ABOUT ME
I started my career in the construction industry. At the time, I was just finishing up my university studies and working part time in a local ski shop when the then Vice President of Black and McDonald, Larry McDonald came in to get his kids skis waxed for a holiday trip. He left with four complete sets of new skis and kit for his whole family. A week later I was being interviewed for a business development position at Black and McDonald. I spend the next ten years there and won the national sales award eight of those years.
Looking for a new challenge after learning how to run a large business and manage people from some of the best people you could ever hope to spend spend ten years leaning from, I was offered a position with an industrial parts distributor, relocated to the west coast and focused on acquisitions to drive growth through vertical integration, building out a new EPC construction division, adding key supplier partners and consolidating and rebranding 12 different regional companies into Belterra Corporation which is today the largest company of it’s kind in Canada. After proposing some strategic changes shortly after joining, they made me a Vice President, loaned me the money to buy shares in the company and a seat on the board and I spent ten years learning about business growth and management from some of the toughest and most relentless people you’ll ever meet.
We eventually sold the company to Marubeni Group in Japan which gave me an opportunity to build my own business from scratch. I had been watching the transition to digital in photography and video quickly accelerating and noted that most suppliers were slow to respond and reluctant to supply clients with anything other than analog assets via a clunky and dated licensing model. I felt this was an opportunity to create a production company focused on delivering digital (and easily adaptable) assets to corporate clients for websites, stakeholder relations pieces, shareholder communications and similar assets. I spent the next 11 years building my own business producing digital assets for brand and corporate clients all over the world including, Honda, Siemens, Exxon, Shell, McDonalds, Pepsi and Nike.
When you own your own business and trade your time for money, your growth is limited by how much time you’re able to trade and the idea I had 11 years earlier had become a pretty crowded market place. The timing was perfect because I was craving the rush of being part of a larger team and leading a larger growth opportunity again. In 2020, I found Makers, the business model they were developing was part of a trend I had noticed around the decoupling of production from creative advertising. Brands were looking for a new way to make their advertising assets and Makers was on the leading edge of that revolution. Today, I’m Vice President of Global Growth at Makers where I oversee our new client relationships, guide the growth of the company and travel globally meeting clients and overseeing new partnerships.
EDUCATION
Heriot Watt University
Edinburgh Business School
Edinburgh, Scotland
MBA
Canadian Securities Course
Toronto, Canada
Saint Mary’s University
Halifax, Canada
B. Comm
Diploma in Human Resource Management
Loyalist College of Applied Arts
Ontario, Canada
Broadcast Marketing Program
FAVOURITE THINGS
Vintage guitars, music
Furniture making and home renovation
Fly Fishing
Investing, Finance, Capital Markets
HERE’S SOME THINGS I’M EXCITED ABOUT IN 2024.
Makers
As Vice President of Global Growth at Makers, I focus 90% of my time helping the company expand globally. We really are revolutionizing production and the decoupling of production from creative is an exciting trend in marketing and advertising that creates one of those “once in a lifetime” opportunities. Nothing makes me happier than being part of a success story in the business world and helping Makers become the market leader in this category is something I enjoy, a lot. Plus, working with truly lovely people and being surrounded by the best team makes it look easy (it’s not).
The “in housing” trend
industry trends
AI
I know, everyone is talking about AI and it’s probably going to destroy the universe but, it’s also probably the next big leap in humanity and technology and will likely make the invention of the microprocessor look like it was nothing. That said, it certainly seem like it has the ability to solve a lot of scale problems like access to healthcare.
The economy
It certainly felt like 2023 was a bad year for the economy, I definitely went into the year with a bad feeling about where we were headed, primarily due to interest rates and what felt like never ending inflationary pressure but, I feel like we’ve turned the corner. All the indexes ended in positive territory for the year, my portfolio returned about 16% and interest rates are already retreating now that inflation (at least in North America) is receding. There’s a lot of cash on the sidelines, market breadth is strong, trading volume is rising, put call ratios etc etc etc. Look, I won’t get into the weeds, everyone can find reasons to be optimistic or pessimistic, choose your poison but, I like Andy Kessler’s take HERE
Me
health, fitness
What else?
I created a brand called “3 Paw Ranch” which is inspired by our 3 legged rescue dog Jerry. Jerry’s been in our family for a little over two years now and he’s been a lot of work. He came from an abusive home and learning to trust other people and strange dogs has taken a lot of work and patience from us and our friends and family. Now that he trusts us and our circle, he’s an enthusiastic family member who’s earned his stripes. I’m not exactly sure what I’ll do with it yet but, I’m leaning towards developing a link of apparel and food products inspired by love of dogs, the outdoors, barbecue and fishing.
danbannister.com 