In an exclusive interview, the one and only Wes Hall join the podcast to talk about his new book "No Bootstraps When You're Barefoot: My rise from a Jamaican plantation shack to the boardrooms of Bay Street." Wes shares his story and advice for retailers on how they can genuinely help black entrepreneurs and adds hints for anyone who winds up in front of him on CBC's Dragon's Den
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
In an exclusive interview, the one and only Wes Hall join the podcast to talk about his new book "No Bootstraps When You're Barefoot: My rise from a Jamaican plantation shack to the boardrooms of Bay Street." Wes shares his story and advice for retailers on how they can genuinely help black entrepreneurs and adds hints for anyone who winds up in front of him on CBC's Dragon's Den
Thanks for tuning into this special episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven’t already, be sure and click subscribe on your favourite podcast platform so new episodes will land automatically twice a week, and check out my other retail industry media properties; the Remarkable Retail podcast, the Conversations with CommerceNext podcast, and the Food Professor podcast. Last but not least, if you are into BBQ, check out my all new YouTube barbecue show, Last Request Barbeque, with new episodes each and every week!
I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company & Maven Media, and if you’re looking for more content, or want to chat follow me on LinkedIn, or visit my website meleblanc.co! Have a safe week everyone!
About Wes
As the executive chairman and founder of Kingsdale Advisors, Wes Hall is one of North America's most influential powerbrokers and Canada's preeminent leader in shareholder advisory services, playing pivotal roles on multi-million and billion-dollar transactions for Air Canada, Xstrata, Citigroup, Tim Horton's, PetroCanada and many others. Hall is also the owner of QM Environmental, a leading national environmental and industrial services provider with over 450 employees, among other businesses. An instructor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, he teaches Black Entrepreneurship & Leadership, a first-of-its-kind course in North America; he is the founder of the anti-Black racism initiative, BlackNorth; and in October 2021 became one of the investors on the hit series Dragons’ Den.
About Michael
Michael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated on thought leadership panels worldwide. Michael was recently added to ReThink Retail’s prestigious Top 100 Global Retail Influencers for a second year in 2022.
Michael is also the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts, including Canada’s top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail, plus the Remarkable Retail with author Steve Dennis, Global E-Commerce Tech Talks and The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. Most recently, Michael launched Conversations with CommerceNext, a podcast focussed on retail eCommerce, digital marketing and retail careers - all available on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music and all major podcast platforms. Michael is also the producer and host of the “Last Request Barbeque” channel on YouTube where he cooks meals to die for and influencer riches.
Michael LeBlanc 00:05
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host, Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with the Retail Council of Canada.
In an exclusive interview, the one and only Wes Hall joins the podcast to talk about his new book, "No Bootstraps When You're Barefoot: My rise from a Jamaican plantation shack to the boardrooms of Bay Street ''. Wes shares his story and advice for retailers on how they can genuinely help black entrepreneurs and adds hints for anyone who winds up in front of him on CBC's Dragons’ Den.
Wes Hall 00:32
Let's look at every single opportunity that we have in front of us. And let's make the best of them because we never know where those opportunities will lead. And so that's the lesson that I was hoping that I was going to say in part to say on your way up that corporate ladder if that's what you, if you want to climb the corporate ladder, that is that you're going to be encountering a lot of things along the way. And some of them may not look like opportunities. But if you view them the right way, you, you and, and you look back, you're going to go man, if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't be here today. If I had not, let's say for example, the law firm, you know, working in the mailroom of a law firm.
Michael LeBlanc 01:15
Wes Hall, welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. How are you doing this afternoon?
Wes Hall 01:18
Back, I am back to the fantastic, fantastic this afternoon, a beautiful day in the city of Toronto.
Michael LeBlanc 01:24
Well, outstanding you just usurped my first question was going to be where are we finding you today? Are you back on the road? Are you back traveling? I imagine you did a fair bit of that before. Have you resumed the pace of travel? Or has your life changed a little bit?
Wes Hall 01:37
Now, now that, now that I have a book on the go and on the road to promote it. Now life is a little, a little bit more hectic than it was a few months ago, I guess because everybody wants to hear the story about how Wes Hall became the quote unquote, "King of Bay Street", which is the handle that they use on social media.
Michael LeBlanc 01:55
Yeah, yeah. Well listen, it's a fantastic book. We'll get to it in a minute. I have tons of questions for you about the book and about your journey. But let's start with as you said, you've got a big profile in the financial and the not-for-profit world and of course, a dragon on CBC Dragons’ Den. Many listeners would know of you but maybe not all, and maybe they might not know as much as they need to about you. Tell us about who you are and what you do for a living?
Wes Hall 02:20
Well, I assume that nobody knows who I am. Let's just put it that way. That's the way I go in preparation for my day. I don't walk around looking at people going, don't you know who I am, I assume nobody knows who I am. So, I'll tell you a funny story about that. I was at the, the Raptors game and they recognized me on the Jumbotron. And everybody in the audience was clapping and stuff. And after I decided to go on social media, and they put a picture of me and they put it on the Raptor, social media Instagram page, and there I am with my fancy suit on. And then I heard (inaudible) a whole bunch of comments, who is this guy?
Michael LeBlanc 02:56
He's well-dressed whoever he is. But I don't really know, (crossover talk),
Wes Hall 02:58
Who the heck is he, right? So, I go back about business assuming that nobody knows who I am. So, for me, I, the, the book has a good story about, about, me. But it's not really, the book wasn't really about promoting me or promoting Wes Hall. It's really about telling a Canadian story, a Canadian story and because we're a, a, a country of immigrants. Everybody who's been here, either their ancestors came here, or their new Canadian or older Canadian, but we're all came as immigrants. And I'm one of those new immigrants that came to this country, first generation immigrants. And I was able to, I came here as a, as a, 16-year-old with literally no money in my pocket, nothing. And, and I was able to work very hard by starting at the very bottom, I started on Bay Street, in the mailroom of a law firm. That's the bottom, that's the bottom. And now I'm really at the top of my career, working, advising public companies, advising CEOs, owning multiple businesses and so on. That's the Canadian dream. And the book is really not about promoting me but really about promoting the Canadian dream. And that anyone, anyone can live that dream.
Michael LeBlanc 04:18
Well, congrats on the new book, it's available now. Available wherever folks like to enjoy buying books, No Bootstraps When You're Barefoot: My rise from a Jamaican plantation shack to the boardrooms of Bay Street. Now, tell us who did you write the book for and what and why? I think you're, you're giving us a bit of foreshadowing as to why. I mean, you start the book by saying it's not an instruction manual. So, what, what did you hope to achieve?
Wes Hall 04:41
Well, a lot of people write books and go this is how you become rich, or this is how you become famous, or this how you become successful, this is how you become an actor, this is how to become a businessman, and this is how to become an entrepreneur. My book is none of those things. It's not to tell you how to. It's really a roadmap to show you the journey that I traveled and essentially is less than to say, nobody should really travel this journey.
If we're looking out for a fellow man, we're going to make sure that anyone who is in the situation that I found myself in from I was a baby all the way to, to now that if we can do something to prevent that from happening, it's our duty to make sure that nobody had to live that journey.
A lot of people go, you have to go through hardship to be successful, yes, but not all kinds of hardship. There's no reason why you should go through physical abuse, verbal abuse, mental abuse, in order for you to be successful, in order for you to make it. So, if we have the means to prevent those parts of success, or somebody's life, and we can affect them in a positive way, we should do that.
So, my book is a, a lesson in how we can be humane, how we can look out for a fellow man, and, and really how as Canadians, we have a duty to make sure that we look, we look out for each other. I got up here, because I had a lot of people that didn't look like me, that really looked after me, looked out for me. When they hired me, they made sure that I'm successful. Unfortunately, we're getting away from that, whereby people now have to, you know you got to prove yourself first.
Well, when I got my second job, which is the first one was out of, in my second break was the first one was in the mailroom, and people may say that's not a break, but it was a break, it was a big break, because I get to understand Bay Street by looking at it from the eyes of a mail clerk. And I got to understand the politics of Bay Street. So, that was a big break. When I got my then my first, my second big break, which is to work for Canwest Global. I didn't have any experience to do those jobs, none, zero. I had no skills to do that job. But yet somebody said to themselves, I am going to take this kid under my wing. I'm going to teach him what I know. And I am forever grateful for the gentleman who did that, for me forever grateful.
Michael LeBlanc 07:10
What, what do they call it? You know, when you get to the top, send the elevator back down kind of metaphor,
Wes Hall
Absolutely, well, there's, there's so I and, and you, you also have to Michael, add, being a busy executive on top of that, right?
Michael LeBlanc
You're, you're clearly a master, great communicator, your, your business ventures are built around communication. But I just want to get back to the tradecraft of the book a little bit. Because to my mind it, it's a really great first person read.
Now as you sat down to tackle that blank page, it's not as always easy as writing a prospectus or helping people write a press release. Talk, talk about your writing process. I just interviewed Steven Pressfield, ‘The War of Art’, which I don't know if you've had the chance to read that book, he describes this gravity like force called resistance that faces all creative people that gets in your way of doing anything. How did you, how, what was your process? I, you know, some authors forced themselves to write an amount per day, some you know, just set goals. How did, how did you approach this? Sure, sure.
Wes Hall 08:09
If, if you're an author, your job is to write stuff. That's it. You don't have other things distracting you from writing. The only thing that generally may distract you is writer's block. I just don't know if you mentioned there's a blank page and I don't know how to fill it. So, I started the process by going, I am going to write X number of pages a day, X number of chapters a month. And then I start to write the stuff and I realized that this is hard. And you know, this is, this is hard. And, and after finishing the first chapter, I go man, you know, how many more I asked my, (crossover talk),
Michael LeBlanc
Am I done yet? (crossover talk),
Wes Hall
I got about 20 more of those. I'm like, man. So, I, I go, I need to work with someone. So, I really worked with a gentleman who him and I spent time together whereby we're going to go, here's, you know, let's put the story together, really, really closely. But I want, it's my story, it's my language, it's my words that's been used. But I want to make sure that once I dictate those words, we work on making sure that we put them in a way that make it flow nicely.Because one of the things about when you're reading the press release, as you mentioned, it's like it's you're writing about facts. You're not telling a story in a press release.
And so, in corporate Canada, for example, we got to the point that (inaudible) whereby, when people are putting out their prospectuses, and they're putting out their information circle, they were just boring, dull legal documents, so boring and dull. And what we've decided to do is to use them to tell stories about the company and about the investment. And people start to appreciate that a lot more, but we had to fight with the lawyers and the bankers and everybody who liked to see these things out in a boring kind of way.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah.
Wes Hall
It's just, it's the same thing with, with writing a book. You know, I have to write it in a way where people can go, I want to turn the page. So, how do you put those paragraphs together and what you focus on to make sure that it flows in a logical sequential way. And I was able to write, I worked with someone to be able to help to, to put it together in that format.
Michael LeBlanc 10:15
Well, congratulations, I interview a lot of authors and read a lot of books I can generally tell when one is written with help. And one that's written first person. I couldn't tell, I thought that was your writing. That's why I was so intrigued by how you'd fit it all in. So, congratulations on.
Wes Hall 10:29
Thank you.
Michael LeBlanc 10:30
It's a fantastic read. I want to get back to one thing in the book, you know, you talked about basically adversity, and Malcolm Gladwell, for example, has talked about the idea that a little bit of adversity is actually correlated to pretty well to future success. You know, reading your book, you had to say the least, a lot of adversity more than a little. But give the listeners a, a background about how that created in you the drive for success, if I can put it that way. How you landed here, and just and just took advantage of your opportunities. Was that a factor that, you know, no one, as you said, no one wants to replicate it. But, you know, does the and, my follow up question is does the lack of adversity conversely, make it harder, because you know, you, you, you haven't faced tougher times?
Wes Hall 11:15
Yeah, I've, I've always said to (inaudible) to people that I wouldn't trade what I went through for anything. I wouldn't, now when I was going through it, it wasn't fun.
Michael LeBlanc 11:24
Right, right.
Wes Hall 11:25
When my, when, when my mom were abusing me physically, as a child, I thought I literally thought my mom was going to beat me to death. That's not fun. And when she, she threw me out of the house at 13 years old to fend for myself, in, in Jamaica, that wasn't fun, either. And when I came to Canada, and to live with my dad, and two years later happened to be on my own in a brand-new country, that wasn't fun. When people call you names, or use, you know, racial epithets against you, or deny you of an opportunity, because of, because of the color your skin, that's not fun. But they built in me certain resilience, that allowed me to just keep on pushing. Because every time I win, I go, I didn't know that I didn't know that would happen to me. And then after, it's, it's almost like a baseball player, every time they swing at the ball, they get a, a, a single. And so, are they going to stop swinging, because they got one strikeout. But they know that they're getting singles, singles, win games, (crossover talk),
Michael LeBlanc 12:32
You are going to get on base, (crossover talk),
Wes Hall 12:33
They get advanced, they get on base, and they get advanced. And so, I was getting a lot of singles along the way, even though I was getting this hardship that was coming along. But I knew that those hardships would make me stronger. And so, I went from not knowing that I would ever leave the small town that my grandmother raised me in, in rural Jamaica, never leaving there. And I thought it was going to work on a sugarcane plantation like my grandmother did. And like her ancestor did for the rest of my life, because my broth-, I have a brother in Jamaica right now and that's what he does. And, and because everybody in that community, nobody leaves that community, nobody leaves that community, I thought I was going to be in that community forever.
And so, when I got the opportunity to actually come to Canada, I didn't remember about the hardship that I faced in that, in, in that plantation house at all. I just thought about, wow, look at this great opportunity I now have, I can be whatever I want, (crossover talk),
Michael LeBlanc
You just saw the future, (crossover talk),
Wes Hall
Exactly, I saw the future right there in front of me. But I didn't know how good the future was, I just knew that the future was better than I left behind. And that's all that mattered to me. Because I went through, you know, the abuse from my mom, I now know that I'm never going to treat my children that way. And because my father, give, got this woman pregnant, left her in Jamaica, and I was abused by my gra-, my mother, and I know that I need to be a better husband. And because my grandmother was so kind, to me, and, and everybody, I want to be more like her. And so, all the things that I've went through, it helped me to become a better person. And I believe that had I not gone through all those things, I would be a different person today. I really believe that.
Michael LeBlanc 14:22
And, and it's those characteristics that you've imparted on your kids, and I guess on your kids’ kids, right. Because thankfully, they don't have to go through the same thing. So, is, is that your, your idea? I mean, you've got a great family and, and very successful in their own right. Is that, is that the choice of, you know, importing or imparting those kinds of characteristics of striving for greatness and kindness and those things?
Wes Hall 14:46
Absolutely. Because I would be dishonored my grandmother if I didn't strive for that, because she wanted to raise decent grandkids, decent grandkids. That's the only goal she had. She didn't say I want to raise these kids to become rich so that they can look after me when I'm old. Because first of all, she was already old when she was raising me. When she got me, when she went to this tin shack, where my grandmoth-, where my mother rather abandoned us, she was 60 years old, my grandmother 60. She was supposed to be going off into the sunset and collecting Social Security. She knew she now has to even work harder. She died at 97 years old in poverty, because she was still looking after great great grandkids when she died.
Michael LeBlanc 15:33
Wow.
Wes Hall 15:33
So, I would, I would be dishonouring her if I didn't pass her lega-, legacy down to my children, for them to live the way that she lived. And I live the way that she wanted me to live.
Michael LeBlanc 15:48
Your book chronicles your, your journey up to what did you just, would you say the King of Bay Street? Is there anything you would have done differently along that journey? Or you just played the best hand you, you could and you and maybe that's the bigger lesson in, in the book as well.
Wes Hall 16:02
Yeah, I, I think you're going to find that you're going to get a lot of opportunities as you go through life. And some of us just turn our nose, nose up at opportunity. Oh, that's not good enough, oh, you want me to work in a mailroom, I have so much more skills than working in the mailroom. I'm never going to work in a mailroom. Because it's beneath me. I just, I just feel that it's, it's, it's more of a, let's look at every single opportunity that we have in front of us. And let's make the best of them. Because we never know what where those opportunities will lead.
And so that's the lesson that I was hoping that I was going to impart to say on your way up that corporate ladder, if that's what you, if you want to climb the corporate ladder, that is. That you're going to be encountering a lot of things along the way. And some of them may not look like opportunities. But if you view them the right way, you, you and you look back, you're going to go man, if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't be here today. If I had not. Let's say for example, the law firm, you know, working in the mailmen for law firm, and I decided to work in the mailroom of Canada Post. They're both doing mail. Would it lead me to the same place? No, I would meet a whole different group of people,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, yeah.
Wes Hall
That have different perspective in terms of what the future should look like for them. But when they went to Bay Street, not only did I see people in fancy suits, driving fancy cars, and in fancy offices, I saw a different way of life that I couldn't have imagined before.
Michael LeBlanc 17:37
Didn't have a cont-, didn't even have a context, (crossover talk),
Wes Hall 17:39
I didn't even have the context of it. I couldn't even imagine it. I didn't even know it existed. I saw it on television, though.
Michael LeBlanc 17:46
Right.
Wes Hall 17:47
But now I'm seeing it up close and personal. And then all of a sudden you go maybe if I do certain things, maybe I could be like one of these people. And you know, because when I came to, to Canada, I moved to Malvern. Malvern is one of the toughest neighborhoods in the city. We didn't have skyscrapers in Malvern, they were downtown. But downtown was almost like a different universe for us.
So, when I came down here, and I looked at these tall buildings, when it came for the job interview, I was amazed at didn't even know we had that in our own city, in our own city. I'll give you another example. Michael, I was at a golf course, BlackNorth put on a golf tournament for black Canadians. And there was about 150 people there. It was at Scarborough Golf Club, and around the golf club were some of the toughest buildings that you could live in, Galloway. And there were people that came to our golf tournament. And they said to us, we were raised in those buildings, and we didn't know this golf course existed.
Michael LeBlanc
Wow.
Wes Hall
They were looking down and they didn't know, they drove by it every day, they had no clue because it was like a different world to them. So, how can you dream big when you don't know what dreaming big looks like? And so, when I came down to Bay Street, I saw what dreaming big looks like. And I was able to start dreaming big. I want to be in the corner office, doing conference calls and be somebody important. That's dreaming big. I couldn't dream that big, if I, if I'd worked at, in the mailroom of Canada Post.
Michael LeBlanc 19:23
Yeah, and it's only a bus ride away, right? It's a, (crossover talk),
Wes Hall 19:25
Only a bus ride away.
Michael LeBlanc 19:26
That's a great lesson. Now you're the second act-, well kind of the third person I've had the opportunity to interview who contributed to Andrew Willis' Unprecedented. I interviewed Andrew and I interviewed Michael Medline.
Now, you talked about your own business during the COVID year and about the BlackNorth initiative. So, a couple of questions. Let's, let's talk about first of some pragmatic stuff. Retailers around Canada are really interested in what's going to happen in how people work. You've got, I can't miss this opportunity to talk to someone who's right in touch with, with so many head offices How are you feeling about return-to-office? You know, of course you know rea-, for retailers they tell me today that their downtown locations are, are not successful. They are picking up that business on eCommerce or in the burbs. How are you feeling about the way people are going to work in the future? How, how are you organizing yourself and, and what are you seeing?
Wes Hall 20:21
Well, Michael, that's a great question, because that's the, that's the question of the decade right now, because nobody wants to come back into these towers. I am talking to you from the Exchange Tower and before COVID we couldn't, we couldn't, you know, (crossover talk),
Michael LeBlanc 20:38
Couldn't find space. I mean, you, (crossover talk),
Wes Hall 20:41
You know, there was one of the banks, we have half the floor and just before COVID, one of the banks was bidding on us given up half of the floor. They just (inaudible) give us whatever we wanted. And we go, well, we want to keep it for expansion purposes, and, and they were very disappointed. And they spent all kinds of money renovating the half that they have. And they finished it just before COVID. I think they have maybe five people in there now since COVID.
Michael LeBlanc 21:08
Yeah, it's a lot of money, sit-, there's a lot of money's tied up in that spaces, right?
Wes Hall 21:09
A lot of money. Now, if I want to give my space away, right now, I probably would have to pay somebody to ticket.
Michael LeBlanc 21:20
Wow. Wow.
Wes Hall 21:21
Because the building is probably is maybe 30% occupied, think about it. And this is not unusual for my building, pretty much all the buildings. So, when I go downstairs in the concourse for lunch, or walk for coffee, it's just a ghost town still, to this day.
Michael LeBlanc 21:38
Yeah.
Wes Hall 21:38
Now, I think that is creating a massive problem for our economy. It is, it is. Because when you think about that you mentioned, the retail shops and, and so on. Those people rely on people like me using their facilities. So, one of my favorite suits shop where you know, I get suits and, and shirts and stuff like that is, there's two places down here. There's a place called Rego downstairs, and they have to now open by appointment only, by appointment only. You know, it's, it's, it's just really crazy. Because these businesses have been suffering for years. And all they want is guys like me showing up at the office again. And so, we mandated our people to show up at the office. But guess what happened? People go well, if that's the case, I'm going to find another job.
Michael LeBlanc 22:29
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, it's interesting, because I can't imagine how your story would have turned out. If you had land, you know, if you fast forwarded and you would have landed today, like the mailroom with no one there. Like, (crossover talk), you wouldn't go to be organizing Zoom calls. I'm like, you know, it's, it's just a fascinating dynamic. But the economics are pretty compelling, right? If I don't have a lot of office space, the I don't know, but, but, (crossover talk),
Wes Hall 22:53
The economics are compelling. But here's the problem. You know, I own a hotel in in St. Lucia. And during the pandemic, we had to lay everybody off, because except for the management team, why? Because we had no guests. We had no guests, and we opened up again, when we reopened the hotel, the management people that we had to keep. Keep in mind the frontline people were all laid off.(Michael) Yeah. Management we're not and management said, you know, we want to work from home when the place reopened, but guess who couldn't work from home?
Michael LeBlanc 23:27
Yeah, the people that do the work, (crossover talk)
Wes Hall 23:29
Person making the beds.
Michael LeBlanc 23:30
Yeah.
Wes Hall 23:31
They couldn't work from home. They couldn't call that in. And I said that we're creating a society of haves and have nots even and it's getting worse. And what we're saying is that, let's just figure out a way that we can rebalance the scale. I know that was very imbalanced before because people were working way too hard, and they're getting mental stress and so on. We don't want to go back to that. But we certainly don't want to have a situation where we have the frontline people that we really rely on are treated very differently than others. And, and we don't want to create two classes of corporate citizens, corporate employees, those who can call in the day by just rolling out of bed and call it in. And those who have to travel, drop off their kids at daycare, get on the in, in, you know, on the transportation, get, get their clothes dry cleaned, and spending all that costs that they still have to spend, and yet others were making more money than them are not incurring those additional costs and they're having better lives. We have to rebalance the scale because what we have right now is not healthy.
Michael LeBlanc 24:39
Let's talk about what you spent the, the back half of your contribution to Unprecedented. The BlackNorth Initiative that certainly a strong slate of directors, I see Michael Medline, for example from Sobeys, he's been a guest on the show to guide the organization. How are you feeling about where you are today and, and perhaps some comments on what retailers as a community can do to help achieve your collective objectives?
Wes Hall 25:05
Well, I can tell you that Michael Medline and Sobeys are fantastic. Listen I've known Michael for a long time and have always, ever since his Canadian Tire days. He's been a, a very decent human being, very decent. And, and I got to serve with him on the Sick Kids Foundation Board, philanthropically. I've done a lot of things with, with him philanthropically. And he's got a very kind heart and combining that with the Sobeys Family. It was just, it's just amazing. So, they are among the largest supporters of, of the work of creating a Canada that is, you know, equitable, and diverse. They're not just saying it, they're actually doing it. And if you go into their stores, not only by the people that work in there, but if you look at the products that they carry, and (inaudible) actually reflects this beautiful mosaic that we live in.
And so, in terms of the work that they do to further bipoc entrepreneurs, because keep in mind, that what they can do is not a matter of just saying we're going to hire black people to work in Sobeys. But those black people and bipoc people, you know, indigenous entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs of color, when they have great ideas with consumer products, we're going to bring them into our stores and give them an opportunity to be successful as well.
But when you think about the, the, the buying power they have and the power they have to create success stories. It's absolutely amazing. So, to me, they're amazing allies, because they can create amazing opportunities for people like my grandmother, for example. My grandmother had this amazing pudding that she would make and sell. And it would sell out as soon as you go into market, take the (inaudible), they, the, the, the basket off her head and put it down. It's gone within an hour. It's gone within an hour. Could you have imagined if my grandmother lived today, and she could take that idea to Sobeys and put it on Sobeys shelf. My grandmother could be a millionaire as a result of having a skill baking pudding. And so, that's why I appreciate that, you know, people like Michael and Sobeys, because they get it, they get it they get what they can do to make this country better, and to create entrepreneurs in this country.
Michael LeBlanc 27:31
You know, I can't have you on the podcast without touching a little bit on Dragon's Den. You're not my first dragon. Arlene Vince has been on the show a couple times, Season, what is it 17, just launched,
Wes Hall
Yes sir, yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
So, you know, tips for those folks appearing in front of you, you see both great ideas and not so great ideas. Wh-, wha-, what's the one or two things that you advice you would give to anyone who's going to be standing up in front of you pitching an idea for an investment?
Wes Hall 27:58
You could have the best idea in the world. But people buy into you, into you and your vision. You have to be able to sell yourself as much as you've, you're selling the idea. I've seen people come on the show and they're so arrogant about what they're doing and how much money they're going to make and so on. Those ideas, I can tell you, they never work. They never work. Entrepreneurialism is a, a humbling journey. You hear a lot of no’s, you hear a lot of no thank you's. And if you're arrogant, you're not going to be successful. Because you don't really know how to get over that those no’s are no thank you's. Because you think your ideas is just the best one. And guess what, you're not going to listen to people who are giving you good advice as well. So, when I as a dragon tell you that your idea should be tweaked this way or that way, you're going to take offense to that. And even though you have the, the greatest idea, because you're not prepared to take advice, it's never going to come to fruition, or it's never going to rea-, reach up to its full potential. So, we look for great ideas, yes, but we also look for entrepreneurs with a you know, good disposition, who we feel that we can work with. To take that idea from inception, because a lot of, of things that come to us are new, new businesses, new companies to take it from that point, to make it into something special, (crossover talk),
Michael LeBlanc 29:18
A bit of humility, you're, you're talking about humility, right? A bit of you know, you got to both be con- it's a, it's that balance, are you going to be confident enough to get up and create something on your own and put that in front of people and put yourself out, but at the same time that, that blend of being all those things and then humble, right?
Wes Hall 29:36
You have to be humble because well listen, to get in front of us to pitch us on the show. It takes a lot of courage to do that. And you need a certain amount of confidence. But there's a thin line between confidence and arrogance. And we have to know where that line is. Because if you walk in a show and you tell me that I have the best idea ever, and I need this much from you, and this is how it's going to make you rich and so on. But you really haven't demonstrated how you're going to make it happen and how you're going to make it work. No, no, I'm the smartest guy in the world just trust me. You're going to make a lot of money from me. Well, somebody else may make a lot of money off you but it's not going to be me,
Michael LeBlanc 30:12
It's not going to be you.
Wes Hall 30:13
It's not going to be me.
Michael LeBlanc 30:14
Well, my guest is Wes Hall, the book is just out "No Bootstrap When You're Barefoot: My Rise in a Jamaican Plantation Shack to the Boardrooms of Bay Street". It was such a treat to chat with you, such great lessons and you know such a Canadian story and a, you know a great contribution to the fabric of this land. Thanks so much for joining me on The Voice of Retail podcast. It was a real pleasure.
Wes Hall 30:36
Michael, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Michael LeBlanc 30:39
Thanks for tuning into this special episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven't already, be sure and click and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so new episodes will land automatically twice a week. And check out my other retail industry media properties, the Remarkable Retail podcast Conversations with CommerceNext podcast and The Food Professor podcast with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. Last but not least, if you're into barbecue, check out my all-new YouTube barbecue show Last Request Barbecue with new episodes each and every week. I'm your host, Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company and Maven media. And if you're looking for more content or want to chat, follow me on LinkedIn or visit my website at meleblanc.co.
Have a safe week everyone.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
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