Matt Knight at Alberta business families centre: from startup to exit

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Matt Knight’s early consulting career meant he ended up working with many businesses – including family businesses like Molson Coors and Estee Lauder. He also experienced co-founding a local brewery, and understanding the challenges of starting and growing businesses meant he was well positioned when the Alberta Business Family Institute (ABFI) tapped him to lead the organization.

The Edmonton-based organization is part of the Alberta School of Business at the University of Alberta. It started as a collaboration of a group of Alberta business families – including founding patrons Ron Mannix, Sandy Mactaggart and Stanley Milner – and academic experts from the University of Alberta’s School of Business. It conducts research and holds courses, conferences and events for business families and advisors, as well as running a podcast called Table Talk.

Executive director of the institute, Knight holds an MBA from Cape Breton University and is an FEA and ICD.D designate, and also continues consulting work.

Here, he talks about the challenges business families face, how ABFI came about, and how he came to lead the organization.

How did ABFI come about?

ABFI’s origins go back to the early 1990s. We were set up by a group of local business families, who got together with leaders from the Alberta School of Business. They saw an opportunity for families with businesses to be better served in Alberta. We have been supported in the past by RBC Financial Group and other donors who have chosen to remain anonymous.

How did you end up at ABFI?

I call it a happy accident — it was a wonderful journey to get here.

I spent my early career as a management consultant, focusing on strategy and technology and business dynamics — working with businesses as they grow and scale.

It turned out that this included working with a lot of family-owned businesses. Some of them were quite large, for example Molson Coors, which was interesting because it was two business families coming together.

After extensive travel I wanted to stay put more and focus on supporting businesses in Alberta and Edmonton. I realized that with all I knew about how businesses grow, there was a gap in my knowledge in how businesses get started. That led to new adventures, including co-founding the brewery and working with a brother and sister team to build a medical device company (Umay.rest), and I helped set up a family office and managed a series of startups with Tim Latimer (Cashco Finacial).

I got more and more interested in how families carry forward their legacies, maintain their wealth and bring in children and new generations of family members.

What are some of the typical challenges that family businesses face?

Two of the most common ones we see are interrelated.

One is when a son or daughter takes over a business for a parent or a grandparent and they need to establish their credibility and leadership, but at the same time show their innovation and creativity and how they’re going to contribute to the business.

It’s a delicate balance: How do they make themselves unique while respecting that legacy and culture and making sure they bring the employees and the stakeholders and other shareholders along with them?

The other challenge we see a lot, which is related, is the concept of governance.

Whether you’re taking over the family business as the next generation or you’re getting ready to do this in a few years, how do you get involved in governance? How do you set it up in a way that the current leaders in the family will support?

You also have to think about how the next generation beyond you and even those who may already be retired are going to respond to the kind of governance that’s set up.

How do you deal with family dynamics in the business?

We’ve all seen shows like Succession. I don’t think there is any family with a business that could say they have not had conflict or differences, but usually, it’s nowhere near as bad as anything you’d see on TV.

Dynamics get complex in a family when there’s shared ownership and shared management. We work with families to get them to understand what their goals are, which ones they share and to build communication and help them collaborate.

Some of these dynamics include the relationship of Sean and Erin Rayner of [100-year-old Edmonton-based industrial HVAC firm] VETS Group, who were ABFI’s 2023 Signature Family and were included on our Table Talk podcast. They’ve shared their journey about how they gave up their early careers in Toronto to move back to Edmonton when their father faced a terminal cancer diagnosis. They had to navigate working together to support the transition, and how to build roles for themselves, which ultimately led to Erin leaving VETS to start her own business while continuing to support her brother in taking over the leadership.

How do you help families transition their business from building to managing and investing in what they’ve built?

It comes down to helping them analyze the change and learning how to adapt to it.

We ask families to consider whether they set up strong communication channels amongst themselves and help them ask the right questions.

Are they looking at innovation, new technology that can help them with the transition? Do they need to re-examine their governance?

We also help families work on strategic planning, help them focus on how they’re looking at the future.

And at ABFI, we offer continuous education so we can help families thrive in their businesses and, when they are successful, in structuring their wealth management for the next generations.

Our courses and events help to raise some of the common challenges that they can face, and we examine the various structures that they can consider, like single or multi-family offices that can be used to support business families with wealth management and transition.

At a recent event that looked at selling your family business, we looked at the power of working with independent and outside advisors to support how to structure deals and sell operating companies.

Sometimes it’s also helpful to bring in outside advisors, people who are not in that particular family’s business, who can add an independent perspective.

Do you have success stories to highlight?

We hold what we call our Signature Event every year to celebrate success stories. This year, our 20th annual event, we’re honouring the Sunner family. Their story began in the mid-1990s when Joe Sunner and his son Harry, then 19, immigrated to Canada and acquired a small PVC window shop.

Now Durabuilt Windows and Doors have nearly 700 employees and facilities across Western Canada, with three generations of the family involved. We look forward to sharing more on the Sunners’ story at our Signature Event in October.

Are all families with businesses the same?

Yes and no. Many of them have common challenges and opportunities, but they all have different stories, legacies, and values. This impacts how they look at strategic decisions and how they look to transition and grow. I like to (half-jokingly) say that they are all special but not unique.

Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

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