Episodes

What does it take to earn that little logo on a bag of coffee? More than you might think. With Colin away, Blair and Jacob take over the mic to ask a question most people answer without thinking: what is the purpose of a business? Profit matters, they agree. But is it the whole scorecard? They unpack the shift from shareholder thinking to stakeholder thinking, walk through the five areas a B Corp assessment examines, and share how many businesses come up short on their first attempt. The gap m...

Is AI a bubble? Colin has a one word answer. Then he takes it back. This week on The Free Lunch Podcast, Colin and Greg follow the money behind the AI boom, from the hundreds of billions tech giants are pouring into data centers to the power grids racing to keep up. You’ll hear why Colin thinks electricity, not chips, could be the real bottleneck, and what a $200 laptop from Canadian Tire has to do with any of it. They also look back at the tech wreck, ask whether this time is really different...

Five year GICs are paying over 4% and come with a guarantee. So why not just move your fixed income there and call it a day? In this episode of The Free Lunch Podcast, Colin and Greg tackle a question they've been hearing more often as bond returns have dipped in recent months. They walk through why bond prices move the way they do, what 2022 taught investors, and why Greg says a GIC can be compared to a bond issued by a bank. They also dig into the risks that never show up on your statement, ...

What do a World Series champion and a strong financial plan have in common? According to Colin, neither one happens by accident. In this solo episode, Colin steps up to the plate with baseball as his guide, exploring why every great roster and every great portfolio starts with the same question: what are you actually trying to build? He breaks down why the best hitters in the game still fail most of the time, why a perfectly struck ball can still be an out, and what the odds really look like w...

What does a professional money manager really mean when they say they've gone defensive? Sometimes it means moving from 2% cash to 4%. Headlines everywhere say the stock market is expensive, and Colin and Greg acknowledge some of those warnings may well be true. But they ask a tougher question: if the market is pricey, what are you actually supposed to do about it? They dig into valuation measures like the CAPE ratio, revisit what happened to investors who called the tech bubble too early, and...

What would you do if a repair company told you it would take ten days to fix your internet? Colin knows exactly what he did, and that company never got him back. In this episode, Colin and Greg take a detour from markets to talk about the moment every relationship eventually faces: when something goes wrong. Why do small mistakes turn into big trust problems? And why does silence so often do more damage than the original error? They unpack a simple three step approach to recovery, why a stack ...

Ronald Reagan once stood beside a Canadian prime minister and said protectionism is out and trade expansion is in. Today, tariffs between Canada and the US are as high as 50 percent, and the two countries are further apart than they have been in decades. In this episode, Colin and Greg break down what a tariff actually is, who really pays for it, and why the answer is more complicated than politicians suggest. They walk through a simple product example, then scale it up to the auto industry, en...

Oil is flirting with $100 a barrel again, and Colin and Greg ask the obvious question: does that mean Calgary is heading back into a hiring boom? Not exactly. Greg walks through how capital discipline, automation, and shareholder demands have reshaped the energy sector, and why higher prices tend to reward company balance sheets before they reward payrolls. From there the conversation gets personal. Colin builds out a full household balance sheet for a Calgary energy employee, and the correlat...

Colin and Greg dive straight into WTI climbing back above ninety dollars a barrel. For anyone working in Calgary's energy sector, they ask a question most people never consider: how much of your financial life, salary, bonus, employer stock, even your house, is already tied to one industry. They also revisit an old story about a client who refused to diversify because a dividend was covering his mortgage. It didn't end well. A good reminder that knowing a company well and owning too much of it...

Would losing your job tomorrow be financially catastrophic, or just painful? Colin digs into that question in episode two of his Energy Professionals Financial Playbook series. He breaks down why severance is a bridge, not a windfall, and why fear tends to be the most expensive part of any downturn. The families who come out ahead usually prepared quietly during the good years, not during the panic. Let me know if this works, and once you've picked your clip and social post, I'll get the comp...

Would losing your job tomorrow be financially catastrophic, or just painful? Colin digs into that question in episode two of his Energy Professionals Financial Playbook series. He breaks down why severance is a bridge, not a windfall, and why fear tends to be the most expensive part of any downturn. The families who come out ahead usually prepared quietly during the good years, not during the panic.

What if you had to pay someone to take your oil off your hands? It actually happened, and Colin opens this episode with that story, along with the eerie Tuesday layoffs that became a running fear across Calgary's oil patch. This kicks off a new series, the Energy Professionals Financial Playbook, looking at why so many people unknowingly tie their salary, investments, home value, and employer stock to the same cyclical industry. Colin also breaks down the real difference between rich and wealt...

What happens when three siblings from different marriages all believe they're getting the family farm? Trish Tate has seen it firsthand, and it rarely ends simply. On this episode of The Free Lunch Podcast, Colin sits down with Trish, a fourth generation farmer and Canvas Wealth's newest advisor, fresh off a week at Ag in Motion in Saskatoon. They talk drones, giant seed carts, and how technology is quietly reshaping farm operations. Then the conversation turns to a number that surprised even ...

What's the best investment move you can make this summer? According to Colin, it's nothing. Or almost nothing. In this solo episode, Colin trades market talk for a summer reading list: seven books he believes can make you a better investor, and most of them aren't really about investing at all. From why doing well with money has more to do with behaviour than intelligence, to the concept of memory dividends and why some experiences come with expiration dates, Colin makes the case that the best...

What if the biggest financial planning mistake has nothing to do with your investments? This week on The Free Lunch Podcast, Colin sits down with Lori Curtiss, a fee based financial planner with a master's in financial psychology, to dig into the money story playing in your head and how it quietly shapes every decision you make, from the grocery aisle to your retirement plan. Colin and Lori get into the debt traps that are easier to fall into than ever (wait until you hear the rolled over car ...

What does a $175,000 chuckwagon tarp have to do with your portfolio? More than you'd think. Fresh off Stampede season, Colin and Jacob take on one of Calgary's flashiest marketing traditions and ask the question nobody at the rodeo is asking: where does that money actually come from? Colin runs the math on what a six figure sponsorship might really require in revenue to support it, and the number will surprise you. From there, the conversation gets bigger. Why do some of the wealthiest people ...

Get rich quick and get skinny quick have a lot in common. Neither one works. This week on The Free Lunch Podcast, Colin and Greg welcome Phil McInnis, Chief Investment Strategist at Avantis Investors, who compares building wealth to building fitness. In his view, it's not the shortcuts that matter, it's the boring basics done consistently over decades. From goal setting to factor investing to why your brain isn't wired for market swings, Phil shares what he thinks investors with 10, 20, or 30 ...

The World Cup isn't just great TV, it's one of the best crash courses in investing you'll ever get. In this solo episode, Colin breaks down what championship soccer teams can teach us about building a championship portfolio: why the best team doesn't always win on any given day, why bonds are the unsung goalkeeper of your portfolio, and why chasing last year's hottest stock is a lot like betting on last year's Golden Boot winner. Plus, why "home field advantage" might be quietly costing Canadia...

Great companies do not always make great investments With AI stocks grabbing headlines lately, Colin and Greg ask the question a lot of investors skip: what are you actually paying for that future growth? In this episode of The Free Lunch Podcast, they talk through market concentration, the Magnificent Seven, and why a diversified portfolio usually beats chasing the next big theme, whether that's AI today or dot coms back in 2000.

What if "higher for longer" just means normal? That's the question Colin and Jacob dig into on this week's episode of The Free Lunch Podcast, and it's one worth sitting with. For most of the last decade, ultra-low interest rates felt like the baseline. But historically? They were the anomaly. Colin and Jacob talk through what the new Fed chair's first meeting signals, why the bond market matters more than most people think, and what today's rate environment actually means for retirees, homeown...

Colin and Greg had one of their most honest conversations yet on The Free Lunch Podcast this week, talking through IPO mania, the current wave of AI and space company offerings, and why the strategies that sound disciplined on paper often fall apart in practice. Their take? If you want to put a small slice of your portfolio into something speculative because you find it interesting, that's very different from betting your future on it.

The single biggest lesson from 30 years in the industry? Markets reward ownership, not prediction. In this episode of The Free Lunch Podcast, Greg sits down with Jacob for a mentorship-style conversation about what actually works in investing and what consistently fails. They dig into why so many investors hurt themselves trying to outsmart the market, and why staying invested and diversified tends to beat almost every clever strategy people try. Greg puts it simply: the real challenge in inve...

Estate planning isn't just for the ultra-wealthy. It's for anyone who owns a home, has kids, or simply wants to make a hard time a little easier for the people they love. In this episode of The Free Lunch Podcast, Colin and Blair break down what estate planning actually looks like for everyday Canadian families, including the tax surprises most people don't see coming, why your beneficiary designations might be quietly working against you, and what Blair calls "the most important document you'l...

What is likely to work in investing? According to Colin, it's the advice nobody gets excited about. Stay diversified. Rebalance consistently. Cut your tax bill. Understand your own behavioural blind spots. None of it is glamorous, but the data generally backs it up. Colin and Greg get into all of it on this episode of The Free Lunch Podcast, including why "which stock should I buy" may be the wrong question.