Dan Aykroyd doesn't make a distinction between his roles as a businessman and an entertainer. To the veteran comedian, actor and writer, there truly is no business like show business.
Mr. Aykroyd knows both ends of the entertainment industry very well. His career has spanned more than two decades and it has been the launching pad for many of his varied business ventures.
Like a good professional, the Ottawa native has learned that whether in business or on stage, nothing beats good research, a dress rehearsal and solid performance.
Mr. Aykroyd is an entrepreneur of diverse pursuits. He owns a piece of the House of Blues Entertainment, Inc. which operates live music venues and concert promotion across North America, as well as a Chicago hotel. Recently Mr. Aykroyd obtained the Canadian distribution rights to Patron Tequila through his company Alloy Brands.
Last week, he made a significant investment in Ontario winemakers Niagara Cellars Inc. (NCI), the holding company that owns four of Ontario's top wineries including Lakeview Estates, Birchwood Estates, Thomas & Vaughan and EastDell Estates, as well as Diamond Estates Wines & Spirits.
"Make no mistake about it. I've been in business basically since I was 21 years old. It's called show business," he tells globeandmail.com. "Being an entertainer and a performer is a business. I was paid as an actor for Second City, I went on to write and create for Saturday Night Live. then I went into the recording business, and I still today receive a royalty for the records I made with the Blues Brothers.
"I went on to write movies and perform in films, and I have a stake in those films today. I am an owner in a revenue franchise that will hopefully never end for as long as the life of myself, my children and my grandchildren. Show business is a business."
One of the key business lessons learned by Mr. Aykroyd came from one of his forays into television. The former Saturday Night Live cast member signed on to star in a television sitcom in 1997 called Soul Man. According to the comedian, he did not know what he was getting into.
"In the first minute, of the first hour, of the first rehearsal, before we even moved the show to New York City, and I had a whole year ahead of me to do it, I realized that I made the biggest mistake of my career and the biggest mistake of my life," he says.
A business venture may look attractive financially, but you have to search out the negatives and weigh them against possible benefits," he says. "Assess whether you want to deal those negatives to gain the benefit from the positives."
Mr. Aykroyd was able to get out of the situation comedy after one year, and he took away a valuable lesson from the experience.
"You have to do a test ride," Mr. Aykroyd said. "Before entering any venture or deal, you have to conduct a laboratory experiment on it first.
"You have to sample the people you are going to be working with. Look at it from all kinds of reflective and oblique angles. Turn the thing over maybe a little more than you may look at it on the surface."
Throughout Mr. Aykroyd's career, which has included prominent roles in blockbuster comedies like The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters to name two of his more than 70 television and movie titles to his credit, he has taken a serious interest in the financial matters related to his career.
"In all of the deals we ever made, whether it was recording contracts or films, I was intimately involved in the structure of the deal and defining my own value to the project," explained Mr. Aykroyd, who credits Fred Spector, his current agent, along with former Hollywood heavyweights Michael Ovitz and Bernie Brillstein as major business influences in his life.
"I got to work with amazing negotiators on both sides and was involved in creative discussions in all the movies at the studio executive levels," he adds.
Today, Mr. Aykroyd is as likely to be discussing his burgeoning investment portfolio as he is the next film project. As the man said: "Show business is a business."
Following is a new feature on globeandmail.com/small business called My Best Mistake where we ask Canadian business leaders and well-known entrepreneurs to discuss a seminal moment or action that helped form who they are today"
My Best Mistake
1. What do you consider your biggest career mistake or miscalculation?
My biggest mistake was entering the sitcom world. I was offered a show by ABC called Soul Man. In the first minute, of the first hour, of the first rehearsal, before we even moved the show to New York City, and I had a whole year ahead of me to do it, I realized that I made the biggest mistake of my career and the biggest mistake of my life.
And then I had to go and perform and do the show for one year absolutely hating every minute of it. I realized that it was something that I really didn't want to do at that stage in life. But I had to go through with my commitments. The show became a massive hit, we had ratings up in the 14s. It was a huge, huge hit and I had to very carefully extricate myself from it.
[The network]let me out of it. I had to swallow hard and get though the whole year, and eat up the sitcom environment, which I really can't stand.
2. What did you learn from it?
I learned that before entering any venture or deal, you have to conduct a laboratory experiment on it first. You have to sample the people you are going to be working with. Look at it from all kinds of reflective and oblique angles. Turn the thing over maybe a little more than you may look at it on the surface. It could be attractive financially but then there are other things in it that have negatives. Look for the negatives and assess whether you want to deal those negatives to gain the benefit from the positives.
In my case, I should have just shot a pilot [episode] and if I just shot the pilot, for instance, I would have realized I didn't want to do this. But no, I went in and bit off 13 of them.
You have to do a test ride.
3. In what ways did it make you more successful?
In the tequila business I am in now, bringing Patron Tequila into the [Canada] I sampled the product, saw the impact that it had in the House of Blues down in the United States. I saw how a popular brand it was every where I went. I saw the smiles it produced on people's faces when you mentioned it by name.
We came up to Canada with it. Our first stage of marketing was just to make people aware that it was in the country. Canadians had known about it, had been drinking it in the States and in other places, but they didn't know they could get it here.
I sampled them back a product that will basically sell itself.
I had already conducted the lab, I already seen how it was moving in the House of Blues, I already saw its reorder status. It was a product that people loved. I got behind it, I really explored it through the end of the investment.
Five Year Plan
In five years, I will like to be best known for . . .
. . . raising three spectacular young women who have a compassion for the fellow man, and are driven in the motivation to make the world better.