BCBusiness

July/August 2021 - The Top 100

With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.

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24 BCBUSINESS JULY/AUGUST 2021 READ THIS Now that COVID has made distributed workforces the norm, there must be a better way to communicate with employees than calling town-hall meetings, holding focus groups and sending out yet another survey. In Scaling Conversations: How Leaders Access the Full Potential of People, Dave MacLeod offers a compelling alternative to those methods, which tend to reflect only the loudest voices. MacLeod is co-founder and CEO of Rossland-based ThoughtExchange, whose online platform lets leaders quickly and inclusively consult groups of all sizes about decisions. Arguing that scaling conversations is the new leadership competency, he shows how to create the right conditions, ask worthwhile questions and do something useful with the results. Wiley 192 pages, hardcover, $35.99 • ( the informer ) G O F I G U R E of projects, including building a prototype for an innovative bicycle seat, designing a new piece of climbing hardware with a Kootenay-based moun- tain guide and negotiating with Scarpa's Italian head office to work on contract boot design. There's also Nelson clothing designer Carolyn Campos and Northern Teardrop Trailers, a company of two that makes about 30 ultralight camping trailers each year out of a shop in Salmo. PJ Hunton, senior design engineer for Norco, is another KORE member. In 2017, he convinced his Burnaby bosses to let him relocate to Kimberley and keep designing new mountain, road, gravel, cross and children's bikes for the six-decade-old brand. "My wife and I got to a point where we didn't want to raise our young kids in the city, and we wanted to be closer to the outdoors," Hunton says. "When I get a prototype that I've worked on sent to me in a box, I can literally pedal from the house and be on trails to test it." KORE is the fruit of several years of back-of-the-napkin brainstorming between Pen- nock and U.S.-born Matt Mo- steller, senior VP of marketing, sales and resort experience for Resorts of the Canadian Rock- ies, a company owned by Al- berta oilman Murray Edwards. "We wanted to change the narrative of small Kootenay communities as resource- dependent towns and show that they are places where in- novation and entrepreneurship in the outdoor sector is hap- pening," Pennock says. A side project for Mosteller, KORE was inspired by several like-minded efforts south of the border, he says. One standout is Outdoor Gear Builders of West- ern North Carolina ( OGB), based in Asheville, a former centre for heavy industry. Over the past 20 years, the city has rein- vented itself as a nexus of the arts, innovation and outdoor recreation enterprise, thanks to world-class river paddling, hiking and biking in nearby protected areas. Started in 2013 with nine core members, OGB has grown to more than 80. Member businesses collectively employ nearly 1,100 people, spend US$8.3 million annually on lo- cally sourced materials and are big contributors to North Caro- lina's US$28-billion outdoor recreation industry, according to Noah Wilson, OGB's director of sector development. "A major motivator was bringing the outdoor media to our community, which was emerging as the East Coast's biggest hub of outdoor gear manufacturing, as well as creat- ing a supportive community of companies that would work together to help one another grow and prosper," Wilson says by email. "We doubled in size time and again at first because we just kept on finding more companies in our outlying com- munities, and sometimes right around the corner, that we never knew were there." Pennock believes the Koo- tenays has similar potential. Launched with a $100,000 onetime grant from the BC Rural Dividend Program, KORE hopes to mimic OGB's success at fostering a maker culture and outdoor enterprise hub. One of KORE's biggest cheer- leaders is Kimberley Mayor Don McCormick. Kimberley has shifted from forestry and min- ing to tourism as an economic mainstay, but COVID revealed that sector's vulnerability. "We need to look beyond tourism to create some economic diversity and resiliency," McCormick says. "I see outdoor manufac- turing as a natural fit for creat- ing lasting jobs and prosperity." It's early days for KORE, which recently got a $70,000 grant from ETSI-BC (Economic Trust of Southern Interior) to hire an accelerator adviser to work with members, plus an at- traction adviser to help recruit gear businesses. "In five years, we'd like to have 60 brands and 200 people working in the sec- tor," Pennock says. • Mystery Caller As Canadian phone providers implement a new technology called STIR/SHAKEN to prevent spoofing—hiding your identity with a fake number—we look at who's calling who in B.C. by Melissa Edwards 12.5% OF THE NATIONAL TOTAL 14,085,042 Phone numbers on Canada's National Do Not Call List as of April 2021 38,367 B.C. phone numbers added in the 2019-20 year The CRTC got 15,352 complaints about phone scams and 13,370 complaints about telemarketers in 2020 B.C. scam and tele- marketing complaints were down E61.7% and E57.4%, respectively, from the previous year There were 947 telemarketing call centres in Canada in 2019 * 103 were in B.C. Average annual revenue, nationally: $8,094,000 $15,000 Maximum fine, per incident, for companies that violate Canada's Unsolicited Telemarketing Rules 16/80 CRTC enforcement actions taken in 2020 were against B.C. businesses Total fines levied against B.C. companies for Do Not Call List violations in 2020: $72,000 * Not including order fulfilment or fundraising

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