This transcript is provided for convenience and is based on the audio recording of the video. While efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, minor errors are possible.
Luke: Hi, I’m Luke Hansen-MacDonald and welcome back to Beyond the Family Business, a podcast made in collaboration with Canadian Family Offices where we discuss the challenges of operating a family enterprise. This episode is brought to you by BMO Private Wealth. As a client myself, I’ve seen personally how they can help families like mine navigate the future.
So, my guest today is myself. Now, this might seem a bit odd, but I’ve had a lot of requests for me to talk a bit more about my own journey and my own family business. I decided to try something new. I’m having my cousin Colin Michael, who of course knows me quite well, and is in a similar role to me in his own family. He’s agreed to come in and interview me. We talk about my family business, Clearwater Seafoods, which we have now sold. I talk about that transaction, my own journey outside and inside the seafood business and I share some of my own challenges and failures and ultimately what excites me about the future of my own family business. All right, let’s jump into it.
Colin Michael: Who are you? Where are you from? And what do you do?
Luke: Yeah. No, before I answer that, I’m just going to say it’s a little unnerving. I’ve sort of handed the keys over to somebody else and so hopefully you don’t drive us into the woods.
Colin Michael: I will respect your gardens. I’ve done lots of research.
Luke: Oh yeah, exactly. So, I’m Luke Hansen-MacDonald. Obviously, I’m the host of this podcast, but I grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, as well as a small village called Chester. And my day-to-day job is president of my family office. I’m second generation, and it is called HanMac Capital. So, first three letters of my two last names and Capital.
Colin Michael: Very good. And you’re dad to Hailey and Bella.
Luke: Ah, good point.
Colin Michael: Very important job.
Luke: I’m a terrible father apparently. Yes
Colin Michael: So you know, I think you’ve talked about it and I think a lot of a lot of your audience would know about your family business, but can you give us your take on the story of your family business and what do you think made Clearwater become what it was?
Luke: Yeah. I thought a lot about this because it’s funny, you grow up hearing the story so many times and ultimately it was our family business, where you guys owned a large part of it as well. And so, I tried to distill it down to what I believe to be true. And what I would say is, you know, basically, you know, my dad was from a relatively poor family in Fairview. He started working as a plumber’s apprentice when he was 11 or 12-years-old. And so, because of that experience, he learned a lot about plumbing. And fast forward, you know, some period of time later, and when he was in his 20s, his brother-in-law, John Risley, had an idea to start a lobster retail business and needed a plumber to basically connect all of the piping for the holding tanks. And his brother-in-law knew how to do that. And so, my dad was supposed to just sort of help him, ended up sticking around because there was nobody else there to work in the business.
Colin Michael: Family first.
Luke: Yeah. Family first, etc. And so they started this retail business together and the defining moment of their success in those early days is that you know, yes they had all kinds of ups and downs and you know there’s the story about them selling out of the back of a truck and whatnot, but once they had this retail store they didn’t have enough room to put the holding tanks for lobsters in the back of the store. And traditionally at that time in the 70s, this was around 1976, most seafood places you’d go into, ask for a lobster, they’d go in the back to the holding tank because it was almost seen as like unsightly to see the seafood out in public, and somebody would get a lobster for you and bring it back out and you’d buy it.
Whereas, because they had no room, they had these holding tanks in the front of the store and suddenly it became like a family activity. You could bring your kids, and you could actually see the live lobsters and pick out which one you wanted. And that kind of became a bit of a, you know, a local craze. And suddenly they had people lining up down the street and whatnot. And so, you know, the business then from there, you know, got out of purely retail, got into fishing, managed to buy a number of different fishing licenses that were in fairly underappreciated industries. At that time, codfish was a huge industry, and then the cod fishery collapsed. And they, before that had happened, they had gotten into scallops and a couple other shellfish that really were not, you know, call it the main focus. And that was somewhat lucky timing because when the cod fishery collapsed, they had these very lucrative licenses and then were able to actually scale that business.
And you know really through just a tremendous amount of hard work and a focus on, I would say, you know automation and productivity, they took an industry which is you know for hundreds of years been basically the same in the world of fishing and forced change and embraced change to [now you have] fully automated vessels. And, you know, they were the pioneers in sustainable fishing practices and all kinds of different things. So much more than I can get into in detail here but ultimately that business went public and then we sold it just over 5 years ago after owning it for over 40 years.
Second part of your question about what made it successful aside from you know that embracing of disruptive technology and you know sustainable practices and things that maybe were not obvious to the industry. I think the core of it was the relationship between my dad and my uncle, and you know my uncle John Risley, known for taking, you know, big risks and my dad is much more of the make it work operator, you know. He was putting in the 80-hour weeks in the plant you know literally packing crates of lobsters, etc.
So that balance and that marriage between them was, you know, rocket fuel where you had a person that was always pushing the envelope, sometimes maybe a bit too far, but you know, pushing the envelope on what you could do—whether it was acquisitions or business ideas. And then the other person who could actually make it work and make it economical and [you know] build the culture to support it and whatnot.
I think at its core was that—then from there they were able to attract amazing people—that created an exponential chain reaction.
Colin Michael: Very cool. Yeah, I know work ethic was a big part of that for sure. I mean I can attest to my dad and your dad, and our grandmother too. I think that’s where they got it from.
Before you started with Clearwater, you and your brother, you kind of started your own business. What was that like? What did you learn from kind of taking that entrepreneurial leap and how did you bring that into business today?
Luke: Yeah, good question. So, basically, I, you know, out of high school sort of said, “Screw you, Dad. I’m not working in the family business.” I actually went to film school out in Vancouver and moved home and, you know, my dad got me to go work packing lobsters on the midnight shift. Did that for one winter and quickly realized…
Colin Michael: It’s the right of passage in the family, I think.
Luke: Yes, exactly. Quickly realized I didn’t want to do that and so started my own business using what I’d learned in film school. And so, me and my brother had a small company that, you know, we did many different things. We were near the beginning of when YouTube launched. So, a lot of companies were trying to figure out: how do you make corporate content for the internet? But where we really, you know, actually saw most of our success was in music videos. So, I got to work with musicians all across Canada, a bit in the US; [we] were nominated for MuchMusic Awards, were you know had our stuff shown on MTV, on MuchMusic, on Entertainment Tonight, on BNN, a whole you know, myriad of places. Never made a lot of money doing it. It was a lot of fun, but I think the biggest things I would take away from that was, first of all I really learned that I loved technology, and you know it was a very technical job because you were using cameras and editing software, etc. The other part of it was, it taught me a lot about the creative process of problem solving because it was me and my brother and you were a producer, a lighting expert, a cameraman, an editor. You know, you’re trying to find a location for a shoot, etc. And so, it made you resourceful and you know, good at problem solving on a wide mix of areas. And the last thing it taught me was that I don’t think I wanted to be, you know, beholden to musicians for the rest of my life. And while I really loved it, it was a volatile job and sometimes you wouldn’t get paid and you know, stuff like that. So, it sort of taught me that, okay, I wanted to find something that was more of a stable, you know, a foundational workplace for me for the rest of my life.
Colin Michael: Very cool. So, you kind of did your own business. I know personally, I had a very defining moment. I went away to university in the UK, and actually I worked at Clearwater then went away to university, and I had a choice to either stay in the UK and work there or come back home and work with my dad. So, what brought you back and what prompted you to join the family business? Was it a deliberate decision or was this just something you kind of the gravitational pull brought you back?
Luke: Yeah, I don’t know if it was a single event. There is one event that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, but I think what was the slowly building part of it was… you know, as I said working in the music video industry it was fairly volatile. A story I remember distinctly: I had worked on set for a full day and the person I was working for, who was paying me nothing (I was getting paid a couple hundred bucks for a film shoot) was doing cocaine while the shoot was going on. At some point he became too inebriated and I had to basically shut down the film shoot. And say, ‘everybody let’s get the *** out of here, let’s get the hell out of here.’ That was one of those moments where I was like I don’t know if I really want to keep doing this as my main job. I was already trying to figure out, okay what do I do next? I like the business side. I like the creativity of business and problem solving and whatever, but I don’t know if I want to do that in particular. I could have moved, you know, I really was going to have to move to the US to make more of a career in that world, which I don’t know if I wanted to do. I was living in Toronto at the time, and I was already away from my family. And then my dad got sick with a degenerative spine issue and had like really severe nerve pain for a number of months and was basically bedridden.
And I came home and visited him at some point. And I’d never seen him like that before where, you know, he was always this very powerful character…could sort of always power through anything. And he was, you know, completely incapacitated with nerve pain. And it just dawned on me that like there’s nobody else in the family who, you know, [on our in our branch] that was getting into the family business.
He was carrying this weight on his shoulders. And so, it really, sort of planted the seed for me of like, on one hand I’m not happy with my current career trajectory and here is this other potential, you know, path I could go down. And so, I just ended up having a discussion with my dad and was like, you know, is this something you would ever be interested in? And he never wanted to push me into the family business. [However], his reaction to it was so enthusiastic that it kind of revealed that he had always wanted, or he was very open to it, and probably really wanted it to happen, but organically.
And the rule was you know I have to start in the fleet department, and you know I can’t immediately jump to, you know, a senior executive or something like that which was for a good reason. So yeah, so that was sort of the set of decisions that that led to me joining Clearwater.
Colin Michael: Nice. Yeah, it’s interesting and I can attest to the fact that our family, the men in our family are very strong personalities and you don’t often see them in a in a moment of weakness. So, once you were in the family business, you know, what were the biggest lessons that you took away? Was there ever a moment where it kind of clicked and said, “Okay, yeah, this is this is the right place for me to be?”
Luke: Certainly, as far as the idea of this was the right place to be, I very quickly, working at Clearwater, realized that I loved being there. The culture that my dad had created, and you know the people that were there who welcomed me with open arms, it was some of the best years of my life working there.
Colin Michael: I agree.
Luke: It was, it was awesome. And I got to see a whole side of my dad’s history and our family’s history, you know, because it was so interwoven together that I just hadn’t seen growing up because I was never really pulled into the business even though I was around it. You know, it wasn’t other than when I packed lobsters when I was 18, I never spent a huge amount of time actually in the business. So, I always knew about the business of course, but I didn’t appreciate its complexity and scale, etc. So, I really loved that. So, I definitely knew early on it was the right place for me as far as my own interest. But the other part of that question I would say is, as far as me finding a spot for myself, it took a long time and in some way I’m still trying to find it is you know this fear of just being there because of nepotism versus actually adding value and you know I think that’s something I still battle with today. It’s like, I don’t want to not add value, like who would want that, right? And, you know, maybe there are some people that would just want to go around and have the facade of I’m this important person in my family business, but you know I genuinely want to contribute. And so that’s always a struggle for me, is trying to figure out there are people that can do their jobs better than me in many areas of our family business. So where do I fit in and where does my unique set of skills and position add the most value?
Colin Michael: Yeah. I know it’s a good point; it is and I’ll kind of get into that in the next couple of questions. But so, then things started to kind of shift. So, your family’s gone through a major liquidity event. How has that impacted you and kind of your family?
Luke: So, there’s two that were significant. One was in the mid-2010s, we sold a telecom business that we were a major shareholder in with my uncle called Columbus Communications. That was the first time in my adult life that suddenly all of our resources weren’t tied up in a couple private businesses and we had almost lost everything or certainly least almost lost the seafood business in 2008, which I was a little too young, even though I was in my late teens or I guess it was early 20s when that happened. I didn’t completely understand the gravity of it but as time went on I did. And so, when this liquidity event happened, it was a chance for us to say, let’s take some risk off the table.
You know, again, my dad and my uncle have different risk profiles of how they do things. And so, it gave us the opportunity to say, let’s start our own thing and start to make investments, you know, on our own that fit our own risk profile. And that was when we started HanMac Capital, which is our family office or basically our investment business. Then more recently, the day my daughter was born, my first daughter was born.
Colin Michael: And my birthday.
Luke: And your birthday, we sold Clearwater. And so, it’s now been, you know, five years. but that was a massive emotional impact. Like the first liquidity event was, you know, not a business that was my dad’s baby, so to speak. So, it was more of a financial impact. The second one was much more of a real emotional moment because my dad went from being the chairman of this company he had, you know, built 45 years earlier or whatever with his own sweat and, you know, tears and became a grandfather in the same day. So, it was a huge transition for him. And then, you know, for me, I had really grown attached to that business. I wasn’t working in it day-to-day anymore, but I knew a ton of people there, etc. So, it was it was very it was challenging to explain to those people, you know, why it was happening and what not. And obviously, I wasn’t the main decision maker. It was a whole, you know, our families together as well as John, you know, made that decision.
But it was, you know, in retrospect, the right choice for us because first of all, my dad who literally worked, you know, call it 60 to 80 hours a week for, I don’t know, 40 years, it allowed him to have some closure to start to enjoy retirement. And him and my mom, you know, since that moment have been able to actually spend, you know, much more of their time doing things that retired people should, which is awesome. It also simplified our structure because now we’re 100% separated from my uncle and it’s just our, you know, pool of investments and whatnot. So, that was also great from the point of view of sort of controlling our own destiny. So, those two things, you know, I think have really justified it to me, but I certainly miss the business. I loved that business and I am still in touch with a lot of the people there and whatnot. So, it was it was a difficult decision, but in retrospect for my family and especially my dad, it was the right choice.
Colin Michael: Nice. Yeah. I know it’s a great story and we’re still next door so I still see everybody from time to time, so I can attest it’s hard to disassociate from that connection.
One of the things I remember, we went to the meeting together. We went to a meeting and Scott McCain did a presentation and you’ve talked about in your podcast and previously about that being a bit of a light switch moment for you and your family. What was it that he shared that actually sparked your family to start HanMac?
Luke: I think it was just the idea to have a proactive approach to succession and to investment for the next generation. And you know, as an entrepreneur, I would guess that, you know, many of the decisions, my dad said this to me before, they didn’t, yes, they had strategic plans and stuff, but you sort of rolled with the punches and made things up as you went along and that worked really well, but, you know, the next generation doesn’t have the same experience. They don’t have the same, you know, whatever beliefs or perspective. It’s a different world that they’re growing up in. So, the importance of like being very transparent and being proactive with succession if you want that to be, you know, the future of your family business, you got to start it early and you got to be intentional about it. It won’t just fall into place. You know, and that I think was probably the biggest thing was the fact that, you know, Scott has been so open with his family and so clear about, you know, how the path is going to work going forward. And I’ve had, you know, Jeffrey on here, his son, and he’s very engaged. He went his own way, but ultimately came back and, you know, to the family business. But Scott’s allowed a lot of autonomy for the next generation to sort of make things on their own.
And that’s often not the case is that, you know, things are often kind of hidden from the next generation. You know, they’re kept on a short leash and, you know, they find out only in the worst possible moment, which is when they’re grieving the death of their parent, how the chips are going to land. And so, you know, I think the discussion or that presentation we went to was more about how do you do this proactively and transparently.
Colin Michael: Nice. Yeah. No, definitely, I can definitely relate. It’s important to have those conversations and be deliberate.
So now you’ve taken on a different role. So, you’re operating in HanMac Capital, a lot more focus on capital allocation and a number of different businesses in different industries. What’s one of the challenges that really stands out to you and how did working through that kind of influence your appetite for risk and how you lead?
Luke: I’ve made so many mistakes. So, there’s been many challenges. I think one that is worth talking about is, I ran one of our operating companies in Ontario, which we still own, and I’m still very actively involved in. It’s called Axyz Automation Group or AXYZ (is how you pronounce “axis” or spell Axyz). It builds automated machinery. I ran that business for almost five years and lived in Ontario, you know, moved away from our family and stuff like that. It was a big stretch for me. On top of that, a year into becoming the president, COVID happened and suddenly it was almost impossible to travel home because of, you know, the quarantine and all that. The business was obviously thrown on its head. We had just closed a transaction to buy a company in Ohio. So, suddenly we were dealing with managing this second business that, there was a lot of cultural differences as far as how people saw vaccine mandates and saw the government’s role in dealing with the pandemic. Obviously, you know, the economy was going all over the place, inflation was going nuts. So, it was a black swan event on top of me already being a young president.
And the biggest challenge with all of that was I didn’t know how to manage stress. I was not being mindful about how do I make sure I’m eating well? How do I make sure I’m doing things to process stress like exercise? And you know, not drinking too much or not eating UberEats too often or whatever it is, and I gained I don’t know probably 25 pounds. I just completely ate the stress of the situation, literally and figuratively, but just did not deal with it well. And only after stepping away from that role and moving back home and coming back to HanMac Capital, did I have time to sort of digest that and figure out a little bit more about myself of like what, this is a marathon not a sprint. How do I live a healthier life that I’m happy about? I almost had this perspective that I’ll be happy eventually and I’ll just postpone it and I just got to work really hard right now, versus you got to try to be happy every day and, not to be too philosophical about it, you got to figure out a way to live through this marathon. And so, whether that’s getting into running or eating healthier or making sure I always see my kids in the morning before I go to work and in the evening there’s a whole myriad of things I’ve done, starting this podcast even, that are cathartic and help me manage the stress of my job.
And so that is probably the biggest challenge I would say. Not to make it all about myself but, because no matter what the problem is, there’s been many and there will continue to be many problems I deal with at work…if I’m not healthy and sound of mind, well then I can’t solve these issues and then how good am I going to be at the job I have? I think that’s been the biggest learning I’ve had [to do] and I’m certainly not there yet. There’s a lot more I can do to improve. But, you know, I’m taking 12 months off drinking just to see what it’s like, and, you know, that’s been since January 1, and it’s been awesome so far. So, I’m just always trying to figure out what else can I do to make myself a better father and make myself a better business operator.
Colin Michael: Awesome. Yeah. No, it’s I think we’re very fortunate. I think health and fitness has always been important in our family. I know my dad I used to get up with them at 5 in the morning and I still get up in the morning and I know your dad’s in the gym on a regular basis. So, I think yeah, I agree. That’s great.
Luke: I think you’re bang on with that and it’s a fair point to say I grew up with my dad always exercising a lot and your dad is, you know, again with boxing or anything else has always been focused on that. Same with not drinking, etc. So, they’ve been very good role models. But perhaps it’s just the stubbornness of our genes. It’s funny how I had to run my head into the wall a bunch of times to figure that out on my own rather than like, “ok, the example is right there.” And my dad would always say things like, “you got to manage your stress.” For whatever reason, it didn’t translate to you need to make sure you exercise almost every single day because it’s going to make you that much better at dealing with stress at work. So, you’re bang on. That role model was there, but I was stubborn enough that I still had to sort of figure it out on my own.
Colin Michael: My two big things are exercise and picking up Jack after school. That’s my favourite thing that kind of everything just falls away after that.
So, kind of on a similar vein, leadership is isolating and I think there’s many books about that. But it can be even more isolating in a family business because you’re looking for guidance and support, but there’s certain role models and sometimes you don’t want to ask hard questions because you don’t want to come off as not knowing the answers.
How do you go about getting an honest perspective when you’re looking at problem solving or building strategy or doing your day-to-day role?
Luke: Yeah, that’s a great question. You’re bang on that. I think in a family business because you’re the son of the owner, people kind of bull**** you sometimes.
As well, getting your parent or your sibling or whoever it is to give you feedback, it can be challenging because either they’re unwilling to give it to you in an objective way or you can’t take it in an objective way and it’s your brother giving you feedback and, you know, oh yeah, well, you screwed up Christmas. It can become convoluted. So, I think I’m still working through this of how do I do this, but it’s something I’m intentionally trying to improve.
One of the biggest things that I’ve done was going and working in this other business, because yes there was still a bit of, okay this is the owner so I’m not going to be completely truthful with him. But any mistakes I had to wear myself, and my business partner is very honest with me about failings that I’ve had, etc. So that’s been a huge learning curve, or a separate arena that’s an arm’s length away that was good.
The other thing I would say is, I have an executive coach, which I used to kind of think was a stupid idea, and now it’s a core part of my routine is that every two months I meet with this person who now knows me quite well. I’m very open with them. They understand what I’m trying to improve on and whatnot, and they can just be an objective sounding board. And because they have no buy-in to my business there’s no backlash if they are truthful with me. I found so far has been hugely valuable, where they have done a good job at helping me figure out my shortcomings and also helping organize what I’m actually trying to achieve myself, what matters to me and my family, what matters to me and my business, etc. So that’s been huge.
And then I’d say the third thing is I’m part of a YPO group and that forum, you know, it’s become a group of people that I really trust and they’re other business owners who’ve gone through their own struggles in their own unique ways. And getting to learn and hear their struggles, as well as them giving feedback on mine, that’s been huge for me.
There’re other ones as well, like certainly my family and my team do provide feedback, but those have been sort of key foundational pillars, I would say.
Colin Michael: It’s interesting because we talked about it before too, it’s like a stigma if you have to go for outside help, but then we look back at how your dad and my dad, you know, how did they figure things out, but they all had different confidants, or whatever. And again, I think I’ve been very fortunate to have Uncle Jack be my kind of confidant and be able to vent to and kind of bounce ideas off on.
So, you and your brother kind of picked up the mantle and you’re taking the family business forward. What’s on the horizon for HanMac? What are you excited about and what does the future look like for you on building that legacy?
Luke: I mean there’s a lot of different things that we’re doing that are exciting. You know, we have a private equity fund called Founders East, which has been going excellent. Our team does a great job of running it and we basically buy midsize companies here in Atlantic Canada. We’re developing a building [and] we’re doing a whole bunch of different projects.
Probably the thing I’m most excited about, because I spend so much time on it, and it’s still very close to my heart is the business Axyz that I used to run. We are doing a major push into prefabricated housing, specifically building the technology that enables prefabricated housing. And you know this is a big federal mandate, obviously in Canada, is to try to get what’s called off-site construction. So that is a big basket, but it basically means building houses in a factory, whether that’s pieces that then get assembled on site or it’s actually doing a full standup of a building in a factory and shipping it to site. Most of the technology for that sector comes from Europe. Europe is way ahead of Canada on prefab and modular. You know something like 70% of houses in Sweden are built using this approach, whereas in Canada it’s like 5%. There are not many Canadian providers of this technology, and our business has been around for over 30 years. We already supply to cabinet makers and cladding companies and signage companies and all kinds of things in construction. And so, we’ve now developed a number of pieces of technology and are continuing to develop technology that is for this prefab and modular housing space. And so, some stuff has come to market, more stuff is coming next year. So very excited about that, just to see where that goes. And you know it’s sort of well timed with what’s going on at a macro level in this country. There is a housing crisis as far as affordability goes. And I really believe the logic of, if you built your car in your driveway, it would be dramatically more expensive than if you do it the way that it’s done in a factory. And that doesn’t mean you can customize every single home exactly the way that houses are built on site. So, there’s always going to be a mix. But if we want to build houses and sell them for a quarter million dollars or half a million dollars, we have to do something about productivity. And that’s where this fits in, is enabling that productivity through automation. So, really excited about that. Our team is working really hard on that, and I’m quite involved in it as well.
Colin Michael: That’s really exciting. It’s great to see some Canadian innovation and have that be homegrown. So yeah, congratulations.
One of the things you’ve talked about in your podcast previously is the fact that you kind of didn’t go or didn’t kind of grow up in your family business. Your dad kind of never tried to pull you in. So, when you think about your experience in a family business: what are you thinking and how are you working with or planning to work with your family [specifically] your daughters in the future if they want to come into the business? Are you going to encourage it or what’s your take on that?
Luke: Yeah, it’s a great question. One of the biggest benefits of this podcast is [that] I’ve got to ask that same question to dozens of people and the answer is always different. Some are similar, but people always have a slightly different take on it.
I think that the one thing my dad has always preached to me is, you got to have purpose in life, and I truly really believe that. At times in my family business, I felt like I’ve lost my purpose, and you know back to that idea of like, ‘I want to add value’. I don’t want to just be some nepotistic son of the owner floating around. And I think as long as there is purpose for my kids—I’m very supportive of it. And the one thing I think I would change is how my dad approached it. He was really worried that he would rob us of our own path. So, he kind of kept us away from the business. I think that I would, or I am already, I’d like to introduce my kids more to the business. Like literally my 5-year-old, I took her to the construction site where we’re building a building and I try to explain to her what we do for work, which trying to explain what a family office is to a 5-year-old is obviously nearly impossible, but [I try] just explaining things like “oh, we are building a building, and people are going to live in that building,” and things like that.
And I’d really like to as they grow up, make sure they’re around the business so that if they have an interest, they know what it is and whether or not they want to go into it. And hopefully that forms organically. But if they don’t want to be in the business, then that’s great too. And I think the main thing is just that they have some purpose. And that purpose may be philanthropic. It maybe they might want to be a lawyer or whatever, could be an artist, but they have to have purpose in life, because otherwise it’s kind of wasting your time and I feel pretty strongly about that.
So, I think the big thing is I’ve had lots of people give me the advice. Danielle Saputo was someone who said it to me recently, there are always ways to get people involved early and it’s easy to think, “Oh, my kids are too young. I shouldn’t involve them until they’re 10,” or setting a date almost. But there’s no reason when my daughter comes down to my office in the morning and pops in and says, “What are you doing, daddy?” to not try to explain to her what you do for work. And, you know, maybe she’ll get 1% of it, but over time it will build. I think that’s the approach I’m going to take and hopefully they can make their own informed decision.
Colin Michael: Yeah. No, I absolutely relate. I know my early days, cruising the car lots with my dad. My dad used to have a car lot. And then all the way through when he was doing security for Clearwater, we’d walk through Clearwater every night, and make sure the security was all there. So, I do the same with my son, and we go into the warehouses, and he was driving the floor cleaner the other day and of course crashed it. But all good learning.
I think you’re right. It’s important to expose them early and then they can find their own path. But it’s important to expose them to the realities of what we do every day and the fun. Work is not a bad word. It can be a lot of fun.
Luke: Yeah, agreed.
Colin Michael: That’s all the questions I have. I appreciate the opportunity and I hope we’ve been able to kind of enlighten your audience on your family path and be really excited to see what you do, and I appreciate the opportunity.
Luke: Yeah. Well, I’m going to try to keep having you back every once in a while. Our last episode did quite well, and I think people like the candor of actually seeing me with my family and we both have similar but different perspectives and whatnot. So, thanks for doing it. Appreciate it.
Colin Michael: Thank you. All right.
Luke: Awesome.
