← Going Big! with Kevin Gentry
Going Big! with Kevin Gentry
The Entrepreneur Who Challenged Canada's Healthcare Monopoly with Kip Woodward
00:59:49
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- [00:00]
Kip Woodward
The laws in Canada, particularly in British Columbia, any medical procedure that is covered by a provincial medical plan, you are not allowed to provide privately. That's the law. So that's, you know, 90% of everything. So they said, no, we can't do that. I said, well, what are all these communities of, you know, 100,000 people unless they have no access to any of this modern medicine? Well, no, you know, they don't. And I was just shocked.
- [00:26]
Kevin Gentry
Welcome to the Going Big Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Gentry, and this is the place where we sell celebrate bold moves and big ideas. Each week I sit down with inspiring leaders, entrepreneurs and change makers who are making a significant impact in their careers and in their communities. Whether you're looking to level up your leadership, pursue your passion, or just get inspired to take your next big leap, this is where those stories come to life. Now, if you're listening on iTunes, YouTube, or anywhere else you tune into podcasts, be sure to hit that subscribe button so you'll never miss an episode. Now let's dive in to what it means to truly go big.
- [01:10]
Well, welcome back to another episode of the Going Big Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Gentry, and today we're going to take a look at what it means to operate at scale, in institutions, in big organizations, industries, and also in the middle of controversy. My guest today is a fascinating guest. Kip Woodward is a business leader based in Vancouver, British Columbia. He's an investor, president of the woodcorp Corporation. He's the chairman of Second street, which is a very influential public policy organization in Canada. He has operated in multiple industries, and I think you're going to see somebody who has gone big in a very different kind of way.
- [01:57]
Kip Woodward
And.
- [01:57]
Kevin Gentry
And there's a lot to learn from him. Kip has led healthcare institutions which have served millions of customers. He has been involved in ranching, in restaurants, in finance. But he's also been willing to step into controversy, and that is to help address, in Canada's case, its healthcare system, which is, as you probably know, forcing wait times that can go into long, long periods of time. But we're going to take a look at how he has operated in the public space, in the private space, in areas that can sometimes generate controversy, all in the manner of trying to get to the root causes of problems and also drive a lot of good innovation and success. So, Kip Woodward, it's just a delight to have you as our guest today on the Going Big Podcast.
- [02:52]
Kip Woodward
Great to be here, Kevin, and thanks for having me on the show. Looking Forward to it.
- [02:57]
Kevin Gentry
Well, how do you answer the question what do you do today?
- [03:04]
Kip Woodward
Sometimes I have a one pat answer that is hard to. I have a hard time holding down one job, but I guess in the most simple forms. I've been involved with a long time family industry which is recently was sold. I've been involved with certainly healthcare for decades now. So depending on the audience I can tell people I serve on boards, both public and private and nonprofits. So I guess I'm a bit of a jack of all trades and I go to where my interests take me to.
- [03:45]
Kevin Gentry
Well, what do you spend most of your time thinking about today? Today,
- [03:51]
Kip Woodward
currently, I would say this part of my life I'm very somewhat bothered by our intransigent world of universal healthcare in Canada. It's a world of rationing in Canada. There's not one country that copies our model. Some of the very best universal healthcare systems are in Europe and Australia. Universally funded, but delivered by a range of organizations, be they nonprofits, be they private enterprise, be they church based or faith based religions, they all deliver care and generally the government pays for it all in one form or another or certainly allows third party insurance to assist in those coverages. And in Canada, we don't enjoy that. We actually have a lockdown on access and a government controlled monopoly run by politicians we all know doesn't matter what country we live in, when politicians want to run a monopoly, you have those inherent issues.
- [04:55]
Kevin Gentry
Well, that was one of the main things that you and I engaged in conversation with when we met last November in Montreal. And it intrigued me sufficiently to say, you know, this guy's got to be on the Going Big podcast. But it was like sort of peeling an onion. The more layers I dug into, the more intrigued I was by all of the different things that you've been involved in, many of which I'd like to touch on in this conversation today as well. But what would you say? Is there a thread that connects all of these things you've done in your life or are we talking about a lot of just continual innovation and change and disruption? Is there a thread?
- [05:35]
Kip Woodward
No, I think the main thread, particularly with respect to the nonprofit world is my interest takes me to where there's much better answers for what we're doing and how to do them. So I was never, even as a kid, I was never satisfied to accept anyone's particular answer. I was, I think, naturally curious, maybe a nuisance to some people, but as you learn and you dig into some subject matters, you sort of say, really? This Is the answer on these complex problems. This is the best we can do. So I guess maybe because they were non profits, I didn't have my own financial risk in a ball of them. I really wanted to just help to find a better solution. And that's really. They're all common threads. Health care, some education, conservation, any number of one of these things, we can all do a much better job on them. So again, the curiosity when people say no, you can't do that. To me, that was like a red flag to a bull.
- [06:42]
Kevin Gentry
Awesome. All right. So I mean frankly, your pursuit of excellence and your match with your intellectual curiosity again is another element that really intrigued me. So we got a lot to dive into. I kind of want to go through your personal story and then bring it back to the here and now. First you touched on a little bit the family business. My not having grown up in western Canada. I don't know the legacy of Woodwards, the department store, But I know people in western Canada who have many, many fond memories of it from Christmas time and Santa Claus to all sorts of things. That was a family business. Now what was it that maybe attracted you but also pushed you maybe to think about going in a different direction?
- [07:30]
Kip Woodward
Well, for sure, I was a fourth generation coming into the business. My great grandfather founded it in 1892. He was middle aged when he moved when the railway was just completed across the country. And he was actually one of the few people in North America that actually started a department store. Let's get some merchants under one roof, let's share the rent. That's how all that stuff started.
- [07:54]
Kevin Gentry
Wow.
- [07:55]
Kip Woodward
And so he came out here after the gold rush with seven or eight kids. His wife and three of the kids died of TB in those days. So he was a strong, strong individual. And he, he passed it on to my grandfather and his brother. Then subsequently my father, and I guess my father was in his early 30s and he built the first shopping center in Canada, 1949, just outside Vancouver. There was a fellow in greater Seattle that had just built one and his uncle at the time was horrified that his nephew had gone off and built this thing called a shopping center, which was not in the downtown core. It was in something called a new suburb. These were all you have to go back to the day. But department stores are great big downtown edifices, right? Yeah, everybody went to them. And then this concept of building a store and attracting your competition to come to the same center was bizarre. So. But that was the origins of shopping centers. And then really 1949, 1950s, they exploded all over north America. So it was my father, sort of. We built 26 shopping centers all across western Canada. And we anchored the malls. And of course, you know, there were big malls. And that's sort of the trajectory of the department store industry for 100 years. Not so much today.
- [09:23]
Kevin Gentry
Well, a good little history lesson in shopping center stuff I didn't know well was why aren't you there anymore? Is that something you chose not to do or you wanted to get out of? Why are you doing things differently today?
- [09:38]
Kip Woodward
So at the time, there was actually a fellow, a Canadian from Ottawa called campo. And, and he was the first person to realize that we were a publicly traded company. Our family controlled just over 25% of the vote, which was enough to secure majority. But in the late 70s, early 80s, Campo discovered that publicly traded department store companies, particularly in the United States, all had their real estate holdings on their balance sheet at cost. And he then created a whole m and a world of let's go buy publicly traded department stores. Let's take advantage of their undervalued real estate assets. And that was the game. So we found ourselves in the mid-80s having a very undervalued stock. We were although darling of the stock market. But all of a sudden our stock went from $8 on takeover bids by two big Eastern Canadian commercial real estate companies that had no shopping centers in their portfolio in western Canada. So the stock went to $19. So it was a position where I don't think the board could turn any of that down. So that happened. All the proceeds got dividended out to the shareholders. And then we found ourselves at the department store. Really our only inventory, our only assets were our inventory. So I think we, we skipped a beat in one year. There was a recession going on in oil rich Alberta at the time. And I guess in hindsight, it was great for me. I was only a young executive, but we probably should have recapitalized a little bit. But we lost. I remember we lost $5 million on just under $700 million worth of sales. And the bank wanted us to recapitalize it. And our family said no, we didn't want to do that. So the, the shopping center, the commercial real estate fellows that bought us, they put up the additional capital and exacted a change of control. So we exited it as a family. And after 100 years. So that was a story amazing. Kind of became the story of most shopping with most department stores across America over the next 20 years.
- [11:54]
Kevin Gentry
These stories, we can go on and on about them. Okay, so now I want to go to ranching Douglas Lake. All right, what did you see in that that others missed?
- [12:04]
Kip Woodward
So Douglas Lake was sort of my father's real sort of happy space as a young child in the 1930s. His maternal grandfather was a founder of one of the great heritage ranchers of B.C. and he used to travel up there and spend his summers up in the interior. So that would be like a seven hour journey from Vancouver. And he had that bug as a cowboy in him. He was a sort of early days city executive. But his real life and yearning was for the outdoors and sitting on a horse, quite frankly. So he bought the ranch. He was a third owner and he bought the ranch in 1958. So that was his other second love. So as kids we used to go up there for sure during parts of the year. But he passed away in 1990 and that was actually concurrently about the same year as we left the department store. So my brother and myself, all of a sudden our main business was now ranching. We never worked there. It was, you know, it was not great pay being a cowboy. I was always, you know, it was. I never worked at the department stores until after university because it was a lousy pay summer job. I used go up north to find work in the gas plants or in forestry. And so we had a task ahead of us. We had a real company. We didn't really know deeply involved in the cattle business at all. But we learned it quickly. We had terrific managers and we went off and we had this enormous land base. And I guess my brother and I were somewhat entrepreneurial. We wanted to add values. So we did a number of different businesses. We had a number of lakes that we brought in, managed to grow like record rainbow trout, sort of the six to eight pound range, which was a premium product. We offered lots of people because we purchased so much inputs for the ranch. Fencing material, for example. Right. We would, we would buy large loads of it and then distribute it to other ranchers. So, you know, everything we were doing, we've just created an ability to make a little bit of money all the way through.
- [14:22]
Kevin Gentry
Well, you're obviously very entrepreneurial and I don't know that that comes easily to everyone. In fact, it's been argued that it's a pretty small segment who can sort of think in that way. But how do you spot value that other people don't see? I mean, is there, can, can you even comment on that? Does that make sense? Is there something that you're seeing that others miss?
- [14:44]
Kip Woodward
Well, let me just Add. So first of all, with death and estate taxes, there's nothing more that makes you work harder to do, right?
- [14:52]
Kevin Gentry
So there's necessity.
- [14:54]
Kip Woodward
We may have inherited a ranch, but after, I should say my father's, he had been married three times. So by the time we cleared up all that stuff, we're left with a beautiful ranch for sure. But we still have some debt to pile through and clean up. So nothing gets you more focused than balancing up your fixing up your balance sheet. So but why not start adding on to what you're already doing? So we had a very large cattle herd, so why not add another 500 head of cattle? They're not costing you more money. We have the rangeland, we have the infrastructure, so why not try to maximize. So there's low risk in those type of things, right? It's not as you're standing starting from scratch. And because we were in the department store business, I guess we're merchants at heart. So what are we selling? Why can't we sell fertilizer? Why can't we sell fencing? Why can't we sell more stuff, right? And we probably had poachers going through our lakes anyway. So why not put a lock in the gate and then create a beautiful campground for them to come and charge them 20 bucks a day to catch world class trip. So those are low risk initiatives, but they all added value over time. So now to be fair, about eight years into this, we actually did step out way out on a limb with a high risk. British Columbia has privatized all the highway maintenance, so there's thousands of kilometers of highways of all of all sorts. So we bid on a large proportion of those and became a contractor to them, to the government. And that was like a four year adventure. And we had partners who were, who understood machinery and all that kind of stuff. So that was good, but we were the financial backers and it was actually a pretty good business. But I can tell you halfway through the business we had some oops in the accrual accounting and we were thought we were making money when in fact we were actually losing some money. Again, nothing focuses the mind more clearly than, you know, fixing things up.
- [17:09]
Kevin Gentry
Well, if you could let me dig into that a bit more because I think it's when you hear a story of the kind of significant business success you've been a part of and say it's just all, you know, he's got like a golden touch, he's got the Midas touch, does this and that, it just all kind of falls into place. Easily for him. I think what you've told me is quite different than that. I mean, are there, were there some setbacks and some scares that you're like, what are we doing? Or how do we, how are we going to make payroll? How are we going to do what we need to do to stay afloat? Were there some stories that gave you the shivers?
- [17:44]
Kip Woodward
Oh, I tell you, on undertaking a contract with the government, particularly a performance contract, in this case, you had a four year, they give you X amount of millions of dollars for four years of work. You take that contract, you go lease $10 million worth of equipment and by the way, you have all an entirely unionized workforce because they were all government workers before. And off you go, you do your best on budgeting and trying to figure out your gross margins and your cash flows. And then you go to your lawyer's office and you sign up all the contracts the day before you present the whole package to the provincial government. And then they, and I just remember a senior partner at the law firm saying, I hope you boys know what you're doing with these performance bonds. And I said, oh, sure we do, but they're the scariest instrument I've actually had to ever deal with in business. Right. Because if you slip up, you miss anything to do on these contracts, well, the government has all the power and they can pull these bonds which are, you know, in this case, could be millions of dollars. So I said, oh, no problem, but we've got halfway through this contract when we had this sort of real financial error. That was a couple of those sleepless nights. So all hands on deck. You know, it's grown up time. You know, we had to remove the general manager of that particular company. And I sent our two Parkers in there to. They just dropped their tools and their companies. I said, you know, we're all in this together and yeah, you work out, you worked it all out and you know, everybody worked out at the end. It was terrific. But boy, oh boy. Yeah, there's some sleepless nights in this stuff. Yeah, you don't take risk without any. There's no such thing as risk less in any business.
- [19:43]
Kevin Gentry
Well, thanks for your willingness to share this. This is fascinating. All right, let's now shift to mobile testing units. Take me back to that venture. And what were you sort of chasing and how did that all work out?
- [19:57]
Kip Woodward
So maybe that was one of my first obvious examples of when people tell you no for no good reason. So one of the early, I would say a mentor, but a really kindly fellow was actually the head of George Canada. So being in the department store business, we obviously sold all their consumer products. And I was my late 20s, early 30s. And after we had left the department store business, I stayed in touch with them. And I was actually down in Toronto once and caught up with them for lunch. And I just joined one of the hospitals, local hospitals, foundations for, you know, fundraising, community fundraising. And one of the items was of course, in those early days where CT scans and MRI machines were rare, they were super expensive, but it was a breakthrough in diagnostic science for sure. So we were talking about that because our hospital was undertaking some fundraising for two of them. And he said, oh, do you know GE is a fellow in Illinois who's got three mobile MRI machines. I said, really? He says, yeah. So GE Medical devices made them. GE finance division financed these tractor trailers. And he drove all around mid sized to small towns of Illinois outside the main areas. And he would drive up, go to a shopping center parking lot, park the tractor trailer for two days. A local radiologist would come in and present and deliver like the latest technology and diagnostics to towns and communities that would never afford these machines. So I thought that was pretty wonderful. The business model looked pretty good. GE could finance everything. And so I did up a business plan and came back to our local provincial government. I said, this is terrific. We can deploy some of these. You don't even have to pay for it. I just need a billing code, right? So I could, you know, charge a universal system that. And I was told absolutely not. And I was so perplexed. Well, because the laws in Canada, particularly in British Columbia, anything that any medical procedure that is covered by a provincial medical plan, you are not allowed to provide privately, that's the law. So that's, you know, 90% of everything. So they said, no, we can't do that. I said, well, like, what about, like what all these communities of, you know, 100,000 people, unless they have no access to any of this modern medicine? Well, no, you know, they don't. And I was just shocked, right? So maybe that was the early days of saying, are you kidding me? Right? And so ever since then, I've always sort of saying, well, this is preposterous because, you know, the politicians end up phoning you quietly and privately. Can I get in? I have a family member as a need. You know, the hypocrisy, it really is.
- [23:06]
Kevin Gentry
The hypocrisy is outrageous.
- [23:08]
Kip Woodward
It's just crazy, right? So that was a long time ago. It was over 30 years ago, so. And Here we are. And I think that fellow in Illinois, I think he had a terrific business. So unable to translate it into the Canadian landscape.
- [23:24]
Kevin Gentry
Well, so how did that then? I mean, you alluded to it, but how did that influence your willingness to challenge these sort of things in the future? Because I got to tell you, most people, I think, would just kind of shake their head, walk away and just move on to something else. But I mean, this is just terrible. You have all these people who are in need of care and they were being left behind because of some nutty bureaucratic rules.
- [23:50]
Kip Woodward
It might have been different had it been any other sector other than healthcare. Now you can maybe shrug your shoulders and move on, but to your point, these are. I mean, this was technology that was going to save lots of people. It's commonplace today. We don't even think twice about diagnostic machines now. But in the day, it was life changing. So I just couldn't, I personally couldn't accept the fact that unless you lived beside a great big hospital in a great big city, you were going to get care and no one else had access to it. So particularly around like a really a stupid law, I said, well, like, what do other countries do? What do other jurisdictions do? So they all had solutions except for us. And it was such a dogmatic ideological stance to take. And you know, we're finally, after all these years and decades, chipping away at it now and Canada, why does it take?
- [24:43]
Kevin Gentry
I mean, so when you even in the introduction, all right, we know that there are these wait times that are just insane. And I mean, everybody must look at the system and say, this is crazy. I mean, right now, when you and I are recording this conversation, we have this ridiculous meltdown in the United States related to air travel, which is just, it's just goofy. Related to a funding decision by Congress. And I mean, it's maddening. People just look at the obvious. Where is all of this today? I mean, God bless you for being motivated enough to do something. Many business leaders shy away from taking a public stand. So kind of bring us into where you see this today.
- [25:28]
Kip Woodward
So where we see it today, it says becoming like if you stay out of the extreme ideology. So in Canada. No, just back it all up. So Canada, for, I don't know, 60 years, we've had this universal healthcare, right? So it's just hugely popular. Everyone says you get your healthcare free and it all works. And it's all good for the most part. Up until really about eight or nine years ago, it was actually pretty good. And even to this day, if you get very ill in Canada, it's terrific, you have world class care, but it's all the elective surgery, it's all the high volume. The weight stuff is, you know, your eyes, your joints, your, if you're really sick, not an issue, Right? So. And all the politicians have always put a wedge issue into healthcare. So we have free health care. Look at what's going on in America. People can't afford it, families go broke, most people can't even buy it. And so this has been a long standing political issue that politicians from both sides of the aisle, right wing or left wing or down the middle, view as something that's untouchable in Canadian psyche. Like it's what makes Canadians Canadian. I go, are you kidding me? If this is what's making Canadians Canadian, it's not very effective, right? So that was a, such a strong, you know, no elections were ever talked about healthcare. It was the death knell for any politicians to even advance reform discussion. So it's really only been really the last, I would say six or seven years. And a brave fellow called Dr. Brian Day, who's a very good friend of mine, built 25 years ago, Canada's first freestanding surgical clinic. And long story short, we spent seven years in court fighting for their right to deliver care when government can't provide it in a safe and timely manner. That's really the whole issue. And the Supreme Court didn't choose in Ottawa, the highest court of the land. We went through the lower courts and then the higher courts chose not to even hear it, basically saying, you know, it's too complicated, this is a political issue, should be decided by politicians. So that really led me to the organization that you and I met at Second Street. If the courts aren't going to hear a challenge, then the only way to get the message out is to get stories out, get the media out, design a methodology and a strategy that will pick up eyeballs, be it mainstream media, be it social media, about, let's just show Canada not what America does, right? Let's show what other great high functioning, universally funded systems do which deliver better outcomes at lower costs. So there's lots of examples. So that narrative is now bubbling through discourse. We actually have some political parties actually pointing fingers now to Europe, let's be more like Denmark or Sweden. And that's been quite deliberate by the work that Troy and others have been doing. It's a long game though.
- [28:54]
Kevin Gentry
It is a long game. So some more here I want to unpack. So our mutual friend Troy Lanigan, who founded Second street, he's, I guess I would call him an organizational entrepreneur. He's led many different important public policy efforts in Canada. And just think the world of the guy. And by the way, he holds you in high regard as a board member because he says you're just a perfect board member in terms of supporting the sort of vision and that the leadership is casting and just helping them do their job. But Second street, my understanding is that's the most commonly named street in Canada is Second Street. So the idea of storytelling is a way for people to understand these things that get complex. So let me bring this back to the healthcare issue. You've led massive healthcare institutions. What have you seen that you think the public misses in this argument where a group like Second street needs to tell the story more?
- [29:59]
Kip Woodward
So healthcare is a monopoly in Canada. So all the good things and yet all the many bad things about monopolies are inherent in these large healthcare institutions. It's just by nature. So I guess coming up, growing up, working my formative early years in department stores, funny enough, we had four or five hundred employees in each department store. They were big, big, like big centers of lots of departments, you know, everywhere. The loading docks to payroll to, you know, they were like military. The stores had to be trimmed, ready to open at 9am in the morning. Right. The show was on, right. So, you know, out of that world I had wonderful managers who didn't put up with anything, didn't care that I was a boss's son. They were there. You know, the company's 100 years old. Whether I was there or not, they all had a job to do. So the complexity of it's all a human endeavor at the end of the day. So when I first sort of found myself in a sort of a governance role in first of all, Providence Healthcare, there's you know, there's like, you know, 10,000 employees right under one, you know, and you think of medicine and hospitals. And in Canada it's not only hospitals, it's long term care, it's academic teaching, it's the whole gamut of healthcare under one big umbrella. So I wasn't intimidated by the amount of people. I think I just had an ability to sort of put it in silos. Think about it and you can twist yourself in knots in medicine like it's unbelievable. There's nothing like it. There's no other industry like it, whether you're in a room full of high caliber functioning physicians or kitchen cleaners. And you know, it's complex but you can distill it down. I guess what I like to do, I like to distill down to simple components. Right. And that's the only way to actually view it. You could eat. Because many leaders in these complex things can get so tied up unless you have a clear view of, you know, the forest through the trees. And so I sort of learned that, I guess. And so I didn't really feel overwhelmed by the size of organization because if you strip them all down to their pieces and try to simplify it a little bit, it's not dumbing anything down, it's just trying to simplify complex organizations. So I found the bigger the organizations, often the worst the governance and particularly when governments are involved. So our hospital boards had to be approved by the minister. So you know, that was fraught because political parties have friends and you know, it's just the way it happens. Right? It's what goes on in our democracy, you know, and I didn't really like that model. I'd rather have a board with competent people who deal with complex issues. I mean our budgets were $3 billion. They're big, complex. Our human resources, multiple unions, some non union. Take any big component and then the science piece, you really want really good thinkers. So that was depending on the premier of the time. I would say my first sort of go around. I nearly had a reasonably free hand to find highly confident people and we would then be a pretty great board, you know. And then when the premier came around for re election again, all of a sudden, you know, one or two people on my board are gone. I've got to take this person and that person and they dumbed down the capacity of governance. Right. That's still bothers me to this day.
- [34:02]
Kevin Gentry
Okay, well so there's more here now to unpack and I want to hit on a couple of things I think that will be of great interest to a lot of folks that you have a unique vantage point to share. The first is so first of all, obviously you're Canadian, our neighbor to the north of the United States. I wish our relations were better. It used to be that this was the closest alliance and brotherhood in the world. Hopefully we'll get to a better place on that. I know that I have many wonderful friends in Canada and I'm just so sort of frustrated by that. But that's its own thing. But economic growth in Canada for the past couple of decades has been really low. There have been some who've argued back like, well, you know, GDP per capita, that's not an Accurate measure. Well, it doesn't matter if you measure Canada against the rest of the world, the developed world. Canada has not been growing well in the past couple of decades. So you obviously are an advocate for those things which would spur growth and enhanced flourishing and prosperity and that's why you're involved. But when you as a business leader do that and God bless you for doing it, and you know, you see business leaders all over the free world will step forward and try to take leadership roles not just in philanthropy, but in public policy. But then the criticism begins. Well, of course you're self interested. You want less regulation, you want lower taxes just to enrich yourself, which I know is just mind boggling. I've talked to so many business leaders, like, are you kidding? I mean I could do a lot more than get involved in the public policy process and have all these arrows shot at me. I could just ignore it all. Comment on that if you would. Because I want you to be both an encouragement to business leaders who are listening and I also want you to be kind of an illumination to people who don't understand this, to understand sort of what's at stake and what often happens.
- [36:03]
Kip Woodward
I think there has to be a like for sure, everyone first. You want to, I think you want to in your own business. You want to do the work that's required to make yourself self confident enough and where your risks of your financial risks of your life aren't front and center every day you wake up, right? So if you can do that and doesn't mean you have to be a super, you know, super, super millionaire, you just have to be comfortable in what your own likes are. Once you can do that, you can actually turn your attention to the things that drive you without the worry. Like if they fire me from a nonprofit board, fine. That's not the end of my life, right. That's quite different than being fired from your day to day job, right. So I think you have to find a comfort level where you're prepared to go out and do because it's heavy lifting some of this public policy stuff and you have to be able to enter the room without a heavy bias of ideology. I remember a friend of my dad saying, well, you're no good and you know, there's no point in working with any government, municipal, provincial or federal unless you're in the tent, right? Sort of colloquialism of saying there's no point just, you know, yelling, you know, from the rooftop. That gets you nowhere. You're going to have to learn how to get in the tent, to have a conversation with those that are making the decisions. And to me that was always the best advice and I've given it now to sort of the next generation down, the 40 year olds. I said, no point in complaining, right. You actually have to go out and do it. Right. And so how do you do that? I don't know. You attend, you listen to both sides, you make yourself available because everyone has an important, everyone thinks their position is the most important position. Right. That's just human nature. But you've got to get yourself in the tent. And once you're in the tent, you can actually have a reasonable conversation. I mean, I went through seven health ministers and a variety and left wing, right wing, and I had pretty good relationships with all of them. Right. And you could, you know, if you sit down one on one to say, you know, I think we're just heading down the road, these are going to be the outcomes for sure. We don't need to do this. How about this? And you could often do that. Right. And then we sort of found ourselves the last decade with a very strong left wing ideological government, both in Ottawa. That speaks towards your low growth. You know, we are a country of extraction, always have been. North America is a continent of extraction. And all of a sudden, you know, we couldn't extract anything that we're good at. Right. So, you know, obviously fall behind. And in British Columbia we had the same thing, super socialist, left wing, tax the rich, class warfare. So you know what, people sit on their hands, they don't invest. Economy sputters along, they spend more money, bigger deficits. And healthcare consumes pretty well, 50% of our provincial budget every year. And of course, like America, the demographics are all going the wrong direction. So you have to have innovation, you got to be open because we're not going to afford what we got. So I just go say that.
- [39:41]
Kevin Gentry
Well, your belief in innovation is the inspiring element of it. But boy, now you're depressing me. All right, so let me go back actually a little bit more on the nurture versus nature argument. You've mentioned the advice now that you give to others. How did you learn some of these things? Did you have some particular mentors? I mean, you mentioned your, your family did. Or did you? Or do you have this sort of entrepreneurial gene in your bloodstream that, that helps you think through these things?
- [40:09]
Kip Woodward
Well, I don't think there's any mentor specifically. Right. I think mentoring is a whole bunch of small episodes that you collect along your earlier stages of Your life, for sure. Right. So I guess in school, you know, I don't think many of us ever had more than one, maybe two teachers that you would reflect back on who made a difference in your life. Right. It's not. It's not a whole bunch of teachers. It's one or two. Right. And usually one. And so. And you don't really reflect on that until later in life. You look back and say, oh, that really. You know, that really made so the same thing in business, whatever you do, you start off and know whether I was working on a loading dock, whether I'm talking to a cowboy who has a perspective on life, like, you just pick up snippets, and either you retain those snippets and think, oh, that's kind of interesting, or. So I think those are my kind of mentors. They were, you know, they could be a whole range of people from society, nothing in specific, but if you listen, you can pick up loss. And even to this day, Right. There's some wonderful stuff that, you know, people always have gems of wisdom that still, you know, impart upon you. Right. So, okay, just remember, you know, you got to be in the tent. That was just a simple comment. Didn't really resonate at the time, but in reflection, it's kind of everything, Right. If you want to move the dial, you got to be in the tent. And so that's kind of how. That's how I kind of think about mentoring. Right.
- [41:48]
Kevin Gentry
How does one become a good listener? You said you need to be a good listener. Any tips?
- [41:55]
Kip Woodward
Probably had to start off as a bad listener to be told to be a better listener. So, you know, I think I've learned it personally by being impatient. I would think I could be described as that in my earlier life, wanting to get sooner quicker. And then you kind of learn that sometimes that never really got you to where you wanted to go. So why not sit and listen some more? And I think, you know, some people may have whispered in my ear somewhere along in my 20s or early 30s, you know, just listen a little bit more. And what was this reason they had to say that is clearly I wasn't listening. Right. Or is too quick to react or whatever. Right. So I think it's a learned. I think it's a learned trait. I don't think you start off like that when you're a kid, because I think by being impatient. Impatient, it's kind of not all bad. Impatience kind of takes you to places you would probably not comfortably go to quickly. Right. So.
- [42:55]
Kevin Gentry
Well, how do you balance impatience with risk taking? I mean, obviously you've talked about many times you have to take on risk, but you have to assess the consequences of that risk. You have a family. You can't just be thrown out completely. How do you balance impatience with risk taking?
- [43:12]
Kip Woodward
Oh, that's a really good question. So at the end of the day, on the risk piece, whatever it is that you're going to be doing, undertaking always engages. There's always people on the other side. Right. And I think over time, so often it's not the business deal itself, it's really who you're doing it with. Right. Like university is a business school. They give you case studies, and two plus two equals four. And if you did this and you did that, this is the way the business should work out. It never works like that. This never works like that. In fact, I wanted to go back to university and tell them that none of that works really, about what's your relationship with the person across the table with you, can you trust them? You know, basically, and stuff like that. So that's on the risk side. And I think. I think it's just a growing older piece. Right. As you see more people, see more situations, you size up differently at 40 than you did at 30. Definitely more than you did at 20. Right. Because you really don't know anything. And even to this day, do I still get surprised by behavior? I think I've seen quite a lot of it and I actually still do get the odd surprise. You know, it's just a piece of human nature, I think, but. But I don't think having impatience muddies a water of risk because that's. At the end of the day, my own personal valuation of risk is really. But the people piece at the end of the day.
- [44:52]
Kevin Gentry
Right, thank you. Well, I just interviewed Arthur Brooks, who makes the point that our brains change as we get older and we just go through these different phases of life, and that's why we tend to be better teachers and coaches later in life. And you alluded to some of that, but you maintain, it seems to me, a really strong, a good attitude and a really strong intellectual community curiosity. What excites you today? You're an investor. We didn't even touch on agriculture, your substantial other investments there. You're in the restaurant business. What excites you today and also what excites you about the future?
- [45:36]
Kip Woodward
My most exciting thing now is watching. So I've got two sons, they're in their mid-40s. I get more excited about what that generation is Working on what their friendship circles are, working on the energy they bring to work. You know, people used to say, people of our age, that we had the best. I don't think we had the best. You know, we certainly had it not bad, you know, coming. Our parents came over the war. We certainly have come from a generation of, you know, just huge, you know, economic dispassion around the world. But I think our kids are like sitting on the cusp of something, even another. So it's exciting being around their positive energy, right? So for example, I've been in the greenhouse business for big, large scale greenhouse business for 35 years. And to me that's always been an exciting where it's a world of science, a world of food security, it's a world of complex operations. These large greenhouses are really complex factories to, to operate. But the most exciting thing is about the people actually are doing it, right, the engineers, the growers. I come at it from being on the board and being an investor in it, but the people that work in that sector are just like, it's exciting to be in a room with them, right? They're creative, they're pushing boundaries. And then particularly in our Canadian assets, we've taken a segment of them and when cannabis became legal in Canada eight years ago, we have 168 acres of glass just outside Vancouver. We've now got 40 of the 160 converted into cannabis. A scale of, you know, we're the world's largest grower cannabis. Who would have thought 10 years ago, right? Are you kidding me? So, but that journey is a highly regulated, it's numbingly regulated, right? So the people that actually do that regulatory work, I mean, they're a different animal altogether, I can tell you that. But starting from scratch and taking a broadly illegal product that's been around for 100 years, deeply ingrained in society, both here and the United States, and converting it to a legal product, it's been a fascinating journey because you're actually, there's no more usage. All you've really done is convert it to a taxable legal product with some guidelines around it. So that conversion out of an illegal, completely illegal market into a legal market is a fascinating journey, right? And we watch the gyrations going through United States state by state by state. And meanwhile, Europe is looking at the Canadian example and countries are sort of acknowledging that, yes, it's there, it's been around forever. So how do we actually make it a legal product? But that whole process and the people that we brought in they're young, they're dynamic, they're smart, hardworking. So, yeah, I get juiced up by being around people like that.
- [48:48]
Kevin Gentry
Well, you are constantly thinking big and going big. And again, I knew just within just a few minutes of our conversation in Montreal that you were going to be a perfect guest. So I want to start to bring this to a close, and I have two important questions I like to close out with that I think are going to be right in line with you. But before that, the special keg card. Is that story true? Tell us, what is the keg card?
- [49:17]
Kip Woodward
So the keg restaurant chain has 125 restaurants. About 30 of them are in the United States. The restaurants are all across the country. So I guess about 25 years ago, they created a financing vehicle called Royalty Trust. So it was an interesting way of financing a chain. So a good friend of mine bought the chain, privately owned company, and you could spin off a royalty. And so basically you take the brand and it was an old baron and it had value. And we sold the rights to the brand. In this case, it was about six years, $7 million. And then the operating company, the. The restaurant chain would pay the royalty company at like 4% of gross sales. And that's all it was. So I was the chairman of that company for up until last October when it got taken private again after 25 years. And so we would be the. We would be the trustees of this 4% royalty that came from all sales from the chain. And one of the benefits I had was a keg card, which was a card that allowed executives and core suppliers and big franchisors to have discounts at their. Anywhere in the chain. So I was lucky. There's about eight cards that allowed you complimentary food and beverage. Right. So that was always a. It was a great benefit.
- [50:59]
Kevin Gentry
Wow. So do you pull it out? I mean, and how does the restaurant react? Do they know what it is?
- [51:06]
Kip Woodward
I can tell you. So I used to go. The restaurant chain is headquartered in Vancouver. Right. So local restaurants kind of knew me or whatever, but when I would go to remote parts of the prairies or into Quebec even. So I don't think anyone in Quebec ever saw anyone for a head office in Vancouver. It's just, you know, there was three stores in Montreal, they were all French. And I would pull up my. My son went to McGill and so on the odd occasion, I'd take he and, you know, three or four friends for, you know, Sunday night dinner. We go to the French Canadian keg and I would pull out my card, and they had no idea what it was. Right. So they would have to scramble down to a notebook to find out what this card was, how to transact it. And it was often a Sunday night. The general manager was English, but he never worked on a Sunday night. So it was quite a lot of fun.
- [52:01]
Kevin Gentry
When we had dinner in Montreal. Was that at a keg restaurant?
- [52:05]
Kip Woodward
That was at a keg restaurant, yes.
- [52:07]
Kevin Gentry
Oh, all right. Did you pull it out? Did you use.
- [52:09]
Kip Woodward
I pulled it out, yeah, I pulled it out.
- [52:12]
Kevin Gentry
That's hilarious.
- [52:13]
Kip Woodward
That was fun. So subsequent to that, then the chain went private late last fall. Right. So. And I very kindly got a reduced benefit. I now have a discount on food. No longer beverage for the next years. For just being a nice guy, I think, for the last.
- [52:31]
Kevin Gentry
Gotcha. That's awesome. All right, well, here are the two closing questions. Now, looking back at an early stage of your life, maybe it was when you were working in the department store or heading up way north into some of the beautiful terrain of western Canada, but into some of those ranches. What would you tell a younger version of that self today, knowing what you now know to have done any differently?
- [52:59]
Kip Woodward
Well, I do know there's one thing about what we said. Like, we all know kids and families whose parents want them to do something specific, right. I want you to be a lawyer. I want you to be a doctor. I want you to do this, I want you to do that. You know, our family's done this forever. And so often I've seen that the kid just doesn't fit. Doesn't want to fit that narrative. Right. And like, even in my own personal case, my father never asked me to work in the business, not once. Our cousin was the chief operating officer. He was the one who had the conversation with me. And he said, your father's point of view is if I have to ask you to come and work in this industry, your heart's not going to be in it. And I said, well, I'm going to work in it, because I don't know really anything about it, you know, and that was the best advice, you know, kind of go with really what you want to do. And sometimes that's hard for people because they're, you know, their parents have set a high bar for them. I understand that. And I actually, you know, I've interviewed tons of people over my life, and I never really asked them where they went to school. I really couldn't care where they went to school. Right. An MBA is an mba. And, you know, like, you Know, it's all about, can you work with people? What is it that you're good at? Not academically, but what is it from a human emotional point, because that's going to be your trajectory in your life, right? Can you engage with people? Can you be in a team? Are you best left alone in a cubicle? Right? And there's all sorts of people that. That fits. And the other one thing I've said is, and I've said this to my own boys, you know, you're going through life, there's going to be a lot of doors open, right? One form or another. Like, walk through every door. Like, take a meeting, don't breathe. Don't be preset in your biases. And maybe that's kind of what I reflect upon, because I probably wouldn't have gotten involved in healthcare unless I had this kind of weird situation where I was told, no, I couldn't have a mobile MRI like it. I probably wouldn't have met Dr. Brian Day had I not been through a completely unrelated issue. So take an opportunity. When an op, when a door opens, like, walk through it, don't be afraid to walk through it. You never know what you're going to be. And the best thing I want to say about joining nonprofits or spending some time outside of your own field of work, the most rewarding thing I've got, I've met people on boards that you would never otherwise meet, right? You're in your. You're in your field of work. That's kind of your scope of time and effort. But boy, oh, boy, when you get on and spend a little bit extra time on some nonprofits, I don't care whether it's education or health or, you know, conservation, anything. It's fascinating people that you get to meet and opens your eyes. I think that's the most important thing. Like, do nonprofit work. Find a little piece of time. Everyone's busy. They all got families, but, you know, we all do. And find that little bit of time because you'll meet the most rewarding people that you would otherwise never meet. So that, to me, has been quite rewarding.
- [56:10]
Kevin Gentry
Yeah, well, this is awesome. Lots of great insights, lots of great advice. All right, so the last question building on that is what encouragement would you offer to anyone listening to this conversation, wherever they are in the world, Canada, the United States, Europe, anywhere, the Americas, Asia, to think about going big in their life, to find their contribution and to really just live that life of purpose and meaning.
- [56:40]
Kip Woodward
You have to have and not be afraid of some self Confidence, I think that's one thing because you can't make that step outside your safe boundaries, right. So to the degree that you think you can step beyond something that makes you feel slightly uncomfortable, it's that being uncomfortable that makes you kind of more engaged in, you know, more important things in our community. Like this is all, none of this is easy stuff, right? Doesn't matter what board you join, profit, non profit, it's, it's, you know, it takes work to make things better. And thank goodness there's still more people trying to make things better than not. Right. And you know, we're all going through phases right now, I think, in every country where our politicians aren't really serving the general population and making things difficult for everybody virtually in every country. And so like if you've been to Europe, you go to the States, like, like I have so many American friends. I can tell. I don't think this is what they all bargained for a few years ago. And then these things are all, they build upon themselves. One problem leads to more problems. But still at the end of the day, I look back on my parents generation, they had a world war, things were a wreck. Like what the 1960s, they were shooting students on campus. We're not there yet. So as young people look at today going, wow, this is a crazy mess. No, things are actually have been crazier. Right. And you know, out of the, you know, out of the wreck, human nature always seems to pull itself uncomfortably, but they pull themselves back. So I still look at, I'm still the half blast full guy despite. It's too easy to be the other way, I think.
- [58:39]
Kevin Gentry
Indeed. Well, I appreciate your optimism, your positive outlook and all that you do. Thank you. Kip Wilber, it's been great just to get to know you and thanks for joining us today on the Going Big podcast.
- [58:50]
Kip Woodward
Kevin, it's been a real pleasure and I love the work that you're doing. And again, your show opens up everyone else's eyes to what could be too. So, you know, it's a great service.
- [59:01]
Kevin Gentry
Well, thank you. All right. Looking forward to working with you for many more years to come.
- [59:04]
Kip Woodward
You bet. Thanks, Kevin.
- [59:06]
Kevin Gentry
Thanks for tuning in to the Going Big podcast. I hope today's conversation left you feeling energized and ready to tackle tackle your biggest goals. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes, YouTube or wherever
- [59:19]
you listen to podcasts.
- [59:21]
It really helps spread the word and it gets these inspiring stories out to more people. You can also find more content, resources and updates at our website, goingbigpodcast.com Remember, the only limits are the ones you don't challenge, the limits that you impose on yourself. Keep pushing, keep growing, and above all, keep going big. See you next time on the Going Big podcast.