From Single Mom to Billion Dollar Book Business | Heather Reisman (Founder & CEO, Indigo)

Harley Finkelstein (00:00):
Live from Startupfest in Montreal, this is Big Shot.

David Segal (00:04):
We're here for our first Big Shot, live here in Montreal, a city of entrepreneurs.

Harley Finkelstein (00:08):
Different venue, different setting, as you can see, we're in a green room right now.

David Segal (00:11):
We're live.

Harley Finkelstein (00:12):
We are live. We're in a green room right now at the back of Startupfest in Montreal, our first ever live taping in front of a studio audience for Big Shot.

David Segal (00:20):
And where better to be than Montreal, this city, it has this rich, immigrant entrepreneurial culture.

Harley Finkelstein (00:26):
Yeah. Now all of you have probably heard about Indigo, the bookstore, there's 200 stores, right?

David Segal (00:31):
Yeah, a billion in sales.

Harley Finkelstein (00:32):
What you probably have not heard is how Heather Reisman built this company brick by brick with strategy and acquisitions and capital and figuring out all these different techniques to grow. But at the core of it all, it's her deep understanding of the consumer. She built a business, a billion-dollar business, based on her own interests, right?

David Segal (00:53):
And then she gives us that cheat code for the two things that really lead to success.

Harley Finkelstein (00:57):
That's right, yeah.

David Segal (00:57):
And how she came throughout her career, a series of missteps, to realize this was the essence of what was going to make her successful.

Harley Finkelstein (01:04):
Same time, even though she's this incredible entrepreneur, and she's so aggressive about how she builds, she always has time for family, she talks about her 11 grandchildren, she talks about her love and her relationship with her husband and how they collaborate and strategize together. This episode is amazing. Ladies and gentlemen, Heather Reisman.

David Segal (01:35):
Heather Reisman.

Harley Finkelstein (01:35):
All right, funny story, we're the only podcast on the planet, let me break it down, let me break it down, we're the only podcast on the planet that actually licensed that song from Drake. So Started from the Bottom is actually licensed to us.

David Segal (01:52):
That's right.

Harley Finkelstein (01:53):
And that in itself is a great story.

(01:56):
Before we start, show of hands in the room if when you were growing up, you had a poster on your wall of an athlete or an actor or a celebrity. Okay, quite a few of you. David and I did not. When we were growing up, on our walls we had photos and clippings and articles of entrepreneurs. David and I pray at the altar of entrepreneurship and have our entire lives.

(02:22):
And a few years ago, we, for one reason or another, because of Shopify and DAVIDsTEA and all this stuff, we began to meet some of the most iconic entrepreneurs on the planet. We decided we would start recording these sit down, these coffee chats, learning about where they come from and how they've built these incredible businesses and empires.

(02:46):
Now, two things came up for us. The first one was, those are our people, those are our stories. David and I are proud Jewish entrepreneurs. So the idea of interviewing other Jewish entrepreneurs was mind-blowing. But the second thing was that all of these people that we interviewed started from absolutely nothing. In fact, some of them started from living in displaced persons camps, people like Eddie Sonshine, who goes on to create the modern day REIT and build RioCan. Or Issy Sharp who created the Four Seasons Hotel. Or Fran Weissler who basically created modern Broadway and created Chicago.

(03:24):
So we put out this podcast about two years ago called Big Shot. And to our incredible surprise and delight, it's become one of the biggest business podcasts on the planet. So I think bashert is the term to use that we'd be coming here to Montreal where my family started their journey and so did David's.

David Segal (03:42):
Yeah, we got to pause there, we never thought, I mean, we're filming our first live Big Shot here in Montreal. Montreal is a dynamic city built by immigrants. Harley's grandfather sold eggs at the Jean-Talon Market. My family came here at the turn of the century and started a clothing business on Chabanel called Peerless Clothing, that became a big business. And entrepreneurship is deep within the roots of the Jewish culture. And these stories, there are a lot of great immigrant cultures that have great entrepreneurs, but these are our stories. They have timeless wisdom, endless learnings. And we're here today to share them with you.

Harley Finkelstein (04:21):
With one of the best entrepreneurs ever.

David Segal (04:22):
Best entrepreneurs in Canada, one of the best ever. All of you know her, you've read her books, you've followed her picks. She has a company with over 200 stores, a billion dollars in sales. She's an incredible, incredible entrepreneur who's had an impactful career. Her philanthropy is-

Harley Finkelstein (04:40):
Iconic.

David Segal (04:41):
... iconic. She's helped build hospitals and helped with schools. And we're going to hear all about her today and everything she has to tell us, so the inside stories and all the trials and tribulations along the way.

Harley Finkelstein (04:52):
And all of you who are here for the first ever live viewing, live audience of Big Shot. Thank you for being here, thank you for listening. And ladies and gentlemen, Heather Reisman.

David Segal (05:14):
Welcome to Big Shot, Heather.

Heather Reisman (05:16):
I'm so glad to be here in my own hometown. As a matter of fact, you were telling stories about your parents. My grandfather sharpened skates for the Montreal Canadiens.

David Segal (05:26):
Oh, that's cool.

Heather Reisman (05:26):
There's my connection.

David Segal (05:28):
That's great. So we usually like to start right at the beginning with Big Shot, we take it right back to what it was like growing up in the Reisman household.

Heather Reisman (05:37):
So I grew up in a household, four kids, my parents. We had a wonderfully close-knit family. Dinner at our house was always a raucous affair. We discussed all kinds of things, the events of the day in our own lives, the events of the day in the world. We followed the evolution of Israel very closely. But I was blessed, I had a kind of Leave it to Beaver growing up.

Harley Finkelstein (06:06):
What does that mean?

Heather Reisman (06:08):
Oh, yeah, oh, gosh, I'm so old. Nobody even knows who Leave it to Beaver-

Harley Finkelstein (06:10):
You're not that old, we want to go into it.

David Segal (06:13):
Remind for the audience.

Heather Reisman (06:14):
No, of course, of course. Anybody old enough to remember Leave it to Beaver?

Harley Finkelstein (06:17):
My mom's right there by the way.

Heather Reisman (06:19):
Leave it to Beaver was this program, I guess, in the '60s, and this joyful family. You'd never find it today, everybody's dysfunctional. And dysfunctionality is kind of a badge of honor. Anyway, I had that kind of growing up.

(06:32):
But I think, to the discussion today, what was most significant is, although my dad was a good successful businessman, my mom chose to work. So even though I'm one of four, my mom chose to work. And remember, I am old, so that's a long time ago. Sort of old. So she chose to work at a time when if your husband earned a good living, women didn't work. And my mom wanted to work. And my dad was hugely supportive of her decision to work for her own creative expression.

(07:13):
And every now and then, one of his friends would say, "But doesn't it worry you that sometimes she won't be home for dinner or she travels to Europe for work, and who's going to make you dinner?" And his answer, which I heard repeated many times in different ways, was, "I can get somebody to help me make dinner, but I can't be married to someone as interesting as your mother for all the tea in China."

(07:38):
So I grew up thinking that I could be a good wife, a good mom, and follow any additional dreams I had without thinking that was odd. And then the other thing I remember from when I was growing up that I think is relevant to this story. When I was about 15, my brother was 18, he was just beginning McGill. And one of the things my dad did, as they were doing all their shopping just before getting ready for school, he bought him a pipe. Because my dad always had a pipe. He thought better with a pipe-

Harley Finkelstein (08:19):
Tobacco pipe, just to be clear.

Heather Reisman (08:19):
Tobacco, yes.

Harley Finkelstein (08:20):
Different now, yeah.

Heather Reisman (08:21):
Yeah, exactly. It wasn't vaping, it was smoking. So he bought him a pipe. And I was always intrigued with all of the activity around a pipe. If you have a pipe and you're putting in tobacco and you're tamping it down, I always found it interesting. And I said to my dad, "I want a pipe." And he said-

Harley Finkelstein (08:41):
You're 15 years old?

Heather Reisman (08:41):
I was 15.

Harley Finkelstein (08:42):
Okay.

Heather Reisman (08:43):
He said, "Sweetie, I understand that, but you're a bit young." The next night he came home and he had this beautiful white meerschaum pipe, a ladies pipe. And he said, "You're too young to smoke now, but put it away and when you're 18, if you want to try it, go for it."

Harley Finkelstein (09:03):
He seems like he always encouraged you to pursue the thing that you were interested in.

Heather Reisman (09:06):
Exactly, exactly. Both my parents, I think the most, among the most valuable things that they transferred to me was a deep belief in family, but also a belief that you could follow your dreams and that your dreams would not be constrained by whether you were male or female or anything in between.

David Segal (09:30):
Do you think we still encourage our kids in the same way today? I mean, so much has changed. Is it still by modeling and by encouraging in those ways? I mean, my kid came to me and asked for a pipe right now, who's 14 years old, I'd say, "You're crazy."

Harley Finkelstein (09:41):
I'll buy him a pipe.

Heather Reisman (09:45):
Listen, I think, how you choose to do it, I can't comment on that. What I do believe is kids are a reflection of what they see. Just as we are all a reflection of what we see and experience. And kids in particular, the things you model when your children are young create the deepest brain impressions. I mean, your wife's a neuroscientist, I'm sure she'll tell you that.

David Segal (10:13):
She does.

Heather Reisman (10:13):
That the deepest impressions in your brain happen when you're young or in some deeply affecting experience.

Harley Finkelstein (10:21):
Let's go back to when you were young and you were sitting at your mom's store, it was a jewelry store, I believe, right?

Heather Reisman (10:26):
No, it was a clothing store.

Harley Finkelstein (10:27):
A clothing store. Clothing store, and you worked at that store?

Heather Reisman (10:30):
I did.

Harley Finkelstein (10:30):
What did you do there?

Heather Reisman (10:32):
I folded things, I sold things, I tidied up the office, I did whatever she asked me to.

Harley Finkelstein (10:40):
And did you like that environment, did you like being around?

Heather Reisman (10:43):
I did, I did, I did, I did.

Harley Finkelstein (10:44):
And watching your mom be an entrepreneur?

Heather Reisman (10:46):
Yeah, I did, I did like it. Actually, my dad bought the store, he was in real estate. And it's a long story of how he ended up buying it. But he didn't know what to do with it when he had it. My mom had never worked in retail. But he for sure didn't know what to do. So she decided to help him and it just became a passion for her.

David Segal (11:06):
When did you fall in love with books?

Heather Reisman (11:09):
I think I was around two.

David Segal (11:13):
Two?

Heather Reisman (11:13):
Two, two. And it's another thing I can tell you. Books are my passion and I've always said that Indigo is a combination of passion and destiny. Two is when I can remember being read to. I can remember from the time I was two. But I was only about eight when I used my allowance to join the Book of the Month Club because you got three books for free. Eight or 10, 10, I guess I was 10 because they had these teen books and I was already reading, teen books.

Harley Finkelstein (11:43):
It's kind of a weird thing for an eight-year-old to spend their money-

Heather Reisman (11:47):
10, I was 10. I was actually 10.

Harley Finkelstein (11:47):
A 10-year-old to spend their money on.

Heather Reisman (11:47):
Yeah. So I've been in love with books as long as I can remember. And I have most of my books, I've saved my books, and I have my school books, the books I read when I was a teenager.

David Segal (12:00):
Was this modeled for you as well, were your parents huge readers?

Heather Reisman (12:05):
Yeah, my parents were readers, and in particular my dad, my dad had this special area for the books he was reading or had read. And we used to go, as soon as I was a teenager, a young teenager, we used to go to his shelf of things and pick books. And I was reading, I mean, I read The Fountainhead when I was 13 or 14.

Harley Finkelstein (12:30):
Flex.

Heather Reisman (12:31):
I didn't quite get all of the underlying capitalist story. I mean, I read Herman Wouk, all those books. I read them when I was young. I love books.

David Segal (12:41):
They say that curiosity makes the best entrepreneurs. What do you think about that?

Heather Reisman (12:47):
I think curiosity is actually the key of everything. We hire for curiosity, I'm sure you hire for curiosity. And it's interesting that you mention that because I was together with a man named Daniel Zajfman, who until recently was the president of the Weizmann Institute in Israel, which is one of the great science post-graduate universities. And I was asking him how they recruit their scientists, PhD students and their professors. And he said, "Only on two things, can they demonstrate deep curiosity and do they have intense ability to stick with what they're interested in?" He said, "That's it."

Harley Finkelstein (13:37):
Determination, yeah.

Heather Reisman (13:38):
Determination and curiosity.

Harley Finkelstein (13:39):
Curiosity. I love that.

Heather Reisman (13:39):
Which is the heart of entrepreneurs.

Harley Finkelstein (13:39):
It's kind of perfect-

David Segal (13:41):
Yeah, it makes sense.

Harley Finkelstein (13:41):
It's kind of perfect, the interest and the appetite to explore, but also the ability to stay with it for a longer period of time and not bounce around.

Heather Reisman (13:48):
So I got married. My first biggest dream actually was not to be in business, it was to have children.

Harley Finkelstein (13:57):
That's what you wanted, that was your goal.

Heather Reisman (14:00):
I wanted children. Again, I fell in love with reading and I fell in love with children when I was a child. So I got married-

Harley Finkelstein (14:09):
And smoking pipes.

Heather Reisman (14:10):
... I had two kids.

Harley Finkelstein (14:11):
There she is smoking her pipe, thinking, "I should have kids."

Heather Reisman (14:14):
My pipe, my book, and my kids. Yeah. But I think I really wanted to have children. I'm not so sure about the husband I picked. I thought he was okay at the time, but I really wanted to have children.

Harley Finkelstein (14:28):
Not her current husband, it's her first husband, just want to be clear here.

Heather Reisman (14:28):
Not my current husband. Right.

Harley Finkelstein (14:31):
Those of you that know Jerry.

Heather Reisman (14:32):
We all need a starter something.

David Segal (14:35):
Starter husband.

Heather Reisman (14:36):
Yeah. But I did end up with two amazing kids. But that didn't go so well. And I decided I was going to leave. My husband at the time decided if I was going to leave, I could leave with the kids, but he wasn't going to be doing much on the financial side. So I had to go to work. And I went to work, my brother at the time had a computer company, and he hired me.

Harley Finkelstein (15:05):
What was the job, do you remember what the job was?

Heather Reisman (15:06):
It was called Time.

Harley Finkelstein (15:07):
What was the job that they hired you for?

Heather Reisman (15:09):
Well, they hired me to learn how to program in BASIC. You know what BASIC is?

Harley Finkelstein (15:14):
Yeah, of course.

Heather Reisman (15:15):
Does anybody-

Harley Finkelstein (15:15):
We're not that young.

Heather Reisman (15:17):
So I learned how to code in BASIC. Actually this is a good story.

Harley Finkelstein (15:21):
Tell us.

Heather Reisman (15:22):
I think I learned how to code in BASIC and I was so into it that I was dreaming strings at night. Literally, I was dreaming about it. So I had someone to help me, I had a housekeeper. And I was working, I had to work. And I was so into it. And one day I came in and all my notepads were moved to the reception. And my brother had a partner, and the receptionist had quit, and my brother's partner decided I was losing my job as a coding trainer and I was becoming a receptionist.

Harley Finkelstein (16:00):
Bold move.

David Segal (16:00):
Really?

Heather Reisman (16:01):
Yep.

Harley Finkelstein (16:02):
How did that make you feel?

Heather Reisman (16:03):
I was out the door in half an hour.

Harley Finkelstein (16:05):
Good for you.

Heather Reisman (16:06):
That is a true story.

Harley Finkelstein (16:07):
Good for you.

David Segal (16:08):
What was that phone call with your brother like?

Heather Reisman (16:09):
I needed, that's another story, I needed a job, but I didn't want to work as a receptionist.

Harley Finkelstein (16:20):
And you had high integrity to what you wanted to do.

Heather Reisman (16:22):
And I had been coding by then, I'd been coding for about a year and a half, and I was into it. And the company was a minicomputer company, it was one of the first minicomputer companies just when minicomputers were becoming of interest to small to medium-sized businesses who wanted their financial systems on a computer, their inventory management systems. And I was so interested in it, I was really interested in it. And I was single. And I went out on a date with someone who owned a consulting firm. Again, I don't know how many dates there were, but I got a job.

Harley Finkelstein (17:00):
I mean, it worked obviously.

Heather Reisman (17:00):
I got a job. And I worked for this consulting firm.

Harley Finkelstein (17:07):
What did they consult on?

Heather Reisman (17:08):
So they were doing operating strategy for medium-sized businesses.

David Segal (17:15):
Is this Paradigm?

Heather Reisman (17:16):
No, before Paradigm. They were doing operating strategy for medium-sized businesses. But they had recruited to their organization, a young man who had just finished a Ph.D. at MIT on organization change into the consulting firm. And they had two big clients. Steinberg's, remember Steinberg's?

Harley Finkelstein (17:40):
Homegrown story, yeah.

Heather Reisman (17:41):
Homegrown story. And he was on the Steinberg's account doing organization development. And he and I struck up a friendship. And over the next two and a half years we worked at that firm. He literally, to the best that was possible, he transferred all of his organization development, organization change learning to me, including, he had two thesis advisors, he was MIT's youngest, Sloan school's youngest PhD graduate, a fellow named Mark Gerstein. And he introduced me to his two thesis advisors. I couldn't go back to school, I had kids, I was supporting them. They created study guides for me. It was like my own version of Oxford.

Harley Finkelstein (18:30):
Incredible.

Heather Reisman (18:31):
And I was so into it. And it was the very beginning of organization change, which essentially deals with the application of technology to strategy. So you wonder how the hell did I get into this digital-

Harley Finkelstein (18:47):
I was going to say, now you're doing it all the time.

Heather Reisman (18:51):
That's a whole story. Okay. So anyway, long and short was we left after three years working at this consulting firm, we left and we set up Paradigm. Which was a firm that dealt with strategy and organization change. We were the first organization change firm in the world.

Harley Finkelstein (19:08):
And this was really your first business that you owned yourself.

Heather Reisman (19:11):
And it was my first business. We were partners. And we grew it to have about, at our largest, we were about 18 consultants, which was a good-sized consulting firm.

David Segal (19:24):
Very good sized.

Heather Reisman (19:27):
And then I got recruited to a client.

David Segal (19:29):
But before we go there, I mean, I'm sensing a pattern here, you went through, and we're going to talk about this later on with your experiences in the book business at Indigo, but you went from, I mean, you are not afraid of change, I mean, you went from folding clothes, to being a mother, to learning how to code in BASIC, now to becoming an operation change expert, strategy expert.

Heather Reisman (19:49):
Strategy, yeah.

David Segal (19:51):
How does change feel to you? Many people get anxious when the experience change. You embrace it. So what does that feel like to you? I mean, when you have to move, you've had these major changes throughout your life so far.

Heather Reisman (20:04):
Of course I get anxious when I have to embrace ... everybody does. No, it's a good question and I'm just kibitzing with you. Well, so we had this consulting firm for 16 years. It was a really beautiful firm. And it pioneered a lot of things that are still in use today. And a lot of the clients that we worked with, Canadian clients and a couple of American clients, they still talk about, the leaders that were there then, still talk about the work. So I was very proud of the work that we did. And then I got to this point where I didn't want to consult, I wanted to do. And so I was 46, by this time I had remarried and my kids were on their way to university. And I didn't want to consult.

Harley Finkelstein (20:55):
What was it about consulting that made you ...

Heather Reisman (20:58):
It was a business, but we were working hard with our clients on strategies for them to implement.

Harley Finkelstein (21:03):
And you wanted to implement?

Heather Reisman (21:05):
And I wanted to implement. And that's what happened.

Harley Finkelstein (21:07):
And you ended up going to Cott next I think.

Heather Reisman (21:07):
Yes, yes. And I wanted to implement.

Harley Finkelstein (21:10):
And Cott was a client of Paradigm

Heather Reisman (21:11):
Cott was our client. When they came to us they were a soft drink company.

Harley Finkelstein (21:18):
You guys remember Cott? C-O-T-T. Amazing company.

Heather Reisman (21:21):
Actually started as a Canadian company. And they were a client. They were just beginning to work with President's Choice with Dave Nichol. And they came to our consulting firm to do some work. And I was the lead person on the assignment. And after nine months of work, the founder/CEO offered me a job as president to come and implement. And I really, really, really wanted to implement.

David Segal (21:49):
But you're still an owner in this consulting firm.

Heather Reisman (21:51):
So I sold my part to my partner, who then sold it to a larger consulting firm. And I took this job as a president. And over three years, over a three-year period, and the core concept of what drove the growth was his, was the founder/CEO, but over three years, we grew the company from ... Was roughly 110 million when I went to about 900 million. It was a rocket ship.

David Segal (22:21):
In three years.

Harley Finkelstein (22:21):
Amazing.

David Segal (22:22):
It was a rocket ship story. It was a rocket ship story. But I woke up-

Speaker 4 (22:30):
Ms. Reisman, you give it 200 [inaudible 00:22:34]

David Segal (22:33):
You're in the wrong place, man.

Speaker 4 (22:43):
Stop attacking me, stop attacking me. Ms. Reisman, you're supporting a genocide. Stop attacking me. Why are you putting me to the ground like this?

David Segal (22:47):
This is about entrepreneurship. The rally is down the street.

Heather Reisman (22:50):
Do you want to know the truth?

David Segal (22:51):
No, no.

Heather Reisman (22:51):
Do you want to know the truth?

Speaker 4 (22:52):
Want to know the truth? Yes.

Heather Reisman (22:52):
The truth is-

Speaker 4 (22:53):
Know the truth.

Heather Reisman (22:56):
The truth is, do you want to know the truth?

Speaker 4 (22:59):
I want to know the truth.

Heather Reisman (23:00):
The truth is that we fund-

Speaker 4 (23:02):
Stop assaulting me. Stop assaulting me. She's trying to give me the truth.

Heather Reisman (23:09):
I would give them the truth.

Harley Finkelstein (23:09):
Wrong venue.

David Segal (23:09):
Wrong venue.

Heather Reisman (23:09):
Does anybody want to know the truth?

David Segal (23:13):
Sorry.

Heather Reisman (23:13):
The truth is, we fund education for people with no parents. That's what we do. That's what we do. We fund education for people with no parents at all. But that lie has been perpetrated. So I'm so glad he gave me a chance. I would've chatted with him if he wanted to engage.

Harley Finkelstein (23:34):
And that's the most anti-fragile sort of thing that you took an opportunity like that.

David Segal (23:39):
Yeah, I think you answered my question about change real well, you may have gotten nervous.

Heather Reisman (23:43):
Exactly. Be confident in your role, this is a pivot, we just pivoted.

Harley Finkelstein (23:45):
Well, David said, "Why don't we do more live tapings?" Yeah. All right. Back to our feature presentation.

Heather Reisman (23:56):
I apologize, do I have my back to all of you, are you feeling okay? Do you want me to move my chair slightly? We're okay?

Harley Finkelstein (23:59):
Okay.

Heather Reisman (24:00):
Okay. Anyway, where were we? Okay, so I went to Cott.

Harley Finkelstein (24:05):
So you go from a hundred million to 900 million in three years in top line.

Heather Reisman (24:09):
110 million to 900 million and real margins, that business had margins. But two things were problematic for me. One, the CEO and I shared the excitement about growing a business, but our value system was not exactly aligned. So while he hired me, and I'm a woman, and hugely empowered me, it would not be unusual for him to try and tell a dirty joke in a meeting. And I would go entirely ballistic.

Harley Finkelstein (24:40):
Inappropriate.

Heather Reisman (24:41):
Polity. Yeah, inappropriately. Different style, we had a different style. And he was quite brilliant, but different style. But more importantly, when I did the work at Paradigm, I so believed in our work. There was huge conceptual integrity to the work. It was rooted in real theory and practical application. But there was huge rigor to the work. And I believed in it. At the end of the day, I didn't care how many soft drinks got sold. And by crazy coincidence, almost 30 years later, I ended up making a documentary about the evils of soft drinks.

Harley Finkelstein (25:23):
Full circle.

Heather Reisman (25:24):
Well, if we ever get to that, probably not in an hour, we can't get to that. But I didn't care about the product, it was soft drinks and then there were snacks, it just had no meaning for me.

David Segal (25:34):
Because you went in as an operational?

Heather Reisman (25:36):
Yeah, I was president, and I was on the strategy and then to operate. To operate. And then to your question of being able to manage change, I did the single least effective thing on how to manage change. I built up this sense of frustration and lack of satisfaction, and I walked in one day and I said to the CEO, "I'm really grateful for the opportunity and I'm glad we have this friendship, but I'm leaving in a month."

David Segal (26:08):
How do you wish you'd handled it?

Heather Reisman (26:09):
In a month. Well, I had no idea what I was going to do. And all the time up until then, I was balancing kids and work. And all of a sudden, this very moment, both my kids were in university away, I leave my job, I wake up, the first few days I felt amazing.

Harley Finkelstein (26:35):
You're free.

Heather Reisman (26:36):
I'm free of a place I didn't want to be. And then I literally went into the only kind of depression of my life. I was like, I had nothing to do. For the women in this room, I can say I was the kind of person that if I needed to go on a trip and I had to do some shopping, I could get into a shoe store at five to six and leave with three pairs of shoes two minutes later. During this period, I remember going to a shoe store in Toronto called David's. You know where that is?

Harley Finkelstein (27:15):
Sure. David's Shoes, yeah.

Heather Reisman (27:15):
David's Shoes.

Harley Finkelstein (27:17):
Not to be confused with the tea.

Heather Reisman (27:19):
And I could not make a decision between two pair of black shoes, that's how discombobulated I was.

Harley Finkelstein (27:25):
You were paralyzed almost at that point?

Heather Reisman (27:26):
I was paralyzed.

Harley Finkelstein (27:27):
I mean, just to say the thing also, if my math is right here, you had basically been working for 25 years straight at that point. And this is the first time-

David Segal (27:35):
We're still not at the bookstore.

Harley Finkelstein (27:36):
Exactly. Paradigm started in 1979, now we're talking about 1994.

Heather Reisman (27:41):
Exactly, exactly.

Harley Finkelstein (27:42):
And this is the first time you're finding yourself with nothing to do.

Heather Reisman (27:44):
Nothing. And no sense of who I was. I thought I was a big deal running this company. I was doing all of the running of it. And it was horrible. But it turned out to be the most productive five months of my life. Because what did I do? I took myself to my own happy place, which was a bookstore. And my eye happened to catch a book, that I still recommend today, called Clicking by a woman named Faith Popcorn, who is a kind of pop psychologist.

(28:24):
And the essence of this book is about when you're clicked into gear with work, when you're at work, if you are feeling uncomfortable with work, it's like not being in gear if you're driving a gear shift car and your energy falls out the bottom. But if you're doing what you really are curious about, interested in, it's like you are in full gear and you are just, the bad days are a little bad, but everything else, your energy is just flowing.

(28:57):
And in the book, she inspires people who are in a transition or not a good period to put on paper the four or five conditions that must be in place for you to feel that you'll be able to fully access your creative energy. And I did.

(29:17):
And I said, one, I have to believe passionately in the product or service. I have to believe in it. Two, it has to be something that can grow to scale. I'm just not a good mom and pop kind of person. I have to feel that I'm as close to the customer as possible. Because I understood from my work that the closer you are to the customer, the more you're inspired. Their values are going to drive the business. And I had to feel that much of what I understood about how to grow an organization and process design work, which is the technical specialty I developed, could be applied. I know supply chain. So I just put down, it's got to leverage some things that I know. And that was my list.

Harley Finkelstein (30:02):
What did you do with that?

Heather Reisman (30:04):
And so I kept looking at it, kept looking at it, nothing jumped out. And then I got a call from a friend of mine, with whom I sat on the board of another company, who was on the board of Borders books. And they wanted to come to Canada.

Harley Finkelstein (30:22):
They were just in the US at this point?

Heather Reisman (30:22):
They were in the US and they wanted to come to Canada. And the Canadian regulation was such that they needed a Canadian partner. And he said, "Look, we're just looking for someone to put some money in and it's an amazing deal. Put your money in, we guarantee you an 18% return."

David Segal (30:40):
Not bad.

Heather Reisman (30:40):
"And if we ever ..." I didn't have to be that smart to say yes. "And if ever we have the permission, we will buy you out at three times your money."

Harley Finkelstein (30:47):
And that sort of business, that sort of book retail business, that hit all five of those points?

Heather Reisman (30:51):
Well, I was passionate about books, so I went down, I learned things about the business, I visited it many times. They only wanted me to be the chair, not really to muck around in the business, they didn't want-

Harley Finkelstein (31:05):
Noses in, fingers out.

Heather Reisman (31:06):
Yeah, yeah. Put your money in, be there.

David Segal (31:08):
Your money and your passport.

Heather Reisman (31:10):
Exactly. But I went down, I was still going to invest in it, I learned about it. I was in heaven. Everything about it I loved. And then for a very unusual set of circumstances, the application for them to come to Canada coincided with the Oui/Non vote here in Quebec was happening at the same time.

David Segal (31:29):
Rough time.

Heather Reisman (31:30):
And at that time, the cabinet in Ottawa decided that the way they were going to wave the Canadian flag was not to let Borders come to Canada.

Harley Finkelstein (31:43):
That was their token symbol.

Heather Reisman (31:44):
That was their token. And so the deal fell apart. And I decided I'm doing it anyway. I knew nothing, nothing about retail. I knew nothing about books except I was a customer. But it ticked every single box. And Chapters, Larry Stevenson had already started Chapters in partners with Barnes & Noble. They had 17 stores. He was off and running. He had bought Coles, he was off and running.

Harley Finkelstein (32:15):
So there was already an incumbent here in Canada in that business.

Heather Reisman (32:17):
There was an incumbent.

Harley Finkelstein (32:19):
And you were going to open one store in Burlington, Ontario?

Heather Reisman (32:22):
Well, it wasn't my idea to only open one store, but I was going to start with one store. But I hired a consulting firm to help me figure out was there an entry strategy. And like typical consultants, not my kind of consultant, I had opinions.

Harley Finkelstein (32:35):
The other kind of consultant, sure.

Heather Reisman (32:37):
They said, "Well, you could win and you could not." And that was good enough.

Harley Finkelstein (32:40):
They're going to be right no matter what. And here's my bill.

Heather Reisman (32:46):
And I had so many thoughts when I was visiting Borders about how I would do it differently. What did I want? That I looked at my list, I sat down with a piece of paper, and I imagined the perfect bookstore for me. And that was the first thing Indigo.

Harley Finkelstein (33:04):
That was the first Indigo.

David Segal (33:05):
And was this tremendously exciting for you?

Heather Reisman (33:07):
It was totally exciting. And we raised, on my little piece of paper, we raised $25 million.

David Segal (33:17):
Because 17 stores, I mean, Indigo is well over 200, but I remember this from DAVIDsTEA, there was Teopia, they had 14, and it seemed like Mount Everest to climb. Because you don't realize the size of the market.

Heather Reisman (33:29):
Yeah. Well, I had in mind that I would build a Canadian chain. I had that in mind. Even though I had to start with one. And I had this concept for what we were going to do. And I went out to raise money. And I had been the one raising money for Cott, so I had relationships. And so I raised $25 million on a plan.

Harley Finkelstein (33:46):
And I assume the $25 million raise for your business plan was-

Heather Reisman (33:49):
To do 15 stores.

Harley Finkelstein (33:50):
15 stores, that was the plan. And you started with one, the first store was in Burlington?

Heather Reisman (33:53):
In Burlington.

Harley Finkelstein (33:55):
Why was it different than Chapters, what made it different?

Heather Reisman (33:59):
The way we approached the assortment to me felt differently, I'd shopped their stores, didn't love them, the things even then, I wanted to do a beautiful papery. Because I always gave books as gifts, but I always wrote in a journal. And to me a reader and a writer went together. I wanted to do my own cafe, not a Starbucks. Because I wanted to serve wine because in my imagination, my romantic imagination, some of my customers were going to be become the great Canadian novelists, and they were going to sit in the cafe with their wine, it was going to drip. I had a romantic vision of what I wanted. So we had a papery and we had our own Indigo Cafe, and we had these little giftable items that I would give with a book. So it had a different sensibility.

Harley Finkelstein (34:56):
And did that first store have that built it?

Heather Reisman (34:57):
All of it.

Harley Finkelstein (34:58):
It had all of it. So really it was the concept store.

Heather Reisman (34:59):
We had our own Indigo Cafe. It was a concept store. And it all was exciting until five in the morning before the first day of opening, all my team had gone home, I was there alone with the cleaners. And I looked around and I thought, what if I got the whole thing wrong? What if I got it all wrong? It was different than what a Chapter's looked like.

Harley Finkelstein (35:28):
And there was no other concept like that.

Heather Reisman (35:29):
And there was none like ours. And I thought, what if I got it wrong? And I called my husband crying. Crying. So we were living in Rosedale then, and this was in Burlington, so almost a 50-minute drive. And he came out just as the sun was coming up, and it was so beautiful. It was really a beautiful store.

Harley Finkelstein (35:53):
Special moment.

Heather Reisman (35:54):
And we opened at 10:00 that day, and at 10:05 it was packed.

David Segal (35:59):
Know that feeling.

Heather Reisman (35:59):
It was packed.

David Segal (36:01):
Amazing.

Heather Reisman (36:02):
So that's how it started.

David Segal (36:04):
And yet I bet you did get a lot wrong too at the same time. And you got the essence of the concept right clearly. But when you step back at the end of that day, what went according to plan versus what didn't go the way you thought it would?

Heather Reisman (36:18):
That store was a little bit of a ... It was good. I was the customer, I think businesses often do well when you're the customer or close, or at least in my case, I was the customer.

David Segal (36:32):
Totally.

Heather Reisman (36:33):
So there was just a lot of people like me.

Harley Finkelstein (36:36):
I mean, that's the assumption, that works really well when there are other people like you and you believe that to be true.

Heather Reisman (36:40):
I believe that to be true about entrepreneurs. And we had lots of other issues. The store was great. We had lots of other issues. Our competition at the time, the company that we then bought, they were trying to keep us off the beaches. So they were taking up all the real estate, they were putting pressure on the publishers not to give ... I mean, we had, don't get me wrong, we had thousands of issues, but it wasn't the store.

David Segal (37:05):
The concept, the essence. So how did you deal, the competition is trying to box you out, how do you deal with that?

Heather Reisman (37:13):
Well, there's all the stress of a startup. But in a way we got lucky in that, and in this case, I had a competitor, that to this day I have huge respect for, a man named Larry Stevenson, who started Chapters. He's a fantastic ... super smart. But as a military man, he was very taken with the notion of don't let the other guys get on the beach. And he over expanded and he created some vulnerabilities. And he was a public company and he had public shareholders. I mean, it was just a lesson. I say this, even though he created vulnerabilities, I have a lot of respect for him. But the long and short was he created some serious vulnerabilities. And his stock went from about 35 to seven. And he had a lot of pressure. And you know that can happen, there are moments when stocks bounce around.

Harley Finkelstein (38:12):
Sure, I've heard that, yeah.

Heather Reisman (38:15):
And I was living with someone who knew a lot about how to do acquisitions. And I came home one night and I said, "Listen, this company is not controlled, the stock's at seven, there's unbelievable synergy if we put these together." We were battling like crazy.

Harley Finkelstein (38:32):
Sure. You would be the biggest in the country also.

Heather Reisman (38:34):
And then I would be the biggest. We were only at 25% the size of them.

Harley Finkelstein (38:38):
But the combination would just be a powerhouse.

Heather Reisman (38:41):
The combination.

David Segal (38:41):
You had the right experience, but they had the scale.

Heather Reisman (38:43):
They had scale. And I think for Larry, it was a business, but it didn't have the same soul.

Harley Finkelstein (38:51):
Soul.

Heather Reisman (38:53):
And so it was just lucky, and I had this phenomenal advisor-

Harley Finkelstein (38:59):
Who happened to live with you.

Heather Reisman (39:00):
Who happened to live with me. And I still say that it was a lot of good fortune. And we were able to acquire them, we did an unbelievable integration and we had just a powerhouse one.

Harley Finkelstein (39:14):
And you acquired them in 2001, so it was a weird time to make a big acquisition.

Heather Reisman (39:18):
Right. We acquired them in 2001. I took on a ton of debt. That scared me.

David Segal (39:24):
Did they want to be acquired?

Heather Reisman (39:24):
No.

David Segal (39:26):
No. So how do you deal with-

Heather Reisman (39:31):
You're filming this and-

Harley Finkelstein (39:31):
You look great I think.

David Segal (39:36):
You look great. But you're in the midst of negotiating this deal with the other party doesn't want sell. And then the deal happens. How do you then square the circle, because you've got to go in and now run this company?

Heather Reisman (39:47):
Well, yeah. So they didn't control the stock, it was public, and he did not have a control position. So we made a bid. And the bid, we had to go up a little bit, but then the bid was accepted. So we owned it. And so that's an interesting question. When we went in, when I went in to Chapters to ... we had to do the integration.

(40:11):
I will say, there are many things, many mistakes I've made along the way, big ones. The way we did the integration was a success moment. And I think it was because there was a lot of pressure on Chapters because of this ... They tried to grow so fast to keep us away. There was huge stress on the company. And they knew Indigo was doing something right. And most of the people who worked there were passionate about the business. And they got that we were there because we were in love with that business. And so the integration was good-

David Segal (40:52):
How did you make them feel that?

Heather Reisman (40:54):
Because most of the people who were working there were passionate book lovers. And I'm a book lover in my soul. So it's very easy to break down barriers. And we weren't there, it wasn't the kind of acquisition where we were there to what can we strip out? No, we were there to build a great Canadian company.

Harley Finkelstein (41:14):
And build it together. Although it's interesting because in a lot of M&As, you have two parties, in some cases they're equals, and you combine them and the one plus one equals three type of scenario. In this case, they were much bigger than Indigo, and they became Indigo. So you had to bring your culture and the way you did things into a much larger behemoth, not just make them be okay with it, but actually force them to embrace it almost or get them to embrace it. That's a really difficult way to do that.

David Segal (41:42):
And I mean, you didn't convert all the Chapters to Indigo, I mean, Chapters still exists today. So you then had to manage two-

Heather Reisman (41:49):
Two brands, yeah. That was one of the most difficult things. It remains an issue. I was very struck by ... the people who went to Chapters, loved their Chapters, the customers loved their Chapter stores. And the people who went to Indigo loved their Indigo. And I was always struck by the Coke story, remember? Does anybody remember when Coke, they changed their formula?

David Segal (42:08):
The new Coke?

Heather Reisman (42:09):
New Coke. And it was a disaster.

David Segal (42:10):
Disaster.

Heather Reisman (42:11):
That story was in my mind at that time, and I was afraid to put the Indigo brand on and people would say, "Oh, it's just plastering it and they're taking away our Chapters." So I was very tentative. And to this day there are still some Chapters

Harley Finkelstein (42:27):
Because they're Chapters, they're not Indigo.

Heather Reisman (42:29):
Yeah. And they run from the inside like Indigo. And now we could change them, it would be okay, because there are other issues. So there's some left. But the internal culture changed within six months, it was one culture. We were there for the right reasons.

Harley Finkelstein (42:45):
And they saw that, I mean, they saw that you were successful. You talked about, when you were at Paradigm consulting, but even before so, this idea of transformation and bringing technology in and helping companies to innovate. And I feel very proud to say that you and I have become friends the last few years. And frankly, my relationship with you is effectively us talking about technology and us talking about ... sometimes you tell me something that I don't really want to hear, but I need to hear. And sometimes I tell you the same. And that's our wonderful dynamic.

(43:13):
But you did something that is remarkable that most people in the room have heard of but don't know the story. Which is in 2009, you decide to do something that no other book retail entrepreneur would ever do. You're the founder of a company that does e-readers. Which is like me starting to buy old school shopping malls. It doesn't really make that much sense. You are disrupting yourself.

Heather Reisman (43:40):
You'd probably be successful. I would say he's going to be successful.

Harley Finkelstein (43:42):
Maybe, maybe. My mom and dad are in the front row, so they definitely ...

Heather Reisman (43:44):
Where are they?

Harley Finkelstein (43:45):
There's mom and dad.

Heather Reisman (43:50):
Hi. Hi. He's amazing. Your mom and dad are here too?

David Segal (43:50):
Yeah, they're right there.

Heather Reisman (43:53):
All right. Yay.

David Segal (43:53):
We brought the whole [foreign language 00:43:54] here, the whole family here. My mother's actually one of the grandmother judges here at Startupfest.

Harley Finkelstein (43:58):
It's her birthday, no?

David Segal (43:58):
And it's her birthday, yeah. Happy birthday mom. Love you.

Heather Reisman (44:02):
Excellent.

David Segal (44:07):
Okay. All right, all right. I digress. You decide, you now are running the largest book retailer in Canada, one of the biggest book retailers on the planet, and in 2009 you decide to launch an e-reader company called Kobo. You remember, you've heard of Kobo? And you still have it. Incredible company. Why in God's name would you do that, Heather?

Heather Reisman (44:25):
Okay, well, two reasons. One, I was on the board of a company called J. Crew. Does anybody here know J Crew?

Harley Finkelstein (44:34):
We know Mickey Drexler.

Heather Reisman (44:35):
You know Mickey? He was here.

David Segal (44:35):
Having him on Big Shot soon.

Harley Finkelstein (44:35):
He's one of our next guests on Big Shot.

Heather Reisman (44:38):
Okay. So I was on Mickey's board. And I go to a meeting one morning. And it was the hippest company at the time. It was the super hippest company. And half the people are just waxing lyrical about their Kindle. I still don't like to use it.

Harley Finkelstein (44:55):
Yeah, it's okay, you don't have to say it.

Heather Reisman (44:56):
And they're talking about it and talking about it. And I'm thinking, what the heck? And anyway, I started to learn about e-readers and what Amazon was doing with e-readers. And they were so into it. And I could see that the technology was going to upend, just like what had happened with MP3 had upended music stores.

Harley Finkelstein (45:17):
And was the fact that you could store multiple books or was the e-ink, what was it that you felt was-

Heather Reisman (45:22):
I personally didn't even like them.

Harley Finkelstein (45:23):
You didn't like them.

Heather Reisman (45:23):
But I could see that there were people who were attracted to this technology and that it had upended the music business. At that time, I was in an unbelievably lucky position. My chief technologist at the time, who, man, I miss him to this day, Harley, my chief technologist was a rocket scientist who had come back-

Harley Finkelstein (45:45):
Actually a rocket scientist?

Heather Reisman (45:46):
Yeah, Mike Sherbenis. You know Mike?

Harley Finkelstein (45:47):
Yeah, I know Mike.

Heather Reisman (45:48):
Okay. Mike had come back to Canada from Silicon Valley. And he had joined Indigo because he also loved books and he knew he wasn't going to be at Indigo forever. But we just had this great connection and I wanted to do things technologically. And so we decided, okay, we could go up against Amazon in this technology. Because it's just, in the end, it's just you need the technologist.

(46:10):
And then my husband owned a company that made hardware. There's a lot of luck in my story. I think you're getting, there's a lot of luck.

Harley Finkelstein (46:18):
All of our stories.

Heather Reisman (46:18):
And I think that's true. You need the hard work, you need the courage. But I am convinced, and I've been around a long time, that there is good fortune, you have to give credit to good fortune. So I had a software technologist, I had my husband owned a company that did hardware, and I had a great friend who was the number two at a company called IDEO. Do you know IDEO?

Harley Finkelstein (46:45):
Yeah, design agents, yeah.

Heather Reisman (46:48):
They're design, one of the greatest in the world.

Harley Finkelstein (46:48):
One of the best.

Heather Reisman (46:48):
So suddenly I could put this team together. I didn't know any of it. But I knew the customer. I always know the customer. So we did. And within nine months we had Rev One. And Rev One was not bad. Rev Two, Fast Company did a blind, not blind, but they had people test Kobo, Kindle and Nook.

Harley Finkelstein (47:13):
Doing reviews.

Heather Reisman (47:15):
And we won.

Harley Finkelstein (47:16):
Nook was Barnes & Noble's version, right?

Heather Reisman (47:17):
Nook was Barnes & Noble. And we had a rocket ship. A rocket ship. So at that time, Indigo was doing great, we had a rocket ship with Kobo.

Harley Finkelstein (47:30):
Kobo.

Heather Reisman (47:31):
But I could see after, zero to 200 million in two and a half years was a rocket ship, but I could also see Apple was getting in, Amazon was revving up, there was no way that long term, we're not a technology company, we're really not a technology company.

Harley Finkelstein (47:51):
And they're capitalized to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars of working capital.

Heather Reisman (47:54):
Unbelievable. Only Shopify could go up against them.

Harley Finkelstein (47:56):
Yeah, maybe.

David Segal (47:58):
Going back to the checklist, I mean, where you're the number one customer, you're the chief book lover and you're not a customer of this, this is not for you.

Heather Reisman (48:06):
I was not a customer of Kindle, but my customers were customers of Kindle-

David Segal (48:11):
And that was obvious to you.

Heather Reisman (48:12):
And I was early into MP3 digital downloading. I respected that digitizing content was a real thing. But me personally, no. I love audio. Interestingly, I've become an audio fan, and physical, so I read one, I listen to one. But anyway. So that was a rocket ship. But I was worried. I was worried. I knew. And there was that Rakuten, that company in Japan, had tried to buy Nook, and they ran into a disconcerting relationship with the owners. And they came, they knocked on our door. And I mean-

Harley Finkelstein (48:52):
That was it. So, I mean, let me set the stage for the audience for a sec. So company gets started in 2009, Kobo, in 2011, Rakuten comes and buys the company for over $300 million. That's her side project. That's unbelievable.

David Segal (49:05):
Yeah, that's right. That's the Cliff Note, like the footnote, right? But Heather, when I met you, it was in the late two thousands, and Amazon had really ramped up, books as a category went from a major category to a much smaller category. And you're faced yet again with this huge transformation of the business. You had to be books adjacent. Talk to us a little bit, I mean, first you had to deal with e-readers, which you capitalized on, as Harley says, incredibly well. But after that was done and you're celebrating this acquisition, you now have this issue where you have a really big bookstore and the book category is shrinking.

Heather Reisman (49:43):
So first of all, the book category wasn't shrinking. And when we sold Kobo, we did a 10-year deal that had us getting 50% of all e-book sales. We sold it. We actually sold it for 400 million.

Harley Finkelstein (49:57):
Excuse me, sorry, I rounded it down by $100 million.

Heather Reisman (49:59):
No, wait, no, no, no, you were right. We sold it for 400 US. But it included distribution in Borders in the US. Borders went bankrupt between the time they made their offer and the close. And it shaved 70 million US off the price.

Harley Finkelstein (50:18):
One thing that most people know but don't really understand is a very simple marketing concept called Heather's Picks. Now Heather's Picks, you all see it, it's in the window, you can read about it, it's Heather's books that she'd recommend. What I don't think most people understand is the efficacy of it. And you can say, well ... I want you to talk about why has Heather's Picks been so effective in your view?

David Segal (50:47):
Also where did it come from?

Harley Finkelstein (50:49):
And how did it come up?

Heather Reisman (50:50):
I've been picking books and recommending them since I was 11. So these are just books I read that I love like crazy. They come with a money-back guarantee. We don't get many back, but they come with a money-back guarantee.

Harley Finkelstein (51:05):
It's like your money back on DAVIDsTEA.

David Segal (51:06):
Yeah, exactly.

Heather Reisman (51:07):
How many people in this audience are francophone, read French first? Okay. We were just here today talking about doing [foreign language 00:51:17] Heather's Picks [foreign language 00:51:19]. We were just here talking about it. And I'm going back to reading in French a bit as a brain training. So we're going to have those.

Harley Finkelstein (51:26):
These are your first set of customers, your beta customers.

Heather Reisman (51:27):
Yeah, exactly.

David Segal (51:28):
Are you going to code again also, are you going to do coding again also?

Heather Reisman (51:32):
I should, but I'm way rusty on coding.

Harley Finkelstein (51:36):
But it's been so effective, and I think most people don't realize how important and impactful it is. I'm fascinated by this thing.

Heather Reisman (51:44):
Well, that's very nice of you to say.

David Segal (51:47):
Did you have it on day one in Burlington?

Heather Reisman (51:48):
Yeah.

David Segal (51:48):
Really?

Heather Reisman (51:49):
My first pick was a book called The Secrets of Grazia dei Rossi, we opened with it. Yeah. Listen, if you do anything in life with authenticity, so these are books I read and I love. And when I read a book I love, I'm dying to tell people about it. So that's all I do, I just tell people about it.

Harley Finkelstein (52:09):
I want to be respectful of time, we don't have too much time left. But a couple of things I want to cover. First is, you've now all heard the Indigo story. It's an incredible iconic story, not just for Canada but in the world, with an iconic leader. You're back now, as I said, you're taking the company private.

Heather Reisman (52:23):
I did.

Harley Finkelstein (52:23):
You took the company private, excuse me, privatization, no longer publicly traded. We're also neighbors in Toronto, we're in the same building, which I feel very proud of. What's the plan?

Heather Reisman (52:34):
The plan is to not just ... first of all, I had to bring the company back to who we were, we got a little bit lost for two years, had to bring it back. And it's having a huge impact. I'm really happy about that.

(52:47):
But I'm interested in where we go now as a company that is about reading and ideas in a world where attention spans have declined. How many people in this room have children? How many people are concerned about the amount of time your kids spend with their phones? And I'm curious how many people here, I'm just curious, how many people here feel you, and be honest, you wish you scrolled less and read more? That's what I'm interested in.

(53:23):
I'm interested in the connection. There is a giant neurological connection. I wish your wife was out here.

David Segal (53:31):
She's not here.

Heather Reisman (53:35):
Between long form reading and brain development and reading real books and your ability to sleep and good quality sleep. There's a huge connection. And I am deeply interested in the connection, connecting people to what they really want to read and what they really want to do. On the kids business, our goal is to have Canadian children the most literate in the world. Both the ones we serve and the ones we do through our foundation.

David Segal (54:05):
How do you do that?

Heather Reisman (54:06):
You have to bring me back, that's a whole discussion. That is a whole discussion. Our mission is to inspire reading and enrich the lives of our book lover customers. And there's a lot I want to do in that. So that where's, and I need your help.

David Segal (54:25):
Maybe it's a full plan on how you get kids reading more, but how do you take something so powerful like the scrolling effect, it's addictive, we all know that.

Heather Reisman (54:34):
It is addictive.

David Segal (54:35):
So conceptually, just from a thousand feet, how do you go about ... because you're right, we all want to sit there and read a book, we romanticize it, and yet we don't do it, yeah, we stay on our phones and we scroll.

Heather Reisman (54:48):
It's a lot. If you actually can hook into something you feel like reading, and you get into it in the first four pages, it's unbelievable what happens. You've got to give yourself that chance. So what we found is heavy readers still exist. Everyone thinks book buying has gone away. It hasn't. It's declined almost not at all. It's format mix. By the way, e-readers have gone way down. Audio has its place because people can listen to story while they're doing things. So we're going to do audio for sure. But there's a lot of ways. If I put the right book in your hands, man, you're going to read.

David Segal (55:29):
It's curation, it's being able to-

Harley Finkelstein (55:29):
[inaudible 00:55:30]

Heather Reisman (55:29):
It's curation and it's the application of AI to curation, which I'm really interested in.

Harley Finkelstein (55:34):
I can help you with that.

Heather Reisman (55:35):
Really interested in, really interested in. I say that again.

David Segal (55:39):
I think you're interested in it.

Heather Reisman (55:41):
So there's a lot that I think there is to excavate on this subject.

David Segal (55:45):
Cool.

Harley Finkelstein (55:46):
I mean, frankly for David and I, there's no better run companies than founder-led companies. Show of hands, how many of you are founders in the room? Yeah. I mean, founder-led companies, there's nothing like it. There's no one that's going to care more, work harder, be more focused, be more ambitious than founders. And to bring a founder back into the helm like you, I'm so excited.

Heather Reisman (56:04):
And then when you transfer, what I missed, I just took for granted, were the values and soul of the place, and I just assumed it, it was so central, like breathing. And I think this is true even when entrepreneurs are building organizations, and I bet you both have views on this, values alignment is number one. The minute I came back, first of all, two people who quit came back that I adore.

Harley Finkelstein (56:31):
There's a magnetism to it, right?

Heather Reisman (56:33):
It is all about those core values and making those core values happen.

Harley Finkelstein (56:37):
We have to go. But before I do, there is something, I have my mother and my wife sitting in the audience, I also have two daughters. And so one thing that I am always been inspired by you since the day you and I met in Muskoka many years ago, was the way that you have been ... You said earlier that the thing you wanted even before being an entrepreneur was to be a mom, to have kids.

(56:57):
You seem to have this incredible way to, I don't want to call it balance, because it's more like it's harmony, this work-life harmony with ... you have 11 grandchildren, I believe?

Heather Reisman (57:05):
Right.

Harley Finkelstein (57:06):
You're a titan of industry.

Heather Reisman (57:08):
Go for it.

Harley Finkelstein (57:09):
We don't even have time, but we're not going for any more kids. Actually, this is where I want to tell you all ... No. But you're a titan of industry, not just in Canada, around the world, but you're an incredible grandmother, leader. We haven't even had chance to talk about your philanthropy. You gave a hundred million dollars to make sure that we have more AI technology innovated versus Toronto.

David Segal (57:30):
And she built the emergency wing at Sinai Hospital.

Heather Reisman (57:33):
No, and humanity. The relationship between technology and humanity. But anyway, go ahead.

Harley Finkelstein (57:35):
But how do you do it all? How does this all work out? What do I tell my daughters to be more like you? And what do we all tell everyone to balance-

Heather Reisman (57:45):
This is going to sound like the least feminist answer. And I'm a proud feminist. I married well, and I was born well. That is my parents gave me good values. Three things. My parents gave me good values. I'm blessed with good health, so I hope that right. And they gave me that. And really, I have the most incredible husband. I think ... I tell him all the time, 80% of what I've succeeded at, I put at his feet, support-wise, the balance, the way ... again, I can't even express my gratitude for him and the way in which that has enabled me to follow my passions. I'm just a curious person.

David Segal (58:33):
Amazing. Heather, Harley loves to say we stand on the shoulders of giants, and I think that it goes without saying that you're clearly one of those giants. We're both tremendously inspired by you. And I know everyone in this audience has gotten a lot out of this talk, so thanks [inaudible 00:58:45]

Heather Reisman (58:44):
I want to make sure I don't leave with one thing. The number of mistakes I've made is legend and could fill a book. I don't want to leave, I never like to leave these discussions with someone thinking it was just all these big wins. It's a thousand little mistakes and a few big ones. We just keep at it.

Harley Finkelstein (59:02):
Thank you so much. We build Big Shot for people like you. Thank you.