https://youtu.be/AyV4QiDYiRQ
Interview with James Hickey, Managing Director Sterling BackCheck
Episode 2, James Hickey provides us a description of his journey working as senior management at one of Canada's largest telecommunications company to his decision to leave to create his own business. He stresses the importance of selected good partners and how complimentary skills allowed him to be successful.
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Transcription of Podcast
Intro: Welcome to the Mad Profit Podcast where we interview active investors, entrepreneurs, and experts who left corporate jobs to buy or start successful ventures and live life on their own terms. Listen to their stories, learn from their experiences and heed their advice so you too can create mad profits and the life you've always wanted and now here's your host Laurent Truc. Laurent: Hi, everyone my name is Laurent and welcome to the Mad Profit Podcast where we interview investors entrepreneurs and experts who have bought, started or invested in successful businesses and are living life on their terms. I'm really excited today to have a good friend of mine and mentor as our guest, Jim Hickey. Jim welcome to the show. Jim: Thanks. Laurent: Glad you could make it and I am really looking forward to this interview. You've had a very interesting background. You and I have talked about this a few times and you've got so much to share. So I'm looking forward to picking your brain and learning a lot more from you (as I'm sure the audience does as well). Jim: Let's have fun doing it.Laurent: Perfect. Why don't you kick us off? Can you give me a little bit of background about yourself and a little bit of the work that you've done? Then we can dive into each one of these individual topics. Jim: Sure, one of the things that I tell people anytime I get into a situation where people are trying to understanding who I am, I tell them that I started life as number eight of eight but ultimately, I became eight of 11 children. I have seven brothers and three sisters and that informs just about everything I do. I grew up on a farm, father died when I was a young teenager, and my mother carried the load still having eight kids in public school as a single parent; she would have been 51 at the time. That kind of determines how you approach life. When you have 10 siblings around and a parent to tell you when you're wrong (I don't recall being told I was right about too many things but silence I took for being correct behavior), it drives you to look at the world in a certain way and think about things differently than what many others do. I got through public school, went on to university, really for sport-related reasons (I played soccer and junior hockey) and had a competitive streak to win. I was never worried about losing. I know lots of competitive people and really highly competitive people that fight like hell not to lose. I was on the other side of that and there is a difference. My approach to life is really about doing what I can to win and the consequences of losing I never worry about. Once I walk away from a game, it doesn't matter what it is, if I've lost and I did what I needed to do to win, then I don't think too much about it. I move on to the next thing. Through University I left the east coast of Canada moved to the west coast and got involved in a couple of interesting things that weren't in the business world because I still had no idea what I was going to do. I had a basic science degree that was focused on the kinesiology world and ended up heading back east in Toronto. I started and landed in sales. I was probably in my early 20s and knew nothing about the business world. I had no mentors in it; not a single family member went into that space. I didn't have uncles or cousins or any family members in the space. The older women in my life would have all been stay-at-home moms so I didn't have that influence.
