EP01 Leading Change and Innovation in a Family Business: Sarah Baptiste, ArrKann Trailer & RV

Speakers

Speaker 1: Matt Knight

Speaker 2: Sarah Baptiste

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Matt Knight  00:00

Welcome to Table Talk with ABFI. I'm Matt Knight. Today we're joined by Sarah Baptiste, President and CEO of Arkan trailer and RV today you'll hear her thoughts on trailers and the EV of the future, how to build great humans, both at work and at home, and how to set up boundaries between the tables of your life, be it your kitchen table or your boardroom table. Welcome to table talk with ABFI. We're joined today by Sarah Baptiste with our can trailer and Arvy. Wanna maybe start by telling us a little bit about your company. So even just what does our can do, aside from trailers and RVs, of course.

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Sarah Baptiste  00:46

Yeah, so we, well, we sell them. So we sell RVs, travel trailers, fifth wheels, tent trailers, motor homes, pretty much all RVs. And then we sell the accessories and service and parts that go along with that. So that's the, you know, the boring version of what we do. The more interesting version is that we help people enjoy the camp, camping, RV lifestyle, and just connect with themselves, each other and nature. And we are really excited to do that, because we feel that now more than ever, people really need time and space that allows them to force those connections, because a little tougher, everyone's kind of down in their screen sometimes. So we can, we can help people do that. And we've been doing it for years, and we'll do it for years to come .

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Matt Knight  01:32

Just kind of helping people to enjoy nature and connect with themselves,

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Sarah Baptiste  01:36

Yeah, each other, whatever that is. You know, for some people, it's going by yourself into a park somewhere, and for other people, it's getting together with some group camping, some other families, and sometimes it's just with your own family. So, you know, it looks different for everybody, and that's kind of the fun part. Is learning about our customers, what kind of camping they want to do and what they how we can best help them do that, because we do different things for different people, and we have the expertise to do that. That's the elevator pitch there for you.

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Matt Knight  02:05

So backing up into the kind of the very beginnings of Arrkann, or probably even before it was Arrkann. Can you go into kind of the history and background of the family business? 

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Sarah Baptiste  02:15

Yeah. So, the beginnings was before me. So my grandfather, Rube Friedenberg, he was a very entrepreneurial man. So from what I understand it, his first business was a gas station. So he started with that, and then him and his wife, and my dad and my uncle, they moved to the city. I don't know if the dad and uncle came before or after the move to the city, but they came to the city, and for years and years, he ran Allendale hardware in the Pleasant View neighborhood in Edmonton. So they -  he ran that for a long time. My dad and my uncle both worked in it, and eventually they started renting tent trailers out of the back of the hardware. 

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And that was the gateway into RVing. And they started to see some larger, he started to see some larger, like hardware stores, that big box was sort of starting to come in and they decided that he would open the dealership with my dad, and they would start selling RVs. And my uncle joined a few years later, and then off they went. 

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So they started selling, and they moved into, actually, some manufacturing too. So they manufactured tent trailers, leisure craft 10 trailers for a while, and sold hot tubs for a while, and affordable portables for a while. And they were in the path of the tornado, I think, in 1987 and it totally took out all of the buildings and manufacturers and everything. So at that point, they decided that they were going to rebuild the dealership, but they were going to focus on the retail sales and move away from the manufacturing.

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And so that took us into the 90s, my grandfather retired and turned the business over to my dad and my uncle. They acquired our we don't have it anymore, but another location on Sandberg trail. So we called the - we called it the satellite location. They did sales on parts that are there, I think in 2005 finish. My uncle retired shortly thereafter, around 2008 and then it was my dad. So I, you know, family business. I worked in it from when I was quite little, cleaned many, many trailers in my day in the summers, worked RV shows, and then I worked there when I went to university. And yeah, when we keep going, yeah. 

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Matt Knight  04:36

Well, that kind of leads right into the next question, which is, kind of tell us a little bit about your professional journey.

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Sarah Baptiste  04:36

Like, yeah, so, like, like I said, I worked in the dealership growing up, and I went to university with no plans of ever being involved in the family business. You know, I wasn't going to do that. That wasn't for me, which I don't think is an uncommon story. And I have to say, my father's always been really supportive of whatever I wanted to do. So his mantra, or what he always said to us, all of us, there's three of us growing up - you can be anything you want in the world, except for a banker. He doesn't like bankers. They had called his loans in the 80s and called as much stress, and he's never forgotten. So you'd be anything in the world except for a banker. So whatever, whatever you want to do, you know, go for it. We'll support you.

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So I went to university. I did the co-op program at the U of A, the U of A so, I'm an U of A alum, I got my Bachelor of Commerce, and I worked for a Canada Revenue Agency for four months, which was awful. I was in the business call center. So if you called from a business, I might answer the phone. And you know, what I really learned was that that type of government environment, it just wasn't for me. It was really rigid, really focused on you do what you're supposed to do. And I just needed a lot more flexibility in my world. And I'm a little bit of a go getter sometimes. So you know, if I saw something that needed fixing or I thought I'd help, I would want to, and it just wasn't really encouraged in that type of environment. 

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And so then I worked for GG commercial finance and their equipment finance division for eight months, which was really cool, because the heavy equipment financing is parallel to some of the floor plan financing we do at our can. So I had, had kind of seen that, so I could kind of see the other side for heavy equipment and what that piece looks at like with the bank. So I did that for eight months, and, you know, I liked it, and I liked the office and liked the people. But you know, when I started looking around, I'm like, man, for me to move up this corporate ladder, it's going to take a long time, and probably isn't going to be in Edmonton, so I might need to think about moving, which wasn't, I was okay with that at the time, but because it was such a large company for me to have any sort of influence or say, for everyone, even to be interested in hearing my ideas, that was going to take a really, really long time. And you get really specialized, you know. I was a co op student, so I was the bottom. I was the bottom. I was doing everything, but I could see, there was the account managers, there was the there was the doc person, like everyone had their really specific roles in the office, and you really didn't get to see how you impacted the larger picture of the company on a national, provincial, national, or even international level. 

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So, you know, I looked around. What did I love? I loved flexibility. I loved having a voice in the direction. I loved someone being interested in my ideas. I'm like, Huh, okay, I have this opportunity right now. It's the family business. So I went to my dad. I said, I think I'm interested, but at that point we had our 1904 85 location in Edmonton. I said, I think I'm interested, but I really, I really want to see if I can grow this thing. So you - this is obviously your investment. It's your retirement, it's your life. Are you interested in that? And he said, Yeah, I'm interested in helping you in that journey. I'm not interested in doing a ton of the work for it. So if you want to take it, I'll support you with my money. Essentially, it is his investment in his blood, sweat and tears up to there. 

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And so yeah, I joined. I started in a parts manager role, did that for a few years, moved into an office manager role. I got my CMA Certified Management Accounting designation, which is now a CPA, and started my family in 2013 -  it's actually my son's 10th birthday today. So 10 years ago, happy birthday. Happy birthday to him. To Connor, yeah. And then when I came back from my five month maternity leave, my dad retired, and I took over as the General Manager, which we converted to a CEO role, and then the rest they say is history, off we went.

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Matt Knight  08:38

So a lot of changes, kind of 10 years ago, around that event.

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Sarah Baptiste  08:42

Around that event, yeah, so we had added in 2012 our first Calgary location. So this was our first new location outside. So it was kind of like it took me, I came in 2005 it was seven years to even make that first step. But it was really sort of small. It was an opportunity. We thought, Okay, this can kind of help us get our feet wet. See what it's like, without too much risk, because we weren't investing in any property at that time. So we were leasing from someone else. It was a small dealership. It wasn't only a few 100,000 for us to take that over. So we did that, learned a ton, and then we acquired some land, because that piece wasn't quite big enough outside of Calgary, and we built our Calgary store, where it sits today, on 8.4 acres. It's on high, oh, one just outside of Chestermere. And we opened that in 2017. 

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So I learned about land development and building buildings. And there's some, there are some lessons there definitely, for sure, a little bit of different than what I had been exposed to up till then at the same time, we'd also built another shop in Edmonton, and we're glutton for punishment, so we opened our Calgary location 2017 and we also acquired our next dealership in Carstairs at that same year. So we took that over in September. 

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Matt Knight  09:57

So lots of lots, lots of change.

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Sarah Baptiste  09:59

Yeah. So it was pretty busy. It took us a few years to work through that and kind of figure that out. And in 2021 so we took over a dealership in Medicine Hat. Okay, so that wasn't that long ago, and in that same year, we ended up selling off a summer trail property and where our shop was and moving our head office out to Atchison, to our second full service location, so we didn't have service out of our other locations. So we moved that up, and now we're dealing with that another jump of growth. And I always joke like, why can't I just do one thing at a time? Why do we have to stack things on? But you know, what can I say? I like challenge. 

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Matt Knight  10:40

So you probably don't think back on what would things look like if I was still in the GE corporate, non family business?

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Sarah Baptiste  10:46

You know what sometimes I do, and you know, honestly, I wouldn't feel I don't. It's hard to say like I think that I'd find fulfillment in whatever I did, but I certainly I don't think I would feel the same sense of accomplishment for me personally, like I said, I started my family 10 years ago, and at that point, my husband and I, we would go camping sometimes because we kind of felt like this is what we should do. And I did it because I felt an obligation to, not because I wanted to. But then after I had my son, I think he was six months old, we took our first trip to Pigeon Lake and just seeing him out sitting in the grass, playing with his little, tiny bucket and shovel and shoveling sand in and playing with the plants, and it just hit me. I'm like, wow, this is why we do it. Like, what a gift. And if I wasn't in this environment, I wouldn't camp. I would miss out on this whole piece of it. Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't, but probably not and I would just miss all that. So I'm really thankful that this is the path that it went on, because it's really enriched my family life, too, in a way that I had no idea it would do.

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Matt Knight  11:57

Yeah, that's amazing. So you mentioned your father was really kind of supportive of you doing whatever you wanted to do, aside from kind of that guidance and support and kind of ability to do whatever you wanted, hat did he do to kind of prepare you for the family business?

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Sarah Baptiste  12:11

So my father has been a real mentor to me. So I started full time in 2005 and I worked with him. My father is a really great leader. So he does an awesome job really listening to the people that he works with. He knows some of our old stuff, those countless stories, listening and understanding, and this, this sense of empathy. I think sometimes in businesses you get, especially in a competitive labor environment, you get protective of your employees, that if someone wants to leave, you get offensive. You find it like, Why would you leave? But he, he was never like that. He always modeled, because it was never a conversation like, officially, was just model like, if someone's not happy who works here, that's - they need to go explore that. And you know, if we can, if we can do right by them, and we can give them that freedom, you know, maybe they'll come back. And lots and lots of employees have, and maybe they won't, but that's okay. 

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And you know, having people who work, and I'm going to say with you, because there's always been his perspective. People never worked for him. People always worked with him. And I think that's a philosophy that I've adopted as well. So I mean, people work with you, you know, you don't want people who are miserable coming into work every day and because he works with them, that they influence him, like there's that give and take and vice versa. So, you know, he really showed me that sense of empathy and taking the time to understand and listen, and you'll be a part of people's day to days and, you know, take a walk around, get to know the people who you're working with. And I think that there is some people who own businesses who don't have that philosophy. So that's really held by my heart, and it's something that we've worked to maintain. We call it the kind of family feel. So, you know, I'm part of ArrKann's family, but we talk about the ArrKann family. So, you know, ArrKanns, you know, you're part of something bigger than just yourself. So he, that's his philosophy, and we've really carried that forward, kind of as we went on. 

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But he worked with me in 2005 so I got to see his leadership style when I became office manager. Our doors were right next. So he slowly transferred responsibility for me. You know, was always that, always that that mentor and that coach right like wants to have conversations, and I as So I recently turned 40, and you reflect back, and who knows what my 50s and 60s would bring. But, you know, in my 20s, I think I really, I felt like I knew it all, and I had a lot to offer, and no one appreciated what I was bringing to the table. But then as I became smarter, I really learned, like, I don't know anything, like, I'm pretty stupid, and I can't believe he let me. Some of those things, but he let me make mistakes, not catastrophic ones, but he let me make mistakes and I learned from them. And I really appreciate that he had that he gave me that freedom to do that, you know, he didn't micromanage, and he didn't come in and question everything that I did. So he allowed me some, some space to to learn in the way that worked for me and and gave me the guidance, sometimes when I asked, and sometimes I didn't give me the guidance. And if it wasn't a dangerous thing, you know, he wouldn't take that advice and that I would live with the consequences of my choices. Yeah, and yeah. And I learned to learn a lot, and I still do, because now I've brought that philosophy on and carried on with our management team.

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Matt Knight  15:40

Nice. And anything kind of from your father's lessons there, or you know that you're doing a little bit differently in how you're raising your son and thoughts on preparing him for the business in the future. 

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Sarah Baptiste  15:52

Oh you know what, I think I'm not doing a ton different because, you know, he didn't raise me to prepare me to take over the business. He raised me to be a good person and a good member of society. So, and I think that that's kind of what I'm doing, too. You know, my goal, I think, as a parent, is, I want to, you know, release my little fledgling into the world, and I want him to fly and I want him to go out and contribute. So, you know, I want him to be a good person and deal with everyone with integrity and honesty and and give back when he when he can, and, and so that's, you know, that's a similar type, type philosophy that my parents had to, you know, he was never, there was never that pressure. And I don't think that there should be, because, you know, life's too short to go to work doing something that you feel like you have to do every day. So there was never an expectation. So for us, that was really freeing, really so, yeah, there's no expectation. And we say the same thing, you know, you can, you can be whatever you want to be, and foster, foster along. I think my son played team sports and I never did. I'm not sure if that was a deliberate choice on my parents’ part or just a meeting. So that was good, but honestly, no, not a ton different. So I guess I'll say I think my parents did a pretty damn good job, because I'm pretty great. 

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Matt Knight  17:16

So is he starting to watch trailers? 

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Sarah Baptiste  17:19

Yeah. No. Not yet. Not yet. He - we do have them come in some of our videos, though. We use them in our marketing. We don't pay him for it. So we exploit his cuteness.

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Matt Knight  17:34

So can maybe in those times you were working with your father and, you know, and other interaction with the family, how are you guys handling things like succession planning and balancing the difference between kind of the family and business dynamic? 

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Sarah Baptiste  17:47

So one of the things that we did when my dad started to exit the business, well, first of all, we worked with a consultant. So they're called Predictable Futures, to help us, and one of the things they advise us to do is set up an advisory board. So we have an advisory board. We have myself, my dad, and two external members, and my dad isn't the chair - one of the external members is. So what that has really helped is it creates - we meet three times a year - an advisory board, similar to a regular board of a government, is that, you know, the job of the board is to help strategic, provide strategic direction for the business. And what has really helped too, is there is a level of accountability for me, because I'm not the be all and end all. I need to report into a group of people and ensure that, you know, I'm a good steward. And for my father, it allows him space to review the financials, ask his questions, you know, the hard questions like, why are you doing this? Where are you going? What do you think is going to happen? And then we can have some debates about where it goes next. So this has really enabled him to still have a voice in his business, and it's given me and my team a higher level of accountability, and we produce a better project and project product. And it's, it's been, I think, essential for our succession plan to have that space. 

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It was, there was a transition, especially when, when he very first, like, that first year of retirement, I think for him, it just felt like a holiday like, and then as he started to feel less a holiday and more day to day, and then he started to get a little bit bored. So then he would come in and, you know, he'd want to have a conversation about what's going on, and I would be, I'd be too busy. So he always jokes that I have one feeling. So one day he's like, Sarah, I only have one feeling, but you've heard it, and, you know, so we've had some of those tough conversations. So, you know, he felt dismissed and that I didn't have the time for him, and that was a real problem. And I was frustrated because I didn't feel like I could just drop everything to make time for him, because I was running the company, right? I was  busy. So, you know, working through some of those conversations, you know, we didn't let it fester, you know, we did it up. And one of the things that I requested is when we still, we often have family dinners on the weekends, or we get together and and one of the things I requested early on is, I don't want to talk about the business I know I want to talk about what's going on in my life, in your life, and everything else that goes around, but I don't want to talk about the business here, because I need to. I need to get away. I need to set more boundaries. And I think that's maybe something I've done different. 

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Back to the raising questions, and he has, is He? He? Especially when I was young, you know, he worked 60, 70, 80, hours a week, like he really gave the business his all and and I didn't see him a lot, and I wouldn't say I didn't think I missed him, but you didn't miss what wasn't there, and he was there. We still did our family vacations, but you know on that, you know he often wasn't home for dinner, and that's just just how it was, right? So I have worked really hard to maintain work life balance. You know, I try to be home in the evenings. I try not to work insane over time. I always take my days off and take holidays. So maintaining that boundary, I think, has been really, really important for me. So for when we go to family dinners and we know this  is my family time, this isn't my work time. So, you know, we can have a conversation and work time, not a problem, but, and that was a that took a little bit of time, but we got there, and it's not really an issue anymore at all.

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Matt Knight  21:31

It's a hard boundary to set, but kind of, once it's there, it's, yeah, sacred. 

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Sarah Baptiste  21:35

Yeah. So, and I think probably the thing that we need to do that we haven't done as good a job with is just setting up family meetings. So a regular time to meet, to talk about, you know, as a family with my brothers and sisters, like, what, what does the business look like? What's the plan? What are the impacts? What's the what's my parents plan for, for when they pass, what's in their will, and some of that stuff about what that looks like. So, you know, we need to make a little more time for that. I think we've done okay, but we'll need to do a better job moving forward with that piece of it as we start to go on and it's a little bigger than it was before. So you know, as the business gets bigger, people who weren't interested in it before, might be more interested now, so establish the, what's the what's the transition look like for the family that's not involved? So we're starting to have those conversations now, yeah? 

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Matt Knight  22:31

So kind of outside of that ownership and family role, yeah, they're becoming a little bit more interested. Yeah. And are any of your other siblings involved in the business today?

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Sarah Baptiste  22:40

Yeah, my brother is so my brother is our, one of our general sales managers at, actually, our South store here. He does an amazing job. And I say that. So he's eight years younger than me. He's quite a few years younger than me. So he is - he's my succession plan for when I'm ready to go. And then he can do this for a while and see how he feels about it. So we're starting to, he knows that now, starting to have that conversation, what that looks like and there's still some time. I think I've got another good decade in me, at least, maybe more than that. But, you know, you always have to have and that's what our advisory board says. You know, something happens if you get hit by a bus. Sarah, tomorrow, like, what do we do? What is that plan? Yeah, what is that plan? So? 

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Matt Knight  23:19

So what do you do in the organization today, at all the different branches and corporate to kind of build that culture of, you know, familyness and collaboration and entrepreneurship and innovation?

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Sarah Baptiste  23:32

Well, that's a really big question, isn't it? Um, so, so one of the things that that will, first of all, we try and model that with my team. So I try and model it for the recognition piece. I think that that's probably really important from when I started, and maybe just a little bit of my personality, that little bit of type, a pessimistic type, I really see what people aren't doing well. And so I've tried to transition to recognizing what's going well. So that recognition piece and giving praise, where praise is due, in the moment, I joke that I'm going to write a book, but I'm not sure it really is a joke that raising good kids and having a good culture at your company is the same skills. So, but one of those pieces is, yeah, like, if you see someone doing something that you want to see, want them to keep doing, you should tell them, and it's a simple concept, but most people don't do it. They're just like, okay, good, you're doing your job. But for a lot of people, they don't know that that's what you want. They assume they're doing it. But in the absence of a story, people will make one up. So we're trying to fill that narrative. So okay, great, you're doing a great job. And so I've worked really hard at doing a better job with that recognition piece. And it's taken a lot of years. I think I've finally started to make some progress on it. 

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So my team is doing that now, and we encourage our management to do that. So we have a program. We call it the props program, so people recognizing other people, so they fill that card and they give it to you. That person's manager, and then they can, they can either share it with an individual or in a meeting, so they can give props to that so they know, and it might be their manager, but it's usually it's somebody else where they just saw and they're like, yeah, you did a great job, I want to give some props. So that's our, probably our recognition program. 

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Um, from a cultural piece, uh, COVID kind of derailed things a little bit. We're kind of just starting to get things back on track, but in most of the stores we will, we would do mixers every three to four months. So over the years, we've done all sorts of things. So we've done everything from we rented sumo suits and have like sumo competitions. We've done some, like fundraisers for cancer, so cut people's hair. So that still works for us. We joke that he's Thor because he has long blonde hair. But we had a cut it or keep it campaign. So we each raised money, cut it or keep it. And if the keep it side, raised more, he would keep it. And if the cut it side raised more, they cut it and raised more.

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So we had a big event: Iron Stomach. We've done like penny carnival things. We've done quite a few, some charitable pieces too. So like, we did a cleanup for the Bissell center. They have a moonlight Bay camp at Wabaman So we did spring cleanup. We'll probably do that again this year. We'll do it for Ronald McDonald House. We've done it in the past. We're gonna do it again this year, where we go and we cook a meal for the house. So we try to have that community piece. 

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And I guess that that's the other family piece too, is having that community so we have our keeping kids camping program started out, people used to ask Ken, what do you do? And he's like, Oh, I just keep the kids camping. So he said, it kind of tongue in cheek, but it was kind of true. So now we have our keeping kids camping program. So it's about using our resources to keep kids active and healthy in our communities. So we take a portion of every trailer and we set it aside, and we reinvest that back into the community. So a lot of jerseys, a lot of kids sports teams. We have some naming rights there. We were partner with Rainbow Valley. They have their program for new Canadians to get involved in the Canadian lifestyle. So camping or skiing. So we contribute to that piece of it. Yeah, lots of sports teams. Mostly, that's what it is, it's kids in schools. There's a Spruce Avenue School in the inner city here. We usually donate some money to them so they can buy jerseys for their kids, because they don't have any extra money for that stuff. So we try and help them out with that. And then we also have our community events trailer. So any nonprofit can borrow them for anything. So lots of cancer runs. When IKEA used to sell Christmas trees, they would borrow in the winter. We do Alberta snow days. They’re used a lot. There's lots of community initiatives. Yeah, they'll end up often at Heritage days or radio stations will borrow them for what they want. So anything nonprofit you can apply to use this. We have one in Edmonton and for Calgary, lots of cancer runs or ride for dads. Yeah. So, you know, we try to model being good citizens. And I think that that carries forward. 

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Down in that family piece, I talked about how I want to raise my son that way. You know, I'd love for our staff to be that way too, right? So we try to walk what we talk - is a big, big part of that piece for innovation. We really focus hard on using our meeting rhythms to hear people's ideas, so hearing where people are coming from, and actioning some of it, and being open so we it's like a dirty phrase, because that's how we've always done it. If that's our only answer, then we need to go back to the drawing table, because that's not good enough. That's not a good answer. No, not a good answer at all. So that's that's part of it, though, like that core belief that, because we've always done it, if that's the best reason, we need to rethink it. And when people start to understand that, you know, people have been there a long time, do now, they're going to be okay. Well, maybe I have an idea of how to do this better, right? So that's something else that has, I think, helps foster that innovation and bring people's ideas forward. 

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Matt Knight  29:21

So changing gears a little bit. Do you kind of have any funny stories or embarrassing memories growing up in a family business?

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Speaker 1  29:31

I don't know. Probably,  I'm sure I do. So the Edmonton RV show has been around for a long time. So they were doing, often did themes, and they were doing a newsprint theme. So dad said, hey, do you want to come work the RV show for the weekend? I'll give you 20 bucks. 20 bucks. I'm like, yeah. Now I'm like, I was ripped off. I was there from, like, there for 12 hours a day, for four days, but I was dressed up as a little Susie they have with a little hat, handing it out the ArrKann things. I come here, and we're like, okay, well, that was fun. I'm sure there's more, but that one, that one really resonates with me. I said, now I'm like, you ripped me off. He's like, well, he's like, You didn't negotiate. 

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So, yeah, and I just vacuum every day before we started, had to vacuum it. That's all. With this old um Kirby vacuum, like either my dad or my grandpa used to. Iit must have been my dad, like, early in  his career. This is the thing. This thing weighed, like, probably 10 pounds for a little 10 year old Sarah. I'm not that big now. Then pushing it up and up and down. You're right. It is time for Conner to start working in the family business now that I think back on it,

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Matt Knight  30:43

Yeah, he could be at the RV show. 

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Speaker 1  30:48

Yeah, maybe we'll put him in the mascot. My cousin actually is involved. So I said my uncle left the business. But my cousin, Neil, his son, works for us too. So he helped us start the Calgary store. So when we bought it, we realized we needed someone from our current organization to help bring some of those values. And again, I didn't even talk about our values. 

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So we do managing by values. So we really believe that you need to manage within lines. So that's the core of our culture. So they're stay on the right path. Be sticky, stick with yourself in a relationship, get dirty, get in, get it done. And there's always room around the campfire. So we wanted to make him themes around inclusiveness, teamwork and integrity. Yeah, those are fun. Yeah, yeah. So we redid them a couple years ago to make them more authentic to who we are, and so now we have a lot of fun with them, yeah. So, yeah, we love that. 

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So my cousin, my cousin, Neil's involved, and he has three sons. And so now his sons are, yeah, they were. We have to Ranger Rick. So his dad is named Rick. So we named our mascot that we use at the shows. It's an homage to my uncle. So Ranger, Ranger Rick was Neil's kids was doing it, his oldest son was doing that, this show so, yeah. So we're starting, we're starting to see that second generation. 

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Matt Knight  32:05

Getting more involved and being engaged, yeah, yeah, yeah. Looking forward, what do you think there's going to be the biggest challenges for the family business and kind of the next five to 10 years?

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Speaker 1  32:17

From a family perspective, um, you know, I don't think there's going to be a challenge, you know, specifically for the family piece, but I think the business, there is some significant challenges. 

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So as EVs become more prevalent, and being mandated by governments are starting to navigate, how does that affect our industry? So, you know, at first I thought it would be towing issues, but, you know, it's not. It's range issues. So like the floor lightning truck, it can tow as much or more than the gas version of that same vehicle, but it's the ranges that will be the challenge and the lack of charging infrastructure. So the RV IA, so the RV industry association, the US is pushing the US government, when they do charge, instead of charging infrastructure, to do one for a car, but one for the trailer, so when you pull up, you can charge both. The manufacturers are starting to play around with the idea they actually have had them. Have had them in Europe for about three years, that the power train on the trailer is self powered as well as the car, so it increases your range, because the trailer is propelling itself and the car is just keeping it on the road, yeah. So I think navigating that and seeing what that looks like is going to be really interesting in the next five to 10 years. 

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There's a little fear of the unknown around that, that piece of it, you know, and in this current environment there's a lot of conflicting pressures, you know. Then you hear about the inflation piece of it, and the upwards on wage pressure, but then our margins are coming down. So navigating, how do we utilize technology to help fill the labor gaps that we just can't afford anymore. So learning to become more efficient with how we run our business is going to be really key to our success, something that we're working on now, but it's a challenge. It's a challenging shift, because when things aren't going well, our people feel too busy. The defaults always like, well, we need to hire more people, which is really difficult to do right now, right? So managing that labor inventory, especially as there's a squeeze, and those baby boomers are retiring, and what is that? What does that look like? 

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I think, from what we have going for us is we do provide an amazing experience that a lot of people see value and get into. The COVID was a huge upswing for us, and we were super lucky about that, but it introduced a lot of people to the RV lifestyle that never would have seen it before. So how do we keep that, those new RVers in our infrastructure, and help them keep enjoying the RV camping lifestyle and those pieces moving forward? So you know, as the next generations come up, I think they see value, and I think I know they see value in what we're doing. So it's shifting enough that we can provide value with them and managing those  ever increasing customer expectations and decreasing skill of the average person to mechanically fix their trailers. So how can we help them meet that need? So, yes.

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Matt Knight  35:22

Okay, from kind of an education and professional development perspective, is there kind of a book or a seminar or course, that kind of sticks out in your mind as being the most impactful to either your development or how you manage your business today?

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Sarah Baptiste  35:38

So most recently, we - myself and my whole team - we actually worked with a coach on a book called Scaling Up by Vern Harnish that has been just mind blowing for me. What I really loved about that book was it took strategic planning and put a process to it. What I've always kind of struggled with is, okay, we need to do strategic planning. So we go off site, we do these big strategic planning things, and we have our binder, and then we put it on the shelf, and good plan is done, but there is, there's no accountability in that. You know, how do you actually ensure you execute it? Sometimes it happens by accident, but it's a little bit by accident, so you don't actually do anything different. So that's what I love about Scaling Up, is it talks about, okay, you have your front page, what's your big rocks? What's your three or five year key threats? What are your big plans now? What actions are you going to do on an annual basis to a quarterly basis, to a weekly basis that are going to move you in that direction, towards those rocks, towards those rocks? 

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So, you know, for me that really, that was the very first time that I was like, okay, I have a process now that I can train people on what, how to do it, how to execute and hold me and myself and my team accountable to it. So that is probably the most recent piece that has really changed my perspective and helped propel this forward.

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I did a leadership development course. I did it with a company that's in the RV space, and then some and my brother, which I think was actually better. Did it with leadership development, with the executive education at the U of A, which I don't think they have that anymore, but some of those programs are still, well, I was looking, yeah, so, you know, I think I might put some more people through that. So I think that that was great. 

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But, you know, I think the hardest thing as a leader is to develop those soft skills. So I think leadership development is super important. And self awareness, you can only get better at what you do if you're aware of what you're not doing well. So  you take responsibility for that. So that's, I think that's key. So I really look for, when we're looking for talent, people who are, who we always say, where you see your biggest opportunity. It's not things like, oh, you know, I try too hard. It's, you know, it's real, concrete examples of, you know, you know, for me, I wasn't great at recognizing people, so we put in a program that gave us a process on how we could do that, right? So that's kind of the best example, but that's the one on top of my head. But just being self aware and recognizing that you're not going to be perfect. Acknowledging where you're not. I think being being human, and acknowledging that, and not only is a great example for your team, but it makes them more likely to come to you with their problems or with news that they know you won't like. We sometimes joke. We have a kind of like words we come in, someone says, like, oh, you know, this is, this is the safe nest, right? I'm like, okay, I'm not gonna like what you're gonna tell me, but that's okay. But it kind of like allows you to mentally prepare if someone's gonna drop a bomb on you. But that self awareness you can only be improved if you know where your opportunities are. 

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So being aware of that, and I think that leadership development programs, help you explore what that is, and then help you give you some paths and some skills to improving those, and then you can follow up. So that was great. 

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And then, you know, way back, I think university degrees, you know, I got a Bachelor of Commerce, and I'm in business, so that works, but we have my VP of sales. He has a Bachelor of Education, and he's actually, I don't know if he would be a great teacher. He's really good at his job, but what university, I think really teaches you is linear thinking. You know, it's how to think through a problem and then communicate it in a linear fashion. And that's not something that comes intuitively to the average person. So I'd see a ton of value in getting diplomas and degrees just from that piece of it. I don't really care what it is really because no matter what path you go on, it's going to teach you how to think in a linear fashion, 

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Matt Knight  39:57

And it shows that you have that ability to learn.

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Sarah Baptiste  39:59

Yeah. Exactly. And you know that drive, you know, that sense of accomplishment with this one or other interview questions is something you're proud of. And I love it when they've completed post secondary, because you don't have to do that. No one makes you do that. So I think that that shows their ability to finish something that they chose to do.

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Matt Knight  40:17

Nice. So any ideas, if you weren't doing this, what do you think you would be doing? 

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Sarah Baptiste  40:22

Well, how about instead, I'll talk about my next job. Okay, so I have, so, like I said, I have a succession plan 10 to 15 years. There's the jobs that I'm actually going to do, and then the job that I would do if money didn't matter. So we'll start with if, if money didn't matter, I would run a used book shop and a coffee shop, because I just love old books. I love the way they smell. I love reading them. I love talking to other readers, and I like drinking coffee. So I think I would really enjoy that. I think I get a lot of satisfaction out of that. The other thing I get a lot of satisfaction is helping other people. So, you know, as I don't think I could have done it if I didn't do this job first. But, you know, consulting and mentoring, so working with others.I would think, particularly for me, women in business and women in dominated, male dominated businesses, I love when I can have conversations and help them grow and be a part of their leadership development journey. So I think moving into some consulting and some mentoring programs is probably where I'm going to move to next. 

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Matt Knight  41:32

It's a bit of a weird question, but if you weren't in kind of your family business, is there another business, family or another business that you would like to be transplanted into? 

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Sarah Baptiste  41:45

Oh, I don't know. I've always been fascinated with manufacturing, because that's a different side of it. So I think that well, and maybe it was because I recently saw the CEO ofPCL speak. But PCL, I think, is a really interesting company, and I would love to learn a little bit more about that business and be a part of it. So I find that to be, you know, interesting, that construction world. Yeah, I guess maybe at the core, I like to build things, which is not something I would have recognized back in the day, but I think that that's the manufacturing of that construction piece would probably be where I would look nice next.

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Matt Knight  42:30

So how should people get a hold of you if they want to learn more about you, if they want to learn more about buying a trailer, if they need to get their trailer serviced? What if they want to learn more about the joy of camping? How do they reach out? How do they connect?

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Speaker 1  42:45

Yeah, so you can connect to different ways. Obviously, our website, www.ArrkannRV.com is a great way to get all sorts of resources and book appointments and do that. Um, probably emailing me is the easiest way as well. So my email is s.baptiste@ArrkannRV.com, and yeah, send me a note and I will happily chat. And yeah, have conversation, depending whatever that may be awesome.

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Matt Knight  43:19

Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It was great to learn more about Arcann and learn a little bit about your journey and your family's journey. Thank you. Thank you to both Sarah Baptiste from Arcann trailer and for you for tuning in today. If you want to learn more about ABFI or get a hold of us, visit us on the web at www.abfi.ca or send me an email at Matt.Knight@@ualberta.ca.

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