The Power Of Kindness: How Jonathan Wener Turned A $10k Loan Into A $15 Billion Empire

Jonathan Wener (00:00):
He said, "You can't buy the Royal Trust building on a credit card." I had written one building, $65 million, I had signed it. I said, "Could you please call for an authorization?" And it was a gold Royal Trust credit card. They sent me my bill yesterday and I paid it and I brought it up to date. That means I won't get another bill for 30 days. That's worth 1%. 1% is $650,000. And I said, "And by the way, I don't know whether you know it or not, but on a gold Royal Trust credit card, you get a 1% discount." That's $1.3 million.

Harley Finkelstein (00:53):
As long as I have known about the real estate business, and you and I have always been fast in the real estate business, there's this one company that always comes up.

David Segal (01:03):
Canderel.

Harley Finkelstein (01:05):
Canderel and I actually didn't know the story behind Canderel until you started talking to me about Jonathan Wener.

David Segal (01:09):
He's amazing.

Harley Finkelstein (01:10):
And you brought him up to me for years and years you've been talking with this guy, Jonathan, and I actually knew nothing about him. And so as we began to think about Big Shot and who we wanted, I started to do a little bit of some research on this guy to figure out, "Okay, is this guy as amazing as Dave thinks he is?"

David Segal (01:23):
Yeah, hit us with the stats. It's unbelievable.

Harley Finkelstein (01:25):
It's unbelievable. So this guy in the 1970s started with a $10,000 loan, and he's rolled this into, let me get the numbers here.

David Segal (01:35):
Many billions.

Harley Finkelstein (01:36):
Sorry, so a $10,000 loan in 1975, he borrowed $10,000 on a $19,000 salary, and he was able to make this purchase. He ended up making $50,000 profit on that first.

David Segal (01:48):
Right. He bought a Concordia building and turned it into a restaurant.

Harley Finkelstein (01:51):
Exactly, Concordia, for those that don't know, it's a University here in Montreal. So he bought a little building right by Concordia, and then he used that money to start Canderel with the profit that he made. He was 25 years old. Today, they have 60 million square feet of own managed, developed properties, and they've done 15 billion with a B dollars of acquisitions and developments. I mean this guy has built the entire landscape of Canada

David Segal (02:13):
He's amazing. He had the tallest residential building in Toronto. He's also now the chancellor of a University, huge in the community.

Harley Finkelstein (02:20):
Now it's not just that he's like this incredible entrepreneur and a credible builder. One of the things that we started talking to some people and asking them, "Tell us about Jonathan, the way that he operates is really smart. He's so strategic." So if he wants to work with someone, for example, even if they say no, he always finds a way to bring them in and make it worthwhile for them. He leaves enough on the table so they can benefit, and instead of just convincing them, he kind of shows them, and eventually in his own Jonathan way, he gets exactly what he wants.

David Segal (02:46):
And that's his book, right? No is Maybe on the Road to Yes.

Harley Finkelstein (02:49):
That's what his book's called?

David Segal (02:49):
That piece is about to come out.

Harley Finkelstein (02:50):
No is maybe on the way to Yes. I love that. I mean it's so perfect for a big shot.

David Segal (02:54):
Totally.

Harley Finkelstein (02:54):
So this story is incredible because one, if you don't understand real estate, you may not have heard Canderel, but what you will start seeing now that you've heard the name, you will start seeing Canderel signs everywhere. I mean these guys built Canada and they've done it in a way that someone we reached out to says he has such a huge heart, they called him the Jewish Santa Clause.

David Segal (03:13):
I love that.

Harley Finkelstein (03:14):
But again, he started with a $10,000 loan and has built a 15 billion real estate empire, and he did with heart and Integrity. I cannot wait to talk to Jonathan. It's going to be a great episode and I think he exemplifies this concept of big shot and big audacious goals.

David Segal (03:30):
Jonathan Wener.

Harley Finkelstein (03:30):
Jonathan Wener, let's go.

David Segal (03:32):
Let's go.

Harley Finkelstein (03:36):
Jonathan, thank you for having us. I'll kick us off here. You weren't always such a big shot.

Jonathan Wener (03:45):
I was never a big shot.

Harley Finkelstein (03:47):
Well we may disagree on that, but David's right. Yeah, take us back to the beginning. I mean we all know the famous story of the $10,000 starting point of Canderel, but we want to go back before that.

Jonathan Wener (03:59):
At 16, I went to see Maxwell Cummings. That's Steven Cummings's grandfather.

Harley Finkelstein (04:05):
We know the Cummings Center.

Jonathan Wener (04:06):
Yeah and he was married to Queenie Wener, which was my grandfather's sister, and they were building a large portfolio in Calgary, and I said, "Listen, I'm 16. I'm going into University next year and I want a job in management." He said, "Tell you what, go buy yourself a pair of hard toad construction boots and a helmet, and I'm sending you to Calgary and you'll learn about management." And I learned to build from the ground up.

Harley Finkelstein (04:40):
You were like the foreman there?

Jonathan Wener (04:40):
No, I was not foreman. I was a laborer.

David Segal (04:47):
You were a laborer. Okay, you were bottom of the totem pole.

Jonathan Wener (04:47):
Bottom of the totem pole. By the end of the summer and they put me through the ringer and I wouldn't quit, and I could go on for hours on some of the stories that went on in terms of having to carry steel frame exit door frames up 30 stories and I wasn't allowed to use the crane, and most people would've quit.

David Segal (05:13):
Did part of you love it?

Jonathan Wener (05:15):
I didn't love it. No, I just said, "Nothing's going to break my back." End of the summer, I became clerk of the works on the job, and so I moved up quite a peg up. I wasn't anymore on the construction site. I was in the office the next year. They hired me to act as a general contractor for the same building, selling tenant improvement packages to the tenants and I made a million dollars in the six months in my first year of University.

David Segal (05:45):
You're like 17 years old.

Jonathan Wener (05:46):
17 years old.

Harley Finkelstein (05:47):
And you're selling them insurance effectively?

Jonathan Wener (05:49):
No, I was selling them packages of tenant improvements that we were [inaudible 00:05:56] for them and we were the general contractor. I was running them.

Harley Finkelstein (05:57):
So you basically had a menu of things you could sell them and you just...

Jonathan Wener (06:02):
Doors, ceiling.

David Segal (06:03):
And this is $9 million today? This is 19...

Jonathan Wener (06:08):
This 1968.

David Segal (06:09):
Wow.

Jonathan Wener (06:09):
Okay, so I fell in love with the business. I absolutely fell.

Harley Finkelstein (06:14):
Was there an aspect of the business? What did you love about it?

Jonathan Wener (06:20):
I wasn't talking suit for $16. I was talking about million dollar contracts. I was dealing with prominent business people. I was getting deals done. I was just absolutely beyond happy in terms of intellectual stimulation. I said, "This is it for me." So I was lucky and I consider the lucky people in life, the people who can have a passion for what they're doing, not the people who just make money, or the people who unfortunately never find the things that they're passionate about and just follow in a rut for the rest of their lives. That I consider my greatest piece of luck. The rest followed and you make your luck by how hard you work and how you put yourself into everything you do, but that gave me a real foundation for the future.

Harley Finkelstein (07:18):
Let's go back a little bit to when you decided you want to spend the summer as management. I mean that takes a certain level of chutzpah to call and say, "I'm going to be management now." Was that something that chutzpah, is that something that you always sort of had, you always felt, the audacity, the confidence to do to take something?

David Segal (07:38):
Well wait, before you answer that, what does chutzpah mean to you?

Jonathan Wener (07:42):
No is Maybe on the Road to Yes.

David Segal (07:44):
Which is your book's coming up.

Jonathan Wener (07:46):
Yep. I believe not taking no for an answer. So figuring it out. I was probably a bit brash and very naive at the time.

David Segal (07:57):
You're 16.

Jonathan Wener (08:01):
I knew that I was going into management at Concordia, or which was Sir Georgia at the time. I obviously wanted something that was aligned to that, but if this was a route to get there and he told me, he said, "You hunker down, learn, learn everything." And the amount I learned about construction that summer, and I remember a cement truck driver saying to me, "You must be Jewish." I said, "Why?" He said, "You asked so many questions." And I was asking about the different aggregates and what's the difference between this concrete and that concrete? And I was learning, I was a sponge, and I've always been a sponge for learning from people and or experiences.

Harley Finkelstein (08:50):
So now you're in the office, you're selling. What happens next?

Jonathan Wener (08:53):
So what happened next is they asked me to quit school and come back.

David Segal (08:58):
To Calgary.

Jonathan Wener (08:59):
Yeah and there's a lot of interesting little anecdotes within that because what happened was I wasn't making enough money for my expenses, and I was putting myself through school. My parents did not put me through school.

David Segal (09:13):
Wow.

Jonathan Wener (09:13):
The fact they made it worse, they charged me rent.

Harley Finkelstein (09:17):
They charged you rent to live at home.

Jonathan Wener (09:19):
Yep.

Harley Finkelstein (09:20):
And why is that?

Jonathan Wener (09:21):
I only found out later it was a forced saving. They gave it back to me when I got married.

Harley Finkelstein (09:25):
But do you know at the time?

Jonathan Wener (09:26):
No.

Harley Finkelstein (09:28):
And so they were trying to create independence presumably?

David Segal (09:31):
They wanted to instill the value saving?

Jonathan Wener (09:33):
They were hard driving. They really did instill. Sometimes I felt like it was too much. Maybe I should be able to cool my jets or my engines a bit, but I was so hard driven in so many ways. It was always there and I am a passionate guy. I love what I do, whether it's philanthropy or it's community or it's business and so the engagement's always intense, and I don't mean intense in the dealings, intense to get it done, to get to the finish line.

David Segal (10:10):
And then you get to Concordia, which you describe as a part of you, and you meet your wife on the first day.

Jonathan Wener (10:20):
Her father said, "You're only going to university to get married." And she said, "No, I'm not." And she met me in the first hour.

Harley Finkelstein (10:28):
Where'd you meet her? How did that happen?

Jonathan Wener (10:30):
So I was very active at Sir George. I was the first student member of the Board of Governors. I was chairman of clubs, chairman of a pledge drive, skiing, and all kinds of other activities. In my fourth year, I was involved with freshman orientation. There I was wearing a three piece suit and this young lady comes no shoes on.

Harley Finkelstein (10:59):
No shoes.

Jonathan Wener (11:01):
She walked from her home in St. Laurant, no shoes to downtown.

Harley Finkelstein (11:05):
Wow.

Jonathan Wener (11:06):
Hair down to middle of her back, and stunning, and I gravitated to her table and managed to talk to her.

Harley Finkelstein (11:19):
Well you're in a three piece suit. She's not wearing shoes.

Jonathan Wener (11:22):
Anyway, she goes to her friend Linda, who's still a good friend of ours, and says, "That's the kind of guy I want." And she played hard to get for a few weeks, a few months and finally we had a date. I was president of the student union in that last year. I had renovated that student union, and I was the MC for Past the Hat.

Harley Finkelstein (11:44):
Wait, what do you mean you renovated the student union?

Jonathan Wener (11:46):
Okay, so a group of us bought the Student Union, which is where Ville Neuf had his bar.

Harley Finkelstein (11:55):
So you were a student and you bought the building?

Jonathan Wener (11:58):
Yep.

Harley Finkelstein (11:58):
How old were you?

Jonathan Wener (11:59):
20.

Harley Finkelstein (12:00):
This is privately or through the school?

Jonathan Wener (12:03):
Through the school and my summer job that year, I told you I took a year off from Cummings. That year I renovated it, and it's actually in itself quite a story because I kept going for a building permit and a set of plans, and the first time, these are all part of the No is Maybe. First set of plans, the building permit department said, "You need to make these, this and this change." And I said, "Okay." So I went back, made the changes, came back, made obligation for the permit, didn't get it. This happened three times. I'm only 20 but I'm realizing that I'm being held up and I'm in an institution and this isn't right. So I go back to the student association floor on the fourth floor at Sir George and I said, "I'm calling the mayor."

(13:01):
"Oh yeah, who are you? You're going to call the mayor?" I'm calling the Mayor. So I pick up the phone, I call the mayor's office and the woman says, "I'm sorry, the mayor's busy." I said, "Well, I kind of knew that that's what you were going to say, but just let me interject a few words here and then we'll see where this conversation goes." I said, "My name's Jonathan Wener. I'm president of the Student Union. I don't know whether you realize it or not, but the mayor's running for reelection in October, and this is the first time that students will have the right to vote at 18 years of age. They are going to be furious when they find out that city hall has been holding up the student union from being able to renovate and be open in September."

David Segal (13:43):
That got her attention.

Jonathan Wener (13:44):
Just a moment, please.

Harley Finkelstein (13:45):
Mayor's not busy all of a sudden.

Jonathan Wener (13:48):
Mayor gets on the phone, he said, "Tell me the story Mr. Wener." I tell him the story. He said, "You come here at nine o'clock tomorrow morning and you'll pick up your permit." And he made the guy hand it to me. He was so red-faced.

David Segal (14:05):
Wow, chutzpah. Yeah, total chutzpah.

Jonathan Wener (14:08):
No, it's not a matter of chutzpah. It's a matter of right and wrong, and my attitude is you have an obligation to execute, right?

Harley Finkelstein (14:18):
Yes, but the chutzpah part of it is the fact that you decided to call the mayor directly. I mean whereas most people would never even think to do that. They'd be like, "Well, I guess it's the way it's done. I guess we have to wait in line."

David Segal (14:28):
I mean you're 20 years old.

Jonathan Wener (14:29):
But because of the ethos that I was given by my grandfather, payoffs were just not in the vocabulary.

Harley Finkelstein (14:38):
What was the actual ethos? What was the thing that...

Jonathan Wener (14:40):
Just a high level of integrity in dealings. I've left millions of dollars on the table for integrity.

Harley Finkelstein (14:47):
Can you give me an example of that?

Jonathan Wener (14:49):
Well I have two situations. One is where a large tenant invited me, we were working on their renewal and he invited me into his premises on a Friday at noontime, and I think at the time I was 29 years old, he said to me, "My daughter's getting married very soon." I said, "Congratulations." I said, "I have two daughters myself." He says, "Weddings are very expensive." I said, "Oh yes, I'm starting to save now and I'm 24 years old, but I understand that weddings can be very expensive." And he goes on and on this and I said to him, "Look." And this is an open office landscape environment, but there is nobody else in there except me and him, and he says to me, "Do you not understand what I'm saying?" I said, "I understand completely what you're saying, but if you're telling me that the renewal of your space depends on me helping you out with your daughter's wedding, we're not doing business." And this was at the time, about a $10 million lease, and $79.

Harley Finkelstein (16:08):
And you owned this building?

Jonathan Wener (16:11):
I was a part owner, not a major owner, but part.

David Segal (16:14):
Right but still. Yeah.

Jonathan Wener (16:16):
And I lost the deal, and I told my guys, my bosses, I said, "If you want to overrule me, that's fine, but I will not do it."

Harley Finkelstein (16:26):
And just to be clear, it's a $10 million lease, but he probably didn't need much. He probably needed 25,000 bucks, right? Something like that?

Jonathan Wener (16:33):
Right.

Harley Finkelstein (16:33):
And you still said, "No." You don't do it.

Jonathan Wener (16:36):
I've never done it. I never have to look over my shoulder.

Harley Finkelstein (16:39):
So I mean we got to go back to the start of real estate where this famous story where I believe you start first, you leave Concordia and you get a job, right? With Eugene Reisman.

Jonathan Wener (16:50):
The council I got was enough about construction, go into leasing because that's where the money's made. The execution is in construction. The value's created in leasing. So I went into leasing. I worked in PVM and then I moved over to a building called 2020 University, which was a joint venture with First Quebec Corporation and Trizec. I did the leasing there. I gained my first 20 pounds in real estate doing the first fast food fair in the basement of 2020, trying out all the different foods to make sure we had the right package, etc., and get it done. Interestingly, so many of the buildings I had connections to, I ultimately bought because I ended up buying 2020 University 30 years later.

David Segal (17:39):
Am I still good?

Jonathan Wener (17:42):
Yeah. Anyway, I put together a fairly large deal, a hundred thousand foot deal, and Trizec said, Too small for us. We don't want to do it." I said, "You're too big for me. I need to go." And First Quebec was Eugene Reisman and Ralph Berman at the time, a very small office. They made me a vice president at 23 years old, credible and Reisman, who's still alive and who I've looked upon as a father figure. He's a real renaissance man, a very lovely individual, but not a great businessman. Strategic but not business execution, and that was a great asset because it was a void that I could fill, and he let me go and so one deal after another, when I started out with him and will roll back to 1975, but I told him, I said, "I'm not really interested in salary. I'm interested in equity. I want to build wealth."

David Segal (18:50):
Was that always how you thought about it with jobs?

Jonathan Wener (18:52):
Yeah. Everything I did along the way was to get to that point, and so Reisman said, "You can participate. I'm happy to have you participate in the deals, but you're going to have to write your own checks." Reisman's father used to call me on Fridays to find out what his son was up to and was he doing the right thing or the wrong thing?

(19:22):
So I'll roll back to 75 because in 1975, I needed equity to go into a couple of deals, and I had a pregnant wife, right? Actually, 1975 was the birth of my first child. So we had that, we had an apartment on Nuns' Island. We were looking at a house. Reisman was giving me an interest-free mortgage to buy a house. So that would really get me going and I realized I better put together some money. Lo and behold, now Concordia, not Sir George calls me the treasurer of the University and says, "John, nobody knows the student union building better than you. You know every screwed nut and bolt in the place. We've outgrown it. We want to sell it. Would you like to buy it?" So I said, "Sure." I negotiate with him.

Harley Finkelstein (20:32):
But you said, "Sure." You had no money.

Jonathan Wener (20:34):
I had 5,000. Yeah, so I had $5,000.

Harley Finkelstein (20:39):
It almost rounds to zero.

Jonathan Wener (20:42):
$5,000 in those days was not so bad.

Harley Finkelstein (20:44):
That's true. It's funny because when you research the story, it actually rounds up to 10.

Jonathan Wener (20:49):
No but then I had to go see the Trombley at the Bank Nationale. It was then the BCN Bank and [inaudible 00:20:58] National, and I figured he was one of my true heroes because earning I think $13,000 at the time, I said to him, "I need to borrow 10 from the bank."

David Segal (21:09):
Did he laugh at you?

Jonathan Wener (21:10):
No, and he said, "Well, how are you going to repay it, etc.?" And I showed him and I said, "Look, I'm going to be worth a lot more money, but you need to take a chance on me." And so I figured...

Harley Finkelstein (21:24):
What credibility did you have with him?

Jonathan Wener (21:27):
Showed him my plan and my life plan and whatnot.

Harley Finkelstein (21:30):
But you had never done a deal before.

Jonathan Wener (21:33):
I'd never done a deal before for my own account. So I figured he was my real...

David Segal (21:37):
So how did you know him? I mean you must have gone to a bunch of other banks that showed.

Jonathan Wener (21:40):
Well they were a tenant in one of our buildings. So he was the bank manager and I had a relationship with him. Anyway, so he lent me the 10, and I made my offer, and I executed on the offer, and a good friend of yours, father Jerry Scheiner who's an notary at the time introduced me to a fellow by the name of Marie Barro who was a Moroccan restaurateur and was interested in a location in Montreal and I met him, and we sat down and we worked it through and negotiated a lease. And I started to organize my financing for the takeout and two weeks before closing, Mr. Barro came to me and he said, "Look, John." He said, "I know we negotiated a lease. I'll live up to it, but I really don't want to be a tenant. I'd like to own the real estate." He had bought some of the old Timmons properties up in Westmount and had renovated and done very well with them. So he said, "I like the location. I'll give you a $50,000 profit. Would you be interested in the deal?"

Harley Finkelstein (22:59):
So this was a $50,000 profit to sell the building right away?

Jonathan Wener (23:03):
At closing

David Segal (23:04):
Finished, so lease with a restaurant to it.

Harley Finkelstein (23:07):
Wow.

Jonathan Wener (23:08):
That 50,000, we did close and that 50,000 became the startup capital for Canderel.

David Segal (23:14):
But wait, at this point, you're thinking you're raising money to put in equity into Eugene Reisman's deals, right?

Jonathan Wener (23:20):
But I was going to do it through a vehicle. My vehicle became Canderel. So Canderel started out joint venturing with Reisman in one, two, five, 10, 15, 20, 30, eventually 49% positions in the deals and so actually, a bit of the past, my next deal, which was much bigger with Leo Cober and a number of other investors, which was 5757 Cavendish in Côte Saint-Luc, which a year later was supposed to be the continuation of Gene and the continuation of Cavendish Rue du Saint-Laurent. It is now 47 years later, it still hasn't happened.

David Segal (24:07):
Still hasn't happened, that's right.

Jonathan Wener (24:11):
But I needed to borrow a large sum of money and guarantee it at the bank. I did not have enough net worth statement to do it and it humbled me tremendously, but I had no choice because I had no family to go to. So I went to see Maxwell Cummings, and I said to him.

Harley Finkelstein (24:33):
Your original boss when you were 16 years old?

Jonathan Wener (24:35):
And I said to him, "Could I get you to be a guarantor for my financing because I can't have the underlying value to do it." And he said, "Are you prepared to assign your shares in your company, etc.?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "And how long will it be?" I said, "Not more than a year." And he did, and TD Bank became the banker. He insisted on TD Bank and I got the deal done, and I came back to him. I refinanced it and gave him back his note in six months. He said, "Six months, wow, let's go."

Harley Finkelstein (25:16):
You had a whole year.

Jonathan Wener (25:18):
I said, "Well, here's what I did." And I did a couple of other deals that made it happen. So I never had to do that again.

Harley Finkelstein (25:26):
Where did you hit the first one that didn't work?

Jonathan Wener (25:29):
First one that didn't work? If I have to tell you...

Harley Finkelstein (25:35):
They've all worked?

Jonathan Wener (25:37):
No, we've had two or three that didn't work, but they happened in the '90s.

Harley Finkelstein (25:42):
And was it there a common thread of the ones that did not work?

Jonathan Wener (25:46):
No.

Harley Finkelstein (25:47):
They were all different?

Jonathan Wener (25:48):
Different things that I learned. For example, the forum. Montreal Forum, we did. We brought in a partner that was supposed to know what they were doing. Simon Property Group from the States.

David Segal (26:01):
Yeah, David Simon.

Jonathan Wener (26:02):
And the unfortunate thing that you learned with many Americans is they are arrogant as hell and that you, Canadians, you don't know anything. Just move over.

David Segal (26:13):
Let us in basically.

Harley Finkelstein (26:14):
And this is your backyard. I mean we're blocks away from it.

Jonathan Wener (26:16):
So they didn't listen and they pulled a number of moves that we recommended against, but we weren't a major partner, and that project lost 60 million bucks.

David Segal (26:28):
60 million, wow.

Jonathan Wener (26:30):
So what did I learn from that? Entertainment real estate is out. Why? We're in the business of financing other people's covenants in the buildings we build. In entertainment real estate, they're using the developer's balance sheet to finance their leases.

Harley Finkelstein (26:50):
What do you mean by that? Go a little deeper on that for people.

Jonathan Wener (26:52):
Because you were putting so much money into their business in TIs and improvements.

Harley Finkelstein (26:59):
Tenant allowance, right? It's when you give the tenant...

Jonathan Wener (27:01):
But hundred dollars a footer or $150.

David Segal (27:04):
To make it look nice, yeah.

Jonathan Wener (27:05):
So basically, they weren't taking money out of their pocket, my bank, and I became chairman of credit at Laurentian Bank, and I learned a lot of lessons on the way through about the credit and the quality of the user because it's not the developer in the end. It's the quality of all those pieces.

Harley Finkelstein (27:29):
Can you talk about how you build such great relationships, particularly when you're at a young age, like 23 years old, and you're asking for a lot of money from these people. How did that happen? What was your strategy there?

Jonathan Wener (27:43):
I think underlying whatever you do to build trust, you have to have competence and we had proven competence, and there's the old expression, you're only as good as your last deal but as long as you have a good track record to point to, and when you look at the fact that we've built over eight billion and maybe along the way lost 60 or $80 million in real estate, that's not too bad. I will say there were a couple of deals that we didn't make as much as we thought we would because circumstances changed, but you bring up a good point because to me, the ability to cross the same bridge multiple times was more valuable than how much money we pulled out in any one deal.

Harley Finkelstein (28:26):
Can you explain that a bit?

Jonathan Wener (28:28):
Yeah. For example, when I built my business, and I'll give you just a brief interlude because it'll transition to the next piece. In 1979, I was so blown away by what had gone on here in Quebec that I had been called, I was 29 years old, I'd been called by all kinds of companies to come be CEO, do all kinds of things and I'd always said, "No, I'm very happy. I'm making good money." And at the time, by 79, I had made a million dollars and that was very much in my goal before I was 30 that I had made a million bucks.

(29:13):
But I forgot something and I only remembered later, and Reisman reminded me that I also had said that I wanted to have my own business by the time I was 30, and that was put away, way back and very deep. So at 29, I said to Reisman, I said, "I love you like a father, but I'm dying here because I grew like this and I'm growing like this right now. I need out of Quebec." And so I actually went through what looked like a heart attack in Florida. I started the morning starting to feel a lot like a bronchial congestion, and I was lying in my bed at 10 o'clock at night talking to my wife, and I felt like a horse was sitting on my chest, and she screamed at me, get an ambulance and go to the hospital. So I went to the hospital and they checked me for a heart attack, and they said, "It's not a heart attack. You're having an anxiety attack. You must know what's causing it, deal with it, or it will be a heart attack." And I went home and resigned.

David Segal (30:33):
Wow, that same day?

Jonathan Wener (30:35):
The next day and I wrote him a note and I said, "When you've had a chance to read this because I was really emotional about it, let me come and talk to you." So I talked to him and then I opened up and I started getting flown to California and Belzberg in Vancouver. Belzberg was a wonderful story because he flew me out, offered president of First City Developments, 10% of the action, bottom line, $400,000 salary and I think I was pulling at the time, maybe 100 and on and on. He takes me home to have dinner with his wife, drives me back to the hotel and says, "I withdraw my offer." I said, "Why?" He says, "I don't think you want to work for anybody."

David Segal (31:29):
Wow, and what'd you say?

Jonathan Wener (31:32):
I said, "I think you're right." I went home and opened the door.

David Segal (31:36):
Amazing, what was it about that dinner that he figured it out?

Jonathan Wener (31:40):
He was just very incisive. He was very incisive and he said, "I really feel like you're a guy that wants to do your own thing.

David Segal (31:49):
He knew you were a big shot.

Jonathan Wener (31:50):
He knew where I was going and I developed quite a relationship with him following that. Anyway, long story short, I had been working on a deal with Iada for a building on Peel Street, and I had acted as a consultant to Reisman to keep it going because the firm wasn't doing anything with it, and finally, I said to Reisman, I said, "Your whole company, nobody's filling in for me having left and I'm not coming back." He said, "Well, why don't we do it as partners?" And so we did a 50/50 deal. We only had $50,000 deposit out on the land and so we kept going forward, and I kept moving and working on financing and getting things organized. Long story short, he had a little bit of financial trouble and he said, "Well, why don't you buy me out?" So I said, "You know what Gene? I said, "Let's go to Zitri Sibling's office. we'll sit with Herb Sibling."

Harley Finkelstein (32:56):
Who's that?

Jonathan Wener (32:57):
It's the accounting firm. They were bought by ENY eventually and I said, "Let's sit down and discuss price because I don't want to take advantage." And I said, "So Gene, what do you want?" He said, "I want a million dollars for a half interest on a $50,000 deposit."

Harley Finkelstein (33:20):
Sounds rich.

Jonathan Wener (33:21):
I said, "Gene, I tell you what, I'm going to give you a million and one." And he looked at me and he said, "Why?" I said, "Because I don't want you to ever be able to say that I didn't give you more than you asked for."

Harley Finkelstein (33:35):
Wow.

Jonathan Wener (33:37):
And I did it. Herb Sibling said to me, "John, are you out of your mind?" I knew exactly what I was doing. I was tired of having been through the business joint venturing with other developers and when you're joint venturing with other developers, there are many ways to do things. So you're arguing style in a partnership when that's not complimentary. It's not complimentary, it's competing. What's complimentary was for me to be able to bring financial money institutions to the table. So they had the money, I had the know-how, put that together and be able to go do many deals.

Harley Finkelstein (34:14):
Yeah, the Venn diagram overlap is too much when you both have the same skillset. If you bring money, if they bring money and you bring the skillset, you actually form the best partnership.

David Segal (34:21):
That's remarkable. I mean million and one, it's probably worth what? 100, even if you're giving them a premium.

Jonathan Wener (34:27):
So what ended up happening and it goes back to a question you asked me earlier, is I did a deal with North American Life who put up the million one to buy Riesman. So I didn't put out the money. I got the full development fee, which I didn't have to split with him and I developed a relationship with North American Life, which built my career because I did multiple deals with them. So many that have got to a point where and I love the relationship so much that I had befriended the financial, the CFO of the company, and I told him what I had in mind that maybe I should sell 50% of the interest in the company to North American and we just keep going forward. Orey Fidani built up a huge portfolio with North American life. So there was the example, and he said to me, "John, don't do it."

(35:25):
I said, "Why?" He said, "You're going to outgrow us before we outgrow you. You're going to have more deals than we can service. Diversify your relationships." And so what ended up happening, which goes back to your earlier question, I did half a dozen deals with North American Life. I did half a dozen deals with Great West Life. I did 10 deals with Aetna, and they became my partners and they all had different kinds of deals that fit their mold, and so I say, "If this deal came along, I said, well this one belongs to Aetna and this one belongs to North American life because it fits their mold." And there was no resentment and lawyers were amazed they could send me a bill for 1,200 instead of 12,000 or 125,000 because it was the same document over and over again.

Harley Finkelstein (36:16):
So that in itself is absolutely amazing. The other thing that I find absolutely amazing is when we walked in here, you showed us what we call in my world a deal tombstone, which is after a deal is done, everyone gets something to commemorate it, and the thing you showed me was this three-dimensional chess.

David Segal (36:31):
Yeah, talk to us about that.

Harley Finkelstein (36:32):
Well actually, I have a really interesting story that I want to tie to this if I may. So we did some research on this sort of thing and I've been thinking about when you said three-dimensional chess, think a couple things clicked for me. One of the people that I spoke to in anticipation of this interview was Steve Kaplan from Reliance Construction and I said, "Steve, tell me some stories of Jonathan and how do you explain Jonathan, his success, his chutzpah audacity, and how he built this incredible company.

(37:02):
And he said, "Well, the thing about Jonathan is this." He's like, "A couple years ago, Jonathan wanted me to come and work on a deal in Toronto with him and I didn't want to go to Toronto." This is Steve talking. "I didn't want to Toronto." And Jonathan kept asking me, and I said, "I don't want to go to Toronto. It's not my thing." So Jonathan said, "Fine, do me a favor. Just come for the dog and pony show. We want to talk to some bankers. Help me come and talk to the bankers about it."

(37:25):
And so I go and Jonathan and I sell these bankers, and they were so impressed, and Jonathan called me and said, "Great news, we got the deal. We're going to do this, but there's only one issue. They'll only do it if you do it with me." And then he said, "Then how could I say no?" And so I knew that entire time, it was always about Jonathan getting me into the deal. That to me is three-dimensional chess. You knew exactly what you were doing. You saw all the different pieces of it.

Jonathan Wener (37:48):
There was another piece to it though.

Harley Finkelstein (37:51):
Yeah.

Jonathan Wener (37:53):
And Steve will tell you today, he's very grateful for me having dragged him to Toronto.

Harley Finkelstein (37:57):
I mean we know that.

David Segal (37:58):
Well isn't that the Aurora building? That's the biggest residential tower in the country.

Jonathan Wener (38:02):
He needed to come to Toronto so he was not so reliant on Montreal. I have done billions of dollars with Steve, and since Sam Aberman died from Divco because I used to switch deals between the two of them. I had the same handshake relationship with both of them and literally a handshake, but Steve had all his eggs in Montreal and a bit in Ottawa, and I said, "Steve, that market is crying for you. You have such an opportunity in there to be one of the large contractors there. We're getting out of general contracting our own deals. I'm prepared to give you my staff." Because we don't want to carry them anymore in between projects because we got smashed with $2 million carry of all the key staff while the project got laid in 2008 because of the debacle, and I knew Steve would fly.

Harley Finkelstein (39:05):
I mean that's not your business. It's someone else's business.

Jonathan Wener (39:08):
Because Steve and I have a trusted relationship that goes back 30 years. If I wanted to do most of my business in Toronto, don't you want to have your own general contractor there by your side? And Steve has never screwed me. He runs his business the way I run mine. That's why we get along so well. There's huge mutual respect up and down the entire organization. I can tell you a story about Steve that would blow your mind. We had a project where I brought Steve in as a design build contractor for Bell Canada on Nuns' Island. We had to pull that project together, which was a quarter of a billion.

(40:03):
We had 17 months to do it and we had to pull together the provincial government, the federal government, the Port Authority, and the city of Montreal, get everybody sitting at the same table with $30 million worth of highway infrastructure. Normally you'd say, "Well, that's 10 years right there." And my attitude has always been if everybody wants to see something happen, you can put them down to the table and get everybody to work together to make it happen. If somebody in the group doesn't want to make it happen, you can negotiate all day long. They'll drag their heels and it won't get done. We got everybody into the right place where something that might have taken 30 years to happen could happen now.

David Segal (40:48):
You brought them all into the same room, or take us to that meeting.

Jonathan Wener (40:52):
Because they all had the same vision. They didn't know how they were going to get there, but if we brought a 650,000-foot tenant that was going to pay taxes and was going to make the whole economic creation of it happen and work and allow the rest of the island to be built and developed by virtue of it, everybody was a winner and everybody saw it. Steve came in. We had a relationship with Bell Canada. That was unbelievable. I was called into Santrade the year before this.

Harley Finkelstein (41:27):
This is United Way in Quebec. It's United Way.

Jonathan Wener (41:30):
Yep, so I was called in the year before to head up the real estate division of Santrade and for me, it was a bit going backwards, but I said I'd do it and I told Daniel Parrot, who was my senior guy from Montreal, I said, "You're going to learn and next year you're doing it." He said, "I don't like that stuff." And anyway, lo and behold, Daniel does it the next year, three weeks into the job at Santrade, and Michaels knocks on the door and says, "How would you guys like to build our headquarters on Nuns' Island?" Daniel comes to me and says, "You know what? I get it."

(42:08):
So we move forward on that. Steve Kaplan developed a construction schedule and worked with us together on the designs, excavated out 16 acres in two weeks using mining equipment, built a mountain. Took all the soil with the big super shovels and those big trucks where the wheels are 10 feet high. He was going 24/7. When the steel came in, the steel came in two million over budget because the structural engineer had miscalculated and I hear about it, and I picked up the phone and I called Steve and I said, "Steve, that's not reasonable that you should pick that up. I'll pick it up and I'll split it with you." He said, "Never you mind. That's mine."

David Segal (43:07):
Wow. We got to go back to a story because I spoke to your friend Mark and he goes, "You got to tell him to talk about the Royal Trust story."

Jonathan Wener (43:18):
So Royal Trust started with a guy named Tommy Tucker, and we developed a close relationship with them and built a building for them on York, which was the HSBC building. I think HSBC is moving now, but basically we built that for them. Developed a close relationship, heard all the stories about what was going on in Montreal with the Royal Trust building here and that people were feeling that they were getting building sickness syndrome and they were losing tenants, and I said, "Tom, what's going on? You're not managing it properly. Could I buy it?" I said, "Could I buy at half interest?" Because I never dreamed they would sell the whole thing. He said, "No, you want it, you can buy the whole thing." I went, "Wow." So we developed a letter of intent and lo and behold, the deal looks like it's going to happen, but they had been very clear that I was not allowed to discuss the details of this with anybody. Anybody meant including my bankers because it normally it would exclude your bankers.

David Segal (44:38):
Right but how are you going to get the financing though if you don't?

Jonathan Wener (44:41):
Exactly, so we get to a point in the deal, and the deal at this point is 60 million. I get dropped and no reason, and I'm feeling really anxious and very bad about this, and Tom said, "John, put your head down. Trust me, this is going to work out okay, but we have to go through and he didn't give me details." I found out later, they had a client who had a 100 million on deposit and who made it very clear they were going to yank their deposit if they didn't get a chance at buying the building, and so if you didn't know anything about the multiplier of on capital, that's probably $2 billion worth of capital and the trust.

(45:36):
So later on, things start to open up a bit. They change the price to 65 million, and I am really annoyed. I get told this and I digest it, but doesn't mean much because I don't have control of the building. So around March 25th, 1987, I get a phone call, "You still want to do the deal?" Yes. "Are you prepared to do it and sit down and knuckle down and get it done, and nobody leaves the table till it's done?" I said, "Well, that's my kind of language." Because I used to have a habit that at four in the afternoon, I would say to all the lawyers in the room, I said, "Nobody's going home until this is done."

(46:36):
Because what's unreasonable at 4:00 PM is very reasonable at 4:00 AM. Anyway, long story short, we sat down Friday afternoon at four o'clock in the lawyer's offices, we did not come up for air until Tuesday. We had clothes sent in, meals sent in, showers in the offices, and we got everything done, and they said, "Well, how are we going to have you do due diligence because if you walk away from this, it's not a good sign on the Montreal market." I said, "Well, your property management's so bad, why don't you just give us a property management contract and we'll use that to do our due diligence, but the beauty of that is that when we buy, there'll be an easy transition."

Harley Finkelstein (47:29):
You're already the property manager.

Jonathan Wener (47:31):
So they said, "Great, that looks fine." In fact, I even had a broker call me and said, "Hey, we heard the Japanese are buying the World Trust Building." I said, "I can't believe it." Anyway, sure enough, we end up going to the closing. So we go to the closing. Did Sherman tell you this part of the story?

Harley Finkelstein (47:51):
No, he wouldn't tell me any of the stories, ask John.

Jonathan Wener (47:55):
So we go to the closing and I told everybody on my side, all the champagnes, all organized and all the pastries and everything sitting on the side, and we start at seven o'clock in the morning. I had to organize myself because there was a trade for the money in New York at 11 o'clock. So everything had to be done by then. I was shaking like a leaf thinking that here I am, 37 years old, buying the Royal Trust building for 65 million bucks. My hands were shaking.

Harley Finkelstein (48:31):
Is this the biggest deal you've done at this point?

Jonathan Wener (48:33):
For sure, by a long shot.

David Segal (48:35):
It's 37 years old. Think about that.

Jonathan Wener (48:39):
Okay, so I go in and there's a pile of documents all the way down the table, no negotiation to be had, just signed. So we do that for close to two and a half hours, and the treasurer is there from head office. He says, "Could I have the envelope please? Send it across the table."

Harley Finkelstein (49:02):
The check.

Jonathan Wener (49:04):
And I hear a shriek.

Harley Finkelstein (49:07):
A shriek?

Jonathan Wener (49:07):
What the fuck is this?

Harley Finkelstein (49:11):
You can swear on our show. It's our show, we can do whatever the hell we want.

Jonathan Wener (49:14):
I said, "What's your problem, sir?" Jesus, this is a credit card slip. He said, "You can't buy the Royal Trust building on a credit card." I said, "Are you kidding me?" I had written one building 65 million. I'd signed it. I said, "Could you please call for an authorization?" And it was a Gold Royal Trust credit card. He said to me, "You got to be kidding me. You put all these lawyers and everybody here, and you're trying to close this on a Visa card?" I said, "Yes." I said, "I have a Gold Royal Trust card."

Harley Finkelstein (49:56):
But you get points. What do you mean? [inaudible 00:49:58]

David Segal (49:56):
That's a lot of points.

Jonathan Wener (50:00):
I'm buying the Royal Trust building, so what could be better?

David Segal (50:04):
Don't need to pay for a flight since.

Jonathan Wener (50:05):
He said Cornelison is going to have a shit fit if he finds out. I said, "Well, I'm really sorry." He said, "Well, what possessed you to do this?" I said, "I'm glad you asked that." I said, "You know what? They sent me my bill yesterday and I paid it, and I brought it up to date. That means I won't get another bill for 30 days." That's worth 1%. 1% is $650,000. And I said, "And by the way, I don't know whether you know it or not, but on a Gold Royal Trust credit card, you get a 1% discount. That's 1.3 million. You guys took five million out of my pocket. I'm taking 1.3 out of yours. Call for authorization." Well, the guy looked like he was going to have a heart attack.

Harley Finkelstein (50:56):
He has to call someone and say, "I need an authorization for $65 million on a credit card.

Jonathan Wener (51:01):
And Tom Tucker was in the room, and he knew me well enough to put his hand up to his face and laugh behind, but knew I was having a time of my life with this guy, and I finally said, "You know what the difference is between you and me." He says, "What's that?" I said, "I'm a man of my word. Here's the check."

Harley Finkelstein (51:21):
So you just fucked with them. Perfect.

David Segal (51:22):
That's hilarious.

Jonathan Wener (51:26):
So invest in your employees in every way that you reasonably can to build your business, and the next piece is give it back, pay it forward. There are so many ways to do it. Get your employees to get involved. The strength of the defeat is it's ours. It's not we're working for the children's hospital or the Jewish General Hospital, or Santrade or Jewish community, this or that, this belongs to us.

Harley Finkelstein (51:58):
David and I think of a building our own companies. We also think about building with purpose and actually building far beyond just making money, but also having an impact, and I mean Duffy Canderel has been around for a long time. The impact is 33 years.

Jonathan Wener (52:11):
33 years.

Harley Finkelstein (52:14):
Walk us through that.

Jonathan Wener (52:15):
33 years and I think this year brings us to close to $24 million.

Harley Finkelstein (52:19):
That's incredible.

Jonathan Wener (52:22):
We wanted to do a charity run and we were in the early days stinking Nuns' Island that we would do it from downtown Montreal across the bridge to Nuns' Island and run a race. Lo and behold, 33 years ago, Susan ends up with her first bout of cancer. Like most men, I look at the doctor and say, "What can I do to make a difference? How can I fix it?"

Harley Finkelstein (52:50):
Yeah, fix it for sure.

Jonathan Wener (52:52):
And he said, "You can't, there's nothing you can do." But he said, "The one thing you can do is develop money for research so that other people don't get this disease and that we make advances." And that left a big impression. I went back to the office and my current CEO who left us for about 20 years, but his back was part of the initiation of that, and we started it as a fun run. Costumes were part of the whole thing for a good 20 years, and in those days, I guess we were bringing in about a quarter of a million dollars and it was meant for business and it was for business to show it had a heart and the cancer really affected a lot of families, and there was an opportunity to do something good. We split it between McGill and University Memorial 50/50 to their respective cancer research centers and I have to say, I mean this year we'll write a check for a million bucks to each of them.

David Segal (54:06):
It's amazing. One of your friend says, "Jonathan works 100 hours a week, and 40 of them are for community."

Jonathan Wener (54:11):
That's about right.

David Segal (54:13):
What other community projects are you most proud of?

Jonathan Wener (54:18):
Matta, Federation, CJA. I just finished a great run. I was given a $100 million goal with Mitch Garber, and it was to be a two year campaign special during COVID, and we finished it, the two year campaign in six months. We had a month and a half of extra work the following year to close that year off and we brought it to 131 million.

David Segal (54:51):
Jonathan, Big Shot is really about, it's an archive. It's about taking these wonderful stories from these incredible people like yourselves.

Harley Finkelstein (54:58):
By the way, this credit card story is up there, especially through these amazing stories with these incredible entrepreneurs that's definitely up there.

David Segal (55:05):
It's amazing, but to the problem with these stories is they're ephemeral and they've inspired Harley and I, they've inspired a whole generation of entrepreneurs and we want to capture them and if somebody in many ways, this is a time capsule, and so if somebody picks up this recording 100 years from now and hears this, what do you want them to take away? What's that message that you want them, the lessons that you've learned?

Jonathan Wener (55:30):
I say it in my speech at graduation. First and foremost, be passionate about what you're doing. Don't worry so much about the money. The money will follow if you're really truly passionate about it and if it doesn't, you'll find something else, but be really passionate about what you're doing so that it's not going to work, it's going to play. My kids said, "Dad, at 60, when are you going to retire? I said, "I did 20 years ago." They said, "What are you talking about? You still work like a dog." I said, "I play like a dog." Because for me, every day it was a joy and still is a joy. Even though I'm removed from CEO, I'm now COO. You know what COO is? Chief Opinion Officer.

Harley Finkelstein (56:15):
Sure your CEO loves that.

Jonathan Wener (56:17):
But I love the business and I love business, not just my real estate business. I love business and many different things that we've done, and I love watching other people's success and making them successful if I can. So first, passion. Second, put the right people around you and share with them. Let them become wealthy with you. I built my company giving 20%, not of the company, but 20% of the action in the buildings and the real estate deals deal by deal. 10% to head office and 10% of the field office. So each city was a field office, 10% went to that city and 10% went to the head office guys who supported them.

(57:08):
Invest in your employees. Invest in the organization and create a family. I can tell you, I invited all my employees up to my country home every year for an extravagant dinner and a wild day in the country. We did crazy things, dragon boating, sand sculptures, all kinds of stuff that was team building oriented. My wife used to say, "God, when are you going to stop this?" I said, "I'm never going to stop it because it's part of the employee's understanding that I care."

(57:44):
So invest in your employees in every way that you reasonably can to build your business, and the next piece is give it back, pay it forward. So I think that's a full life. What's a rich life? A rich life to me is not how much money you have, it's how you're feeling your soul, and if you feel good in that, if you can look yourself in the mirror and say, "Have I done good deeds? Am I doing the right things? If I'm worth a 100 million less or 100 million more, it's not going to change my life, but it will change other peoples, and I'm trying. The other thing I would say and I've done it and I'm executing on it now, and I would say to you it's the best advice I could give other people. I'm the executor of my own will in my lifetime, and that's a joy.

David Segal (58:46):
Didn't you have a professor at Concordia that said something like, "Don't invest in machines, invest in people."

Jonathan Wener (58:53):
It's, "Machines depreciate, people appreciate, invest in people." That's my underlying theme.

Harley Finkelstein (59:00):
I think it deserves a toast.

Jonathan Wener (59:02):
Okay, I'm for that.

Harley Finkelstein (59:04):
Cheers. Thank you for sitting down with us.

Jonathan Wener (59:06):
My pleasure.

Harley Finkelstein (59:06):
This has been so much fun.