“It’s hard to break away ...” Most Victorians know the story of League Assets Corporation and the failed Capital City Centre project in Colwood. When League, a REIT (real estate investment trust), ceased to exist in early 2015, it had almost $370 million in outstanding debts with an array of creditors.
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to raise about $41 million via a Quebec pension plan. But League’s complicated bookkeeping system, for more than 100 companies it owned in Canada, caused League to miss the deal’s deadline, Gant says. The lesson learned? Excess legal entities create massive complexities. It took too long to produce League’s 600-page prospectus for the Quebec deal. “We ran out of liquidity,” he says. Today, Gant runs his new company, REAfe Advisory, where he advises B.C. and Alberta companies on growth, real estate acquisition and how to start from scratch. “People get to the point where they’re embarrassed. They feel bad, don’t believe it could be fixed and throw in the towel,” he says. “I figure I know something and can help some companies.”
Recovering from failure isn’t always fun. Vancouver corporate coach Victoria Brown says the first arrow comes from someone or something else (the cause of failure) and the second arrow (selfcriticism) comes from ourselves. “We make it personal, think it’s us,” she says. “But many factors come into play. We need time for grieving. There’s such a stigma about failure. As adults, we think we have to look good. But think of kids — they fall off and get back on.” Almost all successful business people say they have failed, Brown says. To fully learn from failing, you have to embrace it, says University of Victoria business professor Mia Maki. “Unboxing it, although painful, and talking about it, takes it to a deeper level. You can extract much more,” she says. While success stories are nice to note, they often go in one ear and out the other because the narratives don’t resonate on a personal note. “Learning from the
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or League co-founder Adam Gant, 36, a Victoria resident, his company’s failure had its genesis in confirmation bias, the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms your beliefs while ignoring alternative ideas. “We were a victim of it; once you start a project, it’s hard to break away from it,” he tells me. As League grew, the decision to break ground in Colwood was based on the heady days of 2007 and belief that the good times would continue. But in 2008, the financial downturn hit, and by 2009, Gant was asking, how would the Colwood project remain viable? In hindsight, he admits the project was too big. In 2013, League attempted
The Other Side of Failure
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