Ryan Jackson
President, Canopy Canada
As a child in Swift Current, Sask., Ryan Jackson learned from his car-dealer father that selling automobiles was a good way to make a living.
interview by Brian Brennan
When a year in the jazz studies program at Edmonton’s Grant MacEwan College brought home the sobering reality that he would never make it as a professional saxophonist, he returned to Swift Current to work in his father’s Hyundai dealership. Five years later, in 1991, Jackson rescued a Medicine Hat Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep dealership from bankruptcy. Over the next dozen years, he built it into a $12 million-a-year business. Then, in an adventurous change of direction, he sold the dealership and bought into Canopy Canada, a Medicine Hat-based Internet service provider that uses Motorola wireless technology and the provincial government’s Alberta SuperNet broadband network to deliver high-speed access to rural customers. Over the past 15 months, working with his wife Alison, Jackson has seen Canopy quadruple its client base from 300 to 1,200 subscribers and double its annual sales to $600,000.
Q: How old were you when you started working in the automobile business?
A: You mean, where I actually got paid? Ever since I was old enough to walk, I guess. I went down to my father’s dealership to do whatever he would let me do without wrecking something. I parked cars when I could barely see over the steering wheel. But on a full-time basis, it would have been after my first year in college.
How serious were you about music when you enrolled at Grant MacEwan?
At the time I was an aspiring musician and an aspiring business person, and trying to figure out which one I wanted to do. Tommy Banks was the director of the Dues Big Band at the college, and his wisdom and knowledge convinced me in a real hurry that I wasn’t in the top 1% that make it.
Why did you decide to quit the car business?
I saw a very large market adjustment coming on the domestic side of the ledger for cars, with imports threatening to cut into market share. I couldn’t see much growth in that business in the foreseeable future – in the end, we were selling financing, not cars – and the Alberta SuperNet presented an interesting business opportunity.
Did it concern you that you were entering a crowded field? There are many ISPs out there.
There are, but not as many wireless providers as wired ones. The nice thing about wireless for us is that we own our own network. We are able to serve our customers without having to pay Telus or Bell or someone else to be on their network. That’s where the biggest win comes from. Competition in the car business was a lot more intense than it is right now in the telecommunications industry. You have larger competitors, but you certainly don’t have as many of them.
Are you in this business for the long haul?
I am. Many people start out thinking they will soon exit to a large telco, but I feel there’s an opportunity for the wireless ISPs that have started up as a result of the SuperNet to eventually consolidate and continue to grow. If we can all work together through strategic alliances or partnerships, we can achieve the kind of exit strategy that will put some money in our pockets at the end of the day.
How many years will it take for this to happen?
In this business, things happen very quickly. Growth is going to be accelerated now that SuperNet is available to a lot of communities, so I would say the pie is going to be baked, so to speak, in the next three years. After that, we’ll have to take a look at other opportunities.
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