Self-made millionaire Mandy Rennehan cold-called for first job

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It can be a unique path for female founders and women leaders in Canada’s private businesses.

Mandy Rennehan, founder and CEO of the Burlington, Ont.-based retail construction and maintenance company Freshco Retail Maintenance Inc. (not the grocery store, she notes), is a self-made multimillionaire, philanthropist, award-winning entrepreneur, host of HGTV’s Trading Up with Mandy Rennehan and trade-industry ambassador.

Commonly referred to as “Bear,” she founded the company at the age of 19.

Born and raised in Yarmouth, N.S., she came from little money and her parents struggled to feed her and her three brothers. To help her father, a lobster fisherman, 10-year-old Bear foraged for bait and sold it to the local fishing community for profit.

Here, Bear discusses being a child entrepreneur (known as the “local fish broker” by the time she was 10), leaving home to start her own business, and why teaching people skilled trades is the greatest form of philanthropy.

You’re known for being very straightforward, but it can’t always have been easy.

“I have almost become okay with just being me. I’m certainly far from feminine, but I am me. I must have been created like this to help more women, which I do all the time, and so I’ve found a peace there.

What we’re dealing with is that people don’t do well with what is not normal. It very much is around the entitlement of feeling in control.

The second part of it is the insecurity coming from men. And then [there is the related type of woman] called ‘Karen’ … [who has] the inability… to see their self-worth [and] they became a worse version than a male.

This generation is so afraid. You know, everybody’s so afraid to be who they want to be. All of the people out there that that are ‘normal’ are so afraid that somebody else was not born like them.

Tell us about your early days in Nova Scotia.

“On the East Coast, there’s a simpleness there and a love there. There’s a beautiful heart … and that doesn’t mean that ignorance doesn’t exist, because it absolutely does.

I would say that from a very young age, I watched my mom and dad fight over money. They didn’t have a life. Everything was about money. It was a hard time. There were four of us – three boys and then there was me.

Pop used to say I was the son he never had because I was the one who was going to follow him around, always wanted to go fishing. I really did come out wired differently in every sense of the word.”

What started you on your business journey?

“It never dawned on me once that I couldn’t love whoever I wanted. So much so that one day I looked at my boyfriend, and I said, ‘If this is it, I’m done.’ For me, all I wanted was to make my parents’ lives easier, and I just wanted to find a love that wasn’t Jimmy.

I left home with a dirty hockey bag and very little money. When you’re gay on top of it and it’s 1994, I mean, what a résumé.

I didn’t have time to go to school. I didn’t have the money to go to school. But I love building and I didn’t know why. And so I would call these guys and they would hang up on me. I’d be like, ‘Hey, I’m Mandy Rennehan, and I would love to work for you for free to gain experience.’ They would hang up the phones. They thought I was crazy.

I would call back and I would say, ‘Hey, you’re really going to like me.’ And so when I presented them with my intent, and that I was very much respectful of what they did … I very much played the reality of I’m not going to judge you because I don’t care. So you’re not going to judge me either.

“My parents were so worried about trying to pay their bills. They never knew where I was. They never asked – they didn’t even know that I had left home until three weeks after I left. My mom called and said, ‘Hi there. Where are you?’ I said, ‘Ma, I’m gone,’ … to find love and to find money.

To help my parents was my North Star and it motivated me.”

How did you learn the skills of running a business?

“Financially, what happened was just that I was one of those young people who would go to the bank and they would say, ‘Hey, do you have collateral?’ and I would say, … ‘Of course I don’t have collateral.’

I almost advised myself, because I learned at a very young age that I needed collateral. And that’s why I lied to the bank when I was 20 and told them I needed equipment. I really didn’t. I bought that on my own. I put my first down payment on a house at 20 in Halifax, and I knew I needed to start growing those things called collaterals from a very young age.

“My first accountant taught me about interest rates, and why I should keep those things down. So I was very much self-taught in finance, too, because I always really felt that people didn’t understand what I was asking. Because I was like, everybody says that the banks are there for entrepreneurs, but they’re not.”

What advice do you have for young people who want to start a business?

“Young people come up to me every day and say, ‘I want to go out on my own.’ I’m like, ‘Do you have any money?’ It’s useless unless you have clients, unless you add something that shows that you already have an existing balance sheet. Nobody is going to even look at you because we are so risk adverse in this country, that you really have to know the business behind your own collateral before you get into business.

I worked my paws here to the bone. I didn’t have employees for years, because I knew the banks would just not give me the money if I didn’t have any money. I knew I wanted to be a millionaire by the time I was 30.”

How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect your business?

“This pandemic literally ripped the backbones out of entrepreneurs and pounded them over the head. When you look at my 20 years of being in business and being self-financed – we’re a multimillion-dollar company in North America – we’ve [have not] had debt, not for the last 15 years. And now we do.

And then there’s high interest rates, and they talk about a recession. It’s like this nightmare just keeps going on and on and on for all of us.

And so then … you go to the banks … and I go, ‘So what’s the problem here? I have Fortune 500 clients. I have no issues. We have a perfect credit rating. What is the issue?’

“The banks are not funding all of the little people. They won’t lend to any of my vendors, and there’s a lot of them. So I have to float them and I have to float me.”

How would you describe your philanthropic work?

“I didn’t even know what the hell philanthropy meant. I’ve been doing philanthropy since I was 8 years old, selling bait to the other fishermen to help my parents out, right? In my mind, it was, ‘If I do this, they’ll have what they need.’

There’s a lot of hierarchy around the word philanthropy. For me, I very much looked at my people that work with me and give me their life to help, you know, push this company we call Freshco-not-the-grocery-store forward. When we invest in them, invest in people, they invest in our clients. There’s philanthropy going on everywhere.”

What ways do you choose to give back?

“One of the things that we do at Freshco is we want to empower our people to feel like they’re giving back. One of the things that I recognize is that we wanted to give to charities or be part of charities that actually were an engine that were going to go somewhere.

I’ve been behind Jill of All Trades [skilled trades program for girls] for close to 10 years. You’re seeing girls aged 9 to 12 show up, they drive heavy equipment, they try bricklaying, and they’re just like, ‘I’m allowed to do this?’ Women and minorities in the trade industry as a whole is really where we focus on giving our money.”

How would you say the skilled trades are viewed?

“My pop was a lobster fisherman for 40 years. He was a legend down home. He says to me one day, ‘You know, dear, until you became you, nobody even knew my name except for the guys in the industry. Now, they hold the door open for me, and they call me Mandy’s dad and Mr. Rennehan. At least somebody’s giving me some respect at some point in my life.’

Entrepreneurship and the trade industry goes hand in hand, 100 per cent. We try to give people a lot of skills. We manage thousands of little trade companies at Freshco, and we teach them about money.

What I’m trying to do is show people that for all intents and purposes, I should have never been a person that had the success that I did. I had personality, and I had ambition. From that I became very smart with the voids that were around me because I wanted to give back to others. I want to give back to these communities.”

How do promote the trades, especially for people who don’t normally choose them as a career?

“I’m a big proponent of the 4-H Club, and of Women in Skilled Trades, and I’m the brand ambassador for North America for Jill of All Trades. And then there’s the many mentorships. I mean, I could go on and on. Yeah. Those are what we really hover around because we believe in the fundamentals of the next generation.

But, also … I’ll go out and talk to all the trade schools and there are women in their 50s who just graduated with their certificate in plumbing. They’ve dumped their husband, their kids are grown, they’re going into fifth gear, and I’m just like, ‘Yeah, Baby!’”

How does your company recruit, retain and support employees?

“At Frescho, we don’t complicate things. There’s no tokenism with me or the company. I don’t care what you’re packing or what you’re not. We’ve always believed in talent.

I build people every day. That’s our biggest philanthropy every day. We build people. And we build people that otherwise nobody ever wanted. Nobody gave me anything. My philanthropy is teaching. You already have this within you, you just have to engage with it, and you can.”

Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

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