============================================================
TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
============================================================
[00:00] SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Canada's podcast, the number one podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.
[00:07] SPEAKER_01: Okay, all right, Scott. Welcome to Canada's podcast. It's great to meet you. And you know,
[00:16] SPEAKER_01: for those that don't know you, you have a, you know, a pretty accomplished background in the investment and media business in Canada.
[00:27] SPEAKER_01: But rather than me explain it, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you're doing today?
[00:36] SPEAKER_00: Well, Philip, thank you very much for having me on your podcast show.
[00:41] SPEAKER_00: I have had some great successes, but I've also got a lot of scars on my back, Philip.
[00:48] SPEAKER_00: I'm 56 now. So I kind of think of my career in two pieces. The first part was largely the formal part of the investment world where I start as a stock broker, love doing that.
[01:02] SPEAKER_00: I love cold calling people believe it or not. It's not something a lot of people would say, but I just love the, the whole of victory.
[01:09] SPEAKER_00: So to speak when you through to somebody business with them got into investment banking and meaning helping companies raise money and and loved technology companies, you know, today it seems kind of obvious because virtually every company embraces technology in some format.
[01:29] SPEAKER_00: But I'm talking about in the late 80s and early 90s, while clearly there was, you know, Silicon Valley and what was happening in technology.
[01:38] SPEAKER_00: It was less obvious that the investment world will be dominated by technology themes.
[01:44] SPEAKER_01: I grew up in that world too the same time.
[01:47] SPEAKER_00: Exactly. And I started focusing on focus focusing on probably financing technology companies and really enjoyed that.
[01:56] SPEAKER_00: I just loved being exposed entrepreneurs that a vision for the future and were often prepared to risk, you know, their whole network or or for go salary for years, all the kind of things that you have to do as an entrepreneur.
[02:12] SPEAKER_00: And focused on that and did quite well and then I ended up building a brokerage firm in the mid 90s, which became the number one technology investment bank in Canada.
[02:22] SPEAKER_00: And so my first half of my career was kind of defined by the formal structure of the industry.
[02:28] SPEAKER_00: Last half, really more informal where, you know, for lack of a better words, I'm in the venture capital business or the entrepreneurial business really I would describe myself as, you know, technology, venture capital is focused on two themes and technology financial services or what everybody's calling fintech these days.
[02:50] SPEAKER_00: On the media side of things and media is increasingly been overlap with technology, those are my two loves and where in some elements of them, I think I've got a reasonable degree of expertise.
[03:02] SPEAKER_00: That's really interesting.
[03:04] SPEAKER_00: Would you call yourself a entrepreneur?
[03:07] SPEAKER_00: 100% yeah, yeah.
[03:09] SPEAKER_00: You risk it, you risk it, do you?
[03:10] SPEAKER_00: I risk it way too much.
[03:13] SPEAKER_00: You know, when I was younger, I was pretty cavalier about money in the sense that I can always make it back, always make it back and little older and now I've got a bucket full of kids.
[03:26] SPEAKER_00: I have eight kids fill up. I just had my latest kid five months ago.
[03:31] SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
[03:33] SPEAKER_00: Three different moms mind you. It's a bit of a science experiment.
[03:35] SPEAKER_00: They keep me busy and that's for sure.
[03:40] SPEAKER_00: But I think a little bit more about risk and when you get older, you tend to be less willing and eager to kind of do the unexpected or try the more creative or be more aggressive because it tends to be
[03:58] SPEAKER_00: the element of youth that allows you to get away with some of these things when you're older people know what that is that guy doing that from so I notice it a little bit and it forces me to say don't lose that capacity for risk.
[04:12] SPEAKER_00: I'm talking measured risk hopefully of you, but I'm a big believer.
[04:15] SPEAKER_00: You know, you got to be in the arena, the famous theater or Roosevelt speech of 1909 in Paris about the man in the arena. I would say that defines really my life in many respects.
[04:27] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so you know, I interviewed so many entrepreneurs who are kind of moving through that emerging state meeting people like you on the VC side of things.
[04:38] SPEAKER_01: Is there anything I mean, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you because you've got a ton of knowledge on that front.
[04:47] SPEAKER_01: Their challenge is obviously to get themselves financed. Is there any kind of wisdom that you can pass from the investor side of it to them?
[04:58] SPEAKER_01: Obviously that's a slew of it, but any one or two gems that they they they they shouldn't keep kind of in their mind all the time.
[05:10] SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know if this will answer it, but I long felt that there are four ingredients to outsize success.
[05:19] SPEAKER_00: And I use the word outsized success to be differentiated from conventional success. And what I mean by that is you can pick any vocation in the world.
[05:30] SPEAKER_00: And if you work hard, because I think hard work is the base ingredient. If you work hard, you'll be a success at it.
[05:36] SPEAKER_00: But if you want outsized success, you need to be you need to for things to take place. One you have to have a vision that is truly predicting the future to be different than it is today.
[05:48] SPEAKER_00: And the second thing is you need to attract a half a dozen a players that share that vision and they're usually different disciplines. One might be sales, one might be marketing, one might be operation.
[05:59] SPEAKER_00: Share wow, we we get that as with respect to this predicting of the future. I say half a dozen very purpose. It might be five. It might be seven. It can't be two. That's too thin.
[06:11] SPEAKER_00: So in other words, a couple of a players, you can't get there. And if you've got 20 might sound odd, but I don't think you can make it either there's too many primordana in the room.
[06:21] SPEAKER_00: And the third thing is to be slightly ahead of your times, probably the most important of all of them. There's I could give you and we could spend hours talking about people who thought of things invented things well before the world was commercially ready for them.
[06:37] SPEAKER_00: And they didn't get the benefit either from financial award or personal or I've got some of those. I've done that in my earlier life.
[06:45] SPEAKER_00: At the time, it feels like it's going to happen instantly because of the future. And often they'll even get the half a dozen people. But if you're too early, you know, it can be a sad story run out of money or you just lose the desire to stick in there. If you're too late, forget it.
[07:02] SPEAKER_00: So you've got to be slightly ahead of your time. And the fourth one is luck, good old fashioned luck. But just back to the third one for one more second, you know, people laugh about hockey sticks, the proverbial term for the business plan and you see the projection and it looks like a hockey stick.
[07:20] SPEAKER_00: We're going to do this and this and then it's going to take off. Those are actually true in my view. They're true about people's careers and they're true about businesses. And what's happening when you're on the blade of the stick, it could be three years or 10 years as a person or a business.
[07:37] SPEAKER_00: You are building the core competency. You're building day after day, whether that's 10,000 hours, they talk about playing the guitar or whatever your vocation.
[07:44] SPEAKER_00: It's a similar theme. You're building that core capability and the moment the world's really ready for what you predicted, it goes like this. It looks like an overnight success. It looks like a hockey stick, but it's really that you are uniquely positioned to take advantage of that.
[08:00] SPEAKER_01: You've met some unexpected challenges and you're some business life.
[08:04] SPEAKER_01: Do you have a, if you develop a particular way to handle them, so you meet this thing, which is a wall, have you discovered there are ways if you follow certain processes, you can move around them.
[08:21] SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a great question because I, I, you know, even today, obviously, COVID's caused a few challenges in some things I'm involved in and, and, and one in particular, which I know we'll get a chance to talk about future vault that I'm spending the vast vast majority of my time on having a lot of fun with.
[08:40] SPEAKER_00: You know, we'll take two steps forward and then there'll be a step back, you know, some client or prospective client for whatever reason doesn't turn into one and there those moments of demoralization.
[08:53] SPEAKER_00: And I think that's probably the key character trait that defines someone's temperament and ability to succeed in the long term as an entrepreneur.
[09:04] SPEAKER_00: Look, some people are very lucky and it happens right out of the eight doesn't mean they didn't deserve it because their hard work and the vision and the six people in the slightly at your time, but the vast majority of people have to do the blade of the hockey stick they've got to spend years and years and years and years and years before whatever their original idea or something that's more from that idea becomes reality.
[09:24] SPEAKER_00: And that requires resilience. So I would say if you said to me, you know, of all the character traits that matter the most to succeed in entrepreneurship and what do you do when you got turned down when you didn't get the money when all those kind of things, it's the resilience.
[09:39] SPEAKER_00: And I see it all my kids, you know, if that gets hit by a bus tomorrow, you got to remember one thing. You fall off that horse, you get right back on the horse.
[09:48] SPEAKER_00: And I find myself having to kind of look into me here once in a while on a failure, a small failure, a medium failure, a big failure and say listen to the advice you give your kids to get deep breath, have a nice sleep, but get up tomorrow and go back at it again.
[10:04] SPEAKER_01: On the advice side of it, question my ask everyone because I think it's really important. What's the best piece of advice that you've ever received?
[10:13] SPEAKER_01: That, you know, those are really that real important thing that you've used through your career kind of thing.
[10:21] SPEAKER_00: Well, it probably was indirectly from my grandmother and the thesis was tied in a bit to some of the things we've already talked about, but that there's there's three layers to achieving great success.
[10:36] SPEAKER_00: And it starts at a base level hard work. If you're not prepared to work hard, sure you can get lucky, but 99% of the world just simply needs to work hard.
[10:45] SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't mean not working smartly, you know, I probably could work a lot more smartly, but working hard is going to achieve level success.
[10:52] SPEAKER_00: The next thing is, is initiative. You have the initiative to come up with new ideas, new thoughts, you've got a great idea, but are you going to actually then work hard associated with that initiative.
[11:01] SPEAKER_00: And the third piece she would say would be guts, but they have to be in that order in the sense that guts is, you know, let's go to Las Vegas and take our life savings and put it all on red on the red table.
[11:16] SPEAKER_00: That's crazy. Of course, you're risking everything. So that's not very smart.
[11:20] SPEAKER_00: And initiative, we both know, you know, many, many people have come up with great ideas. They start the initiative, but they don't they give up.
[11:27] SPEAKER_00: They either lose the resilience or they lose the hard work piece of the puzzle. So it's got to be a net order hard work initiative and then you sprinkle in a little bit of guts. And that's when it can really work out for you.
[11:39] SPEAKER_01: Interesting, very interesting. I'm going to ask you some what I'd tell rapid fire questions. Don't think about them too much. Just come and spit out the answer.
[11:47] SPEAKER_01: Oh, here we go. If you weren't doing what you're doing now, what would you be doing instead?
[11:56] SPEAKER_00: Oh, my God. Well, I want to say a watersky instructor because it's my favorite.
[12:04] SPEAKER_00: But, you know, when I was really young, when I was 14, my grandma, the same one I referred to earlier, she changed my life because she, for my birthday, gave me five shares of habitivity paper.
[12:14] SPEAKER_00: And you would remember how to see the paper from way back when I looked at the window, all my buddies had bikes, little bikes for their birthday presents. And I was thinking, I kind of wish I had a bike, which gave me the share certificate worth $65.
[12:29] SPEAKER_00: But I learned, wow, you can use your brain and try to make a living from doing that and understanding the stock market and companies, how they work and how capitals raise and how jobs are created, etc.
[12:42] SPEAKER_00: So I guess the reason I tell you that story is, you know, what I love to, you know, water ski all day long and I love playing squash and tennis and home and other sports. But the truth is, I love the investment business and I love the machinations of it.
[12:56] SPEAKER_00: And I love how intertwines with financial services and media, the two areas of my focus. So I don't know if I could do anything else.
[13:03] SPEAKER_01: I know exactly what you're saying.
[13:04] SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
[13:06] SPEAKER_01: On another one, what book are you currently reading or listening to or would recommend to the audience?
[13:15] SPEAKER_00: You know, if you would laugh if you looked at my bedside table at home, this is about 40 books on it and they're all about 25 pages into them.
[13:29] SPEAKER_00: And I've actually decided what I've started to do is read the New York Times.
[13:34] SPEAKER_00: That didn't work.
[13:35] SPEAKER_00: We got to turn this sounding off somehow.
[13:37] SPEAKER_00: But the New York Times Sunday book review, because they've got about six or seven book reviews and you could read it and you've obsessively got the crux of the book.
[13:49] SPEAKER_00: But what I do enjoy and I'm reading a Nielsen Demail fiction and I came and tell you what the name of it is, which is pretty embarrassing.
[13:56] SPEAKER_00: But I love Nielsen Demail. What am I longer term favorite fiction writers?
[14:00] SPEAKER_00: If I want to go to sleep on whatever I'm burnt out of Saturday afternoon, a Sunday, whatever it may be, I will turn on or I'll read a Nielsen Demail book.
[14:10] SPEAKER_00: And it will it will put me to sleep. If I'm reading nonfiction, then it's a lot harder to do that because I feel like I've got a record.
[14:19] Speaker UNKNOWN: I'm the only person in the family.
[14:19] Speaker UNKNOWN: And I just want to see what I can do.
[14:19] Speaker UNKNOWN:
[14:19] Speaker UNKNOWN: I want to see a team, the information.
[14:21] SPEAKER_01: Are you a morning or a night person?
[14:23] SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm becoming both.
[14:25] SPEAKER_00: I'm a night person by instinct and innately my team and I and people I work with kind of kid me because I regularly email them at two in the morning.
[14:38] SPEAKER_00: But, you know, I've got all these young kids, so I'm up pretty early as well.
[14:42] SPEAKER_00: But I much prefer getting into a groove from kind of 11 o'clock till 2 a.m. and getting
[14:47] SPEAKER_00: a bunch of stuff done.
[14:48] SPEAKER_00: But I have to be 24 or 7 now with all my responsibilities.
[14:53] SPEAKER_01: What's keeping you up at night these days?
[14:56] SPEAKER_00: You know, the nature of the beast in the world I'm in, which is financing and leading typically
[15:02] SPEAKER_00: as Chairman of the board.
[15:04] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, an executive chairman, meaning a very active chairman, not kind of a governance
[15:08] SPEAKER_00: of pure role.
[15:10] SPEAKER_00: You know, in the meat of trying to get new customers and recruiting people and all that
[15:14] SPEAKER_00: kind of stuff, which I enjoy.
[15:17] SPEAKER_00: By definition, it takes years for these companies to be cash positive.
[15:21] SPEAKER_00: And by definition, if you don't want to dilute the heck out of yourself out of the
[15:25] SPEAKER_00: gate, you need to finance and lock steps.
[15:27] SPEAKER_00: You raise some money, you make some improvements, you hopefully can justify an increase in
[15:32] SPEAKER_00: valuation.
[15:34] SPEAKER_00: But there are moments when if you go into a window in which it's more challenging to raise
[15:40] SPEAKER_00: money, those are the moments that you have some G and you're not trying to be too aggressive
[15:45] SPEAKER_00: on that front in terms of waiting for the last second.
[15:48] SPEAKER_00: But that's kind of what wakes me up.
[15:50] SPEAKER_00: And also, you just constantly question yourself, you know, this was our vision, this was our
[15:55] SPEAKER_00: view.
[15:56] SPEAKER_00: It felt yesterday like it was working.
[15:58] SPEAKER_00: Today, maybe it didn't in the afternoon, as you didn't get a new customer you hoped
[16:02] SPEAKER_00: you would, do you have it right?
[16:04] SPEAKER_00: And so it brings on a degree of anxiety, degree of fear.
[16:10] SPEAKER_00: But it's also exciting because you want to, at least in my case, I want to prove to myself
[16:16] SPEAKER_00: that we can do it and we can deliver what we said we would to people around our prediction
[16:21] SPEAKER_00: of the future.
[16:22] SPEAKER_01: So if you had to pick one word to describe yourself, what would it be and why choose
[16:29] SPEAKER_01: that word?
[16:31] SPEAKER_00: Gosh, I was going to make a joke if I knew who was watching and they're all my buddies
[16:35] SPEAKER_00: that kind of make a joke.
[16:37] SPEAKER_00: But I don't know.
[16:39] SPEAKER_00: I might go back to the resilient thing.
[16:43] SPEAKER_00: You know, on a couple of things that haven't worked in business and life, I remember in
[16:48] SPEAKER_00: one case, we got involved and there was a really nasty counter party and some fraud involved
[16:54] SPEAKER_00: and all this crazy stuff that was in the US.
[16:57] SPEAKER_00: And a couple of the investors at the end, when I called them up on a new opportunity,
[17:03] SPEAKER_00: said, we're absolutely going to back you.
[17:04] SPEAKER_00: You stuck with that.
[17:06] SPEAKER_00: You didn't miss it.
[17:07] SPEAKER_00: You didn't get any money.
[17:08] SPEAKER_00: You worked on it for a year.
[17:09] SPEAKER_00: We actually got $0.80 on the dollar back in this particular thing where we would have
[17:14] SPEAKER_00: got zero.
[17:14] SPEAKER_00: But when I ask other people for money, it's more important than my money.
[17:18] SPEAKER_00: I mean, obviously I want to do well.
[17:21] SPEAKER_00: But if you give me money to invest, you're backing me personally and usually with limited
[17:25] SPEAKER_00: to diligence because you're counting on me to have really considered what we're doing
[17:32] SPEAKER_00: and put in place all the building blocks that give the opportunity the best chance to succeed.
[17:37] SPEAKER_00: I'm a big believer in governance and independent boards and auditive financial statements and
[17:41] SPEAKER_00: kind of all the stuff that investors deserve.
[17:43] SPEAKER_00: I think it makes a company much stronger company.
[17:46] SPEAKER_00: By the end of the day, most of the people that have backed me do so because they trust
[17:50] SPEAKER_00: my judgment.
[17:52] SPEAKER_00: There's a relationship.
[17:53] SPEAKER_00: And I take that to heart.
[17:55] SPEAKER_00: And I take that very seriously.
[17:57] SPEAKER_00: And when the chips are down, the point about what wakes you up at night, it's less about
[18:00] SPEAKER_00: me thinking about me losing money.
[18:02] SPEAKER_00: It's much more about what we're thinking about losing these other people money.
[18:05] SPEAKER_00: And it's very motivating, therefore, to work hard and do my best to get out of whatever
[18:10] SPEAKER_00: problem if there's a problem or to continue to succeed if things are going really well.
[18:15] SPEAKER_01: So what's your perspective and not going to use the term new normal on a new future?
[18:24] SPEAKER_01: What does it look like for Scott Patterson?
[18:27] SPEAKER_00: I think I've been predicting for some time that we were going to experience a sharp
[18:33] SPEAKER_00: V recovery.
[18:35] SPEAKER_00: I'm a little bit surprised by the veracity of this second wave.
[18:40] SPEAKER_00: But my prediction, you know, I was asking people a few months ago, I had two questions
[18:44] SPEAKER_00: at kind of every, either every Zoom call or when we could have a little bit of dinner parties,
[18:50] SPEAKER_00: socially distanced appropriately up north and things like that.
[18:53] SPEAKER_00: I'd say, you know, who's the next president?
[18:56] SPEAKER_00: And are we talking about COVID in the summer of 2021?
[19:00] SPEAKER_00: My view was Biden, when I still have that view.
[19:04] SPEAKER_00: And I don't think we're talking about COVID next summer.
[19:06] SPEAKER_00: I mean, other than remember last summer, do you remember how crazy it was?
[19:09] SPEAKER_00: And I know that's only nine months from now.
[19:11] SPEAKER_00: But I think we're probably at the peak of the, I don't know, fears the right word,
[19:17] SPEAKER_00: the fear peak was probably back in, you know, at the very, you know,
[19:20] SPEAKER_00: mid-March when things got really scary and it was unknown.
[19:23] SPEAKER_00: But my sense is we're at the peak of the sense that hey, it's going to spin out of control.
[19:28] SPEAKER_00: I'm not a medical doctor.
[19:30] SPEAKER_00: I know nothing about the science.
[19:32] SPEAKER_00: My sense is though, when things are front page, it's not sustainable to have the same story
[19:38] SPEAKER_00: on the front page for long periods of time.
[19:41] SPEAKER_00: And I think it comes off the front page.
[19:43] SPEAKER_00: And it is a, if it's there, it's effective life.
[19:46] SPEAKER_00: And fortunately, it looks like the mortality rates are declining.
[19:50] SPEAKER_00: And you know, the people that do need the right protection and care are taking care of themselves.
[19:54] SPEAKER_00: And hopefully by governments and communities, et cetera.
[19:58] SPEAKER_00: But I think, I think this is all news.
[20:01] SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that things aren't going to change with respect to Zoom calls and with respect to DocuSign
[20:06] SPEAKER_00: and respect to future vault.
[20:08] SPEAKER_00: The company I mentioned earlier around how rapidly some of these technologies are going to be deployed.
[20:14] SPEAKER_01: I think there's some things that aren't going to change.
[20:16] SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you look at overhead and various other things, there's some new ways of doing business
[20:21] SPEAKER_01: that were there, but if it's salary dramatically, and it really not going to change.
[20:27] SPEAKER_01: I don't think I'd like to have stock in Canada or any of those guys at the moment.
[20:32] SPEAKER_01: But, you know, I'm not sure.
[20:35] SPEAKER_01: That's about it. I think that was really interesting.
[20:37] SPEAKER_01: Some really good perspectives from a little different angle in terms of,
[20:41] SPEAKER_01: we don't get too many of the venture guys on.
[20:45] SPEAKER_01: And I think it's very interesting.
[20:49] SPEAKER_01: How can people get a hold of you?
[20:51] SPEAKER_01: You know, they hear this.
[20:53] SPEAKER_01: They want to do something.
[20:54] SPEAKER_01: Can they email you?
[20:55] SPEAKER_01: Is there some?
[20:56] Speaker UNKNOWN: Yeah, sure.
[20:56] SPEAKER_00: Over the years, people have said that it's been kind of a good policy to be kind of open.
[21:04] SPEAKER_00: I love meeting new people.
[21:06] SPEAKER_00: I am very busy.
[21:07] SPEAKER_00: But, you know what?
[21:08] SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of great people out there with great ideas and or feedback from me.
[21:13] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, my email is probably the easiest.
[21:16] SPEAKER_00: Philips, it's at espattersandipattersonpartners.com.
[21:20] SPEAKER_00: And we'd love to hear from from anybody.
[21:22] SPEAKER_01: Okay, Scott.
[21:23] SPEAKER_01: Well, listen, it's been great meeting you.
[21:25] SPEAKER_01: I really enjoyed it.
[21:26] SPEAKER_01: And thanks for coming on Canada's podcast.
[21:28] SPEAKER_01: Really appreciate it.
[21:29] SPEAKER_01: Well, I appreciate it too, Phil.
[21:31] SPEAKER_01: Thanks. You have a great rest of your day.
