♪ ♪
I’m Wes Hall, and I am the newest Dragon in Dragons’ Den.
I’m the executive chairman and founder of Kingsdale Advisors.
I’m 51 years old. I started Kingsdale when I was 34.
If you have a problem with investors in this country
and they want to replace you as the CEO, you call me.
If you have a problem with someone trying to take over
your company and you don’t want to sell it to them, you call me.
I have the top firm in the country at helping companies
stay independent, or to become bigger.
I’m also the founder of BlackNorth Initiative.
And I started BlackNorth because
I wanted to change the way Black people are perceived in Canada.
When I go into a board room, there’s generally no one
that looks like me in the boardroom.
I want to change that.
And BlackNorth is here to do exactly that.
♪ ♪
You have never had a Dragon like me before,
and you’ll never have another one again.
Because there’s only one Wes Hall.
I am special because how many people in this country
have made it from a tin shack to the top of corporate Canada?
Pick 'em.
There’s none.
So there’s only one, and you’ve got him.
I want to be an example to the kids that are from
underserved communities, which I was from.
So I want those kids to go, “I want to be like
Wes Hall one day and I want to be a Dragon.”
♪ ♪
I was born in this town in Jamaica called Golden Grove.
It’s actually literally in a tin shack.
It’s on five foot stilts because it would get flooded
all the time in that neighbourhood.
I have 13 brothers and sisters
and my grandmother raised us all.
I came to Canada at 16 to live with my dad.
I lived with my dad for two years
and then at my senior year in high school, I go,
“I want to be on my own now.”
And I left to start to build my life.
I graduated high school. Then I started to do odd jobs.
One of my first jobs was catching chickens.
And another job was cleaning offices.
I was a security guard in a very tough neighbourhood
and I had to respond to burglar alarms
in those tough neighbourhoods
with a flashlight. That is a terrible job.
So if you want to know what not to do in life
and how to be serious, get one of those jobs.
You're going to wake up really fast.
I sent myself through university in the evenings
and then end up in the mailroom on Bay Street.
And then that just kind of kept going and going and going
until I'm where I'm at today.
♪ ♪
I am an entrepreneur because of
my drive, passion, and commitment.
But I also watched the best entrepreneur that I know,
which was my grandmother.
She worked like multiple jobs,
she looked after all of us,
and she just didn’t rely on somebody else
to take care of her grandkids.
She was industrious and she was hardworking.
So I learned that.
And as a result of that, I figured that
anything is possible for me
because of what I saw her accomplish.
♪ ♪
I think I'm going to be the kind of Dragon that people relate to
and that people get along with.
But also, they’re going to recognize the fact that
I can be a tough Dragon as well.
I think all the Dragons will love me.
Everybody loves me.
There’s this thin line between arrogance and confidence,
and sometimes people think I cross that line,
but I don’t think I do.
I don’t want an entrepreneur that dances on the line.
I don't dance on the line.
But I want them to have confidence.
I want them to have bravado.
I want them to know that if I set numbers with you,
you're going to hit the numbers out of the park.
I want to hear you say,
“You want 20? I’m going to give you 30!”
Because that’s the bravado that I bring to what I do.
♪ ♪
I’m sector agnostic when it comes to investing.
I just look at great people with great ideas
with great passion
that I can work with and mold to become better.
They have to be prepared to work harder than me
in order to steward my capital.
And if that person is not prepared to do that,
or if in my view, that person is not going to be
the person to do that, I don’t care how good your business is,
I have no interest in investing.
♪ ♪
When I was growing up in Saint Thomas, Jamaica,
I never thought I would actually
leave that neighbourhood, period. Full stop.
I got on an airplane for the first time,
I saw an airplane up close and personal
when I was 16 years old.
I didn’t know what snow was,
I didn’t know what highways were,
I didn’t even see a traffic light, you know,
until I came to Canada.
So, to me, this life was literally
was so foreign to me that I didn’t even imagine it.
I didn’t even dream it.
I thought that I was going to grow up
in that same neighbourhood
and I was going to die in that neighbourhood
because that’s what exactly happened to
every single person who lived in that community.
♪ ♪
Yeah, I love nice things.
Listen, if you live in a tin shack, man,
with no running water, no electricity,
and you have the opportunity to actually have running water
and to have electricity, would you take it
or would you deprive yourself of it?
Yeah, I’m going to take it.
So when I see those nice cars, you know, on television
and then I realize that I actually can buy one of those,
I decided to. And it’s a lot of fun.
♪ ♪
I think what drives me to continue to push myself
is because I've accomplished the impossible.
So in my mind there’s no such thing as impossibility.
And so I will continue to push myself
as far as I possibly can push myself
until somebody tap me on the shoulder and say,
“Young man from Saint Thomas, Golden Grove, Jamaica,
you’ve gone far enough. The end of the road is here.”
But there’s no end in sight for me.
♪ ♪
[dragon growls]