18: $20 Million Business Bankruptcy to Passionate Happy Lifestyle // The Story of Bernard Callebaut

The recession hit, the whole real estate market collapsed. The land that I paid $5 million for, nobody wanted to buy it anymore and the banks pulled the loans. If you want to really become a quality business, you have to keep on educating yourself, learning, go to trade shows and always improve because that's part of top quality. Always improving. You never reach like, I'm now a top quality. No, there's always a step above that. You can always do something better.

Welcome to From Rock Bottom to Rockin It. I'm your host, Eric Gilbert Williams, and this is the podcast where we explore personal stories of people who hit absolute rock bottom, then got back up, wiped off the dust, kicked failure to the curb, and now they're rocking it like you'd never believe if you didn't hear it. Live Right here we cover subjects in business, sports and life in general. If you like this podcast, please share it. These interviews are intended to inspire, to motivate, to give hope and vision. So please share this episode with someone who needs it. Use your Instagram account, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. Hand signals, trained pigeon. Send smoke signals up in the air, use Morse code, whatever you like. Just share the love and share this episode. Also, email me anytime. Podcastricilbertwilliams. Send me questions you would like to have asked of future guests and I will incorporate them. Or just send me some suggestions on how to run a better podcast. Or just say hello, I'd love to hear from you. That's podcasterrickgilbertwilliams.com I know you're going to love today's interview, so let's get started. With us here today on From Rock Bottom to Rockin, it is Monsieur Bernard Calabo. Bernard's story is personal to me because I'm a customer at his businesses, I'm a fan, and at arm's length. I was an observer to his rise to dominance in the Canadian chocolate industry and also of his bankruptcy. Reading about it in the newspapers and then his redemption. This is a story of major business success, bankruptcy recovery and perseverance through any age and through business worst case scenarios. It's a story of the entrepreneurial spirit, a subject that I could talk about all day long, as you know, because entrepreneurship, in my opinion, basically saved my life. And maybe it still does. Bernard, welcome to the show. I'm so happy you could join us. Tell me how you doing?

Very good. Even that it's tough times today these days, but in any case, yeah, no, I'm feeling great.

It is tough times. I mean, I'm recording from my car right now because my house is too loud and I need to find a quiet spot. So we got to work with it and just go with the flow here. How are you finding it over there on your side?

We ultimately decided to close our retail operations. Even we were not forced to. But ultimately we want to contribute to the community and help the community to fight the virus. So we decided to close the locations and do only web orders and ultimately the clients. Surprisingly, we get a lot of orders in what is very positive. So I think it might change a lot afterwards how business is done. People are going to be more creative, you know, in wartime. Most inventions are done during wartime. And I think now people are forced to be creative and come up with alternative ideas to get things done.

I think you're right. I mean, what else do we do other than keep moving forward? This show is called From Rock Bottom to Rockin It. And likely with all of this is probably going to be and hopefully not, but probably there's going to be a lot of people experiencing new types of rock bottom moments out there. And we got to find a way to persevere and to survive and most importantly, to thrive again.

There is positive sides to it. I mean, there's lots of negative sides to it. You know, losing your house and everything, I don't wish that to anybody. But ultimately, when you go through a major event in your life like a bankruptcy, losing everything, it gives you a totally different perspective on life. Your value system changes completely. What was important before is not important now. And ultimately I learned a lot and you become a different person.

Absolutely. Now you've been through adversity before. And before we dive into that, tell me, where did you find your inspiration for chocolate? When did you know that you had to enter the chocolate business?

I am literally born 20 meters away from our house, was across the street in Belgium. So it was always part of our life. Day in, day out. We smelled chocolate in the house every day. And ultimately, you know, I studied for engineering. I'm an electromechanical engineer. But ultimately the passion of chocolate stayed with me. And ultimately that's what I did. Like, we sold the business in 1980. It was in the family for quite a long time. 1911 till 1980, and then my mother sold it and I moved down to Canada and started my new business. And, you know, it's a true passion. And when you find your passion in life, I wish everybody that has a job that they find really a job that they are passionate about because you don't work right, because you Always do something that you want to do, and it's a totally different experience in your life. And I'm really fortunate that I found my passion.

Now, if you could help me for a moment. For those listeners right now that are listening in, and maybe they're familiar with you, maybe they're not. Maybe they've heard of you, or maybe they've tried the chocolates. But for those that aren't familiar with the breadth of success that you did attain, can you share with me and share with us? What was the size and the scope of your business at its peak? How much was the total net worth of all of your locations combined? How many locations were there? And I know that you have different companies right now active that we're obviously going to talk about. But when we're going back in time here and talking about Bernard Calabo Chocolates, what was big? Like, what did you reach?

I would say around 2007. That was our peak year. We had 30 stores. Like, the whole organization probably was a $30 million operation. We were structured like a franchise dealership, but all the stores together, that's kind of the number that we did. We were very profitable, was a great company. And, yeah, like, ultimately, when the recession hit, I got caught up in it, and ultimately I lost the whole company.

And when you say 30 million, do you mean in revenues or do you mean in total valuation of the organization?

Well, it was never really valued. I don't know. It was like, revenues. $30 million in revenue.

Yeah. So we take the revenues and we work out the net profit and the EBITDA on that, and we work out the multiple and factor in all the other variables that are required to do evaluation. Either way, we slice the pie. At the end of the day, you had 30 stores. There was a lot going on. But then there was an obstacle. And what was that? What happened?

We got caught in the recession. I had bought a piece of land, a very large piece of land, 195 acres, to build a new factory. It was actually a concept. It was farmland. And ultimately we use a lot of dairy products. And so we wanted to do a dairy farm that makes chocolate.

Okay.

It was the whole concept. But then ultimately, the recession hit. The whole real estate market collapsed. The land that I paid $5 million for was. Nobody wanted to buy it anymore. And the banks pulled the loans. And ultimately they called my loan. I had a $3 million line of credit. I had to pay that back. And the three months to do that, I was able to raise $2 million. What was already a lot. Considering nobody wanted to invest anymore, I had to give up. But you know, I've had people asking me the questions and say like, okay, like why did you go bankrupt? Ultimately the responsibility goes to me. Right. I always think about the captain on a ship. When you hit a storm, you can make a decision and you take the ship in a certain direction to avoid the storm. So I was, I took risky moves and ultimately the responsibility is on me, etc. Banks are cratic institutions that deal with money.

Yeah, right.

They are not entrepreneurs or business people. I went to the court, I had actually a bid in with the receiver to buy back my company. I was backed by investors that used to work for me. They got my company and I lost. And suddenly you had Nothing anymore after 27 years. It's kind of a shock really. But you step out of the court and you have nothing anymore. It's gone. Start from square one.

So there's a lot of people listening to this show right now. I mean the name is From Rock Bottom to Rockin it. So there's people right now listening who are going through their own rock bottom moment as we speak. Either they're going bankrupt right now or they know someone who's going bankrupt or they've been through a bankruptcy in the past. And this subject of bankruptcy, I think in my opinion that society, we try to just avoid this subject at all costs. No one wants to talk about this thing. It's like we all want to just believe that it'll never happen to us, right? But for me in 2014, going into 2015 was a strange year. You know, on one side, 2014 is when I won that first place acknowledgement or whatever you want to call it for fastest growing company in my city. And that was the same year that I ended up running into a cash flow problem and I almost went bankrupt. I was about two weeks away. Because of that rapid top line growth, I ended up in that cash flow crunch. And yeah, at the beginning of 2015 was almost there, I was almost out. So 50 people on my employment, on my payroll, a lot of them were good friends, were about to be out of a job and it was about two weeks away. They didn't know at the time how close we were. This was definitely one of my rock bottom moments. And so this subject of bankruptcy, I think it's important to talk about it. It's a reality that in my opinion every business needs to acknowledge, be aware of. And because it's an ongoing threat, any business can go bankrupt for a number of reasons almost at any time as a business owner, it's a reality that we have to persevere through and find a way to not end up falling into that trap. What do you think, Bernard? Am I onto something here or am I a little bit off track? Tell me your opinion.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I'm old fashioned coming from a conservative country. Belgium is a conservative country. When you go bankrupt, it's a shame. When you go bankrupt, that's bad news. My mother was ashamed of that, that I went bankrupt. But ultimately you have to go over that and give yourself a fresh start. And that's ultimately what bankruptcies do. You give yourself a fresh start. And you know what? I'm not embarrassed about it. I didn't do that on purpose. It is my fault. But ultimately you have to go over that. There is a lot of lessons that you learn when you build your or when you look to your old business and you realize that you made mistakes or I did mistakes, decisions that I did. And now I can start a new business with a much better base because ultimately you built a foundation to grow a business and I gonna have a much better foundation to build a new company.

You're such an inspiration to me, Bernhard. You know, there's so many people I talk to on an ongoing basis and they say, oh, I can't get in the business or oh, it's too risky or I'm too old for this, or I'm too young for this. And here you are. Not only did you start something, I'm 66. Yes, exactly. I wanted to find out your age, but I didn't want to ask you specifically, so I'm glad it just came out naturally. And so on that subject, you are to me an embodiment of the entrepreneurial spirit. You just do it, you own it. And I remember the day when the Calgary Herald headline came out saying that the bankruptcy had occurred, that the ownership had been transferred and basically just stating all the bad stuff that was going on. But throughout all that, what I remember the most is your response. And I don't remember word for word, but essentially you responded to the newspaper. You said, look, I've always made chocolates. I'm going to keep making chocolates. People know and they love my chocolates and they're going to keep buying them regardless. Because you were opening up a new company called Papa Chocolates. Do you remember that response? And that newspaper heading, Absolutely, absolutely.

If you're passionate what you're doing, it's really not difficult to start again financially. Yes, it's simply you want to do it and then ultimately to create something totally new, that's what you want to do. I always take the example of a chef in a restaurant. If you take a three star Michelin restaurant chef and you take his menu and you burn it, the guy is going to say, fantastic. No, I can create a whole new menu. That's really what it is. So I do the same thing, but with chocolate. So it's an opportunity. I see it as an opportunity and one message I want to give to people that are bankrupt, that lose it, think about it positively, see it as an opportunity to reinvent yourself and you're going to be much more satisfied when you're able to do that. Yes, it's hard when financially you don't have any money, et cetera. And I have struggled the last 10 years. It has been a struggle, has not been easy. But ultimately I still love what I'm doing. I still can get out of bed at 4 o' clock in the morning because I still want to do it. I know that I will come out very successful. It might take longer than I expected, but that's okay. I will still be a happy guy because I still love what I'm doing and I will succeed. And I think at one point I'm kind of one of these believers that the law of attraction, at one point things will fall in place. I have run people that approached me after my bankruptcy and they saw it as an opportunity to work with me simply because they wanted to cash in on my name. But we didn't have the same thought, like you have to find partners that you can work with that think like you, that's not very easy because you have the financial pressure. Right, right. You have the financial pressure. You have to start. And ultimately, in the beginning I had, I had a lot of struggles. Like the last 10 years has been very difficult, but now things are falling into place. Don't give up. That's the key. That's really a rule that I say to people, like, don't give up. Yes, you're going to hit brick walls, but don't give up. If that's really what you want to do, keep on doing and things will fall into place.

I believe that as well. And as soon as we come back from this short break, I want to ask you, how do you manage the emotions? I feel like when people are listening to this, they, you know, it's like, oh, of course, that makes a lot of sense. Just keep moving, just keep pushing forward. It's logical. It Makes sense. But when it's actually happening, when it happened to me or to you or to other people, and the fear and the panic and the resentment and the anger, when it all kicks in, things change. Logic isn't so clear in those moments. Emotions dislodge the logic. It's kind of like when there's a fire in the house. It's usually, statistically speaking, the smoke that does more harm to people. Smoke kills more people than the fire does. And when I consider the subject of the emotions of going bankrupt, the fear and the energy, that negative energy of the potential threat of going bankrupt, that's more damaging, from what I can see, than the actual bankruptcy. Because, all right, let's face it, you go bankrupt and then what? All right, well, life goes on. We figure something out and we keep moving forward. And that's basically in a nutshell, how bankruptcy works before, during, and after. But the stress that the fear causes, it triggers a whole bunch of different reactions and emotions inside of our mind, and they compound and they become so big that the damage is caused by the fear of going bankruptcy, not the actual event itself. There's a quote by Mark Twain that goes something to the effect of, I've had a lot of worries in my life. Most of them never came true. And there was another one. Worrying is like a rocking horse. It's a whole lot of work and it don't get you nowhere. So, Bernard, when we come back from this short break, I want to ask you, what's your secret? How do you manage the emotions that are going on that when we come right back. Hey, everyone. Eric here at From Rock Bottom to Rockin It. And on today's episode, I decided to support an organization called Sketch CA. Sketch CA is an organization focused at helping youths between ages 16 and 29 that are living homeless or on the margins, navigating poverty to make all kinds of art, performing art, physical art. There's a 10 week workshop in the fall, there's one in winter and in spring as well, with a special summer workshop too. It's an organization that's designed at helping kids that are in need. And I say kids because when you're 16, I think you're still a kid. And early adults as well. And When I was 16, I was in a lot of trouble, as you guys know, as you're listening to the show and it's organizations and it's people that cared, people that reached out to help me is what really helped to make a difference in my life and maybe even save it. So Organization Organizations like Sketch CA make a big difference to me. They're really close to my heart too. Of course, I'm a Kitchener boy, originally in Ontario. Toronto is just around the corner. So I hope you guys check out the organization. Share the website URL with people that need it or need to hear it or just talk about it with your friends and if you get a chance, also donate if you can. That'd be really great. I bet you that every dollar you donate there goes a lot farther than you'd ever imagine. There's a little button in the top right corner. It's really easy to donate on the website. Just go to sketch ca, click that button. Five bucks, 5,000 bucks, whatever you like. Just put in a little bit amount. It's great. It goes a long way. And when we all come together and do something together, then we have a global change that happens instantly. So thanks again and we'll go back to the interview now. Okay, we're back now on from rock bottom the rockin it. Thank you again, Bernard for joining us today. Tell me, how do you manage the emotions of bankruptcy? This is the worst case scenario for most business owners. How do you manage is an emotional.

Roller coaster, let's put it that way. Because I sit there in court and there is the judge and says like I give the company goes to the other party and that's it. Now you stand there and then you step out of the court and you have all the reporters coming and asking you all these crazy questions and then you go home and you sit there with your children and your wife and yeah, it's very hard. And one thing that we did right away is my wife and I and I'm grateful for what she did there is we right away we focused on getting going again. So I went in court. It was the 26th of October 2010 and we opened. The new little shop that we had was actually a sandwich bar that went bankrupt and that's where we started making chocolates the first of December. So literally six weeks later on a very modest way, that's where I focus energy and not sit still and ponder too much on all the bad stuff.

Right.

One advice I give to people is don't read the social media because that is something that definitely affected my wife tremendously. She read it and people tell all kinds of crazy things. Like we had a house in Bermuda. I've never been here in my life. We had the Rolls Royce. I don't like this car. That's for old farts. Give me a Ferrari then in the stat. Right.

I like it. You said Ferrari, not Lambo. I love Ferraris and I just feel like they drive better. So I like you even more now.

So in any case, I really. I'm a positive thinker and I really focused on that. Are there days that I feel low? You bet you do. You're down. But you have to pick yourself up and really focus on the positive side. And it's not easy. That's very. It's very easy to say, but it's not always easy to do it. But we really focused, my wife and I, to rebuild the business and get going again. But then ultimately, that whole journey after that, we started. Actually, people were very supportive. It started very well, but ultimately we had no money. And ultimately that's what made the whole journey very difficult. Now, speaking about when we started that new Papa Chocolate new business, the support was tremendous. And that's one thing that I learned in bankruptcy is if you built a business over the years that has a tremendous reputation, good quality, good service, etc. If you have really good reputation, that's something they can never take away from you. That's worth gold. And even if you go bankrupt, they can never take that away. I only found that out, really, when I went through the bankruptcy process, that I found out that, wow, that is something. That is. That's amazing. People calling. We had phone calls right away when we said that we would start it right away. We did $40,000 out of that Santuz bar in three weeks when we opened in 2010, in December. That's simply over the phone. And so there is really very positive points in that whole process. But it's difficult. It's very difficult. It's an emotional roller coaster. You have to be strong because you're going to run into a lot of obstacles. That's also a big challenge that the guy that took over my old business, he's a litigator, like a lawyer. He worked for me. So, you know, having to fight against a litigator is not very easy because they know all the legal little tricks. So that's a challenge. And it's still not over yet because I'm still personally in bankruptcy. And ultimately that guy knows how to simply keep me into personal bankruptcy. But that's a whole different story.

It is a whole different story. The law is such a broad subject and often such a negatively regarded subject. And I feel like humans by default, we're imperfect by nature. We're not robots. We have emotions, we have differences of opinion. And I feel like the Law is our imperfect human's best attempt at trying to make sense of our interactions and trying to predict scenarios in as many ways that we can to try and keep order together and to keep chaos at bay. But by nature of a system being created by essentially imperfect beings, there's a lot of flaws inherent in the system that we're creating. And sometimes when we have a person inside the system who knows the tricks to the system. Right? Just like you said earlier. And in my opinion, if you're in business right now and you've not been pushed through or forced into the court system, and again, just in my opinion, either you're probably not big enough yet, or you haven't been around long enough yet, or you're not successful enough yet. Because to me, every successful large company is going to end up in the court system to one degree or another at some point in time. It's statistically, I think it's unavoidable. It's just part of being in business. If that weren't true, then lawyers just wouldn't be so rich. So give that a thought for a second.

The thing is, my experience in the court system is obviously I didn't have money to hire lawyers because ultimately that would cost a fortune. And then ultimately you're standing there yourself, and then the other party has the expertise of the law. They know exactly what you can say or do it. And you know all the little loopholes in the whole system, and you don't, because you're defending yourself, you have literally very little chance to succeed. That, I think, is a challenge with the court system that if you don't have the money to have an expert lawyer, you're in a very bad position. That's my opinion. But all that, we had to swallow that and you have to move forward. And it's really that point, that step, you know, I survived. That is simply the will and the determination to get going again.

Now, inevitably, in my last venture, I ended up in the legal system for a couple different reasons. And like I said earlier, that's just inevitable, in my opinion, when a company gets big and successful. So for people listening to this, it might sound obvious, but if I can give a little bit of advice, just stay out of the court system completely. Find a way to resolve your problems with whoever it is as peacefully as possible. Too many people get excited or they get righteous. Oh, I'm going to take him to court. Oh, I'm going to sue him. And I'm just going to suggest try and stay out of the legal system, try and just resolve things peacefully. Because, Bernard, I mean, I haven't been in the legal system to the capacity that you were, but every time I did find myself going through the system, I thought, man, I wish. I wish that I had found a way or that I knew a way to have avoided this altogether. There was one time specifically in the earlier days when we were just starting to hit that growth spurt and we were working on a project and we were a little bit newer with the product, we hadn't worked with it much in the past, and we had a somewhat interesting or complicated job that came up, and I jumped on the opportunity to install it because I thought it would be awesome. So we jumped onto this product, we started installing everything, and at the end of the day, we lost the confidence of the client. They realized that we were a little bit in deeper than maybe we should have been, even though we had good intentions and we were definitely going to get this right. This isn't rocket science, right? We weren't in trouble. Nothing actually happened wrong. It's just that they lost confidence in us. And when that confidence got breached, then things fell apart really quickly. Conversations got escalated in tone, and next thing you know, they didn't want me on the job anymore. They didn't want my team to be there anymore. And there wasn't really much to do other than find a way to peacefully and amicably walk away from each other. And so basically, they paid me up to that point and I left and they got someone else to finish the job. It was humiliating. I was so embarrassed that this actually happened. I mean, I was so proud of my team and of my company, and I still am. And then this damn thing happened. So what I ended up doing was taking it as a moment and an opportunity to learn and grow. So the next thing that I did, to me, it was obvious. Sell another project as fast as possible with the exact same product, study the hell out of it, become an expert, and do it flawlessly. And that's exactly what we did. But more than that, I recorded a video of my team installing this product, and I made it like a tutorial, an instructional video. This is how you install this product perfectly. We knew how to install it, first of all because it wasn't rocket science, like I said before, also because we failed a little bit. We certainly learned a lot through failure. And of course, we studied the product at great length, especially on the second go around to make sure we did it perfectly. So we had this tutorial video, and it ended up going Viral. We got hundreds of thousands of views on this thing. It was incredible. And that was kind of the getting back on the horse experience, you know? And I look back at that event where the client lost confidence, and I think, man, you know, I'm so grateful that we were able to find a way to peacefully resolve the issue so that we don't have to go to the court system. We don't have to go through that excruciatingly painful process of proving ourselves and arguing through the court system with really expensive lawyers. We were both committed to finding a peaceful resolution. And in a bad scenario, that's pretty much the best case outcome. I hope that everyone listening to this who owns a business remembers this and finds a way. I hope that you find a way to. To keep yourself out of the court system, keep people happy enough in a compromising way to just stay out of the system so you can move on with your lives more productively. So that was my little story of getting back up and wiping off the dust and moving forward. Right. So, Bernard, tell me your thoughts on getting back up and diving right back in. Like, how important is it to you? What are your thoughts?

Absolutely. And I think mistakes will happen. We have done mistakes, and that will happen in the future, and you learn from it, and you put systems in place to avoid that. But ultimately, I think when you make a mistake, our policy is like, we look what happened and it's our fault. Just admit it, we screwed up. It's our fault. I'm sorry. Let's fix it and replace the product or give even more than what they bought for. And I think that's where you recognize good quality businesses, is how they fix problems. A lot of them go on the defensive side, and I think that's wrong. And ultimately, in our business, like, the amount of complaints we get, like, is there people that sometimes take advantage of. Yes, they do. You have the freebie hunters. We know that they exist, but ultimately it's so small that it's not worthwhile. The energy to fight it. But fixing problems, I think that's one important point where you recognize a good quality business that is run properly is how they handle that.

If we were to go backwards, say maybe 2005 or six, just before all of this happened to you, if you were able to go back and talk to yourself back then and give yourself some advice, what would you say to yourself? You'd say, bernard, this is what I think. What would that advice be?

A couple of things would have structured the business differently. Like, for example, in Our industry, wholesale is a big part of the business. And ultimately we are a manufacturing business. So volume is important. Like, the profitability goes up when you do that. We were structured as a dealership. I always wanted to do wholesale because I know there was a tremendous amount of growth, like scalability is enormous in that. And they were fighting that. And we gave that exclusivity for wholesale to the dealers. That was an absolute fundamental mistake. We should never have given that. I should have had control over that. And that was really a mistake that I let happen. And that was wrong. And then at one point, we renegotiated the contracts with the dealers, and we couldn't come to an agreement. And then we decided to stop wholesale. What was even more stupid, because now we lost right off the bat, 10% of the revenue and ultimately 20% of the profitability of the company. So that's things that I would structure totally different. For sure.

I might have jumped a little bit here. I remember now we were talking about the subject of how to manage emotions. I think I accidentally got into a rant there. So coming back to it, to me, entrepreneurship is such an important subject. When I was little, I got in a lot of trouble. And one of my saving graces is that I discovered that I was passionate about something. I discovered what my passion was. And for some people, maybe you, your passion is art, music or dance or science or technology or software programmer or, you know, whatever it is, skiing, being outside, being underwater, whatever your passion is. For me, it was entrepreneurship. And I'm so passionate about it that, yeah, sometimes I go on rants. But back to what we were talking about before, about managing emotions. How do you, Bernard, manage your emotions? Is it focus? I think you mentioned this a couple times now. I mean, right now, COVID 19 is causing fear and panic all over the place, everywhere across the globe. Eric here. I hope you're enjoying the episode today. This is a passion project that I put together. I really wanted to do this. I really want to help people out there. I had so many people reach out to me when I was younger and when I was having a tough time and struggling. I've written a book about it. You can check it out on my website. Please do. But most importantly, reach out to me. Give me some feedback. What could I do better with this podcast? What am I doing that I should stop? What am I not doing that I should do? Tell me your experience. Give me some tips and suggestions. I really want to design this to suit your needs. And all you got to do is send me an email. It's ericericgilbertwilliams.com or use the contact me button that you'll find on my website. Just send me an email. We'll have a phone call or we'll chat online, doesn't really matter. I would love to hear from you and figure out how to make this show even better for with your help. So please reach out and don't be shy.

The focus is the main thing. You have to keep on focusing what you're doing and ultimately you have to go over that fear and keep going. I don't know what else how to explain it. That's in any case what I did. Because if you start thinking and doubting too much about yourself and chewing everything over again at the end, you don't do anything anymore. Like you jump off the building and then you learn how to fly. That's what I have been doing. And you know, I've crashed a couple of times, that's for sure. But that's what you have to do. You have to focusing and keep going.

And this ties back to the subject of Law of Attraction like you mentioned earlier that you believe in and the people listening in right now. I'm sure that most people have heard of this subject, Law of Attraction. I know I have. And some people interpret this subject of Law of Attraction as mystical and woo y. And other people have a very in depth subject, quantum physics, type of a scientific analysis. So Bernard, tell me what you think here, what you're saying here about maintaining this focus. To me, when we focus on this thing that we really want and it's our number one, it's at the forefront of our mind. It's something that we can almost see and feel. It's so clear in our minds when we focus on that just one thing, then it gets all of our energy. It gets our brain power, our emotional energy, it gets our attention. And the more brain power and emotional energy and attention that it gets, the more clear it becomes. It's like taking a flashlight and shining it directly on what's in front of us. And the flashlight shows us what the next step is. If there's a problem, then all of a sudden we start to see solutions and we start to see what we can do about it or what the workaround might be. And the flip side is also true. If we're going to focus on and let the fear and panic of COVID 19 or bankruptcy or or whatever it happens to be, if we're going to let that be in our mind's eye Continuously, then that's going to be what gets our energy. That's what's going to start to grow. And by default we're going to end up losing sight of what we want to see. We're going to lose sight of that positive where when the brain is occupied with something negative, well, there's no more room for something positive. And that's not mystical or wooey, in my opinion, at all. That's just logic. And to me it's also the essence of the law of attraction.

I totally agree with you. I'm experiencing that right now. I said it has been a difficult 10 years for me, like financially. But ultimately now things are really falling into place. People that come into my life, they are the right people. They think the same way as I do. We have a great team here in the company. Like the people that all work here. We are only a dozen, but they are great people really. I see things falling into place. Really. I think we're going to even that now with the virus. There's going to be a lot more challenges. But I know that things are falling.

Into place for us and we will persevere overall. I mean, everyone has to find their own way through this. And if we can all focus on the solution for each of us individually, if you can focus on what would help your situation right now, today, if all your energy could be focused on one little thing that you can do right now to improve your situation, to provide a solution for you today, then we're all collectively going to be working positively forward every day together. And eventually it compounds like a snowball. And so much good in the world starts to overcome all of these challenges and obstacles that we're seeing right now. And ultimately we do end up getting through this. We will get through this.

Absolutely. It's going to be a very strange year for a lot of people. And I think there's going to be a lot of bankruptcies that will happen. But I think the people that keep on fighting because like you hear on tv, it's kind of like a war with an invisible enemy. But ultimately people have survived worse, right?

Yeah.

If you think about it, Germany was flat. It was completely. And now it's the strongest country in Europe by far. And that's simply determination, willpower, and keep on going. That's what I want to communicate now. One point I want to say is what is important? I think so if you are in a certain field, like I'm in my field, one thing that's very important is to keep on educating yourself when you're in an industry, there is always new things that happen and it's very important to keep up like the learning process. And that's part of quality. If you want to really become a quality business, you have to keep on educating yourself, learning. Go to trade shows and always improve because that's part of top quality. Always improving. You never reach like I'm now a top quality. No, there's always a step above that. You can always do something better. And that I think what makes the difference between an average business and really the guys, the people that stick around and always get improved. And it's an ongoing process and that's I think, total quality, in my opinion, three points. That is, you have to have the knowledge, you have to have the passion. And then also you always want to keep on learning. Learning is part of the process.

How big is the team today? I mean, how many people or what kind of volume are you doing? And what do you think that's going to look like over the next few months or maybe even the next few years?

So our company, we have 12 employees, three retail stores, we do more and more wholesale. And also a big opportunity is private label where we customize a product to the customer specification. We do co branding or not mainly, mostly we do co branding. Like just recently we have a new customer that came on board quite large and now we see really the company is growing. Like before we were going like steadily up, but it's going to become exponential and the scalability is going to be there and ultimately the profitability.

Okay. Calgary was already in a difficult spot, say roughly around 2018. What do you think's coming up in the future now with all of these effects? Just out of curiosity, I think Calgary.

Is going through very difficult times because of course the oil prices are literally very, very low. But it is a town with entrepreneurs and I think they will reinvent themselves and they're going to come out of it. But I think the oil and gas industry is not going to be like it was before, but other industries will come out of it. You see that now people are coming up with ideas. New industries like the renewable industry is going to grow, the IT industry is going to grow here and the city will get back on their feet. But it's going to be a rough ride now for the next year or two. I think it's going to be tough definitely when the oil prices stay that low.

Yeah. And you said earlier how important it is to continuously learn and continuously grow. One of my favorite books is the E Myth by Michael Gerber. It provided to me anyways some really solid fundamental concepts to grasp in my earlier years going into business. What were some of your favorite books that gave you that business growth?

I just recently read a book and I think it's a great book. It's written by a local person here, Arlene Dickinson. She was on yes, and she wrote a book about reinventing yourself. And I highly recommend people that are in that situation to read it because she speaks very openly about her being vulnerable and things like that. I highly, highly recommend it. And on top of it, because she is a woman, she speaks about the challenges of being a woman in business. And it's still a man's world, right? And so that's an additional challenge. And I found her book extremely inspiring.

I think I'm going to reach out to her after the show and see if I can bring her on here. I think that's a good idea.

She's great. You should read her book. It's really, really good.

Yeah, I definitely will. As we wrap up here, I'm wondering, what do you say? I mean, people listening in here right now, we all go through struggles and we also feel inspired. How many people want to have a company that has $30 million in sales? This is one of the inspirations to get into business in the first place. And people listening in right now to this, they want to know how to do that. We've talked about some things like Law of attraction and clarifying in our minds, you know, what do we want to build and focusing on that. We've talked about reading some good books and getting a good foundation. But Bernard, what would you say to people if someone came up to you right now and said, how do I build a big business like that? What would you say to them?

In my industry, where you go in the food industry, you have to acquire a knowledge if you want to go high end. So if you go in a food business, go for an apprenticeship, go and work for someone that is top notch. Learn from the executive chef, don't learn from the dishwasher because you need really the fundamental knowledge. And once you have the fundamental knowledge, then you can get going. And then it's really your passion that has to kick in because that's when you're going to have the determination, etc. No, the financial aspect, you have to get some money to get going because that's where most people fail on that is the under financed and then they don't make it. That is a challenge. I struggled in my first company that took Me, two, three years to literally keep my nose above water. But then ultimately at one point the volume grows and you get there. The financial aspect is a challenge. If you don't have the money, it's not easy. But it is possible.

Yeah, it is possible. I mean, I dropped out of high school, I was deeply in debt when I moved all the way across the country to Calgary back in 2006. It was just a grind. Save money and save pennies and dollars to pay off my debts and build up a little bit, buy some new tools and reinvest all that money to just grow, grow, grow. And next thing you know there's a bigger company. And it happened. Right. So they're definitely. There's a way to do this. But man, it would have been so much easier had I not made those mistakes when I was younger and had I managed my money better and didn't have to start so far behind. But it wasn't the end of the world. That's just how it goes.

Yeah.

What kind of schooling did you do? Did you do university or college or.

I did university and I'm an electromechanic engineer and then I did one year of business management afterwards.

And did you do that in Belgium or did you do that in Canada?

The engineering was done in Belgium, the management was done in Switzerland.

Oh, okay.

In between, I did my military service because in Belgium it was mandatory to go to the army.

Okay. What would you say is the biggest difference between business in Canada or Belgium and Switzerland? You know, what would you say?

I never really operated a business in Belgium, but you know, I saw it at home, etc. The difference is, I think there is much more red tape in Belgium in any case. No, I haven't gone there since 35 years, so things might have changed. I don't know. It's definitely more risk taking here. Like people have more an entrepreneur spirit. If you feel it's not like looked on as badly as it is in Belgium. In Belgium, if you go bankrupt, that's very, very bad. I mentioned that earlier here. It's not the end of the world. I see that now. The reaction from the people, like when they have so many customers that come and see, like, we are so glad that you're back on your feet. That's fantastic. We support you, etc, etc, and you would not see that easily in Belgium. Something that reaction. Okay, now having spoken about all that, the one point that is very important when you go through bankruptcy is, I call it, it's a natural filter to see who your true Friends are. Because in bankruptcy your friends change. The true friends stay with you. But a lot of people disappear. When you were like known you were a star in the community, blah, blah, blah. You have a lot of people that wanted to meet you, be with you, around you, invite you. When you go bankrupt, a lot of these people disappear. But your true friends, that's the one that really matter.

Ain't that the truth.

Yes.

How important was it for you? Did you have people in your community that were helping you? Like, how important was community to you when you were going through your rock bottom moment?

Absolutely crucial. It's very important. I had people, the true friends. They came and helped me. They're amazing. I've seen amazing things from people. I had even people that offered me money that I didn't know, like simply people phony and say, like, you know What? I have $100. I went to bankruptcy myself. I don't have a lot of money, but you can have a hundred dollars. You know what, that makes me cry because I think that is so incredible.

That's so touching.

It's very touching. And the human side, it's very eye opening, really.

It really is. Bernard, I really want to thank you so much for coming on the show here today. I love your chocolates. I always have. I'm not sure how much money I've spent with you. I know it was a lot because I bought a lot of chocolates for my old customers back in Calgary.

Well, thank you.

Yeah, I'm really glad to hear and happy to hear that you're still doing what your passion is and you're still making this good product available to everyone. I want to thank you again for coming on the show.

It's absolutely a pleasure. I love talking with you and please come and see me when you're in town.

I absolutely will. And here on From Rock Bottom to Rockin it, we're signing out. Please remember to subscribe to the channel and most importantly, share this with your friends so that we can all be a part of this message and this growth. So until next time, have a rockin it day. And that's it, my friends, for this episode. We will see you next time. Please send me an email, say hello, give me some feedback, let me know what you think, give me some tips and suggestions. I'd love to to hear from you. Also, please share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, doesn't matter, just get it out there. I really appreciate it. And we'll see you next time on from rock bottom to rockin it, have a rockin it day.