Brett Wilson: The Dragon with a heart Entrepreneur pushed the reset button on life when phenomenal success in business cost him

CALGARY–"Not all those who wander are lost," says Brett Wilson, quoting J.R.R. Tolkien and setting the pace for an examination of Dragon No. 5 that's one part business, three parts psychoanalysis.

It's the kind of quote that telegraphs to the interviewer that this is not the moment to talk about oil and gas futures or investment banking deals or ROI. The citation is a daring, ask-me-anything come-on, quite in keeping with Wilson's on-air persona as the dragon with a heart on Dragons' Den, the guy who can fall for the tear-streaked emotional collapse of hopeful entrepreneurs seeking a farthing or two for their fragile business start-ups. The rich dragon – possibly the richest – who likes to say yes. The dragon who in a recent Facebook posting wrote: "Always kiss her like it's the first time, and the last time."

Why would he post that? "Someone may have been reading it," he says, tossing yet another emotional breadcrumb in the interviewer's path.

Of course, you will want to know who that "someone" is. But that comes later.

He's dressed in jeans, Wilson is. His hair is the longest it's been since he was in high school. His dog Maya is padding behind him, looking for love, just like his master. The handsome Mount Royal house is packed with Saskatchewan art, testament to Wilson's Prairie roots. There's a Joe Fafard sculpture of Ernst Lindner in the living room. There are Ernst Lindner paintings everywhere, including an uncharacteristic Lindner of daisies being clutched between a pair of startlingly full breasts.

Is this not painting a picture of a mover and shaker in your mind?

The bulk of Wilson's wealth comes from oil and gas, a story that wends its way from investment banker McLeod Young Weir to the self-named start-up Wilson Mackie to the building of FirstEnergy Corp. Anyone wanting to understand how profitable this trajectory was for Wilson, hear him say this: "Calgary was always considered a place where you could airplane bank." Translation: the money was run by visiting investment bankers from Toronto, or, just as bad, New York.

"There is nothing that oilmen hate more than dialling 416 or 212 and asking for help," Wilson continues. "It's such an arrogant perspective." One memory: he's working for MYW out of Calgary. His assistant pops her head in the door. "Toronto is on the phone," she says. "Tell them Calgary's in the washroom," he replies.

So FirstEnergy was established in 1993 as an investment dealer catering exclusively to the energy sector. "We could have been called Only Energy," says Wilson of the company's focus. He became fabulously wealthy.

We could talk about the money. Or we could talk about the price he paid in making it. "I got absorbed into that work-money, work-money cycle, deal, deal, deal at McLeod," he says. "Then when I started my own business, each hour I wasn't working was an expensive hour."

His marriage started to teeter. "The worse my marriage was the more time I spent at the office. The more time I spent at the office, the worse my marriage was."

In a special Dragons' Den episode airing Wednesday, the back stories of the dragons themselves are lightly told. Wilson speaks of his divorce.

He doesn't talk about checking himself into an addiction research program. "I thought it was workaholism," he says "but as it turns out we went back and peeled back all of the layers of the onion and got back to Brett the boy at 4, 6, 8, 10, 12. There were a few issues ... some speed bumps ... It was a powerful experience."

He says that any talk of an alcohol dependency is not accurate. "There was no dependency on alcohol whatsoever," he responds. "What there was, was an inappropriate style of drinking." He defines "inappropriate" as binge drinking. "It wasn't like I just sat down and hammered drinks. But if the party went on until three in the morning I was probably drunk. If it went on to 11 I was probably tipsy ... I would just drink until the party was over."

Depression? "Absolutely. I joke about seeing a list of the 12 signs of clinical depression and going through the list and nine of them were clearly me and the other three, well, I was still in denial."

One day in 2001 his lawyer called. The paperwork on the divorce had been finalized. "I closed the file and said to my secretary you can put the divorce file away. An hour later I get a call." Here he mimics his own self calling out to his secretary: "Wendy, can you open another file?" Wendy replies, "What is it?" Wilson's response: "Call it cancer."

Brett Wilson's friend Warren Spitz talks about how Wilson pushed the reset button on life. Cancer – prostate cancer in Wilson's case – will do that to you. Divorce will do that to you. A determination to fix the frailty of a relationship with three children will do that to you. "The cost of success was my health, my family, my marriage," says Wilson. "It wasn't worth it."

Wilson stepped down as chair of FirstEnergy in January, his business interests focused wholly now on Prairie Merchant Corp., his private investment company. His interest in the Diamond Jaxx is in there (Tennessee: baseball); as is his stake in Derby County, the U.K. football club he calls the "Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Midlands." He's still hoping for a piece of the Nashville Predators. There's an advertising agency. A fitness franchise. A divorce solutions company. Real estate. We could go on.

But the baseline in Brett Wilson's reset life is No. 1, his kids, and No. 2, philanthropy. "He's not just walking around trying to give people money," says Spitz of Wilson's philanthropic endeavours. "He's trying to help people get on their feet and stay on their feet."

Wilson is inexhaustible when it comes to causes. Keith Harradence, a friend from Wilson's undergrad days at the University of Saskatchewan, recounts a climb up Kilimanjaro to raise money for Alzheimer's research. Climbers were compelled to raise $10,000. "A week before the climb he hadn't had a chance to do any money raising," says Harradence. "We started the climb – it was a six-day climb. We get news two-thirds up the mountain that the 800 or so letters that he had personally signed before departing had raised over $300,000. That's just the way he is, right? Brett in a week could raise in excess of $300,000."

Dragons' Den plays in to that. On the surface it exposes Brett Wilson's heart, which Warren Spitz says is three times too big sometimes. He means that in the nicest way.

Sometimes other dragons have mocked Wilson, as they did when he invested in the Aerial Angels, a travelling acrobatic troupe. "They made fun of it, on national TV," says Wilson. "My girlfriend was upset ... She said you don't look like you care ... I said if I valued their opinions I would be deeply concerned."

Yes, there's a sting there. Wilson is well aware of how soft he can sometimes appear on television, especially against the caustic pronouncements of Kevin O'Leary. He says the diligent editing of the show makes him appear kinder than he is on occasion. He says he asks a bazillion questions, possibly deemed tedious by the editing team.

"I've never seen them use the core business question I ask, which is how much money and how much time have you got invested in the business? I've asked that of everyone I've ever invested in. I don't think it has ever made it to TV."

When he auditioned he was told he wasn't mean enough. "I said, look, if `mean' means being a prick, don't ask me back. I'm not interested. I'm not going to `mean up' for the show."

That's what he said then.

Today he appears interested in sharpening his elbows. "Each year I get tougher and ruder but not to the people coming on the show. Just to the other dragons." When he calls Kevin O'Leary a "moronic outlier of capitalism," he says he intends it in a friendly, spirited way.

The other dragons need him. Wilson is by far the largest deal doer. "He doesn't think enough deals are done. He told me that," says Keith Harradence, who had dinner with Wilson shortly after he accepted the dragon role. Wilson has done more than 15 deals since he signed on, committing between $3.5 million and $4 million in capital.

Then there's the issue of equity. "If you look at some of the advertising you'd think it was the Kevin O'Leary and friends show," Wilson says. He took up the point with the CBC. "I just said, that stops. No more. It's Brett and Kevin and Robert and Jim and Arlene. Equal billing."

There's ego at play, no surprise.

And, with Wilson at least, no guile.

The day is drawing to a close.

Is he happy? "For what it's worth," Wilson replies, "happiness jumped a notch when I came out of the Hoffman Institute last December."

Whoa.

With Brett Wilson, there are no uncomplicated answers. This is the third time in our encounter that he has returned to the therapeutic peeling of the onion, the getting back to unnamed issues unresolved, in this case checking into an eight-day intensive residential program that explores the first 12 years of childhood. "What they do is they explore the negative patterns in your life," he offers. "The whole premise is built around the concept of negative love ... The negative patterns in your life that came as a result of the ones who loved you."

He says the program has helped enormously. You get the sense all the emotional tremors in Brett Wilson's life run close to the surface. What were the issues in childhood?

"Let's just assume I've always had speed bumps," he says. The Hoffman, a place that will cause eye rolling and near cult accusations from skeptics, helped, and it's unconventional to hear such admissions in business quarters. "A lot of this shit, I realized, is their shit. It's not my shit," says Wilson, sounding very unlike his dragon persona.

Is he happy in love? On a side table in the living room there's a framed pen and ink etching of a fire-breathing dragon. "That's a McLachlan," he says, meaning the singer Sarah, who signed the artwork with love to Brett on his 50th birthday.

"We spend time together," he says when asked if they are still dating. "Anyone who saw us at the Olympics would know that we spend time together."

Read into that what you will. There is more interesting territory to explore, deeper crevices. Wilson is in the process of writing, with a ghostwriter, the first of what he sees as a number of books. He's grappling with how candid he will be. He knows he can be an inspiration to others. He asks that we go off the record. Brett Wilson is still thinking about how much he wants the world to know.

BIOGRAPHY

Age: 52

Dragon personality: Heart of gold, resources to match

Business Holdings: Prairie Merchant Corp., private holding company

Personal: Hires an acting troupe to scare the hell out of the neighbourhood kids every Halloween. "My goal is to send away one child in three crying."

Did you know? Pulled the typical Godiva-on-horseback prank while at engineering school at the University of Saskatchewan. Reports that it's easier to find a Godiva than it is to find a white horse.

Boston Pizza Dragon Jim Treliving

IRVING, TEXAS–Just about wherever Jim Treliving travels, his wife of eight years travels with him. Partly because he enjoys spending time with Sandi. Partly because he wants his third marriage to be his last.

"Regular people, people that have a job 9 to 5, that go home every night and maybe travel once or twice a year for a holiday, they don't understand. Your opportunities are changing when you're on your own," Treliving says over lunch in a Dallas suburb at one of the restaurants in his U.S. chain, Boston's The Gourmet Pizza.

"You say, 'Oh, I'll go for a beer tonight, I'll go down to the lounge,' and the next thing you know you're talking to a quiet sweetheart that's the same as you are –that's why I can't get mad at Tiger. I'm sorry. I – you know, if you're put in that position that you're a god – he didn't want that, but he got it.

"And I think it's the same thing with us. I don't think my marriage would survive with the amount of travel I do."

Even as an unremarkable youngster, Treliving "never had any problem taking a girl home from a dance, or finding one to take to a dance," says Guy Longman, a childhood friend from Virden, Man. And, even as a grown man, Treliving has never been a master of his impulses. Of his second marriage, which he decided was a good idea during a bout of "craziness one night," he says, "I don't know what that was. It was longer than a one-night stand, but...'"

It was only in his 60s, however, even as his hair thinned and jowls loosened and the lines criss-crossing his face deepened and he shrunk, from a strapping 6-foot-4 to a strapping 6-foot-3, that the opportunities became so frequent.

At 68, more than 40 years after he traded his RCMP uniform for a shirt and tie, Jim Treliving is a babe magnet – a man often unable to have a drink without being interrupted by aggressive young lookers who don't much care that Sandi is beside him. This was the impact of Dragons' Den.

"Celebrity status changes your whole life," he says. "Absolutely changes it."

If you find it odd to hear Treliving empathize with the world's most notorious adulterer, you probably have watched the CBC show through which Canada learned his name. On a panel with made-for-TV personalities like Kevin O'Leary, who rarely offers a suggestion when a put-down will do, Treliving casts a dignified presence.

"He's kind of like the chairman of the board to us," says executive producer Tracie Tighe. "He's the voice of experience." Even the entrepreneurs seeking money that he has rejected describe him as kind and respectful – The Nice Dragon, The Quiet Dragon. Says Christine Poirier, who pitched Momzelle nursing apparel: "He just seemed like a grandfather type of guy."

Treliving-as-Dragon is not entirely unlike Treliving-as-human. He is a grandfather, of four, through whom he is making up for some of the quality time he missed with his own two children when they were young. He chairs boards. According to everyone from franchise managers to his first wife, now a dear friend whose struggle with multiple sclerosis he has assisted financially, he is indeed a good man, quietly generous and compassionate. He makes a point of being considerate to Dragons' Den pitchers, he says, in part because he remembers what it was like to be them.

In 1983, he and accountant George Melville bought the 44-restaurant Boston Pizza chain, which they have since grown to 340 locations in Canada and 55 in the U.S. and Mexico, for $3.5 million in borrowed money.

"I've said to everyone on the show: treat these guys with respect, because they've put a lot of time and effort into it, and what we may take as a joke, or fun, these guys have lived it for four or five years," Treliving says. "I've been there. I've been through that. I didn't have $3.5 million to buy the company. So I know what it's like to pitch for some money. And it's not easy."

Yet the reality television version of Treliving is, in some ways, distant from reality.

"I watch him in the show, and I'm going, jeez, I'm not sure if I follow that, if that's really the Jim I know," says Hockey Canada president Bob Nicholson, a friend since Treliving worked at his first restaurant in Penticton, B.C. The Treliving that his friends know, for example, is a gregarious people person: a talker, a storyteller, an Alpha Male toucher with a penchant for unexpected backslaps (of men) and hugs (of both men and women), an interpreter of personalities and intentions.

Confident in the stranger-assessment skills he honed as a Mountie for nine years after high school, he cares less about the credentials of prospective employees and partners than his gut feeling about them. Given the resumé of a potential senior hire, says Boston's The Gourmet Pizza chief operating officer Michael Best, Treliving is likely to dismissively say, "I just want to meet the guy."

Treliving, sitting ramrod straight in a dark blue suit with a purple tie and pocket square, says he believes every person is "only really good at one or two or three things." According to others, his ambitious strategic planning, flair for marketing and feel for restaurant design and food were central to Boston Pizza's rise. Asked what his three things are, he offers variations on only one: "I think it's managing people. I think I get along with people well. I can understand people. I can read people fairly decently."

How does he read people? He briefly launches into a discourse on body language, then stops himself. "It's hard," he says, "to really explain to you how I – I took years to figure that out."

Treliving is professional, sometimes terse, on camera. In private, his candid banter, peppered with folksy "gonna's and "gotta's," sometimes lapses into the macho vocabulary of the hockey dressing room. (A goalie in his youth, he and Melville own the Central Hockey League in the U.S. Southwest; his son Brad, the former CHL president, is now assistant general manager of the Phoenix Coyotes.) About Sandi, who is two decades his junior, he says, "She's aggressive, and I like that, and she's a redhead, and fiery, and she's got all the toys I like. Among other things... we can't get into that, because it's a family show." Asked what he and Treliving talk about, friend and Keg Restaurants owner David Aisenstat laughs and says, "That's a leading question which I think I'll decline to answer." Why? "You know Jim."

Treliving, who divides his time between Texas, B.C. and Toronto, is having more fun now than ever. The fame that came with Dragons' Den was actually the second life-altering change of an extraordinary decade. The first arrived in 2002, when Richmond-based Boston Pizza raised $77 million through an initial public offering for its income fund. Much of the proceeds went to Treliving and Melville, now the company's co-chairmen. Before the IPO, Treliving had wealth but not access to great disposable sums. Much of his net worth was contained in the value of a company he wasn't selling. After the IPO, he was, finally, liquid.

As a self-made man who got his windfall around the age more precocious entrepreneurs tend to call it quits, he is an oddity akin to a 33-year-old NHL rookie.

"I think the neat thing with Jim is that it happened a little bit later in life, in his 60s. It didn't happen when he was 30 and messed him up," says Boston Pizza president and COO Mark Pacinda. "He is who he is. Coming into a bit of money wasn't really going to change him."

He has, thus, had a somewhat complicated relationship with his bulging pockets. On one hand, the cash has allowed him to go to beautiful places and buy beautiful things, most notably a spectacular two-storey Vancouver penthouse. On the other hand, say friends and family members, he has retained the instincts of a barber's son who has never been thought important enough to warrant a Wikipedia page.

"He was looking at buying his house in Palm Springs," says his daughter Cheryl, a lawyer who runs the Boston Pizza Foundation, "and it was so pretty, and he must have called home about 15 times – `You know, I'm not sure,' and `What do you think?' and `I don't want people to think that I'm just buying things.' We finally just said, `Dad, if you like it, then buy it! You earned this money, it wasn't money that was gifted you!'"

No longer in charge of Boston Pizza's day-to-day operations, he derives unmitigated pleasure from the wheeling and dealing his new money has enabled. Treliving leaves the day after this Texas lunch for the Hawaii franchisee convention of Mr. Lube, in which he and Melville bought a large minority interest four years ago. Before he drives to his home in tony Southlake to pack – in a Bentley that Sandi bought him – he will stop at the nearby building that houses the offices of both Boston's and the real-estate venture he and Melville founded three years ago.

The duo, he says, now has investments in about 30 companies. While he still self-deprecatingly refers to himself as "the pizza guy," and while he still devotes the majority of his time to Boston Pizza, he relishes his new-found status as a multi-industry player.

"That's the fun part: it's not just one thing anymore," he says. "For 30 years, 35 or 40 years, every day was a concentration. It's almost like the old days with police work – when the phone rings now, you don't know what it's about."

He also enjoys being recognized in public. It is good for the ego, he acknowledges, even though he says he takes the attention with a "grain of salt." And he sounds almost giddy when he talks about the bigger names he has recently met. Over the course of three hours, he mentions, among others, Sarah McLachlan, Bill Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sidney Crosby and Texas billionaires T. Boone Pickens and Jerry Jones – seeming less the obnoxious name-dropper than disbelieving lottery winner.

"I think he's just proud of the fact that he's able to rub shoulders with those type of people. Proud of it, but doesn't flaunt it," says Longman. Peter Coors, the beer scion, took Treliving to play golf at America's most exclusive club, Augusta National: "As a kid growing up," Treliving says, "I never thought I'd get to go to Augusta, Georgia, let alone to Augusta."

Treliving holds up eight fingers in front of his face. They represent productive decades. He closes six fingers. "These are gone for me," he says. He folds another so that it is almost closed. "This one's just about gone." He wags the remaining upright finger. "So I'm at about this right now." Ten good years left. If he's lucky.

How does he plan to spend them? Doing business, of course. Treliving can't retire. Not when things have just gotten so interesting. Not with so many deals left to be made and so many people left to be met. Sometimes described as a visionary, he has even figured out his ideal death. He would be happy, no joke, if he left this earth as he has spent much of his time on it: in a Boston Pizza restaurant.

"I want to be in a situation where I work, and the day they take me out, goin' boots first, or whatever, they say, 'God, he was right here and he fell off the chair,' " he says. "Or whatever – doing something."

BIOGRAPHY

Age: 68

Dragon personality: Nice

Business holdings: Boston Pizza, Mr. Lube, Global Entertainment Corp.

Personal: Married to Sandi Treliving; divorced twice. Two children, Cheryl (executive director, Boston Pizza Foundation) and Brad (assistant GM, Phoenix Coyotes)

Did you know? There has never been a Boston's restaurant in Boston. The original Boston Pizza was opened by a Greek immigrant in Edmonton in 1964

hen Jim Treliving was a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer in rural Alberta, he discovered a simple truth that has formed one of his basic rules to business success.

It always pays to know your customer's culture.

"My best friends when I joined the Mounted Police (back in the 1960s) were from Quebec, and they taught me how to dress, basically," recalls Mr. Treliving, chairman and owner of Boston Pizza International. "They were classy guys. We were farm boys that had one suit, white pair of socks with a charcoal suit ... which looked perfect.

"Their culture was completely different from ours."

Mr. Treliving makes the point when asked to share some of the lessons he has learned over a business career that has spanned 38 years.

He made the jump into the business world after leaving the RCMP in 1974 to open a Boston Pizza franchise in Penticton, B.C. with partner George Melville. Since that time, Mr. Treliving has not forgotten the importance of understanding the people he serves.

Mr. Treliving and Mr. Melville parlayed that initial Boston Pizza franchise into 17 more in Western Canada. Then, in 1983, they bought out the entire 44-restaurant Boston Pizza chain from then owner Ron Coyle. The pair immediately divested 15 of their restaurants to individual franchisees, converted one restaurant into a corporate training restaurant and set in motion ambitious expansion plans.

After growing the chain to more than 90 restaurants in Western Canada by 1995, Mr. Treliving set his sights on the East. He moved to Toronto in 1997 to oversee the expansion.

Today, there are more than 60 Boston Pizza restaurants in Eastern Canada, including nine in the Maritimes. Boston Pizza International has signed agreements and/or collected deposits for another 75 restaurants. At the same time, development continues in Western Canada, as strength of the brand provides new opportunities for growth.

Mr. Treliving spearheaded his expansion into the United States around the same time. He admits that he may have been lulled into thinking that success in the States would come as readily as it did in Eastern Canada. He was forced to rethink his strategy

"I realized then that with the people we had, and what we had going on [in Ontario, Quebec and the States], we had to take a whole new look at how to expand," he said.

Mr. Treliving said he found he was out of touch with the communities he was opening restaurants. He wrongly assumed that if he found success expanding in Canada, that it would follow in the States. In response to the new challenges he was facing, he moved to the States, basing Boston Pizza International in Dallas.

"We added more sales persons. It was a matter of finding out when you got there. A lot of Canadian companies expand down to the U.S. and are not successful, and the reason probably is that they don't send one of their chief executives, or people who have been in the business for a long time. They sort of hire people down there, then you have to keep showing them the culture that you want," he said.

Establishing the right 'work culture' is import to Mr. Treliving. But so too is adapting and meeting the expectations of the people who live where you set up shop.

"I got in and started meeting people and found out what I really needed to do," he said. "The people may look similar to us and speak the same language, but from there on in it is completely different," he said.

BPI's American division, Boston's The Gourmet Pizza will open its 45th store this week. There are plans for 20 more.

Incidentally, the one place Mr. Treliving does not have a franchise is Boston.

In addition to the Boston Pizza chain, Mr. Treliving's investment company, T&M Group, purchased the Mr. Lube chain and he has expansion plans for that property.

He is also the chairman of Global Entertainment, a U.S.-based sports entertainment company that runs the Central Hockey League. The league has thrived under a management model that essentially brings the franchise model to pro sports. Global Entertainment owns the arenas, the ticketing branch and controls the ownership of the teams.

"We are bringing hockey to the United States," said Mr. Treliving, whose son Brad is the CHL president.

As for future plans, Mr. Treliving plans to continue to grow the Boston Pizza brand.

"We will continue to grow strong in Canada, it's a mainstay. We are happy with what is going on there, and we still have lots of growth pattern in Canada. We are pushing hard in the United States," he said.

There are plans to further expand internationally to the Middle East and China, but don't expect to see Mr. Treliving moving to China or the Middle East.

"We have spent time in other parts of the world, it is an education every time you go somewhere. I really enjoy that part of the business. I don't know how much time I will spend setting up new places. I think that is over for me. We have enough great people working with us that will do all that stuff now. I just get a chance to visit and travel with them and make sure they are following the system both my partner and I want."

In addition to Mr. Treliving's business interests, he has recently been featured on television, as one of the entrepreneur panelists on the CBC reality show Dragon's Den.

Jim Treliving's Best Mistake

1. What do you consider your biggest career mistake or miscalculation?

Not realizing the cost of opening and perseverance in opening in a foreign country. A lot of Canadian companies expand down to the U.S. and are not successful, and the reason probably is that they don't send one of their chief executives, or people who have been in the business for a long time. They sort of hire people down there, then you have to keep showing them the culture that you want.

2. What did you learn from it?

Take more time and review what and how you are going to attack the problem. I got in and started meeting people and found out what I really needed to do. Basically that was the same when we went from Western Canada to Eastern Canada to open stores there. The only difference in the U.S. is, while the people may look similar to us, and speak the same language. From there on in, it is completely different

3. In what ways did it make you more successful?

You understand the people are different than at home. You have to adapt quickly to the situation.