Born Entrepreneur
Mark Leger is the editor and part-owner of Huddle. This is a weekly column that features opinion, analysis and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts and business news in the region. It’s published first as a Saturday morning newsletter – sign up and receive our free daily newsletter too.
Jody Glidden was already very entrepreneurial as a kid in Fredericton in the 1980s. In elementary school, his parents went on vacation to Bermuda. He had “nothing to do” for two weeks so he taught himself how to use the family computer with a book. Later that year, he created a piece of software and won the science fair.
When he was 14, he started selling hockey cards, and other sports cards, and made enough money to buy a car that sat in the driveway because he was too young to drive it. A couple of years later, he started an arcade and pool hall, getting his mother to co-sign a loan.
“I just kept trying, trying, trying a lot, I was really interested in business,” he says.
“I kept creating things on the computer at the same time as I was attempting things in business and I just never brought the two of those things together.”
Until much later, of course. Glidden went on to work at and found several tech companies that led, ultimately, to the launch of Introhive, a software company that now employs more than 350 people in the Maritimes, U.S., Europe, and India.
The company’s product is a platform that helps salespeople in businesses automate routine tasks related to their customer relationship manager (CRM) systems. Launched in 2012, the Introhive platform that boosts productivity and performance is used by companies in around 100 countries. The company’s revenue nearly doubled during the pandemic and it recently secured a $100-million (U.S.) investment, led by PSG, a Boston-based investment firm that backs middle-market software companies.
I chat with Jody on the latest episode of the Huddle “Home Office” podcast. I’m always curious about the origins of the entrepreneurial spark in people like him, which is how we began talking about what he was up to as a kid and teenager. That desire to create and scale was alive at a very young age.
Podcast: Jody Glidden’s Journey From Teenage Entrepreneur To CEO Of Introhive
I’ve had many other similar conversations, whether they were with the owners of very large businesses like Introhive or smaller ones like Goods, a general store in Saint John that I wrote about in a column earlier this year.
Susan Pass has been a lifelong entrepreneur going back to her childhood in small-town Newfoundland. At an early age, she would help her parents in their general store, doing things like stocking shelves. Her sister made ice in the family kitchen and sold it to her mother and father wholesale to be resold in their parents’ shop.
There are also many people who don’t show any interest in business until they’re well into their adult careers, but I always ask questions to see if there was an entrepreneurial aspect to things they did when they were younger.
That was certainly the case with me. I have worked for established, traditional media outlets like the CBC and the Telegraph-Journal but most of my 25-year career has been spent with startup media outlets like Huddle, either as an owner, an employee, or both. But when I look back on my teen years and early 20s, there are no clear indications that I would become an entrepreneur in my 30s.
I had an independent spirit that may have played a part. I took a job straight out of school at a trade magazine in Toronto. It wasn’t a dream job, but it was a start. I started having misgivings shortly after I accepted the job and ended up quitting on my first day. As I rode home on the bus, I promised myself I’d do interesting things to make it worthwhile walking from my first job.
Out the window on that ride home, I saw a billboard advertising plane flights to Cuba and an idea for something interesting came to mind. A few months later, I was on a plane to Havana to research and write a story for a magazine. I didn’t end up becoming a foreign correspondent, something I once wanted to be, but the experience showed I could create my opportunities: be entrepreneurial without being an entrepreneur.
Nearly five years later, after I did take my first job at the Telegraph-Journal, I founded a weekly newspaper called here in Saint John with a group of friends and the entrepreneurial phase of my career had truly begun.
Tracy Bell, the co-founder and CEO of Millennia TEA, might say I had it in me all along; that I was just was waiting for the “big idea” that would launch me into business.
Podcast: Tracy Bell On Millennia TEA’s Journey To Sobeys And Whole Foods
I had a chat with Tracy on the last episode of the “Home Office” podcast. She worked hard from a young age, getting her first job when she was only 12. Throughout her teen years, she did things like work as a gift wrapper at Christmas and dress up as a clown at kids’ birthday parties. She worked in retail, restaurants, and factories before she went away to school.
She also considered herself entrepreneurial in her work as a journalist and communications specialist, always gravitating to positions of leadership and being entrepreneurial in the way she managed departments and worked with other people.
It wasn’t until she had a health scare in her family that she and her husband Rory launched a search for healthy teas rich in antioxidants. Everything turned out okay, but that process led to the launch of a new business, Millennia TEA, and her becoming an “accidental entrepreneur.”
Since the launch of Millennia several years ago, the Saint John-based company has developed a tea flash-frozen within hours of being picked, the best way to preserve freshness and maximize antioxidant properties. Huddle has closely followed the various stages of Millennia’s growth, from their appearance on Dragons’ Den to a venture capital raise of more than $500,000 to the tea being sold in Sobeys and Safeway stores across the country.
“I was really entrepreneurial by nature,” Tracy told me, “but never imagined that I’d start my own thing because I didn’t have a ‘big idea.’ I really loved telling stories that mattered to people and sharing information that people need to know. But didn’t ever imagine it would be telling our own very personal story and having a business start out of that.”
Back in 2000, the big idea for me, and my group of like-minded 20- and 30-somethings, was a newspaper that appealed to young people like us. Jody’s (much bigger) idea was a platform for sales with a customer base that spans the globe. Tracy came up with an innovative tea that tastes great and maximizes its health benefits.
We all took legitimate pathways to create businesses and drive them forward, becoming entrepreneurs, accident or not.
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