Winston Kam

Transcript

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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_02: It's VanCouver's podcast on the Canada's podcast network.
[00:12] SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone, I'm Angela Faye, Hub Builder and co-host of British Columbia's Podcasts.
[00:19] SPEAKER_01: Part of the Canada's podcast network, your source for great insights from entrepreneurs
[00:23] SPEAKER_01: from across Canada.
[00:25] SPEAKER_01: We talked entrepreneurs who are making it happen here so you can listen, discover and engage.
[00:31] SPEAKER_02: Interesting, Winston Cam, who is the founder of Winwright Law firm in Vancouver, British
[00:37] SPEAKER_02: Columbia.
[00:38] SPEAKER_02: At Winwright Law, Winston primarily practices in business and real estate law dealing
[00:42] SPEAKER_02: with both the solicitor side as well as litigation side of law with the remaining time
[00:47] SPEAKER_02: that he has left with Winston focuses on business development and using legal tech software
[00:52] SPEAKER_02: that helps Winwright Law move towards a forefront of customer service in the legal industry.
[00:57] SPEAKER_02: So as part of his passion of business development and helping entrepreneurs, Winston is also
[01:02] SPEAKER_02: the current president of the Pacific Club connecting Vancouver's business leaders.
[01:08] SPEAKER_02: It is a club that's mission is to connect entrepreneurs, professionals and lifelong learners
[01:14] SPEAKER_02: with Vancouver's top businesses to build friendships, grow personally and professionally
[01:18] SPEAKER_02: and form lasting relationships with individuals and business organizations with shared values.
[01:24] SPEAKER_02: Welcome, Winston.
[01:25] SPEAKER_02: So, tell me a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey.
[01:30] SPEAKER_02: How did you get to where you are today?
[01:32] SPEAKER_00: Sure.
[01:34] SPEAKER_00: So, I am a born-raising Vancouver.
[01:37] SPEAKER_00: I am the son of two business owner of parents.
[01:42] SPEAKER_00: I had a traditional kind of upbringing in the sense that my mom gave me two options.
[01:48] SPEAKER_00: I could either be a doctor or be a lawyer.
[01:51] SPEAKER_00: I was terrible at sciences and so my automatic path was just becoming a lawyer.
[01:59] SPEAKER_00: But I didn't mind it because you know what I understood it to be at that time was still
[02:03] SPEAKER_00: versatile career that would allow me to do different things as well as practice law.
[02:08] SPEAKER_00: And so I did that.
[02:09] SPEAKER_00: So, I did my undergrad and law school at UBC and then I, I,
[02:15] SPEAKER_00: I, I, I, I, I worked at a law firm in downtown for around six years or five years.
[02:23] SPEAKER_00: And then I decided to start my own law fit of the business like back then.
[02:27] SPEAKER_00: When I first started, I just wanted to open up a business.
[02:30] SPEAKER_00: I had been dabbling in legal technology.
[02:32] SPEAKER_00: I had been hanging out at, at local incubators like launch academy.
[02:38] SPEAKER_00: And it just seemed like an automatic fit for me to open up a law firm because it,
[02:47] SPEAKER_00: you know, there's a very, to entry to a lot of other entrepreneurs from coming in.
[02:52] SPEAKER_00: And it also seemed right for disruption, innovation, doing things differently.
[02:59] SPEAKER_00: It was, it is, it was and it still is a very traditional industry where we're trying
[03:06] SPEAKER_00: very hard to sort of do things differently to make the delivery of legal services better,
[03:13] SPEAKER_00: more efficient and just more welcoming to all individuals.
[03:20] SPEAKER_02: Awesome. Well, and I, just looking on your website and finding out a little bit more about you,
[03:23] SPEAKER_02: you say that innovation occurs as a result of a belief that something can be done better.
[03:28] SPEAKER_02: And your goal is to shake up the legal industry.
[03:31] SPEAKER_02: How are you doing that?
[03:32] SPEAKER_00: Right. So I mean, we take, we look at other industries, a lot at tech industries and see what's
[03:41] SPEAKER_00: different about them, what's made them succeed.
[03:45] SPEAKER_00: And we try to utilize those, those business models, those systems, those processes.
[03:50] SPEAKER_00: And even the culture, we try to foster much like other organizations that we see who've done it well.
[03:58] SPEAKER_00: So for instance, we looked at a lot of tech companies and we just loved their open space
[04:04] SPEAKER_00: concept. How collaborative was, how everybody was working hard, but also seemingly having a good
[04:11] SPEAKER_00: time. And what we did is we wanted to adopt that and we still, we have and we actively foster
[04:18] SPEAKER_00: culture to make sure that it is something similar to that. So I mean, you know, in the legal
[04:26] SPEAKER_00: industry, when you work in law, it is stressful. I mean, that's why lawyers get paid.
[04:33] SPEAKER_00: They do because we deal with people's stresses and we are, we are sort of paid in train to
[04:40] SPEAKER_00: manage and help them alleviate what it was causing them to stress. But just because the work is
[04:45] SPEAKER_00: stressful, it doesn't mean the work environment has to be stressful. And so we try to keep
[04:49] SPEAKER_00: very light and keep a very open culture where people are having fun, but also working hard.
[04:58] SPEAKER_02: So specifically at WinRite, what product or service do you specialize in and who do you serve
[05:03] SPEAKER_00: for your ideal clients? So we practice in three areas, real estate, business and wealth preservation.
[05:13] SPEAKER_00: And what that means for real estate is we do real estate transactions, whether it's residential,
[05:18] SPEAKER_00: commercial, we do real estate development work and we do real estate litigation.
[05:23] SPEAKER_00: For business, we do everything from small to medium enterprises, everything from
[05:28] SPEAKER_00: structuring to mergers and acquisitions, to drafting the spoke contracts.
[05:35] SPEAKER_00: And we also do for wealth preservation, we do wells in the state's planning. Our typical demographic
[05:41] SPEAKER_00: or client can range from for some home buyer to a real estate developer to franchise business owners
[05:53] SPEAKER_00: somewhere around the mark of one to 10 million in revenue, potentially. And we also have families
[05:59] SPEAKER_02: that we work with. What do you see as the challenge that's kind of facing the whole, and I'll talk mostly
[06:08] SPEAKER_02: about the commercial real estate sector because that's most of your, sounds like most of your business.
[06:12] SPEAKER_02: What's the biggest challenge facing the industry right now? Is there a disruptive trend that you
[06:16] SPEAKER_00: see that's affecting a lot of your clients? If you're talking about right now right now,
[06:22] SPEAKER_00: what's happening is legislative changes by the government has led to a lot of
[06:29] SPEAKER_00: tightening in terms of allowing people or foreign investors to come in.
[06:36] SPEAKER_00: It's causing the timing of the economy. It's caused a lot of transactions to go down.
[06:43] SPEAKER_00: And so everybody in the real estate industry has felt that that real estate transactions,
[06:49] SPEAKER_00: the number of them have gone down and prices have been dropping.
[06:53] SPEAKER_02: Interesting. So if you could describe a piece of advice that you would love to give people that are
[06:59] SPEAKER_02: considering commercial real estate, what piece of advice would you like to give them?
[07:05] SPEAKER_00: Commercial real estate and residential real estate do seem to be the transactions do seem to be
[07:14] SPEAKER_00: less these days, but we are seeing in a summer months transactions going back up. And so it is
[07:20] SPEAKER_00: an interesting market. I think we'll have to just wait and see to see what happens.
[07:26] SPEAKER_02: So I just, I mean, this is more of a personal question for your insight, but I've seen headlines
[07:31] SPEAKER_02: and blog posts around things like the next way, the next generation will avoid
[07:38] SPEAKER_02: owning real estate, right? That'll be the gig economy of where they live, including or where they work.
[07:45] SPEAKER_00: What's your opinion on that? It's interesting. I mean, I've attended and host the seminars
[07:50] SPEAKER_00: on the gig economy. We see it. I mean, I haven't seen it that much yet with real estate owners.
[07:59] SPEAKER_00: We have seen businesses that have popped up in which they are selling fractional shares of
[08:05] SPEAKER_00: real estate. One name comes to mind is imbi. imbi is one that has started up, which is selling shares
[08:14] SPEAKER_00: of houses to individuals. In terms of the gig economy, I think it's a very interesting time.
[08:22] SPEAKER_00: It's caused a lot of interesting businesses to open, whether it's businesses like Uber,
[08:31] SPEAKER_00: it just allows for millennials or the next generation of people to do five things all at once.
[08:39] SPEAKER_02: Right. Well, and a little bit about you personally now, Winston, we've
[08:42] SPEAKER_02: shipped off from work, but what's in your bucket list over the next, say, 12 months? What three
[08:48] SPEAKER_00: things are you hoping to achieve personally? My bucket list. Personally, we recently adopted a
[08:59] SPEAKER_00: puppy, a Labrador, I'm hoping to actually just make sure that puppy grows up well-trained.
[09:06] SPEAKER_00: So that's on our personal level. In terms of other personal goals, one of which is just to be able
[09:15] SPEAKER_00: to work remotely with my team, who is sitting in the office, work more with other remote workers as
[09:24] SPEAKER_02: well, and build a team that way. Perfect segue into a little bit of insight on how you work. I mean,
[09:31] SPEAKER_02: traditional, we all have this vision of the traditional law firms, and they've been building on
[09:36] SPEAKER_02: the hill and what really, what does it look like today for a new wave or new generation law firm?
[09:45] SPEAKER_02: Do you have a home office? Do you own Brickson mortar? Really state? What's it look like?
[09:49] SPEAKER_00: Right. So we have both, or I have both, we have a brick and mortar office out at Canberra, Broadway.
[09:58] SPEAKER_00: We were very lucky to have the space. It originally started only as a two unit office. We've
[10:07] SPEAKER_00: expanded in the last two years ago to make it around 2500 square feet office now.
[10:15] SPEAKER_00: So we do have a brick and mortar office, but I'm currently just working from home remotely,
[10:20] SPEAKER_00: and how that looks is that I'm on an inter office measuring platform that many know as Slack.
[10:27] SPEAKER_00: So we do, we correspond via Slack throughout the entire day so that we're still
[10:34] SPEAKER_00: kept in pride of everything that's going on, but for in-person, office meetings, I'm obviously
[10:39] SPEAKER_02: back in the office. Right. Obviously it depends day to day, but if you could give me a typical
[10:45] SPEAKER_02: Winston day, what does it look like? Or maybe week. Okay. So it really depends on the number of
[10:54] SPEAKER_00: meetings scheduled for me. If it's in-person, then obviously I'll be at the office. Also,
[11:02] SPEAKER_00: what is typical of the week is that each week we do have what's called a team huddle. So we'll
[11:08] SPEAKER_00: have a team huddle early in the week with our entire team going through what they're going to be
[11:12] SPEAKER_00: working on, what's what's everybody working on? We're at current files at any sort of obstacles
[11:19] SPEAKER_00: or difficulties that we envision. At the end of the week, what we have is also something called
[11:26] SPEAKER_00: innovative, fragile for different team members to bring their ideas or insight into different
[11:33] SPEAKER_00: projects that we're working on. Yeah. So for instance, last week, we were very excited to have a demo
[11:40] SPEAKER_00: of a new online Wikipedia that we're building out. And online, you're building out a Wikipedia?
[11:46] SPEAKER_00: What? We were testing out different platforms that have Wikipedia's on them,
[11:53] SPEAKER_00: because we understand that in our industry, we're all knowledge-based workers. And so what we want
[12:00] SPEAKER_00: to make sure of is that we continue to build that knowledge base for future team members.
[12:07] SPEAKER_00: Right. So we're building out our own Wikipedia to store everybody's knowledge and to help people
[12:14] SPEAKER_00: learn as they come and work. Any vision for ARVR in your future? Yeah. I mean, we actively like to
[12:25] SPEAKER_00: think about these things because it's happening. And although the legal industry is probably arguably
[12:33] SPEAKER_00: 10 years behind everybody else, it will happen with us as well. But we're doing it winrate is we're
[12:40] SPEAKER_00: trying to think and forecast about what we think the online or the delivery of legal services should
[12:46] SPEAKER_00: be in general, whether that's in person or online. And definitely, the online delivery legal services
[12:53] SPEAKER_00: just brings so much convenience to the consumer that it's going to be inevitable. And so whether it
[13:00] SPEAKER_00: is ARVR, it's probably going to happen relatively soon. Absolutely. So you talked a little bit about
[13:08] SPEAKER_02: possible involvement of tech. I heard you mentioned, growing your team. What's the vision for the
[13:14] SPEAKER_00: business? How do you, what's your growth plan? Yeah. So our growth plan has always been to
[13:23] SPEAKER_00: deliver great customer service to deliver, to change the way the delivery of legal services is.
[13:31] SPEAKER_00: And what we do differently than most law firms is that we review it as a business. We don't
[13:37] SPEAKER_00: view it just as the practice of law. And so at winrate, we not only have lawyers and legal assistance,
[13:44] SPEAKER_00: but we have other team members, whether it's in marketing or tech or operations or finances.
[13:52] SPEAKER_00: So that's how we've been building. So we build our legal team, but we also build our business team.
[13:57] SPEAKER_00: And that's how we've been trying to move forward in all fronts.
[14:02] SPEAKER_02: Winston, what are you most excited about in your business these days?
[14:06] SPEAKER_00: I'm pretty excited about this online Wikipedia that we're building. I think that's very cool.
[14:14] SPEAKER_02: What's the time for everyone? When can we expect to see it? Will it be general public access
[14:18] SPEAKER_00: of all or more for clients? So we're going to start with our own internal Wikipedia. We made
[14:26] SPEAKER_00: you, and after that, we're probably going to build out whether it's like an AMA, ask me anything,
[14:33] SPEAKER_00: any type of FAQ for our consumers. But that's later on the road. Cool.
[15:03] SPEAKER_01: Across the country. I'm Angela Faye. See you next time.