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Back to K.C. Irving: Competing with Giants, with Shane Parrish.

What Did Harrison McCain Learn From K.C. Irving?

Shane Parrish says Harrison McCain reduced what he learned from K.C. Irving to one sentence: don't ever be satisfied.

K.C.'s sons told their father McCain was one hell of a salesman, and K.C. offered him a job. McCain named his price, $10,000 and a big car, and K.C. gave him both. K.C. rarely gave senior people direct orders. Over lunch he would mention that a certain account would fit with Irving's plans, and McCain heard that as get out there and get the account. One large account took 18 months to win. McCain called expecting congratulations. K.C. asked whether he had gotten the lubricating grease business as well. The grease amounted to only about 4% of the total business. McCain had won the other 96, and K.C. wanted to know about the 4% that he had missed.

McCain never forgot that moment. He later left Irving and built McCain Foods into a giant of its own, and he kept talking about K.C. as one of the great influences of his career. He compared K.C. to the conductor of an orchestra. K.C. trusted you to play your own instrument, but he expected you to play to the tempo he was setting.

Grokipedia·Shane Parrish·Harrison McCain

Transcript

K.C. Irving: Competing with Giants ·

The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish

More from this episode

  1. How Did K.C. Irving Handle a Missing Oil Delivery?Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving handled a missing oil delivery by answering the call himself and phoning back until the oil was in the house.
  2. How Did K.C. Irving Get Gasoline When Imperial Oil Cut Him Off?Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving went looking for his own gasoline after Imperial Oil cut him off and expected him to stick to selling cars.
  3. Why Did K.C. Irving Refuse a Loan His Father Would Guarantee?Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving refused a line of credit unless it stood in his own name, even though his father would have guaranteed the loan.
  4. Why Did K.C. Irving Start Irving Oil?Shane Parrish says K.C.
  5. Why Did K.C. Irving Keep Expanding During the Great Depression?Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving kept expanding through the Great Depression because fewer people were trying to grow and there was less competition.
  6. Why Did K.C. Irving Buy a Ship When the Railway Raised His Rates?Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving bought his own tanker after Canadian National Railway raised the rates on his oil and refused to treat him like Imperial Oil.
  7. Why Did K.C. Irving Keep Cutting Timber He Could Not Sell?Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving kept cutting timber through the Depression and stopped selling it, while competitors laid people off and waited.
  8. How Did K.C. Irving's Veneer Plant Help Build the Mosquito Bomber?Shane Parrish says the first part of K.C. Irving's business transformed by the war was Canada Veneers, a small veneer company he had purchased the year before.
  9. Why Did K.C. Irving Count the Trees Before Buying a Forest?Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving counted the trees himself because he would not buy a defunct railway's forest until his own count matched the inspectors.
  10. How Much Was K.C. Irving Worth in 1948?Shane Parrish says Canadian Business put K.C. Irving on its cover in February 1948 and guessed his fortune at about $100 million. By 1948, K.C.
  11. Why Did K.C. Irving Start Planting Spruce at 58?Shane Parrish says K.C.
  12. Why Did K.C. Irving Turn Down British Petroleum's Refinery Deal?Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving walked away from British Petroleum because it wanted the right to buy Irving Oil when he retired or died.
  13. Why Did New Brunswick Want More Than One K.C. Irving?Shane Parrish says people called K.C.
  14. Did K.C. Irving Take Dividends From His Newspapers?Shane Parrish says K.C.
  15. Why Did K.C. Irving Say It Was Too Expensive to Die in Canada?Shane Parrish says K.C.
  16. Why Was K.C. Irving's Newspaper Ownership Not a Crime?Shane Parrish says a monopoly was not automatically a crime. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled the government had to prove that K.C.
  17. How Many Trees Did K.C. Irving Plant?Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving's spruce program passed one billion trees on land experts said would not grow them. In 1957, 58-year-old K.C.

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