“I’m not good at sitting on beaches,” Frank Heaps tells me from his Toronto office. “I’m going to develop them.”
I learn that they are not idle words. Frank Heaps is a man of action and at the age of 69, his entrepreneurial spirit is still driving him forward. Heaps helped pioneer the micro-brewing craze in Canada when he started Upper Canada Brewing Company in 1984.
“I quit my job, put a mortgage on the family home, wrote a business plan, raised capital and then struggled like hell for five years until it caught fire.”
Heaps sold the successful brewery 10 years later and thought about retirement.
“I tried watercolour, golf, bagpipe lessons, pottery classes — nothing appealed to me.”
It was back to the beach and Heaps began developing a waterfront property in St. Lucia. He is also the current president of Iceberg Vodka in Canada.
“You’ve got to have passion. You also have to motivate yourself because if you can’t do that, you’re not going to motivate the people around you.”
Beer, vodka and offshore property development. I can hardly wait to see what Frank Heaps does next.
