J Frank Schmidt & Son Co. Generational Development

[Music] my name is Frank Schmidt and uh I'm currently the uh chairman of the board Ben Ral I'm the CEO Jan Schmidt Barkley um I am the oldest Schmidt family member of the G2 generation my name is Sam Barkley uh I am our farm manager for our container Farm my name is Eric Henri and I'm the production manager for the nursery my name is Gordy Webster and I've been uh working in our family business for uh over 20 years now so in 1946 my grandma and grandpa they decided to uh start a business uh a nursery which uh they always wanted to do senior had three sons and a daughter and they all went off on their own branch of the nursery industry it started on 10 acres and it since then came to a little over 3,000 Acres after my grandpa uh retired from the business it was just my Uncle Frank and my mom Jan left there and they worked uh both of them worked for over 40 years before they retired a couple years ago and now it's uh myself and uh in my cousin Gordy you know the legacy of of of our uh founder my my grandfather you know he just instilled in our whole family certain values and those values that we use to make decisions every day no matter what the decision is it's all based on those stuff that that was passed down to the g2s and now to us g3s and now we're passing it down to our G4S and who knows what has to come for the future uh there's uh my son is says he's interested in it he's six uh he also wants to be a dinosaur but I hope he wants to be a farmer more the family policy it relates to uh future Generations coming into the business is basically they have to earn their way through the organization they have to prove through hard work and effort um that they're capable of doing those significant roles uh no one is entitled to a certain position based on just because their family and the current family members that are ear in the business understand that my grandpa had some rules saying that hey we needed to go work in the business if we wanted to you know learn a business we needed to to to really learn the business from the ground up we put together a plan by having a board of directors a ownership Council to make it so we can be around for four five six generations to come so I take a lot of pride in that yeah I'm just really happy with where our business is you know it's been you know a long period of you know tough conversations and you know sometimes having some art disagreements and there's many things that the family does to promote generational leadership one we have an ownership committee which is beyond the current board of directors that run J Frank Schmid we have board seats that are specifically positioned for future Generations meaning they sit they're not actual board member but they sit in those meetings and participate uh we have multiple family meetings per year to talk about the business the needs of the business the overall structure of the business the goals of the business all nine members of the the the grandkids uh participate in those meetings you know we have a good you know highquality CEO running the business and the g2s can retire and and all of us can enjoy being family more to receive generational development award from the center family Enterprise is a was a really big honor for the family it really uh shows us that all the hard work that and planning that we've put together through our board of directors and ownership Council that it's uh it's showing not just ourselves but others that we've really made strides in the right direction to uh really improve the quality of the business and the fact that we're going to be here for generations to come it's a great honor that we've been chosen for this award uh our employees our our family uh everybody really you know was proud of that uh it's a lot of hard work for over 75 years to you know get to where we're at today and and uh really uh proud of our whole team and our family and uh the planning that we did to get to where we're at and uh you know we're all proud of that [Music]