Duane Spader grew up on a farm in Oldham, South Dakota, the 10th of 16 children. Duane’s father earned some retirement income by selling campers from the family farm. Duane started by selling mobile homes in Brookings, South Dakota. The local banker was more friendly towards RVs, so Duane switched to selling pickup campers and tent campers, which didn’t compete with the RVs sold by his father. But soon Duane took over for his father selling campers from the farm.
Duane was the first boy in his family to attend high school – the boys were expected to work on the farm, not go to high school. Duane worked and went to school at the same time, and graduated from Howard High School in Howard, South Dakota. He was the first child in his family to attend college, and was married to Elaine Reisch by age 20.
Duane and Elaine decided to take the $1,000 they had saved for Duane’s final year of college at South Dakota State University in Brookings, South Dakota and invested it in an RV dealership instead. This was a very difficult decision because Duane had worked so hard to get to college. He had mentors and investors interested in helping him in this fledgling business, and a college professor told him he could always come back and finish his education, but he might only get one chance for a good start in business.
Duane’s mentors were mainly located in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the largest city in the state. They advised him to move the dealership from Brookings to Sioux Falls to gain access to the larger market there. The original facility was a single humble building, but today is a thriving RV dealership managed by Duane’s second son, Tony Spader.
One of the aspirations Duane and his investors had for this RV dealership was to create a franchise-like system that could be applied to a chain of dealerships. In addition to managing his dealership on a daily basis, Duane worked over several years developing a top-to-bottom system for easily managing the dealership. His intention was to create a total management system that could be executed by anyone. He liked to say that when his total management system was complete, he could take “an average person off the street and make them an above-average manager.”
Duane hired Noel Lais, who went on to become a CPA, as bookkeeper for the dealership during this time. Noel worked alongside Duane to develop the “economic equation” that is still a cornerstone of the Spader business management principles featured in today’s Total Management 1 workshop.
Duane, a life-long learner, was also very interested in the “human equation” of the business. He sought out teachers and learning that could help him create systems for managing the people side of the business as effectively as what he and Noel were creating for the financial side. He attended the second session ever presented by Dr. Geier, who pioneered the DISC personal style model. As he continued his studies into this powerful aspect of the human equation, Duane met Dr. Michael O’Connor, who later became vice president of development at Carlson Companies in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Carlson purchased the rights to the DISC personal profiles from Dr. Geier. Duane and Dr. O’Connor began a friendship and a business relationship that has continued and expanded over the last thirty years.
Duane continued to use his total management system as the dealership grew, Duane was invited to speak before his own industry’s RVDA convention on the same topic. He used his growing reputation in the RV and marine industries to create 20 Groups in both industries beginning in 1976. This type of peer-based group, which meets three times per year and exchanges full financial information between up to 20 non-competing businesses, had been popular in the automobile industry for some time, and had also been tried in the RV industry before. The difference in the RV and marine industries was that there were no standardized accounting systems in place. Duane and Noel created easy-to-use reporting standardization that all dealers with any accounting system could use to participate in 20 Group reporting. Spader 20 Groups are now available in eight industries, and are still a key tool for businesses seeking to become better.
Just as Duane and Noel were making good progress on the Spader total dealership management system, the economic crisis of 1979 caused the RV dealership to lose 75% of its revenues in 90 days. From a high of 30+ employees, Spader Camper Center was run by just Duane and Noel during the winter of 1979-80.
Duane knew that dealers needed more than just 20 groups to learn the total management system. He never wanted to be a trainer, but in the interests of helping small business owners survive and thrive, he began teaching the Total Management Workshop in 1980. That first workshop consisted of eight marine dealers sitting at school desks in the Spader Camper Center showroom. Elaine brought home-cooked lunches in each day, and Duane taught those dealers how to manage the financial side of their business in 4 ½ days. Although the curriculum has evolved and changed over the years, this workshop, now known as Total Management 1, is still our most widely-attended training event. And it’s still held several times per year in Sioux Falls, South Dakota – although now we have a state-of-the-art training facility, and Elaine has quit cooking for workshops!
As Duane expanded the Spader 20 Groups into the early 1980s, many marine and RV dealers asked him what accounting system was recommended by Spader. While personal computers were becoming more widespread and affordable for small businesses, there was no viable software solution for these companies to track their accounting and run their business operations. The same marine 20 Group that had turned Duane into a trainer asked him why he couldn’t create a good dealership accounting software system? Duane threw out a number off the top of his head; he thought he could do it, but it would take $50,000. Ten of the members of that group raised their hands and said they would each contribute $5,000 if they could all have the software for free when it was done! Spader Software was born.
As luck would have it, Duane ran into a computer programming professor from New Jersey that summer. Jeanette Wolcott was staying with her family in a camper at the KOA Kampground owned by Duane, and as he visited with her, she agreed to write that first set of software on an Apple Macintosh computer. She worked closely with Noel Lais to understand what small businesses would need, and the Spader Grand Ledger system was soon completed. Sales Analysis, the big ticket unit inventory and sales system, soon followed.
Duane and Noel grew the software business over the next several years, moving from Apple to a Microsoft DOS platform, and hiring a staff of programmers, installers and support specialists. Mercury Marine wanted to partner with Spader to offer the software to its dealer base, so in 1984 the company became known as MercSpader. That agreement continued for several years. Later Outboard Marine Corporation, “OMC”, the parent company of Johnson and Evinrude, would partner with Spader Software to provide software and support services to its dealers. Over the next fifteen years Spader Software grew to be the largest dealership software provider in the marine and RV industries, with a staff of nearly 50 employees.
In 1997, the company received an offer to sell future development rights on the DOS software. The real Spader strength was in helping people manage their small businesses. So the software rights were sold, and Spader scaled down to a lower business plateau and concentrated on training, consulting and 20 groups in expanding industries.
John Spader joined the company in 1987. John had not intended to join his father’s business – his passion had been for farming. He was working full-time on his uncle’s farm in South Dakota when an accident left him with a broken neck, unable to do the physical labor farming requires. John began as a salesperson in the dealership, and learned first-hand how the Spader total management system works from an employee’s perspective. John discovered a natural ability to see how numbers relate, and he soon migrated over to Spader Business Management, first as a sales trainer, then working through several other positions in the company.
Over the next several years, Duane leaned on John for more and more. Duane had never wanted to be a trainer – John took over 
as lead instructor for Total Management 1. John was added as the third person in top management, working closely with Duane and Noel to pilot the company through its evolution away from software development and toward consulting and training. In 2003, Duane turned the company over to John as president. While Duane is still an active 20 group facilitator and speaker, John Spader is the primary owner and president of the company, with Noel Lais continuing his instrumental role as vice president of operations.
Duane’s work with Dr. Michael O’Connor came to fruition with an important milestone in 2008: The first Total Management 2 workshop was conducted in Sioux Falls, with Noel Lais, David Spader and Dr. O’Connor as the pilot instructors. This 4 ½-day workshop, which covers the human equation of the business in as much depth as TM1 does for the economic equation, marks a capstone on Duane Spader’s vision for systemizing total dealership management. TM3 is in active development now.
