This week we were pleased to hear from one of our club members, Norman Leach, who gave us a very interesting and entertaining introduction into what he has done over the years. Norman told us that some of his clients refer to him as the chaos navigator, as he helps them to develop and implement marketing plans for their businesses. When he first started developing business plans for people, he often found that they had trouble implementing the plan that he gave them. Marketing includes many different aspects of a business including the product, the price, the place, how to distribute it and promotion, but many people only consider it to be promotion. This is when he will step in as a contractor for them, to help implement the portions of the plan that the client feels they cannot on their own.
Norman told us that his inspiration in life came from his grandfather, who was orphaned as a small child, grew up in an orphanage in Quebec and was turned out to fend for himself at a young age. He then went on to find a homestead in Springside, Saskatchewan, raise a large family and become a very successful farmer. He also helped many of his neighbors with their farm businesses, by acting as an intermediary and translator for them in selling their crops, as he was one of the few people in the area who spoke both English and Ukrainian. Norman said that his grandfather strongly believed that the best way to succeed in life was to get lots of education and as much experience as possible, as those were the two things that other people could not take away from you.
Norman said that he first encountered Rotary when at age seventeen, he became a Rotary Exchange student to Japan. He took this as a challenge to learn as much as he could of the Japanese language and became proficient enough to win a Japanese language competition. He said that he still speaks Japanese fluently, along with several other languages including English, Spanish and French. He told us that he has now worked in thirty-seven countries, on many different types of projects.
He then related an interesting and entertaining story of how he met, pursued and married his wife, Maritza. Many years ago, when he was working in Mexico City as the Alberta Trade Office manager and she was the building manager for their office space, he did not speak Spanish well and used one of his employees as an interpreter to communicate with her. After several months and many meetings with her, his interpreter suggested to him that he should invite her as his guest to a social function. He thought this was absurd as he barely spoke any Spanish. The interpreter then told him outright that this was silly as she spoke English quite well and had only requested an interpreter for their meetings as she was not confident in her interpretation of details. After he recovered from the shock of this information, he decided to ask her out, she accepted, and they ended up being married several years later. He said that this also served as a lesson to him to never assume the people around you do not understand what is being said.
Norman then told us that as he is a private contractor, he can and does work on many other types of things. Shortly after marrying Maritza, she convinced him to turn his passion for collecting Canadian military memorabilia and trivia into a business by writing a book about it. His first book about the role of Canadian troops in the First World War, Battle of Paschendale, was promoted for sale to the Canadian Legion, but turned out to become a Canadian best seller, with over twenty-five thousand copies sold. It was subsequently made into a movie by Paul Gross, with Norman acting as a consultant. He has now written thirteen books, four of which have become Canadian best sellers (each with more than ten thousand copies sold). One of his other sidelines is teaching, and he now teaches courses for six colleges and universities across Canada. In addition, he has recently become the historian for St John’s Ambulance. He also said that in 2019, he and his wife Maritza, after much research and planning, bought a travel agency, just prior to the COVID pandemic. Through this they learned that not all plans work out as originally thought, but the business is now starting to take off.
We would like to thank Norman for this very interesting and entertaining glimpse into the lives of both him and his wife Maritza and look forward to hearing more from him in the future.