Episode 33: Dave Johnston
1 hour 12 mins
Dave Johnston is the Founder and CEO of Johnston Group Inc, one of Canada's Leading Group Insurance Administrators. He also co-founded Payworks Inc, a leading expert in the field of total workforce management solutions, providing cloud-based Payroll, HR, Employee Time and Absence Management to businesses across Canada. Both businesses are platinum members of Canada’s Best Managed Companies.
Dave tells us that the Johnston Group story didn’t start with a lot of fanfare. It began with a question:
“How do people want to be taken care of at work?”
He goes on to say, “This may seem like an obvious question for a benefits provider to ask, but it wasn’t always the case. It wasn’t until the 80s that some industries started making a shift. They no longer expected the customer to conform to their offering and instead began building their business around what was best for their customers. It was a simple philosophy, yet it didn’t take hold in employee benefits. For something as personal as benefits, the industry remained awfully impersonal. We decided to change that.”
In this conversation, we discuss entrepreneurship, leadership, the hard thing about hard things in business, and the role business can play in building better communities. This bio doesn’t tell you, but in this episode, you hear that in addition to being a successful business person, Dave is also incredibly active in the community through non-profit work. He is a pretty relatable human when you get to talking to him. As the Founder and CEO of Johnston Group, he’s built a very successful National Business, and it’s fun and inspirational to hear about the entrepreneurial journey that it took to get to this point. Please enjoy our conversation with Dave Johnston.
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