Behind the Brand®

Jeff Adamson [00:00:08] Welcome to Behind the Brand presented by Neo. We take an inside look at the leaders behind today's most influential brands. I'm your host, Jeff Adamson. As co-founder of Neo Financial and SkipTheDishes, I'm fascinated by what it takes to build great companies. On this podcast, we'll learn from leaders that are reimagining, transforming, and innovating in the financial and retail industries across Canada. Let's get going!

I’m excited to welcome Peter Furnish on the podcast today, a strategy and marketing expert with three decades of experience working behind the world’s most iconic brands. Peter’s expertise has been instrumental in launching successful marketing and branding campaigns for the likes of Walt Disney Studios, Budweiser, Alexander Kieths, Virgin Mobile, HBO, and Cineplex Entertainment.

Most recently, Peter served as a member of the Starbucks Canadian Leadership Team, where he was a catalyst for innovation by developing and launching strategic partnerships with Air Canada and TD Bank, resulting in Starbucks’ first-ever “Reward Together” partners globally.

In addition to his extensive marketing knowledge and experience, Peter has a ton of hands-on expertise in the loyalty space, working on two of Canada’s most popular loyalty programs - SCENE and Starbucks Rewards.

Welcome to the show Peter!

Peter Furnish [00:01:02] Thanks for having me. Good to be in person.

Jeff [00:01:03] Tell us a little bit about your own journey. You’ve gone from Pfizer to Starbucks. What does that story look like?

Peter [00:01:10] Yeah, I, I'd love to say there was a master plan in how the pieces came together, but to go way back, you know, I, I was born and raised in Scarborough, went to high school there, went to university at Western, went to the business school, started my career in marketing, working on Advil.

Jeff [00:01:26] Marketing, Advil?

Peter [00:01:27] Yeah, marketing Advil and Chapstick. So very sexy stuff. You know, at school, the marketing path, it wasn't anything I got from my parents. My dad had worked at the same company for 37 years and was an operator. In school, I had some just amazing professors that inspired me. And I loved the idea of the marketer at the time, kind of being the hub for the business or the wheel. So driving sales, influencing consumers, working with operators, bringing product to market, and that really appealed to me. Longer term, you know, with the goal of running a business or being a general manager to get that breadth of experience and that's what led me to that first job working on Chapstick and Advil. I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty slow moving. It's a highly regulated business. You're outta school, you're young, you're kind of impatient.

Jeff [00:02:11] I remember back when I was thinking about my first jobs as well. Like the speed at which a company moves, do you think that went into your equation of thinking through like who you wanna work for? Or was it like, I wanna get the badge of this company on my resume?

Peter [00:02:24] Yeah, it was more the latter at the time, to be honest, to get the experience, to get the, almost the certification, I think if I would put it another way.

Jeff [00:02:31] Saying, “Oh, Pfizer hired me.” So you obviously aren't a complete knuckle dragger.

Peter [00:02:35] [Laughing] Yeah, and to get that training and to get that practical experience, that's, you know, when you're in school, you learn a lot of it, sort of theoretically.

Jeff [00:02:42] Yeah.

Peter [00:02:43] You're the CEO of Boeing. You are the president of General Motors. You know, shifting and working on Chapstick is a big swing from that going through. So, you know, definitely humbling. But at the same time, like the business that we worked on, which is very disciplined, learned a lot about writing, learned a lot about analysis, and, and had just amazing people. And that would be a thread I would draw through all of my experiences was just trying to get near people that I thought were smarter than I was and learn from them.

But at the same time, like it was pretty slow moving. And so I started to explore opportunities and I was working out at the gym and I was spotting weights for someone and they told me about a job they'd interviewed for at Walt Disney. And so I called up, the recruiter asked him to send me through, and he wouldn't do it because I didn't have experience in, sort of children's category or a similar product. And so I just went down to their office and knocked on the door. And kind of demanded an interview, was chosen as one of the finalists, was sent to California.

Jeff [00:03:33] Does that work nowadays though? Like, because I mean, you've probably hired hundreds of people in your career, like…

Peter [00:03:40] Sure.

Jeff [00:03:41] Like if someone showed up at your door and said, “Hey, I wanna work for you,” would you be like, “Are you stalking me?” or like, “Get outta the office,” or “How'd you get by security?”

Peter [00:03:48] [Laughing] Yeah.

Jeff [00:03:49] Does that work? Does that work in 2023? Or is that a 10, 20 years ago type way of operating?

Peter [00:03:53] No, I think if it's done appropriately. I think, you know, one of the threads we can talk about certainly is just the power of building your network and building those connections, building them, not just for now, but for the future as well. And you know, I still stay in touch and connect with students, connect with friends of my sons, and they're, they're very in the moment. And so as you introduce or talk about opportunities, their reaction is, well, you know, “Is there a job right now?”

Jeff [00:04:14] Mm-hmm.

Peter [00:04:15] And my reaction is “No, but there might be in 10 years, there might be in 5 years.” Like, you never know. And, and we're a country of 40 million people, but it's a pretty small world. And I've learned in my experience, you come across the same people, you're on the same paths, you're on similar journeys. So I'd say just maintaining that network and maintaining that connection can also give you license to do that later in your career.

Jeff [00:04:34] So true.

Peter [00:04:35] But at that junior stage, I'd say it was probably a bit unusual. But it was amazing and then I went down to Los Angeles. I had 13 interviews down there. Had a very unusual experience where I was hosted for dinner with the other candidate.

Jeff [00:04:46] Hmm.

Peter [00:04:47] So I had dinner with the other candidate for the role, and we're still great friends today.

Jeff [00:04:51] Oh really?

Peter [00:04:51] And yeah, absolutely. We stayed in touch, we took a cab to the airport together. And I ended up getting the job and it was to launch Disney's Interactive Business in Canada, which was video game consoles. And that was my first experience reporting into US leadership, reporting into sort of a large multinational. But at the same time working in a business that had a very strong, you know, founder background in Walt Disney.

And it was just about the time there was a leader of the business named Michael Eisner, who was transforming Disney. The Lion King had just come out. Toy Story had just come out, which I'm kind of dating myself with that. But it was a very exciting time at the business because there was a lot of transformation happening and there was a creative surge in the business, sort of inspired by Walt.

During my time there, I had a chance to host Walt's daughter. I met her at a session in Santa Monica, she was doing a presentation on her dad, and I'd done some research beforehand and went up and introduced myself. And it turned out Walt had lived in Goderich, Ontario for two years.

Jeff [00:05:45] What?

Peter [00:05:46] When he was really young. So his father had kind of passed through…

Jeff [00:05:47] Oh so he’s basically Canadian!

Peter [00:05:48] That was my pitch and I said, “Your dad spent some time in Goderich, Ontario. That's just outside Toronto!” Which is a bit of a lie, it was four hours outside, but regardless…

Jeff [00:05:57] stretching it

Peter [00:05:58] And invited her up to visit. And she very politely took my number and was great. Her husband was the CEO before Michael Eisner.

Jeff [00:06:05] Okay.

Peter [00:06:06] As well. So she was connected to the company, you know, owned a significant portion of the stock. And so she felt very invested in the business and Eisner was taking it in a different direction than her husband had, but they were invested in the success of it and the success of her father's legacy.

And so about four months later, I was sitting in my office and my call display popped up and it said ‘D. Disney’ on it. And I picked up the phone and she offered to come to Toronto for four days. And we hosted her, did press interviews. We were launching a product about her father's story. And then subsequently she invited, I was on a trip to California to say, if you're ever in California, look me up. So I did that and had a chance to visit the home where she grew up with her dad and there were, you know, photos on the mantelpiece of Walt and her. She talked about the first time he brought Mary Poppins home and, and said “This would make a great movie.”

And it was so inspiring to be able to connect and, and, you know, Walt had passed away years before, but to connect with someone that was there and was an influence of, of what had happened and had really inspired that storytelling and that creative spark.

Jeff [00:07:05] How old was he when he started Disney? Because you know like there's that story about how he got rejected by everyone and he couldn't get hired and then… But did he have children at that time too? Or was that pre-kids?

Peter [00:07:14] That was pre-kids.

Jeff [00:07:15] Okay.

Peter [00:07:16] Yeah, pre-kids. So she didn't remember that time. Her time was sort of more in the fifties, sixties and seventies. But it was your dad. I'm like, that was the cool part. It was the way you would talk about your dad or I would talk about my dad, like…

Jeff [00:07:26] Except for it's Walt Disney.

Peter [00:07:28] It was Walt Disney. And I was like, wow, your dad's name is on my company credit card. Like that's so cool! But it was so personal, very motivating and just very inspiring for me to have that personal connection.

Peter [00:07:36] I think I was reading something about succession and you know, passing down businesses to your children. Someone had made the comparison, it's like choosing the 2050 Olympic team based on the people who competed in the 2016 games. The odds of them also having the same drive, the same passion, the same genetics and talent and all that, those things is very, very small, but it happens a lot. And so like when you think about your relationship and your experience with his daughter, was that there? Or was it her just being like, “Hey, I'm kind of, this is my inheritance, or…”

Peter [00:08:10] Yeah. Not having run the studio, my observation would've been that, you know, the business gets so big, it gets so complicated, the landscape changes so much that it's really dependent on that sibling's ability to adapt and grow and develop. And you are growing up in a different world. Like they were extremely wealthy, they were well-traveled, but the business was enormous at that time.

And I think what Michael Eisner did, and then Bob Iger did subsequently was put the pieces together in a way that, you know, just brought so much synergy to the business. And you know, later Bob Iger purchased Pixar and purchased Marvel and Star Wars and brought all those properties together for what would be a bargain today. Just my observation in that specific case was the business had just almost outgrown the family.

Jeff [00:08:51] Yeah.

Peter [00:08:52] In some respects she had an uncle that was still involved in the business for Disney.

Jeff [00:08:55] Okay.

Peter [00:08:56] I think I sent you through one of the pictures of that. So he was involved in the animation side. But I think for consumers, when we would talk to consumers, when we would talk to customers that went to movies and we talked to customers that bought video, that bought products, that connection with the founder, they would still talk about Wonderful World of Disney, which is a TV show that was on Sunday night and Walt would introduce. It, that hadn't been on TV for 30 years at the time, but they still remembered it. They still valued it. So having that connection with the founder was so important for the customer.

So as a marketer, you know, that's something you could leverage. That's something you could, you don't wanna rely on it, you wanna be relevant, you wanna be contemporary. At the same time, it brings like, a certain sense of authenticity.

Jeff [00:09:34] Did you tap into that? Like you're like, “Hey, I've now have a bit of a line here to kind of the direct feed of the story of Disney and that authenticity.” Were you able to weave that into some of the marketing that you were doing for the launch of this new product line?

Peter [00:09:46] Eventually. Our first priority, to be frank, was getting distribution. The product that they were producing, the game was amazing. They had theatrical talent doing voices. The animation was first class. You couldn't find it anywhere. So this is when you would go and buy games in Walmart and buy games in Best Buy.

Jeff [00:10:03] Like what, what platform was it on?

Peter [00:10:04] It was like Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis.

Jeff [00:10:06] Okay.

Peter [00:10:07] Early Sony PlayStation, PC gaming.

Jeff [00:10:10] Okay.

Peter [00:10:11] Uh, as well. And I, I focused on getting distribution, to be honest. Like that was the need of the business and that was my objective need. There was a very sexy side of the business that you could easily kind of get caught up in the result was by the second year mark, we had full sections in our stores with 40 different facings of product.

Jeff [00:10:28] These are Disney stores or like Best Buy?

Peter [00:10:29] These were, these were just mass stores, like a Walmart.

Jeff [00:10:31] Okay.

Peter [00:10:32] The US had one shelf with just a few products, so they did not have the same focus on distribution. My point of view is like I can't make the product any better. I can't add any value there, but what I can do is put it in front of customers and make that connection and make it available for them.

Jeff [00:10:45] How much did you have to layer in? Cause the distributors are always gonna say “Well, we don't wanna put stuff in front of customers unless we know that they want it. So how much are you spending on marketing?” So how, how did you balance out, like creating the demand on the marketing side and then also getting the distribution set up? We had two

Peter [00:10:57] We had two benefits at the time, and one was the brand and the properties were just so strong. So you had the Lion King, which was the…

Jeff [00:11:03] It's a bit of a household name, Disney.

Peter [00:11:04] [Laughing] Top selling movie!

Jeff [00:11:05] People know about it.

Peter [00:11:06] I'm sure it's in your household or you're streaming at a Disney Plus. And, and so you had properties that were just, everyone wanted.

Jeff [00:11:11] There's kind of built in demand already.

Peter [00:11:14] Huge advantage. And you know, this was prior to, to really strong video game branding. I think EA done some great work,

Jeff [00:11:18] Was it like on the outside looking in, you're always like, oh yeah, you walk up to Best Buy, and you're like, okay, we're gonna take over half of your store. And they say yes, and you're done because you're Disney. It's not always the case, right? Like even if you are a big name. I don't know if sometimes they'll see that.

Peter [00:11:30] Yeah.

Jeff [00:11:31] Or, or they'll appreciate it or value it. Like did you have to really like convince them that, hey, this is why it's so important for you guys to kind of dedicate a large amount of your store to us?

Peter [00:11:41] Yeah. At the time we had, we were starting to see the synergy benefits of advertising the product on the front of video, you know, trailers and pre-roll. We were doing promotions with McDonald's. So there'd be, you know, a Lion King Happy Meal that would talk about the interactive product, that would talk about the gaming product.

So what we would present in front of them is just the amount of media and support that the consumer would be seeing. The platforms were growing at the time. I think, for customers at that time that were entering the category and were new. You know, this is when games are like 70, 80, $90 for a console game. It also was a safe purchase. It was a high quality purchase. And so the, the, in looking at it, the priority was just to get it in front of them.

Jeff [00:12:18] Mm-hmm.

Peter [00:12:19] Let all the synergy effects of the business and consumer products on theme parks, on the studio, bring the elements together. And then we eventually shifted into more media events and once we had that distribution set, and were really able to accelerate the business.

Jeff [00:12:33] Interesting. So you didn't stop at Disney. How did you make that decision? That you're like, all right, my time at Disney is now over and I want something different?

Peter [00:12:41] At the end of my time at Disney, the next step would've really been to go to the studio, in California, which I had had several discussions about. At the time my wife was graduating from law school and she wanted to practice here in Canada. That was the business case for that. Although we talked about moving we decided to stay. And literally the day we made the decision, I had a call from a friend in my network about a role at Labatt at the brewery, and it was to work on the Budweiser brand.

At the time, the Budweiser brand was the number three brand in the country. It was lagging behind Molsen Canadian and Labatt Blue. It was licensed by Labatt from Anheuser-Busch in the US. They had a 100 year agreement to license the brand and they were in year four. So it was to work on this brand that was growing, that was amazing. Had a highly complex relationship with Anheuser-Busch. They had veto power over all our marketing activity.

Jeff [00:13:31] Mm-hmm, lovely.

Peter [00:13:32] But they couldn't dictate our marketing activities.

Jeff [00:13:33] Just block it.

Peter [00:13:34] You were constantly in sort of this, it really, it had you on your toes. You were constantly defending your business, defending your strategy, defending your objective.

Jeff [00:13:40] I’m starting to appreciate how much marketers are like running backs, you know what I mean? Like…

Peter [00:13:45] Yeah.

Jeff [00:13:46] Because there's all these blockers. People try to tackle you all the time, like…

Peter [00:13:49] There's a lot of stakeholders

Jeff [00:13:51] And so you'll need someone to like, “Hey, I need you to like block for me in order for me to get through, but there's another guy over here that I'm, I need to get by.” Like there's constant barriers…

Peter [00:11:57] A hundred percent.

Jeff [00:11:58] That you're trying to negotiate all the time.

Peter [00:14:00] And Budweiser at, at the time, was strong in each region of the country. So the brand launched here in Alberta. It at the time was about 25 years old. It had most recently launched in Quebec and Ontario. So the brand was at different life stages across the country and was a very different challenge than other brands in the category.

So if you worked on Kokanee, you just worked on, focused on BC and the West. If you worked on the Labatt Blue, you focused on Ontario. If you were on Molson Dry or Molson Export, you focused on Quebec. If you were in the Maritimes, you focused on Alexander Keith’s. Budweiser was strong in every region.

So you had that complexity of sort of dealing with the brand at different life stages. You had this very large partner on the other side of the table who brought amazing resources to the business, but at the same time you had to justify your positioning. And then we operated within a portfolio of brands where we had to occupy a certain spot on our consumer segmentation.

It was strategically, it was a huge challenge. And, and at the time, Budweiser was in the category, it was the masculine brand. And the definition of masculinity was what the big challenge was. Because for some consumers, the masculine representation would be the rodeo rider, right? And we sponsor rodeo here in Alberta. In Quebec, it was the person going out to a nightclub and, and sort of more urban.

Yeah, it was, it was amazing. And then you had partnerships with, we were the largest sponsor of the National Football League outside the United States. And then you had all the Anheuser-Busch sponsorships with Formula 1 and NBA and Olympics. So it was just hugely complex to put together.

The story I always tell that I'm most proud of though, is that there were so many opportunities to screw it up, and we didn't do that. We kept the brand growing. We kept it on its upward trajectory. We passed Labatt Blue, we passed Molson Canadian. We became the largest brand in the country, and we did it staying true to our plans, true to our customer, and really fought off all those forces that you talked about.

Jeff [00:15:53] How do you balance out like, and you, you're no longer there anymore, so maybe you can speak more freely to this, but I've always wondered about people who work for, I'll call them like sin brands in some ways, where they're like alcohol or vaping or wine companies. Marijuana, cannabis now.

Because I always feel like having a strong purpose is really important and like getting outta bed and making Budweiser number one, is that just like something that's competitive within you where you're just like, “Hey, I want to be number one”? Or where you're like, “Hey, the world is a better place if Budweiser's number one versus Molson.”

Peter [00:16:24] Yeah. I'd say at the time it was the competitive juices.

Peter [00:16:26] Yeah.

Peter [00:16:27] Wanting to keep growing it, wanting to keep accelerating. We had responsible use messaging as part of our strategy. We had responsible use guidelines as part of, you know, our protocols at Labatt, so all of those pieces were definitely in place. But at the same time, at that stage in my career, the opportunity to drive that brand, the opportunity to deliver creatively. The brand gave you license to be quite innovative and quite aggressive in terms of what you delivered. You had the dollars to do it and yet it was highly competitive. We kept growing and growing and, and stayed consistent and as I said, it would've been so easy to veer off course.

Jeff [00:17:01] Yeah.

Peter [00:17:02] And go in another direction but we stayed true to ourselves. And, and Labatt at the time as well was, this was prior to it being purchased. At the time, it still, you could hear the echoes of John Labatt. The values that he had were clear in the business. We had this fantastic pub in our office at the time, and everyone had a stein up on the wall.

And when you started, you would get a stein, you'd receive it, it would have your name on it, and then you'd recite a little saying related to John Labatt. And as you went through your career and had accomplishments, you would put them on your stein.

Jeff [00:17:32] Oh, really?

Peter [00:17:33] Everything that you did. So it was on the wall or as you know, two or 300 steins, your name on it, your accomplishments. And then when you left the business, you were ‘steined out’. And everyone came in and acknowledged you, you had another little saying about John Labatt and they gave you your stein as a keepsake and talked about everything you accomplished on your business.

Jeff [00:17:49] That's so cool!

Peter [00:17:51] And it was an amazing time. And we came together once a week as a group, we shared our accomplishments, we shared our failures as well. It was the first business I worked in where we talked about what we didn't do right, as well and celebrated that, which I think is really important cuz you get learning out of that.

Jeff [00:18:04] How do you do that in a way though, you know, obviously you know that by focusing on things that you're not doing well, you need to recognize the things that you aren't doing well to, in order to know what you need to be doing better. How do you prevent people from kind of getting all down about it? Because you, you need to be talking about it like, “Hey, this is what we didn't do well”? And cuz sometimes I feel like the things that you do well are readily apparent because you're, if you're succeeding and you're winning, it's like, okay, well we know why we…

Peter [00:18:25] It’s on the stein.

Jeff [00:18:26] And everyone like, yeah, exactly [laughing]. Maybe we should get steins around here, that'd be awesome. But like, how do you do it in a, in a way that is more, you know, healthy for culture?

Peter [00:18:34] Yeah.

Jeff [00:18:35] As opposed to getting negative about focusing on the failures too much.

Peter [00:18:38] Yeah. I'd say two things. I'd say one is, if you focus on the learning and the application of what you did, I think that's really important. Failing at the same thing twice is a bit more of an issue where you need to raise that. But if you focus on what you learned, how you're applying it to your business going forward, how it makes you better. I just have found, has been incredibly motivating.

The other thing I would say too is it's important to celebrate decisions where you decided not to do something, that was maybe a great idea. So products you thought about launching that you decided not to launch and in hindsight that was a great decision. That doesn't show up on your year end performance review.

Jeff [00:19:11] Yeah, it’s true.

Peter [00:19:12] That doesn't show up on your bonus, that you avoided a potential catastrophe by doing something. So, and in that category again, there was, you had huge resources, you had huge dollars. It would've been so easy to put in an amber Budweiser or a different type of Alexander Keith’s and to proliferate. We would fight back those suggestions all the time.

Jeff [00:19:30] Yeah.

Peter [00:19:31] And as I said, it doesn't show up on your year end performance review. We would celebrate that as well.

Jeff [00:19:34] What's the worst Budweiser idea that you ever came across?

Peter [00:19:38] They were usually ideas that involved the Clydesdales. Everyone would ask me, they assume we just had a stable out back of the office, and we could go and tap the Clydesdales. And could you grab the Clydesdales and, and bring them out? [Laughing] And yeah, we had always broke people's hearts when we told them that we didn't have any Clydesdales in Canada. We would bring 'em up for Stampede. We would bring them up from their stables, there are different spots in the US where we'd have them and we could access them, bring them…

Jeff [00:19:59] They actually brought them here all the way from the US?

Peter [00:20:01] Oh yeah!

Jeff [00:20:02] For the Stampede?

Peter [00:20:03] Every year.

Jeff [00:20:04] Do they still do that?

Peter [00:20:05] I don't know if they still do that or not. It was a huge attraction. You know, back to the founder-inspired discussion, you know, we also had August Busch’s son, August Busch IV. Who was engaged in the business, who we would present to every year. His father, August Busch III, or ‘The Chief’ as they called him, he was the Logan Roy of Succession, I would kind of put it. He was the legacy. He was the person that had been around and built the business. And August Busch IV was slowly becoming more and more engaged in the business and he had a real gift for marketing and advertising. And so as a result, was engaged in our side of the business and [it] was interesting to watch the relationship between the two of them.

The one thing they were totally aligned on was the quality of the product and the standards we were held to. We used to throw out batches of beer because they didn't meet quality and taste standards. We would send batches of Budweiser down to St. Louis from every batch we brewed. They would have tasters taste them aAnd occasionally we'd have to throw some out. So they were also a force and a presence in the business as well.

Jeff [00:20:58] After Labatt, Virgin?

Peter [00:21:00] Yes.

Jeff [00:21:01] Or was there, was there a pit stop in between?

Peter [00:21:02] Yeah, no, it was, Labatt was amazing. And again, it was another connection. Virgin Mobile was launching in Canada. It was a joint venture between Bell and Richard Branson. Sir Richard Branson, I guess I should say. It was to launch a challenger in the wireless category, what was called an MVNO at the time, a mobile virtual network operator, which essentially meant we bought airtime from Bell and resold it.

Jeff [00:21:24] Mm-hmm.

Peter [00:21:25] You know, your image of Virgin and your image of Bell is that you would go in and have all of this support and playbook behind the business. The reality was that we were set up as a completely separate entity. We, the CEO of the business intentionally hired team members who didn't have wireless backgrounds. And we had this binder from Virgin that sort of talked a bit about the brand and that was kind of it.

And I was the 12th employee when we started and focused on, at that time you do… Probably, you were probably the same when you started Skip or when you started here. You literally do everything. You're like the Swiss Army Knife in the business, so you're choosing handsets, you're involved in rate plans. I'm sure you went through the same experience.

Jeff [00:22:00] Yeah, and I think that it's interesting that he chose non-wireless people or non-telecom people, because I think it's really underestimated how much unlearning you have to do when you go to something that's, it may be in the same industry, but it's at a totally different phase maybe. Or you can go to a different industry, same phase. So there's very unexpected things that might be helpful and unexpected things that have no application at all.

Peter [00:22:22] Yeah.

Jeff [00:22:23] It's hard on the ego. Because like if you're like a telecom executive and you come in and you're like, “All right, we're just gonna open up our 40 million marketing budget here, and we're gonna go into the agency, we're gonna buy up everything and do this like $10 million activation. We'll get Justin Bieber here.” And then you're like, “Oh, umm, we actually have zero marketing budget.”

Peter [00:22:41] That's right.

Jeff [00:22:42] So how, what was that like for you coming from two totally different industries? I mean, if you go, if you count Pfizer, Disney, and then Labatt.

Peter [00:22:51] Different categories, for sure.

Jeff [00:22:53] Different categories. What did you find that was helpful from those industries, in telecom? And then what was not helpful at all that you maybe thought what would've been?

Peter [00:23:02] What was not helpful was the structure. And as you say, the unlearning and the ability and the need to move quickly as we started in the business at Virgin, you're right, we didn't have the resources, we didn't have the budget. We had an amazing brand. We had an amazing brand that gave us license to be unorthodox and do different things.

That was how we pitched ourselves because there was no way you could outspend three huge carriers. They've got so much money. It's really important when you’re in that position as well, to be clearly differentiated, explain to the customer why you're different. And I, I look back in hindsight too. Make sure you don't position yourself to the customer by describing what you're not. And so for example, we initially came outta the gate talking about the fact that we didn't have certain fees and we didn't have at the time, there was a service fee, a monthly service fee in your bill. And those types of things, large incumbents can match instantly, so you have to differentiate.

And so the brand was where we went. And where that manifests itself started with the in-store experience. We had our teams that cover the stores, we thought of it as a theatrical visit, a character. So this was leveraging kind of the Disney experience and some experience at Labatt that rather than having the sales rep come in and talk about the product, we branded our, our in-store team as Mobile Mavericks. And we put them in Lululemon and we made the visit theatrical and entertaining and informative as opposed to at the time, what was the more sort of conventional approach coming in.

So we differed there, we differed on how you activated the phone. And then our advertising and the way we position ourselves to the customer was very fun, very irreverent. And then you had Richard Branson who would come in once or twice a year and would quite literally do anything. One time he kite surfed through Squamish Bay to launch a promotion. He crushed three cars with a monster truck in Dundas Square in Toronto. He was not involved in the business whatsoever, but to promote the business, if you needed to bring him in, he was there. And you know, his belief was, you hear his hierarchy, happy employees, happy customers, happy investors. And he lived up to that.

He would come in the office and he would be laser focused on the employees, on the team. Would encourage us to make mistakes, would encourage us to be bold, would encourage us to try things. That was really celebrated, but you had to do it quickly. And as I said earlier, if you made the same mistake twice, that wasn't that great.

Jeff [00:25:15] How did he like, cause I've read his book. I think it's ‘Losing My Virginity’.

Peter [00:25:17] Yeah.

Jeff [00:25:18] That's, that's the book?

Peter [00:25:19] There’s ‘Screw It, Let's Do It’, is his other one.

Jeff [00:25:20] Okay. And, I was struck by like, how little he knows about running a business, but then also how much he knows about running a business at the same time, like understanding relationships and going the extra mile. What would you attribute his success to? Like, no, having worked inside of his companies and having met him, what do you think that is?

Peter [00:25:36] He's relentless. He will do anything to promote his business. One thing I was super impressed with was the team that he had assembled around him at Virgin Management. Very savvy.

Jeff [00:25:46] Yeah.

Peter [00:25:47] Very sophisticated.

Jeff [00:25:48] So, good team.

Peter [00:25:49] He had made that leap to say, okay, I need to bring in people around me to support that. I'm still kind of the living icon of the brand. I live at the brand. I have an island in the Caribbean. I fly balloons over the Atlantic. I take speed boats across the Atlantic. He'd done some outrageous things with Virgin Atlantic on, on the airline.

He, I would say it was that, that recognition to bring in and bring the support, around it. And I, I would also say that their, from the other business that I met, that their hiring was terrific. Their leaders for their business that they picked were in the same mold and sort of had that balance of experience, but also the ability to be agile and be aggressive and be competitive and do things that were a little bit outta the ordinary.

Jeff [00:26:27] It's super underestimated, the team aspect. As you're thinking about your career, I think a lot of people think of it as like this solo journey.

Peter [00:26:32] Oh yeah.

Jeff [00:26:33] I don't know if anyone really builds a career by themselves.

Peter [00:26:36] A hundred percent. I, and the reality is, I mean everything even I talk about [with] you today and I'm sure your other guests, like all of that work’s a product.

Jeff [00:26:42] Yeah.

Peter [00:26:43] Of a whole constellation of people that are around you that bring it together. How you bring that out, how you pull it together.

Jeff [00:26:49] And the people who came before you too.

Peter [00:26:50] Totally. You stand on the shoulders of their work and what they've accomplished. And so what Richard had accomplished and we were gifted this amazing brand.

Jeff [00:26:57] Yeah.

Peter [00:26:58] We were gifted his participation in the business, and he was an investor in it for sure. It really gave us license to do things that carriers weren't doing at the time.

Jeff [00:27:05] Yeah.

Peter [00:27:06] And I loved your discussion when you had the founder from TEN SPOT on cuz she talked about some of her original products that they launched and some of the irreverent names and…

Jeff [00:27:13] Yeah.

Peter [00:27:14] I just love that cuz it's like you create something and you just do it. Where our competition really couldn't follow in that space.

Peter [00:27:19] Yeah.

Peter [00:27:20] And we had one great example that I shared with you where we visited one of our, Best Buy had a conference for their sales reps and we were trying to get their attention and get on their radar and they would charge for space, they would charge for time. And we were thinking like, how do we get on their radar? And how do we make an impact?

And so we decided to go into the hotel the night before the event and we reprinted the cover page of the Globe Mail. And we went and wrapped every newspaper in the hotel with a cover, a new cover of the Globe of Mail that talked about stories, all about Virgin Mobile, our new rate plan, our new handsets. Cuz we didn't know what rooms people were in. So we did every single room at the hotel and they woke up and we're like, “Oh my God, this is incredible.” We were the talk of the show. And spent nothing doing it, which was amazing. You have to find another way when you don't have those resources.

Jeff [00:28:04] Yeah.

Peter [00:28:05] But we had this great brand, we found ways to do it, and there's a million stories like that from the Virgin Mobile days that made it so much fun.

Jeff [00:28:13] Yeah, it's interesting like, constraints breed innovation. It's really underestimated. Because people are always seeking to kind of get out of constraint and get into abundance.

Peter [00:28:23] Yeah.

Jeff [00:28:23] But then when you get into abundance, it's actually like you're less creative.

Peter [00:28:26] Totally.

Jeff [00:28:27] At least for me. But like, when I think about the most creative times in our career, building out Skip or building out Neo, it's like where you're like, “All right, we have to figure this out, and we have a week or else the company goes bankrupt or…

Peter [00:28:38] Can't make the payroll.

Jeff [00:28:39] Yeah. Or like, “Hey, we can't do all these things cuz we don't have the money to do that.” Or you don't have this amazing designer to go and do something. The original menus at Skip that were programmed were basically our friends in the basement and we paid them with Lucky Lager. Sorry, sorry, it's not Budweiser, but like obviously because like all you're trying to do is get good enough to get you to the next thing and just kind of survive a little bit longer. Cuz the people who see the product today, like even if you look at Virgin or Labatt or Disney, If people watch Disney cartoons from the thirties or forties, like they're not really spectacular to watch.

Peter [00:29:10] No, it's very different.

Jeff [00:29:11] But when you look at them today, then you're like, “Oh my God. Like, this is absolutely incredible. The story is so captivating.”

Peter [00:29:16] The bar is so high too.

Jeff [00:29:18] Yeah. And, but like they didn't start there. Like it was layered up on top of itself and it took like basically acting in a way that they were gonna succeed or fail and go bankrupt and they were able to kind of get to success, but there's so many moments in those companies’ histories where they probably could have failed.

Peter [00:29:35] Yeah, I would say…

Jeff [00:29:36] Well, Virgin for sure. I know this…

Peter [00:29:37] To, to your question about what worked and what didn't. You know, coming from a business where you're doing three year strat plans and “we'll have to come and talk strategy and where you're gonna take your brand”. The reality was you had 365 days each year to make your results. And we looked at the results every morning at 9:57, the report came in. I [was] talking to a friend about it, we still remember that. And if you miss that day, You're behind, it's the next day. Just that sense of urgency, that sense of, of survival.

And the scarcity absolutely did breed creativity. It took us and the brand let us do it. It took us into places that we never would've done. You kind of have to suspend some of your belief and some of your training…

Jeff [00:30:11] Tons! All the time.

Peter [00:30:12] To go and do that. And just do it. And if it doesn't work, then you try something else. And cuz we made some huge errors too, and big mistakes and signed some bad deals. And, but the reality is you're sort of trending in the right direction and growing the business.

Jeff [00:30:24] Well, you don't have someone from the founding team at Bell who is like, “Oh yeah, we tried these things and then none of them work, so like, just do this stuff that works.

Peter [00:30:32] Right. Or they say they've tried that before. “We've tried that before and that didn't work.”

Jeff [00:30:34] Yeah.

Peter [00:30:35] In the last eight years. And, and you have to just suspend yourself and say, no, what is it? And, and be really in touch with your customer. We would have customers [come] into our office and sit at tables like the one we're sitting at now. And, and host pizza parties with them and meet them just kind of on an informal basis just to hear in real time what they, how they were feeling about the service, how they felt about customer service. We would get on headsets and listen to customer care calls. We call it y-jacking, at the time. You'd put a little headset on and listen…

Jeff [00:31:00] Just to hear what customers are saying?

Peter [00:31:02] Just to hear what they were saying. And then we would support the call center employees and the customer facing employees on, Christmas day was a huge day for phone activations and we would bake cookies and bring them in on Christmas day for the members of the team in that first year. And it was really, it was an amazing culture. Everyone had a sense of humility about what they were building. And you know, our first day we launched, we had 17 activations.

Jeff [00:31:22] Oof!

Peter [00:31:23] That was it. 17. And so months of work, all the brand, all this big promise and all this distribution we built, the report came and you're like, wow, 17.

Jeff [00:31:23] That is gut wrenching, hey?

Peter [00:31:33] And uh, where do we go from here?

Jeff [00:31:34] That's a pit in the stomach.

Peter [00:31:36] And the idea of, you know, doing thousands a day just seemed preposterous. But you get there, you keep pushing, you keep going. Ultimately, we launched into the postpaid space where you have contracts.

Jeff [00:31:48] Yeah.

Peter [00:31:49] Built around stores. We launched, you know, better devices.

Jeff [00:31:51] At Neo we're, we're very much positioned against the, the big five.

Peter [00:31:54] Yeah.

Jeff [00:31:55] It's very similar to telecom and banking in Canada. How did you position Virgin relative to the big telecoms because that’s a… Telecoms almost seem like extensions from, of the government. And so you're going up against these massive companies, but it's also kind of commoditized in some ways where you're like, if you were to ask people on the street like,” Hey, what's the difference between Rogers, Bell, and Telus?” What would they tell you?

Peter [00:32:15] It’s hard, it's hard. The networks are, let's face it, they are, they're great.

Jeff [00:32:18] Well, they all claim to have the fastest network though.

Peter [00:32:19] They all [have] the fastest network, apparently. They all have the same phones, the same handsets.

Jeff [00:32:25] Yes.

Peter [00:32:26] You walk through the mall, pretty hard pressed to see a difference between any of them…

Jeff [00:32:31] Different color.

Peter [00:32:32] That’s material. Or a rate plan that lasts for more than three hours before it's matched next door, they're just so agile and could match. And we were arriving, it's funny you know, even at that time we were observing that homogenizing and banking I think, is very similar now. I think it's very tough to differentiate between the product. I think it's really hard for new Canadians, young Canadians, like it's daunting.

Jeff [00:32:52] Especially given that it is kind of a commoditized product, like I think people care more about what phone they have, not what carrier they have.

Peter [00:33:06] Yeah, we…

Jeff [00:33:07] When it comes to the carrier, they're just like, gimme the lowest price. That's all I care about. And as it's starting up, like you can't just be the lowest price because they can…

Peter [00:33:13] They could beat that in a second.

Jeff [00:33:14] Exactly. Like, to your point, like don't do things that they could also just do easily. So what was your plan to grow market share?

Peter [00:33:21] We did two things and the first was we focused on the relationship with the member, [which] is what we called it. And it was the time we launched the strategy and we were the first Virgin Mobile to do this about offering additional benefits that met the needs of the target group. We're getting, we had a very young customer and so relationships at the time with Cineplex, relationships at the time with Subway, were actually quite meaningful to our members and quite material. We also really leaned into music and bringing members to events. We had a series of concerts across the country. We really tried to connect with our customer with the activity we were doing on the brand and make some of these events accessible.

I'd say that was the first piece. And then the second piece was just being really consistent in our customer care and having award-winning customer care. And at the time, JD Power was the big measurement for customer care, and we won that every single year. Maybe a low bar in the category at the time that we came in, and that was a big part of our messaging and sort of gave us that credibility. At the same time, you know, we brought the experience to life and made it feel very authentic for the customer.
Our big challenge at the time was actually getting some of the devices and getting access from the manufacturers.

Jeff [00:34:27] Yeah.

Peter [00:34:28] Who thought, you know, we were kind of small. We didn't meet minimum order quantities. And so it was a challenge. We would fly to phone shows and just show up at their booth and say, “Hey, we're here and can we buy some, some of your phones?” And eventually the business, Richard sold the business, Bell bought out the other half, and what they brought to the table was access to those devices. It was actually, in hindsight, it was exactly what the business needed.

Peter [00:34:53] Mm-hmm.

Peter [00:34:54] To take it to the next level. We had a really healthy basis of subscribers, we were growing it. But there were just certain parts that we hadn't quite crossed that threshold of being able to offer the customer what they wanted and Bell brought that to the table.

Jeff [00:35:06] Virgin did well, I remember, I think you mentioned that you guys kind of outperformed the US.

Peter [00:35:11] Yes.

Jeff [00:35:12] From that perspective, so that's awesome.

So [you] went to Starbucks again, like you have been kind of working in these companies that had a lot of iconic founders and they almost like, continue to live inside the business. And Starbucks is a famous one because I think Schultz is in the news right now, actually. But tell me about your Starbucks experience.

Peter [00:35:31] Yeah, it was an amazing experience. Starbucks and everyone's familiar with the brand, there's one just down the street. It's a part of so many Canadians and so many lives of so many people.

For me, having come through these different experiences and some of them, you know, having very strong, being strongly founder influence, being very savvy, marketers, having really great authentic product. The chance to work on a business like that and be part of a leadership team that was being constructed at the time was just, I thought, a once in a lifetime opportunity to do that.

I did have the chance to meet Howard in my interview. He was sort of the last person I was, kind of ushered into his office for five minutes and was totally starstruck coming in. He's got the first stock certificate there, he's got the trier, which is a little device that you pull the coffee beans out and check them when you're roasting them. The key to the first Pike Place store. But the chance to be part of something so iconic and build a marketing organization for that, and Starbucks Rewards as well was a huge part of the business, and so to be able to have that relationship with your customers. And so I thought it was a huge opportunity as a marketer to go in and to work on something iconic and also had a really strong sense of purpose, it was really community-based.

What I found, every single person in Canada that started would spend two weeks working in a cafe as a barista. And so you start and you wanna read the strat plan and you wanna do things, but you're sent into a store. And so I was sent into a store and worked every shift, you know, from five o'clock to store closing. First of all, I was a terrible barista. I was horrendous. I would work on the espresso machine and then I'd get the tap on my shoulder and they'd sort of send me out to clean up the patio or the cafe, but what I learned there was what the brand was really all about, which was connecting with the customer, which was that moment you handed off.

And it, as I reflect back, all the businesses I've worked on, that customer connection has been integral to each of those, whether it's been at Cineplex with the guests coming in the theater. Virgin, the relationship we had with the customer. Certainly Budweiser, we didn't have a direct relationship with our customer, but we knew them really well and I, I really enjoyed that. I really loved it. And so while I was a terrible barista, it was just an amazing opportunity to see it come to life.

It wasn't what I expected, going in. I thought it would be sort of focused on coffee and focused on amazing product, which it all is. But that connection with the costume. People coming in looking for a relationship was amazing. And that was a real eye opener.

Jeff [00:37:57] Like, you don't see that anymore. Like even, I remember I was, I hired an executive at Skip and I had said like, part of the process was like you rotate through all the teams and that means that you'll be talking to customers, you'll be talking to couriers, you'll be calling restaurants. And they pushed back a little bit and what they said to me was, “Listen, if you hired me just to call restaurants all day, then you kind of hired the wrong guy.” And I was, “Yes, that's true. If that was what I hired you to do full-time for the rest of your career here, it probably would be true”, but I just think it's so important to be close to your stakeholder and your most important stakeholder is your customer, whoever that is. It could be B2B, it could be B2C, it could be B2B2C.

Especially in companies that are more entrepreneurial, a lot of the times the management team, they all started just kind of bootstrapping and kind of like going, and like you said, like flying to shows, buying the phones, being really scrappy, talking, but they're so close to the stakeholder, the customer. And then if you come in and you're the only one that hasn't, even if you know the strat plan, but you don't know the customer, like you're not gonna be successful.

Peter [00:38:55] I couldn't agree more. And I think of learning across all those roles. Two things. I think one is spending time talking directly to your customer in your store, in your branch, in your call centre. Wherever that is, you learn things that, weeks and months ahead before any diagnostic that you have comes up. I virtually guarantee it. And you have to have humility and go in and learn and ask those questions and, and not go in Jeff as the, you know, the big executive on the tour and we're gonna arrange this date and like popping in, having a relationship with the person that has that connection. You just learn so much, through that.

The second piece I would say too also is looking around, being in touch with your competitors, understand what's going on. Not, and I know you've talked about that in some of your prior, with prior guests, but just understanding and being objective about where you sit relative to your competitors. Sometimes you're so focused on your own business. You're so focused on what's happening. You're so focused on your own customers, and until you kind of take up and look around and try it yourself and engage in the process, you're missing a huge part in the mix for sure. And that's been a huge learning for me along my journey.

Jeff [00:40:04] Like you absolutely should be understanding what's going on there, but I feel like when you speak to your customers, there's a point where we had to like shift the whole company over to like helping on customer service, and I was taking phone calls and like talking to customers and resetting passwords and like helping them get through our onboarding process.

I learned so much in that process because I'm like, okay, these are, these are the things that they are struggling with, and so then when you come up with ideas later on, you're, you'll shoot down a lot of your own ideas because you remember, you're like, okay, well if our customers are gonna struggle with a, you know, a 10 digit, upper, lowercase, special character password, then they're probably gonna struggle with X, Y, and Z. And so you save a lot of time. You just basically increases the quality of the business overall.

Peter [00:40:45] Yeah. And that person, that seat you were sitting in, taking the call…

Jeff [00:40:50] Understanding what they go through.

Peter [00:40:51] Their job and their time cuz you know an eight minute call is expensive, a 10 minute call is expensive with a customer and it's, it's hard for them as well. So you're helping the customer. You're helping the person that's serving the customer. Because when they're doing that, they can't focus on the customer, they can't connect. Like you're just solving a problem, you're not actually connecting with them.

Jeff [00:41:08] So, sounds like focus on the customer is a common thread throughout your career. What are, what are the other common threads that you've seen throughout these kind of founder-led, founder-inspired businesses that you've, you've worked in?

Peter [00:41:19] Yeah, I would say, you know, the examples for each of the businesses they've been at, no two are alike. I think each, each one is a little bit different depending on the life stage of the business, depending on the size of the business, depending on the complexity of the business and where you go.

For me, being engaged with the founders or the leaders or the individuals that brought components of a business together and built it, I found personally very inspiring. I find it having that connection, that authenticity is amazing. At the same time, you want that person to be aware or you need to be aware when you are bringing in help, when you're bringing in resources. Cause eventually it gets too big for you to be everywhere or for that person to be everywhere. And so how do they, how do they bring that support around them? And then when they transition off a business? So in the example of Howard, when he left Starbucks and he was contemplating a run for presidency, the transition was, I think, was challenging for the business because it had been so reliant on his ability to make decisions in his ability to cut through. And there was definitely a longer transition time in it than I think I would've thought coming in.

And you know, it eventually normalized, it eventually stabilized, but it's hard for the person that comes behind them. You think of like a Tim Cook following Steve Jobs or following Bill Gates, what that must have been like. Like it's just, there are…

Jeff [00:42:34] It's just been, I mean, Tim Cook's an example of a fairly successful run.

Peter [00:42:37] A hundred percent.

Jeff [00:42:38] And I, and like I remember thinking when he came in, I was like, oh, okay, like putting the finance guy in charge…

Peter [00:42:44] They had a supply chain. He was the supply chain guru!

Jeff [00:42:47] Yeah, I just remember thinking, “Okay, there's no more cool stuff gonna happen.” But I don't think, he's not a Steve Jobs. I don't think he's ever, I think that's probably the key. He's not trying to be a Steve Jobs.

Peter [00:42:55] Yeah, I would think that would be such a dangerous trap to fall into where you're, you're coming in behind in any role where you come in and you're replacing another leader or someone has left to like be the same as them to try and count. You wanna respect what's come before you. As you said earlier, you wanna build on the work that has been done and respect it. At the same time you wanna be your own person. You wanna be authentic, you wanna bring your own spin to it. How you do that and the process you do that can be different. And there's all sorts of, you know, studies and, and research around that but you have to be your own person ultimately. I'm sure the leaders at Skip that came in after you are probably thinking, “Okay, we won't just be like…

Jeff [00:43:31] Well they're like, “Thank God these guys are gone!” [Laughing] They're like, you obviously haven't talked to them. Yeah, it is, it is. It can be challenging, but I think if the founders are playing a part in bringing in the people, then they'll understand like, and hopefully any companies that were founder-led acknowledged to the company that other people are needed to take this company to the next level and that was one of the motivations for us to step down is like, “Hey, I think what is needed for this company to go where it's going is a skillset that other people have, and other people enjoy that skillset. So let's find those people, let's put them in that place so that the company can thrive.”

Peter [00:44:03] Yeah, you had the business’s best interest in mind, thinking about the next stage of it.

Jeff [00:44:05] Well, and all the people too, like you know, the business is a bunch of people who all care about what the company's doing together, and I think that was probably the most rewarding part of building a business is you get to see the impact it has on people, not only your customers, but the people who, whether they've just come out of school, whether they've relocated across the country, taken into career change, they've bet on this company.

And the transformation that they go through, through what they've been exposed through at the business. All the challenges, like even just your Virgin story hearing about how bootstrapped that had been. I mean, obviously totally different than Disney, totally different than Labatt.

Peter [00:44:39] Yeah.

Jeff [00:44:40] Now you're going over to Starbucks and you're like, okay, you have that scrappy mentality. That's that skill set that you didn't have before.

I wanna know about values though. How important were business values in, kind of, the day-to-day operating of the business? Cause I always think about the boring values of just like, hard work integrity, you have on the wall. Like you always hear the famous story about Enron, integrity was on the wall as a value…

Peter [00:45:01] In the boardroom somewhere, like in the corner.

Jeff [00:45:03] Yeah. And it's like they're obviously not living it. So like how much was that a part of what you were doing and how different were they from company to company?

Peter [00:45:11] Yeah, I would say my experience in those where, you know, you had your mission, you had your values, you had your behaviors. Sometimes that you would talk about, “Yeah, this is what we, we're successful when we do this. We're not successful when we do this.” The organizations where you make time to make it part of your every day, you make time to make it part of your every week, part of your team meetings, part of your discussions, and you know at Starbucks to nurture and inspire the human spirit was a mission statement. And we brought it up, it was in, part of our discussion almost every week.

Labatt, we had this message of the enduring spirit of Labatt and a set of values behind it. It was something we talked about pretty much every week. It was part of the conversation, it was part of the vernacular. I've visited other organizations, and had friends that worked at other organizations where it is just that thing on the wall and they do it and don't look back at it. But ultimately it should empower your team to make decisions. It should be that guiding force so when you come to a crossroads, you can use that document to make decisions.

I think Covid was a really interesting time for a lot of businesses where their values were challenged, where they have these, you know, we care about our people, we care about all sorts of different things. And the reality is, do you stand behind that? When your company's bleeding cash, do you stand behind that? Can you do it? Are there things you can do? Are you exhausting all the opportunities to maintain your values? I think is a real challenge. So to use it as that guidepost for decision making is huge.

Jeff [00:47:00] When you think about leadership, I feel like it's an interesting time right now because you have a lot of young leaders. I think you have a lot of people retiring. I think there's a leadership gap. I think that finally some of the Gen Xers, Boomers are finally kind of gone. I think Gen Xers are reluctantly kind of stepping out of some of these leadership roles. Then you have millennials stepping up into leadership roles. And I think they're starting to realize that, “Hey, the way that I was led by this previous generation is not the same way I'm gonna lead.”

Peter [00:47:28] Well, the values are different too, right?

Jeff [00:47:30] Well that the world is different.

Peter [00:47:31] Yeah.

Jeff [00:47:32] What leadership lessons have you learned and what advice would you give to kind of young leaders today who are maybe stepping into leadership roles?

Peter [00:47:38] A couple things, I'd say first is just having a sense of humility. It doesn't matter your background. It doesn't matter what you accomplished before. You should never feel uncomfortable saying, I don't know, and ask the question and go and find the answer. I think people that come in and say they have the answers to everything and I've got the strategy and I'll lay it out. If you don't have that sense of humility and the sort of corresponding sense of curiosity to go and, and find the question, I think is critical.

And then, you know, we touched on it a little bit earlier but again, it's a small world, and so maintaining your connections, maintaining your network, letting people know where you are, finding the right amount of energy to stay connected to other people. You don't have to put 200 amps into every relationship that you have, but it's really important to keep a certain amount of energy in certain relationships.

And you know, when I landed at Cineplex, I actually called a director that I'd had at Labatt and I said, “Hey, I've landed here. You helped me get this job cuz you taught me this and I talked about this in my interview,” and it was just, it was amazing. We just, and we've stayed connected and we've worked together and so I think it's important, you never know when you'll come across someone somewhere else either in Canada, North America, or in another part of the world.

And the last piece too is also just again, taking time to look up and look around, and that's in Canada, that's outside of Canada. That's understanding how things are changing, being really open to that change. I just think is so critical. So more soft skills, I think.

Jeff [00:49:04] Yeah.

Peter [00:49:05] You know, it's interesting you, 25 years ago, functional skills and coming outta school and “I learned this and I could do these certain things and I'm a strategy expert and I can code”, and the reality is like career paths are not linear anymore. My dad was with the same company for 37 years. Like people don't, they don't do that.

Jeff [00:49:18] Doesn't happen anymore.

Peter [00:49:19] No! At Starbucks, we had a little sign in the window and it showed a partner and it said this partner's name and they'd been a 25 year employee. And interview candidates would cringe at that like “25 years, I'm not here for 25 years.” So the mindset and the relationship is totally different.

Jeff [00:49:33] Yeah.

Peter [00:49:34] And I think as a leader to accept that too. Like it's, for some people it's a stop on the journey, but it's a small world and you, you cross paths with them again. So just, you know, maintaining that connection, that network, I think is critical.

Jeff [00:49:44] Relationship capital I think is a hard thing to understand of how you're building it up, but I think it does get tangibly built up through kind of being there for your team, having their backs, helping kind of, helping them reach their goals. And I think it grows even when it's tested too. Like when it's tested, and especially when the companies go through difficulties and adversity.

Peter [00:50:06] Do you know, one other thing I say to students too, Jeff, that you just reminded me is, you know, you think when you're, you're reaching out and you're trying to connect with leaders and learn that that relationship is sort of asymmetrical, right? You're talking to this person with this success. I often remind them, I'm like, “Don't underestimate what you’re delivering to that person as a third year business student or as a liberal arts student or working in a role, what you're going to share with them what you're, they may benefit professionally. They may benefit personally as a parent. They may learn something like, don't underestimate what you bring to that and that they'll be excited to hear from you.”

I think sometimes the assumption, a little bit Canadian sometimes too, we don't wanna bother people, we don't wanna impose. And the reality is when you reach out and connect as a young Canadian, young adult, student, whatever, you have something huge to offer in that connection as well. And so I often remind students of that when you're doing that. And cuz I get the same thing, I get just as much out of the connections back.

Jeff [00:51:03] This has been really insightful, Peter, and so grateful for you coming on and, and giving us…

Peter [00:51:07] Thanks for having me.

Jef [00:51:08] Your time. Where can people follow you? Where can they kind of see what you're up to?

Peter [00:51:12] Yeah, you know what? LinkedIn is the best bet.

Jeff [00:51:13] And that's Peter Furnish?

Peter [00:51:14] Peter Furnish, yeah absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Jeff [00:51:17] Thanks for being here.

Jeff [00:51:25] Thank you for tuning into Behind the Brand. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you’re interested in learning more about Neo Financial, visit us at neofinancial.com.

Behind the Brand is a production of Neo Financial and MediaLab YYC. Hosted by Jeff Adamson. Strategy, research, and production by Keegan Sharp, Alana Tefledzuk, and Kyle Marshall.