There is no question that digital technology is impacting all verticals and businesses, affecting both the customer experience and how organizations make money. The sports industry in particular, is undergoing rapid change and unlocking all kinds of opportunities for growth and new business models.Joining me in this episode is Christina Litz, the Chief Brand & Commercial Officer at True North Sports and Entertainment who are the owners and operators of the Winnipeg Jets (NHL), Manitoba Moose (AHL), the Canada Life Centre, Bell MTS Iceplex and other venues. A lawyer by background, Christina has been at the front of digital transformation for brands including Corus, Rogers, Telus, The CFL and Woodbine Entertainment Group.Listen in as Christina and I discuss;How has digital sports transformation been affecting consumers and fans?What makes a sports fan in the new world of digital engagement?New revenue streams and business models including sports data: real-time stats and numbers.Is data the core element of future monetization?Are sports gambling and the betting ecosystem the future?

According to Nic Beique, the payments space is generally boring, but his goal is to build a payments company that is loved by his customers and that can be the heartbeat of their customers success. Nic tells me that it would be enough of a differentiating point for Helcim to have built the brand that they have already built, one based on processing billions in payments per year with a human touch. But in an industry notorious for bad practices, he's going even further. Nic Beique is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Helcim, a payments company that makes it faster, easier, and more affordable for businesses to get paid.  Helcim is a payments company who believes in giving small businesses every possible edge to thrive and enrich their communities, delivering an easy, smart, and affordable payment experience with a human touch. They serve thousands of businesses in Canada and the US across 800 different industries, processing billions in payments each year.In our chat, Nic discusses how the legacy players in the payments space have enjoyed their monopolies and it is the new entrants and fintechs forcing a customer service first approach to the industry. "A lot of companies see their customer service as a place for bottom of the barrel employees, and it's like, no, no, they are the touch point for our customers, they have the single most impact to our brand. We need to treat them very differently." We also discuss how the data at the core of the payments industry can paint of picture of the health of the economy. Through their platform they are seeing a huge shift to omni-channel commerce, not just online transactions. And on the technology side we discuss how anyone entering the payment space has to have a huge technology stack with a focus on uptime, security, and simply getting payments right.The point is, being successful in the payments space is really, really hard.

When Daniel Dubois did the research, he realized that it takes an average of 27 years for the typical first-time Canadian urban home buyer just to save up for the recommended 20% down payment. That's when he and his co-founder decided to do something about it. They launched Key, a patent-pending two sided marketplace with a co-ownership model allowing people to move in and start building home equity, without being locked into a mortgage. Oh, it only takes $15,000 to start.Growing up in Vancouver his entire life Daniel knew how unaffordable real estate could be. He saw it first hand living in a co-op in False Creek and his parents would often talk about a woulda, coulda, shoulda situation of getting into the market.  It hasn't gotten any easier. Young people are stuck on the proverbial rental treadmill where their income isn't going up at the same rates as housing prices and they're locked out of being able to build wealth with home ownership. As Daniel discussed with me, Key sets out to offer a new option, a model where someone can have most of the benefits of owning, but with the freedoms and flexibilities of renting. They call it "homeownership as a service". It's a new form of home ownership where one can consume real estate incrementally. If a condo is worth $600,000 in downtown Toronto, one can become a co-owner with just $15,000 down and every month in their app, choose to purchase more of the home. After three years the buyer has the option to purchase 100% of it. So anyone can own a home years sooner, continue to build equity, have the freedoms of renting, and after three years have the option to purchase it.  Oh, and at any time, the purchaser can give a couple of months notice and leave and buy a house somewhere else, or move to a new city for a job opportunity. Total flexibility.

Pinterest is not really social media in the traditional sense, it's more personal media. As the "ultimate discovery platform", Pinterest is just in its very nature, a place where people feel hopeful when they are thinking about the future. As Erin Elofson describes in our discussion, "when using Pinterest you're fundamentally happy, reflecting on the past is a harder emotional process, and that's what happens often in social media, you're sort of being compared to others. Kids for example are probably thinking, why wasn't I invited to that party?" That's not what happens on Pinterest.As people start planning for milestones in their lives using Pinterest, not only does the platform get early indications, but that offers signals to advertisers of things like wedding planning, moving homes or even having a baby. All happy and future based events. Listen in as Erin and I discuss the business and consumer use of Pinterest. By the way, did you know that nine out of the ten people who use Pinterest to plan their happy future come with commercial intent? Often they don't know what brand or product they need to get there. What an opportunity for advertisers.Given Pinterest in focused on the future, they have also become experts in predicting trends.  They call their annual insights on trends 'Pinterest Predicts'. Simply put it's Pinterest's way of saying what's going to happen, and 80% of the trends they reveal in the annual Pinterest Predicts report are correct.The future is happy and Pinterest is helping their 400 million users get there!

Candice Faktor is on a mission to help creators make a living teaching what they love by re- imagining the future of learning through her platform, Disco.  She believes the future is learning live together and Disco's vision for learning leaves the industrial age behind and looks to a world of lifelong learning, that's live, with peers, led by trusted creators and accessible from anywhere.Prior to Disco, Candice has held various positions including Global GM and Head of Business at Wattpad, one of the world’s largest storytelling communities, which sold for US$660MM. Her love of learning led her to create cohort based courses years ago and the Gamechanger.co learning community both of which inspired her to create Disco.Listen in as Candice and I discuss learning 1.0 which was all about content and the ability to share it, mostly through prerecorded platforms, digitally or in written form, and how we are moving into the era of learning 2.0, which is all about experiences. The ability to actually facilitate experiences along with others, and that is really hard to make happen without synchronous video. So along comes Disco.As Candice says, "Disco is next level, just watch what is able to happen when you create the space and a container for learning to occur."

Ever hear of The Peak? Well if you haven't it's time to change that. The Peak is a daily newsletter covering the latest Canadian and global business, finance and tech news in a fun and informative daily email. Over 42,000 Canadians start their day with this email and I am one of them!Brett Chang is co-founder of The Peak, starting the business after a number of roles including working at Uber. As Brett explains in our discussion, The Peak is designed for the modern Canadian business leader. Mostly urban young professionals between the ages of 25 to 35 working at big companies like Shopify, Uber and Deloitte, across a range of different disciplines from marketing, to finance, to operations, and they're fairly senior in their roles.  The goal of The Peak is to work backwards when preparing content, thinking what do our readers want to know that  will help them through their day?How have they been so successful? Well, as Brett explains there are peaks and valleys in terms of growth in any business. Listen in as he explains tips on growing your digital customer base including how to get success from LinkedIn, really compelling content and the effective use of giveaways, especially when partnered with different businesses focused on the same target audience.Oh and monetization?  Yeah Brett has some incredible advice on that one too!  Don't miss this tactical and educational discussion (and it's less than a 20 minute commitment).Don't forget to sign up for yourself: http://readthepeak.com?rcode=Aa8-_uGdnHE

Most companies don't bother spending time thinking about how they can create their own flywheel. The flywheel that comes from digitally transforming their business, and finding ways that one new business model or revenue stream can feed off the other. John Boynton is an executive with over 30 years experience and a passion and track record of turning companies around and delivering high growth rates in highly competitive industries in Canada, USA and Europe.  He is continuously transforming businesses and finding those new models that open up growth and opportunity. He is a master at identifying the flywheel. His passion for building teams with his unique coaching/teaching style drives contagious enthusiasm. I know...I worked with him.Listen in as John and I discuss a few interesting topics. We discuss how consumer trends are shaping the way large and small organizations alike are having to transform themselves. We also talk about digital transformation and how large and small organizations need to adapt.As John states, "Consumers are looking for simplicity, service delivered in an effortless way. People are looking for certainty, especially in the digital world as other things in their life become more complicated. They're looking for fairness, a fair price for a large volume of good services. They're looking for quality to over what's widely available for free out there. And there's something about unrestricted access easily facilitated by the subscription economy."One final tip from John, don't forget to institutionalize your information consumption because information consumption is competitive and if you aren't doing it, someone else is.

In a world where consumers are moving their banking transactions online and leaving branches as remnants of the past, how does one bank differentiate themselves from the other? According to Maja Neable, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Banking at BMO Financial Group, it is a combination of what consumers think about as a perceived convenience, and the distinctiveness that a bank can create to try and convince consumers that they are really different. The balance for automation and self-service, along with the need for timely advice, is something that banks are trying to figure out. The young Generation Z client believes that they will probably never set foot in a branch, though as their financial needs evolve and they mature in their financial journey, they often realize the need to ask for and get human advice. Therefore, for those value-adding conversations, banks like BMO need to figure out why people should choose to stay with them, and it is mostly a result of being able to simply provide the right advice and truly help them. As we know, many things happen in life and we often need help. That help may not happen physically in the branch. Consumers can choose to talk to somebody on the phone, through video chat or perhaps even text chat. There is a lot of assistance and advice that can be delivered through digital channels. Listen in as Maja and I discuss these and other topics around the future of banks.  Maja Neable is well recognized as an innovative, action-oriented marketing leader with strong digital background. Prior to her current role, Maja was VP Digital Marketing at BMO and prior to BMO, Maja held successively more senior roles across the US, Canada, and Europe in a variety of industries, including technology (Microsoft and Expedia) and telecommunications (Rogers and Telenor).  Maja is a mathematician who loves creativity, and this combination of left & right brain is what has guided her career. Her 20+ years of experience include digital marketing, design & product development, business & brand strategy and sales & service leadership. Maja sits on the Board of Soulpepper theatre and is Vice-Chair of the Board at Skills for Change. She holds B Math degree from the University of Waterloo, and an MBA from IMD, Switzerland. She lives in Toronto with her husband and two sons, and enjoys skiing, running, and reading.

For anybody who is not familiar with it, there is a real productivity crisis in the pharmaceutical industry and they have even given it a name, which is Eroom's law, the opposite of Moore's law. Moore's law states that every 18-24 months, the amount of transistors you can get for the same or lower price doubles. In pharmaceutical, R&D is the opposite. Every 18 months, the price of getting a new drug to market DOUBLES! The goal of BenchSci is to help bring new medicine to patients 50% faster by 2025. They are solving the problem that about 80% of preclinical R&D experiments in pharma are unnecessary. Why is this important? Well, upwards of 1% of the global economy, and 10% of the G7's economies as measured in GDP are tied to pharmaceuticals, and it is growing faster than inflation. They are trying to solve it by using machine learning to read scientific literature like a Ph.D. scientist, then use the knowledge to guide scientists to run more successful (and therefore fewer) experiments. There aren't a lot of companies like BenchSci that are saying, well, we're not really trying to help find new biological targets or generate new drugs or optimize clinical trials. What they do is help scientists run better experiments, to move more quickly from having novel targets to testing that novel drug and getting it into the clinical environment. Simon Smith is the Chief Marketing Officer at BenchSci, where he oversees all of their marketing including commercial marketing, product marketing, employer branding, communications, events, and creative and content. He joined the company when it was just about 19 people and a few hundred-scientist users; they are now at nearly 200 people, and over 41,000 scientist users. Prior to BenchSci, Simon was the SVP Strategy at Klick Health, where he led digital strategy for a portfolio of pharmaceutical products, including the US launch of two novel drugs. His career spans over two decades working at the intersection of technology, life science, and communications. His passion about applying emerging technologies to improve human health, longevity, and wellbeing is what makes me so excited to have him on the podcast today.Oh, and did I say BenchSci is backed by F-Prime, Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI fund), and Inovia Capital. The platform accelerates science at 15 top-20 pharmaceutical companies and over 4,300 leading research centers worldwide. They are a CIX Top 10 Growth company, a certified Great Place to Work®, and top-ranked company on Glassdoor.

The Canadian healthcare system is typically ranked as either the lowest ranked or second lowest ranked performing healthcare system of all developed world nations. Our physicians are great. Our procedures, world class. Then why such a low ranking?According to Dr. Brett Belchetz, the reason why we are so far behind in the rankings is access. Only about half of Canadian doctors work full-time. That is one of the main reasons why Canadians wait so long for care. The perception is that there simply are not enough doctors. In fact, it's because we're not using our doctors properly. Dr. Brett Belchetz is trying to tackle this exact issue. He is the CEO and Co-founder of Maple, Canada’s leading virtual care provider connecting patients and healthcare providers like doctors and therapists for online medical visits in minutes. He’s also a practicing physician in Toronto, and a Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute. In addition, Brett’s passion for healthcare communication and policy have led him to work as an on-air medical expert for CTV and Global News, as well as a contributor to outlets such as the National Post. Previously, Brett worked as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company.It is estimated that about 70% of the visits that people are making to clinics, hospitals and their family doctors can be digitized. Maple is out to enable that. As Maple continues to evolve, it is moving to a proactive model, where they can let patients know the frequency of visits that they need to have. They will tip you off when you need a screening test done or an intervention done. They will have resources available between those healthcare visits. So it's not just see a healthcare provider and you're kind of on your own until the next visit in a month or three months. It's an entire program. Best of all, Dr. Belchetz wants to make this made in Canada healthcare IP the basis of healthcare systems around the world.