Entrepreneur & Community Leader Talk with James Cumming

Dad never really talked a ton about, you know, why he did things or what his history was.

But I do remember him telling me once that he had a prof from McGill that told him, you have this enormous privilege of an education and now you have a requirement to give back to your community.

The Job Talk Podcast shares stories from people who are passionate and love what they do in their careers through conversation.

And we explore their careers, past work experiences and the education that got them to where they are now.

We are putting together a career crisis Ultimate Interview series.

We are asking experts to give their best advice and guidance around work anxiety career pressure, career goal setting, and ultimately career transformation.

To learn more about this special interview series and get notified when it’s available, please visit our Web page at thejobtalk.com/help Today’s guest is James Cumming.

Here’s our Job Talk with an entrepreneur and community leader.

James, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

You’re you’re here today to talk about being an entrepreneur and being a community leader.

Did you come from a long line of entrepreneurs in your family? Well, you know, my my dad had a pretty interesting history in Edmonton.

And before he moved to Edmonton, that he grew up in a very small village just outside of High River.

And his parents had emigrated to Canada.

And, you know, they were they were farmers, worker workers of the land and instilled an incredible work ethic in my dad.

And so my dad put himself through school and then served in the Navy at the tail end of the war and managed to get himself through school, through McGill mechanical engineer.

And then when he got established with his engineering practice in Edmonton, he started to take on projects not not just as engineering projects, but then he would also make him his firm would be the prime architect or prime engineering firm, and then he would take an interest in the project.

So he ended up in real estate because he was a mechanical engineer, but because I think people trusted him that he could provide a good product.

And so while he was doing all of that, he was also getting involved in the community and was a bit of a community leader, chaired the Chamber of Commerce chair Kiwanis and in thinking and Dad never really talked and in thinking and Dad never really talked a ton about, you know, why he did things or what his history was.

But I do remember him telling me once that he had a prof from McGill that told him, you have this enormous privilege of an education and now you have a requirement to give back to your community.

And so that that kind of all of those little things, I think as you’re growing up, you see and I think it embedded in my mind that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I wanted to build things, build business and do some community work as well.

It’s funny that he found himself in the Navy being from landlocked Alberta, Canada.

I wonder how the first little while was on the ocean for him.

But what? What was your first post-secondary experience? So I after I graduated from high school, I worked for a year at Canada Safeway, because I think I had the attitude that, you know, I wanted to go make some money.

And then I realized, you know, I did have this building construction, hadn’t quite figured it out, but I decided what’s the quickest way for me to get enough of a background and education that I can get involved in industry? And so I picked NAIT So I took building construction.

Engineering at NAIT is now called Construction Engineering and took the two year course and it really gave me the technical ability to at least launch into a career in construction and ended up being hired by one of the larger general contractors in Edmonton.

AB Karlsson and I worked as a project coordinator, project desk commander and then bought my first interest in the construction firm that regroups for 20 years corporate Carmen Dixon Construction.

A lot of graduates from NAIT have that entrepreneurial spirit.

When you were being, I guess you were always looking to go into business for yourself, or did you find yourself in that first project management position where you were thinking, I could maybe look at a 20 to 30 career year career here and then retire? You know, I think I always wanted to be a leader and builder.

I didn’t necessarily think that it would be owner leader builder, but it just struck me that that was the way to get it done and be able to do it quicker.

So I had to put some risk into it.

And and certainly I would tell you those first few years of construction, they were ladled with risk.

You can’t be afraid of personal guarantees.

You can’t be afraid of the hours and the time that you have to put in to build something.

But yeah, I think I knew that I wanted to own and build something, and I think that was pretty embedded early on.

So that was in the construction industry.

You eventually, I believe you owned a company called Overhead Doors.

Is that correct? Yeah.

So after I sold my interest in the construction company to a partner who I actually went to school with and took construction engineering, I sold I sold them pieces of the business as we went along and then sold them the balance of the business.

I had it term where I was the CEO of a company called Princeton Development.

So we did land and real estate development and asset management and then was the CEO of Courtney Developments, which we did design, build sort of development work.

And when I left that, I was approached by some private equity guys who had acquired creative door systems in Edmonton, and they were looking for new leadership to try and grow the business and as most private equity guys are, they wanted to sell at some point in time.

So they brought me in as investor and CEO and then grew that business to the point where we sold it to Sanmar Holdings, which is a Japanese company, but they owned a company called Overhead Door Corporation of the US and that was the linkage into the door business.

They wanted to have greater presence in Canada.

So it was a really, you know, a fascinating time to grow that business.

I traveled once we sold it.

I stayed on for just over a year, traveled to Japan a little bit, got to see what, you know, a Japanese corporate board environment looks like.

And again, it to me a tremendous education.

Lots of interesting things during that period of time.

Did you pick up the language at all? You know, no, I didn’t.

And it was interesting in the board meetings that they would have translators there.

But most of the discussion around the board would be they’d be speaking to each other.

So you wouldn’t have a clue what they were saying.

But then they would summarize it and, you know, they could be at it for 15 minutes and they’re very expressive.

And, you know, you you don’t know if you’re in trouble or they’re arguing about your presentation, whether it’s good or whether it’s bad.

But at the end, they would summarize that longer conversation into about a 32nd sound byte of This is what we’d like to see you do.

So you wouldn’t get the richness of what the conversation was, but you certainly give some instructions before you left.

What did your day to day look like when when you were in that mindset and in that in that specific position? What would your day today entail? So I would say that the majority of my career when you’re working in the C-suite is there’s a percentage those troubleshooting or dealing with with issues on whether it be specific projects or specific strategies or staffing issues or looking at, you know, improving staff and, you know, those sort of the human dynamic of the business.

But I tried as best as I could to make sure I could carve enough time out to talk about what were we going.

So a lot of people, you have to look in the rearview mirror.

You have to look at your results.

You have to look at, you know, what did you accomplish? Did you hit your goals? Did you hit your targets? But as much as that is important, I think what’s even more important is where are you going? So I would try to as much as I could, either drive that strategy or coach people that were a big part of the strategy to make sure that they were executing on the bigger picture along with their day to day stuff.

Because there’s stuff, you know, there’s people quit.

People are mad at each other. People are happy.

You know, you have a whole bunch of different things.

Clients are happy.

Clients have a problem they want you to get engaged with.

So all of those are the day to day things.

But you can never lose sight of where are you trying to go? Like, where is that bigger strategic vision and imperative that you’re trying to drive? And that’s that’s the part of business that’s always intrigued me.

And that’s the part that is probably, I think, the most enjoyable.

But it’s the hardest part because execution is not easy, you know? Yeah, you have to carve time out of your day to day craziness to make sure that you’re driving strategy.

Yeah.

How do you define success and it’s not just I’m wondering if it’s not just financial success, but your definition of success and how long do you think it took for you to feel like you were starting to feel like you were achieving success? Yeah. Yeah.

I think initially there’s probably a little bit of a monetary driver in there because, you know, you’ve got to pay the rent.

You got to you got a house to look after, you got family.

But then I think you get past that point where you have to start to view success a little bit differently.

And so my motto was, I would look at the growth of our people.

To me, that would really quantify success.

If I if I go back and look at my career and I look at some of the key people or have been involved in all of these businesses and see the degree of success that they had post that environment, then that to me is success.

That that is me, that we’re encouraging leadership or encouraging growth of other people.

The rest kind of take care takes care of itself.

Like if you if you have a good strategy, good vision and you grow great people, you can grow great business.

And the monetary side, it will happen.

Now it doesn’t happen just naturally like a just, you know, it’s still a grind it out.

You still got to deliver a good product excellence in everything you do.

But most of that is derived from good people with good coaching and getting good results. So yeah, what would you say to that person that is considering has an idea for a business? What’s the greatest advice you could give to a person that’s going to venture out and and start as an entrepreneur.

Make sure it’s something you believe in.

Like, you know, you may have had an idea, but it’s something that’s not, you know, not something that’s really in your soul.

I’d say it’s got to be something that you’re really, truly believe.

What? Because if you don’t, it won’t be authentic.

And then your your team, as you build them, your staff, your customer was like, they’ll cut through the B.S.

You have to be passionate about the product or or at least about where you’re trying to go with the product.

Yeah.

What are what are you most proud of throughout your entrepreneurship career? Well, I think there’s two things.

One, but, you know, the people I’ve touched, I hope that I create a better lives for them and, you know, help them launch their career.

And as I’ve worked with some fantastic people that I think become great leaders in their own in their own way.

So that’s one piece.

But the other piece is my community involvement.

So I always said and people would hear me talk about this, that I never want to be defined by the businesses I built or was involved with building, but I’d rather be defined as to what I did as a human being and you know, in the time that you have on the planet.

So business gave me the luxury to be able to do all the other things I did that weren’t related to the business.

So whether it was going back to NAIT, to getting on the board and being the chair or muscular Dystrophy Canada or ART Stabilization Fund Construction Association, almost all of these things I did, there’s no payment for it.

It’s not a board gig where someone hands you a check.

It is, you know, you’re helping you’re helping your community.

And I find that tremendously gratifying.

I can’t, you know, to see where we went.

When I was involved with NAIT, we hired a new CEO.

The amount of growth that we had, the turnaround at muscular dystrophy Youth, the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce.

When I chaired it like we were, the entire board had resigned and we had put in a new board, new governance.

And I ended up sharing all of those life experiences who are, you know, they’re fantastic.

Plus, you know, I think we got good results and and for our community so you know those two things seeing the growth in people and the growth of those businesses and then being able to give back to your community there, those are the things that I’ll cherish for sure.

Now, along with that, you know, you’ve got family and you know, I’m blessed.

I’ve got a fantastic wife and kids that I am immensely proud of.

And I’m hoping that, you know, my actions perhaps helped set them off on their career as well.

I think that’s a great segway into your career in politics, and we’re not going to call you a politician.

We’re going to call you a community leader.

But when you’re experiencing success as being an entrepreneur, why would you want to go into politics? giving back to your community has to be part of your core value when you’re building a business.

And I’ve always thought the ultimate give back to your community is public service.

And I think military service would be the thing that comes to mind for me.

Number one, like looking at what my dad did.

Well, I didn’t do that and couldn’t later in my life couldn’t do it.

And so I always thought the public life through politics might be the vehicle to be able to make some substantive change and and take some of the things that you’ve learned over your business career and being able to take those and apply them into the political arena.

And I always thought, like, I’m enormous respect for people in public life, but I do think in public life we need some people that have actually built things, run things, sign both sides of the check and all that sort of stuff because it is much like my education, which is applied learning.

I often think what’s lacking in politics is practical, applied approaches.

And so I thought I could bring that to the table.

My peer group, my business peer group would say, much like you just said, are you not like, what are you doing? What I you know, I was Laurie Hawn, who is the sitting MP and Edmonton senator.

He was pretty persuasive to say, James, you know, you’ve done some community work, but this is ultimately what you need to do.

And so that’s I did it.

And, you know, I’m I’m glad I did.

It’s probably the shortest run for someone in politics ever in that I ran, I lost.

Then I ran again and won.

And then we had a COVID shortened parliament because the Prime Minister decided to call another election and I narrowly lost round three.

But in that two years I learned a lot and just realized that it there’s great complexity into politics and public life.

All three leaders are both leaders that I had gave me portfolios that were interesting.

They were challenging.

Throw some COVID into the mix to make it complicated on how you deliver and learning how to work on Zoom and, you know, a variety of different things.

So, you know, a great experience and I think, you know, I’m proud of the time I spent there.

I had a good team working with me in both in Ottawa and Edmonton.

And again, same sort of premise supplies that I look at what they’re doing now and I’m incredibly proud of them.

They’re they’ve all you know, anybody that I worked with has done, I think, doing really well and proud of them.

And I’m proud of the work that we did.

And maybe we influenced a little bit of public policy, you know, in our small way, like COVID relief for small business.

So, you know, I think me advocating against the minister that I was the critic of, you know, perhaps we got them to changed tact a little bit because some of the programs weren’t working very well.

So, you know, you hope that you did.

You don’t know for sure.

But, you know, it was I’m glad I did it.

Can you let our listeners know what roles you had? Yeah.

So after I was elected, I was a rookie MP and then in opposition we have what’s called shadow cabinets.

And shadow cabinets are they’re supposed to mirror a minister and you keep them accountable for whatever they’re doing.

And, you know, either in opposition, you know, be critics, but then also you can offer suggestions for what you think might work better.

So my initial role was I was the shadow minister for small business and export promotion.

And then we we had a new leader, Erin O’Toole, and he made me the critic for science industry and technology and which made me the vice chair on a on a committee in parliament called INDU, which is the industry committee.

So that deals with everything large business, the cellular business, CRTC, like lots of stuff going on in that field.

And I was I did that for a while.

And then he asked me to shift gears and maybe the shadow minister of covered economic recovery because he knew the thought was that we need to come up with some proactive policies as we come out of this.

So that role I interviewed, you know, hundreds of different folks, businesses, leaders to try and come up with some economic policies that I thought would would help.

And then we had an election called and the rest is history.

So there are three great roles.

And I’m I’m proud of the work that my team did when we were in those roles.

I mean, so over my head talking to you about this, but I’m really curious and these are going to sound like naive questions.

But have you always have you always been a good public speaker? Do you feel comfortable speaking in front of large groups? Well, you know, so I have to go back.

My first exposure at any kind of public speaking was when I was chairing the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce.

And I wish I had a video of when I was doing that because I don’t think I was particularly good at it.

I was pretty scripted and awfully nervous because it’s not my it’s not an area that, you know, I was comfortable with.

But I think over time I’ve gotten better at it.

I, you know, I, I would argue sometimes you get to that my team would say you’re your way to you look grumpy.

You look, you look angry.

But but I think that I think I’ve gotten better at it.

I think it’s a bit of an art. I think some people are gifted at it.

I’m far from a gift. I have to work at it.

Yeah.

And I, you know, and you get some training on it.

But I think it’s practice, practice, practice.

And particularly if you’re if you’re, if you’re speaking on something you’re passionate about and you know, the content, then I think you’re way more comfortable.

But the fun in Parliament actually was not so much delivering a speech which towards the end of my career in Parliament I wanted to freewheel more and go less scripted.

So I was trying to go 60 on scripted, 40 scripted.

I would tend to script one. It was very technical.

And you know, if you’re if you’re getting into data and those sort of things.

But the fun of Parliament was when you’re in there is a back and forth question period where the answer has to be the same length as the question.

So you could rapid fire questions.

So I did most of that off the cuff.

That was fun.

And you would see how good the minister was, whether they knew their stuff and if they knew their stuff, they were good.

If they didn’t.

And then you could tell they’re they’re they’re trying to ad lib it and they come off as not knowing what they’re talking about.

Yeah.

And that was sort of that their job was to demonstrate.

Listen, you’ve taken on this role as a minister of the Crown.

You should know your stuff.

Now, you may not know everything and then your your answer.

My mind would be, I’ll get back to you or, you know, but they don’t.

Instead, they ramble off and talk about, you know, is the sky blue? And then you say, I had a bath today.

Like, Yeah, and you sit there and you’re you and you’re perplexed by it, but that’s politics.

And I’m hoping that, you know, in public service, in public life, that we’ll start to get back to.

To me, it’s a serious game for serious people and you should treat it that way.

And it should be less gamesmanship and it should be more about, you know, content and trying to make a difference for the right reasons.

Yeah, being genuine is what I’m taking from from that.

What are the ingredients that go into winning an election? Does knocking on doors actually work? It does because it you know, it’s a combination of things.

So you use any kind of comms strategies you can through social media, through, you know, trying to get that direct connection with the electorate.

But the doorknocking part of it’s persuasion.

But the bigger part of it is because there’s this big national campaign going over on and they’re spending an enormous amount of money trying to get their message across.

So what you’re doing in doorknocking, you’re really trying to determine who your supporters are.

And then the next phase of that is you’re going back to those supporters and convincing them make sure you come out and vote.

Yeah, doorknocking is still one of the best ways to ID voters to make sure that you understand, you know, are they your supporters? And I would tell you, when people are strong supporters, the ID goes pretty quick.

When they’re sitting on the fence, it takes a little bit more work.

When they’re not a supporter, they often make that pretty clear, too.

So I’ve had more than enough people on the driveway.

So you, you know, get some.

I still think it’s an important part of the game.

And you meet people, you get to hear from them.

You know, often it may not be a federal issue, but you’ll hear about their struggles, you know, and they’re real like that.

And particularly during this period of with the pandemic, a point, you know, Kim, I can’t tell you enough stories today of the angst people were feeling.

And I you know, there’s not much you can do, but you’re at the door.

And, you know, if you don’t have empathy, you must be an awfully cold person because you’ve got to have empathy for for the human condition that and the state, the things for it.

Yeah, I’m my biggest concern was my the mental health of my teenage kids because two years that was pretty rough.

But it looks like we’re through it now so that’s good.

What advice and this is similar to the question I asked you when we were talking about being an entrepreneur, but what advice would you give that person considering a career as a politician and entering politics? Well, it’s not for the faint hearted, you know, and if you you know, you should be passionate about public service and that you want to do something and what is the good that you want to do? So don’t do it as a job.

There are many politicians that get involved because maybe they want the paycheck.

And I just think that’s entirely the wrong reason to get involved in that game because your life will be under a microscope.

So, you know, now with the advent of social media, there’s not much you can do that won’t get recorded or talked about.

So, you know, eyes wide open going into it.

But make sure you’re passionate about it.

Make sure that you have a reason that you want to do it.

And it could be like in my case, I thought the economy of Canada and and the opportunities for young entrepreneurs weren’t what they were before.

So my passion was more about I’ve had a pretty good run.

I’m happy with some of the things I’ve done, but I don’t see the same opportunity necessarily for other people saw mine was more of a business focus, but there’s other people that could be a social issue or a crime issue or something, something that has impacted their lives that they’re passionate about and they want to push public policy on.

And that that I would say by anyone trying to do it make sure that you’ve got there is something that you’re running for that that you’re passionate about and then you can focus on that.

And so if you’re going to Ottawa, you know, you can lobby to be on a certain committee or if there’s travel or if there’s other work being done, that’s that is your focus, then, you know, you should gravitate towards that.

You know, I think a one of my colleagues Mike Lake, he has an autistic son.

So he’s he’s done a ton of stuff for autism.

And and he’s also done a lot of cross the aisle work to try and get people to work together on specific issues, particularly around autism.

So that’s his his, you know, passionate area.

And there’s, you know, John Barlow, who’s was a colleague who’s who’s intensely interested in in agriculture and and growing the agricultural sector in in Canada.

So, you know, I think that would be my advice.

Like make sure you’re not just going for a ride, make sure that you’re trying to drive something home and an impact, as you know, make it what you can.

Yeah.

What are you most proud of from your time? As in public service? You know, I think the work that we did with our team coming up with policy initiatives on economic recovery, I really love what we submitted because it was great work and I didn’t just talk to conservative thinking minds.

I talked to a variety of different folks in touch, some former prime ministers, former political leaders.

We went out of country and saw what other countries were doing as best practices.

So I’m really quite proud of the work that we did in that area.

And I think the report, the representations I made in the House that when I look back at them, I’m, you know, for the most part, I’m proud of the work that how I presented myself and my constituents and try to always do it with a level of decorum.

You know, sometimes you get in the heat of the battle and, you know, maybe maybe that shows through and it comes off as partizan.

But I but I think for the most part, I, I’m hoping that the constituents that I serve were proud of the work that I did.

You know, I certainly think I did the best I could and did quite a bit for someone that was never involved in any of this stuff before.

And I had to get on the learning curve quickly because I was getting some portfolios I had to learn and get busy with. So and again goes back to my business background.

I think I found some really talented people that helped me and that was the key to success.

Well, I live in the community that you’re a leader in, and I just want to thank you for everything that you’ve done, which includes coming on this podcast.

Thank you so much for joining us today, James.

I really appreciate it.

It’s my pleasure. And hopefully whoever watches us or listens to us that it inspires them to do the best with what you what you can do with your community, like get involved, get active, try and make a difference.

You’ll be better for it.

Thank you for tuning in to The Job Talk Podcast.

For more information, please visit us at thejobtalk.com Our podcast music was created by our friend Mike Malone in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.