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/1512670
16 B C B U S I N E S S . C A J A N U A R Y 2 0 24 bring everything we have to bear to make the experience better for the customer? What's it like to wear so many hats as CEO? You're a bank but you're also deeply involved in sports, radio, tech, etc. They're businesses I'm passionate about. The other thing is we keep it simple. If it's a credit card, what's the value proposi- tion of the card? You want low monthly payments, great rewards. How do we give the best rewards in the industry? Every- thing relates to being a Rogers customer. Everyone's heard about 1-percent cash back. If you're a Rogers customer, you get 2.6-percent cash back on everything you buy. If you're a Rogers customer on wire- less, we give you five free roam-like-home days every year. Additional incentives that enhance our value proposition. You're a Blue Jays fan, you're a Rogers customer, every once in a while we'll do promos so our customers get great tickets to Jays games, which are becoming more and more popular these days and that's good to see. So everything relates to the value proposition of everything we do. Whether it's Sportsnet, a team we own, credit card, internet, wireless—how do those things relate to one another and to the Rogers customer? Do you have any Maple Leafs predictions for this year? Uh… [laughs]. It's exciting. Anything can happen. Which is why we're a big investor in sports, not only sports but the content distribution. You have three more years left with the Rogers-NHL deal. How has that turned out for you and what are your plans to get as much value out of the last few years as possible? Well, it's been terrific for us. It was an 11-year deal. One of the objectives was to increase the brand value of the sport in Canada. How do we continue to increase the penetration and get more and more people who are new to Canada to engage with it? So we did things like broadcasting in different languages beyond English and French. And we'll continue to innovate. It's an asset we're quite proud of. It's done well for us. We like to think we've done well for Canadians in the way we've evolved hockey viewership. There's a road map of additional things we want to do for the next three years, so we'll keep focus- ing on that. I've heard you're a big music guy. What's your most memorable concert? My first one, a Rush concert. I was 14 years old in Toronto. My good buddy was a drummer, knew someone and we got great seats. You always remember the first one. I'm still a big Rush fan, but I like all kinds of music. The Eagles would prob- ably be at the top of the list. Are you also a big reader? Any books that have been particularly memorable for you? I am. People always ask me what my favourite business book is and one that stands out is Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. Early in my career as I en- tered operations it was just a terrific book on how to get things done at scale. But if you ask me what I like to read these days, I like autobiographies. I just finished Bob Iger's book, which was really good. Now I'm reading Martin Scorsese's. I just like to read about what other people did, what didn't work, what did. How they were feeling at the time. I just find those really interesting. Do you take any lessons from someone like Martin Scorsese and apply it to your life or career? They're all different, everyone has a dif- ferent thing you look at, but they all have the same basic principles of tenacity. You gotta have a passion for what you're do- ing. If you don't, do something else. This interview has been edited and condensed. READ THIS Long before The Barge, B.C.'s most famous floatin vessel was the S.S. Princess Maquinna. Built in 1913, the Canadian Pacifi Railway ship steamed up and down the west coast of Vancouver Island in the summer and winter for over 40 years, carrying missionaries, loggers, cannery workers, prospectors, travellers and residents of local Indigenous communities. In his latest book, The Best Loved Boat: The Princess Maquinna, longtime B.C. author Ian Kennedy explores the turmoil that took place both on the boat's deck against storms and inside its quarters, where Indigenous and Chinese passengers often weren't allowed.