Hiring staff for a new venture is a hit and miss process, and typically the founder does not have the time for proper research or psychological testing. In fact, we could best describe the Canadian Federation of Independent Business during the 1970s as a cabal of crusaders. More than half of those given jobs had sought us out because they believed in the concept of a new political voice for small business.
In 1972 I received a call from Jim Plosz of Canora, Saskatchewan and he said he had been in sales all his life and if we were planning to come out West to give him a call. We hired him in 1973 and within two months made him the Division Manager for the Prairies. We had 400 members at the end of 1973 in his Division, and 4,000 a year later.
One Friday night I called him and asked him if he owned a suit. He said yes, and I told him to meet me at Premier Blakeney’s office on Monday at 10:00 am. You are now my legislative assistant, not our Division Manager. I told him that I wanted to look like I had staff.
The meeting with the Premier was a mind changer. Usually these meetings are photo ops designed to make it possible to meet other members of the cabinet and principal civil servants. However, Premier Blakeney grilled me for an hour and a half on the small business community. Over the next 25 years, I never had a meeting like this one. The photo with the Premier and Brien Gray, our Director of Provincial Affairs was taken in 1978.
I tried to explain that small business is a mirror of the broader society, and that whatever we do as a society to improve the lives of its citizens such as education and training levels, income distribution, health care and so on impacts on the nature of small business. And everything we do to strengthen small business through access to financing, access to markets, competing with large businesses and government, and so on, will spill over into the broader society.
Jim Plosz hired a District Manager named Ralph Wallin, who was our star during the 1970s. He helped us train people across Canada, from Fredericton, New Brunswick, to Prince George, British Columbia and into the Territories.
I loved a story he told renewing members in the Yukon. After the renewal, the member asked him where he was headed for his next call. When he showed him the address, the member said that location would take him all day to find, and offered to fly him there. And over a mountain they went, landing on a lake in front of the member.
Two lessons from our Saskatchewan story: Firstly, you never really know Canada until you call door-to-door in communities across the nation. No wonder we are so hard to govern. We are so complex and diverse. The other big lesson is that you never really know your politicians until you meet them personally. Modern politics is a form of television theatre, and the successful ones are usually excellent actors.