About two years ago, Luke Hansen-MacDonald, president of HanMac Capital, his family’s single-family office, hit on the idea to start a podcast. He wanted to share the experience and knowledge of family business leaders with others to help strengthen family businesses across Canada. Nearly 50 episodes later, Beyond the Family Business is a hit—and growing.
Later this month, Canadian Family Offices will begin regularly featuring Luke’s podcast to bring the insights of his guests—and the sometimes-hard-won lessons they and Luke himself have learned as leaders in family offices and enterprises—to our readers.
We recently sat down with Luke (and asked a few of the same questions he asks his podcast guests) to learn more about his own experience as a second-generation leader, why he felt compelled to start the podcast, and his vision for the future.
What does family mean to you?
I am a father of two young kids, as well as somebody who has virtually for their entire life worked with my mom, dad and brother. Family is the most important thing in life.
What is your family business and how did you get involved?
The original family business was Clearwater Seafoods. It was started by my dad, Colin MacDonald, and my uncle, John Risely, in 1976 in Nova Scotia. They started by selling lobsters from a pickup truck at the side of the road. Over the next 45 years, they grew it to become one of the largest seafood and fishing businesses in the world. They also had a number of other ventures. One was called Ocean Nutrition, which was the largest producer of fish oil supplements in the world, as well as Columbus Communications, which was a large telecom business in the Caribbean and Latin America.
My role in the family business started with doing the midnight packing shift for lobsters when I was fresh out of high school. Later, I took a seven-year hiatus to work with my brother. We built an award-winning business directing and producing music videos. It was a lot of fun, but when I was in my mid 20s, I realized it was not what I wanted to do forever.
The biggest personal challenge I face … is finding the right pace of transition from the first to second generation. When do we fully hand over the reins?
Around that time, my dad got sick, and there was no next generation involved in the family business at the time. I pitched him on the idea of me coming back to work with him. I went from directing music videos to working 200 miles offshore on a fishing vessel within a matter of weeks. I haven’t looked back.
Why did you decide to start a single-family office? What does it look like in terms of staffing? What are the biggest challenges?
In 2015, we sold the telecom business. This was a huge liquidity event, and we had to decide what to do next. Around that time, we attended an event about family offices put on by Scott McCain [chairman of McCain Foods], whom I have since interviewed on my podcast. That’s when we decided to start the family office.
I transitioned out of the seafood business into the family office. We hired a third-party CEO who had worked with my dad and uncle. We saw the family office as an opportunity to start a new venture. HanMac Capital is focused on a more diversified investment strategy. The goal was to not only bet everything on black, which we had done a number of times very successfully, but to also start to think about preservation of wealth, which often happens as you transition from first to second generation.
We now have a team of 12 people. Our investment portfolio includes our mid-market private equity firm, Founders East. Through the firm, we invest in family businesses across a mix of industries, from automation machinery to marine components to beauty product distribution. The common thread is they are great Atlantic Canadian businesses that have succession issues. We come in, buy the majority of the business and work with them to figure out succession either internally from their own management team or externally.
We make decisions based on what is most important for our family first.
The biggest personal challenge I face as president of the family office is finding the right pace of transition from the first to second generation. When do we fully hand over the reins? At this stage, my dad, who is in his late 70s, is only in the office one day a week, but he has a wealth of knowledge and there is a lot to learn from him. We have a strong third-party CEO, as well as a great team, and that helps a lot. I’m not taking on everything all at once, but it is something that is ever present in my mind—making sure I don’t jump into the deep end unnecessarily.
What philosophy guides your family office?
There are three tenets we believe in deeply, and they come from my parents. The first is family is the most important thing, not money. We make decisions based on what is most important for our family first.
The second is purpose—and the idea that purpose does not have to be dictated by whatever the family business is doing right now. The reason I’m the only active day-to-day family member is because my brother and mom are both very passionate about other things, and that’s what they spend their time on.
Third, my dad has really championed giving back to the community, and that is really important to all of us. We’re at a point where we are deciding as a family what we care about to ensure there is more engagement from everyone. This comes back to purpose. We want to make a meaningful impact.
Why did you decide to start Beyond the Family Business?
I officially started it about 18 months ago. The world of family business is secretive, it can be very isolating for people in it, and in public discourse it often has a negative connotation due to nepotism—in some situations, rightfully so. But I also know many family business owners who are great people, who care deeply about their teams and their community.
The podcast is about sharing the stories and lessons from the world of family business. My hope is that other entrepreneurs and next-gen family business owners learn from the mistakes and successes of others. My goal is to help make family businesses stronger and inspire good stewardship of wealth. I’m on this journey, too.
We cover a wide variety of topics. I’ve interviewed first-gen, second-gen, all the way to sixth-generation family business members, largely from Canada, but also entrepreneurs from the U.S., UK, Continental Europe, Africa—all over the world. Going forward, as part of the Canadian Family Offices series, we will focus specifically on Canadian family businesses.
Do you have any favourite interviews?
They’re all my favourites, but two I often point out to people represent the breadth of family businesses. I interviewed Scott McCain, a next-generation leader whose kids are also very involved in the operation of their large, complex family business. He has a wealth of knowledge on the topic of the family office, the concept of having an investment vehicle, as well as philanthropy. That was a comprehensive conversation. Recently, I interviewed Tony and Peter Nahas, two brothers who took over their family’s restaurant business here in Halifax, streamlined it and turned it into a franchise model with 30 locations across Canada and growing at an incredible pace. It’s an awesome discussion around next-gen entrepreneurship, dynamics between brothers, dealing with the family legacy.
What is your vision for Beyond the Family Business?
I am going to keep doing what I’m doing, connecting with awesome family business owners and sharing their stories. Working with Canadian Family Offices will help me connect with new people and reach more people in my audience. I’m really excited about the launch of the series.
Mary Teresa Bitti is an award-winning journalist/multimedia storyteller/
entrepreneur/collaborator with more than 30 years’ experience crafting compelling
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