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.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1425269
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 BCBUSINESS 57 their hand and welcome them. Is that a habit you've had all these years? My mother and dad were very strong on being polite and courteous to people. And of course, I've been selling all my life, and as you know, the customer is king. So it's always good to be positive and friendly with customers. In the beginning, were your parents your main role models? Absolutely. We didn't have any money, but I can tell you that I couldn't have had better parents than my mother and father. What does it take to be a Jimmy Pattison? It takes time at the banks to borrow the money. I've spent Who are your role models today? Who would you look to for inspiration? Anybody that's posi- tive, upbeat, isn't crying all the time about how bad things are. I like people like that….You look at the people that are successful in life, they're the people that are upbeat, not the people that are always whining and kicking about something or other. There's always something that's not right with everybody sooner or later, so it's important to take a positive attitude. bought new cars, and the people that didn't buy new cars, there was a big lift in used cars. What advice do you have for young people who want to make the best use of their lives? I would encourage them to do what they like doing. If you like playing the violin, well, get involved in music and enjoy what you do. I go to work every day because I like going to work. It's fun talking to people like you and meeting people, and that's what I do. If you like what you do, you're usually good at it. Going forward, what is your prayer for you, your family and your business? I always pray every day. I go to church on Sunday. And that doesn't make me perfect, by any means, but I believe in God and the Christian faith. I think the main thing is that you try to be fair. Now, that's a disagree- ment sometimes with people, what is fair. But the main objec- tive, personally, is to get up in the morning and enjoy what you do. And of course, your health is very important. The other thing my mother always taught me is to be sure you pick good friends, because they have a strong influence on you. I always remembered that, and so I always tried to make sure that over the years when I was growing up that not only did I like my friends but my mother liked them, too. What challenge is left for you? We're just getting started. We've got lots of opportunities coming. We always have some kind of trouble, and so our job is to try to stay out of the trouble as much as we can and grow the business. And get up every morning and can't wait to go to work. –P.L. most of my time at the banks trying to loan money to see if we could do business and grow the company. So I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for the Canadian banks. Where do you think you can take the Pattison Group in the next five to 10 years? Heck, we're concentrating on building business right now. As soon as the border gets straightened out here in the next few days, I'm going on a trip to the States to see if we can buy a company that we'd like to buy down there. So we're in the business of grow- ing the business. Besides the fact that you love Vancouver and B.C., is there one reason you've stayed right here in this city? My mother. When I first started, we decided that it was much easier to do business in the States, and to grow the business, which we wanted to do. But I was an only child—my dad had died, and my mother was getting up in years, and I didn't want to leave her here by herself. So I stayed in Vancouver and kept this our head office. What aspirations do you have for the organization? I'm interested in growing the business, and we're concentrating on things that are friendly to the environ- ment. Absolutely No. 1 on our agenda today, on everything, is the environment. And as we're in the car business and other businesses, we've got to move more and more to get involved in things that are good for the environment. And so we as grow the busi- ness, the No. 1 [question] we ask ourselves now is, Is this positive to the environment? Is it negative? Is there one aspect of how the pandemic affected your business that surprised you the most? Our billboard business. We do outdoor advertising. We're on buses, we're on subways across Canada. We're the largest out- door company in Canada, and we have leases with airports and transit systems and prop- erty owners where we have billboards. And they've all got long-term leases on them—like, five, 10, 20 years. When the pandemic came along, most people cut their advertising, but you still have the leases we're responsible for. So the business that was hit the hard- est here overall has been the billboard business. You told me that you were surprised at how many used cars you sold. When the pandemic came, people did not want to ride in the buses, they didn't want to be in carpools. And so people BCBUSINESS.CA