Speaker 1 [00:00:01] Hi, it’s John here. This fall on disruptors, we’ve been exploring some of the big topics on climate change and speaking with some of the big players who are seeking climate action. We called the series the climate conversations, and it’s fair to say those conversations well, they’re just starting as part of that effort. We’re bringing you special extended cuts of some of our most popular climate conversations. Katharine Hayhoe, a Toronto-born climate scientist, was one of our earliest guests in the climate conversations and a passionate advocate for finding common ground through dialog. It’s actually the title of a TED talk she gave called the most important thing you can do to fight climate change. Talk about it, which has been viewed almost four million times. We talked with Katherine about what individual citizens can do to affect change and to change minds. Here’s more of that conversation. Katharine, welcome to disrupters. Speaker 2 [00:00:57] Thank you so much for having me. Speaker 1 [00:00:58] I want to start, Katharine, with a question about optimism because so many climate conversations are negative or pessimistic. You’re an optimist. Speaker 2 [00:01:09] I am, and I would like to say that I’m a rational optimist because I am a scientist and as a scientist, I see all the bad news firsthand. In fact, I get it hot off the press, so to speak. I look at the data myself, and the science does not give us a lot of hope. When we look at what’s happening to our world, climate is changing faster than any time in the history of human civilization on this planet. And that’s why it matters. It’s not about saving the world. The planet will still be orbiting the sun long after we’re gone. It is literally about saving us. But what I’ve noticed wherever I go, and I literally got this question even twice yesterday, once talking to medical students and then once talking to an academic group every single day, almost I’m asked what gives you hope? And so that’s actually why I wrote the book is because I figured this enough doom and gloom out there. We enough of us are activated. We’re concerned about it. The majority of Canadians understand that it’s a serious issue. So what can we do about it? It turns out that hope comes from action at that interesting and not recycling. And though, you know, every little bit helps. But specifically, when we get out and we use our voice to advocate for change when reengage with others, when we speak within the place where we work or the neighborhood or a kid’s school or, you know, an organization we’re part of, obviously our city and our province and at the national scale, when we use our voices to talk about why this matters and what we can do to help fix it, we don’t have to be David Suzuki to do this. I’m absolutely convinced that every single Canadian can do this. And when you look to the past, when you look to massive issues like slavery and women being able to vote and civil rights in the states and apartheid in South Africa, how did the world change before? It wasn’t because a prime minister or a president or a king or a CEO or even a celebrity decided it had to. It was when ordinary people used their voices to say, You know what? The world can and must be different. That’s how change happened. Speaker 1 [00:03:09] What can each of us be doing more of? I mean, I recycle, and as our longtime listeners know, I’m an active biker, but I don’t think I’m doing nearly enough. What can each of us be doing more of? Speaker 2 [00:03:21] Well, it’s so interesting because when I first started to talk to people about climate change, I would get that question immediately. And, you know, I would say the traditional things that we would all say. I would say, Well, you know, have you changed your light bulbs? Have you looked at where your electricity comes from? But then I thought to myself, Is that really enough? So I stepped on the carbon scales myself. I stepped on, you know, all right. I went to a carbon footprint calculator and I calculated my carbon footprint. And I was absolutely shocked because the number one source of my personal carbon emissions was not my light bulbs, and it was not even the car that I drove. It was not my hydro bill. It was my travel. And I’m not talking about like travel. The yoga retreats in Bali. The last time I went on an actual vacation, I can’t even remember. I mean, just to see family. It was travel to scientific conferences and to talk to people about climate change. I thought to myself, Well, this was ridiculous. Speaker 1 [00:04:16] The irony COVID. Speaker 2 [00:04:18] So I decided that pre-COVID I was going to transition 80 percent of the events I did to virtual events, whether people liked it or not. And if I traveled, I was only going to travel by bundling my events together so I would go somewhere and do like five, eight, 10. I think my record so far is 29 events and six days, which is kind of crazy, but it’s a very effective use of your time and your carbon. But then and here’s where being a scientist comes in. I started to calculate, OK. So I did this, and here’s how much I could reduce my carbon footprint. And I also got solar panels and plug in car and address food waste and diet stuff like that. What if everybody else who’s concerned and activated did it too? How much impact would that have on our national emissions? A fraction, a very small fraction, not even a third. And so I thought to myself, Well, this is not the answer. This is not the most effective thing that we can be doing. So that’s what I did this deep dove into. How is the world changed before? Was it because individual people took individual steps and that’s all they did? No, it’s because individual people use their voices to advocate for change in the larger sphere that they are in. So you’re at RBC? I’m at a university. I just joined. Make sure you need it as it’s called in Canada. The global affiliate of TMC, each of us is embedded in a place where we can use our voice to talk about how wherever we are can work together to make a difference. Speaker 1 [00:05:44] We’ve just come through the summer of the apocalypse and felt like in many parts of the world. Did that dent your optimism? Speaker 2 [00:05:53] Unfortunately, it did, because with climate change, a big part of our problem is something called psychological distance. We all agree it’s a big issue. We agree it will affect future generations and plants and animals and people living over there. But you know, we’re the north. We sort of see ourselves as invulnerable to global warming. We see it as a distant issue. And studies have shown that as we decrease our psychological distance, as we’re able to say, look, that crazy heat wave out west, it was one hundred and fifty times more likely because of climate change. The wildfire season we had back in 2017, it burned about 10 times the area because of climate change. The floods that we’re seeing there a hurricane category one passing over Newfoundland, we’re seeing climate change loading the weather dice against us. And so studies have shown that when we’re able to connect the impacts of climate change to our lives, our lived experience, our activation increases, our concern increases. But then you get Covid and I live in Texas. I live in a place where I know people who lost their lives and with their dying breath or saying, this isn’t coronavirus. I know people who their families then did not wear a mask or get vaccinated. And then they got Covid. And I’m thinking to myself, have I overestimated the human capability for self-preservation? Speaker 1 [00:07:12] That’s such a good point, because here we have a clear and imminent threat to our public health, but to each of our lives, and it’s a struggle to come to collective decisions around masking and vaccinations. Climate is clear and present, but it doesn’t pose that immediate threat to most people’s lives. How on earth are we going to change behavior for a longer term threat when we can’t adequately change collective behavior for an imminent threat? Speaker 2 [00:07:40] I still believe we can do it because I’ve seen it happen despite COVID. And that is if we truly address the two biggest things that are holding us back, which despite the headlines that we see with many politicians in the US and even some politicians in Canada as well, despite the climate denial we see in the headlines, the real problems most of us have are not issues with basic physics that we’ve known since the eighteen hundreds. If we really had issues with that basic physics, we wouldn’t be flying or using stoves or refrigerators because the same physics, the real problems we have are, again, we don’t think it matters to us and we don’t think there’s anything we can do about it. So if somebody told you that an asteroid was going to hit the Earth, but there is nothing you could do, you just be like, Oh, well, you know, I’ll leave that up to NASA, and I’ll just go on with my life because there’s nothing I can do. Maybe, you know, hug my kids a little tighter and hope for the best. And that’s sort of the way we feel like with climate change, as if it’s an asteroid headed for the Earth and there’s nothing we can do. Except, you know, like I said, older kids a bit tighter and hope for the best. But the reality is with climate change that there’s everything that we can do as individuals. In fact, the only way the world has changed before, again is when individuals decided that it must and it had to. But it all starts with something that I learned when I was doing my undergrad at U of T for the first time. So up until then, like I learned about climate change in high school, I learned about deforestation and air pollution and biodiversity loss. I learned about environmental issues and I thought about environmental issues as issues that are serious issues that people like changed at all. And David Suzuki and David Attenborough are taken care of and the rest of us wish them well and watched their documentaries. That’s sort of the way I thought of environmental issues. So I was studying astrophysics at U of T. I was planning on going on to graduate school, to study galaxies. And I needed an extra course to finish my degree and I looked around. There was a brand new class in the geography department over and said Smith, if anybody’s familiar with you chief. And I thought, Well, that looks interesting when I take it. So I took this class on climate science, and I was completely shocked to learn that climate change is not only an environmental issue. Climate change is a health issue. It’s an economic issue. It’s a national security issue. And most of all, and this is what completely changed my own trajectory. It’s a humanitarian issue. It directly and disproportionately impacts the poorest and most marginalized, most vulnerable people right here in Canada, homeless people living on the streets and Halifax indigenous peoples whose traditional way of life is literally crumbling before their eyes. It affects them more than anyone, and they’re the ones who have done the least to contribute to the problem. And you know, the United Nations has these very basic sustainable development goals. You know, no poverty, no hunger, clean water access to basic health care and education and gender equity. There’s no way to achieve any of these goals if we leave climate change out of the picture because it’s as U.S. military calls it, it’s a threat multiplier. So what I realized is that whatever your priorities are and whatever minor, you know, being a mom, being a parent, caring about the place where I live, loving, you know, loving winter sports, needing snow and ice to do them whatever my priorities are. It turns out that climate change already affects every single one of those, so it doesn’t have to be a new thing on our list or something that we have to try to force up our list, rather because of one, two, three, four and five on our list. We have every reason we need to care about climate change, and I think that that is key to beginning the conversations in a place that helps us connect directly to this issue from the heart based on our identity and who we are. And then recognizing that, you know what? We have a voice that we can use to advocate for change because I love my child, I love my city, I love my outdoor hockey rink. I love the place where I grew up and the fact that I see it changing. I love clean air. I don’t want it to be choked by wildfire smoke because of what we love. That’s why we can make a difference. Speaker 1 [00:11:44] You’ve argued as well that climate is about values, and we’re also talking to Mark Carney, who has a book called The Values and I think would agree with a lot of what you’re saying, but you’re also saying it’s a rational decision. And I just wonder how we can balance in our conversations just the rational decision that saves you money or saves you time or makes your neighborhood safer versus the moral decision that this is about values and our collective being an even more existential questions Speaker 2 [00:12:18] in most cases for most of us. Those two are not incompatible. In fact, often they’re very compatible. So making our neighborhoods healthier, for example, has a direct impact today. But it also typically reduces carbon emissions or takes up carbon from the atmosphere through investing in urban tree planting that also cleans up our air. So there’s and, you know, making our neighborhoods more resilient to flooding, for example, obviously helps ourselves with our insurance rates and the safety of our homes. But it helps us to adapt and build resilience to the impacts of a changing climate. So. So most of us, those aren’t incompatible. And honestly, I have a really funny story. My book, probably my favorite story of my colleague John. His dad lives in a rural area of Australia and his dad is a fiscal conservative, but he’s also an ideological conservative. And so in Australia, like in Canada, many conservatives reject the science of climate change because they don’t think there’s any solution other than destroying the economy. So its solution aversion masked with science sounding arguments because if you say it’s real, but I don’t want to fix it, that would make you a bad person, and most of us don’t want to be a bad person. So John’s dad would drag up, Oh, there’s more polar bears now than there ever were. You know, what are you saying? The Arctic is melting died every time John went home for dinner. And so John went back to school. He got a p, h d and cognitive psychology to understand denial. He created the world leading skeptical science website that lists 198 science’s sounding arguments against climate change and provides peer reviewed responses. Do you think that changed his father’s mind? I suspect not correct. It did not. But then there was a rebate on solar panels in his dad’s area, and so his dad got solar panels started to save a ton of money every month he would spend on his power bill, saying, John, look how much money I saved. It reinforced his own identity. It it fit rate with one of the things at the top of his priority list. And so two years later, John was sitting with his dad and out of nowhere, his dad said, Oh, you know, global warming. I’ve always thought that was real. And John was like, Why not only had he changed his mind, but he had forgotten that he had ever denied it because the solutions change his mind? You know what? There is nothing wrong with that. Speaker 1 [00:14:31] The great Jerry Maguire line. Show me the money, but you touch on a serious challenge that there are groups, large groups of people not necessarily connected to any one religion per se, but they tend to be identifiable groups by geography or some other demographic points, and the views tend to be fairly entrenched. We’re not seeing that kind of shift that you just cited of. John’s father, you’ve been wrestling with that for, for many years. How do you shift large groups of people that tend to reinforce each other’s beliefs and in fact strengthen their groups by reinforcing those beliefs? Speaker 2 [00:15:14] Well, you’re absolutely right. No one wakes up in one morning and decides, I’m just going to reject 200 years of physics. People wake up every morning and they check Facebook and they scroll through what other people in their social group are thinking about and talking about. They go on the internet and they visit the website of whatever organization whose values and views they share. They listen to today, not just to, you know, the national and not just to, you know, you know, everybody grew up listening to, you know, Peter Mansbridge or Walter Cronkite in the U.S.. No, everybody now listens to customized media that reinforces what they already believe. And so it isn’t that we read all the data and facts first, and we make up our mind second, as Jonathan Haidt, who’s a really interesting thinker, says in his book The Righteous Mind, he says, You know, we as humans, we make up our minds first based on what our social group, our in-group decides about various controversial issues like who to vote for in the budget and immigration and nationalism and climate change and masks and vaccines and Covid and racial issues and indigenous justice issues. We make up our mind based on what our group says, and then we engage in motivated reasoning where we go out and we search the internet to find out why we’re right, not whether we right, why we’re right. So how do we change that? People have put a lot of work into trying to figure that out, and I was part of a really interesting experiment a couple of months ago in the states called New Climate Voices. They got me and a Republican politician and an Air Force general and a libertarian to make short little videos about why climate change mattered from our different perspectives. And I was sharing a faith based perspective since I’m a Christian. They aired them in specific congressional districts in the U.S. on social media. And then they tested opinions among the general public in those congressional districts. And they found that among conservatives among Republicans, opinion shifted wide because they had somebody in their in-group telling them why this mattered to for the same reasons that they would care about it. I have this awesome student who works with me, and she started to help me on my social media and her grandma said, I don’t know why you’re working on this. Nobody believes in climate change. That’s just so those myths that they make up to make people vote for the liberals. And so my student, she’s like, Grandma, just listen. Just give it a listen. OK, you know, I’m doing this for a reason. So her grandma listened to just a couple of the videos and she sent her the ones from a Christian perspective, and her grandma completely changed your mind, and now she is button holing all the ladies in her church, telling them why. If you’re a Christian, you have to care about climate change, so change really can happen, but it has to happen, as you yourself said, not when we’re waving judgy fingers at people and saying you have to be just like me. I have a list of these 10 new green commandments, and if you don’t do those, you don’t really care about this issue. Change happens when we show people that who they already are is the perfect person to care. And in fact, caring about and acting on climate is a more genuine expression of the values they already have than what they’re doing right now. Speaker 1 [00:18:28] Coming up after the break, more of my conversation with Katherine Hayhoe. So stay right there. Speaker 3 [00:18:38] You’re listening to disruptors, an RBC podcast, I’m trying to read the Dome earlier this fall, RBC Economics and Thought Leadership released a report called the two trillion dollar transition Canada’s Road to Net Zero. It explores the costs and benefits of Canada’s shift to a carbon neutral economy and how it can fuel a new generation of Canadian innovation, from carbon capture technology to sustainable agriculture to the full potential of super charging electric vehicles. We look at all the ways for Canada to take a leading role in the fight for climate action and the economic opportunities they create. To learn more. Check out the link in the show notes of this episode and visit our bbc.com. Net zero emissions to listen to and follow disruptors wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 [00:19:29] Welcome back. In the second half of my conversation with Katharine Hayhoe. We talk about climate lessons coming out of the pandemic, as well as the role of social norms in changing how we approach climate action. I sometimes think about smoking and cigarettes, and it’s, you know, an imperfect and maybe a bad analogy, but that that has been a decades long struggle with behavioral change. And when I think about some of the behavioral changes we need for true climate action, maybe there’s some lessons we can we can draw that out. And even though with smoking, all the science is there and many of us smoked regardless, we knew the risks that that we were taking and we did it anyway because it was maybe enjoyable, definitely addictive. But it was also cool. And one of the reasons it was cool was Hollywood. The cool people in film more often than not seem to smoke. And that’s still an issue. But Hollywood has bent and that that establishes or reinforces norms. And I wonder, in terms of climate and our own behaviors, what kind of norms in terms of mass media pop culture, we may need to start to challenge or think about to help change our own thinking and our own behavior. Speaker 2 [00:20:51] I think you’re absolutely right. I mean, that’s that whole idea of social norms, the idea that we determine what’s acceptable and what’s not, because we always, as humans have these antenna, these invisible antenna up that are taking, you know, sort of taking the measure of what’s going on. So is it acceptable to have a plastic water bottle? No. Well, I better not have one. Is it acceptable to drive a giant gas guzzler? Oh, well, not really. That’s not cool anymore. It’s called the fast electric car. Better think about that next time. So you’re right, that has a huge impact, and that has played a big role in the changes that we’ve seen in the world. Before that I mentioned everything from, you know, women getting the right to vote to civil rights, to all kinds of changes. It’s been changes in social norms where people like that’s just not acceptable anymore. And how do we figure that out when we see other people doing it and when we hear other people talking about it? So, you know, get your solar panels or do whatever it is that you’re doing, but then talk about what you’re doing. That’s how you can change people. And in my book, even talk about how their scientific studies showing the impact of contagion, that the number one, for example, with solar panels, the number one predictor of whether you’ve got solar panels is whether there’s somebody else within about a kilometer and a half of your house that has the that’s the number one predictor. It’s contagious literally in a good way, not a bad way. Speaker 1 [00:22:03] You mentioned Covid, and it’s been challenging and continues to be challenging in so many ways. It also illustrated how we can have a significant impact on emissions. Now, we don’t want to go through pandemics to decrease our carbon footprint, but we decreased our carbon footprint last year in ways that we’ve not been able to more positively engineer through decades of trying. You stopped flying as much. All of us are flying less. Maybe that has a material impact. Maybe it doesn’t. But what other lessons should we draw from the pandemic in terms of behavioral change and adjustments that we can carry forward into post-pandemic and healthier years ahead? Speaker 2 [00:22:48] So at the height of the lockdowns last year in spring at global carbon emissions dropped by almost 20 percent and overall over the whole year they dropped by seven percent. And during that same year 2020, 90 percent of new energy installed around the world, some of it in the poorest low income countries of the world that don’t have a lot of fossil fuel resources, 90 percent of that energy was clean energy. So we saw some really significant shifts in the way that we’re living. And in fact, it’s estimated that in some places, in some very polluted places in China, it’s estimated that the reduction in air pollution from the lockdowns because of course, air pollution just falls out of the sky within a matter of days, maybe at most weeks, whereas carbon emissions stay there for, you know, decades. The U.S. air pollution might have saved just as many lives as were lost to Covid, because what a lot of people don’t know is a really shocking number. And that is that almost nine million people die prematurely from the particulate emissions, from air pollution, from burning fossil fuels alone every year. And where we are with Colvard right now, I think we’re somewhere over four and a half million premature deaths. And you know, don’t get me wrong, any premature death is a tragedy, but we’re so conscious of Covid. Yet somehow we’ve normalized nearly nine million premature deaths a year from burning fossil fuels. And so forget about the carbon. Just think about the impact on our health. Think about the impact on worker health for a business on personal health. Think about the impact on people in low income neighborhoods, which are often the ones most exposed to pollution. Think about the health impact in low income countries where they don’t have access to the health care system that we benefit from. I mean, there are all kinds of benefits that are entirely health related that are even. Larger than people getting the Covid vaccination, I mean, that is just insane when you think about and I feel like that is the conversation that we need to be having. Well, we’re going Speaker 1 [00:24:49] to have some of these conversations because of the Glasgow Climate Conference. Governments have made some extraordinary commitments this year, including the US government. Is it enough? Speaker 2 [00:25:00] It is not yet enough. I think of these international commitments sort of like a potluck dinner. Right now, we don’t have enough food on the table to feed everyone. We need to up our ambition and we need to up our delivery. So we’re at something like, I think, somewhere around three degrees Celsius and we need to be down at two or even one and a half. And so coming out of Glasgow, I would be so pleased and so happy and so relieved if we really had commitments, especially from the biggest emitting countries in the world. And, you know, we often think, well, Canada, such a small country, why does it matter? We’re actually number nine on the list of the top 10 cumulative carbon emissions emitters of all time. So sure, you know you’ve got China and the US and India and Russia and the EU, you’ve got them right up there at the top. But we’re not that far behind, so every little bit matters. And in fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change puts it really perfectly. They say every year matters, every bit of warming matters, every action matters and every choice matters. And so if we came out of Glasgow with countries making those choices, recognizing that it’s not about the environment, it’s about us, it’s not about the economy, it’s about actually saving the economy from the risks and impacts of climate change. It is about all of us and our human systems, our supply chains, our food, our water, our health, our infrastructure, tens of trillions of dollars of infrastructure built for conditions that don’t even exist anymore and will not exist again during our lifetime. If people finally realize that it is literally as a title, my book says it’s about saving us and put that on the table. I would be the happiest person in the world. Somebody asked me just the other day. They said, Well, you know what? If magically the climate solution were solved? Would you still study the planet? I said, no, I’d open a yarn shop, preferably on Vancouver Island. Speaker 1 [00:26:48] Why aren’t I Speaker 2 [00:26:49] just enjoy it? It’s something I get great joy and pleasure from it. Speaker 1 [00:26:52] Perfectly good. That’s perfectly great, in fact. You mentioned the economy, and I don’t think we talk enough about climate as an economic opportunity, and I’m not trying to be cavalier or materialistic about it, but just to frame it differently. We’ve got a really interesting piece of research coming out of RBC on pathways to net zero for Canada. Calculating that it’ll probably be a two trillion dollar project for us over the next 30 years. And a lot of people hear that number and think $2 trillion of my Lord, there go the tax increases and we’re saying no, actually that $2 trillion, this is manageable. Most of it may be private money, by the way. It’s not all up to government. In fact, it’s going to be much better if it’s not government money and it’s going to be investment. This isn’t wealth transfer, it’s not tax and spend. This can be the biggest investment project we’ve seen in nearly a century, and that will have all sorts of multipliers in terms of jobs and incomes and prosperity for communities pretty much everywhere. This isn’t about one sector, it’s not about the oil and gas sector or about Alberta. This is about every sector, every region. And I appreciate that’s kind of a high level economics thinking. But how do we translate that conversation into a meaningful way for everyone who does worry about their job, who does worry about their paycheck, or at least the trajectory or flatlining of their income? For students who are wondering if they’re going to have a job or if they’re going to be in the gig economy forever, how do we take these kind of big macro concepts around the economy and bring it down to the individual household and neighborhood level? Speaker 2 [00:28:35] Well, first of all, I’m delighted to hear that you’re doing this because we need the voice of organizations and institutions like RBC. And what you’re doing in its native form is going to be incredibly influential among the people who think in those terms. And those people need to hear your voice, not mine, because you are somebody who speaks that same language and understands those same concepts. And you’re right, it’s about opportunities. It’s about, you know, when a couple of years ago, I remember just before Christmas, I was at one of the malls in Mississauga and there was a lineup of 200 people outside the Apple Store. They were waiting for the new iPhone. And we had just come up from the state. So my husband had just gotten his, so he literally took his life. And he’s like walking down the road, going, Yes, it’s great. Look at it. Here it is. So were those people told they should get it? Were they told they had to get it? Do they have somebody waving a judgmental finger at them telling him this better if they got it? No. They wanted it because it was better. And really and truly and honestly so many solutions to climate change, from technological solutions to lifestyle solutions, to the amazing, nature based solutions that Nature United does with their Emerald Edge project working with. First Nations tribes out in British Columbia. There’s so many solutions that are good for us that when you actually hear about what they are, you’re like, Hell, yes, I love that. How can I be part of it? And so I feel like that’s what we haven’t done as we haven’t communicated that enthusiasm, that opportunity, as well as the financial risks. So you just said, you know, here’s what we have to spend to get there. But what about the risks that we’re avoiding through building resilience and adaptation and to encouraging other countries to come along with us? Because, believe me, they are watching and we can influence them too? So what are we avoiding? What are we gaining and how do we understand that the future’s coming, whether we like it or not? And it’s up to us, and this is literally a science fiction here. The future that we see is up to us. It is in our hands. It is our choices that will determine this. Will our civilization be able to continue or not? That is what is at risk. Speaker 1 [00:30:37] We’ve been having a fairly optimistic conversation, which I appreciate, but there may be people listening who say that’s not the full story. There will be people. There will be sectors. There may be regions that will be losers in this transition. There has to be a bit of give for the take, if you will. Mm-Hmm. How do you have that conversation with those regions you come from Texas, which may and there’s incredible things going on with renewables in Texas and so many other sectors, but there are plenty of people in Texas who think they will be long term losers. And I’m not trying to pick on Texas. It’s just an illustration of many times around the world who feel this way. How do you engage people who feel they see writing on the wall? That is not for them? Happy writing. Speaker 2 [00:31:23] Well, first of all, I think the most important thing is to be proactive about that engagement. Acknowledge it upfront. Don’t wait for them to tell you. Think of it and look at it yourself and realize, Hey, there’s a lot of people who are just trying to feed their families. They have a well-paying job in Alberta and the oil and gas industry, or here in West Texas, which is also the home to the oil and gas industry. And they’re not doing it. They didn’t get that job because they wanted to, you know, help destroy civilization as we know it. They picked that job because we need energy and energy is something that is inextricably linked with human well-being around the world. Access to electricity specifically is one of the major metrics that determines our level of well-being. So when I had the chance to talk to the board of Big Oil and Gas Company here in Texas a couple of years ago, I was invited to speak and I thought to myself, what? I can’t do it unless I figure out how we can connect over something we share first. I’m not going to go in there and start with something we disagree on. I have to start with something that we agree on, and if I can’t do that, I’m not the right person to have that conversation. So I thought about it and thought about it some more. And finally, I was probably like unloading the dishwasher or something when it occurred to me. That’s one of the best thoughts come. Finally, I realized, You know what? I am profoundly grateful for fossil fuels. Imagine what a woman’s life was like. Imagine what anyone’s life was like 200 years ago. It was short, miserable and filled with bone-breaking repetitive tasks that left them no time for education, no time for leisure, no time for travel, no time for anything that we enjoy doing today. Energy has transformed our lives. In fact, thanks to the medical advances that were part and parcel of the industrial revolution that I’m pretty sure that’s why I’m alive. I’m sure I would have died at an early age from some horrible thing, let alone, you know, when you get to the point where you’re actually having a child or some type of very high risk activity like that. So I actually started off by telling them how grateful I was for fossil fuels and how I realized that they were doing this because it helped people. And we need energy. And the solution to our future is not to just pull the plug. It’s to figure out new ways of getting energy. The same way we don’t use a Model T Ford today, the same way we don’t use the party’s own telephone in the same way we need energy just as much, if not more in the future than we did in the past. But in the same way, we’re transitioning to new sources of energy. So how can we work together to try to figure out how to get those new sources while still providing good paying jobs for people who have these skills who again are just trying to support their family and be part of the local economy? And I can tell you it was amazing because I went in and meeting all the arms were folded. All the pastor was leaning back. Everybody was giving side I to the one guy who invited me like, Why did you invite her to speak to us? He sort of read the brainwaves, but when I said that? You could see like the arms were unfolding, people were leaning forward, and then one guy finally said, he’s like, You get it. We’re not the bad guys. We’re doing this because people need energy. And I was like, Yes, that’s right. And how can we keep on making sure they get energy in the future? And so that conversation was supposed to be about 40 minutes and end up going two plus hours. Everybody wanted to know what’s really happening. How is it affecting people and how can they be the good guys? And when we come at it with that attitude of most people do really want to be the good guys. Not all the time. I mean, it’s not some magic, you know, panacea, but a lot of the time we can end up having much more constructive conversations. And when we come at it with the idea of You’re bad, I’m good and I’m going to fix you. Speaker 1 [00:34:53] Katherine, you are an optimist in Speaker 2 [00:34:55] my in my good moments. I absolutely am. Speaker 1 [00:34:57] And it’s contagious. Katherine, thank you for being on disrupters. Thank you for having me. That was Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist with the Nature Conservancy and author of Saving US a Climate Scientist Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, which was published this September. Stay with us in the weeks ahead. For more extended cuts of our most popular interviews from the Climate Conversations, a special multi-part series on disrupters. To hear the complete series, go to our bbc.com slash disruptors. Until next time, I’m John Stackhouse. Thanks for listening. Speaker 2 [00:35:38] Disruptors, an RBC podcast is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by Jar Audio. For more disruptors content, like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit rbc.com slash Disruptors.

Speaker 1 [00:00:02] Hey, it’s Theresa. So what is resilience anyway? I think many of us had to redefine that word in the past year, we realized that it wasn’t so much about getting through a rough patch, but instead navigating a never ending series of peaks and valleys, twists and turns, but mostly valleys in physics. Resilience describes the ability of an elastic material such as rubber or animal tissue to absorb energy, particularly from a blow and release that energy as the material springs back to its original shape. But when we think about the people and organizations that suffered body blows during covid resilience describes the way many figured out not only how to bounce back, but what new shapes to take. These resilient ones figured out a new way of doing business, of reaching new customers, of keeping the organizations afloat. And more importantly, they’ve prepared themselves for a post pandemic future. This is Disruptors, an RBC podcast, I’m Trinh Theresa Do. On today’s episode, we revisit a few of our favourite stories of resilience from the past year. Among them, a bicycle shop owner in Halifax who learn how to sell online and find a better way of packing boxes, and also a Calgary based startup that’s helping companies engage in charitable giving and, quote, infuse a culture of goodness into the world, something that was sorely needed during these trying times. But first, the inspiring story of the Stratford Festival. North America is the largest classical repertory theater company now in its seventh decade of operations. For the second summer in a row, Stratford has had to dramatically curtail its programing. It’s directing most of its performances online, although by the end of August, twenty twenty one, some limited in-person shows are expected on the shores of the Avon River. When we spoke with Stratford’s dynamic artistic director, Anthony Cimolini, last December, the future was less certain. There was trademark confidence and vision for success remained just as clear.

Speaker 2 [00:02:27] 2020 was incredibly challenging. We were beginning rehearsals and and well underway actually for many of the programs or doing 15 plays, introducing a new hundred million dollar theater. And we were stopped in their tracks. Our mission is to connect with people, to bring people together over great works of art and share them with a live audience. And suddenly, the one thing that we were built to do we couldn’t do the economic impact was huge. It was a 20 million dollar hit and staying connected with audiences was vital. And so we had fortunately been recording the plays. On our stages are Shakespeare productions, especially because we wanted to create a Canadian library of these great plays with this wonderful company. And so we have been doing that for many years. And for a while we question whether we should I mean, it was a million dollars for every one of these recordings, but I felt it was important to conquer geography. It was important to conquer time, to preserve these performances and to spread them around the world. So we created a film festival which unrolled over 12 weeks, and it was sent around the world. We showed 12 different films and we clustered them around the ideas that we were examining during this time of isolation. And it was seen by one point two million people around the world and about forty four percent of that one point two million people were from non English speaking countries. So India was our biggest market. And after that, Germany. And it spread the word of the Stratford Festival right around the world.

Speaker 1 [00:04:01] Stratford also launched its own online platform in twenty twenty Stratford at home, charging ten dollars a month for access to a wide variety of films and events. By June, twenty twenty one, more than two million people from more than 80 countries have used Stratford’s online work or attended one of its watch parties. Some people initially worried that going digital might dilute the Stratford brand. But Anthony told us that having a multi-platform strategy is something that will ensure the festival’s ongoing success.

Speaker 2 [00:04:33] We realized that producing work online digital production will be vital to the future. I think we’re all realizing that that, of course, the secret to theater is being there in person with others. And that’s what really makes it magical, that sense of immediacy where anything could happen. But I think in the future that’s going to have to be enhanced with access to all sorts of additional performers, understandings, ways of working through the digital medium. And we’re doing more and more work commissioning artists to explore what that means and new and exciting ways. So the future is not only what it’s been in the past since five centuries, B.C., which is live performance and people coming together, the future will be enhanced with a different perspective, a new perspective that is also digital and can be spread right around the world. One could have been worried that for a live performance venue to suddenly be spreading things digitally around the world would undermine your core business or wouldn’t appeal to your audience. And instead, we found new audiences. We come many people who’d never been to the festival before from around the world. I mean, we’ve always had an international audience. About thirty four per cent of our audience comes from outside of Canada. But now the pickup in South America and across Asia was extraordinary. And I think that it has introduced people around the world to this Canadian treasure. The response has been fantastic. I don’t think it’s everybody’s cup of tea. But from so many people during this lockdown, this time of isolation, it was a way of staying connected with these incredible plays and these words. And our first broadcast was King Lear with Colin Feuer. And who would have thought that in a time of Penda? Something like King Lear would give people solace, would give them comfort, but the communications we receive from people make this devastating play reconnected them to humanity, to the fact that things can get worse. I know that doesn’t sound comforting, but this great place says, hang on, guys, you are something worth something valuable to the world. And things could get worse before they get better. But ultimately, we will in some fashion come through this, maybe not all of us individually, but the contributions that we have made to our families through our work through are the the creations that we made in art, especially. We’ll survive. It will be a future. Shakespeare, of course, lived through the plague. There was a period of time from sixty five to sixty nine when the theaters were only open for about four months. And he understood and that’s actually when he wrote King Lear, he understood that there are times when we’ve got to just hang on to each other and and get through. And this is one of those times

Speaker 1 [00:07:30] strategist’s at home has been showcased in the festival’s Shakespearean films and original content. But now it’s also featuring content from other arts organizations across Canada, organizations that are looking for new platforms on which to share their original content. For Anthony, all decisions made in the past, both by the festival itself and the town that bears its name, give them hope for what the future holds.

Speaker 2 [00:07:55] It’s funny to look back and to look at the decision points that were made, the decisions that were made that actually bore fruit and a lot of it in the years ahead. And it’s hard to know those. I mean, our expansion into creating like three hundred different special events where we get to understand what the what the work in our stages means to the world we live in today. The recording of these films and other related material was all about trying to better connect in new ways with those around us, with audiences. And we knew that instinct was right. We had no idea it would become so critically important in the time ahead. Sometimes the decisions we make about value segments, about who we are, how we’re going to express ourselves has a payoff in the years ahead we can never anticipate. You sometimes wonder why theater flourished in Stratford, Ontario, this railway town that made some really important decisions years ago. They decided to create a park system in the middle of town. And even when other railways want to move in and destroy that park system, they refused and that park system grew. And then when the railways were going to close here in Stratford in nineteen fifty three and the crazy idea of starting a theater festival for economic development came up. It flourished because of the beauty of the surroundings. No one would have known back in 1911 when there was a plebiscite in this town and they turned down jobs to keep their parkland, that they were actually making the decision about the quality of life they wanted in the future. They were making a decision that would be a lifeline for for them 50 years later, because if they had ruined that parklands, there’s no way we could have had a theater festival here. So sometimes those critical decisions that we make, those decisions about who we are, what we believe in, what we want for our children, have payoffs in the years ahead that aren’t just a nice to have, but actually critical to survival.

Speaker 1 [00:09:53] Next, we hop on a bike and ride our way down to the other side of the country for an update from Andrew Feenstra. Andrew is the owner of Halifax Bike Shops. Michael Smith, which sells everything from Bells to Baskets, extends to cargo bikes. Few things captured the imagination of Canadians, more in twenty twenty than the idea of escaping for wild isolation and exploring the outside world on two wheels. Problem was how to get those hot wheels when everyone else is trying to do the same thing. And at the same time as retail stores were closing their doors in many parts of the country for sale. Smith in business since nineteen eighty six, the first few months of covid meant big changes and how they went to market and new definitions of what it meant to be a bike shop. Here’s part of our conversation with Andrew from last December.

Speaker 2 [00:10:46] Twenty 20 was a very interesting year, very challenging. The big thing that we had to do was pivot and pivot changed the entire business or a bicycle shop in Halifax, brick and mortar. We went to almost 50 percent of our sales were done online for a few weeks. And that changed everything how we did our business. We never had a shipping area in our store. We now have three staff that are picking and packing orders and shipping them all across Canada. That is completely new roles and we have taken some of our existing sales staff that would normally help customers that are in the store to helping customers online. I’m a bike shop guy, not a Amazon guy. And understanding how people buy online, understanding how the purchasing is done is so different than in an in-store situation. So, you know, there’s a lot of training, a lot of adjustments on on running the business and investment. We had to invest a lot into our our website, our online platform and get everything all sorted. And a lot of this was done multiple years ago, but the top was just trickling before March and then it fell off wide open come March 15th, when everything was kind of a lock down and open for online basically, and curbside pickup that we that we had done and and to learn how to do it, we we copied other companies. Some of our staff had gone to other businesses and said, wow, they did an amazing job on their curbside pickup. How did they do that? Let’s copy it and learn from from some of the best in class.

Speaker 1 [00:12:17] The quick pivot online allowed Michael Smith to realize record revenues last year, but the success was not without its hiccups. The biggest challenge, it turns out, was learning how to ship boxes en masse.

Speaker 2 [00:12:30] Last November, we did nine boxes. This November, we did three hundred boxes shipping out and so doing it by hand does not work anymore. If we can save 30 seconds on every box that all of a sudden adds up to four hours of someone’s day, that is not spending time on that type of thing. So it’s really making it now. Now that we’ve seen where it can be and where it’s going, we now have a bit of a vision on that and then we can start to make those efficiencies. We’re actually changing the lay up of our basement. So it’s much easier for when the items come in and where the items go out working with Canada Post on their pickup schedules and things to make it quicker. And so we don’t have so many boxes sitting around waiting for pickup in our basement. So those things are going to get picked up faster and everything just becomes more efficient.

Speaker 1 [00:13:21] When we caught up with Andrew this June, he reported that online sales had settled at twenty percent of the total after a pandemic high of 50 percent in early twenty twenty before covid online sales amounted to just three to four percent. The shift led Andrew to invest in new software to ensure his website is better integrated with both the in-store point of sale system as well as Canada Post Cycle. Smith’s main shipping partner. Looking back, Andrew said that covid-19 pushed his business strategy ahead by four years in just fourteen short months. And we talked in December. And you highlighted one key lesson from his pandemic experience.

Speaker 2 [00:14:01] Ultimately, it’s all about preparation. You know, there’s there’s a few things that you learn as a kid and Boy Scouts is be prepared and that’s everything that is. Our success for this year is being prepared for it. Not that we could have known what Colvard was going to do, but we were certainly prepared for it in multiple years. So companies that all said, oh, get online, get your you can’t go and all that kind of stuff. We did that a few years ago, but it was such a small part of our business. But we were ready for it. That was probably the biggest thing that we’ve learned and going into each year, we always prepare for the next year. And that’s really where most other companies can learn, is literally be prepared and be prepared for the unknown, and then you’re going to be much, much better off for your own success.

Speaker 1 [00:14:45] Coming up after the break, we revisit a conversation that my co-host, John Stackhouse, had with Kelly Schmidt, the CEO of Calgary based software company Boniadi. They chatted about how the charitable sector learned to reach new donors in different and surprising ways during covid. So stay right there. You’re listening to Disruptors and RBC podcast. I’m Teresa Do. I hope you’re enjoying this encore presentation. If you like what you’re hearing, I’d encourage you to check out some of the conversations John and I have had with Canada’s top business leaders and innovators over the past year. One standout is John’s provocative chat on intellectual property and the future of Canadian innovation with Jim Balsillie, the former CEO of Research in Motion and the chair of the Council of Canadian Innovators. You can find past episodes of disruptors at RBC, dotcom disruptors or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, here’s John Stackhouse.

Speaker 3 [00:15:55] Canada’s philanthropic sector is the second largest on the planet. When you measure it on a per capita basis, we’re behind only the Netherlands and it contributes an estimated 151 billion dollars to our economy every year, or at least it did in 2018. Of course, last year was different from coast to coast to coast. Most charity walks, runs and rides had to go virtual or be canceled altogether. Even the bells associated with those iconic red kettles jingled a little less loudly this past holiday season. But against that bleak backdrop, we’ve seen some surprising, perhaps even prophetic, successes take the case of Brevetti. It’s a fast growing company based out of Calgary that’s trying to reinvent philanthropy. And it just reached unicorn status, giving it a value of more than a billion dollars. It’s my pleasure now to introduce Benevity’s newly announced incoming CEO, Kelly Schmidt. Kelly, congratulations and welcome to Disruptors.

Speaker 4 [00:16:58] Thank you, John, and thank you for having me join today.

Speaker 3 [00:17:00] Maybe I can start with some background on Benevity. Many of our listeners probably don’t know it or maybe have only heard about it in passing. Tell us a bit about the company.

Speaker 4 [00:17:10] Sure. But is the category creator and market leader in a space that we call corporate purpose technology. So over six hundred and fifty companies, including RBC, use our platform to power their corporate goodness programs and engage with nonprofits. So whether that’s employee giving and company matching, community investment or grant making, volunteering, prosocial actions, you know, in our history we’ve facilitated over six billion dollars of donations and thirty four million hours of volunteering to over 300000 nonprofits around the world.

Speaker 3 [00:17:45] So a lot of numbers there to digest, Kelly. But before we get deeper into those numbers, I want to ask you about that so-called culture of goodness, which I think was a phrase coined by your founder, Brian Townville, who just handed over the CEO mantle to you. What does that mean?

Speaker 4 [00:18:01] Yeah, so culture of goodness, with all of the societal and economic issues around the world, people are looking more to their companies to help solve these issues. And so when we think of a culture of goodness, it’s just the desire of people to really integrate their goodness or their purpose with their work lives. They’re not two separate things anymore. And companies that promote these purposes and culture of goodness actually are more successful in attracting and retaining talent as well.

Speaker 3 [00:18:27] It’s interesting how much charity has changed in a short time. There used to be an expression I gave at the office, which was a way of deflecting from someone knocking at your door, asking, asking for money. But now, I guess with work from home, the office is everywhere. But our connection with charity is also everywhere. We want to give, but we also want to connect. How has been every kind of rethinking, reimagining charity in light of all that technology is changing?

Speaker 4 [00:18:53] Yeah, I mean, really, our platform was designed to democratize, if you will, giving and volunteering, and it allows employees to support the causes that they’re passionate about in the way that they want to. So it’s not just once a year arm twisting exercise for the charities that the company says are important, but it’s also your time. It’s opening it up to the causes that you think are important. It’s tracking prosocial actions such as getting groceries for a neighbor. Those are all of the things that the platform is enabling. And it’s interesting what you said earlier about giving in Canada, declining in twenty twenty, because we actually saw on our platform that in Canada, companies and their people stepped up and donations increased over 70 percent year over year in twenty, twenty two.

Speaker 3 [00:19:39] What’s going on there? Because that’s a that’s a fascinating divergence that overall there are some indications of philanthropic giving going down and yet you’re seeing that’s a massive increase. Why the difference?

Speaker 4 [00:19:50] Yeah, we tend to not use the word philanthropy too often at benefits because it is often associated with high net worth giving anybody is really a micro donation platform and it was designed as such. And so without considering the company match that might be provided, the average donation size on our platform is in the neighborhood of fifty dollars, yet over two point three billion was donated through the platform in twenty twenty. And so we’re seeing that close to 75 percent of companies have some form of program that supports their people, are doing good and rewards them for it. We saw many companies step up with matching campaigns all the way from one to one to five to one to deal with covid and racial equality movement and other issues in twenty twenty. And that drove a lot of giving momentum.

Speaker 3 [00:20:39] And how how is the Colvard crisis changing? I’m tempted to use the word philanthropy, but you’ve just suggested that may be an inappropriate word. How has Colvard changed opportunities around social good?

Speaker 4 [00:20:50] From my lens, I would say covid accelerated a lot of the trends that were already there. And so food security, precarious employment and housing, mental health. You know, many people were right on the edge with these issues before and just barely holding it together. And covid was the final straw or maybe the third strike and the impact of it was disproportionate on the charitable sector. So there was a time in twenty twenty, if you were a hospital or a food bank, you were getting more donations than you maybe knew what to do with. Yet if you ran a youth center or a science center or a place that was a hub of activity, that where you had to close your doors completely due to covid, your donations probably dried up and you were figuring out how to keep the lights on without selling off the furniture. And so a lot of the trends were already there. But I think the thing that’s going to persist is that many of these organizations to survive, they had to become online overnight. And so, as you said, there’s been no charity galas, no golf tournaments, the fundraising activity that they used to do just completely. Dried up, and I think this hybrid model of in-person plus online is probably going to be really powerful going forward, not just for how we all work, could do our jobs, but also for the charitable sector. If I think about the science center in Calgary here I’m on the board of, you know, now we can bring in experts from around the world online versus our online presence, just maybe being a Facebook page. And so it’s a good opportunity, I think, for the sector to experiment and find new ways of doing things and new ways to attract new donors and to grow.

Speaker 3 [00:22:17] I’m glad you use the word hybrid, because that’s a word that’s come up on a number of episodes through the crisis. We’ve come to call it the the hybrid hustle, which is what a lot of businesses need to to think about as they think towards the recovery. Whether you’re in retail or entertainment or finance, you’ve got to be online everywhere all the time, but also in person building and deepening the relevance. Kelly, I’d love to get your thoughts on one charity that’s been digital from the start and what we can learn from its experience during the pandemic.

Speaker 2 [00:22:52] I’m Todd Minocin. I’m the country director for Movember, Canada. It pays to invest in your in your digital infrastructure. We’ve been an online charity since two thousand and ten, basically. And having that platform ready and available for people to participate was a huge part of how we got there this year. We were in a position to kind of look at how to make incremental improvements to some of our technology that resulted in massive returns on on how it worked for people. The other thing that I think we really learned this year was that Canadians were ready to move to mobile for philanthropy. Our sense is when you’ve been sitting at home for eight or nine months, working on your laptop and ordering your life supplies on your phone beside you, making that switch to philanthropy on their phone with something we really noticed this year and felt like it was a significant difference in giving.

Speaker 3 [00:23:46] It’s interesting to hear Todd explain it that way, because we’ve become so comfortable with medical appointments, grocery delivery, conference calls, all on our phone, often on the same device, sometimes at the same time. But as Todd said, you’ve got to invest in the digital infrastructure and in the technology. I sense a lot of charities think they can just put up a webpage or have a site. And that’s their effort for

Speaker 4 [00:24:10] digital destination sites, as you describe them, typically aren’t overly successful because the challenge is how do you get people to your site? Right. You know, in a platform like ours, you can have access to 10 million users instantly. But the mobile piece is interesting. That was actually a part of our offering that we rolled out about a year ago. And so you can do all of your good on your phone. And when we think about the future and where it’s going, certainly we started by using corporations as the aggregator of people. But we want people to think of pulling out the inevitable app on their phone when they think of doing good in all aspects of their lives. And so their family circles, their friends circles, their sports teams, their kids schools, their churches. It’s not much of a stretch to think that you just pull out your mobile phone and track your good as as it happens. And as you move through those circles.

Speaker 3 [00:25:01] Another charity that turn to tech during the pandemic is one actually that I have deep personal connection with. I met our next guest more than a decade ago when he just lost his son and was exploring ideas around what to do about youth mental health. We spoke for a couple of hours and it was it was profound. It was a moving conversation that is with me still. He did far more than I thought possible, showing the incredible power of purpose and passion. He saw no choice but to do it. And now he’s been forced to reinvent fundraising again.

Speaker 5 [00:25:35] My name is Eric Wendler. I’m the founder and executive director of Jaga National Youth Mental Health Charity. We’re fortunate that our staff of forty eight happened to be mostly young people, so they’re pretty savvy, adapted quite well to the challenges of pivoting to digital. The beauty of it was we had already anticipated shifting a lot more of our work to digital, and we see it now as a real compliment to when things return to normal. And we have our are in person.

Speaker 3 [00:26:03] As many of our listeners will know, one of Juggs biggest annual fundraisers is the Jocke ride. But instead of a massive one day in-person event, Rodders took part virtually last year using apps like Swift and Strava. And Eric was thrilled to report they actually raised more money than they had anticipated.

Speaker 5 [00:26:22] So the target for twenty twenty was twelve hundred and fifty riders to raise a million dollars for Jack. Doug, on top of that we receive about two hundred thousand in sponsorships for sponsorships. Never left us. And we were shocked that we actually ended up with over twelve hundred and fifty riders, about 7500 donations, and instead of a million raised, we raised a million, three tenth. So we exceeded our target by

Speaker 2 [00:26:48] about 30 percent.

Speaker 3 [00:26:49] That’s really impressive. And when I hear the stories of the Jack Ride or the earlier example of of Movember, Canada, I think of digital relevance. And Kelly, I wonder how other charities can build digital relevance, which has increasingly become essential to success.

Speaker 4 [00:27:06] Yeah, I mean, many charities became online video first organizations basically overnight, even if they didn’t have a head start as some of these examples. And frankly, they can’t really fulfill their mandates unless they do that. And so now is certainly the time to experiment. The resistance to change is really low and and the cost to experiment has gone down. And so, as you said before, you know, when there’s a will, there’s a way we didn’t think visiting our doctors on zoomer by phone was was ever going to happen. And then overnight that changed. And so it’s probably going to be in person and online going forward. And, you know, depending on the organization and what they’re trying to do, there’s different ways to engage with their donors and to also find new donors through platforms such as anybody.

Speaker 3 [00:27:52] Kelly, how how do you see over the next while technology continuing to remove constraints for for charities and for those of us who want to both give and connect with social good?

Speaker 4 [00:28:04] Yeah, I mean, you’re not just restricted by borders anymore, that’s for sure. Well, that’s probably one of the biggest benefits there, John. We actually see a lot of cross-border donations facilitated through our platform, whether it’s to support Australian wildfires or the racial equality movement in the US. You know what a platform allows this for these causes to feature their content and for us to publish specific campaigns to support them. And we’ve got the benefit, I guess, of having aggregated about ten million users in our platform, that it would take probably a lot of money and a lot of time for causes to reach that many people all at once. When an event like this happens or when help is needed, it’s always.

Speaker 3 [00:28:45] A challenging time in the social good space, but it sounds like an incredibly exciting time to Kelly, where does he go from here, especially as we move out of crisis, into recovery?

Speaker 1 [00:28:57] You know,

Speaker 4 [00:28:57] I think, unfortunately, twenty, twenty one is going to be a pretty tough year as well. We’re certainly not out of the woods yet. There’s some positive signs on the vaccine front. But a lot of what we’ve seen and what we’ve learned in twenty twenty, you know, including around sort of this hybrid online in person model, it’s just unlikely to change. We’re unlikely to go back to a world where all of us sit in offices from eight a.m. to five p.m. every day as well. It’s just the world has changed. So we just think that what we do and how we help companies and their people do good has just become even more relevant. And so we’re just we’re going to be doing more of the same. Plus, we’re going to be focusing on engaging more internationally headquartered companies. We’ve been mainly focused on North America and as I said earlier, trying to engage people in different aspects of their lives. So not just their corporate life, but in their personal circles as well.

Speaker 1 [00:29:49] That was John Stackhouse in conversation with Benevides CEO Kelly Schmidt this past January, by mid-June, benefits reported having processed more than 800 million dollars in donations so far this year, with covid-19 relief in India brevity’s top cause, making up more than 10 percent of all donations. I’m Theresa Do. Thanks for joining us for this look back at some of our favorite stories of resilience from the past year. I hope you’ll join us next time for another special summer episode when we revisit the pressing issue of youth mental health. Talk to you soon.

Speaker 6 [00:30:31] Disruptors, an RBC podcast is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by JAR audio. For more disruptors content, like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or visit rbc dot com slash disruptors.

Speaker 1 [00:00:01] Hey, it’s Theresa. Perhaps, like me, you’re hearing more and more about the benefits of 5G, even though many of us are still stuck on the 4G highway or God forbid, the 3G side road. The promises are many — 5G or fifth generation wireless technology will deliver higher peak data speeds, more reliability, greater network capacity and a more uniform user experience. All the major cell phone manufacturers are pushing 5G enabled devices, though Canada is still playing a bit of a catch up to the world that’s all about to change. In June, the Canadian government began its latest wireless spectrum auction, and it’s considered the most consequential auction in many years. The 3500 megahertz spectrum is crucial in building out 5G services for Canada’s wireless players. 5G represents a unique opportunity to grab new customers and deliver profitable new high speed services. But the necessary investment to make 5G happen is also forcing consolidation in the wireless sector. Most significantly, with the proposed twenty six billion dollar takeover of Shaw Communications by Rogers, what will this new wireless landscape mean for Canada and Canadian consumers? And what does Canada need to succeed in this global 5G revolution? This is Disruptors, an RBC podcast. I’m Trinh Theresa Do. On today’s episode, we revisit an in-depth conversation between John and Claire Gillies, CEO of Bell Mobility, one of Canada’s wireless giants. They talked last fall before the spectrum auction in which Bell is a top contender, about some of the real world benefits of greater connectivity that will come from 5G’s implementation. Among them, everything from smart farms to smart cities and a whole lot in between. Without further ado, here is my co-host, John Stackhouse’s interview with Claire Gillies.Speaker 2 [00:02:18] Claire, thanks for joining us on Disruptors.

Speaker 3 [00:02:20] Very happy to be here at such an exciting time in the wireless industry.

Speaker 2 [00:02:24] So we’re going to get into some of those opportunities and hear about some exciting examples of what can be done and what is being done with 5G. But first, I just want to set the table with a bit of an explanation about 5G. I’ve heard it referred to as transformational. The Financial Times, I think, called it a game changer for humanity. That’s a pretty tall order. What is it?

Speaker 3 [00:02:47] Well 5G, and what it stands for is it’s the fifth generation of wireless networks and it really is not an evolution, as you’ve described. It’s really a revolution in the wireless industry that will change the way we work and live and play, because what it offers is so many more new capabilities than the past generation of networks.

Speaker 2 [00:03:09] To give us a sense, especially for the non techies listening, of what the key differences are between 5G and 4G or even 3G for that matter.

Speaker 3 [00:03:20] There’s three primary elements that come into 5G that really advanced. Number one is speed and capability of the network. So we’ll see a dramatic improvement in the speed of networks as we move forward. Number two is the latency or the quickness, the responsiveness of the network. And the last piece, of course, is some of the services. And, you know, I refer to it as the ability to do slicing and different capabilities within our network that will afford us new options for things that we can build.

Speaker 2 [00:03:53] And what does slicing is an interesting term. What does slicing look like for most of us as users?

Speaker 3 [00:03:58] So you can think of it as instead of every service or application getting equal access to the network, it’s the ability for us to take a portion of the network and allow individuals or applications to use a dedicated quote unquote lane, if you want to think of it in the highway example that we’re all so familiar with and with that, you can explore different services to accommodate that need. It could be someone who needs very high speed, dedicated access in emergency circumstances. And oftentimes I talk about that in the form of public safety. If in case of an emergency you would take a slice of the network and you would dedicate it to those individuals responding to the crisis so they could in an uninterrupted way deal with the state of emergency. That’s just one of the examples of slicing. And now there’s multitudes of things that go along with that.

Speaker 2 [00:04:56] I suspect most people feel like they’ve been hearing about 5G for at least a few years now in other parts of the world. They’re moving ahead fairly quickly, especially in Asia. Where are we at now, Claire, in terms of 5G in Canada? And what does the timeline look like in terms of these opportunities coming to be so?

Speaker 3 [00:05:15] The Canadian market is still very much and what we would describe as an early 5G phase based on the current network spectrum and combinations that we have available to us. And what happened in Asia is they saw the different frequencies of their network become available sooner. So in South Korea, as an example, they had access to three point five gigahertz. If we look south of the border in the US, they’ve done some millimeter wave auctions for Canadian market. We’ll see the three point five megahertz spectrum auction happen next summer, the summer of twenty one, at which case then you’ll see another evolution of 5G that will, of course, add more and more benefit to the end users

Speaker 2 [00:06:00] in Korea is such an interesting example because just in 12 or 18 months, they’ve moved rapidly ahead with 5G. What sort of things should we be learning from Korea and get prepared for going into deeper into the twenty twenties?

Speaker 3 [00:06:14] There’s definitely a few things. So the first thing was, of course, how the government supported them. They really rapidly deployed and made the critical spectrum combinations available for 5G early. And then the second thing that really happened is the major operators in that country really focused on urban areas. And so what it did is it gave the end users immediate benefit where they could feel that density change. And the third thing, of course, was the providers really. To deliver services, they took full advantage of the 5G capabilities.

Speaker 2 [00:06:51] I fear one of the things we’re missing as Canadians is the transformational opportunity not just across the economy and not just for consumers, but for organizations of any size, shape or form if this technology is as powerful as it’s it’s laid out to be. And we’re clearly seeing in Asia that it is clear what should we be thinking about in terms of using this technology to make Canada more competitive?

Speaker 3 [00:07:19] It really is for businesses, I think, at this point, and exploring the art of the possible, thinking about how we should change our businesses in ways that we’ve never dreamed of before. How do we use air in VR in training circumstances? How do we use it to enable remote medicine and surgeries? And the list goes on and on. But it’s sort of this idea of, you know, anything is possible, but we all have to put our minds and our and our investments behind making these innovations happen in the Canadian market.

Speaker 2 [00:07:53] So it’s not just about thinking faster and it will be faster, but it’s rethinking your business or your organization in entirely new ways. And to understand that better, we reached out to someone who has a quarter century of experience in the telecom industry, who’s helped build smart city infrastructure in the US and India. Keith Ponton is a senior systems consultant at IBI Group, and he told disruptors these are early days, but there’s so much possibility for Canada right now.

Speaker 4 [00:08:23] A lot of the measuring sticks we have for five ground carrier deployments, how many carriers have deployed, how many cell sites, how many handsets are deployed? And that’s a very early indicator of who’s leading the pack. But I think the promise of 5G is not so much about deploying infrastructure, but it’s about the applications that will develop typically in a three to five year window after the base infrastructure is available. So well, Canada, because of our population density, tends tends to not lead in those discussions compared to a country like South Korea. It’s important for us to to have a posture of a running start in this race. We don’t want to wait for the infrastructure to be fully deployed before we start thinking about the innovative applications that will be the platforms of business and innovation for the next five to 10 years.

Speaker 2 [00:09:20] Such an interesting point about density and scale. Canada does not have certainly Asia’s density or scale. Claire, without those two factors, how do we accelerate?

Speaker 3 [00:09:32] I think, first of all, as Keith pointed out, it’s important that we get the network coverage and availability in place. And so that’s what the carriers are working very quickly on now. And then there’s a series of different partnerships that we have to encourage this innovation and thought leadership. And we’re really investing not only in businesses, but also in the education infrastructure within the country to explore new ideas. How can we use augmented reality? How will smart cities evolve? When we look at things such as cell research and machine learning and mobile computing, how will all of these factors play a role in how we leverage the fulsomness of the 5G investment that we’re making? And so how does Canada play a role? We get behind it. We get behind it as government. We get behind it as business leaders to make change happen and continue the reputation, quite frankly, that this country has had in terms of being a technological leader.

Speaker 2 [00:10:39] We also ask Keith how Canada can maintain or build on that reputation.

Speaker 4 [00:10:44] You know, my answer is to focus on what we as Canada have as advantages. What we don’t have is a huge population density and large cities on the scale of some US markets or South Korea or even European cities. But what we do have and bring to the table is a lot of innovation and experience. So going beyond the ability to deploy infrastructure, I think the 5G race really is around developing innovative technologies and approaches to leverage that. For example, certainly Canada has a long history in terms of agricultural innovation and leadership in that market. And there’s a number of 5G technologies that support the smart form of the future that would allow us to be leaders in that space in a domain that we already understand.

Speaker 2 [00:11:33] I’m glad Keith mentioned the Smart farm because that echoes the report we put out a couple of years ago called Farmer 4.0, which looked at the digital transformation of agriculture and the skills as well as technology. That Canada needs to be a food producing power in the twenty twenties and thirties, a couple of summers ago I visited a farm outside Saskatoon where the farmer was testing a self-driving harvester. Picture this, a machine going across the prairies with no driver turning up and down the field on its own. And actually, there were a couple of guys chasing it from time to time with laptops, trying to correct the coding. And as I talk to the farmer about how this would transform his operation, he said a few things that really stuck in my mind. One obviously was the ability for him to spend his time doing other things. He didn’t need to sit on a vehicle going up and down the field. He could spend his time studying the data, for instance, that was coming off the vehicle that really excited him. But he wasn’t sure how that was going to happen because networks are not consistent. And until we get there, it’s going to be a little harder for farmers to take advantage of these new technologies, the way that other farmers, especially in Asia, are starting to seize on the technology. Is there the desire and capability of Canadian farmers? Is there all the pieces are there? So how is the country? Do we help pull them together?

Speaker 3 [00:13:10] No, you’re absolutely right. And, you know, the term smart farm is really very on point. And you think about all of the different things that technology will now allow us to measure at scale with 5G, because obviously the cost to deploy a wireless network in some of these more rural and remote markets is very efficient. But I want you to think about agriculture. And there’s an example of something we did with a winery able to measure wind speed, temperature and humidity levels for people who are thinking, in that instance, managing their crops, that you can expand that to many other smart agricultural aspects of the Canadian market.

Speaker 2 [00:13:54] I’m so glad you raised the winery example. We profiled another winery on disruptors a few years ago and spoke to a winemaker who was able to control the vineyard with her phone. She was kind of sitting on stage as well as direct the drones that were working with weather sensors. All kinds of fantastic stuff to see. But I think we take for granted the network that makes that possible. And if you don’t have that speed, the low latency, you’re not able to control all those devices. And all of this really kind of opens up the door to the Internet of Things, which is another bit of a cliche these days, but is a really important way of thinking about the economy of the future, that we have all sorts of devices, drones, appliances, but factories and vehicles connected. And of course, they’re connected by networks. And it’s not just business leaders, any organization, we hospitals, schools, local community associations, how should they be thinking about these opportunities clearer as we look into the future?

Speaker 3 [00:14:59] Well, first of all, I think this has been a moment in time where everybody is really reflecting on what the future needs and what their business needs are and their personal needs are as they as they look to advance. And so in that moment of reflection, I think a lot of organizations are looking at transformative technologies. So, you know, the first thing, of course, for anyone is you can have the service application, but you need a couple of different things. The first one, as you said, is we need the network coverage. Right, without an incredible network partner, really, the application is not relevant. It’s not valid. It can’t work to its optimum capability. And so choosing the right network partner and making sure that we have a robust connectivity infrastructure in Canada is key. And we, of course, drive that mandate each and every day at Bell, then I think it really is about conversation and exploration. There are many, many experts and this is where I know our technical teams that love to have these conversations with, you know, to use your term disruptors, people who really want to be change agents. And what you find is those individuals who are looking at transforming their business. They get the first start. You know, they make that progress and then others will rapidly follow. And, you know, we have some terrific examples. There’s one specific tank company and they completely change their business. They change the way their fleet went out into the field. They changed the way they monitored. And as a result, they were able to improve their operational efficiency dramatically. You can imagine what happened, people followed, but they had the advantage of being there first. But to your point, you know what’s critical? Have a conversation. I can tell you that we have a team of people who have experience and they want to explore options and develop new solutions for you and can steer you in the right direction. So businesses don’t need to try and figure these things out on their own.

Speaker 1 [00:17:11] Hey, it’s Theresa again. I hope you’re enjoying this encore presentation of disrupters in the second half of the program. John continues his conversation with Clare Gillis and also speaks to the chief digital officer of one of Canada’s most innovative cities. If you’re liking what you’re hearing, I’d encourage you to check out some of the many conversations John and I have had with Canada’s top business leaders and innovators over the past year, such as our special Earth Day episode, where I talk with two environmental pioneers who are using block chain to help fight climate change. You can find past episodes of Disrupters at RBC dot com slash disruptors or wherever you get your podcasts. Now back to John Stackhouse.

Speaker 2 [00:17:58] Today, I’m chatting with Clare Gillis, the president of Bell Mobility, about the 5G revolution and the truly connected economy is going to usher in. One city that’s on the cutting edge of 5G is Hamilton, Ontario, which was once known as the steel capital of Canada and is now home of the Innovation Factory at McMaster Innovation Park. Hamilton has also been named as one of the leading seven intelligent communities of 20 20 by the Intelligent Community Forum. That’s why we reached out to the city’s chief digital officer, Cyrus Tehrani, to get his take on the possibilities 5G presents for both consumers and business.

Speaker 5 [00:18:37] The analogy I give it, I think of it for myself as I look at my smartphone and I really can’t live without it. I know that’s a big statement to make. I can live without it. But the functionality that it provides me in my life on a day to day basis, I can’t imagine being lost that now, whether it’s something even like Google or Waze or whatever, that’s all because of the speeds that 4G enabled. And I think we’ve all had that experience where you go to an area where it’s 3G or 2G or something else, you’re like, oh, I can’t even use Google Maps. It’s not updating. So think about the opportunities that potentially exist. How much more new use cases can be evolved that we haven’t even imagined, but it won’t be until it’s fully probably adopted and deployed. And we definitely don’t want to be behind and looking at, I think, other regions and saying, oh, I wish we could do that, but we don’t think about how to make that investment or make it a priority.

Speaker 2 [00:19:28] Clear what communities we’ve just heard from Hamilton be thinking about to position themselves for perhaps a very different future with 5G.

Speaker 3 [00:19:38] As cities are constantly building and renewing their infrastructure, there are opportunities to integrate 5G and IOT technologies along with that that will revolutionize the way they do business and allow them to actually proactively monitor and manage potential risks. So as we are continuing to move forward and progress as we come out of this very challenging covid period, I think building better is absolutely the right way to think about it. And building better means building with connectivity, building with insights with our end users in mind, whether those are consumers or whether those are business owners.

Speaker 2 [00:20:22] I think of the example of smart parking, which would be fantastic. I’d love not to have to drive around the block multiple times waiting for a spot to come open. I’d rather get notified or have my vehicle notified and take me to the spot as it’s becoming available. More broadly, how do cities make a compelling case for the investments that will be needed?

Speaker 3 [00:20:45] For me, it’s always around. What’s the return on the investment, whether it’s the citizen experience or whether it’s a reduction in the costs that a city is operating at and how they can reinvest those dollars in new things to make their community better and stronger for the citizens who live there.

Speaker 2 [00:21:03] I suspect coming out of this crisis, another area of opportunity will be health care as we look for more home care, for less centralization, perhaps, of a lot of health care services. That’s going to depend on technology. That depends on networks. Again, what should we be thinking about in terms of the health care revolution that may be upon us and what 5G can do to accelerate that?

Speaker 3 [00:21:27] You can imagine in the future that we could have a one of the best surgeons in the country and Toronto operating on someone in northern Alberta remotely at a distance through the connectivity that we provide with 5G. So it just in terms of making availability of the very best in health care accessible in a democratized way to everyone, this is going to be a game changer, I think, for all of us and not just here in Canada, but also the role that we’re going to play in the global economy.

Speaker 2 [00:22:00] And it’s not just some of those kind of sci-fi examples that involve robotics. Stuff that’s happening today can be accelerated and even transformed with this technology. We published a report a while back called Paging Dr. Data, and it looked at how data is is transforming health care, but really needs to transform it far more in different international studies. So that I’ve looked at it seems most of the focus right now is on manufacturing and the industrial sectors. Perhaps that’s because that’s where the money and efficiency gains are. Should we also be thinking in those directions? It’s not just cities and health care systems, but how do we transform our industrial base in this country as we continue to face more and more competition?

Speaker 3 [00:22:49] I mean, you talk about manufacturing and retail. You think about improving automation, providing visibility into things such as the. Supply chain, where parts are moving, all of these elements are thinking about how do I how do I use data, you know, whether that’s heat sensors, whether it’s movement control and again, many, many other applications and saying, how do I make this better, faster, more efficient for my organization? And as a result, many of those things will also pop out benefits to the business, as well as end user benefits. That will, of course, further create an attitude towards that business from a consumer.

Speaker 2 [00:23:35] As we look at Asia, the adoption rates there are accelerating and the enthusiasm for 5G, you see this in business surveys is really significant in not just in places like China and Korea, but in South Asia and India. And there seems to be a bit less enthusiasm in North America. And I wonder, Claire, how we can balance those sometimes competing forces in our minds.

Speaker 3 [00:24:04] Earlier in the conversation, we talked about how the third generation and the fourth generation of networked technology have changed the way businesses have participated in the economy. And I just as you fast forward into 5G, you cannot imagine that it won’t have that same sort of revolutionary change on the way that we do business. And there will be this notion of first mover advantage. There’s also more so than I think there’s ever been, John, that we live in this global economy. And so it’s important that as Canadian business leaders, we think about, you know, what are the changes and how do we embrace them and how do we use them to our advantage, not only here in our own market, to deliver better business results, better consumer experiences, but also how we use this as a catalyst for our future in the global economy.

Speaker 2 [00:24:59] I wonder, Claire, as we move towards close, how we can ensure that we have those productive gains? One of the challenges always with technology is that there is an enormous consumer appeal, and that’s terrific. But it’s also important to ensure that frontier technologies also go to the productive side of the economy. How do we ensure that 5G does indeed do that and leads to great and broad benefits for society?

Speaker 3 [00:25:26] One of the things I think of that is really critical is just how far reaching this networked technology will be. So we’ll talk about things like leveraging 5G to provide high speed Internet access in more rural communities who haven’t historically had access to that level of service. And we spoke previously about access to health care and applications of that sort. So I really do think that, you know, when we look at businesses, we look at consumer access. It’s about how we’re changing the game, how we’re reducing expense in some areas to explore and invest in other areas. And this is just this is going to be one of those examples. So whether it’s rural broadband access, virtualize health care or cost savings benefits that can be reinvested to explore new areas for businesses. This really is the moment in time that that’s critical for us to look at the future and to make investments and change for the future.

Speaker 2 [00:26:30] It’s interesting to think of this as a moment in time. And as I sit here looking at my phone, which may be the most important inanimate part of my life, and that’s probably true for many, if not most listeners as well. It’s hard to imagine future moments where the phone and devices will be even more powerful and more significant parts of our lives. But they will be because of the power of what we know they’ll be able to do in the years ahead. There can be downsides to that that we’re all familiar with. But the opportunity for society, for organizations, for business and communities is far greater than the risks. My guest today has been Clare Gillis, the president of Dell Mobility. Thanks for sharing your time and your thoughts.

Speaker 3 [00:27:18] Absolutely. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 [00:27:21] But I also like to thank Keith Ponton from IBI Group and Cyrus Tehrani, the chief digital officer for the city of Hamilton, for their perspectives on the potential of 5G. I’m John Stackhouse and this is Disruptors and RBK podcast.

Speaker 1 [00:27:36] And I’m Theresa Do. Thanks for joining us for this special look at the 5G revolution. It’s a fast moving world and we’ll keep you updated on the latest developments in the next season of Disruptors, which launches after Labour Day. Join us next time for another special summer episode where we check in on some of our favorite stories of entrepreneurial resilience from the past year. Talk to you soon.

Speaker 3 [00:28:05] Disruptors, an RBC podcast is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by JAR audio. For more Disruptors content, like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or visit rbc dot com slash disruptors.

Speaker 1 [00:00:02] Hi, it’s John here. We’ve just been through the most extraordinary in some ways the most unbelievable economic disruption of our lifetime. But, you know, there’s one sector that has thrived through the pandemic and of course, that’s technology. The tech sector is booming in Canada. The boom actually started several years ago. It was driven, of course, by lower interest rates, new tax laws, a lot more venture capital and the rapid shift toward digitization. But it was also fueled by a new generation of tech entrepreneurs who not only wanted to take risks but were committed to building global companies in Canada in twenty twenty one, a lot of those startups started to take off. Just look at the first six months of this year. Canadian tech companies raised nearly as much venture capital as they did in all of twenty nineteen, and that was a pretty good year. Twenty two companies have had financing rounds of one hundred million dollars or more and we’re not even through summer and ten of them have achieved unicorn status. You’re probably familiar with the term unicorn. It refers to companies that are valued at at least a billion US dollars. A few years ago, you could count Canadian unicorns on one hand. Today, it’s in the double digits. Canada is now the third most productive tech ecosystem in the world after Silicon Valley and China. That’s in terms of invested capital. But as we look beyond the pandemic, what will it take to sustain this boom? What will it take to keep this talent here in Canada with their companies? And how can Canada continue to nurture homegrown talent and build a new generation of global tech champions? This is Disruptors, an RBC podcast, I’m your host, John Stackhouse. On today’s program, we’re taking a closer look at Canada’s tech boom, a scene through one of this year’s biggest success stories. Toronto-based Clearco, formerly Clearbanc, was founded in twenty fifteen as a way for startups to raise money through revenue sharing agreements. Since then, Clearco has been able to lend more than two and a half billion dollars to more than fifty five hundred companies. This past June, Clearco raised two hundred and fifteen million dollars in a round, led by Japan’s Softbank. This followed a round in April. The quintupled Clearco’s valuation to two billion dollars, delivering the six year old startup into Canada’s exclusive Unicorn Club. My guest today is the co-founder of Clearco and one of Canada’s best known tech entrepreneurs, Michele Romanow. Over the past 15 years, Michele has launched a coffee shop, a fishery, a mobile couponing app, and now with Clearco, a pretty revolutionary moneylender. She’s also one of the stars of CBC’s Dragons Den. Michele, welcome to Disruptors.

Speaker 2 [00:03:10] It’s great to be here.

Speaker 3 [00:03:12] So it’s hard to believe we’ve been in this crisis for roughly 18 months. Sometimes it feels like 18 years.

Speaker 2 [00:03:19] It does definitely closer to 18 years than 18 months.

Speaker 3 [00:03:25] So what have you learned?

Speaker 2 [00:03:26] Oh, my gosh. I have reconfirmed myself that I am an extrovert. And this was a totally new level of resilience for me. I never thought in a million years that Clearco would be a remote company. We had a rule about everyone was in the office. Everyone had to move to Toronto and we just continued on, I wouldn’t say without a beat. There was lots of things that happened during that period that we had to learn from. But I think that is going to be so liberating. And it was actually really interesting. So there was a lot of work, a lot of actually a lot of the early work RBC produced on this, saying that the pandemic was a huge setback for women because effectively they had become both workers in their home and kindergarten teachers and everything. And I think I am very hopeful that that’s actually quite temporary, because what we did in this pandemic is we proved that working from home was not I am at home doing my laundry, checking an email once an hour. I am actually working from home. And when you think about the long term effects that that is going to have on women and families, I think that is going to be absolutely game changing. And so that was a huge part of learning through the pandemic. And then the last thing that was probably very relevant is, I mean, we raised more than three hundred million dollars from a zoom screen. And this was an industry that everyone said you had to meet in person. You had to get to know other people. And I think that there was a contraction in deals with probably the very beginning. And then people just said, well, look, the world has to go on. And and so we’ve kind of found ourselves in in a new paradigm.

Speaker 3 [00:05:13] Can we jump, Michele, to the state of entrepreneurship? Because this this this crisis has been devastating for a lot of entrepreneurs, been liberating depending on the sector for entrepreneurs. You are a serial entrepreneur, how do you think entrepreneurship has changed because of this crisis?

Speaker 2 [00:05:34] I think everyone now has to think digital first, and I think we probably would have been in another twenty, twenty five years of, you know, in person first, no matter what that means, whether that was retail or restaurant or whatever. And I think you’re right, there was lots of businesses that saw devastation. There was an equal number. I remember this season and last season actually on Dragons Den, just seeing these extraordinary businesses. I remember there is one that’s like you know, it’s an app that shows you where you can bring your dog. The whole revenue model was based on in-person events. And like all of these businesses pivoted. And they if you were a restaurant, you were figuring out how to do corporate events where you had sushi come in. And that innovation is actually extremely important that we have that because entrepreneurs are always throwing these curveballs along the way. And I think we got we got to see this. We were like we were on the front of the airplane on this. We saw this incredible rise in e-commerce and digital commerce. We saw double the amount of new businesses created in the US that in the US last year than any other year in the last 10 years. And I think that’s incredibly important because we can look at a small, narrow section of some brick and mortar businesses that were incredibly hurt. And effectively, what we did is we just put an enormous amount of government debt. And I think that’s going to have a lot of long term effects on those businesses. But there was a lot of people that basically said, screw it, this is my life with the virus. I am either not doing my job and I’m actually going to build my dreams. And I think that that is going to be such a win and we’re going to see this enormous growth of businesses. I mean, double the amount of new businesses were created. And so we look at this the same way that I started my career in the 2008 recession. I was there at the beginning of this group on an e-commerce phase where we had just started with kind of the early consumer tech and obviously the Airbnb and the Uber is just completely took off. But a lot of these were recession based businesses. And although we are not in a recession at all, we went through this kind of crazy economic cycle that I think net is going to produce some extraordinary businesses to watch because we’ve actually seen the creation of all of them this year,

Speaker 3 [00:07:56] these disruptive moments. And we call this disruptors for a reason or real pivot points for society and economies, whether it’s a recession or not. And we saw that in the in the financial crisis, as you said, that’s when Facebook and so many other companies took off because social norms change really, really quickly when this crisis hit. Did you having lived through a previous crisis? No. At the beginning that this was going to be a kind of reset in which opportunities pop out of left field.

Speaker 2 [00:08:29] I now consider myself very blessed that I finished engineering and two thousand seven I finished my MBA in two thousand and eight, I moved out to New Brunswick to build a fishery from scratch, which was producing sturgeon caviar. I was producing one of the most luxurious products, not the definition of things you do not need in a recession is caviar, right? And so I built this business of selling it and I still remember what September 8th of twenty felt like when it was like, oh my gosh, most families were saying they had lost, like, I don’t know, a third to half of their net worth. I was like, this is going to be so painful. And I think there’s nothing like I mean, entrepreneurs lived through crisis’s every day. I mean, I literally wake up. I always say there’s like two things. It’s like slap me across the side and had every week. I just don’t know what they’re going to be. But even in this situation, it was pretty difficult to stay calm. I think I what we did is we just kept hunkering down on saying, here’s what we need to know. We divided the company into one of six initiatives that we were all working on. We continue to put money into the market. This is when literally everyone else that was providing capital, whether it was square or everyone else, pulled back, we said, no, we think these businesses are going to do OK. We’re looking at data every single day to see how things are going in. Some of these trends we’re so interesting was like at the beginning of the pandemic, it was like no children’s toys and the children’s toys went through the roof because everyone was like, oh my God, I’m home with my kids. And there was all these weird friends that we’re watching were like, beauty is going to take a nosedive. It’s like no one’s going out anymore. And then three weeks into the pandemic, everyone’s watching themselves on Zuman beauty is not taking a nosedive anymore. So what’s the benefit of having all this data is that we were seeing it. And then I think the last part of it, managing through a crisis is just constant, transparent communication. I think for a company of our size, we did an all hands. I mean, we were two hundred people at the time. We did an all hands every single day at five o’clock. And I’d say 90 percent of all hands. I felt like I would say. I don’t know more than you we’re not going back to the office tomorrow. And here’s what’s happened. But it was it is not easy to manage through a crisis.

Speaker 3 [00:10:38] It takes a certain humility. And entrepreneurs get humbled every day, as you know, but also have to be super confident because no one’s going to have more confidence in your business than you. So you’ve got to be 100 percent confidence how when you’re going through this kind of turmoil, do you manage that need to be confident to be the leader, to know where you’re taking the place with that kind of daily or hourly humbling that a crisis looks on all of us?

Speaker 2 [00:11:08] You have a very close circle that you are incredibly honest with because you cannot you cannot at the end of the day, be fooling yourself. And you can be I think optimism and living in reality are very different things that many people conflate all the time. Right. They think that if I just ignore what’s happening and the fact patterns, I am ruthless around getting to the bottom of the story and why things aren’t working and why that’s not happening. That does not mean I can’t take what could look like a very negative spreadsheet and say, oh, God, so we’re doing this. And that is really it is separating optimism and separating reality, because I think those are two different things. Andrew and I were incredibly honest with each other throughout this crisis. Every day we were like, OK, this happening where are our assets going, how do we protect this? How do we keep going? Are we taking too much risk? And, you know, it’s a funny thing as you look back now. And one of the things that we did is we pulled out of international markets and now we wish we would have gone so much further. I mean, we we had launched the U.K. by October already. So it’s not like we had a we had a long pause, but I think we had that moment where we could have gone even stronger, even faster into doing things. So even when you think you’ve done an OK job of managing it, you still look back being like, oh, if I’d only known we were going to bounce back so quickly, I would have taken a couple more risks during this process.

Speaker 3 [00:12:33] But what gave you pause and what didn’t you see?

Speaker 2 [00:12:36] Oh, my gosh, we just had no idea what was going to happen. Like, we were we were all reading the same things, which is like the crisis is worse than. I was so worried that consumer spending was going to drop. I mean, we backed we put two point four billion dollars and fifty five hundred commerce companies. I am not a fool. If we see all of consumer spending drop, it’s going to be pretty difficult for us. So there was this whole there was real fear in what could potentially happen there. And then you just you don’t know what you don’t know. And we’ve we made it through.

Speaker 3 [00:13:13] Maybe we can pause and ask you to explain to our listeners what formally Clearbanc does.

Speaker 2 [00:13:19] So I’ll tell you the story. I had been a serial entrepreneur my whole life, built an e-commerce company myself. No one would find me because they just didn’t understand the business and didn’t think e-commerce businesses could do that. Well, sold an app to Groupon and then ended up getting cast on the on Dragons Den when I was twenty eight years old. And what’s important is everyone’s like, oh, that was so great. I mean when you’re me you just feel like the runt of the litter. You are the poorest one on the show and you are the youngest one on the show. So you feel like you have no idea what you’re doing. And so I took a totally different approach to looking at these businesses. And we see something like two hundred and fifty pitches back to back in seventeen days. A lot of things start to distill. This is my first time really being an investor and everyone’s kind of like, look, I want I want one hundred grand and I’m willing to give 10 percent of my company at the early stage. And yes, what they need the money for. And it’s always the same two things. I need it for inventory and I need it for customer acquisition, which is really Facebook and Google ads today. And so I remember thinking, like, why are founders using the most expensive capital in the world, which is always going to be equity to do something that really has a fixed term. I mean, you buy inventory, you can only market up three or four times. You buy Facebook and you’re hoping for a three or four times return stranger. And I put our heads together and I came back to the show the next day. This is in twenty, twenty, fifteen, twenty sixteen. And I was like a different deal type. I’m going to give you the hundred thousand dollars you’re looking for instead of taking ten percent of your company that alone forever. I just want ten percent of your revenue just to pay me back my capital plus six percent. So I was like oh that sounds like a load. And I’m like, no, it’s not alone. There’s no personal guarantee. There’s no fixed payment time. There’s no company interest. But most importantly, this isn’t debt. If you don’t pay me back, I’m not going to bankrupt your business. Totally different risk profile. And so the founder that day was like, yeah, I’ll do that. And that’s effectively the category we created is revenue share deals for founders. The only two options that existed before we did were really bank debt, which always has personal guarantees associated with it and is really in small business as a form of personal loan. And then on the other end there was venture capital and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of those. Venture capital is designed for people who are in the venture capital ecosystem. And so it is. And there’s been. So much published on this, it is extremely unfair the way that is distributed, because if you went to Harvard and Stanford and if you know the VCs, it’s not hard for you to raise an extra dollars. But to think about how large our market is, I mean, there was just a in commerce. Again, we find gas companies and mobile apps, just any commerce. There was twenty five million commerce businesses last year, five thousand of them VC funding. So not only does their product work well, if you’re raising venture capital because you have to take as much solution, you can use our capital for your ads and inventory. But we have a big a big, big, big market out there. And so know it’s hard to believe that off that little jewel off the show, we’ve been able to fund two and a half billion dollars into five thousand five hundred different founders. I mean, our mission is to find a million founders. We think that that’s big and bold and requires us to operate in most countries around the world. But we think we can do that. And the category was created out of Canada, which I think is just the coolest thing. I mean, I think Andrew and I probably thought we could start a company. I don’t ever think that we could start a category. And so that gives us a lot of pride.

Speaker 1 [00:16:33] OK, we’re going to take a quick break. But coming up, more of our conversation with Michele Romanow on the challenges of scaling up and the opportunities ahead for Canada’s thriving tech sector. You’re listening to Disruptors, an RBC podcast, I’m your host, John Stackhouse. You may have heard our recent two part series called The Creativity Economy. We’ve also recently launched a new thought leadership report on the skill for the twenty twenties. It’s called The Coming Creativity Boom. In it, Canada’s most creative thinkers share their insights on the country’s creative potential, discover how different creative types deliver value and how we can translate that into our country’s creative future. You can find it at RBC dot com slash creativity.

Welcome back. I’m speaking with Michele Romanow, one of the dragons on Dragons Den and co-founder of Clearco.

Speaker 3 [00:17:41] What would change is you, Michele, as you as the company grows, you know, to a two hundred and fifty employees.

Speaker 2 [00:17:48] we’re now four hundred.

Speaker 3 [00:17:51] OK, so youre four hundred, I’ll blink again.

Speaker 2 [00:17:54] And five zero people started on Monday. This week. I am just like blown away by the growth that I’m witnessing.

Speaker 3 [00:18:01] And you now have employees, I’m guessing, who you don’t know and you never know. How do you have to change as an entrepreneur? Because until now a lot of your businesses have been things you could wrap your arms around.

Speaker 2 [00:18:14] Yeah. So this is the hardest part of being a founder. Is that what gets you to stage one and stage two does not get you to stage two and stage? And it would be easy if the things that got you to stage one and stage two, everyone was laughing at you along the way. You get down to it and you get said no to so many times in this business. And I always think it’s important to share. Right. So we had this idea that we could give our founders money. We would just use the data sources from their business. We would have no personal guarantee as a backup plan. And I went around Wall Street in my high heels pitching all of these credit guys. And two hundred people said to us, I think the rudest ones said, you guys don’t even understand credit. This will never work. You’re going to lose your shirts. And we’re like, no, we’re pretty sure that these are the data sources that will be more indicative. Pretty sure that because we have access to this information every day, it will it will be a stronger source of data and signal. And so many people see so many people think this is like a cute business. So many thought people thought we would deploy twenty or thirty or forty million dollars and it would be like this cute little thing. And we’re like, no, no, no, we’re going to go we’re going to build an asset class. We’re going to build an asset class that’s bigger than venture capital because I have a I have a TAM that’s much larger than the town of companies that could possibly 10x a year. And so you callous yourself in a really good way where you’re like I am used to people saying no to me. I’m used to people saying I’m wrong. And I had to hear so much of that to get here. But what that does is it gets really scary because now I have to be a very different leader than I was at the early stage. And so my leadership style is always get my hands dirty, always get into the spreadsheet myself, call the customer myself. If something doesn’t make sense to my team’s telling me, it was like there is no task to lower too high for me. I will do it. And that’s an important I think part of leadership is to just lead from the front. But that is a completely unscalable form of leadership when you’re trying to enter ten countries in a year. So you have to work with coaches and people that can take you to that next level. And I have had to stop doing and in many ways things that actually hurt me because they were some of the things that that that made me so successful. And I get that this is going to be the hardest part of my journey, too, is changing the way that I lead. I used to have people could call me at midnight and I took their phone calls and I can’t have a one on one relationship with everyone anymore. And in many ways that completely breaks my heart. But I have to figure out now how to communicate on all hands. I have to figure out how to how to do different things. I think I would give you one last example, and I actually think this is a good example because it’s a little bit controversial. So we’ve got a couple of people thinking about it. But I I had a really interesting experience watching Uber scale. And one of the things that most people don’t know about the Uber story is they know the part of the story where Travis gets aggressive and then he’s kicked out. But they missed the part of the story where to build Uber meant fighting every single taxi union basically in the world. And most people are like, oh, yeah, it was a fight and it was a fight with the government. In many cases, it was a fight with the mob. And I knew actually many friends that had started competitors to Uber. That stopped because they had literally people show up at their door saying they would kill their family. This was not this was this is the definition of what you call a dirty business. Right. And the balls that it took to continue operating when you basically had a person in every city that didn’t want your business to fail, but they actually wanted you killed was very different. And I don’t think anyone ever gave him the respect for having to to build this in every city. And I think now all of us appreciate that this is an incredible public utility, that we now have drivers on demand. But imagine just going to the expression, having the empathy of what that must have felt like to do that in two hundred and eighty four hundred cities around the world. And then you build a little bit of cockiness. You understand that you always feel like people are going to take you down and then you. Lose the empathy for who he needed, the empathy for, which is at the end of the day, his own employees, his own teams and the drivers that funded his business. And this is this is I just it hit me so hard reading his story that the same thing that brought him to where he was was the exact same trait that brought him down. And that is why it is so bloody difficult to do this job as you scale, because he would have never made it there without that trade. And then that trade has to change and get more nuanced and get different. And I think it’s just an important part of the story because people I don’t think he gets credit for what that took at the early days. They just see how that became the fatal character flaw in the later days. And so I think there’s a lot to learn. And I try and be very humble. And that’s going to be have to be a part of my journey as well.

Speaker 3 [00:23:24] You’ve mentioned Andrew a couple of times, that’s Andrew de Souza, your business partner and life partner, and it’s always amazing to watch how you manage that. And I’m curious how your dynamics as the company grows and how you keep hold each other to account of each other, humble, but also balance that those growth challenges. Is it easier as a couple or easier as individuals?

Speaker 2 [00:23:52] I think there is there’s a lot of emphasis placed on the fact that we’re a couple when you’re when you have a cofounder, you just do everything together and you spend much time together and you have to learn how to work very well. And one of the things that makes Anthony such unique cofounding is we are actually very different business people. And Andrew is an incredible product visionary, has extraordinary ideas and the ability to implement those things. And I am a much maybe harder seasoned operator. So we actually what we’ve done today is we divide the company into what we call horizon one in horizon two. We think we have the luxury today of thinking about Horizon two, which is how do we create long term innovation, long term retention of our customers and incredible products that the world couldn’t even dream about. And what gives us the right to do that is my part of the business, which is Horizon two, which is making our numbers this year, which is, you know, it’s the vast majority of the org and making sure we’re operating and we’re launching these 10 countries and everything happens. And we have changed rules over the years. We have found different balances over the years. And then we’ve had to figure out how to balance our own lives as well, which is most couples plan date night because they want to see each other and they want to have uninterrupted time. By definition. I see Andrew every single day. So we have to plan on date nights where we do things better. And you just figure out these rhythms that are incredibly important to you as a couple and to you to your bringing often. I mean, look, I think it was it was great that we got to build something together. I still think he’s one of the best founders I’ve ever known in my life. And so it just comes from an area of respect. Last thing I would say with your partner is and I think Covid actually taught so many couples this is most couples had no idea what they did when they went to work every day. So you love someone, but when you get to see someone when at work and be really good at doing something in their career, they’re kind of like a whole new level of love that gets unlocked with that, which I think is always really cool.

Speaker 3 [00:26:00] That’s a beautiful thought. So your horizon one and his horizon two, is that. That’s correct. Yeah, that’s great. It could be a new and a new playbook

Speaker 2 [00:26:12] because every company has the same concept. It’s short term and long term. And we have to do both and we have to do both really well. If we want to be one hundred year old company, it’s got to be a horizon too. And if we don’t meet this year and what we need to do well, today, we don’t get the right to have a horizon.

Speaker 3 [00:26:30] Well, all of this is unfolding and unfolding very well for Clearco. We are in the midst of the most extraordinary a tech boom. But in some ways, it’s one of the most extraordinary business booms just in the last 12 months in terms of all sorts of asset valuations, but particularly in the VC space. What do you make of what’s happened in such a short period?

Speaker 2 [00:27:00] I actually think you’re probably better to tell me. I don’t think we have ever seen this level of whatever we want to call quantitative easing, printing money that we have ever witnessed the world see. And I think we saw a little bit of what that looked like in 2008 and how that that was still very slow. We were seeing asset prices increase very slow. I, I have no idea what that’s going to mean. And I think they’re far smarter people to talk to me about that. But what I can say is that tech is not is not having a different bubble compared to other asset classes, the same way that real estate is up, the same way that equities have tech is up really on that same cadence at this stage. I can tell you we’re not being valued today on potential in the future in a bubble. There’s an extraordinary amount of diligence at this stage, especially when you get a partner like Softbank that wants to understand how big this business and how big the TAM is and how well you guys are performing. And so I don’t I don’t think I would I would say that this is a bubble. I would say that we should be so proud of, like this new series of what should be close to it. I don’t know a handful of Canadian unicorns. And it’s exciting to celebrate now, but it’s important to remember that all the seeds were planted five, six, seven years ago as people were coming out, as there was more venture capital in the ecosystem as there. More support, and my number one thing is I would just beg Canadians that we cannot have tall poppy syndrome here, we have to root and we have to cheer for these companies to win, because the reality of tech companies is they are largely winner take all markets. The network effects you get on data are so powerful that you get to end up owning the market. And so when we talk about the things, I always think that there should have been a B in there and it should have been BlackBerry. And we have to think about how to not create great companies for Canada, but how to create great companies for the world because they will provide enormous dividends to Canada while doing that. And I think we have a tendency to just not celebrate successes the same way, or they we want to take people down when they’re getting successful. And that’s not how we’re going to win as a country. We don’t win if we’re all like, oh, let’s create a bunch of little Canadian oligopolies. That’s not a win. We’re two percent of the global economy and we need companies that are intrinsically global. And then by God, we get to share all of the Canadian values we like with the rest of the world. By building a company here,

Speaker 3 [00:29:37] what do we need to do to create more of those global winners and global champions?

Speaker 2 [00:29:44] Capital was a big part of the early equation, we’ve largely solved a lot of that risk taking is the other one. I would be lying to you if there wasn’t a lot of days I lied in bed being like, oh, my God, please, someone buy this company so I can I can, like, take a vacation with longer than 48 hours. And I’m so happy today. We kept we kept going. But we also had investors that were really supportive and we had customers that were very supportive for us to keep going. And we need that that global ambition. Right. If we continue to chop down people for God, anything from like traveling to operating in another country, which is not exactly like ours to do, we do this. We get very myopic as Canadians sometimes. And it’s just not how we’re going to win. We’re going to win because we think about we want to create something that’s dominant and we want to create a category. And it’s based in Canada. But it’s for the whole world.

Speaker 3 [00:30:41] And in many ways, you know, in a new echelon, you mentioned Softbank, one of the world’s biggest investors. You’ve got Maya Son now involved in your company. How does that change things?

Speaker 2 [00:30:56] It’s first of all, I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t until we were doing the press where we were like, we’re the first Canadian company Softbank invested in. And then we went back to Softbank and they’re like, yeah, you guys are. And we literally didn’t realize that until like a week ago. Look, it’s a it’s an extraordinary vote of confidence. It’s a reason to have a glass of champagne and to take a moment to pause and be like, that’s really cool. But it means that we are just at the beginning of our journey. I mean, Andrew and I have literally sneakers that same day one on them. And day one means we haven’t earned anything yet. There’s no laurels. Anyone can come and build something. And we need to have this attitude every single day. We have to keep building. And so I think this is like a great vote of confidence for Canada that companies like this can be built there. But I think it’s so bizarre to celebrate fundraising in a way, because at the end of the day, it’s external validation and someone believes in your company, but you’re also celebrating that you just sold a little piece of your company. It’s actually a bizarre thing. It’s like today Michelle and Andrew gave up another X percent. And at the end of the day, I think foundational in their business because they do all the work and investors are or can be hugely helpful. But thinking about the balance of dilution, which is effectively what our company was built on, is incredibly important.

Speaker 3 [00:32:20] As you become more and more of a global company, how do you stay Canadian and how do you avoid being swallowed up by other global players?

Speaker 2 [00:32:31] I think this is where founders have to really think long and hard about how they’re financed. They partner with because there’s certainly situations where you can have things that look like hostile takeovers or things like the public level where companies are given less of a choice to choose. But if you create the discipline around a good business model where you have you have capital and you have options, that gives you the right to continue to remain independent, to continue to show your values and to continue to build that way. And so I think we’re not explicit when we talk. We celebrate fundraising’s but we don’t talk about the more complicated part of fundraising’s, which is do founders still control their board if they still control their destiny? Are they in a position where and this is also founders jobs as well? I mean, if you are burning more money and if you put yourself on the treadmill where if you don’t raise every 12 months you don’t have a company, you’re allowing yourself to be controlled by another partner. And so having that discipline is exceptionally important. And that’s what allows you to really be the sailor of your own ship at the end of the day.

Speaker 3 [00:33:35] If we can have you back on the podcast in a year’s time, what do you hope we’ll be able to talk to about?

Speaker 2 [00:33:42] Oh, I think we’ll be able to talk about all the mistakes we made in a global expansion of what worked and what didn’t work and the advice I can give to other Canadians I’m trying to figure out how to do that. I think it’s going to be a really, really interesting time. The other thing that. So this is a funny one, John, I’ll tell you, because I always like talking about when I’m wrong. So you can always people with too much time can find interviews saying the reverse of I remember when I was first starting off as an entrepreneur, everyone talks about, oh, well, there’s just not enough talent in Canada and you’re going to have to go to other places to get talent. And that’s impossible. There’s thirty three million people in a country like there’s no way I out of talent. Like, that’s just that just seemed like such a bizarre concept. And today I understand what people say when they mean we are out of talent, because when you have a company that’s going through this growth stage, you need enough people on your executive team that have actually seen this before. And in the early stage, you can almost always bet exclusively on young folks that. Work their ass off that will just like figure it out, but the landmines are too big and the time is too fast. So I didn’t know things like how to hire an employee in ten different countries because they’re all different. And some of those people I couldn’t fire and some of those people like you can use these employment for like one tiny thing that that when people have seen this growth curve or this growth spectrum, they’ve gone through. And so that’s kind of and your CFO office and your chief people officer and a bunch of different things where you want someone that says, well, yeah, actually we had to do this. And when Salesforce was going to say it had to happen and we just haven’t built enough of these. I think half of our team is in the United States now. I mean, or how the product is and is in Seattle because she came from Amazon or our CFO was in San Francisco because he ran technology investment at JP Morgan. And we’ve all worked as a remote team. So it totally worked. But it’s one of the things that I was wrong about is that we are going to continue to need to figure out how to get great talent into Canadian companies because of the speed and the scale. If you’re asking founders that haven’t done this before to do it as trial by fire, the mistakes are just too big at this level. And so I finally got it and I was very, very wrong with this forth.

Speaker 3 [00:35:56] What an extraordinary conversation. Thank you so much for your time. Our guest today has been Michele Romanow from Clearco. Michelle, thank you.

Speaker 2 [00:36:05] Thank you for having me. It was wonderful to be here. And a great conversation.

Speaker 1 [00:36:08] I’m John Stackhouse and this is Disruptors, an RBC podcast. Stay tuned in the weeks ahead as we bring you some of our favourite episodes from the past year and update some of the amazing stories of Canadian resilience. Talk to you soon.

Speaker 4 [00:36:30] Disruptors, an RBC podcast is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by JAR audio. For more Disruptors content like or subscribe, where you get your podcasts and visit rbc dot com slash disruptors.