If you do a hundred deals, you better do them quickly so help me understand a little bit more your perspective of how do you get things done fast or slow I guess. >> Well no, I'm probably one of the many proponents of, once you've agreed on that, remember the first meeting you get to know we learn about the other person, the second you create the principles of the deal. Once you've got those principles, believe it or not, that's your 80/20 rule. That is 80% of the deal. The rest is just getting through it and that can take as long as people want. Lawyers are paid by the hour, so it's not in their interest to go quickly. We realize intervening events can come about which make the deal irrelevant. That persons partner could die, he could decide to sell to someone else. Whatever it is. Once we've got those principles done, we try to get a, exclusive negotiations, b, make it for a reasonable time, and c, keep close to them so we can avoid all those extraneous events coming in to hurt our deal. So we try to do it extremely quickly. I'm known as wanting to get the deals done very quickly. And in some ways they like that because it gets their money quicker and they like that. So that's really important but sometimes if you can't get the deal done quickly and it's falling apart, don't walk away angry because sometimes the deals come back. And we've had many examples where we've had a deal not work and a decade later we bought that company. >> Just give me a sense of when you say fast, what's fast here? >> I was working at a company in Montreal And I saw this deal for AutoHEBDO, a sort of classified magazine in Montreal. And I remember I talked to the owner's accountants. And they said, well look let us call him because he's actually with the printer. And the printer is trying to by it at the printer's fishing lodge. And there's one phone in the kitchen, and I said, actually why don't you run out now and call them, and here's the terms roughly I'm going to give. The principles and the player member walked out the account, very senior person to firm and he called the guy, and the phone rang and he happen to be getting a coffee in the kitchen, this large fish lodge, picked up the phone. He says, listen I have somebody else who'd like to look at the business. Here's his terms. He said, well those are very interesting, I'll leave the fishing early to meet him. So we left the fishing early. If I hadn't immediately got the principles to him and he came in and the deal was three quarters of the way done when he came in because we knew he had somehow. He liked the principles, we moved from there. When we got him there we said here's the principles, you like them, we reviewed them on one page term sheet. We signed it. And I had 14 days to close it and basically $5 million. So I was working at a company at that time so we signed that deal, I had 14 days. This is day 1. I walked in the next morning to my boss and I said listen, I'd like to take 2 weeks off if I could. Look at this deal. And my boss said that's fine have your resignation on my desk tomorrow morning. Now my wife at the time was eight months pregnant, this was pressure, but it put the pressure on me to get that deal done within those fourteen days. So what I did [CROSSTALK] >> At least you didn't have any other distractions. >> I had no other distractions. So I worked very hard, to a find, I only had, I had a stock options company was worth $200,000, I put in $200,000 in the deal and the other 5 million, we found a financier to do that deal with us, we found him within the 13 days, the pressure of that person knowing when the deal would close and we need the money there, made them work very quickly. And then the 13th day at about 10 at night, we closed that deal and got it, and that was the start of my career. If I had waited any longer the other company would have made another bid. The financiers said let's take more time on this. The principles were right, and we just needed people senior enough to realize that and we had a big team working in parallel always to make sure we closed that deal in 13 days and that was really important. We've had other examples where we take longer. We've had deals where- >> I think most deals are gonna take longer than 13 days. >> Yeah, some deals take longer. Well, one, we always try to get everything done in 13 days, I was born on February 13th. But no, I think, Barry, some deals which aren't gonna come about It's interesting, we try to get something. A glad example is, we were buying the paper, secondhand paper in Buenos Aires, and in going through our due diligence, we realized that there was an issue about some tax issues. And they couldn't solve it in time, and the guy said, I don't wanna do anything now. But I said, gee, you know, we've done all this work on this, Could you at least make sure that we have a first right of refusal on your business. So you have to come to talk to me before you can sell to somebody else. And that was very effective, because ten years later, I received a call saying, gee, you know, I'd like to sell. And I said well, send me the offer. And of course he had no other offer, so we were able to negotiate that. It gave him a sign to know. So we were able to buy that at a fair price, ten years later. But we got something. So one of the other principles is even if the deal doesn't work out quickly, make sure you can try to get something at the end of that time period so they have some value in the future. And the second rule- >> And why did he give that to you? What did you give him in return for the- >> He felt bad. What we gave him is the guilt feeling. He felt bad that he wasted a lot of our time. Also he knew that we are the major buyer of these papers in the world. He didn't want to make me feel bad. So I made it feel all this work, and you had something you could have told us, didn't work out, so what can you give me? And he didn't value the first right of refusal too much. Ten years later, he realized the value that we took that day. The second one is a deal which didn't work out. When we try not to totally poison the waters. This is sorta a funny story. We were buying the paper in British Columbia called Auto Trader British Columbia. And in doing our due diligence, we found that there was a discrepancy in the distribution of the papers. And anyway there was an issue on this, the deal didn't close. He felt very bad about this. It was in November. And in December for my Christmas present, I received from British Columbia a salmon in a box which must have rotted for five years. We opened it up at home for Christmas and our house smelled for like three weeks. So I thought, gee, we'll never get this deal done. >> Wait, he sent you a rotten salmon? >> He sent me a rotten salmon because he was so angry that we didn't close the deal, which we didn't have to because he was cheating on the >> We believe he wasn't and he wasn't properly accounting for distribution, but what's interesting we didn't get angry at that. We didn't do anything. We realized ten years later when we thought he wanted to sell the company, that maybe it's not John to go do that deal. So we sent someone else, but we hadn't ruined the reputation of our whole group with him, and that other person was able to go and get that deal closed never mentioning my name. So even if the deal is personally antagonistic, don't make it group antagonistic, so there's still a way back. We did that. >> You made someone mad enough to send you a rotten salmon. Are you sure it wasn't one of those delicacies like rotten shark, and you just didn't understand? >> Some people assume what they're doing and not telling you will not be found out. And when they found out there's a face issue, I think I probably hit the face issue too badly. So he was quite angry about that, but in the end, you know we got the deal and, and everything was good. And he was, maybe not the most stable of characters let's put it that way.
