Our guest today is a great friend and associate, Mark Sutcliffe! Mark is a well know media personality, community worker, philanthropist, business person, and investor. He also happens to be a great speaker and listener, which probably has something to do with him hosting his own radio show. Today we are extremely excited to be able able to interview him and pick his brain on all things rational, financial, and beyond. We chat about what makes Mark tick, his passions, his motivations, and what keeps him going. From there we dive into the financial industry and hear first-hand about Mark’s own learning curve and how he currently views investing. We then turn to the subject of Ottawa and look specifically at Mark’s work in and commitment to the city. A strong theme that arises in this episode is Mark’s view of his own good fortune and we finish off our interview with a meditation on the success he has experienced and some of his ambitions for the future. For all this and much more, be sure to listen in!
Key Points From This Episode:
Mark’s passion and what keeps him motivated. [0:03:21.9]
A typical day in the life of Mark and how he gets through all this work. [0:04:34.3]
Mark’s forays into and experiences with investing. [0:06:44.2]
The gripes that Mark has with certain areas of the financial industry. [0:09:45.7]
Mark’s TED Talk and the role of luck in his life. [0:13:01.3]
Long term financial planning and how this links to the rest of Mark’s life. [0:17:17.4]
A big picture perspective and how this helps investors through volatility. [0:21:28.6]
The media’s role in public perception and culture around the markets. [0:23:07.2]
Mark’s current thoughts on the Ottawa business scene. [0:24:48.5]
The long standing association between Mark and PWL. [0:27:06.7]
The trend towards index investing in Canada and its growing popularity. [0:29:00.9]
Mark’s reflections on his successes and ambitions for the future. [0:31:19.2]
Read the Transcript:
So Mark, we've been working together on marketing initiatives for PWL for quite few years now. And we've done lots of interviews together.
But as Cameron said, this is the first time that we are actually interviewing you. So it should be fun. You've got a long history in all forms of media. You also run businesses. You are an author and you're very involved in philanthropy and I'm sure I'm missing something. How would you describe yourself and what motivates you?
What motivates me? I guess I like getting things done. I think I have a compulsion towards ticking boxes and solving problems and that kind of thing. I think when I see something that's not being done properly, I want to fix it. That's probably my greatest motivation. So I like doing a lot of different things. As you mentioned, I'm involved in a bunch of different things and so I like the challenge of getting a lot of different things done and having a busy week and getting to the end of it and feeling like I accomplished a lot. It can be a big workload sometimes, it can be a juggling act and it starts over every week, but I enjoy all the things I do. I love doing radio broadcasting. I love writing. I love being involved in businesses. I love helping other companies. So I enjoy it all. It's lots of fun. And I get as much out of it, if not more than I put into it.
I'm super curious on this, because you appear to be a man of efficiency because you do have so many balls in the air all the time. And the radio show is no joke of course, you have to be prepared for the show every day. How do you do it? What does a typical day look like?
So typically I get up at probably 5:30 in the morning and most days I would go for a run at that time. If I have a chance to run later in the day and I can sleep in until six, then I will take that. But most days I have meetings all afternoon or other work that I have to get done. So I run early in the morning and then I get to the radio station at about seven o'clock every morning and start preparing for the radio show, which starts at nine. And the show is from nine to one and then from one o'clock on, I work on other things, my consulting practice with my partner, Patrick Whalen, Sutcliffe and Whalen, We help other businesses grow. We help them with their strategic planning, their budgeting, coaching, a little bit of that kind of stuff. And I'm involved in other activities as well. And then I pick up my kids at school at around 4:30 or five o'clock and hang out with them and my wife in the evening. And I'm usually in bed by about nine o'clock that's usually-
And how many kilometers are you running a typical week now?
I would say I'm running probably about 70 kilometers a week. Yeah. That'd be a normal week for me. I run almost every single day and I usually run eight to 10K on weekdays and then I do a longer run of 20 to 25K on the weekends.
Yeah. But I would say one of the things about the way my life is structured which I like is that it, it enforces a ruthless efficiency on everything. And I try not to be efficient when it comes to people, but I try to be efficient when it comes to everything else. And so I hate waste of any kind, I hate wasting time, money, food, anything like that. So I try to be really efficient with my schedule and not waste any time at all. That's my strategy, my approach.
That actually ties in really, really well to one of the questions that I want to ask you. I remember a while ago, when we were doing something on the radio, you told us about how you were investing your money prior to discovering PWL and told us about the different phases that you went through. Can you maybe talk a little bit about that?
Yeah. I guess originally I had a lot of money just in GICs and I was risk averse, very risk averse. My parents are both risk averse when it comes to investing and frankly, a lot of things in life. So they were only interested in investments that would have a guaranteed return. So that was my philosophy for a while. And then I started thinking, I've got lots of runway ahead of me. I was still in my 20s and 30s and I was a business owner and I was learning more about the capital markets and that kind of thing. And I thought, well, I should be getting more of a return. I knew other people who were investing in the markets and getting a better return. So I started to invest directly in certain stocks, I thought the telecom sector was going to do well and the technology sector.
So I handpicked some stocks. I think I was invested in Nokia for a time and that kind of thing, but it never really made sense to me that I would have some ability to pick stocks that would go beyond the capacity of everybody else I was competing with in the international investment marketplace. And I realized that it was a competition and that I never understood why, well, if Nokia is going to do well, and that means their stocks are going to go up by a whole lot, and I'm going to make a whole lot of money, why isn't everybody buying that stock? Right. Why aren't we? And so there must be people who don't think it's going to do well and why are they wrong and I'm right?
And what information do I have the means that I can be right? Sitting here in Ottawa, Canada being a part-time amateur investor who spends maybe half an hour, a week on this stuff. So it never really made sense to me and that's why when Cameron and I first met and we talked about all this stuff, it really resonated with me that there was a better way to do things. And that the systems that a lot of us followed as investors handpicking stocks, or having somebody hand pick stocks for us just didn't make sense.
So really we connected at the right time where your thinking was at the time. So it's not that I back then changed your mind, it just seemed to make sense to you really. And since then-
And I didn't know, there was another way, right? That's the thing, is that, what clicked with me is not just what you were saying, but the fact that they're okay, there actually is something that makes sense that is a choice for me, because I thought it doesn't really make sense, but this is the game you got to play. And it isn't.
And so many people we meet have had that epiphany already that this makes sense. We have very terrible luck in trying to change people's minds on investing. Most people just have to get there on their own, which is what you did and we hit it off since then. And since that point, which has to be a dozen or so years ago, I'm guessing. You've been the voice of our brand in Ottawa, on radio advertising, as well as emceeing seminars and whatnot. And you've learned a ton about our industry and our business. How do you look at our industry and how do you look at us in our industry?
So I've learned a lot about the industry. And I think what I have come to realize is look, there are lots of good people working in the investment industry, but if the industry is structured in a way that the incentives that are offered to them, put them at cross purposes with their clients at times, then you know how that's going to play out, right? That's inevitable. It doesn't mean they're bad people, it means if you pay people commissions on things, they're going to sell those things in any industry, whether it's the investment industry or any other business. So if you set up the industry where the objective for the people working in the industry is to sell, sell, sell, then they're going to sell, sell, sell.
If you reward them that way, that's what they're going to do. So one of the big problems I have with a lot of the way the industry works is that it is structured to reward people for selling products, to turn their client's portfolios over and over again, and earn commissions. That they're rewarded to sell certain products, but not others. That there aren't requirements to put the client's best interests first. So I think what really resonated with me about your approach and why I think PWL Capital stands out in the industry, along with a small number of other boutique investment firms, is that I pay you and you get paid by me to look after my best interest in my portfolio. You don't get paid by the investment companies, you don't get paid by the mutual funds. So that aligns our interests. I'm a big believer, my partner in the Ottawa Business Journal, Mike Curran will tell you, I talk about this all the time. You have to align your interests.
This is one of my favorite things to say in business, whoever you're working with, you've got to make sure your interests are aligned. And if they're not aligned, then there are going to be conflicts and you're not going to get the outcomes you want. So our interests are aligned. Mike, mine as a client and yours is the service provider because we both want the same things. And it's not just that we want the same things, we'll both be rewarded the same way and fairly if those things happen. So that's a big part of what I believe in and the second half of it is what we touched on already, that I just don't accept the idea that a stockbroker in Ottawa, Canada can have some specialized knowledge or information or expertise that allows him or her to pick individual stocks in a way that will outperform the giant institutional investors on Wall Street, in London, in Hong Kong and Tokyo, that there's some guy in Ottawa who's going to have...
I can go to him and he's only going to share that information with me and a small number of other people, even though we could all get rich by this information, he's only going to share it with me as one of his hand selected clients. I just don't buy that for a second and the evidence that you've guys have shown me, bears that out.
Yeah. You ended up relying on luck, right?
Yeah. And who wants that for their investment portfolio?
Yeah, exactly. It's actually one of the things we wanted to talk to you about as well. You delivered a TED Talk on the role of luck in life. So we were actually hoping that you could, well, maybe tell us a little bit about how you ended up doing a TED Talk and then also, maybe just talk a little bit about the idea of the importance of luck.
Yeah. I've reflected for a long time on the role of luck in my life, I work hard and I think I'm good at the things I do, but I've come to realize that that isn't the greatest factor in my success in life. The simple fact is I was born in Ottawa, Canada at a time of peace and prosperity and a time of great opportunity. I had loving parents who supported me. So that's probably 95 to 98% of the opportunity to be successful in life. And that's like being born on third base. And I know I didn't hit a triple to get there, I was dropped on to third base to start my life. And so yes, it matters that I work hard and yes, it matters that I'm good at things, but ultimately there are tons of people in the world who have much, much less than I do, who work just as hard as I do if not harder and who have incredible talents, but they weren't born in Ottawa, Canada.
I'm not even getting into the issues of gender and race that go along with that as well. So I'm incredibly lucky and I'm determined to both acknowledge that and to act on that knowledge. So I've gotten involved recently in a number of different initiatives, including some to help vulnerable newcomers to Ottawa, particularly refugees who come to this community and who are trying to make their way in Canada, but they need help finding jobs and finding other opportunities. And there are all kinds of things working against them in the system. So all of this informed this theme that I was working on, and I had the opportunity to deliver a TEDx Talk at TEDx Canada earlier this year. And I wanted to illustrate that, so I used running as a metaphor for that.
And how in [inaudible] marathon, we all have, you run the New York City Marathon or the Chicago Marathon as I did recently, and you have this timing chip that they put on your shoe. So you all line up, 50,000 of you will line up at the start of this race. And if you're starting right at the start line, or you're starting way back, it doesn't matter because they figure out when you cross the start line and they time your race that way. So it's from start to finish, not from way back in the race to the finish line. So that levels the playing field and makes it fair for everybody. Life isn't like that, if you're a woman, you start further back. If you're a visible minority, you start further back. If you were born in a third world country, you start farther back. And there isn't that chip, that levels the playing field.
So that was the theme of the talk. And I've gotten lots of great feedback about it. And it seems to have struck a chord with a lot of people. And again, I'm determined to try to fix some of the things in our world, in our society, even in a country as equal, or is focused on equality and diversity and multiculturalism as Canada, there are still huge systemic barriers that we need to address.
I've known you a long time and yes, you're lucky. I think we're all lucky in many ways, and you talked about being efficient, but I've known you also to be extremely regimented. Our families traveled together once, which was a great time.
We run a half marathon together in Disney World.
The Disney Half Marathon, so I learned there that you're very regimented for sure. You had us rate down to every kilometer was a certain time, so we didn't go too fast because you wanted to finish exactly on two hours, which even for me at the time was relatively relaxed pace. That was a great time, even though we had to get up at what? 3:30 in the morning-
That's right. Yeah.
I started the race, but I think with all the marathons you've run, you've done must be several dozen marathons now, right?
Yeah. 30 now.
30 now, which takes extreme regimented lifestyle combined with the rest of your life that's going on. And I want to link this with the planning exercise that we went through recently, your long-term financial planning exercise with us, which has also regimented systematic approach to planning. Can you talk about how you felt about that process and how it linked to how you plan things in your own life?
Sure. Yeah, I guess I would start by saying, and I've said this before. There isn't really anything important in my life that doesn't have a related XL spreadsheet associated with it. So I am very data oriented and I am very planning oriented and goal oriented. So I keep track of just about everything in my life. So as an example, I was concerned about a year ago that I wasn't getting enough sleep. And sleep is really important to your health, especially as you get older. I also can notice the difference in my effectiveness when I have not gotten enough sleep. So I want to get more sleep. So there are lots of ways you can try to get more sleep, going to bed earlier or sleeping in later, whatever. But to me, I can't do it unless I'm keeping track of how much sleep I'm actually getting.
So I track how much sleep I got. I track what time I go to bed, what time I get up. And I keep a rolling average of how much sleep I've gotten recently. And if it starts to slip below a certain threshold, then I have to do something about it. And you can't act and you can't respond unless you have information, or at least I can't, unless you have information to act on, unless you know what you're doing. It's the same way with food. I don't want to gain any weight. I'm not trying to lose weight, but I don't want to gain any weight. So I keep track of what I eat. I count calories. And I make sure that I'm not exceeding a certain amount on average, over a period of time. And so likewise, I think with anything in life, you have to be conscious of what your goals are and what it will take to achieve those goals.
So what I liked about the financial planning process that you took me through is that it was very comprehensive and detailed. You took into account a lot of different variables. You ran it all through this incredibly sophisticated software. And we were allowed to tweak some of those variables and see how different things turned out. So my income, my projected income going forward, how much money we've got saved up, what it's invested in, what returns it's likely to generate, my wife's income, her pension, how long we expect to live, all these different elements. And we were able to run different models and then see if by and large on average, within a different range of performance and life expectancy and returns, it would all work out. And thankfully, because I'm lucky enough to have been successful in life, and because I've saved a bit of money, it looks like it's going to work out if we keep working hard and there's no catastrophic event.
So that's very encouraging and very... It helps me sleep at night to know that we've got a plan and that it's on the right track. The other thing I would say is, I compare a lot of this stuff to marathon running because in my TEDx Talk, I quote Bill Gates's saying that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in one year and underestimate what they can accomplish in 10 years. Most people try to do too much or think they're going to do too much, learn a new language, lose 80 pounds, whatever, go from not running to running a marathon in one year. To me life is very much an incremental activity. You're always trying to get better. Those increments add up over time, but you can easily get discouraged if they don't add up quickly.
But if you're patient, they add up over time. And I think your planning process shows that, you can go from not being a runner to running a marathon and running lots of marathons as I did. I was not a runner, I was not athletic as a kid. And now look at me and you can go from not being in a great financial position to being in an excellent financial position over a period of time, as long as you're prepared to be patient. There's no get rich quick scenarios. There're no shortcuts in life, I don't believe. I think it is all about increments, and you may expect a lot at the front end and be disappointed, but you probably should think of it more in terms of five, 10, 20 years, because those increments add up over time. And if you're patient you'll get there.
So we've had in the last couple of weeks, some fairly substantial market volatility. Do you think having that big picture view helps you deal with that as an investor?
Absolutely. And the interesting thing is, I write down every day what I'm eating, how much I've exercised, how far I've run, how much sleep I've gotten and a lot of other things about my day-to-day life. I do not keep track of my investment portfolio like that. I entrusted to the plan that we've put together that you guys have helped me with. And I'm playing the long game with that, not the short-term game. So I'm not looking every day to see again, when I was invested in Nokia and a couple of other companies, I was checking their results every day. Did they go up? Did they go down? I have no idea what the markets did on Friday or last Monday or three weeks ago. Right now, as I'm sitting here as a guy who covers the news and follows business and owns a business and has a significant investment portfolio, I can't even tell you whether the markets are up or down over the course of this year.
I have a sense that probably generally they're up. Maybe there's been some volatility recently, I don't know. I'm not keeping track of it that way. I'm keeping track of it very much on a long-term basis. And we sit down and review on a regular basis and on an annual basis maybe, and if things are on the right track, great, if they're not, we'll adjust, but I leave that to you. And I'm not worrying about the numbers in this case.
That's probably the right way to look at it, if there is one. I think in general, the financial media makes it hard for investors to do that. And that's one of the things I wanted to ask you about. Did you think that'll ever change as more and more people take a long-term view like you and maybe have a plan in place? Do you think the media will ever stop reporting on the day-to-day volatility in the market and things like that? Or is it too attractive?
I think it's too easy for them to cover business the way they cover sports. There're numbers involved and it's easy to just say and it's the same, frankly, with the way they cover politics, right? And we're all guilty of it in the media, I'm not separating myself from that. You go for the low-hanging fruit and you go for the things that have changed since the last time the person tuned in and you sent her in on the incremental things rather than the big picture things that are actually really more important.
So I think that's inevitable unfortunately, my advice to people is ignore the ups and downs, the volatility of financial news reporting and at the bigger picture things, the longer-term trends and the evidence. But it's always going to be a thing where, Oh, the markets are down 300 points today, today is not what 300 points was 10 years ago either. So it sounds like a big number, but it's not, but even if the market's down 2% in one day, so what? What's the overarching trend? What's the long-term direction that it's going in?
I got a question for you about Ottawa. It's well known you love this town, it's your hometown, and you're often a big proponent of Ottawa in every event you go to. And in 1995, you founded the Ottawa Business Journal and since then you've seen huge changes in this city. You live through the changes that the Ottawa Citizen or with the newsprint changes, you lived through changes at Bell Media, you had a front row seat watching the tech crisis of JBS and Nortel and what not. And now you've seen, I think a revival hop led many would say by our good friends at Shopify, how do you view the Ottawa business scene now?
I think it's very exciting. And I think the city has grown up a great deal in the last, certainly in my lifetime. I remember when I was a kid, where we happened to be downtown one day and my dad took me to the site where the Rideau Center and the Convention Center and the Western Hotel now stand, and they were... I bet you they were digging the foundation for that. And when I think about all the things that have happened since then, like the Canadian Tire Center, we're no longer skipped over for big concert tours anymore. We've got a National Hockey League franchise in Ottawa. We have football again, we have professional soccer, we have Bluesfest, the jazz festival, there are all these things to do in Ottawa that were not there when I was a kid.
I often joke about how my friend and I would just take a bus downtown and go to McDonald's and walk around in downtown Ottawa. There was just wasn't as much to do, there wasn't live music, there weren't the same entertainment options. So I think Ottawa has grown up a lot, it's a lot more of a big city. We're about to get a new level of transportation infrastructure in our city. That's all very exciting, but I think the flourishing of the private sector is probably the biggest thing that has changed in our city in the last 30 or 40 years. Once upon a time, we were only a government town. And I think the federal government still has a huge presence in Ottawa. There's still a lot of federal public servants. I'm married to one, and that is a huge part of our economy.
And that's a good thing. It's a healthy thing for Ottawa. It's a lot of stability and security. But what I see is really exciting as this generation of people taking risks, like the folks at Shopify and many of the other young and exciting companies in our city, there's a whole generation of 20 something and 30 something entrepreneurs that are doing remarkable things. And they see Ottawa in a much different light. And they're growing up in a different Ottawa from the one I grew up in. So there's huge potential for that. And I think the best is yet to come in terms of Ottawa's private sector activity and growth, there's some really exciting things are going to happen in the next few years.
You've been the voice of PWL in Ottawa for quite a few years now on the radio and other venues. Do people ever talk to you about PWL or broad investing based on your association with us?
Yeah, absolutely. So, first of all, the first thing I get is long live your money, right? So people repeat that back to me all the time. I think that's hilarious. It's great that's resonating with people. I think that what we talked about earlier in terms of there's got to be a better way and the logic or the lack of logic of investing by picking individual stocks. I think that resonates with a lot of people, the messages that we deliver around making sure your investment advisor works for you and not for the big financial institutions. I think that resonates with people. And so this is an area where everybody has questions. It's not something they think about all the time, it can be a seasonal thing. Sometimes it's RSP season, sometimes it's because some circumstances have changed in their life or their relationship with their advisor has changed.
But I do have a lot of people asking me, well, what should I do? And I point out to them that I'm not an expert on any of this. You can't be, if you've got a full-time job and a family, you can't be an expert on investing. And I'm not an expert on medicine. I'm not an expert on law. And that's why when I have an issue in one of those areas, I go see a doctor or a lawyer. And so I think it's really important to have a financial advisor in your life. And I think it's really important for that to be an independent person, who works for you and not the investment companies. And that's what I tell people to do is don't take my advice on investing, take my advice on how to approach your investing and how to trust it to the experts who are going to work for you and have your best interests at heart.
It's a great way to think about it. And we do know that the ads are resonating with people because people are contacting us after hearing, you talk about the messaging that you were mentioning just now. How do you feel about being part of the, I guess, movement toward index investing in Canada?
I'm actually very proud of the fact that I've been involved in this. I'm glad that Cameron and I met so many years ago and I got to be exposed to this at an early stage in my investing career. And at a time when I could become a bit of an advocate for this, and an evangelist for this, because I see the trend in the United States and you guys have quoted some of the data of how more and more investors are moving towards index investing and seeing the logic and the scientific evidence behind that. And I hope more and more people do it in Canada. This is not a zero sum game like so many other things in the investment world are where you probably do want to keep it a secret. If you've got some knowledge that some stock is going to take off, well, you don't want everybody else betting on that stock with you.
Whereas index investing is something that everybody can benefit from. And so I'm happy to be able to spread the word about that. And so it's not just the investment philosophy, it's also the relationship with your advisor that I think is crucial to that. It's the two things, you want to have the right investment strategy, and you want something that is not based on fallacies and flawed logic, but you also want a relationship with somebody who is going to work with you and you can trust. And whose interests are aligned with yours and has your best interests at heart. And I think those two things are what's changing about the investment world in Canada for the better.
My last question for you and as I think about last week's podcast, we had Dan Solin on who you know.
Yeah. I love Dan.
And Dan's a great and very interesting individual who I've known as well for probably about the same amount of time as I've known you.
And who would be mad at all of us are not wearing ties right now.
Perhaps, but we are in the Solin room.
That's true.
He's happy.
Yeah.
I'm thinking he'd be happy about that, but I look at both of your lives and this a question I asked Dan last week, like it appears to me that your life much, like Dan's, you've been on this Epic journey is the words I use [inaudible] the separate journey of helping others, helping tell a story of Ottawa. You've done a lot of volunteer work, but you've been a very driven, inspirational person to a lot of people. Does that [inaudible 00:31:07] kind of feels like to you, would you look back on your life and what you're doing? Are you in a place of, some people call it flowly, you in the zone now where you know what you like doing and getting old enough, you've figured a lot of stuff out?
Yeah. I guess it's a little bit of that. Look, my life is wonderful. I couldn't be happier. I couldn't be luckier. It could not be going better in so many different ways. I have a wonderful family. I have a great relationship with my wife and my mom and my in-laws and my extended family, which is at the heart of everything of course. All of my professional opportunities are fun and rewarding and I get to have impact. And so I'm playing with house money in every sense of the word, so life has exceeded my expectations. I was a very shy kid who was worried about a lot of things when I was a teenager and everything has worked out way beyond my expectations. But life is also a work in progress at all times, you get to a place and you always think, okay, what's next?
And what more can I do? And so you're always setting your sights on the next objective and the next goal. And so in that sense, I'm always trying to figure out, okay, it's not enough what I've done so far. It's not enough to have raised a little bit of money for United Way and the Ottawa Hospital. How do I take that to another level? How can I change more people's lives? I had a chance to meet, as I mentioned, I've become involved in the refugee issue in Ottawa, helping refugees, the challenges they face, and I met a guy named Jim Estill, who lives in Southwestern Ontario. And he has personally sponsored something 78 refugee families that have come to Canada, and he's done a bunch of other things to make their path easier as well. And so I'm always thinking, how can I do something more?
How can I mobilize other people? My thought process now is very much is around the idea that if I were the mayor of Ottawa, what would I do to fix problems in our community? And I'm not the mayor of Ottawa and I probably never will be. But that doesn't mean I can't do those things that I would do if I were the mayor. And if I were a billionaire, what would I do to try to solve problems in our society? I'm not a billionaire and I probably never will be, but that doesn't mean I can't do many of the things that I would set out to do if I were a billionaire. I just have to find other ways of funding those things, but I can still do those things. So I'm very much focused on what the next task is going to be in a lot of different areas.
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