The Kelowna Chamber of Commerce is once again launching its ‘Top 40 Over 40 presented by BDO’, to celebrate individuals in the community over the age of 40.
These are people who showcase as mentors, champions and role models and who encourage and foster the future leaders of the community.
The Kelowna Chamber is highlighting new honourees between February and July 2021. Each year the program alternates between Over 40 and Under 40 Honourees. This is the sixth year of the program as 2021 marks an “Over 40” year.
In 2001, Lane Martin started a “little” IAQ (Indoor Air Quality) company here in Kelowna.
In 2005, he read a story about a “junk removal” company that franchised and sold out across North America. And he thought why couldn’t we do that, become the only coast to coast Indoor Air Quality service provider? And so the journey began.
They named the company Modern PURAIR.
“Clean air we live and breathe it” became their positioning line as they set out to create an amazing franchise system headquartered in Kelowna. The next step saw them opening their in-bound call centre (here in Kelowna) that answers all of the incoming calls for their franchise partners, trademarked their cleaning process.
The first franchise was awarded in 2008. Their PURKIDS Foundation, changes lives – as one per cent of our entire system sales goes back to help kids in every franchise community they service.
Modern PURAIR continues to grow exponentially across Canada.
He believes it’s all about the people: PURAIR invests heavily in their people.
Personal business coaches for the management team, personal business coaches for the franchise partners, training, and scaling/building of systems. People don’t fail. Systems do. Lane says that he always looks to the system for a solution. And, he speaks from experience. If he can’t, he finds someone who can. His company’s “Vivid Vision” shows exactly how the company will look/act and feel three years from the date it is written. It is shared with all team members, vendors, and within the system. It’s the “blueprint” for company growth, and helps all its team to see the “vision” in Lane’s head.
One per cent of their system sales goes towards the PURKIDS foundation. This one per cent then goes back into each community that their franchise system services. A year and a half ago, they aligned with “Mamas for Mamas” as they have branch offices in each city PURAIR has a franchise partner in. Lane is pleased say that tey have already donated over $80,000 to Mamas for Mamas and the entire franchise system gets to see the impact this contribution is making to help those families that need help the most. The Child Advocacy Centre is also near and dear to their hearts - PURKIDS donated all of the toys for this amazing facility in Kelowna. Most recently they aligned with the Bridge Youth and Family services here in Kelowna - and their new youth recovery home. PURAIR is helping them ensure the youth that utilize the facility are looked after.
When it comes to describing his education, Lane says he is a graduate of the school of hard knocks.
His company was also named the 2008 Small Business of the Year - Kelowna Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Awards winner. PURAIR was also a 2018 finalist for medium sized business of the year.
More recently, Lane received the 2020 Mamas for Mamas Honorary Mama, an award given annually to someone who they felt had the most impact to their organization that year.
PURAIR is now the largest IAQ franchise system in Canada, and Lane loves how they get to showcase Kelowna to each of their new franchisees.
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