This episode traces the unlikely path of Russ, Managing Director and Portfolio Manager at NCP Digital Family Office in Victoria, BC, from British Army soldier to BC logger, Salt Spring Island farmer, and finally veteran wealth manager. Russ explains how five years in the military, dangerous forestry work, and building a farm from bare land taught him risk management, preparation, and perseverance long before he entered finance in the mid 1990s. He describes climbing through Scotia McLeod and Dundee Goodman before joining NCP, a true family owned multi family office where client families can become shareholders. Russ unpacks NCP's goals based, product agnostic approach to planning, and shares NCP's contrarian investment thesis that AI behaves like infrastructure rather than software, with power, compute, and water as the real constraints, illustrated by a direct private equity stake in a power transformer manufacturer. He also touches on Bitcoin as a currency hedge, community board service, and his weekly market letter tradition of ending with a song.
A soldier turned logger turned farmer turned family office veteran explains why AI is infrastructure, not software.
What pulled you toward soldiering as a young man, and what's the one lesson from those years you still use every day?
Four of us tried to join the Royal Navy like our fathers, but they said it would take six months, so the next day we joined the Army instead and I was in basic training within six days. The big lesson was perseverance, learning to deal with all kinds of people and cultures, and prior preparation prevents piss poor performance, as one of my training officers used to say. That has carried through my whole life.
What did the forest industry and logging teach you about risk, cycles, and hard physical work?
Logging is a dangerous occupation, so like the Army you're dealing with risk constantly and you have to learn to manage it. You put systems in place so that when something goes wrong you're not left stranded, you've got a known process to fall back on. Good systems also help prevent things from going sideways in the first place.
What does running a farm teach you about capital, patience, and the things you simply cannot control?
The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry because you can't control the weather or the markets for your produce. We built the farm from nothing, clearing land and raising a family as a city kid learning from the ground up. You learn to build things right from the start, like fixing fences properly before your sheep end up in the neighbor's field.
What made you walk into finance in the mid-1990s, well into adulthood, and how did people react?
We'd sold the farm and moved to the Comox Valley, and I developed an interest after talking to my own financial advisor. Finance is a hard, entrepreneurial business to break into, you start from scratch building your own book and finding clients. I was stubborn and decided I was going to stick with it. It goes back to perseverance again.
What made moving to NCP in 2019 feel different from prior moves in your career?
It was the culture, moving KPIs away from pure production numbers toward what the client actually experiences. I also cared more about equity and true ownership than a typical signing bonus based on assets or revenue. Being a real partner and building something unique mattered more to me than the standard industry payout.
Can you walk me through the moment the family office model, being a customer's advocate rather than a product seller, clicked for you?
It clicked early when I moved from commission based to fee based work, because that forced me to be product agnostic. At NCP we start every relationship with a goals based financial plan, building distinct portfolio pieces for income needs, legacy goals, education, or a future business sale. That process lets you dig into what's truly important to the client, not just push the next product.
Can you take us inside the DIG+ thesis that AI behaves like infrastructure, not software?
We're looking at the electrification of everything, not just data centers but cars and buildings too. AI is genuinely infrastructure, and our approach is to provide the picks and shovels rather than chase the gold itself. That's why we bought a company that manufactures power transformers for factory gates, mine sites, and data centers, the bricks and mortar of the AI industry for the next 15 to 20 years.
How does a Victoria family office end up owning a piece of the electrical grid story through a transformer manufacturer?
Our private equity lead, Mario Jacob, has a strong pipeline out of our Quebec team and sourced this deal. On our private equity side we're often the succession plan for founders, and here the founders stayed involved and kept a stake while we brought in more capital and a stronger platform. They monetized part of what they'd built while remaining key to the company's future success.
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