Every family business should know this story

'A significant investment' in Ontario manufacturing - here is the quick story about how a Canadian 4th generation business grew beyond the family's wildest dreams.

Hamilton, Ont.-based Bermingham Foundation Solutions Ltd. has secured "a significant investment" says chairman and fourth-generation owner Patrick Bermingham.

Its new strategic partner, Soletanche Freyssinet, is part of the VINCI group, a Paris-based, publicly traded company that employs 180,000 people in about 100 countries.

Bermingham, founded in 1897, is Canada’s oldest foundation and marine specialty contractor, with a focus on the transportation, energy and mining markets. It also manufactures specialty foundation equipment and provides engineering services under the trade name Berminghammer. It currently exports equipment and services to more than 40 countries. Bermingham’s senior management will continue to run the business and remain shareholders.

How did a company with about 150 employees attract such a large foreign investor? 

Five years ago, Bermingham met Loewen and Partners who taught them about the benefits of private equity for companies under $100M. As a family business, Bermingham had slowed down its growth by relying purely on the banks. As a client for 110 years, Bermingham's bank gave good loans but not enough to grow the company at a quicker pace. Higher growth is tricky and much higher risk which puts it outside the bank's comfort zone. Private equity may have a poor reputation but so do banks. Yet, smart family business owners who have achieved considerable wealth educate themselves about why these different types of finance do have a good achievement rate. Staples, Facebook, Google and Caterpillar have all achieved their success with private equity underpinning.

Putting aside their fears, Bermingham used Loewen and Partners to build up their valuation case and brought in a private equity investor that allowed the company to recapitalize its balance sheet and build out its strategy. Bermingham subsequently repurchased 100 per cent of the business, returning the company to the family and employee ownership. Toronto-based investment banking firm Loewen & Partners, which advised the company in the private equity transaction and the VINCI one, says strong processes and reporting structure subsequently made it easy for a large firm to do its due diligence.

Backed by Soletanche Freyssinet, Bermingham now has a mandate to grow. It intends to expand its overseas operations with increased equipment sales and rentals, and enter into joint-ventures on large scale projects at home and around the world.

Bermingham's long history of innovation over multiple generations of family ownership, and the fact it has achieved continued success in manufacturing - an industry long considered on the wane in Ontario - makes this announcement significant on a number of fronts.

Read the full story at The Globe and Mail by one of my favourite business reporters, Sean Stanleigh

Quick question for a CEO - what is your company's identity?

As a CEO, here is a quick question for you.
What is your firm's identity?
Is it about the core capabilities. Is it about what you actually achieve - like West Jet that serves its employees first and then its customers. Looking after the social capital in the company will yield results.
It is about your passion.
One of my client firms is an engineering business with awkward geeks selling high level skills.
What was interesting is that they know they are sophisticated engineers passionate about using other people's technologies in new ways to create dazzling machine parts.
Even though their website did not give their capabilities a fair shake, their advisory board could all articulate within seconds the company's purpose.
Passion wins through but passion must be articulated and described.
Funny how once that is done, the strategy unfolds within each division.

Great leaders create value - both economic AND social

The point of human resources is to boost the energy levels in the organization.
Building up the employee enthusiasm while also directing their daily work in a similar enough direction is enormously challenging.
Even with Wikis or other wonderful technology, doing strategy with the top 300 people still is the more laborious but absolutely essential method.
Humans need the face time with their leadership and strategy done together is far more powerful.
It seems like busy work. Many believe their time would be better spent on a golf course.
But it is amazing how getting 3 objectives for the year does focus the company. The  Chinese leadership in government use a five year strategy and they have achieved more economic value than any other economy in the history of mankind over these past 30 years.

Follow up rigouros strategy sessions with free flowing, fun activities where people can talk quietly in small groups. The strategy will be more likely to take rot and grow.

MIX STRATEGY & GOLF

Keep focused on the "why" of your pitch

The goal of an elevator pitch isn't to close the deal.

The point of the 2 minute pitch isn't even to give a short, accurate, Wikipedia-standard description of you or your project.

Using jargon words to craft a mission statement that is safe and could be applied to similar businesses misses the mark.

No, the purpose of an elevator pitch is to describe a situation or solution so compelling that the person you're with wants to hear more even after the elevator has stopped and the doors are opening.

There be Monsters - the story of family business succession planning

Lawyers for family businesses are often accused of not speaking frankly to their clients about the need for business succession. At the Globe and Mail Business Summit, I chaired a panel on business succession where the panel spoke about the lawyers not being informed enough or preserving their business rather than helping the owner begin to think about transition.
The real secret is that not even the owner's wife or sons or daughters will broach the subject of succession first.
Why?
If you ask that question, you have not raised the issue with a business owner.
You will observe first a slight red flush and then it could rise up into a more heated discussion and maybe a full scale rage.
Everyone else will be looking down at their papers, especially the family members. No one will come to the rescue. This owner has such a level of power over their financial well-being and future. For a lawyer, why go there and risk being fired?
There be monsters.
That is also the sad story why family businesses do not grow beyond the owner. We will leave that topic to another day.