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/383533
iLLustratiOn: carsOn tinG OctOber 2014 BCBusiness 69 i knew my business was a success when… O'DeA: i rang the opening bell at the american stock exchange. and stopped chewing tums before every presentation. i get my best ideas when… O'DeA: i am playing guitar, late at night when everyone else is asleep. it's just me, my dog blue, a scotch, my strat and 100,000 imaginary fans. People tell me the phrase i most overuse is… RAnDHAWA: "it takes a team." The most underrated trait of an entrepreneur is… MCeLROY: the ability to act on what you believe is the right thing to do, and to have confi dence in your decision- making process. if i weren't doing this i'd be… COOKe: On the other side, investing in mining companies. The person i learned the most from was… COOKe: My friend Gregg Wilson, who taught me the value of patience, and relat- ing with people even in the fi rst encounter. f i n a l i s t Bradford Cooke CEO, Endeavour Silver Corp. I t was after he made his mark in the gold industry in the 1990s that mining entre- preneur Bradford Cooke decided it was time to turn his attention to another shiny precious metal. Cooke and an associate started Endeavour Silver Corp. in 2003, with a focus on silver properties in mineral-rich Mexico. "We envisioned going to Mexico and looking for high-grade silver and gold veins, just like the Spaniards did 450 years ago," says Cooke, who in 1988 also founded gold company Canarc Resource Corp., where he remains chair. More than a decade after starting Endeavour, and through a number of market ups and downs, the company has three producing mines and a half-dozen exploration projects in Mexico, as well as an exploration project in Chile, making Endeav- our one of the fastest-growing silver mining companies in the world. —B.B. Devinder Randhawa + Ross McElroy CEO; president, COO and chief geologist, Fission Uranium Corp. A nyone following the uranium industry knows it's been the worst of times for the metal used to fuel nuclear power generation. The 2011 Fukushima disaster caused a steep drop in the price of uranium, and that price has yet to fully recover. Despite a challenging mar- ket, Devinder Randhawa, CEO of Kelowna- based Fission Uranium Corp., and president and chief geologist Ross McElroy, managed to grow their company exponentially through acquisitions, asset sales and two major high-grade uranium discoveries. Randhawa says Fission has done well by hiring the right people, taking calculated risks and think- ing diff erently than its competitors, who are also exploring in Saskatchewan's Athabasca basin. "If you do what everyone else is doing, you get the same results," he says. "You have to go where nobody's looking." —B.B. f i n a l i s t s 6 QUES T IONS M i n i n g dog blue, a scotch, my strat and 100,000 imaginary fans. People tell me dog blue, a scotch, my strat and 100,000 imaginary fans. dog blue, a scotch, my strat and 100,000 imaginary fans. People tell me