Thriving Through Generations: Peter Dello on Leading Thermo-Kinetics in Industrial Innovation and Family Legacy

Trevor Botkin: 0:10

And welcome back to another episode of when Leaders Connect, the Corporate Connections podcast, where we explore the journeys, insights and strategies of distinguished leaders making a difference in their fields. Today, I have the incredible pleasure of hosting a really remarkable guest whose expertise and leadership have been instrumental in the world of industrial instrumentation and process control. Joining us today is Toronto member and Vice President of Thermokinetics Company Limited, peter Dello. With a rich background in engineering and a keen understanding of the complexities of industrial processes, peter has been a driving force behind Thermal Kinetics' success. His leadership has not only propelled the company to new heights, but has also solidified its reputation as a leader in providing high-quality measurement and control systems. Without further ado, let's welcome Peter to when Leaders Connect. Hey Pete, how are you doing?

Peter Dello: 1:04

Hey, trevor, how are you doing? Today it's Peter to when Leaders Connect. Hey Pete, how you doing?

Trevor Botkin: 1:06

Hey, trevor, how you doing today. It's good to have you finally. It was a bit of a back and forth to get you on the show.

Peter Dello: 1:12

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. As I said to you before we started, I was in our Calgary office this week and listened to five or six of the podcasts on my quarter flight on the way home, and I'm excited to be here.

Trevor Botkin: 1:28

Beautiful little subtle plugs on Calgary, porter and other episodes of the podcast. I like how you roll, peter. Maybe you can just give us kind of a high level, like a 10,000, because most people aren't in your profession and I think when we talk to wealth advisors or we talk to coaches, we talk to people who sell widgets. They're kind of like, ok, I get what you do, but yours is very niche and not as many people. I think people are impacted by it because of all the industries you serve. But maybe you could just give us kind of the Coles notes of what your business is.

Peter Dello: 1:59

Yeah, so we obviously have some other people who are going to listen to this. Haven't heard this, but you've heard the story. My father was the temperature product manager of a US-based company from 1959 to 1971. Had somebody come up from the States and fired his boss one day and went home and said to my mom, I don't want to leave around somebody to do that, literally instantly left the company. In that we are a manufacturer and a distributor. A lot of the companies in our lane, I guess, for lack of a Canada, we have the ability to supply products to anybody who's dealing with temperature, pressure, level and flow in an industrial space, including oil and gas, petrochemical mining metals, primary and secondary metals, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, aerospace, if I didn't mention it already. So we've been fortunate in that, you know, with one industry is down and other industry is up, so it's mostly a recession group industry. We've had a good run and I'm hoping it's going to continue.

Trevor Botkin: 4:02

So 50, 53 years going to continue.

Peter Dello: 4:11

So 50, 53 years? And how old were you when you when you started in the business with your dad? I started in 1904, when I graduated from western in london, so I would have been 22 so you did this right out of university.

Trevor Botkin: 4:23

Yeah, yeah and now it's. It's really cool. I mean, first off, your dad was an entrepreneur or was not an entrepreneur, was an employee, and then to protect himself, but more importantly, it sounds like to protect his family. Yeah, um decided to be an entrepreneur.

Peter Dello: 4:44

Yeah, I really. It's funny. It's kind of it's almost like four kind of different things. My dad started the business. My brother, his education is. He was a lawyer. He also got his MBA. He started working in the company while I was still in school and he took over from my dad later in his life and I've since taken over for him and my son is now in the business and Jeff's son-in-law is in the business and I told people Adam's been with us. My son, adam, has been with us just over five years and I tell people all the time that adam is my dad with an education really disrespectfully, my dad.

Peter Dello: 5:33

He just never had an opportunity to get an education. He basically went to school till grade six and everything that he learned was self-taught or taught to him by somebody else. And I have an economics degree. So I'm certainly in no way technical like my dad was and like my sons, but I've got a very hard head and if I'm getting involved in a conversation I make sure that I know just enough to make myself dangerous.

Peter Dello: 6:08

And then I go into the conversation. But Adam, he's just a social person, like my dad, he's very technical. He has a technical degree. I'm excited to be here.

Trevor Botkin: 6:28

That's very cool. That's pretty amazing, and you could say that your dad had an education. He just paid for it differently than Adam did. Absolutely, yeah, no question. Well, that's amazing, and I assume Jeff and Adam get along like gangbusters being cousins. Well, not because, but I guess by marriage oh well, uncle, and sorry. Sorry, jeff is my brother, james oh, james brother's son-in-law okay, so james and adam are are related by marriage. They, they do, they do get along great.

Peter Dello: 7:02

And, uh, my, my brother's other son, james sorry to be throwing in so many james is there, is also working in, uh, james cavanaugh's operations department working on special projects.

Trevor Botkin: 7:19

It's a fascinating story. I'm sure we could go a number of different ways, but I'd be really curious to kind of see because you have such a different perspective than either your father did, your brother who MBA and law and then you come in with an economics background and you must all three of you must have seen the business radically different because the lens, the paradigm with which you were looking at the numbers, at the sales, at the product, must have been radically different. So I'd be curious to know how you, as a company, were able to navigate that over those three transitions.

Peter Dello: 7:55

Yeah, I think I was thinking about this as I was listening to your podcasts yesterday and thinking about us having this conversation today.

Peter Dello: 8:06

I think I think really, the the backbone for for the, for the thing, the thing that's guided us through through my father and my brother and myself running the company, hopefully, knowing what I've said to you, that I'm hoping that we're going to go from gen 2 to gen 3. That's my, my wish, and I'm hoping that comes to fruition. I think really, I think really, what's carried us through all of that, even though we all, we all had different backgrounds and all led in different ways, I think really, what's carried us through is the culture that my dad created and it's just. I can I would bet money on the fact that if you walked in our front door and asked any of our employees, our longer term employees, what makes them look and experience it, it's just a thing and I know that's a cliche and it gets used all the time, but it's just one of those things that we carry through, all three of us running the company.

Trevor Botkin: 9:21

How many employees?

Peter Dello: 9:23

We're just under 50 across Canada. Our head office is in Mississauga and we've got bricks and mortar in Calgary and Montreal.

Trevor Botkin: 9:34

And you do the manufacturing in Mississauga.

Peter Dello: 9:36

It's all done in Mississauga. We do a little bit of warehousing of customer specific stuff in the other offices, but again they're they're sale.

Trevor Botkin: 9:48

The other two offices are sort of offices and so you were talking briefly about this idea of gen 2 going on to gen 3, and and that what would be, as you look at at, uh, at, obviously, james, james and adam, or just james and adam for the sake, or even just adam, if you want to keep it simple your son, what would be other than it passing to him and him successful? But what would be the vision for him that you would love as a father, but also as the second generation? Um, what, what would be that thing that you would dream for him?

Peter Dello: 10:33

I think, really just a continuation of what we have.

Peter Dello: 10:37

I think that you know, just for those people who don't know, I'll just go back a little bit to those people who don't know, I'll just go back a little bit for those people who don't know the space that I come from.

Peter Dello: 10:49

I think we've done a very good job historically of convincing I don't want to say convincing. It's not like we're trying to brainwash anybody, but we've done it. We have very to brainwash anybody, but we have very technical people. We have very customer service focused people out there that do what we do, especially on our manufacturing side, and customers literally almost every day try and commoditize what we do, and it's possible you could commoditize what we do, but we've always done a really, really good job of showing our customers and proving to our customers that we have value, that we have a stake in helping them run their processes better. So it's a cool thing. I think that before you started recording, I told you I used to really be into technology and now that I'm old it just drives me crazy. But the three boys they're just so into, they're just whizzes with Excel spreadsheets and they're into AI and they're into social media and all of that, and I just think it's just going to be cool to see what they carry on.

Trevor Botkin: 12:29

How big do you think thermokinetics can get?

Peter Dello: 12:34

uh, by ourselves, or or or, like if we were acquired well, I mean that's, that's.

Trevor Botkin: 12:43

I mean acquisition is one thing, but I think then you lose that, that opportunity to to go third and fourth generation as opposed to you know the other.

Trevor Botkin: 12:52

The flip side of that would be acquisition, where, if you put yourself in a position to say, um, you're obviously very smart, um, whether it's book smart or just you know, you know business smart, you've obviously continued to grow this business, but you've got a third generation that's coming up that you know, similar to my daughter, is going to outpace me, like there's just, there's no, no doubt about it. She's got the best of her mom everything from me, including my horrible sense of humor, which is not to her credit, but she, but she would. They want their kids to eclipse their achievements. You, you, you want them to be the best versions of themselves, but even better than you were. I feel strongly in that. So you know, I think you know acquisition, or backing from a bigger player who then helps you grow, that you know, like, what is the opportunity or what is the vision for thermokinetics and how big can it get?

Peter Dello: 13:54

Yeah, it's a great question, Trevor. Yeah, it's a great question, trevor, and we're literally right in the throes of dealing with that right now, in 2024, we've become a member of Family Enterprise Canada. We're in the throes right now of interviewing some advisors to walk us through that process, because you know, the reality for my brother and I is we don't the worry is we don't want to drown the boys in debt for us to exit.

Peter Dello: 14:42

But then we also haven't quite figured out what the ownership structure is going to look like. We don't even know, we haven't gone down the path yet. I know they're interested, but at what cost? Right, you know what I mean. Like it, just, it could be, you know we could get to a stage where they could say, yeah, no, I'm, you know we wouldn't have to put in too much money, I'm out. You know, and I don't even know you may just they may want it, they may want to just continue as a job. We're just like I said, we're just in the early, early stages of dealing with that right now. I think it's important to have that, that, that third party, arm's length person who can walk us through that process, to, to, to, uh, you know, kind of, give us all, give us an insight into all the pathways that we're going to run.

Trevor Botkin: 15:44

Yeah, it's only gotten more complex and I think with the Canadian tax law and you know, the new capital gains things that are coming in, I think it's pretty interesting in terms of, uh, the opportunity for family-run businesses, how they structure themselves and just yeah, I think I think you know I, I, I, um, how do I put this?

Peter Dello: 16:10

I, I get, I get a little bit frustrated with you. Know, I speak to people who have pensions and I had somebody say to me recently that they're okay with the recent change in capital gains and laws and my response to them was my dad built this business. My brother and I have since run it and I'm hoping to pass it on to the next generation. But we don't. We don't have a pension right. Our building our business, that's our pension, and and they just took 17 percent away from us just like that, just by signing a piece of paper. So it, it's just some days. It's some days. I want to pinch myself because I just think we're in just such a great position. Our business is growing every year, we've got great employees, we're profitable, we don't owe anybody any money.

Peter Dello: 17:19

Wow, it's just one of those. I'm in a, I'm in a very enviable position, yet some days, you just some days you feel like you go home, like you got a headache because you just beat your head against the wall.

Trevor Botkin: 17:34

That's most days for me. So just just just so we're clear. Um, uh, that's amazing. Did you and this is total sidebar, this is my own curiosity did you? Have you set up a family trust?

Peter Dello: 17:45

we have, we have yeah you have a family trust so smart we're the advisors of each other's trust right, yeah, that's so smart yeah we've done. We've done all we have. We have a very good corporate law firm that we deal with. Oh nice, we have an independent accountant, accounting company that we get both great advice.

Trevor Botkin: 18:17

Oh, that's a. That's brilliant. Just, and so many people don't know and and I think I mean I mean your second generation and you, between you and your brother some pretty, pretty intelligent. There's so many business owners, especially when they start out, no one gives them the proper advice in terms of like this is what you need to play in place now, because someday someone will knock on your door and offer you a suitcase of full of cash for your business and if that's not in place now, you're going to give most of it away in that salary, the other and and uh, you know, just to go back to back to my dad and and you know the good advice that you got right of my brother and I uh established these two trusts in 2019, so they're five years old but prior to that, we had already been through two, two trusts that we had started and and because they're what are they?

Peter Dello: 19:12

20 or 21 years that they run. So we had gone through two generations of trust through the advisors that my dad had, so we had some really good advice from them.

Trevor Botkin: 19:27

That's amazing. So I'm going to ask you a curveball, because we're talking about your own sort of exit strategy. And I don't want to ask about the exit strategy, but I want to ask should, when that? I want to ask, uh, should when that day arrives, not should when the day arrives? Um, what do you want to spend your time doing in that latter half of of the time you have left?

Peter Dello: 19:50

uh well, my yeah, it's a great question. I think about it a lot Lots, I guess, is a quick answer, but my wife retired two years ago. As a matter of fact, it's two years ago this weekend.

Trevor Botkin: 20:10

Wow.

Peter Dello: 20:11

She did a very large job at SickKids in Toronto. She was a dietician, she was a manager of patient food services. She's been retired for two years. She's really enjoying that. In less than four months we went from having zero grandkids to two grandkids.

Peter Dello: 20:34

Both of our kids and their spouses had kids Joseph just turned Tuesday and Ren turned five months last week. I'm just excited about times where I'm going to pick them up and take them to hockey practices. Alexis still has, and has ridden horses her whole life, so I'm sure someday I'll be going to a to a to a farm to watch her in on the horse. You know, I'm still. I'm still uh, playing hockey, uh, play golf. Sue and I are hoping to do some more, do some more traveling. We're going to be married 35 years in September and Sue's turning 65 in October, so we're going to do two and a half weeks of drinking wine and looking at vineyards in Tuscany at the end of August.

Trevor Botkin: 21:40

So I'm looking forward to that. It's absolutely brilliant, and we're going to Venice and Cinque Terre this summer with all the other tourists. I think I applaud your choice to go as the season's ending, not at its high season.

Peter Dello: 21:56

As a sidebar. If you are going going to chinko, you have to go to the village that's just around the corner from it and it's one word, it's called portovanera, p-o-r-t-o-v-e-n-e-r-e.

Trevor Botkin: 22:07

You have to go there okay, it's, it is written down and it's recorded, so between those two, I should be able to not forget it. There you go.

Peter Dello: 22:21

Do not miss it.

Trevor Botkin: 22:22

It's entirely possible. I'll be re-listening to this episode on the plane just to go where did Pete tell me, there you go. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, everyone I've talked to that's been to Cinque Terre is always like it's the same thing. Okay, you need to find this place, you need to go here and, uh, it's my first time in italy, so I've I've amassed quite a bit of data.

Peter Dello: 22:43

I say all the time I'm convinced I either was italian in the previous life or I'm gonna be italian in the future you can just claim to be italian in this life.

Trevor Botkin: 22:52

I, you, you've got the. You've got the charisma and the laid-back intensity required to be an Italian. I was celebrating the Italian's 60th birthday yesterday. A good friend of mine but a member of here in Montreal, paolo, just turned 60. And there's nothing quite.

Peter Dello: 23:11

Is he the hotelier? Yeah, yeah.

Trevor Botkin: 23:13

Yeah, nice, yeah, he hit 60 and doesn't look a day over, probably 45, 50, and he's like you, it's, it's ageless. It's quite remarkable, um, but I think partly, and I think there's some similarities between he and you, but it's just you love working, you know, like it's the. It's fun to go to work and it's fun to to solve problems and and and face down challenges, but it's fun because it's an opportunity to teach and to mentor and to give back. And that's something that has always struck me about both you and some of the other members that are, you know, getting to the end of that part of their career where they're saying you know, I've got enough money, I've made enough money, and I'm not working money. And I'm not working to make money, I'm working to create legacy.

Peter Dello: 24:02

And it's pretty interesting. When I was listening to the podcast yesterday, I wish I would have heard about corporate connections earlier in my career. I feel like I'm just getting into it and I'm kind of heading towards the end, but it's a great organization. Another kind of work story that I was thinking of yesterday when I heard you and Craig talking about both being from Winnipeg. So Adam's covering Manitoba now and he's also covering our northern Ontario to our rep. I told him now, and he's also covering Northern Ontario to our rep.

Peter Dello: 24:39

A couple of years ago he was at Algoma Steel in Sault Ste Marie and he was sitting across the desk from this guy and he says to him oh, I've met you before. And Adam says to the guy well, I don't think you have because I've never been here before. And he goes, no, no, I've met you before, been here before. And goes, no, no, I've met you before. And starts fumbling through his his um business card directory, pulled out the business card and shows it to adam. He says, actually that's my grandfather, no, and he goes and he goes back to his file and he and and he's looking through and he pulls out another card and points it at him and adam says actually that's my dad. No, yeah, yeah, so, yeah, so it was kind of a. It was kind of a, it was kind of a aha moment, kind of you know so that's, that's something out of a movie though.

Trevor Botkin: 25:27

This, this, um, especially now. I mean, I have business cards and I don't even know what to do with them anymore because I don't. I don't go back to them, I put them in my phone, I save it in my phone and then I don't, I don't look at it again. And the other day my wife had asked me to clean up my desk because I don't have a neat desk. It tends to accumulate things, and I must have had a thousand business cards that go back 15 years. I'm like, okay, I don't think I need these. And again, most of them probably are out of date. The numbers change, change, businesses change, people change, so but it's, um, that's that's old school sales, where you're pulling out business cards from your grandfather and then yours to show your son. That's pretty amazing, yeah, but that's the industry too, right? Yeah, like you're, you're in an old school industry at the end of the day yeah, I mean my dad.

Peter Dello: 26:20

You know the the you're coming from, from manitoba, what I know it's called gerdau. Now what, what? What would it? What would it? What would it have been called back when you lived up there, the, the steel plant in selkirk, or whatever they called back then?

Trevor Botkin: 26:37

The steel plant in Selkirk? I don't even know.

Peter Dello: 26:41

Anyway, so it's yeah, it's just one of those things my dad would go. He'd go to Sidney Steel in Sidney, nova Scotia, and I'll go on the steel and the steel plant in Selkirk and you know, we'd go there in like September or October and the guys would say, I will see you next spring, joe, and he'd go, no, no, I'll be here in the winter, and he was always there in the winter, because that's what happened in those places. The vendors would come, they'd come from the big smoke, and then they'd come in the fall, and then they'd come in the spring, sure, and he wouldn't go in the winter.

Trevor Botkin: 27:16

But my dad always went in the winter. What, what would you say in hindsight as you, as you look back on on your career or your, your, your father? And that, what would you say? The biggest lesson you learned from him was I wow, that's a.

Peter Dello: 27:33

That's a. That's a loaded question. I think that he you know getting back to what I said before about you know the culture that he created and family kids were on this call. You could ask them, you could say what did your top say was the most important thing? They would both immediately say that they wouldn't even hesitate. I think that, kiddingly, he always had a rule that you know, customer is always right and rule two was if the customer is wrong see rule one he was just. That was just. I think it just goes back to what I said about customers trying to commoditize what we do. He did, and we have continued to prove to people that we're not, that our product is not just a commodity.

Trevor Botkin: 28:37

Do you think that's still true today? Customers always right.

Peter Dello: 28:42

I think I think a lot of times, yeah, I think I think a lot of times that I think, yeah, I think it's, I think it's still, I think it still holds true and we, you know, I sign off on a lot of credit notes that I'd rather not sign off on, but I think that kind of the way of the world is you get different numbers from different people. But I think a lot of people will say a customer knows 60% of what they need before they even go to your website or pick up the phone to call you. So if we don't give them a reason to fill in that last 40%, then we're just kidding ourselves, we're just going to fade off into the sunset.

Trevor Botkin: 29:44

That's pretty cool. Yeah, I think it's. I think it's challenging. Um, sometimes it feels like 30 years ago, 40 years ago, and again it's it's hindsight right, which is never 2020, uh, as much as we think it is, this idea of it felt like there is more integrity involved in the average exchange between two people or two businesses, and it feels like whether it's media or marketing or Madison Avenue or the Zeitgeist, whatever you want to attribute it to we got away from that or we've.

Trevor Botkin: 30:24

We've gotten away from that in that we've made it okay for people to not we've. We don't hold people accountable for what they say or for their actions, and to me, that's such a tragedy. But it's also, I think, an opportunity as business owners to, when we deal with people and when we work with them, by bringing that back or by never having lost that I think it sounds like in your case but of insisting on that and insisting our, our employees and our team embody that sense of integrity, of saying you know, if you make a mistake, be the first one to put up your hand and say, yeah, I'll own that and then, and then we'll deal with the consequences afterward, but at least I can deal with somebody who's put up their hand and apologized or owned something, and so few people take ownership anymore. Yeah.

Peter Dello: 31:19

And what James Cavanaugh has really brought to our organization. He's been with us four years ago, last month, and he comes from a consulting background. So he has worked for PWC and he's just, he's literally turned our production department on its gear. I tell people all the time he's created capacity that we haven't even filled with the sales that our sales department created. So that's really something that he's created here. But he hooked us up with a consultant. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's called the Failure Toy. It's just a workshop that we went through called the failure toy and it's just a workshop that we went through.

Peter Dello: 32:15

And I think that I think that you know it's hard as an employer. You know, I think anybody who's listening to this, who's, who's in a major city, who has, you know, you know looking for people in a warehouse situation. We struggle to get people every day. We've got millions of square feet of Amazon warehouses within 15 minutes of our building and they're paying more than we are and people get benefits on the first day and it's just a struggle every a. It's a struggle every day to to attract and and keep people. But and you know, new ones aside the people that have been here, the people that have been here a long time. We have a lot of long-term employees. They just, they, just, they were when they were. They were here when my dad was here. They just know what he created and they just continue it every day.

Trevor Botkin: 33:16

I guess it's true that when you treat your business like it's family, you create family at the end of the day.

Peter Dello: 33:22

Yeah, like I said, I know it sounds cliche, but it was 10 years ago. Last Friday we lost my dad and on the day of his funeral we had to close the company because everybody wanted to come to his funeral. It just was.

Trevor Botkin: 33:43

I had a dear friend who I met through rugby. He was a neighbor, he was older, his kids were about my age met through um rugby. Uh, he was, he was a neighbor, he was older, he was his kids, his kids were about my age. Uh, and um, I ended up meeting him. He was one of the old boys on our club and um, he, he was one of um similar family-run business. Uh, mac done, they did tractors. Uh, he and his brothers were running it and just and just one of my favorite human beings. They ended up selling and it took a long time to sell because they wanted the owners to be the right people. They weren't just going to sell and make the money there, they wanted to make sure they put a lot of pieces in place to make sure their employees were taken care of, that their clients were taken care of, that. It just wasn't anyone that bought the business. And then he passed away a number of years ago tragically, and and I was talking, I have a bunch of stories about just just the serendipity of of meeting people who who knew him in that. But there's one in particular where one of my dear friends who also played we coached the same rugby club together with him, uh, in high school, and um, he had been um on the same bagpiping team as as this gentleman. They both played the bagpipes and so, when, when this friend of ours passed away, he climbed up on his roof in winnipeg and uh, and played the bagpipes as a, as an homage to, to, to, uh, to gary, and um, when he came down, a neighbor stopped him, said was that you playing up there? And he goes, yeah, I lost a friend today and she goes. It meant so much to me because, um, a gentleman I used to work for passed away as well and he used to play the bagpipes and he goes who's what you work for? He said gary, because that's, that was my friend and just, I mean, it's winnipeg, right, there's 600 000 people, but still, um, I was, I was at a meeting, uh, at toronto meeting, uh, running it.

Trevor Botkin: 35:47

This is before we brought your group in with this other group and uh, trevor poplar, who we both know it, brought his aunt um to hear one of our members talk about um wealth and she was looking at starting a charity and anyway, so I I made comments about being from winnipeg and she comes up to me afterward and goes. So you're from winnipeg. I said yeah, she goes. Do you know Colin Botkin? I said that's my little brother. From that she goes. Then you must know my husband, gary. I'm like what do you mean, gary? So that same gentleman had remarried to her, which is Trevor Poplar's aunt, and we both ended up crying in the meeting.

Trevor Botkin: 36:34

I'm not very good with emotion, I tend to be a wet noodle at the best of times. So I called Trevor afterward and I asked him the story and I said how the heck is your aunt now the widow of Gary and he goes? They were high school sweethearts and they went their separate ways in university and he got married in winnipeg and then had kids and then they got divorced and my aunt had gotten married and gary was the best friend of my dad and they reconnected later, much later on in life and remarried and I was like man the world is incredible, just incredible. Anyway, I get having to close the company to honor your father and again I'm sorry for your loss. I know it's been 10 years, but it doesn't go away.

Peter Dello: 37:21

I tell people all the time. My dad was five months and five days from diagnosis to death.

Trevor Botkin: 37:38

Oh wow, he died of lung cancer.

Peter Dello: 37:41

never smoked a day in his life. So he was obviously exposed to something environmental. He worked at the paper mill in Marathon, he worked at Atomic Energy in Chalk River, so it was obviously something that was environmental, that had gone into the system for a long time. I hear all these stories of people suffering for a long time. Dementia is just cringe. Every time I hear it it's the one that scares me. Four and three quarter years of his life he was healthy as an ox and in the end he didn't suffer, he wasn't in pain and he passed away at home. And I I say to people all the time man, if I had to, if I could sign on a dotted line for that, I think I'd probably do it.

Trevor Botkin: 38:41

Yeah, I would uh, it sounds like your father was an incredible man who lived an incredible life, but he lived it the hard way. Doesn't sound like anything came easy.

Peter Dello: 38:55

No, but he yeah, but he yeah, he just, I don't know, he just made it feel easy, I don't know. It's just. You know the last I say to people when he started, you know my mom had to go back to work right when we started. You know, my mom had to go back to work right when I was 1971, so I would have been nine that's my older brother, older sister and a younger sister so my mom had to go back to work and you know there was lots of times where you know where, we weren't sure you know where the next meal was going to come. But we've got here. We are 53 years later and nine of his grandchildren have been, uh, you know, have post-secondary education. Company is partially, uh, financed and it's just, it's an all-around good news story and I just hope that continues for many, many years past.

Trevor Botkin: 39:57

Well, I'm going to take an opportunity to, I think, end it on that note, because there's not much more. I mean we could go. It feels like we could keep going for a couple hours.

Peter Dello: 40:06

You know what's funny? I said to you before we started we'd probably be at 50 minutes 20 minutes, 20 minutes yeah. You know what's funny? I said to you before we started you probably didn't think 20 minutes. I could talk to you for days about stories about my dad. I really appreciate you having me on here. I think I said it earlier, but I'll say it again I'm really excited about the corporate connections.

Trevor Botkin: 40:32

I'm in a great forum group and my only wish is that I would have been exposed to it earlier. Well, we are so grateful to have you. I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned from how you run your business, how you run your life, from how you run your business, how you run your life. Anyone that's able to make 35-year marriage work successfully and to look forward to more time with your wife is a testament to who you are, but also probably to who your wife is.

Trevor Botkin: 41:04

Yeah, more her than me for sure. So you know there's nothing but admiration for everything you've done there. So I really appreciate you taking the time today.

Peter Dello: 41:14

I appreciate you having me on, I really enjoyed it Well, beautiful.

Trevor Botkin: 41:20

So I'm just going to officially thank Peter for sharing his journey and insights into leading Thermal Kinetics Company, which, as we said, is a family-run business with an impressive 53-year legacy and ongoing. And, peter, I just have to say that you're in your dedication to innovation and excellence and just maintaining this company culture. I think it's inspirational. I really do Beautiful.

Trevor Botkin: 41:48

And to all our members out there, I again I like to take a moment to acknowledge our community and I think that that commitment to accountability, to building a strong and supportive culture within our community is is admirable, and I really get excited to learn from from each and every one of our members and to share these learnings with everyone else. And maybe just as a reminder that sustaining a family-run business for over five decades requires more than luck and requires more than business acumen, but it demands a real deep commitment to accountability and strong organizational culture, and I think we can both agree on seemingly relentless pursuit of excellence. So I hope that we all can foster these principles in each other and take this as a point of inspiration. So, peter, once again, thank you very much and, to everyone else, stay tuned for more inspiring conversations with leaders like Peter, who are making a significant impact in their fields and, as always, this is where the ears connect.