John Bragg
44 statements across 3 episodes · 21 bullish · 3 bearish · 2 people on the record · first statement Oct 1, 2024 by John Bragg · said 19 times in 5 episodes since 2025 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: John Bragg's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Shane Parrish (19)
tap a year for its mentions
2025 19 mentions in 5 episodes 4 per episode
- How to Think Like a World-Class Marketer | Rory Sutherland
- How to Win by Being Right and Contrarian: Lessons from Zappos to DoorDash
- Jimmy Pattison: Building a $16B Empire Without Connections, Capital, or Credentials [Outliers]
- Les Schwab: Why Real Ownership Outperforms Experience, Capital, and Credentials [Outliers]
- Estée Lauder: A Success Story
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
Everything said about John Bragg, oldest first
Oct 1, 2024 negative
John Bragg: Environmental rules forced $75k bridge for dry stream
“When you, this particular case, it was a thousand acre woodlot, and we were building roads through it to do silviculture work, great for the future, and I went to see where they put a bridge in, and it wasn't a bridge, but it was half bridge and half rock. It …”
Oct 1, 2024
Bragg: Family investment portfolio exceeds three billion dollars
“I read where so-and-so's running two billion dollars and three billion, and we're doing more than that, and so we've got a big portfolio that's done very well for us, so we try to streamline it and keep it simple and let the operators run the business, and the…”
Oct 1, 2024 positive
Bragg: Private firms can absorb premium acquisition prices via longer payback horizons
“If you paid a little too much and you're a private company, You just have to live a little longer to make it work. My brother used to say about buying a woodlot, well, maybe we're paying too much, but if we live long enough, it'll be a good deal. So this is th…”
Oct 1, 2024 negative
Bragg refuses to grant company equity to non-family employees
“Family companies are great to work for, and we're going to pay you well, and you're going to feel very comfortable here, but there's no equity available, and too complicated with the finance structures if you start giving it away, and then if they want out, an…”
Oct 1, 2024
Oct 1, 2024 positive
Bragg: Eastlink won cable acquisitions by paying top price without overnegotiating
“There's six buyers, but you always get them, and it was basically, we became easy to deal with, and we always lived by our word, and we always paid top price, and so we just kept picking them off one at a time, And made it easy and didn't over, over negotiate.”
Oct 1, 2024 positive
Bragg: Food business success depends entirely on cost control over revenue
“So I would say, for instance, in the food business, all about cost, because you don't know what the revenue is going to be, because we don't know whether we're going to have a frost or whether the currency is going to change or whether somebody else got a big …”
Oct 1, 2024 positive
Oct 1, 2024 positive
Oct 1, 2024 neutral
Oct 1, 2024
Bragg: Eastlink originally bused taped US TV broadcasts across the border
“We built a tower down at Mount Shamcook on the U.S. Border, and we received the Bangor channels there, taped them, put them on the bus, and of course Halifax got them first. By the time we got them in Amherst, they were two weeks old”
Oct 1, 2024 positive
Oct 1, 2024 neutral
Bragg: Capital allocation is the single biggest factor in cable telecommunications
“And I would say in cable, you know, you always have to look at costs, but capital is probably the biggest thing in the cable business, because you can make big mistakes, and, you know, spending, let's say a billion dollars to get into programming, and that jus…”
Oct 1, 2024
Oct 1, 2024
Bragg: Taking Amtelecom Private Removed $3M–$4M in Overhead
“Yeah, and telecom, and southern Ontario, we got some real efficiencies by taking it private, and it, you know, became a branch plant, as compared with a separate head office, separate accounting, separate, I don't know how much, it wasn't that big a company, b…”
Oct 1, 2024
Oct 1, 2024 positive
Oct 1, 2024 negative
Oct 1, 2024 positive
Bragg: Borrowed heavily at 1-2% interest rates to buy stocks
“We've always had a modest portfolio, but when interest rates were down to where we could borrow money for one or two percent, We said, look, this is an opportunity. We should get at this, and so we did. Borrowed lots of money to buy good stocks, and it's been …”
Oct 1, 2024 positive
Oct 1, 2024
Bragg: Operating a business and investing in stocks reinforce each other
“Buffett would say that, that if you're a businessman and investing in your business, you're probably a better stock picker, because you use the same principles. But if you're an investor, it will help you in your business, because you're using the same princip…”
Oct 1, 2024
Oct 1, 2024
John Bragg: Kept family name off businesses to shield his grandchildren
“I was determined that from a family point of view, and if my grand, grandson or granddaughter want to have a Just a normal job in the business or outside of the business. They don't need the burdens of the name being everywhere. So I was quite determined to ke…”
Dec 24, 2024 neutral
Aug 26, 2025
Aug 26, 2025
Aug 26, 2025 positive
Aug 26, 2025 neutral
Aug 26, 2025 positive
Aug 26, 2025 positive
Aug 26, 2025 positive
Parrish: Acquirers should overpay for scarce assets to signal future sellers
“Every acquisition is really two acquisitions. It's the company you're buying today and the companies that might sell tomorrow. When opportunities are scarce, pay what it takes to get the asset you want. The people who nickel and dime their way out a great deal…”
Aug 26, 2025 positive
Aug 26, 2025 positive
Aug 26, 2025 positive
Aug 26, 2025 positive
Aug 26, 2025
Aug 26, 2025 positive
Aug 26, 2025 positive
Aug 26, 2025
Aug 26, 2025 positive
Parrish: John Bragg openly shares all funded blueberry research with competitors
“40 years ago, Bragg started funding research at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, and he never stopped. They study everything from pollination to fungal diseases to vegetation management and berry composition. But here's the kicker that'll surprise you. Th…”
Aug 26, 2025 positive
Parrish: Over 700 Bragg harvesters were sold unpatented across the blueberry industry
“They've sold over 700 of these harvesters now, about a hundred to Oxford, and the rest to competitors and other growers. But here's what separates John Bragg from ordinary businessmen. He didn't patent this invention.”
Aug 26, 2025 neutral
Aug 26, 2025