In January of 1991, Marc Tellier was going to drive to Whistler, B.C., from his hometown of Ottawa.

He never made it.

Tellier was planning to head west to pursue one of his favourite pastimes - skiing - after he graduated at Christmas.

But a job offer with Bell Canada changed his plans, and before he knew it, the former provincial-level downhill skier was swooshing up a corporate mountain to become vice-president with Bell Globemedia by age 29.

Peter McCabe, Business Edge
Marc Tellier never had a chance to pursue his skiing dreams in B.C., but the Yellow Pages CEO has new corporate mountains to conquer.

After participating in some of the largest mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in Canadian history, Tellier is now in the driver's seat as president and CEO of Yellow Pages Income Trust, the parent company of the Yellow Pages Group.

Last year, Yellow Pages Income Trust recorded a profit of $431.93 million, just over four times 2004 net earnings of $106.9 million.

Tellier, the son of a famous federal civil servant, credits much of his success to lessons learned around the family dinner table - where some of the country's most prominent politicians occasionally dined.

1. What was it like growing up in Ottawa?

"Ottawa was a fun town. My father (Paul Tellier) was essentially a career civil servant until '92. His last seven years or so in the civil service was as clerk of the Privy Council. Prior to that, he was deputy minister of energy, mines and resources, and deputy minister of Indian affairs, and he had various civil service functions before that. So I really grew up in an environment that was very focused on a lot of public policy-type discussions. My parents very much instilled in my sister and I - through dinner conversations, as well as people who would come to the house either for a steak or spaghetti dinner at the kitchen table - (the importance) of just exchanging ideas and articulating, and so on. I would characterize my relationship with my parents as being excellent and very close."

2. What do you remember about some of those meals?

"We would typically wait for my dad to come home to have dinner. He used to tease us quite often and ask, 'How was your day today? What did you do today?' A lot of kids will tend to answer, 'Not much.' (But) he used to always say, 'Look, the day you can describe verbally the shape of a violin box without using your hands is the day you won't have to answer the question.' It was really just a way of engaging us into conversation. He would have fun with us. I find myself doing the same with my kids today. When you actually think about it, it's not that easy to do - to describe the shape of a violin box without using your hands!" 3. You met former Liberal finance minister Marc Lalonde. What was he like?

"He was a very human, down to earth, very approachable guy. I can remember coming back from football practice. He'd pretend to tackle me at the kitchen table and then come and chat in the garage and stuff while I'd be taking my pads off (and ask): 'How was practice?' These people obviously create a different perspective when you're 10, 12 years old, when these people are so approachable and show interest in your activities and stuff."

4. What do you remember about meeting Pierre Trudeau?

"He was clearly a remarkable Canadian. I met him as a child.

Marc Tellier

What I remember most from him is his eyes. He was a very intense individual. But beyond that, I can't pretend to say that I really knew him. I met him a couple times, but that was the extent of it. Shaking hands. There was really not much more than that. He had never been in the house."

5. You worked up in the Arctic. What was that like?

"That was actually my first summer job. The summer when I turned 16, I worked on a cleanup crew up in the Canadian Arctic, typically where a company had done some seismic drilling. Back then, it was basically restoring the environment to its natural state. They would either drop us in by helicopter or the Twin Otter (plane) and we'd spend four or five days on a site where they had done some seismic drilling and pick everything up. Obviously, there are no trees there, so two-by-fours aren't natural to the environment. That was interesting. I went to Melville Island and went up to Resolute (Bay.) Actually, I went much further north than that - almost, not quite, up to Point Zero. We spent the better part of the summer going from site to site. We were two crews, but not working together. So it was basically six people, a foreman and a cook and a couple of dogs. The dogs were there to watch out for polar bears. You could call them the early-warning devices. Typically, (we slept) in tent-trailers that they had flown in before when they had done some seismic drilling."

6. What did that experience do for you in terms of your development?

"The recognition that hard work is important. Hard-work ethics. Good values. Clearly, the perspective of discovering my country. The Arctic was my first job, so I really got to know my country. It also encouraged me to stay in school and pursue what I wanted. The next few summers after that were in Alberta. The summer after that was in Atlantic Canada. My last summer job (before graduating from university) was with Bell Canada and I started working full-time in 1990. In September, I was going back to school and graduating at Christmas. I was going to drive out to Whistler when I graduated. A buddy of mine went and I never made it. They gave me contract work a couple days a week while I was in school and then, once I graduated, they hired me full-time."

7. What were some of the lessons you learned early in your career?

"I was fortunate throughout my career in working with a lot of business personalities ... (Former BCE Inc. chairman and CEO) Jean Monty used to have an expression that I've taken from him: It's two per cent strategy and 98 per cent execution. Often, he would kid: 'Well, the two per cent's over. Let's focus on the execution.' Clearly, you've got to plan. You need to have a set objective and figure out where you're going. But, too often, organizations get caught up in trying to find the best plan and trying to find the best direction ... and forget that the difference really happens on how you execute the idea. So it's really about the day-to-day block and tackling, quite frankly."

8. What were some of the takeovers you participated in during your time at Bell?

"I worked on a joint venture bringing Sympatico with Lycos, which was a large web portal designer in the U.S., (and) worked on the Bell Globemedia transaction and then I was always in on a number of small investments. At the time, Bell was investing in a number of small technology companies, web developers and so on. I joined directories in the third quarter of '01. We were sold a little more than a year after I had been there. So in my five and a half years in the job, I had been in the job about a year while we were still under BCE ownership and four and a half years as a separate company. We were a private company for a while and (U.S-based Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts) and Ontario Teachers Pension Fund bought us. Then we took the company public in September of '03."

9. How did that takeover by KKR and Teachers come about?

"That was obviously a lot of fun. Clearly in a large corporate environment, when you're a smallish subsidiary, it typically doesn't get the attention it deserves, and that translates into anything from the quality of people you can attract to being able to access capital to improve our systems. Ninety per cent of our customers are small and medium enterprises, which I would argue are the cornerstone of the Canadian economy.

"Back in my first year when I was there, Bell was trying to hand its wireless access and high-speed Internet access to our sales force for those types of needs. That didn't make a lot of sense, for the simple reason that we're in the media business. It's all about bringing you new prospective buyers. So it was quite invigorating to be able to focus 100 per cent on directories. It was a good-performing business but, clearly, it wasn't upper quartile. Over the last four years, we've really turned it into one of the fastest-growing, most profitable directories of the world."

10. What was the value of that takeover?

"The total enterprise value was $3 billion, which would compare to about $10 billion today."

11. What was it like trying to deal with the merger, considering its financial size?

"It was exciting. One of the things I had to do was rebuild the team. I was also very conscious that, in the vast majority of these buyouts, the CEO doesn't survive. Here I am leaving BCE - where I spent 11, 12 years of my career, starting from scratch. But that's what made it exciting. In the early days, I really focused my energy into building out the rest of the executive team. I put a lot of energy into that, and had support from both KKR and Teachers. A lot of people tend to talk about strategy, but the day-to-day blocking and tackling is looking at how you retire customer contracts, what your quality/ quality-assurance process is in your ad-production department and so on. We were spending a lot of energy just making sure that we could offer superior value to both our users and advertisers."

12. What was your vision for growing the company?

"I knew that online was going to be an important growth lever. I had a contrarian view that online wasn't going to be a substitute, but it was actually going to be a complement to the print business. Recent history has shown us that assumption is correct. Recognizing this business had not been challenged and had not been focused, one of the first things we did was making sure that our mission and aspirations were well defined. Clearly communicating what our operating strategy and priorities were. Then it was all about measuring and inspecting. One of the things we did in the first couple months was overhaul all of our operational reporting, sales reporting and other values elements to manage the business. We wanted to make sure that we had a very clear line of sight into what was going on. For example, in the first couple of months, I was able to look into results in a given market, double-click on a market and see how a particular sales director was doing and see how one of his or her sales managers was doing, double-click again and go right down to the rep level."

13. You mentioned your mission and values. What are they?

"It's about connecting buyers and sellers. There are six values. The top of the pyramid is really customer focus. In order to support that, the second row on the pyramid, if you will, is compete to win and teamwork. The foundation, the base of the pyramid, is passion, respect and open, honest and timely communications. The directory business in Canada will be 100 years (old) next year. We were characterizing it as a 100-year-old startup. It started with a philosophy that, if there's anything that we're doing that we don't like, we're the only ones to blame - because the buck stops here."

14. What did you set as your priorities?

"It's really about being more customer-centric. It's about really putting more emphasis on the advertiser. The second element is about putting more emphasis on the user. The third element was really about competing to win and increasing the level of competitive intensity and competitive response, and bringing it to a whole other level. The fourth element was really one that was focused on expansion and growth. Those are our four pillars."

15. You've been involved in a fair number of mergers and acquisitions. What would you say are the keys to making them work?

"I would summarize (the answer) in a phrase. Preparation meets opportunity. You can't be over-prepared and you can't do enough work up front. Normally, a couple of weeks before a transaction closes, we have an incredibly detailed, very focused, assigned (100-day plan.) There is an owner for each one of the elements of what we're going to focus on in the first 100 days.

"We tend to be incredibly direct. One of the unfortunate things from a lot of M&A activities is, sometimes you need to address duplicate activities. But we've always done that in an open, respectful way. This allows us to meet the remaining employees and say, 'Look, this is it. This is all about growth. It's all about the future. It's all about the customer. And, it's all about delivering value together.' " 16. How do you promote yourselves?

"First and foremost, we have over 400,000 advertisers nationally. We have one of the largest sales forces focused on small and medium enterprise. Our sales force is principally face-to-face. We spend a lot of time talking to customers directly, which is clearly the best way to market your products or services and the value you have to offer. We support that - clearly - with a market-leading brand ... and then we support our efforts in the marketplace, depending on what our strategy is. We're big users of out-of-home billboards. We're currently big users of radio advertising. We use the Internet a lot as an advertising vehicle. But our focus principally is about retention and usage of our products, whether they be print or online. How do we get people to use them? By having a better product. By having more content. By having great distribution. Getting the product out there, whether it be virtually or physically, and then we support it with promotion. The cornerstone of our promotion is our brand. That said, we do support it with more traditional media."

17. How long do you expect this practice of takeovers and mergers to continue?

"I often say I'm not a hammer looking for a nail. If we were deal junkies, we would have become investment bankers. The reality is, what excites us is to integrate and operate businesses. That's what we do. To the extent that there's an opportunity to grow our business, and it makes strategic sense and it's under the right price and under the right conditions, clearly, we'll consider it. What excites us is to integrate and operate and create value."

18. Do you ever see a point where acquiring newspapers may help you?

"Not really. If you exclude Thomson, which is one of the biggest Canadian success stories we have, we would be, by far, the largest media company. Significantly larger than CanWest and CTV and so on. It's not that there's anything wrong with those businesses, but we like the businesses that we're in. Clearly, we benefit from the power of the combination of both the traditional ... and the online."

19. At the same time as you're doing the M&As, could you be vulnerable to a takeover by another company?

"It's not something we worry about. Generally speaking, the capital markets have rewarded our efforts. I'm not about to get into a discussion on valuation. But that said, I think the capital markets have rewarded us for what we've done operationally. At the end of the day, our job is to create value. We're not looking, by any stretch of the imagination, to go out and sell the company. We're here to create shareholder value. We'll do what we do best and we'll focus on what we can control."

20. What do you think you would be doing if you weren't with Yellow Pages?

"I've always had a lot of admiration for people who've had multiple careers. If I wasn't with directories, I would probably give serious consideration to either being involved with the academic community or being involved with the public service. I've always been fascinated by people that have crossed from the private sector to those sectors and then crossed back later. But ... at the ripe age of 38, I'm not likely going to retire anytime soon."

Marc Tellier

* Title: President/CEO, Yellow Pages Income Fund, CEO of Trader Corp.

* Born/raised/age: Ottawa/38.

* Education: Economics degree from University of Ottawa.

* Family: Wife Renée, Eric, 10, Vivianne, 7, Sophie, 5.

* Career: After graduating from the University of Ottawa with an economics degree, Tellier joined Bell Canada as an analyst. He served in customer relations, investor relations and advisory posts before becoming president and chief executive officer of Sympatico-Lycos, which launched Canada's first telco-based high-speed Internet service, and vice-president for Bell Canada. Following the merger of Bell Globe Media, Tellier became president and CEO of Bell ActiMedia, which then published Yellow Pages. About a year later, Bell ActiMedia was acquired by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan and a U.S. partner. Tellier converted Yellow Pages into an income trust, co-ordinating the largest income trust IPO in Canadian history, in 2003. Two years later, he spearheaded the $2.55B acquisition of Advertising Directory Solutions Holdings Inc. in Western Canada. In 2006, he co-ordinated the acquisitions of Trader Media Corp. in Ontario and Classified Media (Canada) Holdings Inc. across the country.

* Moonlighting: Tellier sits on the boards of the National Bank of Canada, Yellow Pages Association, Ste-Justine Hospital Foundation and Lower Canada College. He is a member of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives.

* Awards: Tellier has won several awards. In 2000, he was named one of Canada's Top 40 under 40.

* Passions: Skiing, water-skiing, other sports, travel.

Yellow Pages Income Fund

* Brass: Marc Tellier, president and CEO, Christian M. Paupe, executive VP and CFO, Josée Dykun, VP human resources.

* Profile: Yellow Pages Income Fund is the indirect majority (97 per cent) owner of Yellow Pages Group and Trader Corp. Yellow Pages Group is Canada's largest telephone directories publisher, publishing more than 340 Yellow Pages and residential directories per year. The firm owns and operates online directories YellowPages.ca, Canada411.ca, which are Canadawide, and CanadaPlus.ca, a network of seven local city sites. Trader Corp. publishes print and online vertical media with approximately 200 publications and 20 websites, covering automotive, real estate, general merchandise and employment. Trader's main brands include Auto Trader, Auto Hebdo, the Bargain Finder, Buy&Sell, Renters News and Home Renters' Guide.

* Stats: Yellow Pages Group employs 2,100 people while Trader Corp. has 1,800 employees. The group's companies generated $1.38 billion in revenues last year and produced a profit of $431.9 million or 85 cents per share. Approximately 30 million Yellow Pages phonebooks are distributed per year.

* Recent Stock Price (Exchange): $13.60 (52-week range, $11.55-$16.75).

* Website: www.ypg.com

* HQ: 16 Place du Commerce, Ile des Soeurs, Verdun, Que., H3E 2A5

* Phone: (514) 934-2611

(Monte Stewart can be reached at monte@businessedge.ca)