Agility and Risk-Taking: Keys to Business Success - David Granovsky

Learning from experienced business owners profoundly impacts leadership and business success. It builds authentic confidence through real failures, sharpens intuitive decision-making, teaches crisis navigation, fosters genuine networking, and instills resilience. Their lived wisdom accelerates growth, reduces expensive trial-and-error, and shapes principled, adaptive leaders far more effectively than theory alone

 In this episode, I had a discussion with with David Granovsky — President, CEO, and owner of Atlantic Coated Papers Ltd., a market leader in high-performance protective packaging serving the food, pharmaceutical, construction, and industrial sectors. Before building ACP into an innovation-driven powerhouse, David led the Flexible Packaging division at Atlantic Packaging Products Ltd. He’s also an active angel investor in the tech space, co-founder of the Grand Slam Pro Am tennis charity event, an avid hockey player, and a highly accomplished tennis competitor.

Here's some of the takeaways:

• Agility in business allows smaller companies to compete with larger ones.
• Risk-taking is essential for growth and success in business.
• Teaching children about business from a young age is crucial.
• Effective communication is key to building a successful team.
• Canada has a strong potential for growth with its resources and talent.
• The current education system needs to focus more on finance and technology.
• Opportunities in business often arise unexpectedly and should be seized. Canada has a wealth of talent but needs to focus on STEM education.
• Policy reform is needed in industries like dairy and telecom.
• Hiring the right people is essential for business success.
• The future of work will be shaped by technology and AI.

Have a great day, talk soon!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi guys, welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. Today our guest is David Goransky. David from ACP Packaging. So I was searching your profile, David. I learned a lot about your business, you know, all the companies you've been running. So looking forward to learning from you, looking forward to uh our discussion. Thank you so much for time today. Great. Thanks for having me. Good stuff. So hope hope you enjoyed the Super Bowl over the weekend, David.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Are you a big Super Bowl fan? I am, but I had no no horse in the race. So I was happy for uh for a good game and two quarterbacks that uh that had great stories, right? Yeah, yeah. Teams that that you know went from 3-13 or whatever it was to 13 and 3. So it was it was it was good. I will look for the commercials, but of course we can't see the American commercials from from here. But so but it was it was fun to watch.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

I was just looking for a good football team, uh, football game, but you know, it wasn't it wasn't happening that way. But I said, okay, all right, you know, whatever, we'll just enjoy that. But good. We had a great discussion, uh, you know, to to prepare for prepare for this discussion. So there's so much items we talk about. So I'm looking forward to capturing those items. I also want to learn about your business a little bit, a little bit about your journey. So I'm looking forward to the discussion. So so maybe let's start from uh you know, discuss so I see you involved in uh multiple companies, right? So if you just walk us through how many businesses you involve in and you know where you're spending most time and energy these days. Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

So so my main business is a packaging business at unencoded papers, and I've been doing that for 26 years as a separate company and another eight before. So it's uh it's a long time. I started you know as an eight-year-old running the company, so that's that's how I I look uh I look youthful still. But uh so that's that's my main business. We have uh about uh 200 people, you know, in and around 100 million in sales, and our our business is is B B2B. We look after pharmaceutical, food packaging, and we have a lot of a lot of U.S. business. So our growth is Canada, but it's really, you know, we grow, we try and grow everywhere, but really it's it's American. We're Canada is too small for Canadians to do business in, you know, unfortunately, and that's why we're behind this map beside this massive country at the south, the biggest, biggest consumer in the world, and that's why it's really important for us to to continue with our Kuzma, USMC, whatever we call it. Uh yeah. So I have faith in our country. I'm not so sure I have faith in all our politicians, but I have faith in our country that we can do we can do a great job. And then on the side, I have a bakery business, Griff Spagels. I bought that with my wife and and my my my partner who was my tennis partner and also happened to be uh in the baking business. So we bought that three years ago. It just turned 110. So that's a business that I like to uh dabble in. You know, I help out. I don't do a lot there. From a strategic point of view, I help out and I eat the bagels uh often. So just a bagel or uh other other uh mostly bagels. Like we're 90% bagels, and then we sell, you know, cookies and uh Danishes and cream cheese and tuna and stuff like that, but we're most mostly bagels. It was an older business and we sort of jazzed it up and and made it into uh you know a little more tech. So but in computers, high-tech cash registers, so we get data. You know, two in the morning I get a data sheet from the computer telling us, you know, how we did that day, and a little more than than it was before. But the same, the key to us was make it a make it a a more technical business, but keep the great taste because people liked it. I bought it because I like the taste of the bagels, and I didn't want to see it go away.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

So and I see another business, uh, David, on your profile, Rufus Lab. Is that is that part of uh your Atlantic?

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Yeah, so so so if I go in in well, it's size. I also uh I'm I'm a shareholder in shared towered networks, which a friend of mine is a CEO, and we we he started the company. I I I helped back him on his first company, which was building towers. So we're a small company, but we build them faster and better and and cheaper than the Rogers Bells tell us. So we did that, we sold the company a few years ago, then we started again at Shared Tower. I mean, he's growing that business. We took just took on, it's around, I think, uh around a hundred million dollar investment to build more towers, and then we're looking at building that much, much bigger. Roofers Labs is a tech company. Roof's labs and eMERGE are two tech companies out of happen to be out of the LA area. Roofus Labs is is tech where you use in 3 pls and warehouses, it makes the person much more efficient because everything is on their hands as opposed to something you have to to push to scan things. Put gloves on you and and sensors on your body, and you do you're much better. It's it's a transition between just a person and then a person with tech and then the robot. Robot's coming eventually.

unknown 5:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

If you listen to Elon Musk in in you know in a half an hour, but if you listen to most people, it'll be uh you know, a few years, if not ten, when you get a real robot. And then we have I have Emerge, which is a it's a high-tech sensory system where you can actually feel where you where you look and you see an image with visual and then you feel it with your hand. So you could feel the baseball. It's not there, but you can feel it because it's sensing on your hands. So that's a sensory thing that's and that's they're both about eight, eight, eight years old, eight, ten years old. So that's what I mean. I'm in the usual bricks and mortar, and then for fun, I do tech on the side. So I find some really smart people and tag along with with their tech on that side.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

So yeah, it's a variety of different businesses that you tap into, but you know, I guess uh the passion about the business is remains the same no matter which business we look at. So so let's talk about your your primarily business, ACP. So you've you've been running this company for a long time. Is there something unique problem you solve in this business, uh you know, compared to other businesses as as David looking? Is there something unique challenges in this business or very similar to any general business? Well, I mean, that's that's a good question.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Uh the where we move, where we compete and where we move faster than our competitors. A lot of my competitors, they they've they've uh they've sold to my big competitors. So my my competitors are 10, 20 times as big as I am. So my key is to make sure I move faster. You know, I don't answer it to anyone except my wife as my partner and the bank occasionally, right? So we can do stuff, we make a decision, we do it. My two competitors in the billions of dollars, it takes time for them. So we we we move quicker, we do RD quicker, and we call it OTIF. On time and full is very important to our customers. So they'll pay a little more generally if we're really good at service and really good at quality. So, you know, during COVID, it was a little bit hard to get everything together and get all the right components and people and supply chain, but our on-time and full is is a really important number for us. And that's that's basically how we grow is to be faster and look after the customers. And when they call, they can, you know, I give out my cart to all our customers, and they for 24 years nobody ever called me. During COVID, they picked up the phone and called, you know, to make sure they got their order and make sure they got it on time. When we had you know the bump in supply chains, where it was hard, hard to get all the components together.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

So that is such a great point. Uh what you just mentioned, David. A lot of people don't get that. You you know, it's uh you know, kudos to you looking at that way. But being agile in a business sometimes is a bonus in a business. A lot of people think, oh, we are small that we don't want to compete with the big companies, but that could be some sort of sometime asset to you because you can change based on technology changes so fast, business changes so fast, you control the change in a smaller business, and you can move very fast compared to what's markets coming your way instead of the big companies with the big infrastructure, so many layers of management. It's gonna take them years and years to make the change where you can make the change on a fly, you know, just to correspond to the customers. A lot of people don't see that, but I think that's a great point you just mentioned that being agile, being that that that that change you know, proponent is is a it's as an asset to your business.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

And we we keep the offices. Uh, I've always I've always found that keeping the offices, and my dad always did this too. He put his office in in the building where the factory was, wherever your main factory is, that's where you sit. So if there's an issue, you don't look on a computer and try and solve it that way. I can walk out into the back, look at the issue, find the issue, and hopefully, you know, work with our team to solve the issue. I I hire a lot of very good technical people because I'm not so technical, so I hire for my my weakness. And then my strength is entrepreneur and spirit and and and taking risks, right? Not everyone likes to take a risk. I enjoy taking risks. You know, when my wife used to say, don't go to Vegas. We used to have shows in Vegas because you're going to gamble. I said, My gambling is not playing blackjack for an hour. My gambling is buying a machine that maybe does a good job or doesn't do a good job, comes on time, doesn't come on time, that's the gamble. And to invest when things aren't aren't looking good, that's when you the best time to invest generally. When things are looking good, it's really hard to do.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

But those are calcul those are calculated risk instead of just going a blindly and a gambling something, right? So true, true. You know, you're not going to be able to do blackjack is a cal fact.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Blackjack is calculating risk too. If you have a if you have a uh you know two aces, you you tend to split them. It's your calculator. But no, it's you're right. It's much more of a calculated risk. It's much more of a bigger risk, and and this is being in, you know, taking risks at the office is fun because you see what you get at the end of the day, right? The and that could be a year, two years, three years, right? It's you don't go and spend money on, you know, we did a$20 million expansion, doesn't repay itself in in uh in a year, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:09

So I want to understand this risk taking risk uh approach uh a little bit, I want to I know dissect a little bit more, David. How did you how did you did you learn that skill? Did you always have it? You know, was your dad always taking a risk? Because the reason I mentioned that the risk taking it, that is not something taught in school these days. You take a look at the uh the kids coming from universities and colleges, first thing they're taught is how to stay safe, you know, find a fine, you know, finish your degree, do do the normal, you know, the jobs and stay in it, but they're taking risk is never taught. But they're in that age is that's where they should be taking a risk, you know, early on, right? So that you know, I'm always talking, I heard a lot of young people and I always find the lack of taking a risk. I know it's certain people have that. A lot of you know, what we taught in school these days is everything stay away from risk, right? So, how how did you learn that?

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Uh you always had that, or is it a is it something you so so I I guess I don't know if it's in my DNA, but from uh from a young you know kid, my dad, my dad was an entrepreneur also. He still is, he's 90, still still likes to work. So he he always he was always risking. You know, we used to tell him as as he got older, slow down on your wrists, you're 75, what are you doing? But he's risk, risk, risk. And you know, I learned that. And when when I started my business about 26 years ago, if you don't risk, you're not gonna grow. So you always you you always have to risk. Like you said, it's a calculated risk, but you know, I I did a simulation at in undergrad in in one of my business courses, and it was old old time computers, but it said, you know, if if you want to make short-term money, take all the money out of the business. You you can do well for a year. But if you want to invest, and it said, okay, if you invest in four or six quarters, you know, on the seventh or eighth quarter, you're gonna make more money. But you're you're at the bottom of the pack for the first six quarters because you're investing, you know, you're spending the money. So I keep the money in the business, almost all of it in the business. And you know, I'm I'm not liquid, but I have a nice business, it's a good business, you know. During the middle of COVID, is that's that's when we expanded, and that's when I bought another business. The opportunity comes, you've got to seize it. You know, one of the guys I bought the business from, he called me 12 years, 14 years ago, and then didn't talk to me for 12 years and said, Remember me? I said, Yes, actually, I do. Well, I need to sell my business. I'm 82. The the lease is up on the business. Will you buy it? Sure. The price says the discount, the discount of of all all those factors. But you know, the opportunities sometimes come and present themselves, and sometimes you have to you have to look for them. So but being prepared and being ready and having a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

You gotta put something on the line in order to make money, right? To to your to your point earlier that yeah, you have to risk you have to pick, put something, if you're not putting anything on the line, you know, what are you expecting something to come back?

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Yeah, listen, always, always it you're motivated to to to for the risk, but when you put your house up, and I did that at the beginning, it gets you up a little bit earlier in the morning, it makes sure you're focused because you know you don't want to you want skin in the game, and skin in the game is often what what keeps entrepreneurs motivated. You know, eventually you're just focused without that. But you know, you want you want people to have skin in the game. And you know, we look after that here where we try and get the managers with skin in the game because we do profit sharing for for all all of our team here.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

So one of the uh I know challenge if I if I look at uh data in the business owners in Canada, uh David, what what what I see is a lot of business, and you just mentioned one of the examples, the guy was 82. That just falls into the the data I was uh talking about. It the data shows that 80, 80 percent of or 82 percent of business owners are above the age 55 or 60 in in Canada. And these business owners, they're gonna look for you know exit very soon. And the sad part is they don't have the kids to take on a business. You know, in your case, you've done something right, your dad, that you know you were you got involved in a business, but a lot of business don't or owners don't have that that uh uh that leverage. I'm trying to understand what could we, you know, what could business, you know, the the kids that who are who are you know, parents are running a business, they definitely want to exit very, very soon because the bank's looking at this as an opportunity, right? Somebody gotta change hand in a business, they can make money both sides. The the the business owner who are listening to us or or the kids who are listening to us getting into business, any word advice like what did you do to get interested in your dad's business or or or uh you know had a had a you know career in that and and you got involved in this, what can business owners do or the kids can do so that they're on the same page instead of you know going in two different directions, because otherwise either they're gonna sell it out of the business, because if they're not interested in a business, or or parents are gonna have to just sell the company to somebody else.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

I mean, that's that's a great question. It takes like the parents at their when they're having dinner with their kids and talking business, sometimes you know, go over, tell them why did I do a business? Like when I show I went through with my kids, I said, this is how I valued the bagel business, and this is why I bought it, and this is how you can pay down the debt. And you know, you can work it through in Excel today. I mean, AI could tell you, you know, how to do those things, but but don't forget about your kids and and teach them when they're young. When I was 21, I ran two hot dog stands in downtown Toronto. And that was the fun part of that was making money. It wasn't so much fun, you know, get the hot dogs, getting them cleaned up and serving people for you know 15 hours a day, but it was fun when when you make money and it's the juice of success, right? Whether you're in packaging or tech or whatever, it's fun to be successful. If you're not successful, it's stress, right? And you can go for a year or two or five without without having that success. As long as you're working there and you're you're making the progress. You may not, you know, sometimes you work five years and then the sixth year you go, the business, the business takes off. It's not a short term. Anyone that says, okay, you can be a rich guy in a year or two, yeah, it's pretty unlikely, right? Most people, it's 20, 25, 30 years. That's why like Under Armour. When I heard about Under Armour, I said, what is this new company like Nike? Well, they've been around, they've been around for 20 years before. You know, so they go on that trajectory. But teaching your kids and then, you know, making sure you have a succession plan in in your business and making sure your team is young and old because you want you want both. And making sure that's just you know, smart planning and making sure your business isn't isn't uh in trouble. When I cross the street, I look both ways to make sure that bus that sometimes takes people out, I make sure the bus isn't coming for me. But you always have to structure business. And I mean your kids I don't push my kids in. If they want to come in, that's okay. I wanted to be in business for a long time. My undergrad is in business. So that was an easy one for me. Like I said, hot dogs to bagels. I must have some food thing. I I get I guess I get hungry, but the packaging is the packaging is the real business. And is it is it super interesting? It's interesting, but it's interesting in being successful and getting a new product out and getting machine running and and you know, looking after whatever is your problem of the day. We're really problem solvers, right? And everyone on my team is here to you know to solve problems for the customer.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

So make it happen. You mentioned team, very interesting. You know, you've been hiring people for a long time, you've been coaching people, you know, advice. What is some of the skills that you look for? You know, um most business owners, when I when I talk to them, they they have this intuitions when the when they somebody walks in a room, you room, you can tell in two seconds, hey, is it gonna work or not? Right. Definitely you want to go through due diligence and make sure all the steps are in place, but you can tell as a business owner, somebody just shake your hand that this person's may may work for us. What is a couple of things you look for, you know, get you know, uh getting aligned with the people, and or or what is the first couple of impressions that you say, listen, this is what uh you know uh will work for us.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

So if the person is is on the floor, I need the technical ability because it's hard, it's hard to teach that. It takes years to teach it. So if they can bring technical ability to the business, that's a plus. But then as you get up, you need the person that that needs to be a risk taker and a communicator. You can be the smartest guy in the world. If you can't communicate to your team and your business what you need, you're not gonna build, you're not gonna build a good company. You'll have a company of two or three or five people, but you need you need to communicate. So and hire, I always tell people, I hire for my weakness, right? Don't hire for your strength. If you're really good at at risk, you don't need 10 risk takers in your room. If you're really good at math, don't don't hire somebody who's the same as you. Hire someone who's different than you. And also when you sit around the table, I like to go last when we're talking, you know, because some people think I intimidate by giving my my view. I try not to, but I want to hear your view. I don't want you, I know what my view is, I don't need to hear it. Come around the room and let's hear. Ten people in a room are always smarter than one. And the person with the big ego that says, I know everything, I don't need to, I don't need to, you know, hire them to be in my business because they're obviously not seeing the team orientation, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:36

And so mindset is important. You know, you know what mindset people come with? You know, are they gonna be part of the team or are they gonna try to tell us what to do?

SPEAKER_01 19:43

And lean, I you know, I'm a big uh believer in lean, the lean process. And I just had two of my guys come back, they're doing black belt uh lean training, and they go away for a week and they they train and then they come back for three weeks, then go away for another week. And they said one of the biggest things was team building and communication. So, yes, you need to fix the problem on the floor, and how do we do things more efficiently and better and faster? But at the end of the day, the people on the floor can tell you and can help you fix most of your issues, but you have to you have to listen to them and remember because they've been living through those issues on a daily basis, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:20

They have a better understanding than anybody else you have in a business.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

They're on the machine, they're running the machine, they know what the problem is. We just have to take the time to listen to them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

So let's talk about talent pool in Canada where we are right now. Do we have enough talent pool? What are your thoughts, son? Because you you're always constantly looking for people. You know where we are with the talent pool. We will tell we got so much flex of immigration, we have a lot of people. What's the talent looks like?

SPEAKER_01 20:45

I think on an immigration, we are one of the best countries in the world for people to come to. So we want to take the best people from those countries. You know, India has some of the best engineers in the world. They have the best, one of the best engineering schools in the world. So let's take their best engineers. They can come here, they can help us, they can build code, help us build the country. Or are we bringing let's take the best of the people here? I mean, we have also great engineering schools in Waterloo. But the thing, I think the things that we're missing is at school, we don't teach the kids enough about finance, how to balance your book, how much money they need, how how are they gonna with the issues they have with rent and with housing, we need to teach them better on that. And when I look for maintenance people, there's we're at a real loss for maintenance people. Electricians, mechanics, electromechanical engineers, those type of guys. Because when we they need to fix the machine, and as the machine becomes more and more computerized, you need more of not less of a mechanical and more of an electromechanical engineer. And as you get to robots, the people, the robots will take some jobs away from some people, but it will create jobs for a lot of higher end personal. in the plant and we're going to need those people. And I'm not sure I'm not sure we're ready for that. You know, usually the schools are behind what we need, but we need we need Canada as a fantastic country. We can compete with anybody, almost anybody, not for cost of labor, but in the United States, we get a free trade deal. We can compete with Americans very, very well because we use ingenuity, we look after our people, we have health care, all those things you don't necessarily have in the United States. So we can compete. Just level the playing field for us and let's, you know, let's get a good deal and some security. Like the problem with with the president down south is you don't know what's going on tomorrow. He's putting on a tariff January 20th, you know, we rushed everything across the border. Then he's stopped that he's doing it in March. We did the same thing. Then he announced two weeks ago he's putting 100% on Canada. That that went away. You know so when I used to read the paper every day now I need to you know look at it two or three times a day to see what's what's changing. But you know I rely on our ability to pivot, to change. You know, with with my team is doing an AI course. We have about 10, 12 of us. And we're all looking we need to know what AI is and how to use it better because it's a super powerful tool and we need to be able to use it because if we don't use it somebody else is going to use it and you know eat our lunch. And Canada's fantastic country with all these minerals and oil and gas and rare earth and you know we have a a tremendous opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Yeah. So richest country by capital around the world compared to any other country but it just you know very poor on our policies. You know we've been making some policies that that are not online I'm not taking Canadians anywhere. You know I was I used to be you know on a board in a in a one of the colleges here locally you know the guy said you know we bring a lot of talent from overseas and I said listen yes that's great you bring a lot of talent but shouldn't we encouraging our kids to to to build the talent as well so you know I run a technology company so he said yeah we are doing that I said well let's go to uh one of your classes and see how you know we went to walk up to a couple of classes I want to see how many Canadian kids take in computer science. Show me how many Canadian kids are there in a class or you went to three classes and out of in you know 34 50 or 35 kids there was only two Canadian or three Canadians in every class.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

So you know and I mean you have to let your kids do stuff but at the same time in the one to eight or one to nine or in high school they have to take computer science. If you don't take it you don't learn the power and you may like it. You may not think you like it till you get there but computers and technology are the way of the future if you're not going to learn that you know you're going to be sitting you know riding on a horse on the 401 it's uh it's not it's not good for traffic. You know we're doing something wrong that we're not encouraging our kids who take this you know math and science and those those skills that you know financial literacy you mentioned just one we you know we're not encouraging kids to take that instead of taking arts and you know other programs which is great but we need a balance you know my kids included you know the Canadian born they they will take any other course but just not you know these these uh engineering degrees or or computer science or or financial literacy countries that push their kids into the STEM and computer science areas are the countries that their kids will be the most successful will make the most money because they're going to be the leaders on the the tech you see the Nasdaq drives everything the countries that that do that are the leaders who don't need we we have a benefit of oil and gas and and and rare earth but we should take that benefit and turn it into things like you know Dubai is done Israel is done take the tech and use your your resources because everybody has people it's who uses them the best and it's going to take engineers who take the gas out of the the ground and and and and and produce that stuff we've done nothing for nine years we need we need to get going because oil oil will be finished one day right and we want to make sure that it's our oil I mean today Toronto you don't get gasoline from from Alberta we get it from the Middle East somewhere uh because we can't get it across that's like you know that's like crazy talk about you're buying Canadian we need we need to buy Canadian I mean at the end of the day why would I not buy from Alberta instead of you know another country but and we have to be green right we we just did the whole the whole roof with with solar power because it's not it's the right thing to do and so it's it's financially beneficial. And so my solar grid I'm about one gigawatt it's paid off in seven years. If the end of seven years my cost for electricity is zero. What could be better than that?

SPEAKER_00 26:53

So I mean the government can help you but they have to just remind you your business person do what's smart right and and the new you know the what they're looking for you know the the AS going to need a lot of data centers right so if they're gonna need a data center we've got more electricity than any other country you know in in the US that's a big problem they don't have enough electricity. If we have that electricity why not just you know find a partnership with the US build the data centers in Canada and you know north of Alberta there's a three towns they have all LMG gas you know they're they're filled with that we can use that to to uh you know produce electricity and and build the data centers but unless these politicians get the policy right I I don't think we're gonna get there to have that advantage for us uh yeah I agree with you 100% we've got to gotta get the politicians to catch up with the with the world the world moves really fast politics doesn't move so fast right it's like we need to build pipelines when we're gonna build them yeah everybody wants to build them today they didn't before we have to get them built but while while it's while it's the right time right and but the the AI the technology the kids the kids the kids they talk about there's no opportunity today there was never a greater opportunity in the world you can make an app and you can become a millionaire.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

It's not easy nothing is easy but you know 40 years ago it was really hard to do something and be incredibly successful off the bat right you know big big companies like Nike I I read his story and it took him like 10 years to get going right he was on the verge of bankruptcy and his he was dating a girl and the parents said you can't you can't marry this guy he's a shoe salesman he's nobody and then he said by the way I'm worth 10 billion dollars today so she made a mistake she didn't she broke up with him right wow but you know listen uh an entrepreneur you never know what the what the end game is and people say oh it's all about the money it's about being successful you know it's not it's money is nice to have money just by product it comes with the being successful I guess right so you're doing a marking where do you stand today how you how are you you know doing better but at the end of the day if you're a successful entrepreneur you have enough money it's not about the money or it's about giving it away as soon as you have enough you decide how how can I give this away to charities not not necessarily you know to your kids or whatever to give it to a charity and make make an impact right so so you know next few months we're gonna start you know negotiating with the U.S.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

say you know there's Kuzma whatever they call it is that making an impact on your business uh uh David you know uh while we go through we don't know which way is gonna go but does that is that impacting your business as of now so it's a concern for me for sure because we ship 65 70 percent to the U.S.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

So if the door was closed it would have a very negative impact on on the business to lose that amount of business would be really hard there's not there's not enough business in Canada to make up for that I believe that you know Kuzma USMC is a win-win and it's been a win-win for for 40 years and when Trump negotiated it back in 2018 he says it's great it's the greatest thing he's ever negotiated so I think we're gonna get a deal are we gonna have to open up dairy a little bit and some of these other things almost for sure but Trump wants something that's good for Wisconsin and some of those swing states because he wants to win. Hopefully he's not running again you know two-term limit is is the policy down there but he's looking for for a win so let's not poke him in the eye right he he likes he likes he gets deals done with people that he likes and the U.S. ambassador said how much he disliked Trudeau but on the other hand how much he liked Prime Minister Carney that was before Davos right was speaking but you know Carney's a bright guy I hope he's doing the right thing for the country we can't divide we have to stay together but if it's good for 95% of the country the other five percent maybe it's not good for we have we can help them too we can provide them with the with with training and with financial assistance for the industry so that they can they can compete because the dairy industry we have a great dairy industry here but it's it's it's not competing with the U.S. I'm sure they could do that. Just like we are we don't get any subsidies you know manufacturers most manufacturers get no subsidies for anything. We do our own thing and we compete with the Americans and the Americans are 400 million people we're this little country with 40 million we do a great job we we are not attuned to saying that we do a good job and Canada is great. You know we should realize how great we are here and how great a country it is and have a little confidence that we can make it happen.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Definitely so if you know back to your point on a dairy David if if that if the we have to make open a market a little bit right so let's say that is that do you think there's a political will will or there's enough uh willpower into open whether dairy banking or telecom I think these are the three top industries that we don't want to open dairy I think telecom bank banking and there's one more I think pharmaceutical companies are not pharmaceutical.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

So tel so telecom is easy it's I have an easy answer for that. The Americans don't want to come here we have 40 million people spread across 3000 miles right that's like you know that's like Texas for them. They don't want to I mean the cell terrorists they don't want to come here really our prices have come down they're more competitive lately with freedom and some of those other newer companies so let them in and let them come and see it's a big country with not that many people it's not a great deal for them. On the dairy you know we're gonna have to do something on dairy it's an old system that we've been using I don't know 30 or 40 years. Not a great system. Every Canadian pays more for milk and eggs than than the average person. So it's good for the average Canadian it should be good for us. So you'll have to help the dairy and egg business by saying hey we're gonna help you for the next five years to transition and then let's see what we can do. Saputo it's a Canadian company they're all over the world right you start in Canada's all over the world so if we can compete on eggs and and milk you know we we can do it you you you but you can't give someone like a heart date as of you know August 16th we're we're changing over you have to say we'll give you a transition period so that you can move in when we first started the free trade there was transition I think it was seven years to remove all the tariffs all the duties they called them at the time so it wasn't it wasn't overnight. What was the third the third business banking banking that's a banking that's a banks our banks are so strong you know they're so strong what are we afraid of what are we afraid of TD Bank and all the big banks and CIBC they have incredible balance sheets we are buying US banks right T D what when if you look at hockey least play against Boston in the T D center right that's what it's called most Americans don't know it's Toronto Dominion that's why we do acronyms but most of the Canadian banks own U.S. banks so what are we worried about we do a great job you know they might push us a little bit and the rates might come down a hair but our banks make a fortune they're super strong American banks almost fell over in 2009 we should not be afraid let's not be afraid of the Americans the only thing I'm afraid of is an F-35 because we don't have any complaints if the Americans want to invade us not going to be a long you know a long situation but yeah we're we're we're strong we're much stronger than people think because we don't give ourselves credit.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

Yeah I know um so this probably a little bit tricky because I know came from I came from auto industry you know so that a competitive advantage Canadian have was there's a couple things you know Magna was uh uh one one of the so there was no uh unionized workforce so you know that was one of the appeals for auto to come here the second the second was definitely the the cost of electricity was really cheap you know that a lot of manufacturing wanted to come because there was not enough right so those could be very exactly so in in a cost of operations was a little lower as well so I think that drove auto industry to Canada a lot because of these three four things.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

We had that competitive advantage over the years looks like we lost some of the competitive advantage what could be built if in your mind you know from a manufacturing standpoint what could be built that could last longer as a competitive advantage for us to compete with the US or the world stage well the the the price you're you're you're exactly right the price of electricity has gone up up and up and up because of some things of bad political decisions in Quebec you know we have a facility in Quebec and and in Toronto Quebec is still fairly cheap hydroelectricity very green so we can use those advantages liquefied natural gas we have tremendous advantage on that the world wants our liquefied natural gas and it's actually green because you take the world off of coal and bring it to liquefied natural gas you get a much better carbon footprint not perfect but you get a much bigger carbon footprint and on the auto side I mean Trump is really against us making cars but GM is not against making cars us making cars and Ford and everything is integrated and they look when GM looks at all their plants they look at Canada and if we're inefficient and we can't build a car successfully and and efficiently they close the plan. We don't need a tariff to close a plan. We need to be efficient and my facility in Quebec is union my facility in Toronto is non-union I don't think it's a union issue it's an issue of how do you work together and as long as a union and the the managers are focused on being successful that's the key. Nonunion when Magnet came up yes he had a he had an advantage over over the big three because he was non-union and he did things that they couldn't do which is you know move move quickly and he built a you know multi-billion dollar business on that but we still you know cars are not going to be here forever the when if Tesla ever comes out with the robocar taxi you're gonna send your car to pick up your daughter she'll pick it up drop you off at the house the car will go pick up somebody else you'll have one car instead of you know two or three cars because technology is gonna make it different right kids today they don't think about not all of them think about buying a car because they don't use a car that much right and Uber is a whole different game can you imagine Uber without a driver that's yeah that's where they're going.

SPEAKER_00 37:44

Yeah yeah they already have that and running in the US yeah yeah absolutely very interesting hey I can learn from you you know there's so much to learn so from from your wisdom with experience I want to take a couple one second on that if somebody building a company if somebody trying to walk on your or your footprints uh uh David they're trying to build a company what can they do you know to avoid some of the mistakes that we as a business owners we all make mistakes we learn from it definitely takes longer to solve the problem uh any word of advice who's somebody trying to you know build a company's you know in in a in a Toronto in Canada what can they do to avoid some of the mistakes they're gonna make and they're gonna learn over the time any word of wisdom you can share with them yeah sure that's an easy question and a tough question.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

The easy answer is and you'll see it in the textbook for BBA or MBA hire good people build your team yeah it's really hard right the book says hire good people it's really hard because how do you know the person's good till they come to work for you so I've hired many many salespeople I've fired many many salespeople and now I have three fantastic salespeople makes life easier. At the beginning 26 years ago I was so concerned with salaries and what I pay the person and the person has to be you know competitive and relatively cheap and I and I I the more I paid people the more money I made because I got better people I motivated them better. So yes if you have a startup you have to be careful of what what your costs are but then once you get going you have to make sure that you pay your people properly and you you compensate them on your growth properly and everybody's in the right direction. But what your business is there's so many other businesses you know I my daughter is 24 and I said find a niche that's not satisfied whether it's in manufacturing whether it's in software if you want to be a consultant of the government you could do that for 100 years because fixing the government's problems and software takes takes takes a never ending problem. It takes forever you know but you want to write software write software get a couple friends together start a company where you see there's a need wherever that need is and then go after it right go after like the the software they use I understand in the banks is like 40 years old because they're afraid to change the software because it works with security because probably no one can get in there because it's so old no one knows the code from 40 years ago but yeah you know some of the things the technology moves really fast whether it's software my business moves slowly because you have to buy a machine you have to order the machine you have to install it. It's the old bricks and mortar which I used to be ashamed of saying in 2000 when eBay was going and everyone's tech what do you do? I make stuff. Oh my God you're so you're so passé and people aren't going to make things in the future and you got to make things and and you and then you can do the software and AI I need to know enough about AI to know where I need to concentrate because otherwise you you miss it. And people that are over whatever 30 40 50 we have to make sure we don't get stuck in where our parents went and said that's not for me.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

Yeah everything is for you right auto driving cars and technology and AI and but you need to learn right you stop learning you stop learning you might as well retire play pickleball right yeah whether it's a software whether it's an AI you know from business standpoint always looking at hey can I use this to solve my problems better? Can I solve my problems faster? Where can I take advantage out of this right? So that is only good use for the if if you can't solve your problems what you're up against faster than faster with the AI or with the software then what's the point of having those things right you're simply trying to solve the same problem how fast can I solve it?

SPEAKER_01 41:32

Yeah the robots are coming but it's not going to be here tomorrow. Yeah it might be five or ten years and then you'll see a change and then the question would be do how do I buy a robot? What kind of robot do I buy? How how is the robot doing and when the robot breaks you need to fix it right so that's that's going to be the the issue and then I think you're gonna see a lot of onboarding back from Asia to North America and Europe because why ship from there if you can get the robot a robot is a robot in in whatever country you're in right so I think that will shift business back here. So but life is going to change and life just changes faster than it yeah that could be yeah you know the one of the you know the way of uh you know dealing with this uh the the immigration instead of bringing the people over if we can just be more productive we we can produce more just with the with the machines and you know and AI you know we don't have to have you know bring that that that you know the the whole immigration back to other countries right we can just deal with the just just an increase your productivity increase your productivity then you can take more time off then you can go into more holidays and then you know that's uh the uh the the vacation business I think is going to be much bigger because you know the old days used to work 60 70 hours and then you get back to you know the 40 is a standard and then Europe is 35 as a standard so what do people do when they go home they you know they have to do something Netflix they have to watch things or do things or go out for dinner or stuff like that. But listen the future is just moving faster but it looks good to me. Right? I want to stay long enough to see the future so I got to stay stay in good shape and look after look after everything.

SPEAKER_00 43:10

So any hope any hope the kids can uh kids will be part of your business eventually that they they're showing in trust that that they're gonna take over your business so I want the kids to do what they want to do.

SPEAKER_01 43:21

If they want to come it's open if they don't I have one lawyer I have one screenwriter I have one business person one just just in in first year but you know probably more likely I'll help them to do what they want to love to do. Right. And someone said hey do whatever you love. Well that's not the answer. The answer is do whatever you love that people find value in. If you do whatever you love you like sweeping the floor it's not going to be a a great life uh you know but if you find something that that you love to do and there's there's always value you can always turn it to have some type of value for you. So But the future is future is not written. That's the great the great thing about the future.

SPEAKER_00 44:04

So very interesting. You know, we can talk forever. I can you know it's a very you know interesting discussion. But I want to be mindful of your time, David. Where can people learn more by you and your business if they want to get some more information, they want to learn uh about your company.

SPEAKER_01 44:17

So just go on Google David Gronofsky or Atlanta Coded Papers, Grife Spagels, Shared Tower. They should they should have most of that stuff. And and hey, you should I I gotta tell them they gotta use AI. Don't even go on a website, just go on AI, do Atlanta Coded Papers and what's good about Atlanta Coded Papers and ask all those questions so AI can give you uh you know all the details. It's it's it's very powerful.

SPEAKER_00 44:42

Very powerful. I'm gonna include a link to your website and LinkedIn before the video. People are gonna click a button or they can reach out. But yeah, use AI as you recommend. You know, stop stop surfing the web, just ask a question. Perfect. Very interesting. I you know, you were very kind with your time, David. Thank you so much for time. Really enjoyed our discussion. Thank you so much. We'll talk soon.

SPEAKER_01 45:01

Great, thanks very much.

SPEAKER_00 45:02

Thank you.