SPEAKER_01 0:00

One of the most impactful things I learned from my dad was just this very simple notion of looking for a gap, looking for an unserviced need, and then asking yourself, what is it that you can bring to this that is unique that maybe somebody else can't? And if it fits within the general scheme or plan of what you're doing, then like take a swing at.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Today on the Building Manitoba podcast, I'm talking with Mark Chipman, executive chairman of the board of True North Sports and Entertainment and the Winnipeg Jets Hockey Club, the organization behind the Winnipeg Jets, Canada Life Center, True North Square, and the Portage Place Redevelopment. In this episode, Mark opens up about leaving a law career in Florida to join his family's automotive business, and how those early years set him on a path of continuous learning and servant leadership. We dig into how True North's growth, from relocating the MOOCs to bringing back the NHL to building out downtown Winnipeg, was never part of a grand plan, but grew organically from a simple principle his dad taught him. Find the gap and fill it. If you're building something in this province and want to hear how patience, preparation, and the right people can turn measured risks into transformative investments. You'll enjoy this episode. Let's get into it. Mark, thanks for joining me on the Building Manitoba podcast today.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Nice to be with you, Nathan.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

I want to start out by talking about some of your early years. And I know you went from practicing law in Florida to joining your family's automotive business around 28 or so years of age. Just wanted to ask you what originally drew you to studying law in the first place and then what pulled you back to Winnipeg and the family business?

SPEAKER_01 1:51

I think what drew me to it was my older brother, Steve, was practicing law, and he's I think he's about 10 years older than I am, and I always really looked up to him. He was really, you know, very helpful to me during my high school years. He's just a great example and role model. And and so, you know, as I was finishing my undergraduate degree and coming to the realization that I needed to pick a path, um, I thought I'd take a swing at at practicing law and and and I have no regrets. So I went to law school, moved on to the U.S. I went to did my undergraduate degree in in the U.S. as well. And when I came out, just so much opportunity. And my wife was a school teacher, and and I met her at school. So it just seemed like the a natural pathway for me, and and honestly was really enjoying it. And you know, sort of just getting going and came home for a summer break. And my my dad asked if I'd ever consider coming back and working for him. And and so we chose to do that. It's a long time ago now. But again, no regrets whatsoever. I was a real gift to be able to come and work work for my dad.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Yeah, I was gonna ask like how important was being part of a family business and just the influence of your dad in general from that lens, like in shaping the values and your approach to business that you have now.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Well, I think it was everything. Like that's where I think I first got the sense of what entrepreneurship or what leadership looked like, what family looked like I got from my parents and and my dad. And I remember him telling me once when I was really young, I was too young to appreciate it at the time, but I I it did stick with me. He said, like, one day you're gonna understand how fortunate you are to have grown up in this neighborhood, because there was just I had so many friends, so many kids my age or a year or two older or younger than I was, the ability to grow up playing sports at a community club in such close proximity, and the ability, my dad was just starting his business at that time as well, to have a job to go to in the summertime and and to work for him uh from an early age. It was all just a very, you know, very much a part of my formation. And I and I didn't, I honestly didn't really appreciate it or understand it while it was happening.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Yeah, like so many things, right? You don't realize what you have until later on. Were there any lessons or experiences from those early years in the automotive business like that you carried forward into your time leading True North?

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Yeah, for sure. I mean, so I came out of you know, practicing law, which is a pretty singular endeavor. I mean, the first job I had was working for the state attorney's office, and so there was kind of a team essence to it. But, you know, beyond that, it's pretty much, you know, you're you're representing somebody or you're you're not necessarily working in a leadership capacity. So when I came back, I think I discovered pretty quickly that I was my formal education and my work experience to date really didn't prepare me or hadn't prepared me to take on the kind of responsibilities that I was initially given. So I went on a journey of really trying to immerse myself in what you know what was then the sort of most coveted leadership material. And it was through that process that I really began to understand the distinctions between management and what leadership really looks like. So I I learned, I'm gonna say maybe the hard way, you know, I just wasn't really all that well equipped and so made a lot of mistakes early days, but tried to educate myself, you know, not just by reading books, but really by observation. And I guess I started to look back then, when I started to understand the importance of leadership, I started to reflect back on all the great leaders that I had unknowingly had in my path, right? And some of them were school teachers, some of them were coaches. One of them was obviously my dad, my brother, which I talked about. And I began to see sort of a common, a commonality, a common denominator amongst them. The term servant leadership is well understood now. Don't know that it was as quite as much so back then, or at least it wasn't written about, but that's really what struck me about all the sort of the the people that had the greatest impact in my life were the most selfless people. They were the most servant-oriented folks. And so I learned that if I was gonna have any success, that I needed to try my best to take that kind of approach. And so, you know, we we introduced a bunch of learning into the company back then that I had discovered, and and it helped, you know, it it for sure helped not just orient the company, but it helped me personally. If you're preaching it, you pretty much got to live it. And I'm not saying I did perfectly by any stretch, but it created a frame of reference for me in those early days of taking a business that wasn't accustomed to, you know, thinking along those lines. And it was kind of a almost a perfect storm, or you know, it was a really interesting incubator to test a lot of that theory, you know, for me personally and on the company. And and you know, I'm proud to say that it still very much remains inside that part of our company and and it does as well at True North. So I would say that's what I learned. I learned that I wasn't ready. That's a long-winded answer, but I learned I was uh really ill-equipped for you know, not just the responsibilities I'd been given, but if we were going to grow the organization, I just didn't have enough tools in my toolbox. So I learned that you know life is a continuous learning process and it you know remains so to this day. It just and that was my biggest takeaway from those years working for my dad.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Yeah, there's a lot there, and it really it sounds like you you spent a lot of time kind of self-evaluating and working on yourself and also bringing that to the team as well. And I wonder if you can talk a little bit more about how do you think about developing the team and how do you make sure that you're building, you know, you're not just uh leading as a you know, a strong leader, but building leaders who have that servant leadership mindset, you know, who are on the team below you as well.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Well, I think it begins with the understanding that you can't lead other people unless you're leading your own life or trying to lead your own life in an effective way. I mean, you can manage people and direct people, you can kind of win their minds or through compensation, but you can't win their hearts. So it begins there. Like in order to lead, you've got to be able to lead your own life. The other thing I think I learned is that not everybody can lead. So I am of the view, and and I'm happy to be challenged on this, but I'm of the view that much of what we call leadership is innate. You either you have those sort of innate abilities at various levels of development, or you don't. And if you have the desire or the sort of the natural ability and willingness to subordinate your own interests and lead from that perspective, then you can learn how to lead. There's there's no end of material that's been published and continues to be published and republished on how to do that more effectively. But I think there's a big distinction between teaching people management skills and leadership skills. I really do believe that much of what we think of as leadership, it's got to be in your DNA. And so organizational development, really effective development, I think needs to grasp that. And that, you know, we can't all lead at the same time. There is a hierarchy or a structure that of any organization that you know that's necessary. But to the extent that you can find those people that do have that natural ability and then and then remove obstacles for them within a defined structure, really will ultimately determine your level of success. That that's what I believe. And great leaders are not threatened by other leaders, they embrace them. But when you can get a whole bunch of really natural-born or naturally developed leaders pulling on the rope at the same time, it that's when the magic happens. So that's what we've tried to do. You try to be really intentional in your in your hiring and your development process to unearth those skills in people.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Yeah, and and building that team around you that you have the right skills and the right people on the team and leaders leading leaders. I want to shift a little bit to talk about some of the work that you're doing downtown and before that, I guess some of the lead up and the history kind of coming to that. And I think one of the the hallmarks of kind of what you've built with True North is really that that long-term and visionary thinking behind things and just taking the long view. And so I wanted to start back with the Minnesota Moose and kind of after the Jets left and when you relocated the Minnesota Moose to Winnipeg in in 96. How far out were you thinking and how much of what is here today, and you know, whether the return of the NHL team or a new arena, how much of that ambition was was already there, and how much developed as things played out?

SPEAKER_01 11:44

You know, I'd love to tell you that I had some grand plan when we made that decision. We really didn't, Nathan. I I would tell you this. You know, we we got involved with the effort to save the NHL, and we were unsuccessful. And one of the most impactful things I learned from my dad was just this very simple notion of looking for a gap, looking for an unserviced need, and then asking yourself, what is it that you can bring to this that is unique that maybe somebody else can't? And if it fits within the general scheme or plan of what you're doing, then like take a swing at it, right? So my family, I grew up playing hockey. My dad was a really good hockey player. So the idea of being in the business of hockey wasn't foreign to us. We we loved and embraced sport, and we knew you know we had enough sort of capacity, I suppose, at the time to take a shot at running a team. Like when the Jets left, the first question my dad asked was, Well, what's next? Like, how do we fill this void? And and that was what we came up with. That that was the most logical way to do that. But we had no idea. We had no expectation that it would ultimately cause the NHL to return. It was certainly our hope. Like, I mean, I remember us saying, well, if we're ever gonna get a team back, we got to keep the market alive. People want to watch hockey. So we had the means at the time, and so we invested in it. It didn't go anywhere near the way I had hoped or expected. It was really very, very difficult the first few years. And I could go on at some length, you know, I I would tell you that it became obvious that the league we had bought into wasn't going to survive, and the only way to survive would be to merge with the American Hockey League, which we did, which I I would say I I worked hard at and in order to convince both leagues to do it. And that finally gave us the platform to even consider building a new building. And you couldn't consider a return to the NHL unless you had a new building, right? That that was a large reason why they left in the first place. And then coincidentally, or or not, I'm not sure, the the economics of that league corrected themselves just as we were opening the new building. The NHL locked out, you know, 405 and got a salary cap and got a revenue sharing model, without which we would never, ever have been able to return. So you had this, I don't know if you want to call it serendipitous, providential, I think it's grace, you know, that sort of brought these forces together, you know, beginning in 2001. We announced our intention to build a rink. We merged the leagues, we became the development partner for the Vancouver Cnocks, and we said, why don't we run this like it's an NHL team now? For everyone to get in, we may as well start trying to behave like one. So that's how we ran the team. And then the lockout came, and I had had the opportunity to meet with Gary a few times through the league merger, through a chance visit in Salt Lake during the Olympics. And then lo and behold, we got a call. It would have been late December 2006 to come and make a presentation on whether or not the league would prosper again here. And so we did that. It was all just sort of organic. It was really very incremental. It wasn't some grand design. It was more fill the gap. Okay, we need an arena. Can we build an arena? Found a way to do it. This league doesn't work. Find a way to merge. That's really all it was, Nathan. It was never uh some grand plan that I that I engineered and then executed. It was quite the opposite.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

There's a couple of things in that too. Like I like the concept that you're talking about about filling the gap. And then the other thing that you're kind of saying that's unspoken is also just the preparation for opportunity. When that opportunity came, you had done all the right things and you had put in the right work beforehand to be ready then when opportunity hit after that.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

I think that's right. I think if you expect to grow, you have to be prepared to grow in whatever direction or whatever opportunity comes your way. So how do you do that? Well, you you build strong teams that are really, really capable of taking on capacity quickly. You build your balance sheet in such a way that it, you know, it gives you the flexibility when an opportunity that comes along that you can actually move on it. Everything we've done, uh whether it's acquiring the team or building the buildings that we operate out of now, really was a function of having people ready to do it and or reorienting people towards the opportunity. Like the building I'm I'm speaking to you from was a parking lot. And you know, I I looked at it out of my window for a long time, and and then we thought maybe we can develop that. And we had the capacity, we had the human know-how. Like a guy by the name of Jim Ludlow, who I grew up with and was the guy who led us through the development of what's now Canada Life Center, really, really talented, smart guy. It was just a matter of sort of reorienting him towards this, which became the Wawanisa building, which has now become Portage Place. Like he built out his own team to do these projects, but he had learned all of this through uh building the arena. And so we just kept that capacity and continued to invest in it, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

Yeah, I know that makes a lot of sense. A lot of your investments have been in the downtown, and that was really kicked off with the arena as kind of that first piece of you know building in Winnipeg's downtown. And back then the downtown was really struggling, and you know, there was a lot of businesses closing and just a lot of uh doom and gloom really about downtown. And I want to get your perspective on like what gave you the confidence to commit to downtown with the arena as that first investment.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

You know, it might just be as maybe I didn't know any better. You know, downtown was starting to come apart back then, but it wasn't so dire that we didn't think it could be turned around. When we built Canada Life Center, like we were clear to say, look, this is not going to be the panacea for everything that ails us. It just could be a catalyst, we think, for to reverse the trajectory we're on. And I think it's done that. I mean, I think I could point to I don't know how many buildings that we've built or caused to be built since then, but it would be it's probably, gosh, I don't know, seven or eight or whatever. You know, so it it had that effect, but it has not had the effect yet of stabilizing the downtown in terms of the social challenges that we continue to face. In fact, I would say they're they're more challenging now than they were when we started. Like buildings don't fix social problems. We never expected they would. What it does is it if you're gonna invest, you know, in in bricks and mortars, you gotta also be prepared to invest in the social well-being of the community. And so, you know, I would say just at least in terms of time spent, I probably over the past 10 years, I I think would have spent probably an equal, at least equal amount of time in just trying to find or be a part of finding solutions for those challenges. So it's kind of a, again, not a it's not a perfect plan, it's more organic. But at some point in time, you got to take a leap, you know, and say, Yeah, well, we believe in the city. You get to a checkpoint, you go, you want to do another project? Yeah, okay, we still believe in the city, notwithstanding the challenges that cities like many cities like Winnipeg face. I mean, if you don't, it goes back to that, okay, there's a gap, there's an opportunity, and you know, do you have the capacity? Well, if you do, then then you move forward. If you decide not to, then you're just hoping. And that's not a great strategy. So I don't mean to sound overly altruistic about this, but either you're part of the solution in some way, shape, or form, or you're just contributing to the problem.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Yeah, no, absolutely. I want to get into the your thinking a little bit too behind you know how large some of the projects are that you know, the investments you've made in in Winnipeg and you've paired really a disciplined way of thinking with kind of large, you know, large bets, like you said, filling gaps and you know, the arena being kind of early on, but then true North Square now portage placed later on as well, too. But what's influenced your ability to to think bigger and to make kind of bold, transformative investments in Winnipeg when I think a lot of times the you know, maybe not in reality, but the reputation at least is that Winnipeg's more incremental in terms of how we move. Like what's been different about how you've approached thinking about investments to make those bold bets?

SPEAKER_01 21:06

I'm gonna go back to my dad. I might my dad had this instinct to see opportunities. He understood leverage. That that was the world he came from before he started his own business. He worked in the finance world and small consumer finance business that he worked for. He appreciated leverage. It might have been a subject that he and I perhaps didn't agree on quite as frequently. He was a braver guy than I was, but I think I learned that a measured risk is the way he would put it. Measured risk is a good thing. And so, what's measured risk? There's a lot of ingredients, but one of them is is the know how, the capability around you. Because if the plan is solid, it's financeable, but the plan's only solid if the people who are going to execute it can actually execute it, right? It's one thing to come up With a PowerPoint presentation on a new building, it's another thing to lease it and have it leased, to have those commitments in place to give the lender the comfort. So a lot of that is just competencies. That's just human skill that we had in our organization that I was highly confident in. Because I mean, none of these projects ever had my hands literally on a steering wheel, you know, making every decision and every turn. Maybe the arena at first, I kind of pressed hard on that one. It was through that that I was able to draw some really talented people into our organization that still work for us today. Like John Olfort, who runs True North, like is just a brilliant human being who can execute. Jim Ludlow, who I just spoke about, and I could go on and on and on. But when you've got that level of skill around you, it gives you confidence. You know, you refer to them as big bets. They don't seem that daunting anymore, right? They become measured bets, you know, and they're always somewhat incremental. Like you'll, you're, you're putting self through a discipline of checkpoints where you know you're not like we're doing this no matter what. It's we're doing this as long as as we go through the different stages of this, it continues to make sense. And then eventually it does. And you go, okay, let's go. I think Portage Place is a great example of that. When that idea first came across my desk, I was like, Are you nuts? Like we were just finishing the Walanisa building, and our development team is small but mighty. But I'm like, Portage Place, like, I'm like, what's the rationale? You know, Jim explained to me, he's like, Well, if we don't do this, it's closing. I'm pretty confident of that. Okay, so well, there's your gap. Portage place closed, lights out, not a good visual, right? And they called us and said, you know, do you have anything that might work here? We didn't at first, but we threw some relationships with lifelong relationships with the folks at Pan Am Clinic, knowing that they were looking for a whole bunch more space, again, a gap, a need, you know, we introduced the idea of of them being kind of an anchor here. And again, it was incremental, but eventually it made sense. And then as it made sense, it became financial. And in a very unique way, perhaps the most complex project I've ever witnessed. I don't want to say led because I haven't. I've been more much more uh, you know, on the sidelines watching. Just a very complicated land assembly, very complex financing package, you know, with sort of non-traditional infrastructure data associated with it, but it all worked, you know? And I I don't think there's been a minute that I've been concerned about it because it it's in the hands of very competent people and it's filling a need. So now it's just execute. Now let's just get it built and get it open.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

Oh, that's great. I love the explanation that you gave your thinking there. That's really insightful into that. I wonder if you can kind of expand a little bit too on on your thoughts around the risk management with projects of kind of the size and scale of what TrueNorth has done in recent years. And I think you've mentioned or alluded a little bit to it with just the the checkpoints and you know the quality of the team that you have on projects, but just what is your thinking around managing risk at that scale?

SPEAKER_01 25:28

Well, honestly, a lot of it's imposed on you. When you're borrowing to the levels you have to to complete projects of this scale, a lot of that risk management is imposed on you, and rightfully so, through various hedging strategies, et cetera, whether it's interest rate hedging. It's a combination of the sort of the imposed upon you risk management that comes with lending at that level. And then it's process, like it's a really, really rigorous process of weekly reporting. Because in projects of that skill, you know, things can go sideways. But when you're dealing with the same architectural teams and engineering teams and contracting teams repeatedly, you get a level of comfort, you get a level of confidence. And we learned the hard way, you know, early days, like when we built the arena, we had to deal with a really challenging subgrade uh circumstance. Like just didn't realize how much water there was underneath everything. And and you know, and that that transferred over to True North Square, same thing, same water table. You build in a at a cost expectation for all your subgrade work, and it turns out to be twice that. Okay, so twice, you're not gonna miss that the third time, right? It's like anything. You just you you kind of learn as you go, you know. But if you've got the right people, and I cannot stress that enough, if you got the right high level of competency and a really quantifiable need for what you're doing, then the the risk management kind of takes care of itself as long as your people understand and are comfortable with that level of process.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Lots of the projects you've worked on have involved multiple levels of government, and you know, over the years there's changes in those seats and you know, party color and just different personalities. And what's your thinking, though, behind relationship building that survives changes in administration? And what advice would you give to other business owners who need a government partner or need government involvement but don't want to be dependent on just you know the current political relationship? Like how do you manage that relationship structures?

SPEAKER_01 27:44

I don't know if I got a really simple answer to that. I think every project, you know, I mean, not all of our projects have had any government involvement. Some have had a little, some have had a lot. I think the one where that was most informative to us was when we built the arena, and about 40% of these of the capital for that was came through public sources. We were able to point out to them, you know, what their return on that was, especially the federal government, you know, that there was a very quantifiable return in in the time frames. So when you're able to do that, I think, I think dealing with government, if you can build a level of trust with people, whether they work in the public service or they work in they're across the table in a negotiation, it's the National Hockey League or whatever, or whether it's your family, like I think that there are certain principles that absolutely, I mean, the extent to which we they're followed will determine the success you have in any relationship. And they're not different from one situation to the next. These are sort of inarguable, objective, time-tested truths. And if you follow them, you got a chance. If you don't, you have no chance. And if you follow them, it doesn't guarantee you're gonna succeed in a relationship with a government. But if you don't follow them, I guarantee you you will fail, right? So I think we've just tried to apply the same principles over and over again. And I think the most important one would be trust and that building a layer of trust, you know, that that you can continually build upon over a period of time until people really trust you, unless there's some massive economic gain for them in in partnering with you, and you're really not gonna be able to cross the finish line together. So I would say I was fortunate to develop a level of trust with the folks that worked for the provincial government back when we built the Candle Life Center. And I'm not talking about Gary Dewar, although he was really very, very helpful. The folks that he assigned to that project and that we dealt with over a few years, we just I think in the end they trusted us, we trusted them. That might seem like a real oversimplification or perhaps even naive statement, but I just think it it begins and ends with those being respectful to people and earning their trust, et cetera. That and only that has allowed us, I think, to partner with people, including governments.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Yeah, and that approach and that mentality that I assume that the way that you're talking that applies across not just government, but all the partnerships that you need, whether it's vendors or investors or others that you need to really make projects and the business work.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Yeah, there's no question. Like, I don't have a separate playbook for like, okay, here's here's what we do and say when we go over to meet with the federal government, and here's what we do and say when we meet with Canada Life, and here's what we do and say when we meet with Bell about you know our our broadcast rights. In the end, you're just dealing you're dealing with people that got their own concerns, their own responsibilities, that they're trying to move forward every day. And and I I don't know. I just think that people know when you're when you're maybe not instantly, but eventually, if if you're trustworthy consistently, then you can worthy of other people's trust, then eventually you build what's just called trust. And that doesn't guarantee, but it it enables everything to move forward. And if without it, I can't think of anything, any relationship, any project, any team I've played on, anything that had any kind of success without there being that it being underpinned with with trust.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

Yeah, it's the foundation for everything. I wanted to talk a little bit about you know some of your community involvement. And I know you went to St. Paul's and you were involved in founding a Jesuit school and you chair the the True North Youth Foundation, and you know, there's a clear pattern and kind of through line around community and service to others throughout kind of your your whole career. And I just wanted to talk about like what are some of the influences or factors that shaped how you think about giving back to community and just service to others in general.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

Okay, so I'm gonna sound like a broken record here, but I'm gonna point to my dad and my mother that really understood the concept of service. And I mean, my my mother was, you know, just really, really devoted to our family. And my dad was really, as my dad was as well, but he was really devoted to the community. You know, like for him, service was the rent you pay for all the the blessings that had come our way. And, you know, so he he lived it. Like he I he was a walking, breathing example of a guy who served. And I remember him as a kid. I remember him walking around the block for a period of time. I was quite young at the time, and I finally said to my mom, like, what is he doing? And she said, He's practicing his speech. And I said, What speech? And he said, He's speaking, I think he was chairing the United Way campaign that year. And I I was like, Oh, okay. So from early days, I had this, I have these memories of him, whether it was our church, Rotary, United Way, the school. Like he was always he was he was always just really generous with his time. Now I go to St. Paul's High School. Like, as you point out, it's a Jesuit school. The ethos of Jesuit education is service, right? The very basic building blocks of of that education is to educate people to be a man or woman for others. Again, talk about a time-tested principle, like these emanated from the teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola in the you know, in the 1500s, and have carried across multiple centuries and worked. So when you get exposed to that, you're like, okay, if we're supposed to serve, how do you serve? And then I'm going around again. So you look for gaps. So the school we started that you brought up was a model of a school that the Jesuits started, gosh, 50, almost 60 years ago in New York. And it was just a school because in this particular neighborhood, the parish there was, you know, determining that these kids had massive numeracy and literacy deficits. How could we catch them up? So they created a model of school in middle year school, grades six, seven, and eight, to get kids caught up so that they had a chance to get to high school and move on. And it worked. Now that was a playbook. We just grabbed it, replicated it. I think there are 70 of those schools now in North America. There's only a couple here, but massive need. So through our work with the foundation that we're bringing kids into the game of hockey in the public school system, you're seeing gaps. You're seeing kids that are falling behind. So again, apply some of the resources we have, take a proven model, principle based, get really solid people around it, you know, proven educators, and kind of get out of the way. That's all it is. And I'd love to tell you that I've measured up to them all the time, but I haven't. But I I just believe that that's that's the path I was put on. And so the stuff we do downtown, you know, whether it's the DCSP or Nadinaway Mac or any of the stuff we do in the foundation for kids around mental health or camping, whatever. It the essence of it or the the basis of it is all the very same as you know the things we've already talked about in terms of how do you move a project forward? How why do you why did you build that building? I can tell you it's the same principles that have underpinned everything we've done.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

Yeah, that looking for the gap and then looking to meet the gap. And I was gonna ask about the the work you've done downtown and just you know looking at community safety and working with the downtown community safety partnership, and you've almost answered it already, where just looking at you know what is what is the gap, what is the need, and you know, the example of of downtown just having a you know a huge social gap and the need to fill that. And you've taken apart and you know, trying to fill some of that gap and address that.

SPEAKER_01 36:15

Yeah, that was an easy one to spot, Nate. That gap is right in front of us right now. Honestly, it was about the same time that we decided to move ahead with the uh True North Square project that we decided to try and really understand what was happening or why. And I was seeing the same kind of incidents over and over again where you would get there'd be a man-down call and you're gonna get a dispatch of multiple resources, fire, police, paramedic. And uh, I'm a little bit curious by nature, I was like, okay, so what happens next? Because I'd see the same, virtually the same individual for a period of time, you know, that was really suffering and and resulting in the same response all the time. So, I mean, without going into a lot of detail, what we're really all we did there was we we determined that it wasn't hard and connecting with some really smart people at the Winnipeg Police Service and Firearm Paramedic and Shared Health and Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, you know, we we figured out there was a massive gap. There was a resource missing, and it's still missing, you know, where you can take people that are in a in a very dire need doesn't warrant a 911 call necessarily, but they need care. And not only do they need care in the moment, they need a pathway. So DCSP was created to create that immediate care, to create that we call it like a fourth layer of service underneath or beyond fire, police, paramedic, where these people just need help. They don't necessarily need to get in an ambulance or or be arrested or whatever, they need help. And we thought that if we created this and did it right, that we could reduce the calls for service on those other enterprises. And that's happened, right? Not surprisingly. And now we're connected in, you know, from a dispatch perspective with fire and paramedic, and and we're working towards that with WPS, but we're still a long ways from where we need to be because we still lack that resource where after you engage that person and identify that they need supports, there's almost a triage that needs to occur. Because not everybody's in the same state for the same reason. Unless you can really coordinate that, navigate folks to the right resources. I think you you're you're spinning your wheels, and we're spinning our wheels still. I'm I'm hopeful, really hopeful right now. I think we've we've got the attention of of all the levels of government uh around the need for this. And I'm hopeful that will be perhaps the next project you see us engaging or helping get off the ground, because those needs are very real. They're human needs, and they're not going to correct themselves on their own.

SPEAKER_00 39:01

Yeah, it's a it's a major gap and and something that I think anybody who's paying attention, it's hard to ignore, and it's it's everywhere, and we need those proactive solutions and we need to fill some of those gaps in order to better take care of people for sure.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

Great.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

How do you think about legacy? Like, is there a single contribution, whether it's business or you know, community-wise, that you hope to kind of define your legacy around, or or what really like what matters most to you personally for when you're done your career?

SPEAKER_01 39:32

Oh, wow. I don't know if I got an answer to that. I somebody said something the other day that really stuck with me, and I wish I could remember, or I'd love to find the original source of it, but somebody, some very successful person was asked the question, how do you define success? And the answer was by the fact that their adult children still wanted to hang out with them. And so I went, I like that. And so I'm very proud of the fact that my three daughters have chosen Winnipeg, and you know, they're all very well educated and could be anywhere, but they chose they chose Winnipeg, and I guess that would be it. You know, we spend a lot of time together, and I think that's probably the thing that's been most gratifying as in terms of legacy is that my my adult kids don't think I'm an idiot anymore. I mean, I I think we all go through that, you know, when they're those teenage years, but I my adult kids really get along and we get along with them and we spend a lot of time together. And if I can maintain that and build on that, and then with the grandchildren that we've been blessed with, that would be that'd be plenty for me.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

I'm on the front side of that. I have a couple of young kids, and yeah, looking ahead, it's yeah, if I could land in that place too, I mean, that would mean a lot to me personally, too. And it's just I know there's going to be the teenage years in between before we we get there, but yeah, it just if you have kids that still want to be around you and they are friends with each other, or yeah, what more can you ask for, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:08

And it's the work you're putting in now, kids, that will ultimately determine that, right? It's the work, and honestly, I guess, you know, looking back, it was it was the the time and attention that I was blessed to have from my mom, my dad, my brothers, my sister, all of these friends, all of these families around me, the coaches, the parents that coached me, the teachers that helped me when I was struggling, the coach that believed in me, all of that is part of your formation. And if you can do that for your own kids, then ideally they they want to hang out with you when you're old, like me.

SPEAKER_00 41:47

Yeah. If someone's building a business here in Manitoba today and they're they're trying to decide whether to bet big on this province or hedge and diversify other places, like what's your case that you you give people for going all in on Manitoba?

SPEAKER_01 42:03

A few things come to mind. We're a very resilient population. You have to be. And I was joking with somebody yesterday. Like, can you imagine the people that originally set up shop here? Like how tough and resilient they must have been. You know, I like I often think they must have got here in July and thought, oh, this we can make this work. But seriously, there's a resilience to this community. We long ago lost our geographic advantage, right, of being a gateway. I mean, we still are to a certain extent. People are still harvesting and transporting grain and and et cetera, et cetera. So there is a sort of an infrastructure here that's very robust, and more so than people really understand. There's a manufacturing industry here that's really robust, but all of it is a consequence, I think, of a very resilient mindset. We've never had the big swings, you know, that our friends to the West have had in Alberta, let's say. I think we're resilient. I think we are very resource, very mineral rich, that is just we're just beginning to understand. I think we're a wonderful example of diversity. I think I we've got many, many miles to go, but I think we've started the path, the proper path of reconciliation. And I think that's gonna be our strength, could be one of our real strengths in the years ahead. If you're hedging, the nice thing about Manitoba is it's steady. And when you hedge, you're looking for something that's steady, right? So I'm not saying you need to have all your bets in Manitoba. I mean, we do, but that works for us. And now, and I would say this like I look, I do look at Saskatchewan and the progress in so many ways that they've made that I feel like we're some days we've really fallen behind. You know, Alberta's Alberta, uh, British Columbia with the resources. Like, I I would more aspire to be really better at what we have than to try and outperform the behemoth that is Alberta. I look at Saskatchewan and say, let's let's catch up there in every respect. Let's start with that. You bet on this province because you're betting on the people, the work ethic, the resilience, you know, that's what you're betting on here.

SPEAKER_00 44:29

Yeah. No, that's a great message. Mark, thanks for coming on the Billy Mantle podcast. I really enjoyed our conversation here. And yeah, lots of value in in everything, and I think a really good understanding of kind of the the story and a lot of the influences behind kind of the values and and how you've built yourself personally and true north as a business as well.

SPEAKER_01 44:50

I'm honored to spend the time with you, Nathan. It was uh it was a good conversation. I really enjoyed it, and I'm humbled that you had me on.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

If you found this conversation valuable, I'd encourage you to subscribe to the Building Manitoba Review. It's a short, practical breakdown of the key insights and lessons from each episode, along with actionable takeaways for building and growing businesses here in Manitoba. You can find the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening. I'll see you in the next episode.