Join us for a compelling episode of ABFI Table Talk featuring George Cantalini, President, CEO and Owner of Cantiro, formerly known as the Beaverbrook Group of Companies. In this episode, George shares his remarkable journey from a CA who “wasn’t really cut out for accounting” to leading one of Western Canada’s most innovative real estate enterprises.

Discover how George transformed a struggling land development company he purchased for $1 in 1995 into a diversified organization with over 150 employees and revenues exceeding a quarter billion dollars. Learn how his early partnership with mentor Tony Cairo shaped not only the company’s name (Cantiro combines Cantalini-Cairo) but started the foundation for multi-generational collaboration and mentorship that continues today with Tony’s son Ben.

Whether you’re interested in leadership transitions, innovative business models, or building customer-centric organizations, this episode offers valuable insights about evolving from a single-service company to an integrated family enterprise. George shares candid reflections about employee ownership programs, maintaining an innovation mindset, and preparing the next generation for leadership – including how his children’s different career paths are shaping succession planning.

The conversation explores Cantiro’s pioneering projects, from transforming Edmonton’s southwest with the Windermere development to introducing mass timber construction while taking on the West Block. George’s philosophy of “be Apple, not Blackberry” demonstrates how traditional real estate development can embrace innovation while maintaining strong community connections.

Tune in to ABFI Table Talk for an authentic discussion about business growth, mentorship, and creating opportunities for others to build their futures alongside yours.

Matt Knight  00:07

Welcome to Table Talk. We like to dive into the stories behind successful business families and their journeys. Today, I’m excited to be joined by George Cantalini, President, CEO and owner of Cantiro. Under George’s leadership, Cantero has become one of Western Canada’s most innovative real estate companies, building on the values and roots that started out as the beaver Brook Group of Companies. So George, welcome to Table Talk to start you. Could you share a little bit about Cantiro for those who may not be familiar with it, and also what makes it unique?

George Cantalini  00:39

Sure, well, started with Beaverbrook developments, which was a land development company where we build communities. And then that was in when I took it over, was in 1995 then from there it we started Dolce Vita homes, which was in 2008-09, somewhere in there. And then. After that, we started another company called In House by Beavernrook and Beaverbrook Commercial which was doing multi family sites and some commercial sites. And about five years ago, we decided that having all these different companies and we were starting to move into other jurisdictions that to start building brands, five brands instead of one brand, that we should do it under one name. So we consolidated all the companies into one and came up with the Cantiro name.

Matt Knight  01:33

Okay, Okay, nice. So we’ll get into the name in a second. But your your story with the company, I understand, began before ownership. So you started out as an employee. I believe can you kind of take us back to the early days and how you first got connected with Beaverbrook?

George Cantalini  01:48

Well, my background is a CA, which is now CPAs and but once I got my degree, I realized I wasn’t really cut out for accounting. I didn’t really love it, so I went on a journey of looking for work that was, I guess, accounting related, but not accounting. And I started in working for a company called Tridel Enterprises in Toronto. I was living there. They got me to do a lot of special projects through a real estate company. Did a lot of different interesting things with them. They were setting they had a division called Beaverbrook, and they were setting up a division out here in Edmonton in the late 80s, early 90s, and they were looking for somebody to come out and just spend a little time to help set up the offices here and get things going. And it was going to be a land development company, so I volunteered for that. I put my name in, and they accepted that. So I was only supposed to start coming out once a quarter and just seeing how things were. And I thought, well, that’s pretty good. Get to see a little bit of Western Canada for on somebody else’s dime. And so I started coming out once a quarter. We started growing. I started being once a month. And I started being, I was spending most of my time here instead of Toronto. So in 93 I actually moved here full time, sold my my home in Toronto, which I probably should have kept, in hindsight, but anyways, and by that time, I became president of Beaverbrook, and we were doing five or five or six different land development projects in and around the Edmonton region. But 1995 came along, and that’s when Klein came into office and started cutting and it hit Edmonton a lot harder than it hit a lot of the other like Calgary or other jurisdictions, because we’re very much of a government town, so I went into the executive of Tridel early in 1995 and told them that we were going to have a little bit of trouble making it through the rest of the year, and that since what the way we did, we sent money when we had it, when we needed it, they sent it to us. They said, Well, George, we they were having their own financial difficulties, because the market wasn’t very good in Toronto at that time, either.

Matt Knight  04:23

Yeah.

George Cantalini  04:25

And they said, so just get rid of it. Sell it all off, clean it up. Come back to Toronto. We’ll give you a job. So I came back to Edmonton. I started talking to a very good friend of mine who was also our lawyer, Tony Cairo, and he’s I told him the story, and he says, Well, what are you going to do? And I said, Well, I guess I’m going to clean it up, move back to Toronto. And he says to me, you have a curse of a good paycheck. And I thought, wow, that’s an interesting one. I grew up immigrant family. Parents were all about coming to Canada and for stability and for getting so they were always about get a good job, get a career, get a good job, make sure you have security for the rest of your life, like that. So they weren’t really risk takers. So hearing that was kind of threw me a little bit, I but I thought about it for a while, and I said, Well, you know, why not I have because he’s, you know, if they didn’t really want it, why wouldn’t I have an opportunity to take it? So I went back to Tony, and I said to him, Well, if you think this is such a good idea, then maybe you do this with me. And okay, because I can’t afford to pay you legal fees, and I need a lawyer to negotiate all this stuff, because we, we had to renegotiate all the bank debt. We had to do new agreements. We had lots anyways, the end of the day there was the debt was about as high as the value of the so I only bought beaver Brook for $1 I didn’t really spend very much money, so it’s best dollar I ever stopped in my life. But it was a lot of work to get it cleaned up. We did get it cleaned up by the end of 95 and did take control of the company, and unfortunately, Tony passed away very young age, at 58. His family’s still involved, and that’s why it’s Cantiro. It’s Cantalini-Cairo. Okay, so I’m not the sole owner, and actually, we have employee owners too. So okay, we have a little bit of everything, but, but that’s how the Cantiro name came about, and that’s how I started in the in the business, and in in taking it over, making it mine, nice. Okay, so kind of Tony had that role early on. He was mentor. He was a big time mentor. And he was a little bit more of a risk taker, even though he was a lawyer, he was he had done real estate. He was good to have because we were as I started growing, maybe I was more of a risk taker than he was, because he told me the story that you know, at 30, at 29 he was a he was a millionaire. At 30, he was broke because he lived through the 80s. And he was, he was 14-15, years older than me, so had lots more wisdom and experience, and so I learned from him, and took a lot of really good things from from what he said and did and and it’s interesting, because now his son has taken over his law practice the Ben Cairo, and he was very young when he took over the practice, Because Tony died at a very young age, so I was kind of his mentor, and now I see Ben mentoring people in my stuff, in my organization, because he’s now kind of gotten to the that’s point where he’s a lot of experience. So it’s good to see the families move along.

Matt Knight  07:55

So Tony and his family were a partner, and they’re still engaged? They’re still engaged

George Cantalini  08:00

Yeah, they’re still partners.

Matt Knight  08:02

And inside of that, or asides from the name, kind of, what ways are they engaged? Like, is there anything like, in the business plan or strategy that you incorporated from Tony?

George Cantalini  08:13

Yeah, like, we always, every year, we sit down and and come up with what our what our year is going to be and what we’re going to do, and mostly Ben, but his brother, too, Tim, is also involved in in the decision making on major decisions. Maybe Ben’s involved every day, because he’s still our lawyer, so he he sees everything. Yeah, he’s pretty engaged.

Matt Knight  08:39

Yeah, nice. Takes us back to that day in maybe 1995 where you transition from that from an employee of the Toronto company to and to owning this dollar company. How did that feel? How did you go about as a leader that day when you came into the office to share that news?

George Cantalini  08:57

There wasn’t too much leadership. There was me at that point, and one other person so well, actually there was, I shared an office with a competitor, because that was we talked about it because the market was so bad. We said, well, why don’t we go together? We need the same type of people. We said, well, if, because, if we both went on our own, we would, we’d be able to hire either receptionist or an accountant, but we wouldn’t be able to hire both. So if we went together, we could have a receptionist and an account and an accountant and share them. And so for actually, I think it was first 10-15, years, we shared offices, even though, as we grew and grew and grew and grew, we shared offices, eventually we split off. But that was strata developments and Blaine usnik, and that actually was very great mentoring, also because my background was accounting, so I could help him with some of the finance accounting. His background was engineering. So. So, and I didn’t really know that much about land development, to tell you that, like I knew the numbers, I had been out in the field a little bit, but you know, anytime I had questions on on things, I would go across the hall to Blaine and say, Hey, what do you think? Or what’s going on and better. So I learned a lot about engineering too.

Matt Knight  10:22

Yeah, so interesting. So as you were building up the company then, and as you started that, that growth that probably came relatively quickly, what, how did you kind of go about, you know, things like the establishing the values and thinking about the strategy, like?

George Cantalini  10:37

Well, I mean, to me, the value is always treat everybody as you want to be treated. I mean, I think that’s just in life in general. And so always thought of employees or company as almost like family and that, you know, everybody’s in this together, can’t? I can’t do it all by myself, and I need everybody’s help. And somebody told me a long time ago, hire the best people you can find, and you’ll look good. And so I would always go and try to get the best people, pay them what they were worth, and always gave a little bit of the piece of the action to them too. So let them feel like they’re part of it, the ownership, and that they’re my growth is their growth, and my success is also their success. So because as an employee, I never loved the fact that I knew by the day one of the year that the maximum I could make by the end of the year. Yeah, that was somewhat bothered. Not everybody’s like that, but that was my thing. So I thought, well, this maybe other people would be the same, and there’s some that are and some that just want to know how much and they so you have to figure out how people are are wired.

Matt Knight  11:55

Yeah. And so how do you go about bringing people on in ownership? Is it self select? Is it? You know?

George Cantalini  12:03

It was at the beginning of I was self select. Then, as the company has grown, all employees are allowed to buy in certain levels the executive are, are all owners and you? So that has grown just over time, organically, that we’ve first, it was not really ownership, but like phantom ownership, that phantom ownership, we turned into real ownership. And then we, then start offering to all employees because, like, why not if they and we help them buy in, because there’s a program for that too. So yeah, they can see their growth.

Matt Knight  12:52

And what kind of give any examples or any kind of thoughts that come to your mind around, like, what kind of change do you see in people when they go from an employee to an employee owner.

George Cantalini  13:04

They take ownership. I mean, it’s like being a renter in a home and being the owner of the home. You when you’re a renter, you think, well, I want to keep my house for you know, I’m only going to be here a few years, or whatever it is, and you’re you’re not going to destroy it, but you’re probably not going to maintain it to the same type of level that you would if you were an owner, and you’re looking long term. So they, they don’t just think of today or today’s bonus or tomorrow’s bonus, but they’re looking way down the road of how, how are my shares going to grow, and how, how can, how’s this going to be way down the road, and how does it affect not just today, but tomorrow? So I think that’s the biggest change, when they become more than just employees.

Matt Knight  13:47

It’s nice how you’re able to tie that metaphor back into your business model, so under your leadership. So since you took over the company, you’ve seen some pretty phenomenal growth. You’ve done things like acquiring another home builder or home company, you know, two other companies, a pretty major project with the West Block, and kind of taking that over from, I think, bankruptcy, yes, and you’ve recently gone on with more of Cantiro capital, or Cantiro Capital and the Opportunity Fund. What’s your approach to kind of looking at these acquisitions and opportunities and starting these new ventures?

George Cantalini  14:30

Well, you know, we started in the starting the land development business in 2000 and I guess when I bought a house, the land development company, the market was the worst. It’s been other than 85 I guess. And so it became a great opportunity, and we had major growth, even right off the start, because of the market was moving up. So I like to do things when. And people are and going against the flow. So try to do things when people aren’t doing them. I find that, first of all, there’s not as much competition to get in. Second of all, you can probably get some pretty good bargains at that time, and there is availability of people and resources. So in tooth you know, the land development company was doing great, but 2007 eight, that’s when the financial crisis happened. We had just launched a subdivision called upper Windermere in the Southwest, and none of the builders that had initially said they had showed interest to build, and there were wanted to buy lots at that time because the market was bad, yeah. So I thought, well, this is probably a good opportunity if I’m ever going to start a housing company, because it was real estate related, we already had the land. Why not get into the housing so we, I was started with a gentleman called Stu MacAndrews and another one called Enriccio Nacorto son and my son played hockey together, so we spent a lot of time in an arena. And he was, he’s also another CA. We, he was in between things, and I said, Let’s start a housing company. He says, Well, I don’t know anything about housing. And I said, No, but I’ve talked to you long enough that I know you know a lot about business. I it’s a lot harder to teach you about business than building homes. So he said, Okay. And then Richard acarato, he can, he’s the best salesperson around. And so we decided to start a housing company, and we did, and success right off the bat. We within a year, we had sold 20 something homes, but there was only three of us, and I was like, how are we going to do this?

Matt Knight  17:00

And that was dolce vita?

George Cantalini  17:02

Dolce Vita homes. Happened that somebody I knew is looking to get rid of their Edmonton operation for housing Centrex at the time, perfect timing, because they had, they had all these employees, not enough volume. We had a lot of volume, not, not enough employees, yeah. So the the marriage went together very, very well. We took over them. And so within our second year, we were doing over 100 homes a year. Wow. So that was a big volume jump. Yeah, it was big. And then this past year, in 2024 we just took over Morrison’s homes Edmonton division, so, and that was another big leap. So it’s been, and the same with, you know, you were talking about West Block, yeah, he’s gonna, we were talking, we were talking about getting into the multi family infill. Because, you know, see that that that was becoming a bigger and bigger part of the marketplace. You know, everybody’s about density, about, I mean, are actually our downtown in our area at that time was starting to really change, so thought we should start a division that that looked at that specifically. So we we started in house by Beaver Brook. And we had a couple other projects. One was on 100 and 10th Street. We did a we we had some land there, and we had some in the just south of white Ave. But then this parcel on 100 and 42nd and Stony Plain came available, and we had to get a little creative how to take control of that project. It was crane, everybody knows, spinning around for two years, and there was a partially built building. It. It was a great location. You can never replace the location. Oh, yeah, the headache, I don’t know, sometimes I wonder if it was worth it. Taking over a partially finished building is not the easiest thing in the world. It’s definitely easier to start from scratch than it is to start to work around something. But it has worked out amazingly well. If people have been out there, they they’ll see. You know, we actually have an urban village where we have, you know, work, work, live, play. The condo building has 60 very exclusive units. We have three restaurants, we have a coffee shop, we have palaty studio, we have a liquor store, we have clothing stores, and we have office buildings right on top, so everything’s kind of a little ecosystem on its own. And there’s three more stages to go. We’ll see this year, two of those stages start. So it’s it’s exciting. The LRT is coming. It’s a bit of a it’s a bit of a disaster today, but I. You got to have a little bit of pain for a little bit of gain. So we’ll see where we go with that. When that’s done, it should be great.

Matt Knight  20:06

Yeah, it’s interesting. So you kind of started the story about saying, you know, you didn’t want to even take over beaver Brook because of the risk, and you wanted the paycheck. And then it seems like everything you’ve done since then has been like, exponentially riskier, like starting a multi family division by buying a bankrupt lot that’s been partially built for years, seems like a hard way to start.

George Cantalini  20:30

No, it was, yeah, and it was, but I think, you know, the other thing is, we do everything. Almost every one of our projects is with investor partners, okay? And so it’s we’re share the risks. We’re very calculated of what we do. We try to make sure that we are very well capitalized when we do a project, so that if the market does turn we, we have the ability to hold on and to hang through the ups and the downs. Well, hang through the downs and take advantage of the UPS, yep. And so, you know we, I love a challenge, I guess. And I find people around me that that love it too. You couldn’t replicate that location. It, it’s spectacular. So we thought the headache and the risk was worth, worth it for because for the location. So in, you know, real estate Location, location, location. So that was, that’s an amazing location, just now, close enough to downtown, but far enough in Glenora, it’s just great spot.

Matt Knight  21:50

So when you look at kind of some of the other ventures that you’ve started, maybe on the investor side or the Opportunity Fund, talk a little bit about about those and how those fit into.

George Cantalini  22:00

So we this. This past year, we just launched the capital pool, our opportunity fund, and it’s a little different. As I said, we’ve every project we’ve ever had had investors, but it was they were into it started that you’d be in one project, and as as you invest your money as a as a project went along, you got your returns, you got your money back, you decide to reinvest in the next project. Go on and on and on. It was, it’s worked. It’s been working. Been doing it for 30 years now. However, as we kept growing there, we were doing this on a almost on a constant basis, because there was new projects constantly where and then we so we started grouping projects. So we started doing what we called capital pool. So we put four, four to five projects in one pool where we’d raise money, but again, you were put, people were putting money in. You were getting money back. Then they had this. We had to decide. So then we thought, that’s where we thought, Well, why don’t we just do an opportunity fund where two things can happen. One is that our regular investors can invest, and they don’t have to continually get money back, put money back in. We don’t. They can go in and out as they please, because it’s a it’s an open ended fund. So if they, if they decide they want their money, they don’t have to wait till the project’s done. They can, they can ask for their money back. It’s a little bit more liquid. It’s a little, yeah, it’s, it’s valued every quarter, but also it now becomes RRSP and TFSA eligible. So that helps, too with investing that you don’t you can shelter some of that income, and we are opening it up to not just family and friends, like there is the family and friends, but there is also now the general public that can invest with us and see the same kind of returns that our investors have made the last 30 years, and it’s been, I mean, obviously they’ve done fairly well with us too, because they keep coming back, and they’ve helped us grow as much as we’ve grown, because we couldn’t have just done it organically ourselves.

Matt Knight  24:18

When you talk about growth, like, how big is the organization now, in terms of scale like,

George Cantalini  24:24

Well, you know, went from one employee to 150 now 160 somewhere in there, we have revenues will be over a quarter billion dollars. We we manage 350 to 400 million in in equity and people’s money. So it’s, it’s, it’s pretty decent sized organization. If you look at it, our land development group doesn’t need a lot of employees, even though it does a lot of volume and a lot of numbers. Yep, two. Um housing takes a lot more employees, and some of the multi family were starting self build, but at first we were doing with general contractors, so you didn’t need a lot of employees there either. But we’re now starting to scale up and build our own multi family. So you’re starting to see

Matt Knight  25:18

Okay, so you you have essentially your own GC firm as well?

George Cantalini  25:21

Yeah, we’re starting our own GC

Matt Knight  25:23

Okay, and take me, let’s go back a little bit to when you kind of took over that first home building company, or kind of dulce Vita, and acquired that first company, and you went from kind of like pretty small group, you said the three owners or three partners the land development company probably had pretty limited staff, like six, six, and you took over an organization that had a lot of employees, 60 how, like, that’s a pretty big that’s a difference. How did you go about, kind of showing your values and the way of beaver Brook at the time, or Dutch vida, when you’re kind of the smaller of the two.

George Cantalini  26:03

The it took a little bit of work to get culturally. Our culture in not that Centrex culture was, they were very similar. They were, you know, our their belief was, again, treat everybody. Do you want to be treated? Because the goal was to win the customer choice award, which is a third party award. At the time it was JD Powers, would give it out. And so our first year after Centrex, we actually won it. And we won it for like, three years in a row till they stop making the JD Powers. But we, because we believed in, you know, say, treat everybody how you want to be treated. Treat your customer as if you were that person sitting on the other side of the table. And, you know, there are so many components that go into a home. You you try to make it as perfect as you can. But at the end of the day, there’s, there’s always going to be something somewhere, and we don’t, we don’t manufacture the furnaces. We don’t manufacture the air conditioner. So not yet. Anyway, it’s not going there, but you so you have to, but things happen, so we will go in and take care of it and and that’s our that’s been our philosophy. And incentrex was that it took a bit to get Centrex and 60 employees to start calling themselves Dolce Vita instead of Centrex, and that Centrex was much more of a of a builder that built smaller product, and Dolce Vita was much more custom product product, so it was a little bit of a mindset change too. So, but people, once they saw and were led and and saw the results and and they they came along. It took a little bit of time, but it’s patience. It’s showing leadership. It’s being there, present, when I’m showing up, and leading by example, I think is the biggest thing. And I have to give credit to Stu mccandres and Riccio. I mean, they were the ones who were feet on the ground. I was more kind of in the background and on the housing company. So they took it and went with it.

Matt Knight  28:23

So nice. And if you think of all these projects and all the different things that you’ve done over the years, what like Do you have a favorite, like, what’s been one of the most challenging or interesting projects that you’ve taken on?

George Cantalini  28:36

Well, I would say I was going to pick in the air. So in, in the land development business in their communities. I’d say the Windermere project is probably the ones that most proud of or or is the most interesting. At the time we were buying land in in that southwest corner the city was telling us that that wasn’t going to be developed for 50 years. We were, we were like, That’s That’s crazy once the Anthony Henday is coming, because the biggest infrastructure cost is a highway. So, like, once you got a highway and the rest of it, you can figure out through engineering. And they were like, no, no. So us and another developer del con had decided that we were going to bring this land into the city for development. So you do what’s called an area Structure Plan. But the area Structure Plan went from, you know, the Anthony handy, all the way to 41st street. 41st Avenue Southwest. Okay, so, you know, that’s a whole city that’s 60,000 people, and we had to plan that whole area back in early 2000s and it was people thought we were kind of crazy, a little bit going out there that with, especially with Windermere Ridge, which was out there even before that. Hyundai, and it’s, you know, those are the lots along the river where you see some pretty spectacular homes now, yep, so that and upper Windermere are probably, you know, top of the list, because it was such a pioneering project, and it’s turned out amazing. And now it’s home to probably 40,000 people today, and almost this almost done. So that’s that’s kind of interesting to see.

Matt Knight  30:27

And so driving through that must be pretty interesting for you?

George Cantalini  30:30

Yeah, to while watching what you planned 20 years ago, coming to reality. And we have four, four project, five projects in that area now. So we, we love the southwest. That’s a great spot, the Windermere. I nice in in the multi family. You know, both our project, the purpose built rental on 110th Street. This is called CX. It’s pretty cool project. Our first purpose built high rise rental, but went very well. Had tons of interest in it from other outside people and and West Block. That’s that is like our put us on the map. I mean, we have been as much as been been in business all these years. They were, everybody thinks that’s our one project. We have 25 to 30 different projects. But it is, it is pretty special, I mean, and to me, those are really special. I lived in in Upper Windermere for 20 years, and I now live in West Block, so okay, I also will, you know, I always say that we do it because this is where we would want to be and how we want to be, how we want to live. So it’s unbelievably convenient. It’s great, you know, said close enough to downtown, but also farenough.

Matt Knight  31:52

Yeah. And that kind of goes into your value proposition of treating people, treating the customer, how you want to be treated. Yes, you became the customer.

George Cantalini  31:59

Became the customer.

Matt Knight  32:00

So, yeah, so how do you kind of balance that, where you’re always trying to meet the expectations of your customer, or, you know, set those values, but at the same time pushing the innovation and risk pretty high.

George Cantalini  32:15

I think you have, you have to push. I always say to my staff, you know, we could either be Blackberry or we could be apple. You take your pick, because if you don’t, if you sit, sit there and say, We are the best, and we are always we’ve done it so well, and look at how what we’ve done, you’re going to end up Blackberry. But if you keep innovating and changing and looking at what people want and need, even before they know what they want and need. Then, and you innovate, then you’re going to be leading the pack, instead of trying to catch up. So we’re always trying to push the boundaries a little here and there where we can, you know, in the land development side, we we started doing smaller product, tighter product, mixing different product lines together where everybody did the same. Used to be that there was one, one architectural theme for a whole subdivision. We were the first ones to say why? Like people love different homes that are theirs, that they can make. You know, look, it still looks good. It looks amazing. And now everybody’s doing the same. So we’ve, we’ve actually in one spruce Grove, we did a zoning that they let us come up with that was, that was a blanket zone that let us do different product instead of zoning every single lot, one single family one do, but they liked how well it turned out. They made that their zoning for the whole subdivid for the whole city. So great, because we were innovators, but now everybody had it. So anyways, we have to do the next thing so we keep moving forward and and that even the mixed use of we, you know, West Block, doing, we did a mass timber building, which I don’t know if you know, but the office, the three story office building, is mass timber. So it was the biggest one in in Alberta at the time. It, you know, we were pioneering, so we had to convince a lot of different people, first of all, fire ratings, load bearing, like there was not as much as you know, people want to be innovative, even at at municipalities, when you do things differently, you have to be a you have to be patient, And you have to be an educator too, because they were telling us that we had to drywall over these beautiful timber timbers. And we were like, oh, no, these are, these are more fireproof than steel, yeah. So excuse me, but you have to prove that out, and you have to go through it. So, you know, we went, there was a. Big learning curve, but it, I don’t think those offices would have been rented, because the office market is not that strong, but we, we are 100% leased because it’s very cool space. You have wood ceilings, you have you have wood beams. So it’s like the old warehouse, but brand new. So you get the best of both.

Matt Knight  35:25

The location helps, because you could see it from Stony Plain Road,

George Cantalini  35:29

yeah. So and like their offices in there look amazing. So, you know, we, we always are trying to push the envelope and do some new things and try to stay ahead of the curve. Instead of catching up, this past year, we did a built a home that was all steel. So it’s a rolled steel where there’s a machine that the metal is, is, is a rolled steel metal the machine makes every single stud and to the exact size, so you don’t have any waste. It’s manufactured in a shop, and then you don’t need you can expand lot bigger. So even the joists, everything was metal, so there’s no no wood inside that will that would burn just Yeah. So we did one home as an experiment. We’re looking to continue that down the way too. So you’ll probably see a little bit more of that. The home sold right away. An engineer was like, oh my god, this is awesome. And he they bought it and love it.

Matt Knight  36:36

So the philosophy that drives kind of both that and the wooden office building like they seem almost opposite.

George Cantalini  36:44

Well, both are both innovative. The Wood office is actually, as I said, more fire resistant than steel, than the single one, and it is, you don’t have to your, your actual structure is, is your, is your esthetic. So you don’t have to drywall it. You don’t have to do the ceiling, and you don’t paint. So really it is an in a wood is renewable, but it’s, and it’s the way it’s built. It’s not, it’s not always the best wood, but when you put it all together, but it looks really cool and looks strong. So so it’s, it’s actually been pushed quite a bit in to do as as a very green type of product.

Matt Knight  37:41

So because we are a family business podcast, I thought we’d switch a little bit over to the family side of things. Sure. So you have two kids, two kids, one, and I understand one works in the business, one works outside of the business. Yes. Did you give them different advice? Like, like, how did that play out?

George Cantalini  37:58

So I have Matthew is 27 and my daughter Serena is 25 and I guess when I was I always thought they should have some kind of career, like some kind of designation and education before they came into the business. So I was always, I was talking to Matthew, he’s the older one, and he was going into business. And I said, Well, why don’t you go in to accounting? And he was like, You didn’t like accounting. I said, I know, but it’s a great education. It’s gives you lots of different things you can do with it. And he says, No, I took some accounting courses. I don’t really like accounting, so he went into finance, and he actually got his CFA this year. So that was pretty awesome. That’s a lot of work. That’s a lot of work. It’s a very, very tough one. It’s as Harder, harder than the c ca, CPA, I guess. Yeah, but he’s always been interested in the business, and from a kid when he was probably one or two. He was in the backseat driving around with me, looking at sites, and he knew every machine and what it was called, and got to ride on them all. And so he’s been very involved, and part of it so but now he because we’re doing the capital pool, he’s getting involved in that, because that’s his background with the CFA. He did do a little bit of everything. So he had worked for the development, the communities group, and he’s now, he was in the multi family group. Now he’s coming over to the finance group. So my daughter, Serena, she, I guess, was deciding what to do. She didn’t really she was more into the sciences at the time, and but when she went to university, she decided she was going to go into business. And I was a little surprised, but happy about it. And she very happy about it. And I was like, what she. So I don’t know. I think it’d be kind of neat to see and do. And she thought she could do more things with a business degree, and then when she had to specialize, she said she was going into accounting.

Matt Knight  40:10

So she listened. I said,

George Cantalini  40:13

That’s exactly. I said, Well, county, why are you going to go into accounting? She goes, Well, you told Matthew You should go into accounting. You don’t think I should. I said, No, I didn’t say that. I was like, I just shocked. She goes, Yeah, I think I like, well, she did a double major. She was at Sauder School of Business in UBC, and she did real estate and accounting, so she did a double major. And then she just got her CPA this year too. So that’s big year. Then big year for the cats. Yes, yes. Awesome year. So she’s working for Ernest Ernst EY called out in Toronto. So again, she was like, Well, you said you love Toronto, and living in Toronto, I said, yeah, it was a lot of fun. And so, well, I’d like to spread my wings and do that for a little bit. So yeah, she’s in Toronto, will hopefully one day come back. And.

Matt Knight  41:05

yeah, I worked for EY in Calgary, and it’s such an amazing learning opportunity. Yeah, to work with those firms, like types of clients and opportunities.

George Cantalini  41:14

You see so much. That’s what I you get to see different different types of industries, different clients, how people run different things. So, and you, I find the accounting profession because you’re going in and auditing, you you have to be analytical very quickly, because you’re only there for a very short time if you want to learn this business and understand it and what’s important or not, you don’t have a lot of time to sit around and do it. You got to figure it out quick, and you got to go and you got to make some decisions. So it’s, it’s a very interesting not, maybe not the work after, but learning is good.

Matt Knight  41:47

Yeah. So how does kind of having one, one of your kids in the business, the other outside of the business? How did that change your family dynamic at all? Like, how does it change your relationship with with either of them or both of them?

George Cantalini  41:58

I think trying to keep the same relationship. I mean, it’s way easier to stay in touch when he’s there every day at the office. I mean, I don’t see him every day because doesn’t work in the same area for me. He doesn’t report to me. I want to make sure that that that was always I mean, we have a lot of management, and I didn’t want to, you know, you don’t want to parachute somebody in like that and and and screw up a good thing either. And for him, he has to prove his worth to I think as you go along, he understands that and knows that you know somebody, he’s always probably going to have to actually work harder than the next person to prove himself. Getting his CFA sure opened eyes too, because, like, this doesn’t mean that he you can’t cheat on that one. That one’s No, yeah, no, no silver spoon getting that. You gotta, you gotta earn it. So he did.

Matt Knight  42:50

And the attrition rate and getting through those levels.

George Cantalini  42:53

Less than 40% pass rate each three exams, each exam. So it’s, it’s not an easy one, and you study on your own time. You he’s worked and studied so and so he’s I see him and my daughter. I speak to her almost daily, but keeping in touch and trying to see how her career. It’s interesting because, you know, I did that 40 years ago, I guess, almost now, and it hasn’t changed that much, and neither has the complaints or the work. There’s a lot of work. You work very concentrated time between, you know, December and end of end of May that you have to work your butt off. And so it’s just good because we can relate to a lot of different things. So I can relate on both to the both of them, because one’s in the business is one is one a business I was in and what I did. And so it, it works out really well that way. They’re not really highly competitive. They’re more they’re very compatible. And so I think, you know, and I think one day, they would be make an amazing pair. We do have offices now in Ontario in Kitchener Waterloo, so maybe one day, if she wants to stay out there, that opportunity there too. But I don’t, I don’t push them to I let them decide of how they want to do it and where they want to go, but if they’re gonna eventually sit in the in the chair, they’ve got to work there and their way up to it.

Matt Knight  44:26

So, yeah, so asides from kind of earning their, you know, own stripes, own stripes, and, you know, going to school to get that designation, both of those sounded pretty important to you. Yes, what other kind of guidelines or principles do you have before they joined the business. Did you like, did you put in any protocols or conversations or,

George Cantalini  44:44

well, yeah, it was here. If you’re, you’re coming to work for us. You’re going to be in a you’re going to be a regular employee, as if you were working somewhere else. You’re going to get the you’re not getting any special treatment. You’re you don’t get any extra vacation time. You you you are. Sure, and that’s what I’ve asked my staff to do, too, is don’t treat them that they are someone special. They have to, they have to work at work and earn it and and go and do the work. And I learned that lesson a long time ago too, because when I was working for another company, the son of one of the owners I I was sent out to help him grow a business, and this was one of my special projects. And he and I was, he was a few years younger, being and going through, and I was like thinking, How do I know more than he does? He’s been in this business forever. His grew up in the business his family’s done unbelievably well. He says, George, I never had to work. I would everybody covered for me. I would if I didn’t show up. I didn’t, didn’t, nobody. Nobody said anything. Nobody told my parents. Nobody told my dad that I wasn’t at the job and I didn’t do this and I was they let me go off here, and I would take off these days and do this is I never really learned anything. I got an educated but I never really learned any business. And I was like, oh, so like, you know, put that in the little back of the head and and understand that you you have to, you have to learn it and earn it. And I mean, he’s doing very well now, but it was a big learning curve for him. And so a to figure out. And so, you know, with with Matthew, who’s been in the business, it’s okay, learn a little bit about the land side. Learn a bit, a bit of a multi family and and make your way around so you understand how, how it works, and what everybody has to do to get to where they are so.

Matt Knight  46:39

Nice. And looking towards the future. Where do you see things going with the firm? Where do you see things going in terms of the growth and innovation, anything you’re really focused on or excited for?

George Cantalini 46:52

I think few things, one is the opportunity fund. I think it’s going to take some time to get some legs. We’ve we’ve already, I think, raised 15 million in it. So that’s pretty good start, considering we just started in September. I think that is is going to grow our our business, because we don’t have to. It won’t be as administratively as having all these different little investor groups where we keep taking money in, money out, and having it’s gonna, it’s gonna consolidate it. I think, as getting in the public, general public, into the that will grow, it will also allow us to to do more projects, because we’ll have more ability to grow. We we fund it with our own money. We always put our money where our mouth is, so if we don’t believe in it enough to put our money, we don’t ask for anybody else’s so people can be comfortable with that. I see that, and I see, you know, just growing in different jurisdictions slowly. In Canada, it takes, like, real estate. You got to kind of know that, like you say, location, location got to low it. You got to feed on the ground. And so, you know, we’re here. We’ve been here for forever. We’ve we went to the Okanagan. It’s kind of a tough market there today, but everybody, everybody has their ups and downs, and it was good few years ago. So, you know, but I think, you know, Alberta’s is great today. Will it stay like that? We’ve seen lots of ups and downs here, so we always try to have some different areas that offset. We’re in Kitchener Waterloo, which is good Ontario market. Yeah, rapid growth as well. Yeah, it’s very good growth high tech. I mean, well, that’s where the home of BlackBerry was, and so there was a lot of employees there, and Google has moved there big time because they had the great employment base. So I think that’s where we’re going to continue to grow and expand across I see that, you know that we’re looking more into that steel housing, because I think fireproofing and weatherproofing is becoming much More important over time. It’s you can use recycled metal. So that’s a big thing too. So it, I mean, that’s a another area where it’s a lot of growth, yeah, I think, plus, there hasn’t been anything that has really changed in the housing business over all these years. If you think about it like it’s maybe the tools have changed. It used to be a hammer, and now there’s a, you know, a gun, a gun that nails. The nails in there was the hand saws. There’s Alexa. But really, there hasn’t been anything majorly changed. So we’re, we’re looking at. Seeing, you know, what is the next disruptive item there? We know that we’ve, we’ve done, we actually done modular homes. We were in Fort McMurray building homes, and so we had the modulars. We didn’t build them, but we had a company here build the modulars here. Yep. And then we would, yeah, we would put them together out on on site in Fort McMurray, so it was a two story. So they’d come out and put, we do the basement. They put the first store crane in the second, fix it all up and looked awesome. And we, you know, we could build houses in them in literally weeks, because they were all built in a factory. It worked out there because you couldn’t get labor at the time, and you couldn’t get, you couldn’t get material, just tough for everything, yeah, but it’s, it is more expensive, and it is for some reason, even though it’s a better home because you have a it’s, it has to be built that much more solid, to travel, yep, to transport it. Yeah, people discount it because they say it’s modular, which is really interesting. But so you have to have, you know, it worked in Forman Murray because the prices were so people were just wanted anything at the time, and there was no but, yeah, here it didn’t. It has never really taken off more in rural areas where you can’t get a home. So, but what’s, what is going to be the next destruct disruptive technology in in in housing? I think same with high rises. You know, they’re starting to do high rise mass timber buildings. Hasn’t really taken off yet either. And really the costs, there’s no significant cost savings. So it and it, you know, it’s cool, but they it’s not, hasn’t hit quite. Got there yet. So I don’t know we’re look, we’re just always looking at what’s next and what’s going on, and how can we make things better and better mousetrap.

Matt Knight  52:05

Yeah, interesting since, like there’s a lot of opportunities, since you’re thinking of things very differently in terms of advice for other leaders, whether it’s people thinking about bringing their kids into their business, or people thinking about acquiring a firm that’s bigger than them, what would you tell people? Or what would you what would you have wanted to know 20 years ago or five years ago?

George Cantalini  52:28

Well it’s interesting about what you said. First question was bringing your kids into the business. I was, you know, aware of it or looking I always tried to think ahead, and I looked at so many different and talk to so many different people of how they did it. And I guess there was it went from advice was, never have your kids in your business that no way allow them to be in your business to like they’re by your side and and you never they’re just going to be the heir apparent, and that’s it. And I was thinking, well, there’s got to be something in between. And so looking around, I don’t think there’s any right or wrong. I don’t I think there’s different things work for different people. I think it all I’ve that’s what I noticed over time that, you know, some of them, the ones that their kids weren’t in the business and went on their own, were amazingly successful too, and did their own thing and and proved themselves. There was the people who who were by their their father’s side or their mother’s side, and watched the business grow from from infancy and just became the heir apparent. And that’s worked too. And I’ve also seen the opposite side, where neither one of those worked. So I think you have to decide on your own how, what’s best with how your what’s personality, your personality? What’s the children’s personalities? What’s the age difference to culture in the business, too, all of those things. You know, I’ve, we have a lot of professional management that’s worked there. You know, have one gentleman who’s been there, Jody vodka, has been, I think, 18 years with me. So, wow, yeah, he’s, he’s seen it grow and helped me grow and like so, you know, you want to make sure that all those people are taken care of, too. So, so I think it’s, there’s no right or wrong answer of how to do it. I think it’s all individual of how you decide it is. It’s different too, because we’re not 100% owned by by the cantalini family. We, I mean, I have the majority and have the rule, but I also very aware of all the rest of my partners and investors. So yeah, second part of the question was?

Matt Knight  54:54

More about  the acquisition?

George Cantalini  54:56

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I never. Thought I was a leader. I didn’t. I didn’t ever expire. I aspire to be that I I was said. I grew up in a family where it was, go get a job and and work and put your head down. But you, you, I think the biggest thing is having good mentors and and looking around, because almost everything that happens probably happens some sometime in the past, maybe not exactly the same, but learn from all the different things that you’ve learned over the past and and be aware and try to incorporate them into into what you do. And and just lead by example, I think, is the biggest thing. And so like when, when we had, when we acquired other companies, it was, you know, our employees are very happy there we, we, we win awards for that, too, greatest places to work for last few years. And so if, if that is the case, then everybody will pick up and work and pull, help you pull, instead of, instead of going the opposite direction. So I think that’s the key. Is just and, and getting, getting personal with them too. Like, I still go to the office and walk around and talk to people and say hello,

Matt Knight  56:21

It’s important, yeah. But another question of mind, do you? Do you ever think back to what it would be like if you decided not to buy this company. Stayed working for Trydel?

George Cantalini  56:33

They’re still around just to talk to them. Not really, not a lot. I still follow them. Really talk to them that much. Yeah, I was, I always, I think, like, you know how things in your life change and change drastically because of little decisions, small decisions that might end up big things. And I think if I was there, I, I think I would have probably made my way up to the Executive area. I I have faith in my abilities and growth, but I don’t think I would have ever had ownership or and I probably would have lived a comfortable life, but it wouldn’t have quite been the same and, and it, it is pride and and in just seeing the successes. And there’s a lot of people that have had success with me, which is, I’ve always believed in, you know, somebody gave me a chance, somebody gave me a hand up, so why not pass that along? So building up others around, yeah. So that’s the same with, you know, our ownership group has all done very well over the years, because they’ve, they’ve been able to participate with me so.

Matt Knight  57:47

Nice was kind of last question to wrap things up. I like to ask this to most people on the podcast, what’s kind of, you know, if you think about, like one book or a course or key learning that you’ve had in your in your life that has changed how you look at things professionally or even with your family. What, what would you tell people to read? What would you? What would you? What would be your question?

George Cantalini  58:11

For me, I’m not a I’m not a ferocious reader. Okay, I do more in in asking questions and observing. I think is my way of doing it. I have I’ve had great mentors in my life that I’ve been able to learn and watch and and learn from. I’ve joined like I I never was big on joining like YPO, or any of that stuff, because I always thought I was too busy and I got to do my thing. But in hindsight, I think that was probably a mistake, because I think your peer group and learn, and people that are in the same being able to speak to somebody who’s in the same space, space same going through the same kind of things is probably really good to go over. I have my staff now involved in in those organizations, and my kids and I joined it one later in life and found, wow, this is, this is really good, because I I’m learning from other people that said experience is amazing, and I think that’s where I’ve learned most of mine and mentors, and I’ve had some really good ones, and been lucky with that. And so I always try to get other people to find we have a mentorship program at our office now where I’m mentoring somebody and they’re mentoring somebody. And so we, we, you know, just go and casually talk about a whole bunch of different things that we can learn from. And also, we did hire when we when we all got together as, instead of being individual, siloed companies and went together as Cantiro, as one company, did hire a consultant. Right to help us do that, okay? And because, you know, I, I never really worked for a large organization that had, there was all these small little companies. They were small. It was pretty easy to to manage that. But when you have now different layers of executive and then it starts being much more of a triangle instead of flat. How do you deal with that? And I knew, I think, knowing your weaknesses, so I knew that that was not my strength. My strength is is more on, you know, gut instinct on real estate. So got a consultant in to help us, and it’s been amazing. He’s really helped our organization become a well run organization that has good mentorship, good, good growth, good, good layers of management.

Matt Knight  1:00:49

Awesome. Well, that’s a good place for me to transition. So actually, ABFI has a long history of running peer mentorship groups in the family business space. We’re relaunching them this year that we’re really excited about, and really just wanted to thank you for your time today, for sharing your story and insights. And really think that that there’s a lot of kind of powerful nuggets that people can take away around, you know, leadership, even though you said, you know, it’s not never something that you’ve aspired to be, but I think you have, you know, more than 150 people you know who are pretty powerfully following you, and also about kind of the power of mentorship within organizations. And I think there is a lot there around risk taking as well, and the power of kind of getting out of your comfort zone to do what’s best for you, but also looking at how that translates into innovation and risk taking to do the best thing for your customer, so that so that everyone can can have a good future. Yes, so thank you again.

George Cantalini  1:01:49

Thank you. Thanks for letting me tell my story. It’s been awesome. Appreciate it.