YouSaid · the spoken record

John Bragg

lines on the record: 114
first: 2024-10-01
most recent: 2024-10-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Success for me is the development of a great team and in many cases we have people that worked in this factory through high school and university came back to work with us and are now running the company. That to me real success. We have the same thing in our other businesses where we develop at East Link we have homegrown leaders that are competing with the world and doing it very well. And so real success is developing people so that they can add value. My philosophy is always how can we add value today? Well if you can develop good people they can add value and add value to society or any way you want to judge that.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and we add to it and the most irritating Comment that you get from the civil servants is but this is the regulation. Don't talk to me about common sense. This the regulation. You know, when the people wrote the regulations, they couldn't envision everything, but then the regulation covers everything. It bypasses common sense, and I've heard that, well, this is the regulation. You know, we're just going by the regulations. Drives you crazy.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I went to see where they put a bridge in, and it wasn't a bridge, but it was half bridge and half rock. They ended up costing seventy five thousand dollars. And when I was there, there was no water in it. And there was only water in it maybe in the month of April when it came down off the hill. So there's no fish in it. But they make it things that are absolutely. No common sense too. And we could have had a nice rock way that you just traveled through. But so there's just things like that. That's a minor issue, but it's irritating.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's so many roadblocks at every turn. My friend Wallace McCain, one of his sayings, well, don't let the bastards get you down? Well, I don't know who the bastards are, but there's somebody out there trying to slow you down every day. And it's quite a statement. So you have to work through that. Tax policy in Canada aren't bad. Jurisdictional policy. Hold up at the border, you know, with all these border deals terrible. I'm an environmentalist. We have big wood lots, and I'm really an environmentalist. But if you're not careful, they'll take it over. This particular case, it was a thousand acre woodlot, and we were building roads through it to do silviculture work, great for the future.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Typical estate freeze, but I kept a portion of myself that is going to the foundation for public good. And so that's one of the reasons I keep working is to be able to really leave a foundation. And at the same time, the children will have more than they need or more than they should have probably. But we're going to have a significant foundation and to work for that as compared to work for a big yacht. I don't know how you measure those things, but it'll give me satisfaction anyway.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's exactly right. I don't feel any different about myself now than I did thirty years ago because we have a place in Hawaii and so on and we're next door to the Americans. I would say that the business community in the US is If they make ten million they spend like they have a hundred, and Canadians make ten they hide it. It seems to me the culture in the US is making money to spend it. I've never thought of it that way. I'd rather, you know, we have a significant foundation.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we have a few too many homes, but we don't abuse that, and certainly no yachts hate to admit. Travelling around Way the Airport are my age and my health. One beauty of living in a small town we're an hour and a half from downtown Help. I could be going to dinner every night in Halifax, but the beauty of living here is I just put on the invitation sorry my executive assistant sends it on. The low profile helps but the wear and tear of going to dinner and going to receptions and takes time away.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, they've been a big, big factor. I mean, I was paying 18 or 20 percent at one stage for loans. Didn't have as many loans, thank God. And then when they're cheap, cheap, these rates. Have been exceptionally cheap. And then when they get to be 6%, everybody says, oh, it's too expensive. Geez, I never dreamt that I'd ever see six percent. Certainly I didn't allow that to slow me down because, you know, it's kind of normal, but now we're coming back. It does allow leverage. It affects the portfolio some. You might buy a few more dividend stocks if the money's cheap, if the dividend's twice what the cost funds are. You can get a return without without too much risk pretty easily. It's my cost of funds.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“but of its significant we like the board to be primed in advance as to what we're thinking about, what we might do, so we kind of try to operate without Though surprises”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't want to downplay the board, but one of the great things the board does is bring discipline to our management team. The team love to have the board come and like to present, but they also have to be professional about it. So it's forced our team to be more professional. Now, we get lots of wise comments too, but the discipline that they bring by the board, the different leaders coming before the board, presenting what they're doing, answering the questions, that's great discipline. I use the board different people on the board at different times as listening post. I wouldn't go without it. I'm a big fan of private company boards. I don't think they slow us down in decision-making, but we wouldn't make a big decision. We don't like to surprise the board. There might be smaller decisions we just make and move on.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, thoughts were and how I thought it would work and what the downside was. Well, we've just plugged away at it and we A couple bayon of equity or more now in the portfolio. All that came late in life.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But before that I was building land basis and factories and people but it didn't show up in the bottom line. But I was building a real base of assets and then I could say that after seventy we've done a lot better still. Got the base going and like the portfolio we have, I didn't really get started until 75 maybe. And we played, I shouldn't say played around, we had maybe a significant portfolio and some people's mind, but not one that you would see written up in New York Times or something. But when I decided when these interest rates were so cheap that it didn't have to be a genius to borrow at one or two percent and best in dividends at five, so we did it. Could have set back and done nothing. Not everybody was doing that. We have a board and I was explaining to them what my...”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was a member of YPO like lots of other entrepreneurs, and you get rocked out at fifty. And I remember saying, you know, for me, this is just the beginning, because I built a base now. I haven't really made any money, but I built quite a base. And now I've got to take that base and move on. Most of my real equity, the way you would measure it, has come after sixty.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Patience is a real virtue. I don't know whether I have enough, but I've had to have a lot because we've built our team. We have lots of imports now, but in the early days we built her team on locals that didn't have as much experience as people from away. And some of them turned out to be great entrepreneurs, but you had to have patience, bring them along and get them exposed. One guy said to me, because I was trying to point out the way I wanted to report. And the guy says, Yeah, but John, you're outside and seeing all these boards and reports. We don't see that. Although you smart, just didn't have the imagination, but today tremendous executive, but it does take a little time. And patience, respect civility, those words are big on our culture.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I haven't seen much self correction. A guy that's really doing well when he speaks up, you listen to him. When he goes broke, nobody listens to what he is saying more. So Megan Amelia didn't make you smarter and losing it didn't make you stupider.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I read a quote where he says, always keep the back door open, so although we were levering through these formative years, the real debt load was in cable where the cash flow was quite consistent. The mistake many people make is they have a business and they make the first million dollars and now they get into things they know nothing about and too big a way. I mean, if you want to test the waters, that's one thing. I'm a great believer in not having all the answers. I always say the guy that asked the question looks better than the guy that has the answers, and so I'd like to have the questions. But people get to have the answers. We've all been around associates that once they make a little money, they know more than the next guy.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stick to your knitting, and I've seen A number of friends or associates who made the first man and then thought they knew how to make the second with ease and they would get off focus, go buy another company that they didn't know anything about and just Just not focused on what they knew. I think it's fine to Diversify which you have to be careful how you do that. Frank Soby, when I was in university reading a Financial Times, I don't know which one.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Focus in business is a big deal when it comes to business principles. There isn't one A bigger than focus. Just stay at it and work at it and It's amazing how hard work brings you good luck after a while. Focus is absolutely critical, probably the biggest, maybe the biggest single principle you can have in business.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably if you said sure I have done differently, maybe, but on the other hand I was very comfortable doing what I did, and I worked hard, but we bought our first cottage, and the theory was that Judy could be at the cottage for the kids and I could work, which worked out well. Basically, Our philosophy of life and so on, I wouldn't change. We've lived a low profile on a rural community And at the same time had the ability to do whatever we wanted to.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd say she's a great mother. She's been a full time mother. We have four children. I don't know whether she didn't have an interest in the business or I didn't want to share it, but I do like going home and not talking about the business. We have four great children and we have eight grandchildren. She's been just a very supportive mother. I traveled the world for years and she brought up our children. Her role is a supportive role, but not directly in the business”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I try to Yeah, I do, I do I enjoy it and I work a little every night I'm always reading about stocks or reading business stuff and I guess I'm not working quite as much as I used to but I could share with you I've given some money to an entrepreneurial school at University of Prince Edward Island Catherine Colbeck who was a former premier there and the business schools named after her and she was a friend of mine at university. And a great person. And so we gave some money to an entrepreneurial school. And I said on the condition that you put 7.0 on the wall, what 7-0? That's the hours entrepreneurs have to work every week. Not fifty, but seventy, and entrepreneurs do work seventy.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Always have to look at cost, but capital probably the biggest thing in the cable business because you can make big mistakes and spending, say, a billion dollars to get into programming that just didn't work out. Every company, I would say every business has the five points might be different.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A friend of mine one time said you can run any company with five points on the back of a cigarette package that was years ago. But that's really basic. You know, just what are the key items? Is it revenue? Is it sales? Is it margin and cost? I'm a big believer in being a low-cost producer. Doesn't matter what you're doing. There's no excuse to waste money. If you're low cost, you're going to stay in business in the tough times. The key points are different in every business. So I would say, for instance, in the food business, all about cost because you know what the revenue is going to be because we don't know whether we're going to have a frost or whether the currency is going to change or whether somebody else got a big crop or a poor crop. But if we keep our cost in good shape, we'll be all right in the long run. And I would say in cable, you know.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Historically a lot of hands on. I really don't find the day-to-day operations as much fun as I do the investment of the funds. And so I'm enjoying moving to a head office role as compared with, but I still like to monitor we still have monthly meetings with all of our major investments. So probably a little people would say a little too much detail and so on, but God, when you're signing the checks and the notes, you want to know what's going on. And so I would rather be well informed up front so that I can help if there's a problem than come to the problem late, operating without surprises is pretty important to me.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's work for us. You know, when we were building the cable business, there was lots of depreciation, but the cash flow was good and still is. The same in the food business as we invest in factories and so on. And we also, you know, try to work the angles on the tax situation and use our depreciations. Warner said in the past he's not a believer in EBITDA, but we are. We think it's the cash that the business generates. And so we're always saying, well, what's the multiple on EBITDA? And so we know what cash is coming. Because you can usually cut back on your capital if you need to. We're always trying to measure how much free cash the business are generating, and what do we have to either pay down debt or to buy more buffet stock or something similar.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Condre de Buffett wore a big ebit, I believe her cash they generate if it's through depreciation, that's all right, how much cash are we generating and how can we service the debt and what can we buy with that cash? And as a private company.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“78 when interest rates were eighteen and twenty percent. I had a cable business and financed and the interest rates were killin' me, but we just hung in there and cut the cost and I remember saying, well, if we can survive in this situation, we'll be in pretty good shape going forward. I understand Buffett, but I don't always agree with him. That money is a long term investor having that money sittin' in cashal ball that nobody else has. I'd be investing it in good stocks because the stocks go down, it doesn't matter. But I guess he's waiting for the opportunity to buy them cheap.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is different because he's relying on the market. If the market crashes my cable business doesn't change. People still watch cable or still use cell phone. It might go down some, but it's basically if the market crashes, people are still going to eat blueberries. Well, it might be. It might be tough going, but they're not going to stop eating, and you might have to take a year or two when you don't make any money. But, you know,”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's different and you have to have some different philosophies than he would agree with. He wouldn't have lever the way I did. But he doesn't call that leverage.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Buffet would say that if you're a businessman and investing in your business, you're probably a better stockbicker because you use the same principles, but if you're an investor, it will help you in your business because you're using the same principles in your business. So just like I said, my son, this company we're looking at, not a very big company, but it would kind of fit and my son says, well, I'd rather buy Buffet. That's a pretty good benchmark. So you use that every day and he grew this business by buying other companies, but he didn't charge money to do that. You know, he always says he doesn't borrow money, but some way he's borrowing the insurance money. So he said cash available to Bycom. In my case, I've built businesses for him.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's all right if there's so many so many basic lessons. I say that my kids every once in a while. Would Buffett do that? And they think, well, I guess he wouldn't. So that's the answer. We don't have to have a big discussion. We're looking at a company recently, and my son said, I think I'd rather have more Berkshire. And so that's a good test. And so he just brings value to her everyday life all the time.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Basically we'd just hang on. You wonder whether Berkshire is overvalued today or not. He says he buys the stock when it's one point two type book, but he's actually buying it at 1.5 times and buying it consistently so he knows something that we don't know. So maybe you should sell the stock. But they're going to grow. If you have good stocks, some will be up, some will be down. But We don't really. Pretend to be able to pick the high flyers that really are objective. We've always had a modest portfolio, but when interest rates were down to where we could borrow money for one or two percent, we said, look, this is an opportunity. We should get at this. And so we did. Borrowed lots of money to buy good stocks, and it's been the right thing to do.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have a very small team here in our head office, I'd say three of us and were not traders, we're not trading all the time. We're trying to a lot of buffet and we're just hanging on to it and probably we'll have it 10 years, although I read an article on the weekend of contrarian view of buffets, maybe Brookshaw's not doing so well, but they compare it with Apple and Microsoft and some high flyers that have done extremely well. We're buying Buffett for a ten or eleven or twelve percent return. We're not looking for twenty or twenty five percent. We just like to buy good solid investments. and let him”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're recording this in my so-called head office, which is only two hundred yards from our food processing plant, but it's an effort for me to get away from the food business and let the professionals run it. We have a very small head office and we're running several operating companies and a few years ago we started a portfolio which is, I think, quite significant today. I read where so-and-so is running two billion dollars and three billion and we're doing more than that. And so we've got a big portfolio that's done very well for us. So we try to streamline it and keep it simple and let the operators run the business and they have to deal with the people problems. We work at it.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's always quite a challenge, and we have incentive programs, and they seem to work. If I had my druthers, I'd rather a million dollars and just expect you to work harder than to pay you five hundred with a five hundred bonus. The incentive seemed to be a way of life, but a lot of people will perform without incentives. Certainly we have incentive programs, and they do seem to motivate people.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and civility and respect I think it runs highly through the business and we say to people look if you can't be respectful or if you're not happy here please find a place where you can be happy”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably the best thing we've done on the culture side. Everybody is dedicated to doing it better next year and open to that. Now we always have some people who have to respond with a new idea with a negative comment to start with. That's human nature, but they get through that within a day, and then they're the great team leader. Having a culture that you can just bring up ideas, and there's really no room for naysayers around the table. You've got to just say, look, we've got to do this. Don't tell me why it's difficult to do it. You agree it has to be done we should be better than we are. So let's get together. And that's a good challenge. But they are smart as anybody else. You don't have to bring people from Toronto or Ottawa to decide how to solve problems at Oxford. There's a culture of hard work and all of those basics and”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was a basketball player, and he was recruited to run the athletic department at St. Evex University. The president of the university said, I'm probably only going to pay you half of what you're earning today, but I'm going to give you a job with twice the satisfaction. And that's the most important thing in life. He took the job, and he's got great job satisfaction. And, you know, there's more to life than just the pay envelope. Having a good civil place to go to work and good fellow workers and a sense of working together is trying to get ahead of the other guy all the time. It's worked for us. We've had great employees, just tremendous employees, dedicated. That's what we are.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we've had from time to time there's been that discussion and I face it head on and say look family companies are great to work for and we're going to pay you well and you're going to feel very comfortable here but there's no equity available and too complicated with the finance structures if you start giving it away and then if they went out and I just didn't need that complication in my life I think historically there's a lot of good family companies and especially in Europe there's tremendous generation and people are comfortable. I tell the story of a young guy that”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I like the low profile, no question about that. My son Matthew and I were looking at a cottage that he was looking to buy. It was like farmer caught each of Alex Coval, who was the famous artist from Mount Allison, my university, and it was for sale and we thought it would be nice to own the Koval Cottage, and we were there and there were some other people showed up looking at on a Sunday afternoon, and I said, We understand it's for sale, and we understand there's people interested, but Matthew and I were there. They had no idea who we were, and they were talking this as if maybe we'd know who might be buying it. And it's just nice to. Have a nice low profile and be able to get around and not have the burdens of people. Not as much for me as for my children and grandchildren.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Evil we don't have her name in the food business. Oxford's a good classical name around the world. One of the best marketing tools you can have is use your own name people catch on. McCain's would be a great example. Everybody knows McCain French fries. But I was determined that from a family point of view, and if my grandson or granddaughter want to have just a normal job in the business or outside of the business, they don't need the burdens of the name being everywhere. So I was quite determined to keep our name off it. It's more so today, but security. You don't need a high profile in these small towns. And I think it's just makes a better family. Situation, if you don't have your name plastered over everything. But I can understand why people do it. But in my case, I prefer not to do it.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Originally, we called it Central Cable in Amsterdam. And that was to keep our name off it. But then we had a holding company and somebody named it Bragg Communications, holding company that was not in the public at all. Some way as we bought companies, the Bragg name became a little more. But in most cases, we still ran under the original name, whether it was in Sydney or Summerside or Charlotte Town for finance reasons on had to put them together. The holding company named Brag Communication sort of got out there. But it was never on the walls of any of our buildings because they were all run as Halifax cable or whatever. It was truly a holding company and then we moved it on from there. But those were kind of decisions. I wasn't paying much attention to or didn't care much about. We were always rejigging the financial structure.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it just gets more expensive all the time, and by now there's a lot of fiber networks built, so who's going to build another one? You know, there's a lot of competition, but we've got this. It's plowed in capital that's there that's going to be a big asset for a number of years, I think.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“work that's really amazing when you see it on the wall. I remember I went to lunch in Stockholm with the Ericsenge when we were first getting in the cell business. And I said, will you put a set of busel, you put my cable business out of business eventually? He said, look, we've got to get off those towers and into fiber as fast as we can. So, you know, you think of it's all cell, but it's really coming to you from fiber. And wherever the cell is, there's fiber to another node, and you're picking it up. I think the cell network is a big asset for a lot of years, but boys, it's changing all the time.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think having the fiber network in our office in Halifax on the wall, we have a picture of our fiber network. It's really amazing, and I think it's an asset that's not recognized by the financial advisors and so on of the big companies. But if you look at our map, we have fiber from Ireland to Bermuda to the east coast, and then we have fiber going west through Chicago and Detroit, through Toronto and up north, and all the way to British Columbia. And a lot of this we own, some of it we trade we might have forty eight fibers in area and somebody wants twelve of them. We'll say, sure, we'll give you twelve in a rural area, but we need two to Detroit heard of it to Chicago. So we either own or have trades.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When it comes to the technology business, I'm the wrong one to try and answer that. It's very difficult to Be better than a good fiber system in rural Nova Scotia or rural areas because you have so many options with it. In fact, we're doing business with Starlink because when they get down they want to have fiber that they can feed to people. Are they a competitor? Are they a customer? I'm not sure where that's going. And there's limited capacity in these satellites too. Certainly there's going to be competition, but I take a little different view. We've got the customers. And so our job is to be efficient, provide good service, make it easy, and can we do that? I mean, are we going to carry Stirelinks? We're a distributor of other people's products.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think it was probably a gut feeling they were paying a lot for this programming. And do you think Bell are happy that they spent a lot of money buying programming now? I don't think so. It really hasn't worked out well. Were we lucky? We've thought a lot about it and the programming we could have bought. I guess we felt we had limited resources. We'd rather buy another company then by programming.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's costly to be public, and it slows you down, and you're And you're a target. Everybody public companies attract government. I've been a director of one of the major banks in Canada and I've been a director of many other companies that were public. But it seems to me that living in Oxford and running a private company, you're under the radar a lot compared with public and public filings and regulations. And we have them all and we like our food business. We run top quality. I used to have this discussion with Donald Soby who encouraged me to go public because it gave liquidity for the shareholders. But I'd like to think we could solve that problem without going public. It's really cumbersome. There's no question. Very hard to make long term twenty year decisions.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and telecom and Southern Ontario, we got some real efficiencies by taking it privately and it was Became a branch plant as compared with a separate head office, separate accounting, separate. Don't know how much it wasn't that big a company, but we probably took three or four million dollars of overhead out of it.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But at the end of the day, we've said we've reached our limit. We can't pay that price, and we could have quite easily, but we'd rather buy more buffet stock than pay too much for an operating company.”
2024-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · John Bragg: The Blueberry Billionaire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT