What makes a person start a business? What makes a person want to manage or lead a business? Is it circumstance or by design? Do we do it for love or money? Why would someone want this extra responsibility?
There are as many different answers as there are people. Some are pursuing a passion. Some are pursuing wealth. Others want freedom. Most just want to be the boss.
Whatever the reason, I believe that most business owners and managers never really know how much is involved in keeping a business afloat and steady through a storm. If they did, they would be doing something else.
I know for me, that certainly was what happened through my business life. I could have never imagined the improbable path that I would take simply because I wanted to make money.
I always thought that my life would go up and up; that it would follow a logical progression of success. It didn’t seem like a big stretch. Parents, teachers, and all of the advertising in the world said, “If you study hard and work hard then life will reward you.” To a certain extent, up until the age of 23, this had been true for me.
It was a very proud day when I got accepted into law school. It had been a long journey; not only for me, but for my entire family. For both my father and my mother, education meant everything. All of my grandparents had only finished third grade. My father had only an eighth-grade education and, my mother had dropped out of high school to get married. Now, being the first person on both sides of the family to go to law school was an incredible achievement for all of us. The family was advancing. We had moved out of the fields and factories and into the halls of power and adjudication.
Most of my family were farmers in Central Italy. Mostly with grain but they were surrounded by the usual suspects found in barns: chickens, sheep, pigs, and cows. Post-WWII, after facing many years of austerity, they went seeking a better life. They moved to Southern Ontario, Canada, and took jobs in the auto factories and construction industry. It was a family of workers. They believed in working hard and being productive. There was no such thing as “just hanging out.” From morning to night, you either had to be at a job or at school. It was a strong work ethic that was borne out of hunger, war, and loss. It was a belief that you had an obligation to yourself and the entire extended family to work and study hard. This was an environment where we were constantly learning. When I wasn’t in school, I could be helping my father and grandfather mix cement, build a wall or a sidewalk, put shingles on a roof, change brakes on a car, landscape the yard. Or, I could be helping my mother make pasta and bread each week, pick and can tomatoes, peppers, pickles, peaches…and, essentially anything that could be grown and preserved. From the age of eight, I was helping to make wine and prosciutto. By the time I was 14, I was studying algebra at school and then learning to measure with a string line. I could calculate the angles and grade of a new driveway or new sod in a yard with either my calculator or 50 feet of twine. It was a wonderful balance between reading books and learning to work with my hands.
We were no longer farmers but we still lived close to the earth. I learned how to grow, how to salvage, and also how to kill. From my earliest memories, I was taught the entire circle of life. It began by starting at the very end of another life – by shoveling manure; anything from pigs, sheep, or horse. Each had a distinct effect on what was needed for our soil and garden. If you want good tomatoes and zucchini, you better know what your sheep had for lunch.
I shoveled, turned soil, planted, watered, weeded, and waited for nature to produce something all of us could eat. Most kids played baseball and soccer in the summer; I played farmer. And, when I wasn’t gardening, I was helping my parents butcher an animal. Today, for most, this sounds like a brutal and foreign phenomena. However, for me and my family, it was just what we did for food. Chickens, rabbits, goats, pigs, cows, fish, and even, once, a moose were slaughtered, gutted, and butchered at our home. It was messy, smelly, and sometimes repugnant, but it was food. It was life. It’s what we did to survive and get by with little money.
We weren’t statistically poor but we certainly didn’t have much to spare. I learned not to waste anything. Old nails were straightened out. Branches from a willow tree were used to bind wood. There was no such thing as “scrap.” We were always told “it may be useful someday.” Everything from food to clothing was shared with the extended family as well as neighbors. Every August there was a procession of boxes filled with children’s clothes. Before school started, our moms would pass the older kids’ clothes to the younger kids. I wore most of my cousin’s clothes until I was 14. At the time, it didn’t really bother me that they weren’t from a store; they were still new to me.
My family arrived in Canada with not more than a couple of suitcases, but their work ethic kept us all moving forward and upward, one step at a time. We spent the first five years of my life living with my grandparents. Then my parents bought their own house. By the time I was 10, we were able to buy a new car for the first time, right off the dealership lot. By age 11, we got a dryer for our clothes. At 12, central air-conditioning. At 14, I was allowed to buy new clothes for school. In my mind, this was living the high life. The formula worked. Stick together, help each other, and keep at it. And, that’s exactly what I did all the way until I reached the crowning moment: law school.
I received praise and accolades far and wide. The well-wishes extended through many neighborhoods and as far back as Italy. My parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts all had the same feeling—“we’ve arrived.”
There was only one problem: I now hated the notion of practicing law. It had been a long journey, but it was ruined for me the first day of orientation week.
I sat in the auditorium with 144 classmates, eagerly awaiting an inspirational speech from one of the most successful attorneys in the city. This portly, well-suited man stood in front of the class, and his first words were, “The law is a jealous mistress.” A what? A who? Mistress? What the hell is he talking about? I think he meant minstrel. A poet, a singer. It had to be a minstrel.
He continued. “She will always call you back. She won’t let you leave her side. You will abandon family and friends for her. She will seduce you to a point of insanity. But, in the end, you will be a better lawyer for her.”
Yeah, he meant mistress.
Shit.
Unbelievable. I had worked tirelessly for years to try to get to this place. Days, weeks, months, YEARS stuck in a library, morning to night. For this? To work at something where I would alienate friends and family—for what? A big bag of gold for a girlfriend?
What a disappointment.
From that moment on, I pretty much mentally checked out. I would still go to classes because I loved studying law, but the more I learned about the realities of practicing law the more I hated it. It was a life consumed with splitting words and phrases and billing as many hours as you possibly could before you died. I knew that there had to be more to life than being chained to a desk, sifting through piles of legal briefs, carefully logging my billable hours in increments of 10 minutes, constantly looking for colorful ways to tell clients I am adding value and worth every penny I charge them. There had to be a better option.
Then one day, before the end of my first year of law school, a brand-new opportunity presented itself. I came across a flyer on a bulletin board advertising a program studying the implications of having a common European Market (the EU) that would go into effect in 1992. It was a joint program between the University of Manchester, England and the Moscow Institute of International Affairs, Soviet Union. I knew nothing about any of these places or about any common business market, but I figured that it was really far away and that it was really different than law, so I would try it.
Without much planning or fanfare, in the summer of 1991, I found myself in Moscow, USSR. The Soviet Union was both fascinating and disturbing. It was fascinating because I actually felt like I was behind a curtain, probably more of a cement one than iron. No matter where you turned, the city felt distant and closed off. Prior to this trip, I knew nothing about Russians or communism. What little I knew came from watching movies like Top Gun and Rocky IV. I also knew that the Russians were our “mortal enemies.” The Great Soviet Union was a leader in all things: space exploration, athletics, medicine, science, engineering, and, of course, chess and ballet. They were the other superpower; the counterbalance to America.
I’m not sure what I expected to see when I arrived in Moscow, but I should have had a clue while I was in Manchester. Before we left England, the Russian students filled multiple suitcases with toiletries such as toothpaste, soap, shampoo, lotions, and creams; ordinary and basic items that we can find at any pharmacy or grocery store in the United States. I found it a bit odd, but I just thought they just wanted different products—things they couldn’t find in their country. However, now that I was actually in Moscow, I realized that they couldn’t find any products. None. The few stores that I did come across were barren. It wasn’t only the stores, however; the entire city seemed like a ghost town. There were people and many buildings, but everyone and everything seemed to be shadows of themselves. There was only a whiff of spirit and soul. There was little color and no advertising or neon signs. In every direction there were endless rows of large, cement buildings.
As I walked around, I noticed that the city was spotless. Then it dawned on me that it was so clean because there was nothing to throw away. There were no bags, paper cups, or candy bar wrappers. I walked past an open plaza. I saw 30 people lined up in front of a vending machine. As I got closer, I stopped to watch a very unusual process. When people reached the vending machine, they put in a coin and pressed a button, and water would come down into a five-ounce glass. They would swirl the water around and then throw it out. They’d place the glass back down and press another button, and the glass would be filled with Pepsi. They drank their soda and left the glass for the next person. They were so poor that there was a shortage on materials like tin and glass. I just stared and wondered, This is a superpower?” We were afraid of these guys? Later I would come to understand that there was good reason to fear them; they spent 35% of their GDP on military expenditures.
Meanwhile, the citizens walked around with “just in case” bags. There were so few products in the stores that they bartered for anything they needed. To accommodate a possible purchase, they always carried a bag “just in case” they found something to buy or trade.
My school program was being offered by one of Moscow’s top academic institutions. MGIMO, as it was known, was reserved for the best and brightest of high-ranking Soviet Party members. As such, we were treated very well. Each night, we were offered their very best in dining and entertainment. Their music showed signs of life from their rich and dramatic history. Unfortunately, however, their food options couldn’t hide the ugly reality of the poverty running through the country. Each meal generally consisted of butter, pumpernickel bread, and a small piece of tough and fatty beef. That was their best, so I was grateful. Fortunately, there seemed to be no shortage of caviar and vodka. I had never tried caviar prior to this trip, so I wouldn’t know how to distinguish good from bad. I only knew that it was some semblance of food and that there were three-pound tins on every table.
Our accommodations were as drab and desolate as the rest of the city. My room had the added benefit of being absolutely infested with cockroaches. There were so many roaches that they were pouring out of the sink and bathtub drains. I could not turn on the water without having dozens of cockroaches come pouring out. It was a disgusting stream of black, shiny, creepy-crawly things racing to save their lives. It was intolerable. However, in a desperate attempt to have some semblance of peace when I slept, I bought several bottles of vodka to use as a disinfectant. The vodka smelled and tasted like pure rubbing alcohol. I would periodically wipe down all of the walls and floors just to keep them off of me and my clothes.
Most nights, to avoid going back to my room, I would stay at the restaurant. One night, after having drunk a little too much, I found myself on the subway with a couple of my classmates. They were from South Carolina and they loved Jimmy Buffet. Being young and happy, we were having a good time singing “Margaritaville” on the train ride back to our dormitory. I hadn’t noticed those standing around me or others seated, but they certainly were paying attention to us. Unannounced, an old man in a ragged gray coat rose from his seat and lunged at me with a long knife. I didn’t see him until he was a couple of inches from my chest. Fortunately for me, one of my new friends was an ex-Marine. He saw the old man and pulled me out of the way at the last minute.
The old man sat back down, grumbling something in Russian. I looked at him and said, “I’m sorry.” He had tried to stab me in the chest with a five-inch knife, but somehow I felt like I had it coming to me. I felt bad for him. I could sense that there was some greatness that had once existed in Russia but now it was gone and now there were talks about another revolution and taking down all remnants of the Soviet Empire. A cultural, political, and economic change was coming that seemed very promising to many people. But to others, like this older gentleman, it meant erasing everything he had ever known. He and others like him thought, You told us we were the greatest. Why now do we have to change? Now, in front of him, instead of a quiet ride home on a subway, he had to listen to young idiots singing songs he didn’t know. If I were him, I might have wanted to stab me, too.
The program ended, and I left Moscow not really knowing what to make of it. A few weeks later a first coup attempt was launched against the government. Boris Yeltsin sent tanks into Red Square. By the end of the year, the Soviet Union was dissolved, and it was replaced with a democratic and capitalistic model of government under the name Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
Soon thereafter, I was back in Canada when I received a telephone call from one of my Russian classmates. He asked me if I would help him start a business. He really didn’t know what type of business to start; he just knew that he wanted to be a “capitalist.”
He presented me with a wide range of options: aluminum, oil, cars, furs, and bee pollen. It was very exciting because it didn’t seem like there was a limit to the possibilities. Russia, in particular, was barren. They needed every possible consumer item for the home, but they also needed to rebuild their infrastructure. They needed electricity, roads, garbage removal, and gas stations. After a long and positive conversation, I ended by telling him, “This is all great. I just need to think about a few things.”
The reality is that I didn’t know anything about business. I didn’t even know where to start. As much as I didn’t like the idea of practicing law, in my mind, it was guaranteed employment. This opportunity with the Russians sounded interesting, but who knew where it would lead? It could be a big waste of time.
I was back in school, but still debating this opportunity, when I read an article in the local paper that said that the first Italian Canadian had been appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada. As an Italian, I found this exciting. My family and friends had dinner parties all of the time, so I thought, Let’s have one for the judge. Not knowing any better or thinking twice about it, I immediately wrote him a letter and invited him to our city for a dinner. Within two weeks I got a letter from him saying, “Thank you for the kind words and the invitation, but I will be unable to attend a dinner.” I was amused but also annoyed, thinking, Who doesn’t want a dinner party in their honor? I then went to the dean of the university, a former dean of the Faculty of Law and a fellow Italian. I told him my thoughts. He liked the idea and immediately said, “I know Frank. I’ll call him.” I thought “Wow. He calls him by his first name. Cool.” I said, “Thank you,” and left his office. Two days later the dean called me at home and said, “Okay, kid, he’s coming in six weeks. He’ll be here for three days. Make the arrangements and tell me where I need to be.” And then he hung up.
I was smiling but I was very confused. I had requested a dinner, not a three-day visit, and I didn’t say that I would organize it. I thought it was a good idea, but I thought someone else would do it. Someone with more experience in these matters. What did I know about planning a dinner party like this? I only knew how to show up and eat, and now I had to figure out what to do with him for three days. What do you do with a Supreme Court judge for three days? I didn’t have a clue. But fortunately, I was Italian, and I had a big family. Someone would have the answers.
I had an uncle who ran an Italian dinner and cultural club. He routinely hosted parties for more than a thousand people, so he walked me through the entire punch list of tasks. He prepared an extensive menu from the judge’s home province in Italy, so that part was done. Next, I had to make sure that a lot of people came to the dinner. I had a cousin who was president of the Italian Business Association. I went to him and asked for help and he moved their monthly meeting to the same night as this dinner. With this move, I instantly had a few hundred people in attendance—all prominent professionals and businessmen in the community. I then needed to further elevate the dinner environment so proceeded to call every politician I could across the region—federal, provincial, and local. I offered them free tickets and the seat location of their choice. Everyone accepted. Politicians never miss an opportunity to raise funds and smile for the camera.
With dinner taken care of, I quickly filled in the other time slots. It was easier than I thought; they came to me. Everyone wanted to be close to the justice. The Canadian ambassador to Italy wanted to host a party, and so did the dean of the university and the Law Society and Student Council. The agenda was complete. I could now exhale.
A couple of weeks later, I picked him up at the airport. I met a very humble, generous, and astutely intelligent man named Justice Frank Iacobucci. I spent three days chauffeuring and escorting him to speaking engagements and dinner parties. It was grand. People fawned and showered him with praise. Rooms filled with well-heeled and well-connected folks. Everyone ate from small plates but drank from large glasses. They were elegant and confident and looked to be enjoying life. The closer I stood to the justice, the greater the respect I was shown. All of a sudden, I am no longer a lowly, broke student. I’m in rarified air. People thought I was special since I was his personal valet. I did nothing to dispel their assumptions. It was time to move forward and upward. In these three days, I met countless lawyers, businessmen, and politicians. It was the perfect environment for a student to be recruited for a dream job. In many of these places, I was the only student among all of these professionals. I decided to network the room, presenting myself in the best manner possible. I tried to act like I had been in this crowd of people my entire life. And, it worked. Over and over, I was handed business cards with a smile and a friendly invite: “Come see me, kid. We could use someone like you.” Sometimes life is awesome.
In this newly discovered, magical world, I also met a stoic and affable man named Herb Gray. At the time, Mr. Gray was the longest standing politician in Canada. He had been in public office since 1962. I sat next to him during the night of the honorary dinner for the justice. We had an easy rapport. That evening he invited me to meet with him for a breakfast the next morning. I was busy with the justice but I agreed to meet him early, before the day filled.
We met and he wasted no time asking me if I wanted to join him in the world of politics. He explained to me that I had the perfect combination of presence, education, and cultural background for a tremendous career as a politician. It was very flattering but I told him that I wasn’t interested in that type of work. Of course, at the time, I didn’t actually know what I was saying “no” to. I knew absolutely nothing about politics other than all of the ugly signs they posted on front lawns every couple years. I knew he was important but I was too young and naïve to understand how rare an offer like this was.
Mr. Gray and I would continue a cordial relationship for about 10 years, meeting for meals or exchanging letters of correspondence with one another. A few years after our initial meeting, he became deputy prime minister of Canada. I visited him in Canada’s capital, Ottawa. He smiled and said, “There’s still room for you if you’re interested.” Unfortunately, I still had to pass. He was a good man.
Nonetheless, in early 1992, still in my surreal days, surrounded by luminaries and power, I was confused about my future. I now had too many options. In a matter of a couple years I had gone from killing chickens in my parents’ basement to being courted by lawyers, businessmen, and politicians. I wasn’t sure which path to take and I was still undecided about Russia. I owed them an answer. Two months had passed, and I had not responded to them. They tried to call me a couple of times, but I was too busy with all of the planning for the justice. I didn’t like the notion of practicing law, but I really did like hanging out with all of these people. They treated me nicely and ate a lot of expensive food. I was certain that I could get a job with someone in the stack of business cards that were given to me. After all, that was the goal—to get a good job that brought in money. I was tired of having just enough to get by. And, I was certainly tired of being a student.
Then there was Justice Iacobucci. He was different than everyone else. He was engaging and welcoming with everyone he met, but it was almost as if he were invisible. By design, he blended seamlessly with whatever room he was in at the time.
We spent a lot of time together alone, and I filled it by asking him endless questions about his work. The most fascinating response for me was to the question, “How does it feel knowing that your decisions will affect the entire country?” Very patiently and calmly he replied, “It weighs on me heavily. It’s a great responsibility. For that reason, I don’t intend to be on the Supreme Court bench for longer than 10 years. The country needs perspectives other than mine.” That was incredible to me. He had a lifetime appointment, but he was choosing to walk away after 10 years because he thought it was the right thing to do. This certainly was a different way of thinking than most lawyers I had met.
By the third day, I decided to tell him about my offer from the Russians. I also felt comfortable getting his opinion on law firms and perhaps the prospect of clerking for him at the Supreme Court of Canada. From my viewpoint, now was the time to get clarity. In my mind, there was no one better than him to give me an informed opinion on all of these areas. He understood the immigrant journey, the importance of education and prosperity. And, he understood the practice of law.
He listened patiently to all of my questions and then spoke to me about his life’s path. He began by telling me that he wasn’t a great student and that he was only able to get his first job at a law firm because his girlfriend was an excellent student. She told the law firm that if they wanted her, they needed to hire him as well. She would also later become his wife. He went on and on, telling me about all of the different jobs he had, including: a law school dean, in government, in private practice, etc. He then smiled and quoted a famous American lawyer, Oliver Wendell Holmes: “Anything is great if it is greatly pursued.” He then told me to do whatever I wanted to do but just to be great at it.
I dropped him off at the airport and waved goodbye. Then I drove around the city for hours thinking about being great.
I woke up the next morning and thought, If a Supreme Court judge is telling me that it’s okay not to practice law, then it’s okay. I’m going to try this business thing.
Just like that, my life took another path and I would forgo a career in law. I would forgo the logical path to becoming the first lawyer in my family, forgo a possible job at the Supreme Court, and walk away from all of this certainty and prestige. Instead, I would start at the bottom again. Not just at the bottom of anywhere, but at the bottom in a former enemy country, located 5,000 miles away. It was a country in which people were starving and coup attempts had taken place; a country in which there was tremendous uncertainty, frustration, and anger amongst the people. It was also a place where that anger had boiled over and someone had already tried to stab me with a knife. Despite all of that, I still decided it was the better path. I saw opportunity and I was going to pursue it greatly.
I just had a few more obstacles in my great pursuit. For one thing, I had virtually no money, maybe a thousand dollars in my bank account. I had a part-time job, but I needed that money for daily expenses. I had a couple of department store credit cards but only with a $500 limit. I didn’t speak Russian and I knew nothing of communism or Russian history. My potential partner and his friends knew nothing about capitalism. Their currency, the ruble, was not convertible on the open market; it could only be used in their country. And, most importantly, I knew nothing about starting or running a business—any business. I had no formal or practical business education other than a couple courses in economics. I had never taken accounting or finance courses. I had a degree in Sociology. I was a full-time law student and I was working part-time as an assistant childcare worker at the Children’s Aid Society. Despite all of this, I thought, Let’s try. It’s amazing what you will do when you think you have nothing to lose. I actually had nothing physical to lose. If it didn’t work out, I thought that I could always go practice law.
I would spend the next couple of months trying to figure out how to start a business, what to do, and how to get paid. I spent countless hours in libraries combing over textbooks on business as well as phone books. I researched everything I could and called anyone who might be able to help me start an international business. I knew nothing about banking and finance, so I visited a lot of bankers. I told them that I wanted to start a company and asked if I could borrow money to do so. They asked me about my collateral. I wasn’t really sure what “collateral” meant because the only thing that I owned were milk crates full of books and a duffle bag of clothing. I had been in college for six years at that point, and I had just enough money to get by. Many of the bankers laughed at me but a few had sympathy. I would ask them for advice and they would say, “Do what you know.” I was 24 and the only thing I knew about from being a student was pizza and beer.
After searching for options, I took the bankers’ advice. I chose the most obvious path: I decided to export beer, meat, and cheese from North America to Russia. It was 1992, the time of long lines for bread and any kind of food. People were hungry, so it seemed like a good place to start—I would be matching a need in the business world with my “expertise.”
The next challenge came in trying to figure out how we would actually buy this product. My contacts in Russia only had access to rubles, and that currency was only valid within their country. We explored different kinds of barter scenarios, but no one was interested. American beer companies didn’t want to be paid in bee pollen—they wanted US funds.
At a certain point, I was ready to give up. We couldn’t figure out how to buy the product—it was just too complicated. Finally, I said to my counterparts in Moscow, “If you want to do business here, you need to get me American dollars. I don’t care how you do it, but that’s the only way.” I hung up thinking that was the end of my entrepreneurial adventure. Two weeks later, I received a fax from my partners in Russia that stated, “Check your bank account. Please tell us the amount of the wire that you received.” I went to the bank and I was stunned. In my account was a deposit of $200,000. It was incredible. That account had never seen more than a couple of thousand dollars in all of my years as a student.
The next task brought another challenge. I thought it would be fun to spend $200,000, but it turned out to be a huge pain. I wanted to buy meat, but no one would take a meeting with me. No one took me seriously. The moment I said “Russia” people hung up. By this time in the economic cycle, there was a mad rush of companies trying to ship products to the former Soviet Union. Many were trying but many would fail, principally because of rampant theft and fraud. In the eyes of older businessmen, I was just a kid. They assu