Ben Cowan-Dewar - Build It and They Will Come

(upbeat music) Over the course of my advertising career, I've had the privilege of working with some fantastic brands. I still do with chatter AI. But if you ask me what's one that I hold so dear to my heart, it was the global repositioning of Thomas Cook. At the time, it was one of the world's most respected names in tourism. That assignment took me to London, England every six weeks to work with their internal strategy team. And what I learned has stayed with me ever since. Tourism isn't just about travel, it's about transformation, places, people, and of economies. Tourism accounts for roughly 10% of the world's global GDP and close to 9% of employment. It attracts foreign capital and fuels entrepreneurship. It breathes life into local economies. It's one of those few industries where creativity, culture, and commerce come together to create something truly magical. In Canada, with our natural beauty, our three coastlines, our multicultural mosaic, we have cities and eco and adventure tourism. We have the second largest landmass in the world. We have everything it takes not to just grow tourism, but to become a superpower. But here's the thing, we need to stop thinking of Canada as just a place to visit. We need to start positioning ourselves as the place to be. What does that look like? Well, it's the experiences that we offer that no one else can. Our true points have distinction. And today's episode offers a perfect example. I'd make the right turn at Truro and head towards Cape Breton Island, and without fail, every time I came on Cape Breton, the sun came out. I'd get to that site in Inverness, and I'd smell the salt, and I'd see that landscape. I knew there was nothing else I could do, but move forward with it. The Cabot Trail in Nova Scotia, one of the most breathtaking drives on the planet, carved in the cliffs, kissed by ocean air, and wrapped in history and heart. It's already a destination. But it was Ben Callandoer who saw something more. I think that's what the great golf architects are really doing, figuring out how you interact with this landscape and move through it. People would say it was magical. Ben envisioned a field of dreams along this iconic trail, not for baseball, but for golf. And in doing so, he created not just one, but two world-renowned courses that now draw visitors from every corner of the globe. And more than that, he sparked a movement, a local economy, a community, a reason for young people to stay, and a reason for people to come back. He created the reason to be and the reason to believe. In this episode, you'll hear how it all came together and why Ben so deeply believes in the power of place to build economic prosperity. This is a story of vision, of perseverance, and what's possible when we dare to imagine Canada not as a stop in someone's itinerary, but where memories last a lifetime. - Hi, it's Tony Chapman. Thank you for listening to Chatter That Matters presented by RBC. If you can, please subscribe to the podcast and ratings reviews while they're always welcome and they're always appreciated. Ben Callandoer, welcome to Chatter That Matters. - Hi, Tony, it's great to be with you. - I always start with sort of, how did this all begin? And I understand your childhood in Kingston, Ontario, playing something like a hundred holes of golf a day without a soundtrack, but just tell me a little bit about how you fell in love with golf. - I fell hard for golf at a young age and we lived on a family farm that my mom still lives on. We weren't farmers, but as any natural 10-year-old with a little bit of land would do, I thought I would go out and play golf in my yard and that led me to building a golf hole which my dad helped me with and I had a 200-yard par three that had 70s that I used to mow and a really deep bunker. It gave me a lot of joy as a kid and I was a member at a wonderful little course and 12 years old getting dropped off. First thing in the morning on my dad's way to work with one of my great pals and going and playing as much golf as we could and that was my summer camp. - And, you know, the game gives you so much and teaches you so much, but it teaches you patience, it teaches you manners, it teaches you how to treat people and I read golf books. I was a little bit of a golf nerd and really didn't have a choice but to do this, I guess. - Crow flight closed second hand. My dad brought home for my birthday. We played for the first year in the field behind our high school. We made three holes and then we graduated at Durval Golf Club, a nine-holer and I remember the first time walking on and just being mesmerized by the whole experience. Just curious, your first impression when you left that hole that you built in your farm and showed up in a golf course. Do you remember that? Do you recall that first moment, the smells, the feels and what was it like? - You know, and it's funny. I mean, growing up in the Kingston area, the golf was not downtown Toronto and you know, sort of private clubs. It was rough and tumble and I remember going on Easter and being allowed to play and I was 10 and it was soggy and wet as it always was in Eastern Ontario if you played golf in April and it just didn't matter. I mean, I literally, and I'd watch golf on TV on the weekends and I'd draw golf holes. It's just, you know, I'd drive by golf holes and be craning my neck up the window and I remember watching the Masters in 1986 and Jack Necklace winning. You could only get updates on what happened at the Masters on CBS at 11.35 just before the late show and they would come on and they would have sort of the highlights of what happened that day. And, you know, as a young kid, I would set my alarm and wake up at 11.33 and run downstairs and watch the highlights then go back to bed. So, you know, I mean, it was magical. - What do you think it is about golf that has that bag or vance mentality where we actually know who designed the courses and we almost walk in their footsteps at times. Like I don't know who designed Wimbledon as a stadium and I don't drive that deep in any other sport but golf somehow seems to knit this conversation with nature and this sense of sport. - Well, I mean, it's amazing, right? Because if you think about it, so the world's top 100 golf courses and, you know, the first rankings of golf were actually in the late '60s by golf digest, maybe the early '70s and it was the toughest courses. It was about what were the hardest golf courses and that evolved into ranking of one of the best golf courses. But if you think about what are the best tennis courts and Wimbledon is just an ethereal experience. Tennis courts by their very nature are uniform and so, you know, traveling to one country or another to play tennis, you know, you might get some variation of grass or clay but if you look at the best golf courses around the world, there's so much at their core reflections of the places they are and whether that is St. Andrews or Cyprus Point or Royal Melbourne, they shine through the landscape and the place. The best golf architects are really artists and I think that's why you remember them and so I sort of think of it like sculpture, right? And so if you think about Michelangelo and David, you know, to start with that big piece of marble and to end with that and to get the proportions right and to understand the beauty, I think that's what the great golf architects are really doing is they're sort of figuring out how you interact with this landscape and move through it and we've been so blessed to work with the best and in stunning landscapes. And, you know, when we started to see the early guest reviews and Kate Bratton and people would say, it was magical. And I thought, that's what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to give people that day in their life that, you know, is so resonant and special for them. - When I opened the show, I talked about the holy grail of life as you can find passion, pursuit and purpose and if they all come together, I mean, that is one of the great gifts of a life well spent. When I listened to your interviews and you just see the way you just talked about, I want to bring that magic every day to people. How do you think you stumbled on that? - You know, my mom, who's a family doctor, still practicing at 75 in Eastern Ontario and an amazing exemplar and a dad who really fostered my love of golf. And so my mom tells the story of obviously being a young woman and growing up in Toronto and having a dad who told her she could do anything. And so she believed that and went off to Queens Medical School in the '70s and would have been one of a handful of women in her class. You know, they gave me that when I was in university and it was basically the beginning of the internet and I'd started a golf travel business and the internet was so rudimentary in those days. I think it was me and the handful of other people on it and took it and said, "Oh, I'm going to do golf marketing and golf tours and I'm going to do digital photography." And it got me around the world and I got to play most of the world's great golf courses sort of shockingly by the time I was 24. I was doing this while going to U of T. You know, I just knew at that point, I just had to get going. And as a kid who grew up in rural Ontario, the thought of being able to set out around the world, see amazing places and particularly see amazing places through golf really propelled me forward. I always say, you know, with golf, if I wanted to have lunch with a bank CEO four times a year, you know, everybody would say good luck. But if you get to play golf with them, you form a far deeper relationship. You know, you sort of learn about people, you learn about their family, you watch how they interact with service staff. If you're lucky enough to have a caddy, how they treat their caddies, you watch how they act when they hit a bad shot. Do they take themselves too seriously? And my grandfather was great. Always said, no one cares what you score. Everyone would care if you cheated. And if you cheated at golf, which we do for fun, imagine what you would do in the rest of your life. Those life rules were probably all the foundational pieces that set me up to pursue a career and a passion. And you're absolutely right. I mean, we're 20 years and a month after I visited Kate Bretton for the first time. But when I came back from that, I had a girlfriend who would then become my wife and two parents who all told me they thought it was a really good idea. So I blame the three of them for everything that came after it. We look at Kate Bretton now and we realize that you've created something that roars around the world. Yet it wasn't a skip in the park. I mean, you had to deal with a lot of initial skepticism from the local community. You had to deal with a lot of bureaucracy. How does someone that obviously has an appetite for life and getting on with life at a young age, playing some of the greatest golf courses in the world, how do you suddenly find patience at a young age to see something through versus, "God, this isn't worth it. I'm gonna move on to something else." - You know, Ben Hogan, the great golfer, famously said the harder I worked, the luckier I'd get. I was so lucky. I was at a dinner in Toronto. I got seated next to Rodney McDonald, who was then a young MLA from Inverness and a minister of tourism who would go on to become a premier of Nova Scotia. But Rodney was talking my ear off about this site for golf in his home riding. And I joked with him. I said, "Minister of every farmer with 200 acres, since they have the next great site for golf." But they had this site that they had been as a town dreaming of golf as far back as 1969. And they'd worked tirelessly at it. Jack Nicklaus had done a routing plan. Mike Herdson, who'd done Devil's Pulpit and Paintbrush, had said it was one of the 50 greatest sites left for golf in the world. And so they'd had all of these attempts of trying to get this golf course off the ground. Rodney followed up and he sent me photos. And I went and saw it on a December day in 2004. And so I didn't have patience. I think I had youthful naivety and rose-colored glasses. But again, I'd seen enough of the world's great golf courses that I saw the land on a December day and it was beautiful and the sun was out. And I sort of thought it might be playing golf up till Christmas. And these town fathers and they were all men greeted me. And it was the superintendent of education, the dentist, the high school principal. All of these people had watched the decline of their town from 1953 when the coal mines closed to 2004. Inverness was a mining community. It started in 1880 and went till the '50s. And at the peak, it was 10,000 people. When I got there, it was 1,200. Unemployment was extraordinarily high and it was a community that had certainly seen better days. And I think these people just had a passion and a belief that this land that had been their coal mine, not an open pit, it had shafts that went down 300 feet and a mile out onto the ocean floor. And when you think about that ending 70 years ago and what it would have cost people in terms of their lives to mine coal, you felt an acute responsibility to the place and the town to do a great job. And so there were lots of skeptics and I remember one fellow that I met and I said, "What do you think of that golf course in my first visit?" So that'll never happen. Change has been a bad thing. It's been about losing things. It's been about losing children. It's been about losing industry. What I encountered in Toronto, which was home at that point, was people who would tell a young entrepreneur hateful things. Like, "That's a terrible idea." And just absolutely brutal things. You're out of your mind, "Why do you think you could do this? How do you think you could ever pull this off?" And in hindsight, it was probably all really good points which were, you know, people would say, "Are you a golf prod?" I'd say, "Now, are you an architect? Now, are you a construction person? Now, have you ever worked in a hotel?" Nope. And so, you know, that does seem like an unlikely set of things, but I think that with positivity and if you're lucky enough to find purpose and you can work your tail off, I think the nicest thing, you know, you could say is people outwork their peers. I outwork my peers. Did you ever feel an imposter? I mean, your young kid, the town elders coming out and desperately trying to find a way to, you know, reinvent, re-establish this home? You must have felt like they're going to see through me. Totally. Every day, I was also, I was 25. I felt like I was about 45 when I was 25 and I was desperate to act like it 'cause I didn't want them to say no to me, but they were clearly in a place of desperation to trust me who had a little bit of money and a big dream. But I think I could so clearly articulate and I had seen it. I'd been to Scotland and I'd been to Ireland and I'd been to Band and Dune. And I had slide shows. I mean, back when you had a slide projector, I would, you know, show them and I'd say, "We can build this here and I believe I can do it." You know, I'd grown up in rural Canada and so I knew rural people and it's, you know, you just have to build trust and I was one and I showed up and, you know, some of the entrepreneurial constructs, like doing what you say you're going to do and you say you're going to do it. I didn't know that then, but I knew it intuitively that that's what you had to do to build trust. And so I think I did that and built on it brick by brick. Did you ever want to quit? Did you ever have a point of it where you went, "Oh my God, this is just, I've bitten off way more than..." - Yeah, I used to feel it pretty frequently. The fear and self-loathing of an entrepreneur, particularly a young entrepreneur, is an enduring thing. I was in a business that was get rich very, very slow, if ever at all. It wasn't, you know, sort of a tech business that you were trying to scale and, you know, and again, this was around the dot-com boom. So, you know, you watched entrepreneurs going in that direction and you could have thought, "God, I was really on the wrong track." And I did think that. And it was so hard and it was met with a lot of resistance on a lot of different fronts. And so I used to leave Toronto and I'd fly to Halifax and there was no parkade across from the terminal. It was just a big, open parking lot. And I was renting with Budget, who was at the farthest corner 'cause they were the cheapest. And every single time I landed in Halifax, it was pouring rain, just pouring. So I'd get in my rental car, drenched and drive 316 kilometres up to Inverness. And I literally would just think I'm sinking everything, you know, all of the savings I'd made in my business in those early days from the golf travel business. I was plowing into this to try and make this green come true. I just would feel like I can't do this. I've got to stop doing it. And I'd make the right turn at Truro and head towards Cape Breton Island. And without fail, every time I came on Cape Breton, the sun came out. I'd get to that site in Inverness and I'd smell the salt and I'd see that landscape. I knew there was nothing else I could do but move forward with it. - You know, you talked about creating that magic for the golfer. How does it feel to also create the magic for a community? I don't mean it, you know, giving you the wand that you're suddenly Gandalf, but it must be something of immense pride that this town has now got a new lighthouse. It has nothing to do with coal. It has everything to do with its beauty. - Well, I think it's not why I did it, you know, 20 years ago and it's entirely why I do it 20 years later. And I think we've had so many wonderful stories. The primary school filling up and split classes in a rural community of the tax-based point from one of the lowest in the municipality to one of the highest. You know, young men having to leave and go to Alberta to support their families and mothers raising their children alone to people being able to stay home and find a community or repatriate to Nova Scotia. And so those are the magical stories. And I think if you look at the reviews we've had out of Citrus Farms in Florida, which we opened a couple of weeks ago and some notes I had this morning from groups that were in St. Lucie last week, they talk so much about the beauty of the places, but they quickly go to the magic of the people and the service, building a culture that people are loyal to and that they care about has really been what the success in Cape Breton has been about. And as you know, hundreds of people cash a paycheck, you know, that has a whole series of rewards. And I think, you know, it changes your outlook on, you know, people who are down on rural Canada. - How do you reconcile today? I mean, you've got this conversation with golfers. You want to create an experience. You have to have this conversation with nature because you're building the golf course as part of mother nature. And this conversation with the community, do they always reconcile or is it a constant battle to sort of trade each other off so that you're creating something that meets everybody's needs? - It was a battle earlier on. It is now not for a bunch of reasons. Mostly we have an unbelievable track record and, you know, we have the only platinum certification by the Audubon Society on, you know, sort of for golf courses. And I think that wasn't a reason we set out to 15, 20 years ago of saying we wanted to be environmentally sustainable. That was a key pillar of it. It just felt like common sense. And St. Andrews, which is my favorite exemplar, which is 500 years old in Scotland, has coexisted in a community, a university town, and, you know, the original magical place in golf for 500 years, and Royal Dornock has been a part of its community's fabric for 400 years. And so if you think about that, you know, you wouldn't if you're in St. Andrews poising the water table in a community that everybody who works for you and that you need the support of those folks would do it and you wouldn't treat your community shoddily and you can't pick up and leave, you know, to another country and open a call center. You're there and you're there for good. And if I think about part of what we were building were things that stood the test of time. And while I don't know what retail will look like on Bloor Street in, you know, five years, I know that Pebble Beach will still be amazing and Bamp Springs will be amazing and St. Andrews will be there calling people from all over the world to go and see it. So I think it's gotten a lot easier, but yeah, it was incredibly hard in those early days. - We're not just providing money, you know, we're there to support community initiatives. Our team members sit on local chambers, immigration settlement agencies, schools and sport committees, you know, they're active participants in the growth of these rural communities and it matters. - Those are the words of Chris Ronald, who's the president of RBC and the Atlantic. And he'll talk about why the Atlantic provinces is such a special place to live, to visit, to dream and to do. We come back, I ask Ben, a question I ask any successful entrepreneur. Your dream has now become big. How do you hold on to what matters most? How do you keep the heart of your culture beating strong? - Hi, it's Tony Chapman. RBC has been a longstanding supporter of golf in both Canada and the United States through their title sponsorship with the PGA Tourist RBC Canadian Open and RBC's Heritage Tournament, as well as key partnerships with the Heritage Classic Foundation Golf Canada and the PGA of Canada. Combined, RBC golf tournaments have raised over $35 million to help communities thrive. But did you know about RBC Community Junior Golf? This is an initiative led by RBC in partnership with Golf Canada that's building greater diversity in equity and golf by providing affordable access for youth from equity-deserving communities across Canada. To date, RBC Community Junior Golf has engaged more than 20,000 youth participants by providing first-tea programming at no cost and subsidizing green fees through youth on course. Who knows, one of those kids might be the next Nick Taylor. - For the eagle, for the win, to the cup, to the gun! (crowd cheering) - The trend is over, the trend is over! Nick Taylor with the eagle, the 2023 RBC Canadian Open champion! He's an icon now in this country! - Supporting Canadian youth, well, that matters to you, to me, and to RBC. - Buffett's quote, the greatest luxury is to do what you love with people you love doing it with. And I've been blessed to do that every day of my working life. To me, work is an extension of my life and it's grown up around my three children and that is, you know, just so fortunate. - My guest today is Ben Callendur, a Canadian who's making his mark globally with his Cabot brand. Why? Because he sees golf courses as more than a place to play, but a place to be. Be with each other, be with mother nature, and be with the community. Obviously you've got a brand now that you're stretching across a number of sites, but it's also you as the individual. I mean, talking to Kim Mason at RBC, Clive Collier, people that know you and just talk about who you are and your values, how do you make sure that continues to cascade across your organization as well? Because as you get bigger, it becomes less about the heart at times and more about the machine. So how do you make sure that machine continues to have a lot of Ben inside it? - To do it and to do anything at scale, which obviously we've done now, it isn't about me, it's entirely about the team. And it was about the golf course architects and all of the people. And we build a culture that people are loyal to. And so last week in St. Lucia, I saw a team of people have been making that project happen. And including Andrew Alcambreck, who was a friend from childhood, who was my original GM and Kate Bretton, who I've gotten to work with for almost 14 years and his wife, who was my original CFO and Kate Bretton, who they're now with their two little kids down in St. Lucia. And we built an amazing team in Toronto that support these properties. And we have amazing people at the properties. And I think we view it as these places should shine through the places they are. And so the number of St. Lucia's, who we've created opportunities, and I think we'll create jump off opportunities to go to other properties. And we have a project in the north of Norway, which is amazing. And the superintendent there is an Irishman, who's just a phenomenal guy, who's working in St. Lucia this winter. It's, there's no golf in the Arctic Circle this time of year. And we have some of our really young bright lights from Kate Bretton over in Bordeaux, France, where we've done it. So I think it's cross pollinating it. And I have a poster on my wall, which I've had for a long time that says work hard and be nice to people. But I think one of the things for me is it's important to get to those properties. And when you see a service culture that is so rooted in kindness, in the early days of Kate Bretton, we couldn't have had a kinder team. And we had a woman, Alan, who had retired from cutting hair and came back to help us. I mean, we needed all the help we could get. Our first 32 caddies had university degrees. And, you know, Vince, who was the dentist in town, would caddy on his off day just to help us out. We had a gentleman who had a sword back and he was looking for Advil. We didn't sell it in the pro shops we do now. But she drove across town to the pharmacy and bought it and gave it to him. And he said, "I'm gonna pay." She's like, "No, no, no, that's okay." That was just the service that we had from the beginning. A woman who came in and saw Wendy and was just a brilliant woman who worked with us for many years and said, "Oh, I love that shirt." And it was last year, we didn't have the model and then Wendy literally gave her the shirt. Building that culture in Kate Bretton, that really was the foundation. And so when you look, you know, at an overnight success that's taken me over 20 years, it's built on a foundation that was Kate Bretton. One of the things that we can do when we acquire something in Bordeaux is get our GM there, Vincent, to come over to Kate Bretton. That's a really, really, really positive and impactful thing that we've just made a huge part of our onboarding process. - You talk about these values and the sense of, I would say almost simplifying business to bring it back to humanity. Put the person back in the brand personality. How does that play when you talked about earlier, that fear and self-loathing that people have with entrepreneurs? When they say, "You know, Ben, you're looking for capital, "now it must be a lot easier." But back then, yeah, that's all great, but show me the profit. Let me see the spreadsheet. What's the bottom line like? How do you reconcile the language they want to speak? Or do you just find capital partners that understand that heart matters as much as the head and the hands? - You know, Mike Teiser had built Band and Dunes in Oregon, which was really my exemplar, a golf resort on the southern coast of Oregon and that community that, you know, I'd seen mining and logging pass it by, and it was just an absolute international success. And in many ways, Mike was like a second father, and I sort of met him at the right time in my life where I needed to mentor and I needed someone who would give me all the help in the world. He knew the model and knew what success was, and he bet on young people and sort of gave them a shot, and he gave me an enormous opportunity with probably a belief the downside risk wasn't that great, and the original investment, you know, was relatively modest. And then as we had success, you know, he found those flames, you know, pushed me to dream bigger, and I have five good ideas and 10 bad ones before I fall out of bed in the morning. So I think it wasn't a problem of ambition or dreaming. I think it was just really learning all of those pieces along the way, and we have several families, mostly Canadian. Mike, with my original capital, was an American, but the rest of the families who've invested with us have been Canadian, and I think they believe in the long-term nature of it, and it was extraordinarily hard. Early on, a young entrepreneur can underestimate it. Like, it's just a real grind. It's just very, very, very, very, very difficult. If you do it, and then you have the success, and then you have the spreadsheets that you can point to, the track record of it, and I think it's also your network. It's your knowledge. It's how many situations you've been in. So when you hit a crisis, and I was in the travel business as a, you know, 22-year-old when 9/11 hit, which was catastrophic in the financial crisis, almost ended Cabot. Okay, Bretton, we'd started construction in the summer of '08. We were one of only four golf courses under construction in '09, and then COVID hits, and, you know, I couldn't have thought of, like, 2019 was a record year in Cape Bretton. What in the world could possibly derail 2020? And over 20 years, you learn how to deal with adversity, and you have more people. You have a better team. You've got more knowledge. You understand what believers do, and so I think your knowledge, your network, your team compound in the same way, and so the longer you stick with it, it sort of feels like you start to get a feel for it. You know, I think what we're seeing in the world right now is a lot of divide, and at the same time might be a rallying point for Canada to start really thinking about making our destiny a matter of choice, not chance. And tourism's a key component. What advice would you give to the public sector? What advice would you give to the tourism industry in terms of leading with our best foot forward? I've had to deal with government a lot throughout all 20 years of doing what we do. We touch a lot of different departments, and you know, you learn a lot about the bureaucracy, and that there are great people who can be convinced of great ideas, and you learn that their downside risk for something going wrong is they're fired, and their upside risk is not correlated to success. They rarely even get a job well done, and that makes it tough. In the tourism file, we have a brand that is one of the top three in the world as a tourism destination. Tourism is an unbelievable lead precursor to people visiting a place and then deciding to immigrate to it. I think it's interesting as we see, you know, tariff week and a week dollar, this is the most unbelievable opportunity to welcome Americans, our other relatives really, you know, our cousins, aunts, uncles, neighbors from the United States into Canada. You reinforce with the Americans that we are your friends, and we've been great friends, and you know, sometimes in friendships and relationships, there are ebbs and flows. But I think that's one of the most potent things, and I think people don't get tourism credit. As an industry, you know, the bureaucracy probably knows it. The politicians don't really care about it. It gets so much less support than any other sector. I used to, in Nova Scotia, say it employed more people than forestry, and everybody would say no, and I'd say un-mining, no way, agriculture too, no way, and fishing, no, that was always the one. But it was actually more than all four of those industries combined, and you had to say it again and again to reiterate that it's so important, and it works in the rural communities of this country, and it carries forward our brand, and it gives people an unbelievable ladder out of inequality in a first-time job. I'm not picking on other industries, but I had somebody say, you know, tourism needs to stand on its own more. I said stand on its own, it's all it's done. You know, what is the farm credit balance sheet? Is agriculture having trouble getting financed by banks? I don't think so. You know, there's private equity in that space. We have, you know, a banking system that, you know, is not a huge supporter of tourism, hasn't been traditionally. You don't have farm credit equivalent with billions of dollars on a federal government balance sheet of our taxpayer dollars supporting tourism growth initiatives, and most of the tourism product that's been built in this country was built around the railway, Bamp Springs, Jasper Park. All of those great places, you know, I don't think there's an asset in the country that's done more for the country's fabric and brand than the Bamp Springs Hotel and Bamp National Park. I was in the US and in the Caribbean twice the last two weeks. I had three people say I'd been to Bamp from the last year. What a beautiful place, what wonderful people. This is an industry's just gotten a bad luck wrap and we've got a number three brand and a product that doesn't rival what's happening out there in the world. What do I say about that? Is that a complaint? No, it's an unbelievable opportunity. We are investing heavily outside of Canada, being based in Canada. And what I'd say is whether it's in Florida, in France, in Norway, in Scotland, other places, you know, we'll hopefully see soon. These places are dying to the investment and it's an unbelievably capitol intensive business that can't be picked up and moved. Like to me, I'd be saying that sounds like it's got a lot of attendance of success and there's a lot of knock on effects and it'll work in the rural community. I just wish we were doing more to sand the flames of people like that. You know, Ben, I always end my podcast with my three takeaways and I just want to go up front and say I could do a series on what you have to offer because I think tourism means the world to us. I think what you've done with the circle economy and the local community. But I want to begin with the first one is your comment about fear and loathing and the sense of trying to pull people down and trying to take the shining eyes and the heartbeat away from entrepreneurs and ideas at what cement is sadly, I think even more so in Canada than in a lot of places in the world that we somehow or other don't celebrate our successes. We want Blackberry to fail. We want, you know, roots to not succeed versus celebrating the fact that we've built these global brands. Second thing is the word magic. And I talk about the magic of, you know, your grandparent, your parents, the magic of the sunshine showing up every time you drew Kate Bretton and you wanted to quit. You've just surrounded yourself with mentorship and love and people to believe in you. And I think when you chase purpose and you chase positivity and possibility and passion, you need to have that in your corner. And I think it's a lesson in life for all of us to surround yourself with people to believe in you and want you to succeed versus want to hold you back because maybe your eye shining and your heart beating is something they either don't understand or are envious of. And the last thing is the art of serendipity. You know, the harder I work, the luckier I got. You can have those passion pursuit, but at the same time, it takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of dedication. As you said, my overnight success to 20 years, so all of that more about, I just, you know, I knew I was gonna enjoy this interview 'cause I love the game of golf and I love what you're doing, but I don't even think this is about golf anymore. This is about what the world needs. - Guy Nicholson, who used to be an editor at the Globe Mail, wrote a piece about Cabot Cliffs when it opened and he said he was talking about the fabric of Kate Bretton and Bill Kour, who's our wonderful golf course architect with Ben Crenshaw, who we would get to work with again and Saint Lucia said, you know, this really is a celebration of Kate Bretton. You know, it's about celebrating the special places we have in this country and most importantly, celebrating the people in those places and I can't get a job doing anything else, Tony, so I'm gonna get back to work and keep doing that. - Joining me now is Chris Ronald. He's a regional president for Atlantic Canada at RBC. He's been on chatter that matters before. What I'm particularly happy with is after spending a couple of years with his hand on the rudder of RBC's Caribbean operations, he's finding his way back to Atlantic Canada because this guy is an impact banker and boy, the Canadians need to have people that are capable of making an impact. So Chris, that's quite an introduction and welcome back to Chatted The Matters. - Hi, Tony, you know, it's so great to be here and as you know, I'm a huge fan of your work and your podcast and in particular, you know, your passion for a stronger Canada. Chris, before I get into talking about tourism and the circle economy, what astonished me working with RBC is how much you go beyond banking and if you could just give me the highlight reel of what RBC does to support the Atlantic provinces, I think it's knowledge that's not readily known but should be known. - I'll start with employment. You know, RBC would be one of the larger employees in the region, especially when you take into account. We've got 1,200 people that work in the RBC Innovation Hub in Bedford, so that's outside of our main business here in branch and commercial banking. You know, and then RBC pays its fair share of taxes, you know, as we should, which supports federal, provincial and local municipal governments. You know, then I think of the local not-for-profit community organizations, many of which we support, you know, as do other financial institutions. You know, for RBC last year, we gave, you know, $5.4 million in donations, $500,000 in regional sponsorships, and then add almost a $700,000 in community-to-yether grants that RBC gives to its employees for them to give to support the charities that are near and dear to their hearts. It's not just about the money, it's the hours our employees spend in volunteering at these same organizations that is equally important. You know, we are one of the largest, if not the largest, financiers of small, medium and large businesses in this region and across Canada for that matter. You know, it's because of that, you know, we've got the privilege of dealing with many tourism operators, merchants, restaurants, service providers, and we're providing them with the advice to help them start, run, and expand their operations. - I wanna now talk about tourism and the circle economy. Build it and they will come. It's not just tourism, it's other industry. It's young people staying because of purpose and possibility. Is that something that you're seeing in the East Coast? And if so, what does an entity like RBC do to add sort of that passion to that fire, capital to that fire? - You know, I think it starts with our people. Local matters, they're part of the community and they're there to support individuals and businesses. And knowing the community and being part of the community, I believe is really key, you know? And I'll give you an example. So we've got a branch in West Pubnico and West Pubnico is a small community at the Southwestern tip of Nova Scotia. You know, it's got one of the largest commercial fishing fleets in Atlantic Canada. And the fact that RBC is there supporting these clients and the fishing industry matters. You know, we know them and the uniqueness of their industry. And I was there two weeks ago and the clients told me exactly that. You know, the advice we provide, I believe it's second to none. You know, we hire the best and their goal is to really know their clients. We're hearing good times and more importantly in tough times to help our clients turn their ideas into reality, whether that's saving for retirement, putting their kids through school, taking a bucket list trip, or as you, you know, talked about helping them start, run or expand their businesses. - And talk to me about this sense of place, this beautiful landscape called Eastern Canada. It's gonna have a magnetic force. It's gonna attract others. It's not just the question of, can I make money on a golf course or make money on an end? Can this end support regenerative farming? Can this golf course support the tourism schools? Canada's future might not be trying to solve everything at once, but creating a series of places across Canada that in fact, when they start resonating, what it does is starts revitalizing our economy. - I've been in and pronounced Nova Scotia. I believe that Ben has, has created magic there. You know, it's one of my favorite places on earth. One of the top golf experiences worldwide, creating a destination where people want to come and people want to grow their economies, bring their businesses from a tourism perspective. You know, it is the seeds that is generating more and more economic growth, took risks. You know, risks that many would have said that wouldn't have been successful. Those seeds are showing that entrepreneurs can, and you know, RBC, the fact that we are in many of these small communities, we have the opportunity to end up taking these seeds and helping these customers grow with their ideas. RBC has this campaign called Your Ideas Happen Here. How open, honestly, is an organization the size of RBC to having these entrepreneurs come in and going, I have this idea that the dreams and imaginations of Canadians are welcome when you walk through our doors. - Ideas do happen here. You know, I think right now, Atlantic Canada is having its day. People are choosing from all around the world to come to Atlantic Canada. What has impressed me the most of, you know, coming back to Halifax is just the different languages that are spoken on the boardwalk here in Halifax that wouldn't have happened four, five, six years ago. To make their dreams happen here, help them start their businesses, helping them find the home of their dreams. And it's really exciting. - I'm thrilled you're back there. Hopefully you'll make your way back to Toronto this summer and we can have a round of golf. - I look forward to that, Tony. Once again, a special thanks to RBC for supporting Chata That Matters. It's Tony Chapman. Thanks for listening and let's chat soon.