Learning to Design, Build and Change Direction
My interest in business began in high school through Junior Achievement, where I received an early introduction to entrepreneurship and the practical work involved in creating a business.
At that age, however, I was certain that music would be my future. I was deeply involved in the local music scene as a club DJ and event organizer before attending Fanshawe College in London for music production and engineering. It was an excellent, industry-led program filled with talented people. It also taught me that making a passion into a profession can change the relationship you have with it. I ultimately decided that remaining in the music industry was not the right lifelong path for me.
Renovation work had already been part of my life for years. My father was a shift worker who involved me whenever something needed to be repaired, built or figured out, and I continued doing renovations to help pay for school. After returning to Hamilton, I entered Mohawk College's Architectural Technology program and completed its intensive academic and co-op structure.
By the time I reached my co-op placements, I had established Wright Design Homes as a sole proprietorship. For two placements, my own business served as the employer while instructors assessed the projects and obtained evaluations from the clients whose homes I was working in. It was an early indication that I was often more comfortable creating an opportunity than waiting for one.
Seeing Business at Different Scales
After Mohawk, I pursued the mathematical and engineering side of design with a structural wood engineering company in Markham. I later worked with Losani Homes on design and custom alterations before moving into sales with Lafarge Canada's aggregates division.
Lafarge provided a very different education in business. In an organization of that scale, sales targets, customer demand, production and transportation were connected continuously. My customers were often small and medium-sized construction companies—but “small” was relative to Lafarge's size. A contractor could perform substantial annual work and still be a comparatively small account inside a multinational operation.
The experience taught me to look at demand before committing resources. Enthusiasm for a product does not establish a market. A business needs to understand who will buy, what they value and what the numbers support before it builds capacity around hoped-for sales.
At Mattamy Homes, I returned to residential design within a division producing homes at tremendous scale. I prepared custom-design proposals for purchasers while also gaining exposure to contract work, production systems and efforts to improve structural efficiency. That environment taught me that scale determines which details deserve immediate attention. A modest per-unit improvement can become an enormous result when repeated thousands of times. In a smaller business, the same detail may reasonably wait while a more consequential problem is addressed.
My later industrial, commercial and institutional construction experience expanded that perspective again. I worked on design, estimating, budgeting and project management for hospital projects in Ontario and out of province, alongside organizations including Black & McDonald, EllisDon and Sutherland-Schultz. Winning a project was only the beginning. Labour, materials, scheduling, changes and documentation all had to be controlled if the company was going to earn the result anticipated in its proposal.
Running Businesses, Not Simply Observing Them
My work later continued through incorporated construction and renovation companies. I undertook extensive residential projects, including major additions and the complete reconstruction of a fire-damaged, high-end home. That project gave me a direct education in financing, carrying costs, specialized insurance and cash flow. The project ultimately earned a profit, but it also demonstrated how someone can control a valuable asset and still be cash poor while the work is underway.
I eventually shifted toward a focused local kitchen-and-bath company with fewer employees and shorter project timelines. The business combined contracting, custom design, a customer-facing showroom, retail sales, inventory and product distribution. I purchased and managed inventory, sold products directly to customers and other contractors, and selected products that improved both the client offering and project margins.
Smaller projects reduced the risk of depending on one distant completion date, but they introduced different business questions: how much cash should be tied up in inventory, which products justified showroom space, which services produced the strongest margins and whether total sales were concealing meaningful differences between revenue streams.
Throughout these businesses, I maintained the books and handled responsibilities that included payroll, remittances, project budgets and year-end coordination. I initially performed some calculations manually because I wanted to understand how the system actually worked. I am glad I learned it that way. I also learned that understanding a task does not mean the owner should continue spending valuable time performing it indefinitely.
Learning Through Other Owners
After more than 20 years as an independent owner-operator, I have noticed that business owners tend to find one another. We meet through projects, mutual contacts, community activities and sometimes simply because another person with an unusually flexible schedule is out on a weekday afternoon.
For approximately 15 years, those relationships have led me to advise numerous small-business owners, both formally and informally. That experience has extended beyond construction into retail, the food industry, daycare operations and automotive service. It has shown me how differently the same principles can affect businesses with different customers, cost structures, employees and objectives.
Good consulting does not mean pretending to be the expert in every field. It means recognizing when financial or operational information points to a larger issue, helping the owner understand why it matters, and ensuring that the appropriate accountant, lawyer, HR professional or other specialist becomes involved when their expertise is required.
