Allan is a business coach in Calgary, who's aim is to provide the tools to SMB owners that they require to be successful. Allan has 24 years in the FS business, is a Red Seal Chef, is working towards completing his MBA, has worked in sales and sales management and is always committed to having an impact in all interactions with everyone he meets. He moved to Calgary from Edmonton 5 years ago and is enjoying all Calgary has to offer! Connect with Bryon here: www.thehowardteam.net https://www.facebook.com/thehowardteamcalgary https://www.instagram.com/calgary_living/ Email: bryon@thehoeardteam.net Phone: 403-589-0004
Yeah, well, folks, welcome to another edition of what's this podcast called Calgary, living a real estate and lifestyle. I'm your host. And my name is Brian Howard. And today I have the free choice. Privilege. I believe of heaven. Alan Grant on the show. Ellen was recently introduced to me by my old friend, Harold, and and Alan has a business and is a Calgary liver, I guess his, his business is called action edge business.
Alan, welcome to the Stoll. Looking forward to having hearing a little bit about your Calgary life and Calgary living experience. Excellent. Yep. The company actually is called action, edge business coaching. I'm actually, I'm a business coach by training currently, when you hear all, they can forward it to it.
Thanks. And when Harold introduced us you know, I've had a coach personally, a one-on-one type coach since [00:01:00] January of 2006, almost consistently for my business and frequently for my. Interest in endurance sport as well. So I am a big fan of coaching. So like to get into that. Yeah. One of the things I always say is, you know, if Connor Connor McDavid needs a coach, who's, you know, arguably the best hockey player in the world.
And he has a team of coaches, right? He has, I had goats for the team. He has a personal fitness coach. You know, he has a hockey skills coach. He has a life coach. I mean, he has all these different kinds of coaches. As many athletes do. So my question is to a lot of the business owners that I made is w w what makes you think that you don't need a coach?
Right? Connor McDavid needs a coach, you know, that's what got him there. So if people are interested in becoming, you know a high achieving business owner then coaching can certainly get you. Certainly I know that in the real estate industry every top producer, a highly [00:02:00] productive agent has some sort of coach, well that's most of my experience anyway, and the few that I've met, that don't, I'm just like blown away with, you know, you know, their brains versus, you know, the rest of us that are able to, you know, do great things in great numbers.
And without, without a coach, tell me, Ellen, how did you happen to come to live in Kansas? I was actually transferred here through a company, a corporation I was working for. And so I just thought it was a great opportunity. My wife was actually works in the film industry, so she thought it might be a great opportunity for her to come down here.
And things generally are a little more active in Calgary than in Edmonton. So I was transferred here from Edmonton. I grew up in it. Okay. And so how many years have you been. Five years now. Oh, five years. So you came to Calgary, you know, 2016 ish, I guess not a great time to move to Calgary, I think.
And your wife coming from the film industry. I mean, in Edmonton, I, I was, when you said that I was hoping she wasn't [00:03:00] coming from Vancouver or Toronto or Los Angeles because Calgary wouldn't be the place, but I suppose it's a step up from Edmonton, right? Well, we met him in Vancouver, actually lived in Vancouver for about 15 years.
She was working in the business in Vancouver. We had a, you know, we had a family, my family was all still in Edmonton, so we decided to move to Edmonton and we spent some time there. So yeah. Now we're here. He's, he's a little bit older. He's 11 now. So he's a little bit older though. Oh, that's great.
Reliant. That's great. When you moved to Calgary in 2016, did you buy a home or you that we bought a home in the Northeast? We we didn't know the city that well, we really tried to find something that you know, we didn't want to break the bank. We didn't know what a Calgary was going to hold for us longterm.
So we we really picked up a fixer upper in the Northeast and it's, it's not us really well. It's got great bones, just, you know, need needed a lot of cosmetic work. So that's we're, we're working our way through. What community in the Northeast, Tara. Dale. [00:04:00] Oh, well, good for you. And and so you you bought in terror, Dale in 2016, what's happened in your sort of mindset on that property since 2016 as your property assessments are coming in.
Like I assume, did it go down in value? In, well, 2017 was a better year, probably went up in value and then 20 18, 19 20. Or do you just not watch those things because it's your home, you're living there and you have no intentions of moving. Like what what's happened to you in your mindset. I assume it's worth more today.
I assume it's worth more today. Than it was in 2016, is it actually worth about the same as when we bought it? Because it did go down the last couple of years. I think it's about the same now, maybe a touch more, but one of the things that we lack is a garage. So that's a, that's something that I'm planning to build here in the next year.
Do you you know, like, do you ever think like recently in 2016? Well, what if I just had a bot in Victoria? Does that like, do you ever beat yourself up on that? Well, we had a condo in Vancouver when we [00:05:00] first met. So when we, when we sold our condo, we actually. Quite a bit of money. We were, we were very pleased with ourselves.
We basically traded in our condo for a house in St. Albert. And so when we moved down here, you know, we kinda, we really kind of did across, we actually probably took a half a step down, but like I said, we just wanted to make sure that you know, we had some opportunity in my, in my head. I thought, great.
This thing will become worth a lot more in a short period of time, especially if we put the work into it. So that was really my thought process around that. And you were wrong. I think long term it will pay off maybe short, not so much. I, you know, it's interesting. Nobody knew that Ben Damache was coming.
Nobody could have seen that coming. So it's absolutely probably thrown a wrench in a lot of people's plans, but at the same time, you know, it's a, it's a comfortable home, so we're happy here. And, you know, in, in my podcast with frequent guests, I like to get in dig a little deep into sort of real estate decisions and, you know, really I, I [00:06:00] kind of think there's a lot of luck involved or bad luck.
And you know, as a young realtor sort of. There, you know, I used to think that I was a, you know, maybe I'm able to you know, make smart decisions around location, you know, cause they say in real estate location, location, location, but it's really my experience in Calgary since 2003 it's timing, timing, timing.
Yeah, and it's, it's hard to time it the older I get the more, I, I believe that you know, well, the more the older I get and I speak to with colleagues like yourself and business owners and, you know, this others that have either, well, for the most part become wealthy you know, they acknowledge a fair amount of lock-in timing in, you know, in the decisions.
So anyway, it's just a fun, I find that kind of a fun exploration. I'll tell you a story kind of right around that, that same thought processes. When we bought our condo in Vancouver, it was the time that the leaky condo [00:07:00] crisis was happening and why, you know, we, we definitely benefited from somebody else's bad fortune because.
They had a, there was a small family, he was a pilot and they bought this condo and then the assessment came right. And assessment just kept getting bigger and bigger. I, I think in the end they ended up putting almost a hundred thousand dollars extra into the place. You know, it was a very large complex.
And then they, you know, they had gave birth to another child. In the meantime, it was a two bedroom, condo was 800 square feet. And, you know, they were bursting at the seams. So pretty much the second that they could, they put the thing in the market. They'd moved. They bought another property. And so they just wanted to get rid of the thing.
So we basically bought the condo for the same price they paid for it about six years earlier, which at the time was was quite a saving. So it was, it was quite a, a discount. So when we went to sell it three years later, we did make a considerable amount of money. So talking about luck, that was just sheer dumb luck for [00:08:00] yeah, no, that's, that's great.
Interesting. And so what do you love most about Kelly? Yeah. I, you know, we really like Calgary. We liked the the way it's laid out. Right. So coming from a big city in Vancouver, having lived there for a long time, traffic's really difficult. And Calgary, Edmonton's funny. I don't, I don't really know you know, who's involved in city planning there, but there's, there's certainly some some lag.
Four four thoughts there, but I find that the freeway system in Calgary is makes much more sense. It's a little easier to get around the city, which I really do enjoy. The downtown core is you know, obviously we're not right now, not great, but certainly when we moved here and earlier in the, in the teens, when we were visiting it's a vibrant place to be, and it's interesting and there's lots going on and.
It's still got a vibrant arts culture being close to the mountains, you know, there's, there's a lot of great things about Calvary. Hmm, cool. And what does that, what strikes you about Calgary? I mean, anything else to add to that? [00:09:00] Like Well, in terms of the, I may be the freeways, but is there anything else that kind of just strikes you about maybe mindset or something of Calgary?
Well, I do find, well, sorry, I'm just going to go back to the environment there for, for before I get into that. Cause I mean, having come from CA from Vancouver where there's, you know, Stanley park in that Really like that bull river valley walk through downtown. I mean, it's a beautiful little area, you know, and you've got Kensington and there's some kind of cool artsy and you know, restaurants and things there.
So, I mean, there's, there's lots of cool things to do here. And there is a lot of park space in Calgary. But the, the frame of mind, it's funny. Cause it's, it's kind of in the middle between Edmonton and Vancouver, Vancouver's got to get, don't gotta, you know, Where the big guys on the block, and we don't really care about anybody else.
And Edmonton on the other hand is extremely friendly and kind of really blue collar and easy to talk to people there in Calgary, my somewhere in the middle. So you have a faction of the population that are really white collar and, you know, a lot of head offices for a long time you know, oil industry and such.
And then you still, you know, you've got some [00:10:00] people who are on the working class side as well. So it's a really nice mix of people here. You you were born in Alberta, in Edmonton, is that right? Correct. And so what about the boom bust the economy of our province? Like what, any thoughts, what was your experience of that and where your own was your own family affected, like in the early eighties?
Or, you know, can you just talk to us a little bit about that? Yeah, it's funny. My. Dad was a very conservative man. And he w he taught at at NAIT, Northern Alberta Institute of technology. He taught instruction and he was, you know, he, he didn't like spending money, but he, and a couple of friends that he has got together and they bought a bunch of properties in the early eighties.
And, you know, it took them a long time to. It's like finally 82 with the crash. No, it was like 81 and a half. Right. And they took a long time to really wrap their heads around it. And then they decided to take the plunge. And then six months later the economy died. So he spent the next three or four years, you know, working through these [00:11:00] properties and a couple of the guys.
In there with kind of bailed on him. And he was just kind of waiting for the time that he could kind of make his money back and then he got out. So it's fun. It's funny. You talked about that boomer bus thing and you know, we, we've seen a bunch of them. You know, it's nice to see that the government is now at least attempting to diversify the economy a little bit.
We're seeing a lot more tech happening here in Calgary and Edmonton. So I mean, it's, it's it's a pleasure to see that the I believe now, I don't want to make an enemy out of anybody. You know, I, I think fossil fuels are a dying industry on some level. That doesn't mean that they're going to end tomorrow.
But you know, the question is, you know, what are we doing to, to counteract that? So there are a lot of people out there who are working towards that, so that's great. And then the green economy, of course, in my opinion, is gonna gonna really take off. Wonderful. Well just can't help myself getting back to 1982.
So what, what did your dad like? Did he, was he able to sell before the crash of 82? No, he was that's when he got in, he got in just before the crash, like six months [00:12:00] before the crash. Did he get the keys back? Banquet he had to, oh, no. He, they held on for four years or four years. Yeah. Yeah. He toughed it out.
Yeah. And you know, he was the maintenance guy for the most part. So he used to get calls in the middle of the night, you know? Oh, you know, our, our water heater burst or, you know, whatever my doorbell doesn't work. So, you know, try off the next day. Go and fix it. And, you know, he did that for three or four years and finally they, they sold, they sold one property kind of at a time and they finally divested themselves of that whole thing within four years or so.
Wow. And then and you remember that at the time where you I'm guessing you were like somewhere between. Tenured nine years old and 15 at the time, like around the crash, was it, was it, was it a tough time for your family or do your dad held his instruction job? You guys probably want that effective.
I guess he was still working. So, I mean, it was all happening in the background. I think that this was affecting his [00:13:00] retirement more than anything else. Right, right. I see. Because of that, he didn't retire super rich. And he just, like, there was no change except a lot more work on evenings and weekends.
It sounds like managing properties. I think so. And I think at the end of the day he, he lost a little bit of money, but I, you know, obviously it wasn't her Saturday forum, so, and so Ellen you've come from a career in the, I believe you told me the sort of the, maybe I want to think of it as systems or, you know, the grocery industry.
And a recently launched your own business action, edge business coaching. Am I right there? Tell us a little bit about your career up until now. I've been in working in food service for about 24 years. I've worked in the film industry as well. And I did some movie catering in Vancouver when I was there.
Worked on the cruise, you know, where, you know, there's a real hierarchy is a real system to how things work. Became a chef you know, in kitchens, of course, things don't work unless they were. Kind of doing their bit and doing their job. And so systems became really [00:14:00] important to me, systems and training culture, building teams, really understanding what, what makes businesses tick.
And I think a lot of people in the trades will, would be able to relate to that. You know, there has to be, you know, if you, as soon as you get a team of people, all kind of working towards a common goal, there has to be a system for it to work. It's the same in business. Yeah, I worked my way up to become an executive chef where, you know, that's where I really started to learn about finances and how finances work and budgeting and all those things.
When I was doing my apprenticeship, I was working for an independent restaurant and the chef told me at that time, he says, you know, when you, when I'm done with you, you're going to be as smart as a lawyer, you know? And at the time I was really impressed by that, but it's true, you know, and I would argue.
You know, every business needs a little more food service because there are so many things it's very intense environment. And there's just so many things that need to happen for a food service organization to truly be successful. And, and I think of every business sort of understood some of those things a little bit better.
We'd all be a little bit [00:15:00] better. Wow. That's great. And so action, edge business coaching. What is it that like who's your ideal client? What is it and how do you help, you know, your clients? Well, first of all, it's not, it's not my business, particularly partnered with action edge.
They've been around for 14 years out here in Calgary, and they actually have been helping thousands of business owners throughout Alberta into BC. And we are talking about perhaps expanding throughout Alberta. So they're a very large organization. They're actually number one in the world.
And I'm, I'm actually a top 25 coach in the world. So that's a, it's a pretty, pretty cool thing to be happening. I didn't even know that was now having said that the ideal client for me is somebody who is truly committed to to success and to their own personal development and to has what we call a growth mindset.
I'm sure that's not a new term for most people. And really on the track for making their life and their business better. Right. And you know, our big tagline is we want to build a [00:16:00] business that works without you. So a lot of the time business owners get into business, believing that they're going to have all this freedom and this money, and they find out that.
It's sex, their energy and their focus, and they're really not making that much money. So you know, we work with a framework that really helps business owners understand their business better. We, we mentored them and we help them grow using a pretty solid framework to create a business that works without them.
Sometimes they want to stay in the business. Sometimes they don't. Wonderful. And so Alan, I guess, you know, I'm looking at our time here and we want to be conscious of our listeners times. What is the, I guess a couple of questions. What is the best way for people to reach out to you to explore more or find you, I guess, are you on Instagram?
And. If you had a billboard Allen, you know on the way to the airport or on the way to the mountains or on the way down to Turner valley, what would the billboard say? The billboard for me would say I, I help business owners [00:17:00] achieve their best life and their vision. So that that's, that's my thing, personally, I'm writing this down.
I help business owners achieve their best life and vision. That's right. Nice. I like it. And you know, that encompasses so many things because you know, one of the first things I do when I start working with, you know, businesses is what's your five-year plan. Where do you want your business to be in five?
And moreover, where do you want to be in five years? So once you kind of get a sense of where you want to be in five years and how much money you want to be making or what your lifestyle looks like, then you can start to look at your business and say, what does my business need to be? Or what does it need to look like in order to provide me with that lifestyle?
Right. And that's the start. So then like an Olympic athlete who says, you know, in four years I want to be at the Olympics and they work backwards. We'll have to run this race, this race, this race, this race. And I have to achieve all these things in order to get to the Olympics in order to qualify. So it's the same for, for for us, for business owners, if that's the business.
[00:18:00] Size or what the business needs to look like in order for you to have the lifestyle you want, let's reverse engineer it, and then we can start building towards it. Fantastic. So you can get a hold of me at action, edge business. coaching.com is our website and you can get a hold of me at Alan Grant at action and business coaching.
Dot com I'm not on Instagram because I, you know, I always tell people, pick two things that you're really going to be committed to. So for me, it's Facebook and LinkedIn. Nice. Very good. And we will supply links in the show notes. So that was too. I'll thank you so much for coming on, being a guest on the show, it was really great to chat.
Learn more about you and your life in Calgary and action, edge business, coaching your involvement there, and your passion for helping us. Yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate the time and appreciate the opportunity. So, and look forward to listening to more of these podcasts [00:19:00] as time goes on here and learn more about other calorie citizens.
Awesome. And this is Brian Howard and Alan Grant.