Dennis Collins: Hey, welcome back to Connect and Convert. Yes, another episode of Connect and Convert, where small business owners come to accelerate their sales faster than ever. Isn’t that right, Leah Bumphrey? Hello, Leah.

Leah Bumphrey: That is correct. Absolutely. It’s small business owners, not our business owners who are small. We take them in all sizes, all shapes.

Dennis Collins: Correct. And we love them all, don’t we?

Leah Bumphrey: Absolutely.

Dennis Collins: Speaking of that, before we get on to today’s topic, I want to dive into kind of a favorite topic of Wizard of Ads people, and that’s strategy. Strategy. So before we get there, though, we have a special offer for our listeners. We tell you in every one of our podcasts, we want to remind you of our special offer, don’t we, Leah?

Leah Bumphrey: Absolutely. It is part of our strategy for helping business owners, and it should be part of the strategy of business owners to get some outside help, to get an outside perspective. Dennis and I are offering 60-minute discovery calls that are free. We can talk about any topic of your business that is salient to you, maybe something that you’ve heard us talk about and you want some more information on that’s more specific, but it’s free. Email LeahBumphrey@wizardofads.com. Email DennisCollins@wizardofads.com. We will get back to you. We will schedule in 60 minutes where we can talk about an expanded version of maybe a question that you’ve sent in. It’s all about trying to help you strategize your business. Back to you, Dennis.

Dennis Collins: Thank you. And if you’re in the U.S. Or other countries, we will schedule a meeting, okay? Sorry, I had to translate. I wanted to make sure everybody understood that.

Leah Bumphrey: Oh, people speak Canadian.

Dennis Collins: All right. Well, we get the drift anyway.

Leah Bumphrey: Oh, Dennis, I am so excited that we are sitting here with Mark Flaman. He is part of a family-owned business here in Saskatchewan that is just so unique and second to none. Mark, it’s third generation, fourth generation?

Mark Flaman: We’re third generation now.

Leah Bumphrey: Third generation. And they started from like all great businesses from humble roots with a character of a grandpa that got it going. So, Dennis, I really wanted you to meet Mark, and we’re going to pull a whole bunch of stuff about family-owned businesses from him today.

Dennis Collins: Well, I love it when we have guests, Leah, especially someone you’ve given us a little background on, Mark. I can’t wait to dig in and find out the secrets. Maybe he won’t tell us all the secrets, but some of the secrets.

Leah Bumphrey: So, Mark, tell for our listeners and our viewers that aren’t from Saskatchewan, aren’t from Western Canada, Flaman, what do you guys do?

Mark Flaman: So, we’re an agricultural equipment retail company. We don’t sell any of the big self-powered stuff like sprayers, combines, tractors, but everything that you’d need to set up a farm from front to back outside of that self-powered equipment. So, we sell grain dryer systems and grain monitoring systems, bins, augers, field equipment, breaking discs, all that sort of stuff. And then, of course, the parts and the aftermarket divisions also support that as well. So, we service and maintain all of the equipment that we sell. And we’ve got rental dealers across Western Canada.

I think we’re probably close to about 100 rental dealers now as well. At one point, we had a retail fitness equipment business as well that kind of stretched pretty much Canada-wide. And so, yeah, we’ve grown into a number of different businesses that either complement each other or help the sales keep flowing through when it’s farming season, right? So, yeah, that’s what we’re all about.

Leah Bumphrey: Which sounds really straight ahead, and very kind of rigid. It’s farm stuff. But when you and I were talking a couple of weeks ago and you basically introduced me to your grandpa, not literally, but just with stories, and he’s the guy that got this all going off the farm in Saudi. So, small town Saskatchewan.

Mark Flaman: Yeah, totally. So, in 1959, as the story goes, my grandpa Frank, he was — I guess I’ll just start with his background quick. His parents, they founded the original Flaman family farm one mile north of Saudi, Saskatchewan, which is about 25 minutes north of Regina. And Frank was, I believe, I think he was the youngest of 10 kids or close to the youngest of 10 kids. And he was the one that stayed on the farm, and he was planning on working the land and growing the farm. They needed a few more grain bins one year than what they already had for storage.

And some argue by accident, and some others will argue by, you know, on purpose. But he wound up ordering about, I can’t remember exactly what the number is, but let’s say 10 extra grain bins than what he originally planned on needing. He put an ad out and he said, hey, I’ve got these grain bins and we will erect them for you and we’ll build them. And so he puts this ad out and he sells the 10 bins. And then the next year he ordered twice as many bins as he had the year previous. And he just kept rolling like that. So, yeah, that’s kind of how everything started there.

Leah Bumphrey: So he just had a vision for the possibilities.

Mark Flaman: Yeah, he saw a need back then. He’d order some bins from Manitoba or from wherever, you know, Chief Westland bins from wherever. And then they’d show up on a truck and then you’d get together with a couple of buddies and drink some beers, I guess, and build them. But he wanted to offer a turn key. We’ll come out and this stuff will be set up and we’ll put it there. And guys liked that. And I mean, back then, we’re talking maybe, a thousand bushels or 1500 bushels. It’s nothing like what we see on the farm today. But back then that was the offer.

Leah Bumphrey: And he flew an airplane too. And that became part of what you guys did. What he did.

Mark Flaman: Yeah, exactly. He got his pilot’s license, I think, sometime in the early 70s or maybe mid 70s. He wound up with an aircraft that he’d fly around the province, land on a grid road, and then taxi down a customer’s driveway or a potential customer’s driveway. So they’d hear this low hum overhead. And then here comes this guy. He’d land his plane and then go into the customer’s yard with his product list. You know, “Hi, my name is Frank Flaman and what do you need to continue farming?” And then he’d take the kids, you know, the farm kids for rides for free and that sort of thing.

There was the one story that was told to me by the producer himself. And I don’t know how many years back this would have been, maybe a few decades ago. But he was reading an ad in the Western producer for this new type of aeration fan. And so on a Sunday morning, he called the phone number and he talked to Grandpa Frank. And Frank says, you know, give me your land location.

Mark Flaman: Maybe just send a check in the mail and then we’ll get this thing brought out to you. And about two and a half hours later, the customer hears this low hum flying overhead. And he looks up and there’s an aircraft circling the farm. And the customer I’m talking about, his driveway is about a quarter mile long. Frank landed on his driveway and used part of the field as the runout. And he came back and he taxis the plane up to the house. And Bobby, the customer, he’s looking inside of the plane on his front porch drinking a coffee. And there’s an aeration fan in the passenger seat of this little four passenger aircraft. And Frank can’t get out of the plane unless somebody takes this fan out first. So he says, what the hell are you doing here? Frank said, well, I don’t know. I got off the phone call with you and decided to go for a plane ride. So anyway, here’s your fan.

Dennis Collins: Wow. See, that’s our problem, Leah. We don’t have an airplane.

Leah Bumphrey: You go ahead and get that license and you can take me for a ride.

Dennis Collins: You wouldn’t fly with me anyway. You’d be afraid.

Leah Bumphrey: I don’t think so.

Dennis Collins: Hey, Mark, it’s really nice to meet you. I really love hearing these stories, what we call them, the founder story, the origin story. Those are all so instructive about how small businesses get started and how they stay going. But I was looking at your website and something, a couple of things hit me. I’ll mention a couple of them. There was a line there. “We’re never strangers to diversification.” We’re never strangers to diversification. So then I looked a little further and I said, my gosh, now you have like eight divisions, ag and trailers and trailer service and rentals and grain systems and fitness and apparel. I mean, wow, those are pretty disparate disciplines. How did that all happen?

Mark Flaman: I think in part we all picked that up in our own way from Grandpa Frank. So we had originally started selling, I shouldn’t say we, but Grandpa started selling bins off the farm. And as my dad tells me, he’d have been about, 10 or 11 years old. And a farmer would come to pick up equipment and while they’re loading his truck, Grandpa would tell my dad, Steve, hey, go show them the hi-fi stereos in the van body over there. So then dad would take… And it’s right, and so it’s out of control because we look at one of the original, you know, the catalogs from the 60s and there’s Chesterfields. And I mean, we had a carpet store at one point and all of this different stuff that we are trying out.

Dennis Collins: Wow.

Mark Flaman: Frank bought a carpet store in Regina and his first order of business was to replace all the carpet in the church in Saudi with like two inch shag carpet. And then everybody shows up and goes, holy smokes, what is this? And then, oh, where’d you get this? And then, oh, go talk to Frank. And then all of a sudden, you know, it’s a whole thing or whatever.

Leah Bumphrey: He donated the shag carpet to the church in Saudi?

Mark Flaman: Yeah. So he put shag carpet in the church. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dennis Collins: What a great marketing ploy. And I shouldn’t use the word ploy because he didn’t see it as a ploy. He was gifting the church and it turns out it was the foundation of another business.

Mark Flaman: Yeah. And so there’s a lot of stuff like that that we looked up to him for. And he was a really good mentor in getting way outside of the box. You know, oftentimes there will be somebody who gets into industry and then they’re locked into that industry. And we’ve never really seen it like we’re locked into just one thing. Of course, we want to be able to do everything that we do to the best of our abilities. But I mean, with the amazing team of people that we have, and we’ve been extremely selective with our hiring process, we do really have an unbeatable team.

Dennis Collins: That’s great.

Leah Bumphrey: I love the story of him getting the shipping container. Was it full of shovels or something?

Mark Flaman: You know, so in the third generation, there’s myself. I’m about middle of the pack. And then I’ve got two older cousins, Kurt and Ryan, two younger cousins, Mitch and April. And we’re all within about four years of each other. And so there was a time where Kurt, Mitch, Ryan and myself, we were all working in the yard. And there would be a random shipping container would show up with like 10,000 spade shovels in it.

And we would have no idea what to do with them. And then Frank would call us. “Hey, did you guys get the shovels? Put one on every single auger that goes out of the yard in the entire company for the next five years. That’s what those are for. Just get them out.” Or, you know, we’d have a, you know, a truck full of electronic, you know, pedal assist scooters show up from China. And like, so what do we do with this stuff? There’s actually on that note, I think, Leah, I was maybe telling you about the charter tour company that he had.

Leah Bumphrey: This is great. Dennis, you’re going to love this because you know how cool…

Dennis Collins: I read about this on the website as well. I was going to ask him, but here we go.

Mark Flaman: Yeah. So my dad, you know, I think this would have been in the late ’70s sometime, grandpa moved to Alberta to start getting business fired up at a couple of locations out there. So he had left the original Saudi location to Steve or to Don and to Rudy to run. And my dad was living in Regina at the time. He was a little younger, but Don and Rudy, they’re at the Saudi store. And they start getting these phone calls about a chartered bus tour to the interior of Mexico.

And they’re thinking, what the heck is this? Like we’re selling grain bins and we’re selling augers and we’re selling aeration equipment and ducting and whatever. What is this bus charter tour thing to Mexico all about? Well, after a few days and a few dozen phone calls later, Frank busts through the door. He had come home from Alberta. He busts through the door at the Saudi store and he says, hey, so you guys getting any phone calls about the, the bus tours to Mexico? And they said, yeah, we were going to ask something about like, what the heck is going on here?

What had happened was Frank took out like a full page ad in the Western producer. And he said, hi, my name is Frank Flaman Here’s a picture of my daughter, Carmel. She married a Mexican fella and they’re living a great life down there. And we want to show people who haven’t really traveled outside of rural Saskatchewan, another part of the world. And that was a part of the world where, you know, Frank, he had a large school bus when all of his 10 kids were young. And they would go down to Mexico and they would frequent Mexico every year for a couple of months. And so imagine you’ve got a few people at the store going, okay, but what’s this bus tour thing? And Frank says, oh, yeah, well, I took out the full page ad and it sounds like we’re getting phone calls. So he was in and out in about five minutes. He said, okay, but the ad’s working, right? And they said, well, yeah, it’s working. We’ve got a list of names and numbers, but we don’t know what to do with this stuff.

And Frank says, don’t worry, we’ll figure that out later. And then he drove south to Regina to go line up buying some charter buses. And then they got some buses and they had the shirts made. And then pretty soon you’ve got farmers on buses going down to Mexico.

Dennis Collins: So he created the demand before he even had the buses.

Mark Flaman: Yeah, for him, it was just like if he found something unique and interesting, similar to the first treadmills that were brought into Canada, right? He would just go, okay, we’ve created a little bit of a stir. We’re just going to go do it and deal with the consequences later. And it seemed to have worked out with a few of our product lines.

Leah Bumphrey: No fear. And what I love about the charter bus was, he had a little bit of a personal story because he had taken a school bus with the 10 kids and presumably mom. They went down to Mexico to get out of the winter air that we enjoy here. He saw it as a plan. The ad that he took out… And Dennis, the Western Producer is still going now. It’s one of those print magazines. It’s very, very specific. I think there’s not a farmer that wouldn’t subscribe to it. And he took an ad out that was about his lived experience. So it wasn’t pretend. It’s like, hey, this is what our daughter did. This is what we do. Come with us.

Mark Flaman: That’s exactly it. Yeah. And we’ve got the old reels from Frank, what he had bought with the business, I’m assuming, one of the first types of personal camcorder type units. It was like a personal recorder with the big reels and stuff. And we had all that stuff digitized. And so when Frank passed away a couple of falls ago, we were able to take all of this video and create a little bit of a slideshow. And I’ll forward it to you all after the podcast here. But it’s really incredible. We’ve got video of him flying, landing in a customer’s yard. And then the next clip, there’s a school bus with a bunch of kids running out of it. And it wasn’t like they just decided to do this on a whim. Obviously, it came from a place of art. But they really wanted to show… Grandma and grandpa, they wanted to show their 10 kids. There were three brothers and seven sisters. They wanted to show them what life could look like outside of just kind of these four walls that is Saskatchewan.

Mark Flaman: And they did a good job of that. If I had to sit down and count, probably I’ll just guesstimate maybe like six out of the 10 kids wound up speaking Spanish pretty fluently and stuff like that. So it was a big impact on us.

Dennis Collins: So you still have a family foundation. I think I read on your website. You’re still very active in the community.

Mark Flaman: Yeah. So I guess before we get into that, just a quick little footnote on how all that stuff is kind of organized. We’ve got the Flaman Group of Companies is founded and based in Saskatchewan. When my grandfather moved to Alberta, he started Frank Flaman Sales Limited. And so the Alberta-Saskatchewan border is the dividing line between the two companies. So my father and his two brothers, they’ve got the business here and into Manitoba. Now, the Alberta business is actually owned by a foundation called the Frank Flaman Foundation.

And I believe that it would have been about back in, I want to say 2009, 2010, we had the first foundation gala where he gave away $1 million. And he continued to do that for 10 different charities. He gave each of them $100,000. And then as time went on and he came a little bit closer to the end of his ride on this planet, he started to give away more and more and more. Last year, we crossed the $25 million total donation threshold. When they would go down to Mexico, they would obviously, they’d bring stuff for all the kids in the villages, you know, they’re doing the interior loop.

They weren’t so much doing all the touristy stuff. So they would, often, and I mean, that was how I grew up. There were times where we’d go down to Mexico for a vacation and it was kind of second nature that, hey, if we’re traveling near Christmas time, we would just pack an extra suitcase full of coloring books and crayons and all sorts of stuff for small children that we would just go out and give out. And it might not seem like much, but the sentiment was there to carry that forward.

Dennis Collins: What a great example that sets for your employees, for the community. I mean, that’s amazing. And it’s been going on for many, many years. And it’s a very sizable impact.

Mark Flaman: Yeah. They’ve been doing the foundation gala for about 15 years now. And now what we see is we see golden platinum level sponsors who have been with us for a long time who are starting to follow the lead as well. And I mean, just the impact. I heard one time that there was a metric, just by Grandpa Frank’s foundation donations, Operation Eyesight was able to restore eyesight to, I can’t remember what the number was, but it was in the tens of thousands of people, globally. Yeah, it’s pretty cool to be a part of, it’s pretty cool to watch. And now with my position personally in the province of Saskatchewan, I work pretty closely with the Frank Flamen Foundation. I guess I’d be the one in charge of, getting the donations for the Saskatchewan charities and stuff like that that we give out.

Leah Bumphrey: What I love about it is here’s the family, 10 kids. So we often hear, oh, 10 kids, oh my goodness, didn’t they know where they came from? Like, oh, that’s a lot of kids. But instead of it being a negative, here’s the youngest of 10 and he was inspired, obviously, by how he was raised one way or the other to just do fantastic things. And not just for himself and not just for his family, because of course we all want to do good things for our kids and for our siblings and for our parents. But he was inspired to go beyond that in a way that some people would say, break out the riddle and this guy is a little bit twitchy. He’s going to China and getting sea cans full of shovels and he’s into treadmills and he’s… But like the Flaman name, and I have to really stress that, it signifies quality and it signifies Saskatchewan. And I feel like I would really like this guy. I’d have a beer with him.

Mark Flaman: Yeah, totally. He embodied that Saskatchewan culture of, hey, if you’re wearing two shirts and your neighbor doesn’t have a shirt, you’d take both shirts off your back and you’d give them both to your neighbor, right? And it’s just like that. And that’s the way that he’s always been. We’ve always been really proud of him and proud to be part of what he’s built.

Dennis Collins: As well, you should, as well, you should. You’ve obviously developed a family type relationship, not just with your family, but with I’m sure, your employees and many, many, many thousands and thousands of others. But, you know, I’ve had a lot of experience with family owned businesses over my years. Mark, some of those went really well and some of those crashed and burned. It’s hard enough to be in business today. And then we add the family dynamics, which sometimes are not that wonderful. And some of these businesses fall upon with their own weight on top of them because they couldn’t get past the family issues. How difficult has it been in your experience to have this family owned business?

Mark Flaman: Really not that difficult at all. And the reason I say not difficult, I mean, of course, there’s the thoughts that go on in somebody’s head. Like 24 hours a day, we’re thinking about stuff. We’re thinking about work and family. And of course, people tend to bring a lot of meaning to something that really deserves no meaning at all. So what we learned how to do very early on was to separate the feelings and the meaning that we brought from those feelings from what’s actually going on in the business.

Dennis Collins: Wow, that’s hard to do.

Mark Flaman: Yeah, exactly. We’ve put a lot of emphasis on trying to be a little bit more ahead of the curve in terms of succession planning. And then also, how do we not only work well with each other just in the family unit that’s involved in the business, but with the employees and kind of to bring them into the conversations as well. Not necessarily on the topic of succession, but in terms of, hey, by the way, here are all the things that are coming down the pipe and just keeping everybody from an executive level down, all in on the same conversation and that there’s no surprises.

That’s the important part because if somebody passes away or they decide to sell a business and now you’ve got not only kids of the first generation, but then many more cousins of the third generation, things get a little bit sticky that way. And we’ve all seemed to be able to learn how to play nice together and stuff like that. Of course, there’s daily challenges, but yeah, no, that’s something that we pride ourselves on that we do really well.

Dennis Collins: That is amazing because again, I must say sometimes Leah and I and Paul Boomer, our producer, we get called in when some of those things aren’t going so well. There is dissension in the family, which creates dissension at work. And that’s kind of ugly sometimes, but what a model that you guys have developed. That’s something, Leah, that I think our listeners can really learn from. That is amazing that you’re able to separate it and speak intelligently and rationally about it and not letting it undo your family and your business. You could lose both.

Mark Flaman:
That’s right.

Leah Bumphrey: But it doesn’t happen just automatically. I mean, there’s good people and good businesses where it does the opposite. So what would be your advice, Mark, to a family-run business where they’re coming to that point, where they’re having to figure things out?

Mark Flaman: Yeah, no matter what size they are, I mean, there’s one book in particular that we’ve all read that has had a very positive impact on our business. And it’s called Leaving a Legacy by David C. Benthal. He’s the, was or maybe potentially currently still is, the chief executive and the director of operations for the Dominion Construction Group. And we look up to guys like that who have been, okay, now we’re talking about fourth generation. Everybody started the metrics, well, passing a business from the first to the second generation really isn’t that difficult. From the second to the third, okay, there are now, I’ll just go out and say it.

Of course, I hold dear my immediate family, but I also now have four other immediate families on their own that we have to take into account with all the decisions that are made. And it’s just, yeah, it can turn into a mess. So that’s why the rate that a second generation business transfers hands into the third at a much lower rate. And then from the third to the fourth generation, I heard somewhere the metric was like 2% of family owned businesses winds up in the fourth generation.

Leah Bumphrey: Really?

Mark Flaman: I have a son now, he’s approaching two years old. He’s almost two, Jack. And I think about him. And now what keeps me up at night is I’m not sure if my son will be able to have the same experience growing up in a family business as I did. Because like you mentioned, Dennis, things can change on a fly. Right?

Dennis Collins: It certainly can. Well, if anybody can do it though, Mark, based on the foundation that you’ve described to us, I would say your family has the best chance I’ve heard of. Because usually we’re talking about putting out fires. We’re talking about urgent issues that are about to kill the whole business.

Mark Flaman: Yeah, totally. I guess the advice I would give is not simply to read that book that I mentioned, but to also approach a lot of these conversations with a totally calm and open mind. There was one workshop that we brought in the folks from Unstoppable Conversations in to talk to myself and my four cousins. And not one person walked away without getting something substantial from that two-day workshop that we did. And it’s well worth the money because they’re the experts. If you can find a mentor or somebody who’s really good at that and isn’t so much professional, but to find a mentor who’s not afraid to call somebody on their BS and just say, hey, here’s the way you got it. But it’s totally different from the way that they’ve got it.

And so to create that atmosphere where we can just say whatever we’re feeling without having to feel any animosity or anything like that. A workshop would be a really good advice. We’re all in a room crying together for some reason. On the outside, things look like they’re going great. Our business and we’re growing and the employees are growing with us and we’re trying to elevate everybody at the same time.

That’s hard enough on its own. But then to get stuck in a room with four people who you love so dearly… I call them my brothers and my sister. We’re that close.

Dennis Collins: There was something that I saw.  – Oh, I’m sorry. Professor Paul Boomer.

Paul Boomer: Yes, I am here. So you actually kind of already answered this question, Mark. My question was, so do you recommend getting somebody from outside the business to help you go through that succession planning or whatever it is that you might be doing that has a large effect on the ongoing operations of the business? And you kind of answered that right there. But would you recommend people to maybe try it themselves or no?

Mark Flaman: No. I mean, now this is my personal opinion. This isn’t the opinion of the company. But in my experience, if you have… There’s that the classic model of the dad who expects much from his kids and the kids who grew up in a different version of the business than what the dad built. And they’ve got differing ideas. And so if there is a little bit of friction there, then obviously you want to bring somebody in right away.

There are very few who can do it on their own. I would 50 times out of 10, I would recommend bringing outside support into the business for those conversations because it gives a totally unbiased opinion. You’ve got an expert who sees the business for what it is, and they have no feelings attached to that business. And so they’re able to help with making the best calls for the decisions that are made and how people play together that way.

Paul Boomer: Awesome. Thank you. Mark, how do you go about finding that person or that group, that company, whatever it may be?

Mark Flaman: Yeah. So about 10 years ago, we embarked on a mission… Our whole thing at work is getting rid of the stories that people make up based on the meaning that they bring to something that doesn’t need to be there. We got linked up with… I mean, we’ve all been through the Hoffman process. They’re an excellent organization. And then we also started looking into things like the Landmark Group and Unstoppable Conversations. And I mean, if you just… You type some words into Google and some lists pop up. And then, the hardest part would probably be vetting the right person for the organization.

We were lucky enough to get a couple of people helping out with that part of our business that were not afraid to look us dead in the eye and say, you’re wrong or you’ve got it the wrong way about that person or this process or whatever. They’re not intimidated by us. They’re not worried about us. These people, they’ve been on stage with presidents of countries and leaders of organizations much larger than ours. So to find somebody… I wouldn’t recommend picking somebody fresh out of school who is trained to do something like this.

I would recommend finding somebody who has a lot of experience working with not only an organization in the same industry, but even on top of that, finding somebody who has worked with much larger or much more significant organizations because they’ve seen it all before.

Dennis Collins: Good point. That’s excellent advice.

Paul Boomer: Thank you for watching or listening to Connect and Convert with Dennis Collins, Leah Bumphrey and our guest, Mark Flaman This was part one of a two-part series. Next episode, Dennis is going to ask about the company’s three pillars, hiring practices, and memorable marketing campaigns. Part two will be the next episode. For now, I’m producer Paul Boomer. Have a great week.

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