0:00:03 Amanda Stassen: Welcome to purpose Power Brand, a podcast for leaders and brands transforming business into a force for good. I’m Amanda Stassen, business and brand strategist, entrepreneur, and founder of BIZU Innovation Group. I’m speaking with leaders who are not only proving that business drives profit, but the future of our world depends on it. Listen, if you want to grow your business, if you want to outperform the market, if you want to build an employee culture where your employees actually want to work at, if you want to attract investors, you’re going to want to lean in.

0:00:30 Amanda Stassen: Hi, everyone, and welcome. Have you ever wondered what it really takes to go from a couple of hundred bucks to a billion dollars, from starting up in your garage to running an international business that employs hundreds of thousands of employees in multiple countries? It’s every purpose driven startup’s dream to go from zero to 100 and make a positive difference in the process. Well, today we have the amazing opportunity to learn not just from someone who’s done that.

0:00:59 Amanda Stassen: We’re gonna learn from a legend in the business world, Frank Strong. Probably a man who does not need an introduction, but I’m gonna introduce him anyway. He’s the founder and honorary chairman of Magna International, the world’s largest and most diversified automotive parts supplier with more than 170,000 employees in 43 countries and sales over 40 billion US. Today, we’re going to dive into the secret of magnus success and Frank’s business philosophy of fair enterprise and creating prosperity for all through an economic charter of rights.

0:01:35 Amanda Stassen: Welcome, Frank, to the Purpose Power brand podcast. It’s an absolute honor to have you here today.

0:01:41 Frank Stronach: Great to be with you, Amanda.

0:01:43 Amanda Stassen: Awesome. Okay, so I’m going to set some context for who you are, because a lot of people know who you are, but I’ve been reading your book, the Magna man, and it’s been really great. So you were born during the Great Depression in Austria. You lived under nazi occupation during World War Two. At 14, you started apprenticing as a tool and die maker. At 21, you immigrated to Canada on your own with only a couple of bucks in your pocket.

0:02:09 Amanda Stassen: And you started in your first job as a dishwasher in a hospital. I love that story. And then to building Magna to what it is today. But you didn’t stop there. You also started the Stronach group, which is thoroughbred racing and breeding. You started Adina Farn, you started Frank’s organic garden. And last year, you even launched the next generation of electric vehicles. Like, it’s just. It’s clear that you’re not a person that just builds and then rests on your laurels, you just keep building and building.

0:02:42 Amanda Stassen: So I want to know, what powers all of this building? What purpose drives you to keep creating and building and innovating? If you had to pick one word that best describes all these different businesses and projects that you work on, what would that word be?

0:02:59 Frank Stronach: Well, basically, when we younger, we are hustle a bit to make some money that we can live in dignity. Then as time goes on, it’s an evolutionary process. Then when you get older, you sit back a bit and say, what’s life all about? And so I’ve reached a stage where by patiently locking, is it good for society? If it’s not good for society, then I have no interest.

0:03:31 Amanda Stassen: Wow. Wow. So the good of all is really the purpose that powers you. I love that. I think that’s so powerful. I’m reading the stories in the magnet man, and you talk about the early days where you rented a garage and you were living and you were working in that garage, and then you talk about your first employee and your first contract. I want to talk about that first contract a little bit. You talk about this attitude that you had in those days, which was basically, you were hustling, as you just said, but you also did this other thing where you were promising your customers that you would solve their problems and that if you didn’t, they wouldn’t have to pay.

0:04:13 Amanda Stassen: I’d love to know what drove that. Where do you think that can do attitude came from? And do you see that in entrepreneurs today? Or is it something we’re missing?

0:04:23 Frank Stronach: I think we’re missing something. Our education should be a little different. But going back? Well, I arrived with $200 in my pocket, and that doesn’t last that long. So there were days when I was hungry. Hungry, not because I wanted to lose weight. I was hungry because I had no money to buy food. Right. That leaves a real deep impression, right? Yeah, that’s. That’s branded in your soul. But anyway, life is a question of fate and circumstances, being at the right places at the right time with the right ingredients.

0:05:03 Frank Stronach: It didn’t take me long. Then I had $5,000 saved up, and I rented a garage, but a few used machines or the down payment without. I went hustling, as I said, early on. And I worked in the factory and said, I’m very good in solving problem. And to be sure, I said, if I can’t solve the problem, you don’t have to pay me. So I think when you go into business, you should be aware of what your surroundings are or what business you want to be in, etc etera, etc etera.

0:05:40 Frank Stronach: But anyway, I did solve some problems. After one month, I hired somebody. After you had about ten people. After two years, 20 people. Then there is an evolutionary process. Now, my first employee, his name was Herman, he was the foreman. I noticed he was a little different. So tell me, what’s the matter with you lately? Well, he said, Frank, I’m thinking about starting my own business. I said, I fully have a good understanding for that, and that’s feasible, I said, but maybe in life, there’s always. Maybe there’s a better situation.

0:06:26 Frank Stronach: And I said, let’s talk tomorrow. So that evening, I was talking to myself, and I said, if that foreman’s gonna leave me, that would stifle my growth. Not a good deal for me. The next reason was, if that foreman’s gonna leave me, I got to do all the work myself. I hated that even more. The third reason was, if that foreman is going to leave me and I hire a new foreman and I don’t show him how business is run, then I still got to do all the work.

0:06:56 Frank Stronach: And if I would show a new foreman how a business is run, after one or two years, the same thing will happen. They will start their own business. So anyway, I said, the next day, look why don’t we open up a new factory? You own a third. I own two thirds. By the end of the year, we take pro rata, we take some profits out, and we leave some money in. He said, you mean it? And I said, yes, you know. So we went to the lawyer, wrote it down, and he was very proud.

0:07:28 Frank Stronach: So anyway, I took the next foreman, the next foreman, the next. After a few years, I had a sizable business. I think I climbed to about 5000 people. Right. Within the next five years. Right.

0:07:40 Amanda Stassen: Wow.

0:07:41 Frank Stronach: After ten years 100,000, about 15 years, 150,000. And when I stepped out, 170,000. But learning the evolutionary process happened that I only had the foremans, right? Or to manage this, participating in the profits. And I said, gee, I gotta find some, I got to do some that also, the employees could participate in the profits, right? So I thought that I should have a public company, because in a private company, it’s very difficult for employees if they have shares or what, that they can sell it. Anyway, I transferred the company in a public company, and I put in a corporate constitution.

0:08:34 Frank Stronach: The foremost principle in the corporate constitution was, I decide what we do with the profits. Right. 20% of the profits went to the shareholders in the form of dividend, 10% of the profits went to the employees over and above their wages. 6% went to management, 2% went to charity. And at 7%, the research. The interesting part about it is, which I think society should note, when employees can participate in a very tangible way, not, they know in a real way, they’re on the front line, they can see how to make things better.

0:09:24 Frank Stronach: Right. Our profits climbed the first year, 40% after the profit participation. The second year, 100%, the third year, 200%. So the very aspect about the whole thing is we could, all the countries have huge debt. Canada is huge debt. We could pay back the debt. And most of all, we could eliminate poverty, because employees, employees can participate. And I’ve always said, my main principle is always been

0:10:09 Frank Stronach: Where I say, if the economy doesn’t work, nothing else will work. You cannot hungry, you cannot look after the most fragile people, the elderly, the sick and the handicapped. So if the economy doesn’t work, nothing works. All the politicians agree on that. Business agrees on that, and most people agree on that. If the economy doesn’t work, nothing else will work. But, you know, the funny part about the whole thing is we do not talk what drives the economy.

0:10:41 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.

0:10:41 Frank Stronach: The economy is driven by three forces, smart managers, hardworking employees, and investors.

0:10:49 Amanda Stassen: Yeah. Listen, I want to, I want to ask you about that. Just because you’re tweaking me on something that I think is really, really important. I think, you know the idea of profit sharing, right? When in the, in the Milton Friedman days, the saying was that the business worked for the shareholders, right? And so there was this idea that prosperity was limited to a small group of people, and that was usually these shareholders.

0:11:16 Amanda Stassen: But what you’re doing, what you’re proposing and what you’re suggesting is the secret to Magna’s success is opening that up, so it’s all stakeholders, including employees, including society, including the planet, which I’ll ask you about later. But I love that you really focus on this idea of how do you motivate and inspire and keep and retain employees, because that’s what you did with that first foreman.

0:11:44 Amanda Stassen: You found a way to engage him so that he stayed, and that was this idea of giving everyone a piece of the action. And then you built a corporate constitution at Magna. That really was intentional about that. Here’s the percentage that goes to the management. Here’s the percentage that goes to employees. It was very transparent. Did you find that your retention was improved because of that?

0:12:10 Frank Stronach: Well, it, you know, it’s just the laws of nature, much stronger than any man-made law. It’s just the key is what. What drives people, the key is, you know, it’s so simple, if people know they get paid what the input is, then that’s what drives the economy.

0:12:37 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.

0:12:38 Frank Stronach: So, as I said, the economy is driven by the three forces, smart managers, hardworking employees and investors. But again, I said it was an evolutionary process. Before, only the managers participated in profits. And then I thought, gee, I saw this huge market out there, and just imagine the growth from zero to 170,000 employees. Right.

0:13:11 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.

0:13:11 Frank Stronach: That I was able to do that because I had the employees participate. I had a decentralized structure.

0:13:23 Amanda Stassen: Right, right.

0:13:24 Frank Stronach: When you got everything in a large company, if you got a problem, you got a large problem. If you have a small company and you got a problem, you got a small problem. So I left, you know, I left a company could really, I double checked. We did not want to go beyond 200 employees, so people didn’t become a number. You could really see the performance of the factory. Right. And if there was a problem, you had a small problem.

0:14:02 Amanda Stassen: Right, right.

0:14:03 Frank Stronach: So basically, that was the secret. Yes. We had a few large factories, right. But the secret was very decentralized. For instance, we had no central purchasing, even though we are one of the largest buyers of steel plastics packaging material. The reason why we didn’t do that, we had a coordinating team. Right. Coordinating team went to a steel company, order a package and said, what is the price for 5000 tons or 10,000 tons.

0:14:39 Frank Stronach: And so we established some base prices and then we let our companies know, look, if you buy from such and such a source, you get a better price. But we never told the managers, you must do that for the simple reason no manager. Usually managers have an excuse to say, well, the people up in head office, there were some dumb people there, they forced me out to buy from such and such a source. They said the price was good, but the quality was not good. Then the next thing is the price was good, the quality was good, but the delivery was not good. There’s always another excuse. Right.

0:15:22 Frank Stronach: Our managers have no, it’s really. They do, they got the handle. Whatever is best for the company. That’s what they do, because they get. Get a percentage of it. Right. It’s a very unique system.

0:15:40 Amanda Stassen: Totally. And I think what’s really interesting is there’s a lot of conversation around, can large companies be innovative? Right. What does it take for innovation to actually be birthed? I think what you’re describing is by keeping it small and focusing on small teams or small divisions, you’ve kept this entrepreneurial innovative spirit, alive. And you’ve created a reward system to really inspire people at all levels to come up with new ideas, because when they come up with that idea, they have the potential to be able to get rewarded for it.

0:16:18 Frank Stronach: They get rewarded. Yeah. It’s defined. They get rewarded for it.

0:16:22 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.

0:16:22 Frank Stronach: So when above, right?

0:16:24 Amanda Stassen: Yes.

0:16:25 Frank Stronach: We had, the managers only got rewarded a portion, a percentage of their factories. The workers got rewarded from the whole thing. Because I’ve always said there’s no bad employees, there’s only bad managers. So if you got a bad manager, I don’t want to penalize the employees. It’s not their fault, right. So. And sometimes, in most cases, they’re not even bad managers. They’re not conditioned well enough or they’re not experienced well enough.

0:17:01 Frank Stronach: So we have to. We have to teach the managers, and we have to sort of tell the employees, look, you have an enormous potential. You could also be an entrepreneur. You could also manage a factory. Right.

0:17:21 Amanda Stassen: I love it.

0:17:23 Frank Stronach: It’s incentives all the way around.

0:17:26 Amanda Stassen: I love it. I love it. It’s the teach a man to fish idea, and it’s giving employees, there’s a lot of worth and value that comes from being in a workplace that believes in you and gives you the opportunities and listens to your ideas and makes that something that you could possibly lead someday. It’s not beyond you to be an owner of one of the divisions.

0:17:52 Frank Stronach: But again, it’s an evolutionary process. When you look to the caveman and back, you had the hunter and the hunted, then you had the kings and the servants, and then you had the bosses and the workers. Right?

0:18:07 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.

0:18:09 Frank Stronach: Yes, there’s good bosses, but you shouldn’t manage by a boss. Right. You should manage, the workers are partners. Right. They’re not servants. Right.

0:18:21 Amanda Stassen: I love that.

0:18:21 Frank Stronach: So we have to, the attitude has to change because when you had bosses, you had a lot of disgruntled employees and then the unions. Okay. So we got to take a look at everything here the most. You know, when I look back in history, right, when I’ve given a lot of lectures from Harvard, right across the United States, from Toronto, right across Canada and in Europe, because we had many factories in Europe, right.

0:18:52 Frank Stronach: So, but it only dawned on me the last few years, universities, the mandate of a university is to teach young people, how can we create a more civilized society. It’s funny we haven’t got that, yes. In universities, you teach, you teach great medicine, great art, great everything. I’ve been on the boards of many universities, right. And it dawned on me at a much later stage. Yeah. How come? So I do give some lectures now at the University of Toronto, where we were, the key lecture is, what structure do we need which would lead to an ideal society?

0:19:46 Frank Stronach: Imagine that was not on hand before. If you, look, you don’t hear anybody talking what the right structure of an ideal society? Because if we don’t have the right structure, how would you ever reach the ideal society? Right? So it’s very important, too, that we think about it. Universities will be the ideal institutions, they got auditoriums, they could invite successful people to talk about their lives. It’s just society needs everything from the arts to sport to, because those are all aspects of well adjusted and ideal society. But again, I want to say over and over again, if the economy doesn’t work, nothing will work, but that brings me to a final sentence.

0:20:38 Frank Stronach: The world has always been dominated by the golden rule. Whoever has the gold, makes the rule. I don’t want to be dominate by anyone. If I feel that strong, I should not be able to dominate somebody either. So the question is, how can we dismantle the chains of dominations? Not via violent revolutions, by revolution of the mind. So that is so very important, because when we look at statistics, the statistics are a little better in the States than in Canada.

0:21:12 Frank Stronach: Friends, in the states, 2% own about 60% of the assets of the wealth in America. It world society can function that way when the divide gets bigger and bigger between the rich and the working class. But at the same time, I want to say a society which functions, stifles its citizens in pursuit of productivity, ingenuity, and creativity is a decaying society. If we stifled that, that’s why I’m saying we must give smaller companies, let’s say companies below 300 employees.

0:21:52 Frank Stronach: We must give them the tools. They are tied up in red tape. We got to loosen all that thing here and let them create small companies. Let them create thousands of Magna’s. Right? Okay.

0:22:06 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.

0:22:07 Frank Stronach: So that is very important that we take the chains and the red table off small companies. So when you grow larger, you got a share profits with employees before you don’t. It’s pure free enterprise. If you’re not gonna interface well with the employees, you’re not gonna make it. You got the reward. That’s individual, right? You people at that time, they’re not a number, you know them? And so you gotta manage that way, but when you get larger, you need a system.

0:22:43 Amanda Stassen: Yeah, well, let’s. Let’s talk about that, actually. Let’s talk about economic systems. It’s a subject clearly that’s near and dear to your heart. It’s an important topic for us. Let’s talk about the difference between a free enterprise and what you’re calling a fair enterprise. What’s the distinction between those and why is it important and what’s the outcome to both of them.

0:23:08 Frank Stronach: Free enterprise is purely the capitalistic system, right. Which we don’t want to destroy it. Except greed is too, when they get, when they get larger, we need certain rules. So fair enterprises, the basic philosophy on fair enterprise is the human charter of rights alone is not sufficient. We have to fortify it with an economic charter of rights. Economic charters of rights will lead to economic democracies and economic democracies are the basis for democracy itself.

0:23:41 Frank Stronach: So anyway, the fair enterprise is, so free enterprise doesn’t move to state enterprise. It’s a building block, right. Because it’s state enterprise, State enterprises, when you look at China, when they look at Russia and those companies, they’re based on the socialistic, communistic philosophies, which is wealth distribution, right. First you gotta create the wealth, otherwise there’s nothing to distribute.

0:24:19 Frank Stronach: So I want to say we cannot, we should not destroy free enterprise. Okay? Free enterprise, when it gets too large, then the laws got to say the employers have a right to sum up the profits, right? But smaller companies, you wanna look, you wanna set role models for the younger generations, you wanna, you know, great things can be achieved, right. There’s such a potential in every person, right. Yeah, but let’s, let’s see.

0:24:59 Frank Stronach: There’s too much red tape, there’s too much bureaucracy.

0:25:04 Amanda Stassen: Yeah, yeah. And I think it goes back to kind of this fundamental human need that you’re describing, which is this idea that people get up in the morning because they want to make a better life for themselves. They want to make a better life for themselves and their families. And so if the human charter of Rights is not enough to help them achieve this, the idea that every business, and I think what you’re also ascribing to is every nation needs to put in place something like an economic charter of rights becomes an interesting challenge for business to think about. But my question to you is, how would you describe an economic charter of rights? So what is it and why do you feel that it’s the responsibility of business to do this?

0:25:54 Frank Stronach: It’s to human charter of Rights doesn’t mean anything. Is only free to be hungry. So we do need, we do need economic charters of rights. Right. Especially when the companies get larger, right. Because without workers, you can’t make a profit. Now you want to have the workers, disgruntled workers. Look, they know in that thing that the playing field is not leveled. The playing field is slanted for the rich. Right?

0:26:29 Frank Stronach: So it’s not. So you, so you need. Who could be against, against an economic charter of rights? It would be absurd. Right. And I would love to see that Canada is the first country in the world which would adopt an economic charter of rights to fortify the human chart of rights. Right? Okay. So I think it’s feasible when you, when you really get into the details, I think there’s more and more aspects or more and more reason why you should have that.

0:27:11 Frank Stronach: And again, I’m saying universities would be the ideal institutions where we look up and down, sideways and to get the right structure. Right. And to eliminate poverty. Right. Because the poverty is the greatest problem. Look, I would say maybe 50% of all the mothers have to think, gee, where’s the money coming from so I can feed my kids next week? It’s an enormous stress. And that leads, we could eliminate that, huh. We could eliminate that, right.

0:27:50 Frank Stronach: We could eliminate poverty. And we could have, when you eliminate poverty, eliminate hate, eliminate crime to a great extent. So this is what we are going to strive.

0:28:03 Amanda Stassen: Yeah. And by putting that challenge out there to businesses, for them to engage in this idea of fair enterprise and to engage in this idea of creating those economic charters within their business, they’re releasing more opportunity to the workers, to the employees, which in turn puts more into the economy, which allows them to feed their kids and all those kind of things.

0:28:29 Frank Stronach: Yes. If the workers they gotta have money. Otherwise, how can you function? They need purchasing power. Right. So the whole thing is. The whole thing could be driven in a balanced way.

0:28:42 Amanda Stassen: Yeah. Yeah. I love how the idea of prosperity for all, for you and for all of us really should include society and the planet as well. And I think it’s what led you to also start Adena Farms and then Frank’s organic garden, which is actually how you and I met. I was at the store. I was at Frank’s organic garden, and I happened to run into Jess Oslund, your CEO, over Adena Agra. And it was his passion about the products, about the work that you’re doing that really got me curious about this side of the business as well. So share a little bit about how Frank’s organic garden fits into the economic charter of rights vision.

0:29:24 Frank Stronach: Basically, I consider myself very blessed with a good mind and good health. About 10-12 years ago, I decided I’m building big cars, and my gut feeling is that something isn’t quite right about it, right. And basically the creation of all the greenhouse gases and nonrenewable resources, etc etera. But anyway, I wanted to get out there and I wanted to be in the agriculture, right. I wanted to because I noticed all the kids practically with allergies and stage two diabetics.

0:30:02 Frank Stronach: So I said, look, the more I got into the agriculture, the more I could see the chemical jungle, right. And when I look at, we got to realize that 95% of the food eaten in the world comes from industrial farms. When you look at industrial farms, you see no more eagles fly there. Why, there’s no more rabbits, there’s no more pheasants. We use so much pesticides and fungicides. We kill everything. Right.

0:30:34 Frank Stronach: Pesticide, in fact, gets under there, we breathe there, gets in the water, we drink the water, gets into the soil, and we eat the food. And that’s why, you know, if politicians say we cannot afford that, that’d be a very, very weak statement, because medical costs end up in billions and billions and billions. So we really got to take a look, right? And I want to create a grassroots organization, and not for profit, to make mothers a very big part together. Have a grassroots organization and they pressure your politicians.

0:31:18 Frank Stronach: You know, my vision is such as, no canadian kid should go to school hungry. That means breakfast would have to be served. No canadian kid should leave the school hungry. That means lunch has got to be served. And by law, that would have to be organic. So we could do it, hah. We could do it because young people, it’s, that’s the future for the country, right. And we, you know, we, the elderly people, they grew up right, on smaller farms, smaller cities, and ate more organic, right. But now the kids eat all, I mean, it’s the amount of chemicals they eat, right?

0:32:06 Frank Stronach: Yes, well, to do families where they try to feed their kids organic, but all kids must have the chance, because if you not growing up healthy, that would hamper your learning activities. You cannot be happy. So our mission should be all kids should grow up healthy and have a chance to be happy.

0:32:32 Amanda Stassen: I love it. This kind of runs right into kind of my last question that I want to ask you, which is I want to touch on the fact that you’re now taking this idea of the economic charter model that you created at Magna and you’re taking it to the national level because you really want to challenge countries, starting with Canada and you’re doing that through the Stronik foundation for Economic Rights.

0:32:57 Amanda Stassen: Tell us a little bit about what this is.

0:33:00 Frank Stronach: Well, basically, it’s a grassroots thing here. We, first of all, you never solve problems if you point fingers, it’s the faults of this and that. Yes, our bureaucracy is weird, it’s huge. Right. I want to tell bureaucrats, you got kids, too. Let’s think about it. Let’s find a better way. Right.

0:33:21 Amanda Stassen: Yeah.

0:33:22 Frank Stronach: So things don’t help if you come in with a chainsaw. Right. So basically, you carefully plan what could be done. So there’s no politics involved. So I developed a seven point economic program which no politics. And I’m not pointing, yes, we are bureaucracy, we are way over regulated. But in a civilized society, every citizen has got a right to find a job, whatever the openings are. What I’m saying, the system doesn’t function. We got to look at the system. The political system doesn’t function anymore.

0:34:06 Frank Stronach: And maybe one of the greatest statesmen in the world, Winston Churchill, he always say, damn democracy it’s so cumbersome, but there’s no better system. But before he died, he did say, we need a chamber of citizens. Politics doesn’t work. Okay. It doesn’t, you know, the mandate of a politician needs to be elected, and he will go where’s the win, where they get the most votes and that what is brought forward. Right.

0:34:36 Frank Stronach: So we got, again, I know so many good politicians, and they want to change the world. They want to change. But the older politicians, you can’t say that, otherwise you will be elected. So we got to change the system.

0:34:49 Amanda Stassen: And business has such a big role that they can play. And I love that you have such a heart and passion for small businesses and removing the bureaucracy around, enabling those small businesses and those entrepreneurs to grow and contribute. So I think all of those pieces come together, and I think that’s part of what the economic charter of rights is that you’ve, you’re really championing.

0:35:12 Frank Stronach: Yeah. If you want to change things, you need a constituency, and the timing has to be right. The timing is small businesses, there’s close to a million small businesses in Canada. Like, they are very frustrated because they’re so tied up in red tape. And so that’s really a top priority. How can we loosen that red tape and give them, let them create things. Let them, you know, and, you know, small business, they deliver the most taxes, right in a country, right because there’s so many.

0:35:50 Frank Stronach: And when a small business hires an employee, it’s that’s more the government gets more taxes than they would get from the small business. Right. Because more business makes very little money because they want to expand, buy a new machine and more employees. So there’s practically no but because you have to pay wage taxes. And the owner, which knows this money also has to be, if he takes monies out, he’s got to pay tax on it. But they should not pay a business tax to all the formalities, all the paperwork they got to go through. If they take somebody, a customer out for lunch, can they write it off or can they not write it off?

0:36:34 Frank Stronach: We gotta take that thing here, give small business, you know, only two rules would have to apply. Workplace safety and the environment. You cannot dump poison chemicals in your neighborhood. Right. Or in your backyard.

0:36:50 Amanda Stassen: Right.

0:36:50 Frank Stronach: So those are the only two rules. But let’s get all the other. And I’m willing to help you to know. You get kids, what we do, leave them behind. Right. Got it. They could look, but no point. No bureaucrat has to worry to be laid off. There’d be a hiring freeze. Right?

0:37:09 Amanda Stassen: Yeah, yeah. Wow. That, you know, Frank, this has been such an inspiring conversation. Thank you so much.

0:37:15 Frank Stronach: But listen, we gotta get the message all over. All over. Right. People would understand that. Right. That’s. It’s, it’s just pure, it’s pure economic sense. Quickly. The same principles are we got to eliminate that in 20 years depends a few percentage every year. We should be able to do that. And we got to reduce the bureaucracy by hiring freeze. We can bring it down 50% in ten years. Our tax system is the most convoluted system. Right.

0:37:50 Frank Stronach: When you look in our tax code, there’s thousands and thousands of rules. And the one is more convoluted, we gotta have a simplified black and white. And number four would be where we give the small business the playing room that they can operate. Right. And the fifth thing is large businesses, when they grow from small to large, they are a portion the employees get. And very important thing, number six would be high school should end at grade ten.

0:38:25 Frank Stronach: And then we should teach our kids, give them a chance to be involved in trades, right? Because young kids, they gotta find what would they like to do. And look, it would be such a great thing for young kids to get a different dimension, right.

0:38:47 Amanda Stassen: Yes.

0:38:49 Frank Stronach: There’s a different world out there. Right. And so they would accumulate know how. And that doesn’t mean they couldn’t go to university right after grade twelve, right. The grade eleven and grade twelve would be where we teach them the trade, right.

0:39:05 Amanda Stassen: Yes.

0:39:06 Frank Stronach: And we gotta get back where we make things. When you see a building going up now it’s a warehouse, you know, we gotta get things where we make things. Look, Canada operated great 40, 50, 60 years ago. Right. Let’s go back to the dinghy Indian. And I think as a society, Canadians were open to, immigrants were open to everything there was no hate. There was no, it worked quite fine. Let’s go back, right.

0:39:37 Frank Stronach: We got in a worse and worse situation.

0:39:40 Amanda Stassen: Yeah. No, I love it. I love that there’s a simplicity to it, right? So this idea of learning a trade and this idea of taking, making it easier for entrepreneurs. So on that note, what two tips would you give to an entrepreneur today who is, you know, working on their business? What would you, what two tips would you give them to help them grow their business?

0:40:05 Frank Stronach: As you see in the Magna man, it’s up a step by step to how to build a business. What the tip is, for instance, every day I looked in the mirror and say, do I do the right thing? Do employees respect me that you got out? If they respect you, they work with you, they’re not going to work against you. And if you, part of the respect is that they want to hug it all in that you share. If you do well, you be open and said, look, there’s my bank book. You can see, let’s improve things together.

0:40:40 Frank Stronach: Right? So you got a reward. Right. And you gotta. You gotta. Let’s. Together we can do it.

0:40:48 Amanda Stassen: I love that. I love that. So how do people learn more about the work that you’re doing with the Stronach foundation? Or how do they get involved with the economic charter of Rights, for example?

0:40:58 Frank Stronach: Well, we created a national organization, and so we go methodically and we try to interface with small businesses. And as you might know, I write a column in the Financial Post, you know, a weekly column in some local papers as well. And we spread the gospels and by a podcast like what we just did now. And we get to many more of those. We just want to reach, we want to reach small business, that they be part of it.

0:41:38 Frank Stronach: And which would that they would endorse the seven principles which would lead to an economic charter of rights.

0:41:47 Amanda Stassen: Amazing.

0:41:48 Frank Stronach: If small business does well, all Canadians will do well. That’s another thing. Yeah.

0:41:56 Amanda Stassen: That’s awesome. Frank, thank you so much for sharing your amazing entrepreneurial experience in your life’s learnings. Thank you for living your purpose. And just in case you haven’t heard it today, I want to tell you that the world is made better because of you and the work that you’re doing. Thank you so much for joining us today.

0:42:12 Frank Stronach: Okay. That what drives me, I can be part of a better world.

0:42:17 Amanda Stassen: Amazing. Thank you. Hey, thanks for listening to the purpose power brand podcast. I’m Amanda Stassen. If you liked what you heard, be sure to share and subscribe on your favorite podcast player. Wed also love to hear what resonated with you. Or if you have a guest suggestion, drop us a line at Info@bizu.co Special thanks to mark Salam for original music and lead podcasting for production. Lastly, if youre ready to purpose power your brand to grow, win and impact its scale, let’s talk visit www.bizu.co

0:42:48 Amanda Stassen: Thats www.bizu.co Bye for now.