Larry Clay taught high school for seventeen years — PE, mechanics, math, English and built houses on the side to feed a family of eight. In 2004 he had eight houses to build and a teaching job, and he made a choice. He told me he didn’t want to be seventy, on a porch, wondering if he could have made it.

He also had a deathly fear of public speaking. Bad enough that he once stood at the back of a church and watched a high school girl read the announcements because he couldn’t do it. He made himself a vow that day, joined Toastmasters, and eventually became national president of the Canadian Home Builders’ Association.

We talked about the three levels of becoming a builder and why level three breaks so many companies. His framework for where any builder sits: McDonald’s, White Spot, Keg, or Michelin. What integrated design actually means when the architect, the engineers and the trades are all at the table before anything is drawn. Why affordability looks completely different in Newfoundland at $220,000 a house than it does in Vancouver. And the clients fifteen years ago who turned down the efficiency upgrades because they were only staying five years and what Larry wishes he had done anyway.

The last part is about legacy. Larry watched a six-time national champion stand unrecognized in a room full of wrestlers, and worked out what that meant for him. His answer is worth sitting with, and it starts earlier than most people think.

Larry Clay runs Clay Construction in the Greater Vancouver area and is past national president of the CHBA.

Ian Morgan of Next Architecture on renovating Edmonton’s law courts without closing them, putting AI to work on RFPs, and why a flat, mid-sized firm is a competitive advantage.

Ian trained at the Bartlett and in Cardiff, landed in Edmonton in 2002, and in 2016 co-founded Next Architecture with Alan Partridge, carrying forward a legacy that traces back to 1938. Thirty-four years into his career, he leads a deliberately mid-sized firm that competes with companies ten times its size, and in this conversation he explains exactly how.

We get into the parts of running a firm they don’t teach in architecture school: cash flow, forecasting, the months where payroll keeps you up at night, and the planning tools that turn those months back into sleep. Ian walks through the renovation of the Edmonton law courts, where the building couldn’t close, so his team built the new envelope outside the existing one and worked four storeys above an operating courthouse. We talk about laser scanning heritage buildings, what point-cloud data reveals that the naked eye can’t, how his firm trained AI on twenty years of project sheets to answer RFPs, and where he thinks the technology stops and the architect begins.

We also dig into how he builds his team: a flat structure where the partners sit at the same desks as everyone else, hiring for technical grounding, and why staying mid-sized on purpose is a client-service decision, not a growth failure.

Topics include: firm succession, leading through cyclical markets, budgeting and value engineering with clients, energy performance in Edmonton’s climate, WELL certification, historic preservation, BIM and Revit, AI in architecture, and building a team built to last.

Connect with Ian and Next Architecture: [link]

McStay on What Matters: conversations with experienced leaders about how they actually navigate the hard calls: developing and coaching people, building teams, and leading for the long game. New episodes twice a month. More at seanmcstay.com.

Until next time, focus on what matters.

Most owners know succession planning matters. Almost none of them actually do it. In this episode of McStay on What Matters, Sean McStay sits down with Mike Mack, founder and president of X5 Management and author of the new book Succession, to unpack the conversation most founders avoid: what happens to the business when you are no longer the one holding it together.

They get into why succession is really about making yourself replaceable, why your replacement should not be a copy of you, how a clear plan retains your best people instead of losing them, and the gap between intending to plan and actually doing it. Candid and practical, built for owners and leaders of small and mid-sized companies.

What you’ll learn:

* Why avoiding the succession conversation is what costs owners the most

* How planning your succession makes you more valuable, not less

* The three questions that reveal a real successor: do they get it, want it, and have the capacity

* Why a clear path forward, even without guarantees, is your best retention tool

* The difference between thinking about a plan and actually having one

Chapters:00:00 Welcome, and Mike’s new book Succession01:07 Who Mike Mack is and what X5 Management does02:18 How X5 evolved from the original idea05:25 When to make your first hire07:59 Why slow and steady beats hiring to fix a problem08:38 The discovery process: where are you in three years?12:04 Succession: the gap between intention and action15:26 Making yourself replaceable, and the ego problem18:35 Why your replacement should not be another you21:23 Succession as a retention strategy, and timing25:31 Clarity over guarantees28:35 How to start the conversation at your own company33:27 “What if we train them and they leave?”36:23 The one thing every owner should do next38:57 Where to find Mike and the book

About Mike Mack:Mike Mack is the founder and president of X5 Management in Edmonton, celebrating 20 years in 2026. X5 is in the people business: strategic planning, succession planning, leadership and team development, and executive coaching. Mike is the author of several books, most recently Succession.

Tony Chapman is a Marketing Hall of Legends inductee, entrepreneur, and host of Chatter That Matters. In this conversation we get into what it actually takes to earn attention in a world drowning in noise, why "too big to fail" has become "too slow to react," and how AI is reshaping who thrives and who gets replaced. Tony shares his head, heart, and hands framework for decision-making, why curiosity beats killer talking points, and the difference between using AI to do your work and using it to transform your work. If you're building a brand, leading a team, or trying to figure out what matters next, this one is worth your time.

Steve Cadigan, former Chief HR Officer at LinkedIn and author of Workquake, joins me to talk about what leaders are getting wrong about talent, development, and the future of work.

We discuss why one-size-fits-all talent strategies are failing, why people are increasingly loyal to learning and growth rather than companies, and why organizations will not be able to recruit their way out of the accelerating need for new skills.

Steve also shares lessons from LinkedIn’s rapid growth, his own transition after leaving the company, and why careers are built on trust more than hard work.

This conversation is about development, but not in the classroom sense. It is about how leaders create the conditions for people to keep growing while the world around them changes.

In the third episode of McStay on What Matters, Sean sits down with Glenn Lesko, a partner at Pender and Howe and executive recruitment specialist with nearly three decades of experience finding and assessing senior leaders, to talk about judgment. What does it actually mean to use good judgment, and how do leaders develop it over time? Glenn shares how understanding an organization goes far deeper than a job description, why the gap between what companies say they need and what they actually need is where the real work begins, and how the best decisions in hiring and in leadership come from staying human in a process that often tries to be anything but.

Glenn: https://penderhowe.com/en/

McStay on What Matters is a biweekly podcast about the decisions leaders carry alone and how they navigate them.

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/@SeanMcStay

In the second episode of McStay on What Matters, Sean sits down with Jason Donkersgoed, a leadership coach and consultant with over 30 years of experience leading teams across retail, finance, and higher education, to talk about reality in leadership. What happens when leaders avoid naming what everyone already sees? Jason shares what he has learned about surfacing difficult truths, building the trust required for honest conversation, and why the clearest thing a leader can do is often the kindest.

McStay on What Matters is a biweekly podcast about the decisions leaders carry alone and how they navigate them.

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/@SeanMcStay

Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-donkersgoed/

In the first episode of McStay on What Matters, Sean sits down with Chris Ballard, former Ontario cabinet minister turned CEO and consultant, to talk about presence in leadership. What does it actually look like when a leader is fully in the room versus performing being in the room? Chris shares what he learned about presence through politics, public service, corporate governance, and the transition to consulting.

McStay on What Matters is a biweekly podcast about the decisions leaders carry alone and how they navigate them.