Aleem Khan

Bren­dan Pad­dick, the Cana­di­an who start­ed a Caribbean-head­quar­tered telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny that now op­er­ates in 42 coun­tries in the re­gion, shared the se­crets to his suc­cess re­cent­ly. He was speak­ing at the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce's 9th An­nu­al Busi­ness Hall of Fame in­duc­tion cer­e­mo­ny and gala din­ner at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad.

Say­ing he was shar­ing his "per­son­al strat­e­gy for suc­cess," he ad­vised T&T's busi­ness lead­ers to "make it fun, make it hap­pen, make it mean­ing­ful, make it last and make a dif­fer­ence".To this day, Pad­dick says, he con­tin­ues to "make it fun." He told guests at the black tie din­ner that he and his staff go to work most days in shorts and a ca­su­al shirts. While the Ba­hamas-head­quar­tered Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions was in­cor­po­rat­ed in 2004, Pad­dick ac­tu­al­ly start­ed his busi­ness in 2003 at his house.

He said Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions was "way be­hind" the tele­com gi­ants with which it now com­petes. It was be­hind on time and mar­ket share be­cause its com­peti­tors were decades-old com­pa­nies with glob­al re­sources."We did it by think­ing big and act­ing small," he told busi­ness peo­ple. "It was not just about chang­ing mar­kets but about dis­rupt­ing mar­kets."He added that "risk needs to be tak­en to reap re­wards," and that "per­mis­sion to fail is part of our DNA".

Pad­dick said: "If we're not fail­ing at things, it means we're not try­ing new things."Of course, con­tin­u­ous­ly fail­ing at the same thing will mean there is a prob­lem, he said."We nev­er set out to be cool. We set out to be rel­e­vant," he told Cham­ber mem­bers. He ad­vised them to "nev­er be afraid to hire peo­ple who are smarter than you," and added that they should "nev­er for­get where you came from".On the style of work­ing, Pad­dick said "at Colum­bus, you don't work for peo­ple, you work with peo­ple."

Flow Trinidad

Pad­dick said that for Colum­bus, T&T is "our pri­ma­ry mar­ket" and "our most proud mar­ket." He said T&T cus­tomers are the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of many firsts–high speed In­ter­net at 100 megabytes per sec­ond was rolled out here be­fore any­where else, and he promised the coun­try will re­main on the cut­ting edge as the test­ing ground for many new tech­nolo­gies.

He said Colum­bus of­fers free broad­band In­ter­net to more than 600 schools in the re­gion. In T&T, more than 150 schools get free In­ter­net ac­cess from Flow, the lo­cal brand name by which most peo­ple know Colum­bus. He said his next ob­jec­tive is to roll out "smart class­rooms" through­out the re­gion equipped with au­dio­vi­su­al and tech­no­log­i­cal aides that make learn­ing fun.

Colum­bus em­ploys 2,600 peo­ple of 48 dif­fer­ent na­tion­al­i­ties in the re­gion, Pad­dick said. Of that num­ber "less than 20 work on a work per­mit," he said, adding that this demon­strates the com­pa­ny's com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing jobs to Caribbean na­tion­als.

In clos­ing, he asked rhetor­i­cal­ly: "What's an ad­dress with­out a po­lit­i­cal jab?"

As Trade Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai lis­tened from their front row ta­ble he ex­plained: "To the Gov­ern­ment of T&T, your job is to put in place a favourable en­vi­ron­ment", stress­ing that "a qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem" is the key to the coun­try's fu­ture de­vel­op­ment.

In­ductees

The evening was al­so about three busi­ness­men who were in­duct­ed in­to the Cham­ber's Hall of Fame.Carl­ton Mack, a Chi­nese-born im­mi­grant to T&T, who ex­celled in the re­tail food busi­ness be­fore ex­pand­ing in­to con­struc­tion and mall own­er­ship, was posthu­mous­ly in­duct­ed.Al­so posthu­mous­ly in­duct­ed that evening was the man who made fa­mous the catch phrase "Har­ri­crete it the hard­est hard." Har­ry Sook­nar­ine, founder of Car­i­flex Har­ri­crete Ltd, was the sec­ond in­ductee of the evening.

The third in­ductee was Vic­tor Mout­tet, founder of Vem­co, who told guests he start­ed his busi­ness in the late 1960s with $1,500, a wife, a 15-month-old ba­by, and his chap­let in hand. Mout­tet, who was as­sist­ed to the stage by his son, Chris­t­ian, a for­mer Cham­ber pres­i­dent like his fa­ther, said he es­tab­lished Mul­ti­foods Cor­po­ra­tion Ltd first. He in­tro­duced many new food brands to T&T.

He said com­bined, the chil­dren of that par­ent com­pa­ny of the 1960s are now "one of the largest sup­pli­ers of food and gro­ceries in the Caribbean."Mout­tet be­queaths to his fam­i­ly more than 100 restau­rants in T&T, Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos through pub­licly-list­ed Pres­tige Hold­ings. The fam­i­ly al­so owns pub­licly-list­ed Agos­ti­ni's Ltd; the Pay­less shoe stores; the Court­yard Mar­riott in T&T, and more.