An astute commenter has observed that of the four dragons interviewed, we now have three oak tree and one silver birch to the question - “If you were a tree, what tree do you like to be?”.
I am in the process of arranging an interview with the lady Dragon Arlene Dickinson through her executive assistant, the very nice and helpful Lee Orchard. Now, if you are to guess, what tree do you think Arlene like to be and why? Please leave your guess in the comment area and we will see if you are right. This should be fun.
P.S. Hello Lee, I hope you don’t mind, but your beautiful last name “Orchard” works magic in my quest here with my “tree question“. Thanks in advance for your magic touch. (big smile)
*******
June 25 update: I’ve booked and confirmed an interview time with Arlene in late July. So you get to take in Arlene’s insights when I finish and upload the interview in late July.
In my post “Dragonfly on assignment in Calgary“, I couldn’t tell you much about the entrepreneurs (who they are, what they do, if they get the investment or not, etc.) as that can definitely spoil your fun. But I will try to tell you my impression of them (without giving any info away).
I felt the entrepreneurs’ intense focus on their business during the whole time I was with them.
The entrepreneurs looked very business-like when they auditioned and when they pitched in front of the dragons. But trust me, they look hip and quite “in” when I meet them. They look like their customers and probably think like them as well.
I met them at their off-peak hours and they still were busy and still working very hard.
I absolutely love talking to them and my gut feeling is that it will be a joy to work with them. After seeing many entrepreneurs in Dragons’ Den auditions and in real life, I can tell you that there are some entrepreneurs that may be very smart but also give me the sense that they may be too “self-assured” for their own good, to put things very politely and diplomatically.
Until CBC Dragons’ Den team starts flying me to Vancouver and other cities to do some reporting [note: is that a big enough "hint" for the CBC producers? smile.], I will keep talking to different Calgary based entrepreneurs to get you some insider information from now till Season 2 of Dragons’ Den airs this fall. Once the shows air, I can share with you some of the unique journey that these Dragons’ Den entrepreneurs went through. I think what we are trying here is some ground breaking stuff again. So stay tune for Season 2 of Dragons’ Den.
Today, this dragonfly went on assignment and did some reporting for Dragonfly on the wall. I can’t show you the actual interviews footage yet until season 2 of Dragons’ Den is aired. But I did go through downtown Calgary to get to my assignment. And here I will show you a nice video clip of our C-Train. And may be Tourism Calgary can help you arrange a trip out to Calgary to enjoy our yearly Calgary Stampede?
I promised to write one more entry about my early exit, and here it is. After discussing with Jeff some more as to what happened, I have come to accept Jeff’s version of the story. I have removed names, edited the letter slightly, and added emphasis.
“Kempton, this is how misunderstandings happen. As I said in our conversation, your escort from the building came about as a misunderstanding and not as a directive or suggestion from anyone in CBC Communications or any CBC executive. Your presence at and near [My edit, removed names: two senior executives'] offices was unexpected and as such, [My edit, removed name: a senior executive] inquired as to who you were. That was misinterpreted by the Dragons’ Den producers [My edit, removed name], who thought there was a problem with your being there. There was no problem, and that’s precisely where the misunderstanding took place. Simple as that. A mistake, and we genuinely apologize for it. I think the lesson we’ve learned is not to jump to any conclusions based on incomplete information. Always a valuable thing.“
I take Jeff’s words for it even some people might legitimately threat that as a spin. For me personally, Jeff’s words make sense and CBC’s apology has been very much appreciated. Ultimately, I think I have experienced and learned 85% of what I was in Toronto for during the first two days on Dragons’ Den set. And now I actually got to learn another 85% in the world of how to handle new media (in particular bloggers), which is important for my personal growth.
And many thanks to Jeff for promising to arrange three interviews with CBC executives for my blogs. One is Dragons’ Den specific which I didn’t get to do in Toronto and I will post here. The other two are about factual entertainment and about English programming in general which I will post at my other blog.
In my other blog, I wrote “I aspire to make mistakes faster“. As you can see from my experiences here, I take that seriously and I mean exactly what I said. For me, learning and growth comes the fastest from mistakes and failures. I hope you won’t be afraid of mistakes and will learn and grow from them.
Now, I hope you had chances to watch and enjoy the four interviews with the male dragons - Robert, Kevin, Laurence, and Jim.
When I get back to Calgary (from my current reporting duty at Banff) today and after I catch up on some Banff reporting work, I will try to arrange an interview with the lady Dragon Arlene Dickinson so that we have all five interviews for you to learn from. Stay tune for that. And I still have a few more posts to write using materials based on my on-site visit to Toronto.
Plus when the Dragons’ Den team feed me some inside information as promised, I will share with you some of the information. No spoilers, of course. (smile)
Here is Jim’s Dragonfly interview and his Dragons’ Den bio.
“He’s the tough guy with a soft spot for a good deal and a delicious meal. Jim Treliving is the man behind Boston Pizza, Canada’s No. 1 casual dining brand. But his background wasn’t always in pizza. Jim was an RCMP officer in the rough and tough streets of B.C. and Alberta. During a night shift in Edmonton, he sat down in the original “Boston Pizza and Spaghetti House.” It was love at first bite. After doing the math, he traded in his horse and spurs to become a Boston Pizza franchisee. By 1983, Jim and his partner bought the entire company and soon after expanded Boston Pizza across North America. Jim still recalls how his dad thought he was insane to give up his secure policing career to open a small pizza parlour.”
Here is Laurence’s Dragonfly interview and his CBC Dragons’ Den bio,
“Laurence is a savvy numbers man who brings flare and style to every balance sheet. Early in his career, he was removed from medical school and started his career in the then fledgling computer industry. But in the swinging ‘70s, he immigrated to Montreal, a European-style city and eventually set his eyes on the fashion industry.”
A few days ago, I wrote my “Early Exit” piece. I want to report, for those who cares, I have just talked to Jeff Keay, Head of Media Relations (English Communications) for half an hour about my early exit from blogging deep inside the Dragons’ Den set in Toronto last week. (Jeff and I happen to be both at Banff this week.)
I want to say I feel much better now as Jeff and I explored some of the potential source of confusions that might have lead to what happened last week. And I would like to take an opportunity to learn from this experience therefore I plan to write a longer post to tell you more and share my opinions with you. But at the moment, with my reporting duty at the Banff World TV Festival (reporting for my own blog), the longer post will have to wait till may be next week.
Jeff and I agree the kind of blogging that I do are ground breaking stuff and rules have not been set yet. To me, it will be my great pleasure to help set some of these ground rules. Ultimately, having me as a super-fan is great. But it will be even more impressive if we have a lot of Dragons’ Den fans blogging about the show. I truly mean it when I say I want to one of the many many Dragons’ Den fan bloggers as a strong community can even make CBC Dragons’ Den more successful than it already is.
Looks like the Banff sky has just cleared up. By the way, these are the views that I have to “deal with” (smile) in the last few days reporting at the 2007 nextMEDIA and Banff World TV Festival. Feel free to check out my Banff reports (linked above).
Here is Kevin’s Dragonfly Interview and his CBC Dragons’ Den bio,
“He’s opinionated, he’s ruthless, he hungers for big deals and loves to work. Kevin O’Leary is a Canada’s best-known businessman turned TV investment superstar on ROB TV’s popular investment show, SqueezPlay.”
June 11: I took this entry out but I am putting it back so that the silly or foolish things that I do are keep kept for the record too.
*******
Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, I want to make something absolutely clear. To avoid any confusion, if you are here trying to improve your grammar, syntax, and spelling, then you are reading the wrong blog. In no particular order, I recommend you read New York Times, Washington Post, or Guardian.
Editorial note: I self-censored some sex and violence here but have included them in my personal blog.
Here is Robert’s Dragonfly Interview and his CBC Dragons’ Den bio,
“Robert Herjavec has lived the classic “rags to riches” story. The son of Croatian immigrants, he earned his incredible wealth by overcoming the odds with pure hard work and intuition. He remembers how his mother, who could barely speak English, lost the family savings to a smooth talking vacuum salesman. Since then, Robert vowed he would never let his family be taken advantage of again.”
Before I got my “early exit” I managed to finished four out of five interviews with the dragons. I will try to interview Arlene Dickinson in Calgary as I am also based in Calgary. I hope you enjoy the videos and learn something from the Dragons. Feel free to leave some comments. At the moment, I have a personal favourite. See which one you like most and why.
Now, I am not a professional host or interviewer, so please forgive me for my halting questions and less than smooth delivery. (smile)
P.S. I tried to wait till I interviewed all 5 dragons before I post the video so it will be a surprise to all of them. So I hope the four gentlemen dragons don’t mind I give Arlene a slight advantage. Thinking about it, I will ask Arlene my “tree” question and also a bonus question just for her. (smile)
Well, yesterday was a great day on set but I was running around a bit to do behind-the-scene interviews (posted two, did three more). Long story short, I had only 4 hours max to sleep after I uploaded the two videos and replied to some urgent Dragons’ Den emails.
So I was too exhausted to blog last night. Now I am going to try to catch up this morning. I so much wish I hadwireless or wired Internet access during the day so I can save an hour or two at night. The thing is I can see the wireless Internet perfectly in the control room but unfortunately I don’t have a login id or password to at least give it a try. May be I need to find some tech help from the crew to rescue me. At this point, I am willing to even pay $100 (out of my own pocket) a day to Bell Mobility to get its EVDO high-speed internet just so I can blog. See how determined and big fan I am? (smile)
The other sign that I am totally exhausted is that I don’t even have time to find a photo of a nice dragonfly to put up in this blog entry. To me, the last two blog entries, I at least have the wonderfully charming and beautiful Kirstine and Dianne so I can do without a nice dragonfly. A post of just my writings is a post without charm nor magic. And for that, I am including a video of a song to remind myself that I am not Superman.
As a big fan of Venture and Dragons’ Den, it was wonderful to talk to Dianne. And here is my interview with Dianne. Very insightful and with some surprising back stories. Note: The quality of the original 100+MB video file looks good but this Google Video looks compressed. I will see if there are things that I can do to fix it later. Sorry, too many things to do now to fix it. May be later.
Kirstine and I had a great chat about how she greenlit CBC Dragons’ Den.
Note: The quality of the original 100+MB video file looks reasonably good but the compression from Google Video fuzzy up the video quite a bit. I have tried other video sharing site without much improvement. Trust me on this, Kristine is a lot more charming in person than this low quality and highly compressed video would have indicated. (big smile)
*******
June 21st, 9:48am MST update: I tried another video sharing site without seeing much improvement, so I am reposting the Google video again.
June 12th, 6:44am update: I had a productive discussion with Jeff Keay, Head of Media Relations (English Communications) and Kirstine’s interview will be uploaded again. I will write a longer post to explain more about what happened and why. Please be patient.
June 7th, 6:21pm update: CBC communication department has requested video featuring Ms. Kirstine Layfield to be deactivated.
In my humble opinion, I think the video shows Dragons’ Den in a rather positive light but I have given my words to take it down, so it has been taken down. I will explain more in another post. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Well, may be I am just “lucky”. I just talked to Kirstine on the phone (she was in a meeting but sounded quite nice) and looks like I may get my interview. I will try to arrange a meeting with her or her assistant, will see. Remember, Kirstine was the CBC executive that greenlit Dragons’ Den. (big thanks)
Part of the entrepreneurial process is coming up with and creating a brand for a product. Branding and marketing a product is not an easy task but it can be well executed.
I saw some of the entrepreneurs definitely need some help with their branding which is the reason I am writing this post. Now, rather than writing a long post to talk about branding and marketing or why “brands are running out of juice“? I would like to recommend two books by my friend Kevin Roberts (CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi),
Over the years, I’ve learned a lot from reading Kevin even I have yet to meet him. The world class examples Kevin cited in his books are so clearly and nicely laid out that they are worth much more than the price of the book if you can apply them in your brands.
Until you start paying me some money for my management consulting service (big smile and I do consult), here are some free advices. OK, you better read my advices fast as my better half keeps bugging me, “Kempton, how come you are always giving free advices?” Thinking about it, here is a reason. You see, I guess I learn from Kevin the master. After all, Kevin also wrote those books to share his insight, right? And his clients keep going to him, right? (smile)
Here is a selected list of my previous blog entries about branding and lovemarks,
Thanks to the great and super nice CBC producer Molly’s suggestion, I got an up-close look of the Dragons’ Den control room where all the initial magic (first rough edit) happens.
Posted by kempton
Posted by kempton
Posted by kempton
