[00:00:04] Russell: This is Contributors, a show exploring how today's Canadian business leaders are building a better future for Canada. 

[00:00:13] Jade: Hi, Russell.

[00:00:14] Russell: Hey. Who are we talking to today? 

[00:00:16] Jade: Colin Osborne. Collin is the president and CEO of Samuel, Sun & Co. And this is a very unique organization because it's a 167 years old. Older than a light bulb, older than automobiles. And they're in the business of manufacturing metals and industrial products. They also process and distribute them. 

[00:00:38] Russell: Yeah, I'm really, really looking forward to this conversation for a couple of reasons. I think it's really interesting to have the opportunity to talk to a leader of an organization, this old, you know, an organization older than Canada itself to really get into how it's evolved over time, what's changed and also what hasn't changed. The second thing that I'm really excited about is an opportunity to talk to a leader in manufacturing who's focused on green, who's focused on how we can execute on manufacturing in an environmentally responsible way. And then finally, this is a leader of a private company. This is a private family owned company, and that is its own leadership challenge for a CEO, especially a CEO coming from outside of the family. It changes your perception of kind of why organizations are so focused on ESG. So often this is about shareholders kind of coming in and forcing that. But in this case, this is not shareholder driven. This is really because the organization because the family sees this as the right thing to do. And also they see this as something that is going to drive economic results. So I'm really interested to hear him tell us more about that. 

[00:01:54] Jade: And that's exactly what Contributor's is about. So let's dive in. 

[00:01:58] Russell: Let's do it. So Colin, welcome to contributors. 

[00:02:02] Colin Osborne: Thank you. Very glad to be here. 

[00:02:05] Russell: First and foremost, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your professional background? 

[00:02:09] Colin Osborne: I'm actually first generation Canadian, youngest of five kids, grew up in Montreal. I think my career path was set somewhat by my father, who was who was an engineer. And so I took engineering and I specialized in metals and mining and heavy industry. And that then ended up putting me into the industries that I've been in most of my career, which is metals, mining, heavy industry manufacturing. So I've run public companies, private companies. I've sat on private equity boards for 15 years, worked in six continents or had projects in six different continents. And even though I've been sort of in one element of the industry, which is metals and heavy industry, I've seen a lot of different business models. And I think that helps me as I try to shape the next next century here at Samuel. 

[00:02:57] Russell: At Samuel the organization is it's got a really impressive tenure. One of the things that I was blown away in learning is that the organization is actually older than Canada. And I believe correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the organization is older than electricity. 

[00:03:16] Colin Osborne: Yeah, it is correct. It's an amazing story. Right. It's an 1855 sort of origin. And so if you do if you look back through history, obviously Canada wasn't a country till '67. Electricity was not invented. The light bulb was not did not exist and telephone didn't exist. And so it just yeah, completely, I mean, it was before the US Civil War. It's 167 years old, but it's also fifth generation family. And today the average company survives about 15 years. My favorite story, by the way, about this is, you know, our our lead bank, our syndicate is Bank of Montreal, and they're 200 years old. And they tell the story that we're the second commercial customer they ever had. And the first one was Hudson's Bay for trading. So right after [00:03:59]Beaver, [0.0s] we came right after [00:04:00]Beaver Bay Hudson. [0.3s] We were number two. So, yeah, it's a great story. I'm very, very humbled and very proud to be part of that history. 

[00:04:07] Russell: So 160 years ago, what was the organizations started to do? 

[00:04:12] Colin Osborne: Obviously, you don't survive that long without incredible entrepreneurial spirit, the ability to change direction, adapt to markets. It really started when two brothers saw gas being brought to Toronto as a fuel and they reached out to Europe, which was a little more advanced. And they found hardware and lighting and other things that could run off of gas. And they started importing almost as a hardware distributor. And then they migrated into service centers and into metal and then into all kinds of things. And yeah, I mean, when you look at where we are today, where we're doing 3D metal printing and my biggest customer is Tesla. It's just a mind boggling journey over 167 years. 

[00:04:51] Russell: One of the things I wanted to ask you is you've just had the experience of leading this organization through the pandemic. What was that like? How was your organization impacted by COVID? How were your customers impacted by COVID? And how did you respond? 

[00:05:06] Colin Osborne: It sounds crazy, but it was a very beneficial thing. Partly because, of course we were the manufacturing was deemed essential industry, or so we never shut down. There was a very brief period in early 2020 when automotive completely shut down and things happened. And I remember sitting in my office looking out the window and I was the only car in the parking lot. And it was pretty daunting, right? So I think there was a short period of just complete crisis and uncertainty. We were under huge pressure to actually deliver. Supply chains were broken all over the place, labor force was disrupted, and there was an enormous pressure on manufacturers and distributors to actually provide service to customers. And so I think truthfully, the end of the day, it did two things for us. We we did, I think, a great job servicing customers in a very difficult time. But also we had a mantra and we've had a mantra since I took over as CEO of. What's hard in a company that's entrepreneurial but then becomes $6 billion and 6000 people in 85 locations? How do you keep that fast moving, agile spirit? And the same time, you're getting bigger and bigger and bigger and you don't want to get bureaucratic. And one thing about COVID, I really think that helped is we were forced to make decisions without great information very quickly. And I just think it helped reinforce a culture of entrepreneurial spirit and agility. And in all honesty, and I think we're rare, we run this entire company on a one hour weekly meeting. And that started that started in COVID because we were like, we can't afford to have monthly meetings or quarterly reviews. We need to have a touchpoint at least weekly to see what's happening, what customers are shut down, what are we going to do? And we kept that cadence. So truthfully, as painful as it was and as difficult as it was and as the amount of disruption that it caused us, we're a better company for it. 

[00:06:52] Russell: I was reading where you had said that you took inspiration from the famous case of FedEx. You know that FedEx is able to manage through, you know, turmoil, massive snowstorms, whatever, because they are really good at empowerment and pushing the decisions down to the people on the ground. Can you tell us a little bit about that? 

[00:07:14] Colin Osborne: I don't know if you know that story, but Fred Smith was the CEO. He went to West Point Military Academy in the US. And it might sound strange, but West Point actually teaches a leadership model called Leaders Intent. And the idea is that leadership makes as few decisions as possible and you empower the workforce that is the closest to the customer to make as many decisions as possible. And he would tell the story, you know, FedEx, you know, you'll get it there tomorrow. How is that feasible when Chicago gets shut down by a snowstorm? Well, it was feasible because they didn't have management meetings and committee meetings and phone calls. They literally allowed people at the front line to make decisions. In fact, we've taken our leadership team to West Point for training and the leaders intent model. And the whole point of that model is, you know, we want 95 percent of the decisions made close to the customer. And yes, I have to make decisions about capital allocation and strategy, but the business should run from the front line. I think we do a great job at that, honestly. I think that's one of our strengths. We've had two challenges. I mean, historically, our industry would be viewed as a command and control industry. You know, the steel industry and the heavy metals industry are not known for decentralized decision making. So we had two problems. I think one is when we started to bring in this leadership model, we had a number of people, I would say, in middle management that were not comfortable with this model. Right? They were used to a command structure. You know, I tell my people what to do. They do it, they report back. And that's not the model we wanted to put in place. So we had some difficulty with people who had been in this industry 30 years and we were telling them to give up control. Right. And that's hard for people to do. And then the other problem, to your point is we're pretty good at hiring because as you I'm sure you know, you hire as much of a cultural fit as you do hire for competency. We're pretty clear when we recruit, bring people in from outside that that's our model. So we've had some failures, honestly, where maybe the interview process didn't uncover the leadership traits, and people have come in and said, I can't work in this model, but in large part it's been pretty successful. 

[00:09:11] Russell: That's really interesting. I understand that you're a huge champion of Canadian manufacturing. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? 

[00:09:20] Colin Osborne: I think back to when I was young and I first started in Hamilton in Stelco, and I remember driving to work and I would drive by Westinghouse and Procter & Gamble and Firestone and Stelco and Dofasco and on and on and on, like brand name Fortune 500 companies. And as you probably know, if you drive down there today, they're all gone. You know, Stelco and Dofasco was there. But Firestone and Westinghouse and Procter and Gamble, they're all gone. And so, unfortunately, you know, when you travel as much as I do and you're in the U.S. and Mexico and we're everywhere, and you see how those jurisdictions have attracted manufacturing through incentives, through labor costs arbitrage. You know, Canada hasn't kept up. I am a big champion of trying to recover that. And it's not that I'm just pro manufacturing. It's that manufacturing creates high paying jobs. Not everybody can be a doctor and a lawyer, which is great. But if you want people to make a good living with good benefits, manufacturing provides a huge number of those jobs and they generally pay better than retail or distribution. So I feel like it's a bit of a shame in a way that we've lost some of that. 

[00:10:27] Russell: We have seen a bit of a resurgence in Canadian manufacturing. I think you've seen the same in the States as a result of COVID. You may know that another guest we've had on the show is Jim Estill from Denby Appliances, and he talked a little bit about that. Are you seeing that? Do you think that's here to stay? 

[00:10:45] Colin Osborne: In most of my career. I went through decades of what I would call free tradeism. You know, very much around opening borders or eliminating barriers. But I think COVID, to your point about supply chain, I think what we're now shifting to is pretty massive protectionism, which, to be honest, can be very good for what I'll call a North American trading block. So I think what you're going to see is, you know, on shoring hasn't really happened. Everyone thinks on shoring has happened. It has not happened. There's lots of data to show it's not true, but I think it is finally happening. I look at a lot of the products and services that I do and the end users I provide, and they're investing heavily in the U.S., Mexico, a little less in Canada, which is my concern. But they're investing heavily in building supply chains more locally. You know, you see all the high profile announcements like Taiwan Semiconductor building a semiconductor plant or Intel building a new semiconductor plant. But there's actually been 21 companies announced building battery plants in the U.S. and Canada. So I think you're going to see some of it is driven by just people nervous about supply chain. But I think ultimately businesses tend to do things on a monetary basis. I think protectionism will drive a huge amount of industrial growth in North America. 

[00:11:59] Russell: Protectionism, you mean? 

[00:12:01] Colin Osborne: Yeah, because I feel I don't how much you follow sort of what's happening in the U.S. but the U.S. is getting extremely protectionist, right? So they have Buy American policy which are now going to shift. If it's a government procured item, it's going to be 79 percent American content. They introduced new tax legislation where if you buy an electric vehicle in the U.S., if the battery was made in the U.S., you get extra incentives. The U.S. today is still 22 percent of the world economy, and it's 70 percent of Canada's trade book. So if policies keep developing that prevent Canadian manufacturers from participating in that market, it's extremely detrimental. I'd love to think that North America becomes a trading bloc, you know, Canada, U.S., Mexico, because our supply chains are entangled. But I do worry that protectionism will ultimately hurt the Canadian economy. 

[00:12:46] Russell: What do you see is the solution to that or the potential solution? 

[00:12:50] Colin Osborne: I think it's twofold. One is it's Canadians positioning their industries in a way that they're critical to the supply chain. So there's not much choice. Another way, which is unfortunately very difficult, is government policy. I feel like you need to have governments realizing that an open supply chain between Canada, U.S., and I believe Mexico is actually more efficient, more effective than building all these barriers, because there's too many overlap. You know, the 232 tariffs that hit, they were very punitive on Canada. There's just been a lot of cases in the last three or four years where US centric policy runs the risk of isolating us more from that market. 

[00:13:27] Russell: The other big issue that I wanted to talk about is climate change. Can you tell us a little bit about how Samuel has approached climate change? 

[00:13:38] Colin Osborne: Absolutely. So there's kind of two facets to it. I think one is what I would call the corporate citizenship element. You know, we're not public, so we don't need to go attract ethical investors or any of that kind of stuff. But I think as a company, I'm very proud of the fact that the owners and the board and the management team is as committed to ESG as any public company. From a green technology perspective, we're really doing two things. What we're trying to do is focus on continuous improvement in our carbon footprint every year. So the first piece of it is our commitment to our communities and the environment we work in to reduce our carbon footprint every year, which means reduce greenhouse gas emissions every year and reduce energy intensity every year. So last year we did between four and six percent reduction. And our goal is to keep doing that and to show you our level of commitment on that, we actually have signed something that's pretty rare, which is called a sustainable lending agreement. So we have a partnership with our nine banks and our syndicate that we will meet thresholds of reduction every single year. And their commitment to us is if we do that, we'll get a lower borrowing rate. And if we don't do it, we'll get punished. Number two is, as you probably know, Russell, we're an incredibly diverse product mix. It's just very complex. And so what we try to do each one of our 15 businesses. Now, I love the expression. They used to be a commercial by BASF that said, you know, we don't make the product. We make the product better. And I feel like Samuel's like that. I don't make wind turbines, I don't make cars, I don't make planes. But I'm positioned as a strategic supplier in almost every element of the supply chain. You know, as I mentioned on on electric vehicles, we're now I would say number one or number two in North America on producing aluminum for electric vehicles, solar panels. We're one of the top producers of aluminum extrusions for solar panels. Renewable gas, which is the capture of gas from landfills. We're one of the we're probably the leading provider of renewable gas solutions in pressure vessels. So each one of our businesses, Russell, tries to find a way to position itself in the market as a critical supply chain provider. And maybe the biggest thing we're doing. But it's what I call nascent technology, as we are one of the leaders globally in additive manufacturing. And people don't really understand additive. But if you look at additive from a green climate change technology perspective, it's a breakthrough technology. So instead of buying a giant slab of metal from somewhere and moving it all around and cutting it into pieces and machining it, and all of the energy that goes into that and having 80 percent yield loss, you know, I can print something from powder and the energy savings and the carbon footprint reduction and the transportation costs associated with that. It's a step change improvement. And so we're really I think we're probably we're the top in Canada, we're top two or three in the U.S., we're probably top five in the world in additive manufacturing capability. 

[00:16:28] Russell: As you move into more green technology, how does that affect your current staff? 

[00:16:33] Colin Osborne: There's kind of a what I'll call the the intangible, which is around employee engagement. But I would tell you this, I think every employee, regardless of generation, wants to work for a company that they feel is committed to communities and environments. And, you know, sure, we have to make money because we've got to survive. But they want to feel that they're part of a company that takes corporate citizenship seriously. So I think as we do these things and we communicate them internally and we publish our our ESG and sustainability and our DEI initiative, one of the things that's important to me is that people want to work here, and they want to work for this company. Right? I'm not I'm not Patagonia. I can't pretend to be Patagonia, but within my industries that I operate in, I want to be the best possible corporate citizen I can. And I think that helps me attract employees and makes them feel good about working here. So I think that's a big part. From a skills perspective, you know, and an employee perspective, there's kind of two tranches. One of them is it has no impact in the sense that I have unbelievable capability around welding, super high technology welding. I have that competency. I can shift that competency into products and services that support green technology. So I need to scale up, but I don't have to reskill my workforce. Then there's another tranche where I have to reskill my work force. You know, we're investing heavily in automation. We're investing heavily in additive manufacturing. It's a completely different skill set that I don't have anywhere in the company. And in those cases, I have to find ways to either, you know, intern or mentor or internally develop or partner with external agencies to build that pipeline of talent. 

[00:18:05] Russell: So has that made you particularly vulnerable to this, you know, great resignation, race for talent, marathon for talent, whatever you want to call it. 

[00:18:16] Colin Osborne: You know, I think in automation and an additive, the environment we create like we are best in class in these places and I think people want to work for us. So as much as it is a war for talent, when I look at those businesses, you know, people get in there, they're excited, they see what we're doing. We generally can retain. If it's more of a, you know, a broader skill set that, you know, banks can use and everyone else can use, yeah, it's a fight. It's hard. Yeah. 

[00:18:45] Russell: I understand you're doubling down on automation. Can you tell us a little bit about automation and can you address, you know, the sort of elephant in the room around automation, which is there are those that would say it's going to hurt job opportunities for Canadians. 

[00:19:00] Colin Osborne: I'll be honest, we were kind of fell into it. If you look at the trends that are happening in labor in Canada, U.S. and Mexico. Canada, U.S., this is the first decade in history where the workforce will not grow. In the seventies, it grew by 30 percent. In the eighties, it grew by 20 percent. And it's always grow, grow, grow. But now, because of people don't have a lot of kids, and now because the baby boomers are exiting this, the next five or six years are actually the first time in history where the workforce growth is zero. You know, if manufacturing is in a little bit of a boom and I think it is, where do these people come from? We looked at the macroeconomics around automation and we said we think this will be a great business for decades. We have bought two other companies since then and we're now we're up to about 150 automation engineers and we're building scale rapidly. The second piece, though, is, you know, probably somewhat obvious, but we operate 85 facilities. Those facilities are filled with complicated equipment. They're filled with complex material handling. And internally, there's a massive opportunity to use automation. And just we felt that, you know, we could deploy these people full time forever and we'd rather have that skill set inside the company than outside. To your point about jobs, it is a sensitive topic. I would say this today with how hard it is, and I don't think this is going to get even with a mild recession. I'm not sure this gets better. Today, I can't even crew my operations, you know, in some parts of some parts of the world. So when I do automate, if I free up three people, I can deploy those three people, right? So there's no job loss. But in the long term trend, people automate to eliminate jobs or to improve productivity or to improve quality of work. So technically you're going to lose some what I would call lower skilled jobs. But I will also say it's not one for one, but I will say I see a pretty massive deployment of a different skill set, right? I got me hiring mechatronics engineers, I'm hiring software integrators, I'm hiring assemblers of robotic systems, and I'm hiring service technicians to go out and service these machines in the field. But, yes, you know, there's a shift from, I would say, lower skilled jobs to higher skilled jobs as you do more and more automation. 

[00:21:08] Russell: You are in a unique position in so far as you are a Canadian CEO who manages employees and operations in Canada, but also in Mexico and in the United States. So I'm curious if you can share a little bit about that experience and what have you learned from the way that they do business in the States and the way that they do business in Mexico? And what parts of that should we be looking into as Canadian business leaders? Why should we be stealing from those two countries? 

[00:21:39] Colin Osborne: For Canadians. I think it's where are you going to compete and how are you going to compete? I think and partly this is the job of people like myself and manufacturers, and partly it's the job of government, I think, to look at where we can compete and how we set up the infrastructure to compete. I see a couple of areas. One, you know, again, when you go on to the U.S., what I find fascinating is every state does whatever it wants. So, you know, South Carolina will do something [00:22:04]competitively [0.0s] in Nevada to attract people. You can look at every state and rank them by where it's best to do business. I feel like in Canada we're too reliant on either federal policy or government. I feel like provinces should take ownership to say, you know, in Ontario, for example, we have an incredible technology base with around the Kitchener or Waterloo area. Probably the best in the world or best in North America. Right? How do we leverage that in Ontario to attract businesses that are not around the cost of labor? And how do we build those? Why don't we have more Blackberry? I know that didn't end well, but idea of incubating Blackberry to me is great. I think the second piece is and it's one of my frustrations, honestly, is when I look at you'll see things where, you know, there's been a lot of announcements lately around critical minerals and strategic minerals, and Canada can be a world leader in strategic minerals. I think the government said that. The unfortunate truth is it's not true. But I think there's an opportunity there because we are a mineral rich country. But today Canada produces three percent of the world's cobalt. It produces two and a half percent of the world's lithium. If you add it up, copper and nickel and manganese and graphene were point seven percent. So we're not a world player and we're not a significant player and we're not playing a role. So then it becomes down again to saying, okay, if because of electric vehicles and batteries, these things are now critical supply chain items as a country. Can we participate? We can. But as you probably know and I sit on the board of a mining company, you know, this investment is huge and it's high risk. And so you really would need, I think, a combination of public industries, private industries and government to really look at something and say, if we're going to be a global player on strategic minerals, how are we going to approach that? 

[00:23:47] Russell: Have you seen as a business leader? Have you seen a difference in kind of the workplace culture of a facility in Mexico, a facility United States, a facility in Canada? One of the things that I've read, for example, is that Americans and Mexicans are both a little bit more risk tolerant, that they're willing to try things that we as Canadians might not be willing to try. 

[00:24:13] Colin Osborne: I don't see that. I see honestly in our business, I see entrepreneurial, risk tolerant culture throughout all of our businesses. What I do see different, though, Russell, is again, I hate to go back to what I do see a difference in what I call business culture or government culture around risk and willingness to gamble, you know, on getting businesses into local markets and within Canada's much more cautious. And also, I think Canada's focus too much on the Big Bang Theory. I don't know if you've heard about the what's called the titanium revolution in the U.S.. Right. So they look at all this manufacturing and everyone gets excited because Taiwan Semiconductor is building a five billion dollar plant. But the resurgence of manufacturing in the U.S. is mom and pop shops. It's, you know, I'm simplifying, but it's smaller businesses, you know, 50 million, 100 million. And I feel like in Canada, when we look at our subsidies and our supports, you know, so much goes to Big Bang. But I worry sometimes we're not seeding capital into small businesses that can become big businesses. And in the US, that's a big part of the success story. 

[00:25:18] Russell: That's a really good point. This show is called Contributors. How do you believe that Samuel moved to greener technology, helps contribute to a better future for Canada. 

[00:25:30] Colin Osborne: Yeah. I mean, I would say humbly, you know, we're like many companies, our contribution is this big, right? But if we, you know, in the context of the country. But I think if we all, you know, do our piece, it's a significant when you add it all up. It's significant. I think, as I said, our contribution is twofold. One is it's a direct contribution, which is how do I lower my carbon footprint in Canada? How do I lower my impact on the environment in Canada? That's number one. And to your point earlier, I think the second one is really as a company, investing in technologies or products or services that we think will build supply chain and product capability in Canada. Now I use simple examples like whether it's our additive manufacturing business or our pressure vessel business or whatever, finding these places where we can be part of a critical supply chain which hopefully allows our customer to be successful in the implementation of green technology. The other piece I wouldn't underestimate, honestly, is our investment at our own dime in large part in additive. If you believe McKinsey or Bain or any of these very smart people, they view this business as a hundreds of billion dollar business. And I think Canada actually has a very unique footprint. You know, we're number one of the top people in the world. We have University of Waterloo, which I would say is one of the top institutions in the world. We have a whole bunch of other academic institutions, Mohawk College, McGill, that have heavy investments in additive. I actually think we have a potential to incubate additive manufacturing as a center of excellence in Canada between industry and academia and government, which I think would be a huge part of potential green economy. 

[00:27:07] Russell: That's a perfect lead in to my next question, which is if you were advising the country, what are the three things that we need to do to accelerate manufacturing in Canada? 

[00:27:21] Colin Osborne: I think it goes back to what I was saying a bit about finding out what we think our competitive advantages are, leveraging those competitive advantages. You know, we have to put capital at risk. Public companies have to put capital at risk. But every time companies when companies make decisions or if we say strategic minerals is critical, right, we think Canada could be a leader in strategic minerals. Many companies will make a decision, do I want to invest in a mining operation in British Columbia, or do I want to do that in Arizona or do I want to do it in Peru? I am sure really good if government could get aligned with manufacturing around these elements to say, this is where we're going to compete, this is where we're going to build centers of excellence and we're going to help de-risk. It doesn't mean government and, you know, on the back of taxpayers, but we're going to help de-risk some of these decisions for companies so that they decide to build here instead of in South Carolina or in Arizona or elsewhere. Maybe to your point earlier, is Canada, I don't know if is employees, but is Canada more cautious culture than the U.S.? Is it less aggressive around entrepreneurial start up? I think it probably is. And so, again, I think it would be great if we could incubate more, you know, there's a place down the road here called McMaster Innovation Park. Right. And it's filled with little, little tiny companies trying to get off the ground. Well, you know, they want to get off the ground, but if one out of 50 succeeds, you know, that really cedes the the company's manufacturing base. And so I feel sometimes that our our public policy and, you know, our manufacturers who have all kinds of capital to deploy and our government who have all kinds of policies that can help subsidize or support, I sometimes feel that those are not aligned. And so we miss opportunities to align policy with internal with our own capital to make sure we grow these businesses in Canada. That would be my second big one. 

[00:29:10] Russell: One of the things I like to do when we do these interviews is I like to reach out to people who might know the CEO that I'm talking to, people that have worked with that individual in the past, people in, you know, his or her industry. So I did that in preparation for talking to you today. And I said, you know, which they usually ask Colin? What do you want to know about him? What's the secret to his success that you want me to learn more about? And the answer with you was really interesting. So I need to take half a step back and say, have you seen an HBO show, Colin called Succession? Do you know what that is? 

[00:29:52] Colin Osborne: I have not. I know what it is, but I actually haven't seen it. I know. I know what it is. It's on my list. 

[00:29:58] Russell: For our listeners, this is an HBO drama about a privately held family business. It is a lot of what the story turns on is kind of the dysfunction of a family business. And I think one of the things that is so interesting is, especially in talking to you and learning more about Samuel, that's not at all the impression that you get. The impression that you get is that this is a really well-run organization with focus where people like to work there. It's very different than a lot of the societal conversation about a privately held family business. So the question that I was, you know, that people want to know from you is kind of how have you taken this organization and moved it along and worked with the family to have the success that you've had? 

[00:30:54] Colin Osborne: That's a good question. So I think, you know, I mean, the landscape is littered publicly with family businesses that have end up fighting and in court. And I have to give credit honestly here to the family and to the board. This company is very unusual. So we're private, but we run with a governance model that looks a lot like a public company. The family, to their credit, they sit on the board. They're very active on the board. They're involved in big decisions around M&A and all that. But the management of the company, they leave to management. And they have checks and balances and reporting and KPIs. I talk to them all the time. We do monthly updates, but they really let management manage and I think that's a huge part of our success. The second piece I would say is I'm very proud of our leadership model. We really spend a lot of time investing and development of leadership around this agile leaders intent model, the decision making distribution, the distributed decision making. We've managed to create an environment of a large company where the family provides excellent governance and support and advice without the negatives that could come with that. And we have a very fast moving distributed leadership model. And the other thing I think, which helps, as you can probably guess, is we don't manage the business around our quarterly reporting cycle, right? We manage the business of our long term sustainability. And so we have a lot of discussions about is the sustainable what does this look like in five years when. Right. So we can really focus on longer term and the family has been very supportive of that so. 

[00:32:23] Russell: Thank you so much for your time today. I really have enjoyed speaking with you and learning more about Samuel. 

[00:32:29] Colin Osborne: Really. My pleasure. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. 

[00:32:35] Jade: Wow. I think if we had more time in the afternoon, I could sit and listen to you both chat all day. That was a really inspiring and valuable conversation with you and Colin. 

[00:32:46] Russell: Yeah, he's is such a great speaker and such a great such a great mind. I love the way that he put things. And I got to say that conversation surprised me, knowing that we were talking to somebody who is from outside of the family leading a family business. I expected more drama like I expected that we would hear about, you know, succession or, you know, the King Lear, which kid is going to get the fortune kind of thing. And the fact that he instead approached from a completely different perspective and said it's actually easier to run a business like this because I can think about long term value. That was a really interesting reframing for me. The other thing that that I thought was so interesting is the idea that the work that Samuel, Son & Co do is not only green, but like to me it's like alchemy. Like, I can't even really understand it, right? When I think about manufacturing, I think about big pieces of steel that are bent and, you know, shaped into something. And he's really talking about, you know, taking a powder and creating something from nothing. When I think about that, when I think about kind of what's possible today and then what's going to be possible 10, 20 years down the road, it's a reframing, right. Obviously, the jobs that we have tomorrow are not going to be the jobs that we have today. And that's why we need retraining. We need the ability as employers to train our own people because the world is just moving so fast. 

[00:34:18] Jade: Yeah, that's a great point. And I think they're a good example that you can teach an old dog new checks, right, because they're over 106 years old and yet they're innovating more so than many other new companies, which is great to see. And I think to your point, Russell, they're proving that more green equals more good for Canada, more good around employee engagement, more good for business, so they've really created that connection. 

[00:34:47] Russell: And more for their own bottom line. Right?

[00:34:49] Jade: Exactly. 

[00:34:50] Russell: It is that, you know, win, win win. Yeah, I totally agree. I thought that the old dog you were talking about was me, but it's better than you were referring to that. No, that was great. Thanks so much. And thanks for listening with us. And we'll see you again next episode. Thank you for listening to Contributors, the podcast for Canadian leaders. We hope you'll take away some valuable insights and lessons from today's conversation. To help us reach even more listeners, please subscribe, rate and review Contributors on Apple Podcasts. If you'd like to learn more about CAAT, visit us at caatpension.ca.