VELA Podcasts

In this podcast, Som Seif, a prominent figure in the Canadian financial services industry, discusses his background and journey to success with Jason Boudreau. He shares his experience immigrating to Canada as a child, his initial aspirations to become an architect, and his path to discover his true passion.

 

 

About the Guest – Som Seif

CEO of Purpose Inc.
CEO of Purpose Unlimited
Som Seif is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Purpose, which he formed following the sale of Claymore Investments to BlackRock Inc. in March 2012 and the Co-Founder of WealthSimple Technologies Inc. Prior to Claymore Investments, Som was an investment banker with RBC Capital Markets. He has a strong commitment to community and is currently a member of the AGO Foundation Board, Next Canada Board, and UofT Pre-Campaign Committee and Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Advisory Committee.

About the Host – Jason Boudreau

Jason has built VELA Wealth into an established life and estate planning firm, guiding families as they make meaningful choices at the intersection of life and wealth. Jason’s areas of expertise include intergenerational wealth transfer and estate planning with a focus on advanced insurance-based solutions that incorporate philanthropy and legacy planning. Leveraging these specialties, Jason brings a fresh perspective and outside-the-box thinking to the strategic planning process. To read more, please visit the VELA team page.

 

The episode is also available on:

    

 

The Podcast Transcript

 

Jason Boudreau:

Welcome, everybody to the Polestar Podcast by VELA Wealth. We are honored and excited to have Som Seif – entrepreneur, extraordinaire and well-known guy in the financial services industry in Canada. Looking forward to having a great dialogue with him. Welcome Som, thank you for being here.

 

Som Seif:

Well, thanks for having me, Jason.

 

Jason Boudreau:

So normally these podcasts go as a nice open conversation, but one of the things I was hoping we could do today is get a bit of background on you. I want to understand where you came from, where your family came from and how you ended up in Canada.  I love sharing the entrepreneurial journey but also interested to know how someone’s family life originated in Canada. So, why don’t we start the story and then dial up from there and then we’ll move it ahead.

 

Som Seif:

Sure. I think that a large part of my actual background story is a large part of the character of who I am, as I’d say most people are.  My family immigrated to Canada when I was three from Iran, just around the time of the Iranian Revolution. As we fast forward to the world that we’re in today there are a lot of correlations to that time, of course, in a different way and I think it’s an interesting time to be reflective of the last 40-plus years in the world, in the Middle East and of course, in Iran. My family moved to Canada, and it’s an interesting story actually. I asked my parents about a decade ago what it was that made them come to Canada. And it’s an interesting story because my father was studying for his master’s degree in England. I was born in England. We moved back to Iran, and he originally wanted to stay in England and his professor told him, “it would be stupid for you to stay here. You’re a Middle Eastern man and we are in the 70s in the UK. This is not a progressive society for someone like yourself.  You should go to a country that is more welcoming–a country such as Canada” and so that led to him applying to do his PHD at York University and coming to Toronto, Canada. We immigrated a year after that, in 1980, and I’ll tell you, it was one of the greatest decisions my family ever made, but most importantly, one of the most important decisions in my life that I didn’t make because that single decision changed the probability of success for me and my family by 100-times.  I’m a big probability guy. I’m a math guy and I look at life based on very, very specific factors. If I think about where I’d be if we hadn’t made that move, if we lived in Iran versus where I am today, would be in the top quartile of opportunity in my life relative to anything else. It was really powerful to grow up in Toronto.

When I was growing up, I always wanted to be an architect. It was my dream, and you know the reason? I have a very creative mindset. I loved the idea of building and designing, and it was something that applied a lot. I mean basically, from the age of eight I had always had this focus and it was interesting because when I had to make a decision about where to apply to go to school, I went and spoke to a couple of well-known architects in the Toronto Area and they all said to me don’t do it. It’s not going to be the job that I think it is and they all said that I won’t make any money and I didn’t grow up with anything.

My family provided extremely well for me and I’m very proud of that, but I always had this great ambition of making lots of money. It was actually the thing that really drove me. At least that’s what I thought. So, that led me to question becoming an architect. So, instead I went into Engineering at the University of Toronto. Very shortly thereafter, I made the decision to pivot to more of a business path. I went to work at RBC Investment banking in 1999, just in time for the tech bubble. It was one of the most exciting, crazy nine months of my career. I did more in the first nine months of my career than I did for the next two years. Frankly, it was quite amazing, but it was an unbelievable experience for the next number of years. I worked at RBC for six years and really applied myself. Then, I just started to ask myself, whether this was what I wanted to do? I remember the big moment. I was 25 years old, and money was one of my priorities at that point. I was starting to make really good money for a young kid, and I remember coming home one night at two in the morning, which was the hours I was normally working…

 

Jason Boudreau:

Investment bankers hours, right?

 

Som Seif:

Right.  I sat on my bed, and I said to myself “I’m not happy”. It’s not that I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing. It was that I wasn’t happy because I had pursued all of this with the singular goal of making money. And now I was making some money and I was on the path to making lots of money and I didn’t feel like that was the right goal. I did a lot of soul searching. I had to step back and say “Ok, what is it that I really enjoy?”. I still enjoyed waking up Monday morning and jumping to work and doing the things I was doing and what I realized was the thing that really made me happy was the thing that made me most excited. It was seeing my ideas progress, seeing things that really materialize and being a part of progress in a really meaningful way. And if I actually go back to what I loved about being an architect, it was the idea of seeing your efforts result in something that you actually physically touch and see. This was appealing to me. So, I had to step back and think about what I really wanted. Then I needed to apply myself in a way that was going to allow me to see my ideas flourish. I realized I wanted to build something. So, I sort of decided I’m going to leave at some point. I decided that if I’m still in this seat at the age of 30, I’m going to walk in on my birthday and I’m going to resign. And that gave me a date and I had to solve this problem of what I was going to do next.

Anyways, before the age of 30, that day came. It came at the age of 28, when I decided to break off and start my first company. I started a company called Claymore. At the time I had no idea what I was doing, but I had a really strong mental model and vision about how to build a better asset management firm. I advised a number of firms over the last number of years and got into what was happening in the industry really deeply. So, I believed there was an opportunity, and I built Claymore over the next seven years to become one of the most important financial asset management firms in the Canadian marketplace. It really changed the way the industry looked at asset management, specifically about fees, transparency, quality of investment strategy, and all the rest of it. I think we did a really cool thing, but I had a partner and the partner wanted to exit, so we ended up selling the company to BlackRock in 2012 and that gave me another moment to step back. I was 35 years old, and I had to ask myself what I wanted to do next? So, I decided that I wanted to do it again, but I had a bigger vision for the industry including asset management, wealth management and around financial services and banking. I went back to do it again. I started Purpose a year later and I also co-founded a firm called Wealthsimple We’ve been effectively executing over the last nine years across multiple areas of financial services trying to really drive innovation on behalf of Canadians within the industry. I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to do over the last little while.

 

Jason Boudreau:

Som, thank you for sharing. I learned a lot about you! I thought I knew quite a bit about you, but I really appreciate that background on your story and I know a lot of Canadians share a similar story, where they immigrated here at some point and really made something of being a Canadian and then the next generation, like you have recognized that and taken it to a whole other level. It’s just always really neat to hear that. So, I appreciate you sharing it.

 

Som Seif:

It’s actually quite amazing. I think of myself as someone who’s comfortable taking risks as an entrepreneur, but I’ve really gone through this journey of thinking about those who, either by their own will or, of course, through being forced to go away from the world that they know, friends that they grew up or their family, and move to a brand-new country, often times not able to speak the language or don’t know the culture and don’t know anybody. And they have to integrate into that society, build a life – that to me is risk. And I’m so amazed by this journey that people go through, and what they do, and, of course, Canada is an amazing destination for immigration for people around the world. Well, I’m encouraged, and I’m always inspired by it. I hope that Canada continues to really drive to be the best place in the world, to drive immigration because on behalf of those individuals it’s about creating an environment that only helps our country in the long-term. It also helps those individuals really be a part of a society in a meaningful way.

 

Jason Boudreau:

Totally, it is so important for Canada’s future to have strong immigration. I remember listening to Darrell Bricker’s book last year called “Next” and he talks a lot about the fact that without immigration Canada has basically a net zero new job growth and we need people to come here to help Canada grow and continue to be competitive globally. So not only is there the opportunity, but there’s almost a necessity for us as a country to welcome immigrants and their skill sets.

 

Som Seif:

I agree with that, and I actually think that it’s not only the future that is critical, but actually we don’t have to look much further than what we’ve gone through in the last 23 years. One of my theses around this is that if you look at the US, the US has been winning economically by driving a really strong strategy around IP ownership. If you think about the history of productivity, it was always around, call it physical manufacturing, economic growth and over the last 20 years we’ve seen such great progress on intellectual property and intellectual capital growth and the US has been winning that game against the players around the world. I’ve tried to deeply understand how Canada has been able to maintain a level of growth given that we don’t have the same strategy on the IP side. In fact, we’ve actually had a lot of our IP taken by the US in many ways, but I would say I think immigration has been one of the key driving forces for us being able to keep up with the economic development and growth that the US has been able to achieve. So, I think this is one of our strengths and I think it’s critical for us unless we do have to get our IP strategies right. We also have to continue to drive immigration for demographic reasons obviously, and also just for economic development and growth.

 

Jason Boudreau:

No doubt. I totally agree with that. One of the questions that I wanted to ask you is about your journey with Claymore and then selling that and then obviously starting Purpose. You’ve sort of alluded to it a little bit when you said that Purpose is almost a second chance in the same industry, that you took what you learned from Claymore and take it to the next level where you’re at now. Would you do anything differently if you went back again? Let’s say on the Purpose side, would you do anything differently in the past than you’re doing right now?

 

Som Seif:

So, one of my fundamental beliefs is that we shouldn’t have regrets in life and I actually don’t. Especially when it comes to business. Every decision that I’ve made in history, right or wrong, has been for reasons that were in the moment, and I think it’s important to go back and reflect on the decisions and whether or not you made good decisions or poor decisions.

I do that as often as I can. So, that I can learn from that, but I don’t actually ever look back and say “Oh, I wish I’d done that”. I’ve done that and I think having regret in your life is having an anchor. So, I’ve always believed in that and when I look at it, I’m very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish with Purpose, but I wouldn’t change a thing because I think where we are today is a really good place. I think where we’re going is really exciting and really, what I hope is that every decision that I’ve made that has been a poor decision over the years will help me make a better decision in the future. I think that’s really the way I try to apply that thinking, so I don’t think I’d do anything differently. I think the only thing that I actually regret, was missed opportunity with my interactions with my wife and kids rather than on the business side.

 

Jason Boudreau:

Yes. I hear you. Well, let’s pull on that family thread a little bit because I know you’ve got a big family. You have four, right?

 

Som Seif:

Yes, that’s right.

 

Jason Boudreau:

That’s crazy. I mean I’ve got three and that’s crazy as it is, although I know my wife would love to have another one. Tell me about the background of how you guys decided to build such a big family.

 

Som Seif:

Well, I grew up in a very loving home. I’ve thought a lot about my upbringing, my parents were wonderful individuals who showed me love every day, very highly demanding but a lot of support, which is a very important thing in life. I also had a wonderful brother and older brother and then we had the benefit of my cousin who was my brother’s age living with us and so we grew up in this really interesting dynamic. My mum’s twin sister lived with us, so I had like two moms, two siblings and my dad, so our house was full. It was always something that made me feel joy. So, when my wife and I, who I’ve been with since we were teenagers, were planning our lives, we didn’t really plan at all. We both really enjoy a full house, we enjoy a full life, and we love kids and frankly, to your point, I would love to have many more.

We have four and we’re really happy with that, but every single time I see a baby, I always think that it would be great to have another one and they’re wonderful. My life has changed with them. I used to work non-stop most of my career and then we had our first child and I’ll tell you – your personal perspective changes you. All of a sudden, you become accountable to somebody else, you have a different perspective on priorities and what’s important. It’s been amazing, but I will say that even with that, it took the pandemic to open my eyes up to the importance of being more present regularly. I think all of us have taken the pandemic to teach us really important tricks about life and business, but one of the things I think it taught us is the importance of being present and slowing down. I think that’s been the trick that I’ve been learning really, really, deeply and it’s been exciting to build my new life, structured around my family, around the business, around the way that I want to still work at a highly competitive level. I want to accomplish amazing things, but at the same time balancing much more of the presence and time that I want to be with my family and my kids.

 

Jason Boudreau:

Yes, that also resonates with me. Just recently, I was saying the same thing to somebody that I was at more family dinners in the last two to three years that I have been in the past 12 years. It’s like one of those things where your family is your priority. And then at the same time it’s the easiest to take for granted, and it’s one of those things where the pandemic just kind of hit you square in the face and showed you your priority, right? And I’m very grateful for that happening. To your point, I’ve been totally rebuilding the way I do life and business since then to make sure that presence is there in my life with my family as much as humanly possible.

 

Som Seif:

I think that’s great, and you said the word “grateful”. I think it’s an extremely important word in our lives that we all have to make sure to implement in our day-to-day routines – what we’re grateful for. What I think about life in general, the thing that drives me is that I want to get to a stage where I don’t want anything. I think we always get all these cycles where you want this, or I wish for that. I had that and I think one of the things I’ve been trying to learn a lot more about is being grateful for what I actually have and reflecting a lot on the life that surrounds you today. To me that is very deeply important to have happiness in life in the long run. So, I think this is a really important thing and to your point around dinner – I used to never be home during the week for dinners and in my first business with Claymore I never used to be around even on the weekends, frankly. When I started Purpose, I made a certain set of rules around being home on weekends. I didn’t work on weekends, I made that a set discipline, but I still was Monday to Friday pretty much never home, I’d be at the office until 7:30pm or 8pm or later and I would rush home to tuck the kids in and give them a kiss and that would be the night. And during the pandemic we spent every night together for dinner and I have made that now a rule that I want to be home four nights during the week as well as the weekends having dinner with my kids. And even if that means I’m going to do a call after dinner or whatever, it is that important thing of not being absent for what I think is the most relevant period of my kid’s life in just that family time of being around the table, debriefing on your day and just being there.

 

Jason Boudreau:

What are their age ranges?

 

Som Seif:

So, our youngest boy is just about to turn 7 and then we’ve got three girls that are 9, 12 and just about to turn 14. So, it’s a wonderful age. I’m sure it is the same with your kids, where the baby is not a baby anymore and is not yet a teenager in a meaningful crazy way and we’re just having such a blast with them. They’re the other personalities. They’re fun to be around and they’re funny, really funny.

 

Jason Boudreau:

Yes, totally. We have two boys and the youngest girl who is turning 7 on December 27th. She’s so confident and getting a little sassy, sort of chuckle. It’s fun to watch and just see their expressions and the neatest thing is we just got the report cards from school and all their teachers said how much they love having them in the class, how great they are, how much they participate and they’re so inclusive. So, all these values that we’re trying to instill in them are really starting to show up. I think that’s one of the coolest things for me as a parent, and for Carissa too. So, it’s neat to hear that’s happening for you as well as, especially with the older ones. And obviously, as they get older, it’s probably only going to show up more and more.

 

Som Seif:

I think that’s exactly the case. One of the key beliefs I have that I live my life is this idea that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. It’s one of my favorite principles in life and you can apply it in so many ways.

 

Jason Boudreau:

It’s totally.

 

Som Seif:

To your point being a parent specifically is a very stressful job, especially for people like you and I that attack our jobs, we attack our lives with discipline with focus, and when we don’t know something, we learn it and then you get sort of thrown into the deep end with having kids, which is sort of like… I’ve never done this before.

 

Jason Boudreau:

Figure it out, yeah?

 

Som Seif:

…and learning as we go. The only experience I have is watching myself growing up with my parents. You are constantly asking yourself if I’m good? Am I going to be a good parent? Am I going to do the right things? Are my kids going to be okay? Am I teaching them properly? Now people talk a lot about values and they teach their values. To me, this is a really important principle. Your values are being exposed to them every day, you are exposed to them every single day, and so if you’re a good person, if you’re the type of person who believes in the right things and acts in the right way, treats others people with respect, grateful for the things you have, then your kids are going to learn that because they’re seeing you every day, they’re watching you, so they’re learning from you. I believe that for the first 12 years of their lives it’s about you and your spouse. After that it becomes about their friends and who they spend the most time with, and those people are the people who help them grow up to the next level of maturity. So, there’s only so much we can do up to that stage. But I do think that presenting a set of values to them every day…  and it’s not about what you say to them, it’s what you do. I’d say it’s the same in your life with your team at work, it’s the same with your friends, it’s the same with everything that you expose yourself to and it’s so critical that you see that. It brings to the concept that if you want to be great, hang out with people that are great. If you want to learn how to play guitar go and join a guitar club, you want to do really smart things around math go join a math club. The people you hang out with are the people that are going to influence you to learn the skills and do the things you’re going to do and the characters that you want to ultimately develop.

 

Jason Boudreau:

Wise words! I just wanted to pull a little bit of this sort of gratitude and give back a little bit. One of the things I love talking with entrepreneurs about is their value set around being a contributor, giving back and it’s one thing obviously for us to build businesses and employ people. But then there’s this whole extension that goes beyond that – into the community. I’m just curious to get your thoughts or your philosophy around philanthropy. How do you weave that into what you’re up to as an entrepreneur, as a family man, as a person? Where do you stand on that thing today and then do you have a vision for it for the future?

 

Som Seif:

It is a really important thing in my life. Going back to my upbringing as being important, I’ve been involved both with my time and my energy and money in different organizations to help and give back to society for a long time. It’s something that I believed in, and I’ll give you a story there. I’ve thought a lot about this as my parents came to this country, I’m again very grateful for the opportunity that Canada has given me and so I feel this sense of duty to give back to this country, to my community, to help people around me be better off and to support them in every way possible. It’s just something that is ingrained in me because I feel a level of thankfulness and gratefulness to everything I’ve been given.  I’ve always kept a very busy life sharing and having a social life and a deep career and all the things that have been going on. I’ve always in my life made time for giving back to really important parts and things I’m passionate about. My first interaction with this was in my second year of university. It was a crazy time in engineering and all these things going on in my life, I constantly had no time, but I went out for pints with a couple of friends and one of my buddies who I went to high school with came late and I asked where he was and he said “Oh, I was out with my little brother”. And I said you don’t have a little brother, what you talking about? He said he is a volunteer with Big Brothers. I started asking about it and then I sort of went away that night and I asked myself “Am I doing enough?”. The next weekend I signed up for Big Brothers and became a Big Brother and that taught me so much. I balanced it in my life and people would ask me how I’m going to make that work and I just did it. It taught me so much about giving and getting as an individual. When you give, the importance of it and the joy of it – and from there on I just started to get involved. So, today I have a deep engagement in many important organizations that I’m very passionate about. I apply myself to them, but I will say that I will do that for the rest of my life. But I will say what I am aspiring to and I’m still building it – it is the most important project of my life – how I can make an impact. Today I know that I try to add value and all the rest of it, but I’m talking about really giving with impact. And I want to apply the same rigor and entrepreneurial spirit to the way I build businesses, and how I helped try to change the financial services industry, and improve that on behalf of Canadians, to how I can give and help causes that I believe not just in a short-term, with time and money, but actually for the long run to really innovate and help drive outcomes that are meaningful and change society in a meaningful way. So, I’m excited about that. That’s my next big project. My wife and I have spent a lot of time talking about how we will start to pivot our minds towards that as a core, and I haven’t sold it yet, I’ve got lots of ideas. I’m really energized by getting to it, I’m excited, but we haven’t solved it yet.

 

Jason Boudreau:

That’s great. It’s so neat to hear that you were a Big Brother. I joined Big Brothers in 2008 Carissa and I worked together at the time, but she was living in New York, and so we did a couple of years long distance. I found myself thinking the same things as you just saying. “Am I doing enough?” And then someone introduced me to Big Brothers. I had all this time because I wasn’t in the dating scene and I had my soon-to-be wife living in New York and I said, you know what? I’m going to be a Big Brother. I have two younger brothers, but this was obviously a really important thing for me outside of the family, and I ended up being matched with my little brother and we had a 5-year official match from 2008 to 2013 and they gave us this award for long standing match. We’ve kept in touch ever since. Even though we officially kind of left the Big Brothers program, we’ve kept in touch, and it’s been really neat to see his life grow and I got to know, obviously, his mom really well and it was just such an impactful organization. I think the work they do in the community is so phenomenal that it’s really amazing to hear that you were also a Big Brother.

Just to wrap up the dialogue here, I wanted to ask you about sort of giving back impact. If you’re talking to the next generation, let’s say you’re talking to your kids about this sort of subject. This is something that Carissa and I talk to our kids a lot about, because obviously we recognize that there’s certain privileges that they have in their life that we didn’t have and we want to give that to them, but at the same time recognizing that there’s a responsibility to give back to the community. Let’s say you’re talking to your kids or a younger generation. What would you share with them about the importance of giving back and how to go about it in their lives today.

 

Som Seif:

I think it’s about showing them the joy that comes with it. I go back to the statement I made earlier about your actions, the things that you do every day that they are watching. They see all the things that you do and how you feel about it and how it makes you happy or not, and the impact of it. I think that’s the best thing you can do with them is showing that. When I was growing up, I didn’t have lots of stuff. All I had was my dreams. In many cases I’ve taken away some of those things from my kids because they grow up in a different life setting and many things that they have in their lives or they’re very fortunate to have. We have to find different ways to inspire them to be something greater than what they are today in many ways. I talked earlier about wanting to learn how to be able to give with impact…I think the passion that goes into that is something that we’ll teach our kids because they’ll watch us, and I think it is the best way of learning through being in your own actions.

When I look at my kids, to me the most important thing is to always be developing and learning. I have this belief that life is you versus yourself 12 months ago. All other competitions are crap, it just doesn’t matter, right? So, this idea that people should be worrying about how they are relative to somebody else doesn’t matter. It’s about how you have progressed as an individual over the last 12 months or the last six months or whatever benchmark you want to judge yourself by. If you, as an individual, think that way, you’re just going to get stronger. You’re going to get better. You’re going to do more. You’re going to feel more accomplished. You’re going to attack your goals, and I think that’s the most important thing I want to teach my kids. I think it’s a really powerful way to think in life.

 

Jason Boudreau:

No doubt, that’s great. I just finished listening to Dan Sullivan’s latest book called “The Gap and The Gain”, and that’s exactly the message. The natural human instinct is to measure ourselves against others and against some horizon that we’re really never going to get to. It’s truly a horizon. However, if we look back and measure ourselves against how far we’ve come, that’s where we get fulfillment, that’s where the gratitude comes from, that’s where that energy and that desire to keep progressing comes from. It was just a really neat reminder about the importance of acknowledging growth from the past to today versus trying to just keep growing and growing and growing without knowing where you’ve developed from.

 

Som Seif:

That’s right, it’s a great way to think about it.

 

Jason Boudreau:

Well, why don’t we wrap it there? I mean, this has been such an awesome juicy conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time in and thanks for opening up and sharing about your journey and your family’s journey. And speaking of gratitude, I am really grateful for the relationships that we’ve built over the last 5-6 years, and certainly excited to see where things are heading.

 

Som Seif:

Well, thanks Jason and I feel the same way. It’s a real joy to watch you and the way you think, the way you act and the way you have built a great practice in supporting your customers. What makes me excited about what we do every day is supporting entrepreneurs like yourself. So, it’s a real joy to be a partner of yours?

Jason Boudreau:

Thanks everyone for tuning in to the Polestar Podcast by VELA Wealth and stay tuned for our next guest next month. Thanks everyone.