery. We weren't able to raise any capital at all. We got laughed out of a lot of rooms. The constraint of not having capital forced us to be innovative. Do you find that there's more innovation in companies that have constraints put on them, or do you see that companies that raise large amounts of capital [can] take bigger risks and be freer in how they innovate?

Arlene: I think there are examples of both, and it comes back to the entrepreneur. You know that old saying, “necessity is the mother of invention,” it's still very true. You create new ways of doing things, [because] you don't have a lot of money to do it any other way. Sometimes in doing that, you find places and opportunities that others have missed because they didn't have to look. It's a little bit of both. There are businesses that have done very well because they've had the capital to support their ambitious growth. As a startup in the tech space, that capital's everything. You need a lot of capital to build the businesses up.

There's this competitive force that's on you. There's this internal pressure to be able to put value. There's shareholder pressure to try and do all these things. You've got a lot of competing interests, but I still say that raising capital at the right time is very important.

Jeff: It's a bit of a lifeline for a lot of companies. To go back to your earlier point, you have to be smart with how you're spending it, or else pretty soon, investors are going to come back saying, “What have you done with it?”

Arlene: Today, I still have to say there's a lot of companies that I know of in the market that are unicorns that [have] never been able to generate any revenue, have never been able to build technology. That's super new. We've got to be more cautious about how we think about growth.

Getting a Start in Entrepreneurship

Jeff: Most people, when they see “Arlene Dickinson,” think [of] Arlene Dickinson, the Dragon, the successful entrepreneur, bestselling author, but at 31 that wasn't really who you were. You were unemployed, divorced, and [a] mother of four. What do you think people don't understand about going from 31-year-old Arlene to the Arlene that’s sitting here in front of me?

Arlene: I think [what] they don't understand, [is] you both gain and give up along the way. Again, Jeff, you know this as an entrepreneur, there's a price you pay to be where you are. Whether that's giving up some of your family time or friends because you just don't have time for it or having to make these great decisions and choices that you never even anticipated you'd ever have to make. Trying to constantly test yourself about what you're capable of, what you will do, and what you won't do.

I would hope that much of who I am from when I was 31 is still present. I would hope that I haven't become hardened as a result of the things that have transpired over all these years in business. I would say that what people probably don't recognize is [that] you gain a lot, but you also lose a lot.

Jeff: I certainly feel that. I've got a 22-month-old at home, a wife, and a family that's spread out across the prairies, and you can't be everywhere all at once. Do you have a framework or a way that you think about decision-making when you think about your own investments that you're making with your time into your businesses? How do you go through that, that mental math?

Arlene: We all have to prioritize every day. If you don't start with a priority that says my family comes first, or, is it health, is it friendships, is it business? When you say my business comes first, you are really doing a disservice to yourself because your business hasn't got any ability to give you what you need as a human. It may help nourish you in terms of your ambition. It may help nourish you in terms of the opportunity it provides.

I personally go down the list of if any of my kids called me right now, I would pick up the phone. It took me a long time to figure out that I had to put them first. If somebody said, make a decision right now on my health, and I had to make a choice, go for exercise or work for an hour, I have to make those prioritization decisions. I'd say prioritizing and knowing what you care about, and putting them in that order as you make your choices is way more important than people think it is.

Otherwise, you're constantly going to make the choice to choose your business, because it's always going to be demanding. [It’ll always] need your time, energy, and resources. Meanwhile, all the people that aren’t asking for these things, the humans that are in our lives, are the ones that suffer as a result of us not choosing them.

Jeff: There's really a bottomless appetite that every company has. There are not enough hours in the day. There's not enough time to get everything done. You could pour everything into it and it would still want more. When you look at entrepreneurs today versus entrepreneurs maybe ten years ago, do you see a different calculus being made when they're making decisions? Do you feel like we're prioritizing health and family more nowadays?

Arlene: I think what people talk about here is they would say, “Yes, it's all about social enterprise, and people are caring more.” I think it's very true that businesses that are established today are much more in tune with what's going on in their communities and care more about giving back. Whether it's giving back through some sort of donation or whether causes are baked into who they are. The really successful entrepreneurs I see are doing exactly what I did when I started my business. Working really hard, working many hours, doing all the things you have to do to be successful. Finding that balance is much more difficult than it's perceived. There's this notion that a new type of entrepreneur is much more balanced. And I think there are a lot of lifestyle entrepreneurs out there that are, but [the] ones that are building true big businesses probably are still working too much.

Committing to Starting a Business

Jeff: It's interesting now that you have services like AWS that allow you to start a business a lot easier than it was maybe 20 years ago. The barriers to entry are a lot lower, so I think it's brought in a lot of diversity in the goals that people might have when it comes to entrepreneurship. Before, if you needed 200 grand to start a company, you're probably more committed early on. You're probably going to go full-on earlier than nowadays, where you can do it on the side. Most people are working their side hustle while working a full-time job.

Arlene: I think that's another way to burn out. We're calling it something different, but that's my point. People who are committed to doing something are probably working harder and doing more than they need to be or should be for their health. The side hustle thing is very interesting to me. I know through the pandemic, they're saying a lot of people are keeping their full-time jobs and doing something else, and I'm thinking, “Is that okay?” Like, I don't think that's okay, but you know, people are doing it.

Jeff: You want to de-risk the decision to go full time at something. There are a lot of people I think that have these dreams of doing something that they've always wanted to do and hopefully being able to make a go at it. Many people are trapped within large companies and can't escape because maybe they're making a good paycheck or it's very comfortable and stable. You made the leap to become a “partner” at Venture Communications early on, and I don't believe that Venture Communications was a household name at the time, was it?

Arlene: No, we couldn't even pay ourselves. I think the whole point is that you can say that you don't want to do all these things, and you don't want to quit your corporate job because you know [you’ll] lose [your] safety net. Entrepreneurs forever have been doing that. I had no safety net, so somebody might've said, “Why would you start that job? Why don't you go and do something else that you can get a salary?” So the risk I took was that I was going to make money by working hard and eventually be able to pay that off, but I wasn't able to even pay myself. There was debt accumulating.

I would say that it's an excuse. Jump in, don't do it as a side hustle. Give yourself the chance to make it work. If it doesn't work, go do something else. That is the human condition. Are we doing things that give us purpose, or are we just doing things that pay our bills? You'll never become an entrepreneur if you do that. I know that sounds very harsh, and I don't mean to sound disrespectful. I know there are lots of people that are.

Finding Your “Why”

Jeff: Yeah, I don't think it is Arlene. At that stage in your life, though, 99.9% out of a hundred people would have taken a safe job. They would have just gone and got whatever salary they could get. They would have just seen where that went. What was your process for making that decision, evaluating the risk at that stage? I think there are a lot of people listening who want to take that risk and want to be able to go and take that leap, but they don't know how to think about it. They don't know how to evaluate risk. How did you go through it?

Arlene: There are two questions there. The first one, and evaluating the risk, there's never been a less expensive time to start a business. Ever. If you want to start a business today, it's incredibly inexpensive. Between the internet and technology and manufacturing capabilities and all of the things that have happened in the last decade, you can start a business very inexpensively. Then you have to ask yourself, what's stopping you from starting the business? It's likely your fear of whether or not you can make a success of it. When you asked me that question, what drove me to join Venture was I didn't feel like I had any other option.

I was like, this is at least something. I can at least get going here. I can say that I've got a job and work hard. The worst thing that'll happen is that it doesn't go anywhere, and I end up with some debt. The best thing that could happen is that I might do well with it. But I had no training, no schooling, no skill sets. I didn't have a whole tonne of opportunities in front of me. So this was the door that opened. And I chose to walk through it.

Jeff: There are a lot of people who are struggling with that. I remember when people would ask, at what point did I feel like Skip was successful, and truthfully almost never. That fear of if it's going to be successful. It's like, it may never [be], but it's [about] the motivations for really getting into it. I mean, you speak to so many entrepreneurs I'd love to hear about when you think of bulletproof reasons for doing what you're doing. I remember in ‘All In,’ you were talking about how each person needs to have their bulletproof reason for doing what they're doing, but this is individual.

A lot of people I see get into entrepreneurship for the wrong reasons. I see people who want to be perceived differently in the eyes of others or people who want to get rich. This can ultimately lead to disappointment, broken relationships, [or] financial ruin. What do you think are some of the right reasons for someone to take that leap and take those risks?

Arlene: [It’s] such a great time to talk about that question because you're seeing this great resignation happening across the world. Particularly in North America, people are quitting their jobs en masse because they think they want to either start something on their own, or they've been able to save money through what's happened as a result of deep wage subsidy programs and the cost of living in the last couple of years. We haven’t been going out, so we've been able to save more money. They are quitting their jobs, and many are saying, “I want to be an entrepreneur.”

To me, the right reason to be an entrepreneur isn't about just hating your job. It's about really having a passion and a purpose to go and do something meaningful to you. It's fair, if you hate your job, you should quit your job. You should find something that you can love, but when you’re an entrepreneur, it's not about finding your passion as much as it is about finding your purpose. And I think whether you're an entrepreneur or not, that's true. It doesn't matter if you're starting a business or not.

We have to figure out what our “why” is. The best reason I can give you to be an entrepreneur is that you need to live your “why.” You have got a purpose, and that purpose is meaningful to you. If that is something that gets you out of bed every day and makes you feel like you're changing the world and yourself for the better, and you're accomplishing the things that make you feel fulfilled, then that's a good reason to be an entrepreneur. If you're doing it because it feels like it's a good lifestyle. Because, “Hey, nobody's going to tell me what to do. And I'm going to make all the money. No one else will get any”. If you're doing it for those reasons, it's highly unlikely you're going to succeed at it.

Jeff: Why is it unlikely? I don't know if that's obvious to a lot of people. Would you mind explaining a bit more about if your goal is to get rich or to be famous, why is that not going to work out well for you?

Arlene: I've always thought that making money in business is an outcome, not a goal. It's an outcome of a goal. If you're accomplishing your goal and there's capital to be gained as a result of that, then that’s a double win. If you've done something important to you and you've made money as a result of it, that's great. If you start with that notion, I'm wrong in saying that you're not going to succeed. You very well could succeed. You very well could start your business because you want to make a lot of money. And along the path, you will trample people. You will do whatever it takes to make money because that's your goal.

Your goal is money, and you're going to do everything you can to drive to that goal. You will leave a lot of wreckage in your path, and you will have money at the end of it. You will probably only have money because your friends will be gone, your family will be gone, and your life will not be great. It's not that you won't succeed, I guess. It depends on how you define success. You might build something, but it's probably a house of cards because there's no real value to it.

Jeff: There's a lot of evidence out there [that] money, ultimately in the end, isn't going to be the thing that makes you at the absolute happiest.

Arlene: No. I can say that as somebody with money. I don't want to sound hypocritical. I've lived without it. I've lived in poverty, and I've lived with money, and nobody [is] going to tell me that my life isn’t easier with money. It is. It is far easier to live with capital and wealth, but it didn't make me happy. It makes my life easier, which ultimately provides some sense of happiness, [but] it doesn't make me fulfilled. I think you just learn[ed] that, “Hey, when I didn't have money, I was happy doing small things. And when I do have money, I'm still happy doing small things”. It's that stuff that matters.

Jeff: What advice would you give people who haven't yet found their purpose and their “why”? Everyone knows that they should have it. I think everyone is hungry for it. People are searching for it. You are someone who I feel has found it but maybe didn't always have it. Was there a process that you went through that was deliberate in discovering? Is it even a discovery, or is it something that just is an uncovering over time?

Arlene: My “why” has changed over the years. It hasn't stayed the same. I think it's totally fine for your purpose in life to evolve and change depending on your circumstances. What gets me out of bed every day today is different than what got me out of bed every day ten years ago. I don't want to oversimplify it, but it really is why are you doing what you're doing? Do you understand what it's like to have the stress of having to work, pay bills, and having to take any job to pay bills?

And your “why” might simply be that “my ‘why’ is I need to provide for my family,” but you need to ask yourself why you're doing exactly what you're doing to provide for your family. It takes a lot of self-work, and people don't like to ask themselves why they do what they do. We don't. We're human. We only want to think about what's going to come next and what the future will look like. We don't want to stop and say, “how did I get here? Why do I get up every morning to do these things? What could I do?” This is hard work, and it's the heavy lifting of self-analysis that very few people want to do because it's painful.

We don't want to think about the past. We don't think about why we are where we are. We don't want to think, we just want to do it because somehow, in doing, we're living. How do you find your “why”? You have to stop and ask yourself what matters to you?

The “Why” of Venturepark

Jeff: So what's the “why” of 2021 for Arlene?

Arlene: The underlying “why” for me will always be my family. Always my family, but I'd say it’s two parts. It's number one, helping in Canada, our food and health, personal care CPG space become more of a global presence. To help businesses in those spaces grow and develop and help Canada's agricultural and health and CPG businesses, in general, the sectors to succeed.

I love tech companies, but it's either been technology or energy. We have two very big sectors, agriculture, and health, that I want to support and continue to help Canada flourish on the global stage. It's supporting our nation and supporting entrepreneurs, specifically in the food, health, and personal care space in the CPG world to succeed. I want to help our country, and I want to help people be healthy, and I want to help them eat well. I want to help them take care of themselves more effectively. I can think of no better way to do that because of my experience than investing in entrepreneurs focused on that.

Jeff: We are an agricultural powerhouse in Canada, yet a lot of commercialization or real value creation seems to occur elsewhere.

Arlene: I have a fundamental belief that no stick should leave this country without value being added to it. And we are a country that ships our commodities to other nations to turn them into products that we then buy back. That makes no sense. We have all this expertise in agriculture, all this expertise in health, we have some of the world's best ingredients. Do we want to be an ingredient supplier? Or do we want to be producers of goods and products that can help feed the globe?

Do we want to get the benefit of that last mile of commercialization? That is why I focus on the CPG space in particular because of the value. That is where the opportunity lies in our country. That is where we are not putting in enough effort. And that's the whole reason behind Venturepark.

Jeff: I'm going to get into Venturepark in a little bit, but I'm curious to know, as a Canadian, you talk a lot about your pride as someone from the prairies. What do you see as our strengths as Canadians, and what do you see as the successful ingredients in entrepreneurs from Canada?

Arlene: I think any entrepreneur has to have tenacity, persistence, and a vision, and they have to be determined with a really deep grit. In particular, in Canada, where we have, if I can touch on the negative for a minute, I know that's not what you asked, but I do feel that in Canada, we are taught not to take risks. So this nation is very risk-averse. And not only is it risk-averse as a nation, but in addition to that, we almost punish people that put their heads up too high when they are entrepreneurs. We don't reward entrepreneurs in this country to help them be all they can be.

Jeff: In Canada, we [have a] fear [of] failure that seems greater than other countries. And then I feel like there's almost maybe a little bit less forgiveness for those who don't succeed. Do you find that as well?

Arlene: Yeah, I don't know if I would call it fear as much as complacency. There's such a good social net for us. If we do not succeed, we're pretty well taken care of in this country. There are all sorts of stuff we could do better, and there are things that we need to do better, but in general, why put your neck out? We don't think about how important it is to get people to reach their personal best and [become] entrepreneurs. If you're in the [United] States and Bill Gates walks by, or Warren Buffet walks by, I could name 50 entrepreneurs. You know who they are. Everybody knows who they are.

In Canada, there are some pretty darn famous entrepreneurs that nobody knows who they are and why? It's because we don't celebrate them. We don't talk about them. We celebrate their business, potentially. If you're lucky enough to be like me and you're on television, you might get some sort of recognition for being an entrepreneur. But in general, people do not know entrepreneurs. They think of entrepreneurs as small business owners.

They don't think of them as true visionaries. Not to disparage small business owners, but there is a difference between an entrepreneur building a billion-dollar company versus somebody running a small business who wants it as a lifestyle, which is fine too, but they're different. I think we just do a crummy job, from everything from the capital provided to them to the recognition we give them to the support that we give them. All of it.

There's an opportunity to change that. We can change that. You're changing that with Neo. You're supporting these businesses and helping them grow and helping them realize what they need, and recognize who they are.

Jeff: We talk a lot about the process. Many people are high-performers in multiple different things, whether it's design and art or finance. I think what we try to focus on is the pursuit as much as the goal. We have lofty goals of reaching every Canadian and then potentially beyond that. But the way we look at entrepreneurship at Neo is that there are people we work with, small businesses and large, regardless of whether they succeed or fail, and even for us as well, it's that they're going for it. That they are going all out to the best of their ability to go and succeed. And it's that pursuit of excellence, as much as it is the actual achieving of it that we try to celebrate.

Arlene: It's the journey, not the destination. Honestly, these things have been taught to us over and over again, and they're so true. It is the pursuit. The goal is always to move. I mean, who could have predicted COVID, who could have predicted any of the things happening right now. It's what you do in that context, as you can down the road, that matters. I love what you're saying. I think that speaks highly to the culture and the values of Neo, and that's awesome.

Work-Life Balance

Jeff: When you think back to your journey, and I read this in ‘All In,’ you were talking about how [it] was freeing to you once you realize[d] that [work-life balance] doesn't exist. Can you explain to listeners what you mean by the fact that work-life balance doesn't exist?

Arlene: The notion of balance implies some equality, right? When you think about scales being in balance, you think about their equality and weight. Balance in life is very subjective. I'll use myself as an example. I love to work. I enjoy it. I'm passionate about it. I get up every day to do it. It is my “why.” I find purpose in it. If somebody said, “Hey, spend half your time knitting and half your time doing business because it's going to be better for you,” I wouldn't feel balanced. I’d feel off-balance. I'd feel that my life is out of kilter now.

I think it's very personal. You can't have somebody tell you what balance is for you. You have to find it for yourself. I think so much guilt comes with thinking that you have to give everything in equal quotas to everybody. There's a lot of stress that gets created. You know, your kids versus your work. Some days your work's going to demand more, and some days your kids are going to demand more, and you have to allow that fluidity to happen in life.

Life isn't measured [in] X hours a day doing these things. To me again, balance implies that. Do I think there is balance? I think it's different for everybody. You'd have to seek it out for yourself.

Jeff: Two people in my own life come to mind on this topic. One of them is one of my co-founders at SkipTheDishes, Chris Simair. When we would get asked about work-life balance, I liked his response because he [would say] you have one life. It doesn't always need to be a trade-off. You don't always need to be trading your life for work. You should be doing things that energize you.

Another person was brought in to consult at SkipTheDishes and do some performance coaching and is a good friend of mine. When people would ask him, what should I do after Skip? Or what should I do now? He would always just say, “Do what excites you. Do what gives you energy”. To your point about knitting, knitting might be very draining for you, but working at building companies, talking to entrepreneurs, you might be able to do that 12 hours a day. It comes down to what will give you energy versus taking energy away from you.

Arlene: Don’t let anybody else tell you what's going to give you energy. You have one life to live. I talk to entrepreneurs on a regular basis, or even young adults who will say, “Oh, my dad wants me to be a lawyer, so I'm in law school”, and I'll say, “Do you love it?” and they say, “I hate it, but it's really important to my dad.” This is where we all start by trying to please other people and doing the things that are going to make them happy. We don't find our own happiness. Eventually, we become martyrs, and life isn't enjoyable for martyrs. Martyrs end up living hard lives because they don't get to live their own life.

Jeff: You also said something I liked that [was], don't let other people tell you what should give you energy and what shouldn't. That's a tough one because a lot of people do care. What people maybe don't know about you is that you probably get told “no” a lot more than people think. They probably think everyone is saying yes to you all the time. The reality is that you're aiming for the stars. A lot of the things you're doing, your goals are bigger, and therefore getting yeses is also a lot more difficult.

I wonder when you think about your journey, when you think about other people's journey, how do you look at what you're doing and decide, “I should start listening to the people who say, I should call it quits, or I should make a change.”

Arlene: I guess I will know that when the time comes, [but] it hasn't happened yet. I listen to myself. Maybe that day will come. I can't imagine it coming. Age has been an amazing gift.

Jeff: You've raised a hundred million with District Ventures Capital. What are you looking for in companies? Is it the team? Is it the ideas? Is it the space in particular? What is top of mind for you when it comes to investing in companies right now?

Arlene: I can't understate how important the entrepreneur is, and a fit with the entrepreneur is. Philosophically, they are self-aware, they're going to take advice, that they're great communicators that have a vision, a team around them, and they know what they need to succeed. It's very much driven off of a belief in the individual, then I'd say it's really about their innovation or their product.

Have they proven product-market fit? Have they demonstrated the ability to scale [while] keeping margins in a good place? Have they demonstrated that the total addressable market is scalable? Finally, we're looking for that whole, even with the value equation, do they give back, do they care about their community? Do they understand what needs to happen to be successful? Are they interested in a partner versus just capital?

If they're looking just for capital, then we're not going to be the right fit for them. We're looking for people that really want true partners and people [who] are going to support and help their businesses scale. That's some of the things we look for.

Jeff: I've really believed that you and people like you are making a huge difference in Canada. I think it's very, very needed and I’m very grateful to you for doing that.

Arlene: It's been a real pleasure to talk to you. I feel like I could've talked to you for a few more hours. I really admire everything you're doing at Neo and who you are as a person and just your style and approach. It's been a genuine pleasure to have a conversation with you. And I feel like I got more out of it than I gave here. So thanks for that time.