Here’s a guy who got rejected not by “virtually every university in Canada, it was every university in Canada”—and for an MBA program at that. Now chairperson of Goldcorp TSX:G, Ian Telfer credits one school’s 11th-hour offer with giving him a second shot at his career, putting an undistinguished background behind him to become a serial success story.
His reflections provided inspiration to a sold-out Vancouver audience of 850 people hoping to pick up some of the magic that made him a mining legend.
The June 28 event saw him interviewed on stage by Peter Legge, a standup comic-turned-publisher and author of several motivational books. Consequently, conversation focused less on mining deals than on qualities that might complement success in any industry. Hosting the event was BCBusiness, a magazine created by Cambridge House International founder Joe Martin and sold to Legge by local zillionaire Jim Pattison.
Telfer’s mid-career second chance came from the University of Ottawa, in a surprise phone call the day before classes started. Taking his studies seriously this time, he went on to become a chartered accountant and financial analyst for Hudbay Minerals TSX:HBM predecessor Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting. Looking back, he describes his former self as a mediocre salesman and “probably less than a mediocre accountant.”
But junior mining requires “promoting ideas that you hope are going to turn into companies. You have to do some selling and you have to understand numbers and it turned out I was a better accountant than the other salesman and a better salesman than the other accountant.”
For the rest of this article: http://resourceclips.com/2018/07/04/ian-telfer-talks/