Elevate Your Business: Sam Frame

Video Transcript

Good afternoon, welcome back. Kent Boehm with Nine Business Group and Elevate your business spotlight interview. We have Sam Frame joining us today and no, Sam is not in the roofing business or in the housing business.

Sam, please introduce yourself and more importantly your company, your company name and what sets you apart from the competition. Sam, welcome. Thank you and glad to be here.

My name is Sam Frame. I am the owner of Care Plumbing and we work out of Calgary or the Greater Area of Calgary. What sets us apart? I think just knowing the projects and the opportunities that the clients present and that we can exceed that client’s trust and provide to them a contractor that gives them integrity at the very end and to be honest in what you provide to them as a product.

So thinking about that question, integrity and honesty, without being too personal, did you learn that lesson the hard way or how did that come to you? Was that a mom and dad lesson learned early on or is that I was an employee type of lesson and when I wanted to be in business I wanted to have this as part of it because it’s why I’ve heard entrepreneurs say that. I think it’s another thing to have been in business for 10, 15, 20 years and to live it. So can you give us some insight as to how that came to be important for you? That was instilled in me as a child, also through my Christian faith.

It is instilled in how I carry myself in my business world but also in my personal world. I try to always instill honesty and integrity in everything that I do. Thank you.

Cool. Some insight to you as well, not just the company. Great.

When you look back over the years, what is the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome or more importantly, yeah it’s cool that was the biggest challenge you had to overcome? Me getting out of my own way, trying to wear too many hats. Okay great answer. Can you give us an example because I think that’s different for everybody on for a different trade.

So can you lean into that a little more and kind of give us some what that really means because on the surface it sounds good but how did you do it? I think initially when you start your own company you see the horizon of so many things that need to be addressed and as a business owner you have a certain element of built into you that’s a bit of a control freak and you need to control every aspect to ensure that the company succeeds. As you bring manpower on for the purposes of growth and growing your entity, you need to let go of aspects where a plumber that stands side to side with you is as equally qualified as you are to do the piping and the clients business on that project.

Where your skills are required more deeply is in the managing of the company and in the sales of the company’s product to market for other clients to be interested in working with you. So from that perspective not being on the tools you’ve got to let go you’ve got to get your focus changed and be the manager not the employee. I hope that answers it. It does.

It’s getting so much closer. I would assume in running a team of four or five you’ve had to do that more than once. So what were the two hardest things you had to let go of? Pushing the broom and I think the hardest part is actually not being out there on the day-to-day basis troubleshooting for the clients because that’s what they, from a service perspective, they are seeking from you.

You bring the many years of your discipline to their place of business or to their home they anticipate that you’re going to provide them with proper and effective solutions. Amazing. You shared with me before we hit record around some things you’ve learned along the way from other entrepreneurs from other businesses.

What is the top? If there’s one or two things can you share them with us start with What is the one thing you’ve learned maybe about project management or working on large jobs keeping teams motivated as an example per se of something you’ve learned from another entrepreneur or another business owner? We’ve had the good fortune here in the last six months we’ve been working on a project that started about two years ago in the planning phases and the contractor that is running this project introduced us to one of their programs that has been very effective at managing multiple trades on a project and they call it a pull program and essentially it is a here is an end date for this piece of the puzzle. We need each and every trade that’s sitting at the table so whether that’s the plumber, the electrician, the drywall, or the framer, it doesn’t matter. They’re all sitting at the table and they’re all listening to each of the trades say I need this piece of the puzzle done before I can do my job to meet that deadline.

So it allows everybody to see the bigger picture sitting at the same table but acting as a group in order to hit a deadline for the general contractor and in turn for the client so that we can all benefit from a well-executed process. Well isn’t that just smart and I’m not I’m not trying to be sarcastic that seems and maybe I’ve been around maybe I’m perfectionist when I work with my clients so you’re saying that as if that doesn’t happen very often. I will be delicate around this one there are good business operators that are exceptionally skilled at what they do and there are other business owners that don’t know their business.

I hope that enlightens it in a way that’s delicate. We’ll leave it right there perfect shots fired. I love it.

What is the greatest lesson you’ve learned in business that if you knew it as you know it today you could go back to your younger self and impart that upon you when you start in business.

So that greatest lesson that you know today that you wish you would have had on day one.

Never stop learning.

You will if you have the patience and the wisdom to listen to what clients have to tell you they will teach you things that will help you maybe take a morsel or a nugget from any type of conversation that you can readily apply to your own entity that has done nothing but take a few minutes of your time to extrapolate and apply.

I’ll give you an example there was an old an old oil executive who ran his own oil company for many years and Roy and I met when I was a first-year apprentice way back when and he had retired back then but Roy would talk about some of the pitfalls some of the successes and some of the failures and through that he pointed out to me some of the things that business owners are bad at and that is not recognizing when they’re the wrong person to do that job and being able to understand to get out of your own way as I said to you earlier my only worst nightmare is myself because I don’t know when to quit and let the professionals handle it it’s like when you have an accountant and a lawyer why are you trying to do their jobs you’re not qualified unless you’ve got the alphabet soup behind your name you’re the wrong person for the job. So true I love the insight and thank you for the example.

If there was a thief in your business what would they be stealing from you? Effective time management. You qualified it there why effective time management? Well there are places in time and space where you can get chasing the the nitty-gritty in the bottom of a well that’s pointless because it doesn’t need to happen for three months down the road. Manage your time more effectively and know that those pieces need to occur but do them three weeks down the road don’t do them today because they’re not going to be of effect to you today.

You can also look at about effective time management through your interaction with your client. There are a lot of clients who love the sound of their own voice want to drag you into a long and sorted one-hour dissertation on a subject matter that has absolutely no bearing on the here and now to be effective on what has to happen in order to get them their widget fixed in an hour. That is amazing I was talking to I think if memory’s correct Jen yesterday with I think a marketing company something about owls and blue sky owl or something anyway that was her comment though it was fascinating because like intentional focused conversations so that time is valuable to all of us and to understand not just to respect ours but to go into every conversation every meeting with intention and focus and I love that analogy of understand when it needs to get done and we don’t have to do it all today we can do it in an early fashion and in an organized fashion in a long-term vision.

The last question what does success look like for you what is the definition of a successful business? I think that’s a two-pronged answer I think there’s a personal one through the starting of your own company and I think there’s a corporate answer to that. I think the personal one is going to be the validation of your struggles and your sacrifices that have made that journey worthwhile. I think from a corporate perspective it’s the gratifying to know that our brand was and is a trusted entity providing service to a client and providing employment security for each of our team members that maybe down the road your legacy can live on through whether that’s your employees buying your organization or it’s being sold on to somebody else but what you crafted out of your own efforts is an entity that others would want to keep around. I love that.

The second one I’ve heard many times before but the one I’ve not heard as I love that from personal perspective is that the personal validation of the struggles I think that speaks volumes to me personally part of it is I have this crazy idea I think it can work it’s something I’ve never done before even if it’s tweaking something and adjusting something and doing it slightly different I think that I think that will resonate with a lot of viewers and listeners kind of yeah I thought about it and now I did it and it’s not about the money it’s really about that personal validation. Thank you very much.

Last and most importantly Sam who’s your ideal client and when they’re listening and you they hear you where can they find you to get more information? Well considering I’m not on the web that would probably be a struggle for them. I have been reluctant to play in that field because I’ve always believed you’re only as good as your last job and you have to prove yourself every single time out of the gate so that client needs to know that they can reach us through email or by my phone number I believe you have the links there save me regurgitating it. My ideal client is a client that is in the commercial industry that knows their business has a good team around them and is looking for a company like ours that can fill a niche that needs filled with trusted sub trades that can do the work with integrity honesty and in theory on time.

Amazing thank you very much Sam I love the insight there’s nothing better than talking to an experienced person who not only has been on the tools but also appreciates the value of working on the business and looking at it from the top down and going how can I find better ways to help my business serve me and my team members and my clients.

Thank you very much appreciate have a great week.

You as well.