Marnie: Hi, I'm Marnie Niemi Hood. 

Russell: And I'm Russell Evans. We're the host of Contributors, a podcast where we explore how Canadian employers are leading change, innovating industries and investing in our country's well-being and prosperity. 

Marnie: These organizations are prospering today by prioritizing more than just the bottom line and so are we. As leaders at the CAAT Pension Plan, we are contributors to one of Canada's fastest growing defined benefit pension plans. 

Russell: We believe in contributing today for a long term benefit. And we want to showcase other employers who are securing a better future for Canadians. Follow along. 

Marnie: It's been said time and time again that it's far better to give than to receive. 

Russell: Our guest today personifies this adage with his generosity of spirit and frequent acts of kindness. 

Marnie: Today we're sitting down with Jim Estill the CEO and owner of Danby Appliances. 

Russell: Although he's seen great success as a business leader, Jim's impact reaches further than that. 

Marnie: Throughout his career, Jim has made it his mission to give back to the community, helping others through generous initiatives like supplying ventilators during the pandemic and supporting Syrian refugees who've recently come to Canada. 

Russell: Jim exemplifies a highly optimistic attitude and a willingness to do the right thing. 

Marnie: As a lifelong entrepreneur, author and former founding director of Research in Motion, the inventors of the BlackBerry, Jim knows a thing or two about what it takes to grow and scale a business. 

Russell: He's also been awarded the Order of Canada in recognition of his good deeds, which goes to show that he's just as kind as he is savvy. 

Marnie: Today's episode is an inspiring one and we're confident you'll feel positively encouraged after listening. Enjoy. 

Russell: So welcome to Contributors, Jim. 

Jim: Thanks for having me. 

Russell: Many of our listeners would know about you but some would not. Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and your background? 

Jim: Sure. I was taking engineering University of Waterloo and I needed a computer because I wanted to design circuit boards. Got a better deal of I bought two of them, bought two, sold one and bought another two and then bought a printer and some memory and some disk drives. The next thing you know, I'm buying and selling computer products. And I was that company I built to two billion in sales. And then I had invested along the way in 150 tech start ups and mentored and was a board member. Most famous what I did was BlackBerry, where I sat on the board since before they were public for the first 13 years and then I retired. Moved to New York and then my dad got sick so I moved back to Guelph and I sat on the board of this company Danby Appliances. The CEO resigned and I said, well, I can go in and run it. And I started running a business again. I said, Well, this is what I'd like to do. That would be my next decade gig. And then the ownership group said they wanted me to sell it. So I said, how much for? And they told me and I said, great, I'll take it. So that's how I ended up owning Danby Appliances. 

Russell: And what does Danby Appliances sell? 

Jim: Danby Appliances sells basically appliances, mostly smallish refrigerators, freezers, wine coolers. We do actually sell air conditioners and dehumidifiers which sounds weird but the commonality is they all have compressors, so that's the commonality. And we do sell some products that we don't make like microwaves and stoves and laundry. So we sell a complete line. We sell it through most major retailers like Costco and Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe's, as well as all the independent appliance stores, as well as Amazon. We do about two million appliances a year, mostly in North America. 

Russell: Yeah, I have a Danby wine fridge. I got it. I think it's one of those silent auctions. I have it in the basement and it works extremely well. 

Jim: Awesome. 

Russell: So a couple of years back, pre-pandemic, if I'm right, you made a decision to return some manufacturing to North America, to Canada specifically. And this is something that has been really timely topic right now and something a lot of Canadians are looking for and talking about is how do we get more manufacturing back? So can you walk us through that and kind of what inspired that decision? 

Jim: Well, the end of the day, companies are economic beings, so you do it for economic reasons but to some extent you do it because people will buy more product. That's an economic reason as well. Now we certainly don't, we import a lot of our almost all of our parts and we don't, we import many of our products so we're not mostly onshore. We just have some products that we make onshore, like a high end wine cooler or partial guard products made onshore. And we're looking at on shoring more. I'm sure you followed the logistics issues that happen. And so we want we will onshore more. The problem with setting up a factory is probably a two year process to bring more manufacturing to Canada and the other issue is parts. So even if you make product in Canada, if you have to buy compressors or casters or anything that's not in Canada, you're still not completely protected from supply chain issues. But shipping costs have gone through the roof and so it makes it economically viable to do it here and automations up as well, right? 

Marnie: So, Jim, you're known for being an innovator, coming up with new product offerings to meet changing consumer demands. Can you tell us a bit about how you're able to pivot your manufacturing to produce new supplies for the pandemic? 

Jim: When the pandemic happened, I was worried I had a company and factory and we wouldn't have enough work because I thought at the time, Oh, the sky is falling and no one's going to buy any products. And at the same time we hear ventilators. Nobody's going to be able to live because none have ventilators. So we pivoted and we assembled 10,000 ventilators, which we sold to the Canadian government. We worked with partners because as we got into it, I learned that we didn't have enough expertize to just do it. So we partnered with three other partners, myself and Baylis Medical. And that's that's how we did it. 

Russell: Jim, you obviously are from the Waterloo Guelph region and the Waterloo region in particular has played such a pivotal role in the innovation economy of Canada. Can you can you tell us a little bit about that and what it's like to be on the front row for that? 

Jim: I've been fortunate in my life, partly by accident. I am a University of Waterloo grad. I went to systems design engineering when computers were new. So I was right on trend because I was a computer nerd, wanted to do computers. And what Waterloo developed was an infrastructure and a ecosystem and it feeds on itself. So many, many years ago, myself and another dozen CEOs were running Technology Business Med and we met every month and we rotate from business to business and eventually we formed community tech. And if you look at Community Tech today, they'd have no thousand people or a thousand companies and they foster a huge, huge ecosystem as companies feed on other companies. So one company that makes circuit boards feeds on the company that makes chips and feeds on the company that makes consumer products and it's just a healthy tech ecosystem down here. 

Marnie: Let's go back a few years here for a minute. You were really at the forefront of innovation. Some incredible innovation, in fact, at BlackBerry. Could you give us a fly on the wall perspective? Take us back to those moments of inception when you were on the fledgling board of Research in Motion. 

Jim: So I joined the board just before they went public, so they were a private company at the time. At the time I joined the board, I was running a big company compared to BlackBerry being the small company, so I was the bigger company. I had been public for about 10 years by that time. BlackBerry built a great team of people and it certainly wasn't me that did did that. I was on the board, I wasn't running the company and it was that that team that brought out the product and I did get my education on a number of things. I was on the board when they lost a $600 million patent lawsuit. So I know more about patents as a result. It's one of those things that even though you have a goose egg, you're stronger for it. 

Russell: So, Jim, when I mentioned that Marnie and I would be interviewing you to a call the other day, the very first thing that they asked about was the work that you and Danby have done around assisting refugees. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about that and what inspired it? 

Jim: Sure, so a few years ago, everyone knew about the Syrian refugee crisis and they saw Alan Kurdi washed up on the beach in Greece. And it's just a humanitarian tragedy of untold magnitude. And I'm an entrepreneur, an impatient one and saying, what are we doing? We're not doing anything. So I said, Well, what can I do? And I also, I have a weird view of wealth. You want a certain amount of wealth because that gives you security and everything over that you should give away. So I said, how much do I have to give away that I give way to this cause? And so in that cause, I chose an amount of money and I said I could sponsor 50 Syrian refugee families but to sponsor 50 refugee families, I also knew that I needed to have a process. I can't meet 50 families at the airport and set up 50 apartments and register 50 families in school and get 50 doctors and 50 dentist, like I knew I couldn't do that myself. So I went out into the community and organized group of engineers or a group of volunteers. We had 800 volunteers at that time. Every family that comes in is assigned five mentor families. And then we set it up like a business. So there's a checklist to sign up the kids through school, to test the parents for English, get them an ESL class, get a bus pass, ride the bus with them, get the doctors, get the dentists, find the apartment or the townhouse, get it furnished, get the cutlery, get the housewares, get everything set up so they do checklists and we do score carting every two weeks. How's the family doing? And our job is to help them through a hard time not support them long term. And I leverage that activity with the other very good organizations in Guelph. So the current project we're doing with 250 Afghan families but we use Habitat for Humanity to do the furniture. We use Mission Thrift to do cutlery and linens. We use the clothes closet for clothes. We use Salvation Army. We use Hope House for food and so we leverage local organizations and that's how we get the donations. And the Salvation Army of all of these organizations, we don't earmark it. This must be for refugees. It is for people in need. 

Russell: When I read about the work that you've done with refugees, one of the things that I thought was interesting is you approached it like a business. And even in considering how many refugees you could take in, you effectively put together a business case on that. So I'm curious with some of the charities you've worked with. Do they like that approach? Has there as there been sort of positive and negative on that? What what did they make of the way in which you kind of dove into this? 

Jim: Well, I believe businesspeople should do more of this type of thing because business people know how to organize for scale. I say to my business friends, if you can run a company with 800 people, you can run a volunteer organization with 800 people. And the problem with the church groups, which I love and they do good work, is they're trying to do a bake sale to raise $72 and and they're well-meaning but they've never done things on scale. You need to do this on scale. So like when we knew we were resettling 50 families, we found an Arabic dentist. We don't speak Arabic speaking dentists. We don't send everybody to that dentist. It's the five families that need the Arabic speaking dentists. The rest we're sending the English. Dentist spread it around. An Arabic speaking psychologist, translation service. So these are things that are easy, more easily done on scale and business people think on scale. If there's pushback from some volunteer organization or some, some people, we have a little bit of tough love in our organization. We believe our job is to help you. It's not to weigh on you. Our job is to if you are capable of working, you should work. It's like we're our success for us as people working, speaking English, some degree of integration. That means if you're healthy, then we will introduce you to a job will help you get a job. We'll do resume writing. We'll do assign a job coach. We'll do all of that sort of thing. 

Russell: So we're getting into some of your personal beliefs and principles. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? What are what are the principles that drive you as a business leader? 

Jim: Well, I certainly believe in work and work ethic. I also believe in failure. Marnie says, Oh, I'm a success. I'm a success because I'm willing to have many failures. So at the time I did BlackBerry, I invested in mentored coach was on the board hundred and fifty companies. But you say, Oh yeah, but you did BlackBerry. Yes, I did BlackBerry. Well, there's another 100 companies that went completely out of business. That's the nature of startups. Another 50, some of them sold. You know, you'd recognize some of them like a ClearPath and Miovision that we did well but at the end of the day, it's a lot of failure in that. And I like to have that failure culture in my company. I always say fail often fail fast, fail cheap. Having a failure does not make us a failure, and we don't zap people for trying. We should zap people for not trying. And so I have a few more goose eggs and that's the pivoting thing. Same thing on this volunteer organization. When we first set it up, we had the the directors and director of housing, director of food, director of education, director of health, finding the doctors, finding the dentist, finding the housing. And I learned it's better to give it to the mentor groups and then they call the director if they if they can't find appropriate housing. And so it's just a bunch of micro pivots. 

Russell: I'd like to build a little bit on on what you said around failure. So, I know you have a blog and one of the themes that I saw on there is you kind of changing your mind, leaving room to change your mind. You had an entry on sleep and how you've kind of rethought your relationship with sleep. You had another entry on kind of rethinking your your relationship with yes and learning to say no. How important is it that a business leader is willing to change their mind? 

Jim: I think you have to be willing to take input and make logical changes. I do know that leaders will also fail if they're left today and right the next day and left and right, left and right. And so some business people are too much all over the place. More people are that way than firm in one point. But if I made a mistake, I surely should change my mind because I'm a constant learner. That's just who I am. I mean, I wrote that book on time management. I said, sleep is for wimps and I no longer believe that. I believe sleep is necessary for learning, processing, health as matter of fact, I actually think sleep is going to be the next health passion, just like right now. You say, How's your health? What's my eating? What's my exercise? You've got that. No, it's going to be eating, exercise and sleep. Those are going to be the three pillars going forward, in my opinion. 

Marnie: Well, certainly your personal approach and your brand around doing the right thing, inspiring and engaging. All of your coworkers and your staff has clearly paid off for your community and for your company. How do you see that approach going forward post-pandemic? How do you see the benefits of doing good and continuing to provide value for your employees and the community? 

Jim: I believe are and I hope to believe even more have them right on this, that there is a trend, a macro trend towards conscious capitalism where people are companies are and people are more concerned about the world than just their financial gain. And I believe companies will be very very shortsighted if they say we are only for our financial gain. And ironically, if they're for the better good, they will win financially too because people who say I'd rather buy a Danby fridge than buy this competitor fridge because I feel warm about Danby because I think that they're doing the right thing. And so it, but I don't think it's just going to be that. I just think there's a trend. I found the trend also in employees. Employees are loyal to us because of the good we do. 

Russell: What would your advice be, Jim, for some of the Canadian employers that are listening to this show now that want to contribute to the community that want to do something like this? Where do they start? 

Jim: I would suggest engage your employees because that will, that's good for them, they want to do it. I also encourage people to do any thing. They don't have to do what I do and the reason I encourage anybody to look after any charity. I did refugee but I also do hospice and homeless and a bunch of other stuff hospital. But I would have people flaming me saying, Oh, why aren't you doing that, the homeless? Or Why aren't you doing something? You're doing refugee? So do whatever your cause is and you can make a difference. The other thing I'll say is you will never get it perfect. Don't worry about getting it perfect. It's the try and do it. 

Russell: It was so incredible to hear about Jim's work supplying ventilators throughout the pandemic. 

Marnie: His inspiring story is just one example of the kindness and compassion we have here on home soil in Canada. And it's the kind of positive news that should be highlighted more often. 

Russell: The work he's done with refugees is also impressive. Hopefully, he'll inspire other business leaders to do the same. 

Marnie: Indeed. Jim sets a terrific example with his optimistic attitude and giving spirit. 

Russell: It's true. The spirit of helping others isn't just a nice to have, it's a more economically viable approach in the long term. As Jim mentioned. 

Marnie: I also loved when he talked about how a post-secondary institution like the University of Waterloo developed the infrastructure and an ecosystem for innovation. Let's listen as Jim describes opportunities in the Toronto-Waterloo Innovation Corridor. 

Russell: Jim also shares more wise words about leading a business, the value of shifting your perspective and failing forward. 

Marnie: You're certainly tackling some of the core challenges facing Canada socially right now. You mentioned homelessness as an example, and you know, certainly income inequality continues to be a challenge here in Canada. Can you share your thoughts on that? 

Jim: Well, homelessness is mostly an issue of mental illness and drugs. I know a lot about the safety and social safety net that Canada has in place. And if I had no money and was unemployed, I could live on what government provides without being homeless. We have to address the drug issue and we have to address mental health. That is, in my opinion, mostly connected to the homeless. The wealth divide, that's another issue that it's gotten worse and worse. Anyone who owned a home in wealth in the last two years, they made $200,000. Anyone who's a poor renter, their rent went up by 10 percent. Like, it's just become a bigger and bigger divide. Interestingly enough, there's a labor shortage at the lower end, so we are seeing wages go up naturally. I much prefer for them to go up naturally than have government mandate because government mandate usually doesn't work. All of a sudden, all the prices go up, all the costs go up. We are in an inflationary time. I would like the top one percent to realize that they are not safe. We are not safe long term. I'm a huge advocate of equalizing more and I have the weird what view of wealth that people when they get money, many people don't stop. They need more and more money. 

Russell: It's been a hard couple of years, Jim. And yet despite that, you've kept such a positive outlook. What's your secret? What is it that inspired this positivity in you? 

Jim: Well, apparently I'm naturally positive and I often see upside, which is why I have so many failures. So I look at all the good stuff and then I fail because I didn't look at the downside. But I'm an entrepreneur and entrepreneurs love change. If everything's steady state, there's no opportunity. But this is creating a massive change. And so if we can figure out what those changes are, we can capitalize on them. And it's and that for me is is fun and inspirational, allows me to use the best of my creativity. And so this is this is a good time for entrepreneurs. Even though I know that it's a terrible time in many things, even personal it, it's allowed me to rethink my life. I thought that I needed to be on an airplane every other week or every week. I got on an airplane every week and I thought I needed to drive into a dinner meeting in Toronto, which for me was like an hour and a half drive each way. And I thought, I need to do this. I haven't needed to do this. I've been two years and I haven't been on a plane. It kind of works, and the video kind of works. 

Russell: So I'm holding a yellow book here. I don't know if you can see it. It's called the Happiness Advantage. And I understand that this is a book that's inspired you. Can you tell us a little bit about that and why? 

Jim: No, I don't have it. I have a box of them because I give them so. Yes, Happiness Advantage is a great book. It's a very fast read. It's a positive read. I'm not going to steal the the story but it's largely they're talking about the secret to happiness. Now I will tell you from my refugee project, I did learn the secret happiness and that's not from that book. Secret to Happiness is being grateful for what you have. Not ungrateful for what you've lost, not ungrateful for what other people have. And when you talk to a refugee who lived in a house just like your house, they lost that house and their brother died because he got shot. And they came over here and we don't recognize their degree and they don't speak English well enough to get a job in their field. If they're grateful for what they have, not ungrateful for that loss and not looking over the fence and saying, well, how come that refugee got a better couch than I did, then it's happiness. And any challenges that anyone listening to this has is a first world problem. 

Marnie: That's quite the perspective here in Canada. We often forget how lucky we are just simply to have been born here, not like we did anything special to deserve it. We just happened to have been born here in a country that has freedom from war and for the most part, natural disasters that are really catastrophic. Great quality of life, great education, great health care. 

Jim: Absolutely. We are. Imagine if I was born in Afghanistan, I'd probably be dead because I'd probably be conscripted. I'd probably be like, what would I be? Right? What would you be, Marnie? I mean, you sure as heck wouldn't be doing an interview? 

Russell: So let's pivot now a little bit to look at Canada overall. Where do you hope to see Canada as a country? If you look ahead, Jim, you know, five, 10 years, what would you like to see? 

Jim: I would love it if Canada could be a leader in conscious capitalism, a leader in environment initiatives. I would love it if Canada could be leading in that area. But that said, we're economic beings, so of course, I want the economy to be buoyant and we are in a competitive world. But I think we can hold our own and have a be a prosperous country as it. And we are so wealthy as a country. We have natural resources, we've got land, we've got space, we have educated people like it is. It couldn't be better and we've got safety. Health care goes back to being grateful for being in Canada, being grateful to be a Canadian. 

Marnie: What would your recommendations be for business leaders in terms of how they can show leadership around this conscious capitalism and environmental initiatives? 

Jim: So I have partly been successful because I recognize trends and I get ahead of trends. And I believe if there is a trend towards conscious capitalism, you will get employees who are more loyal. You won't have to pay as much for recruiting. 

Marnie: Certainly, southwestern Ontario has traditionally been the tech and manufacturing engine, so to speak, for the Canadian economy. What kind of opportunities and innovations do you anticipate coming from what's been called the Silicon Valley of the North? The Toronto Waterloo Innovation Corridor? 

Jim: Well, because of the pandemic and the global supply chain has gone wacky, it, like the price of containers from China, went from $3500 to $20,000. Seven times increase. And there's shortages. You can't get them. We sell freezers and I can't get my freezer for my friend because the demand is spiked and you can't even do it. So there's this major thing, for a manufacturing point of view, it's golden. I think there's going to be more manufacturing on shored, more of it local because the cost of inland trucking is also up 25 percent, 30 percent. Soon as cost of inland trucking is up. Well, I'm maybe not going to have, you know, make everything in Saraland and and ship it everywhere. I'll maybe put another factory or some factory in another location, which is closer to market. So I think there's major major opportunities there. 

Russell: So you have worked with some pretty inspirational Canadian business leaders. So I'm wondering. Who provided you with the best advice? What was the best advice you ever received from a fellow business leader? 

Jim: Well, one of my mentors that I owe a lot to is Frank Hasenfratz, who is the founder of Linamar Machines. He was a refugee from Hungary. He lived in the train station in Montreal for two weeks before he came to Guelph to live with a family friend. He actually worked at Danby. There are Danby sister company Woods making parts, and he said, Well, how much do you pay for these parts? They pay $2 is a great offer. Would you buy them for me if I've made them for a dollar seventy five? And how many do you buy? And so he went bought the machine and we grew that company to billions. And now his daughter, Linda runs it. So his advice is sort of over any time I had an issue, he basically is very zen about it. And so like, I'm thinking that the sky is falling because I have a customer didn't pay their bill and isn't this awful and blah blah blah. And he's just so calm about that. You'll make that you'll make double that in two years. So you don't you don't even care about that. You stub your toe. Don't, don't don't don't bother that. So it's it's mostly don't catastrophize and don't. And what we think is bad is sometimes good. And even what we think is good is sometimes bad. 

Russell: That's really interesting, that's that's very insightful. I often think of, you know, in first year accounting, if you've ever taken an accounting course, they introduced this concept of materiality and that's effectively what what he was saying to you is that in the long run, are these concerns material? 

Jim: That's exactly right. At the same time, he's moving up my materiality level. So I'm at the time running a smaller business, I lose a million dollars. I think, Oh no, this is this is awful. He's just, ah, don't don't sweat it. Five years you'll be doing so much business. A million dollars is like losing $10. It's just no big deal, right? And invariably he's right. And invariably it's one of those things, what causes hardship makes us stronger. And I believe my success today has to do with dealing with some adversities over my life. And so you could say at the time, that's really bad but maybe it was really good because maybe I'm a little bit tougher or better or whatever for having gone through those hard times. So that's partly more of my failure thing. I mean, I stuck my toe on a lot of little failure, micro failures, but they're all micro failures. Keep me small and drive on. Learn. 

Russell: Well, it was wonderful to have the opportunity to meet you today. And thank you so much for sharing your insights. 

Jim: Nice meeting you, Russell and good seeing you again, Marnie. 

Marnie: Good to see you too. Thank you again. Your community efforts and business perspectives are always inspiring. What an inspiring conversation we had with Jim. Overall, a theme that really resonated with me was shifting your perspective. Whether it was critical advice he received from a business leader or realizing something you thought was inessential is actually very essential. There's always value in reassessing your beliefs. 

Russell: Jim also highlighted that a positive outcome for global supply chain issues an intercontinental shipping challenges is more opportunities for Canadian manufacturers to build factories onshore but also to be more innovative with what they deliver to market. 

Marnie: He had some great suggestions for employers coming out of the pandemic, including continuing to use video calls as well as traveling less. This will have a positive impact on employees at the bottom line and the environment. 

Russell: I love his advice to work hard but to not be afraid to fail. Jim credits his success in part to his willingness to fail often and his ability to continue to put one foot in front of the other until he reaches his goal. 

Marnie: He also really drove home the idea that gratitude is the key to happiness. Jim noted that sharing what he has personally bringing to Canada, refugees from Syria and Afghanistan has taught him the value of being thankful for what you have. 

Russell: I think this is a sentiment we could all benefit from, especially now as we continue to grapple with what we've lost post-pandemic, 

Marnie: Jim's positive and optimistic attitude has certainly rubbed off on me and we hope it's had the same effect on our listeners. 

Russell: Thank you for joining us on Contributors. We look forward to continuing our conversations with Canadian leaders in the new year. 

Marnie: Until then, we're wishing you happy holidays from all of us at the CAAT Pension Plan.