CEOs You Should Know Ken Walma Big Ass Fans

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Yeah. Great. It's always funto tell the story, and you always
have the question of how deep andhow long do you want to go.
But I'm actually originally from Fairfax,Virginia, just outside of Washington, d
C. And then moved around abit, lived in Chicago, lived in
Philadelphia, ultimately did my undergrad atSouth Carolina. I met my now wife
there after that, and lived allover the East Coast, Atlanta, New

(00:23):
York, Philadelphia, a little timein Texas, Miami, and then here
in Lexington, Kentucky through there.Did a graduate degree at Emory, so
had a little extended time there.But that's sort of the basic background.
And Ken, You've got a greatresume, including a business, and you've
got tech behind you, so itmakes a perfect sense of what you do
now as president and CEO of BigAss Fans, which we're here to talk

(00:46):
about. And I know it's comingup on a year and a half now,
and as I take a look atyour resume, you've done some incredible
things. And with that said,I know why you were interested in the
company, but why were they interestedin you? Tell us about just the
relationship about joining them. Yeah,it's interesting. So I've actually been given
a call from the parent of Madison, a parent of big s fans company

(01:07):
named Madison Industries, and Madison Industriesis sort of creating what I'd say is
the next revolution of how to runcompanies. And I say that because you
think about what I think about isIBMGEGM. These companies really talked about a
leadership model coming out of World WarTwo and the best way to run companies.

(01:29):
That sort of evolved where you sawcompanies develop business systems, the dataher
business system, and then many companiesreplicated or developed similar systems where process was
the best way to run a businessand it didn't matter what kind of products
you made or where you were inthe world, if you ran the process,
it would work. Madison is focusedon culture and culture and mission first
and then trying to find the rightpeople in businesses to really effectuate a culture

(01:53):
behind it and unlock their potential.So Madison sparked my interest. The role
of the business that they asked meabout wasn't interesting, and they came back
and talking about big ass fans andthe reason why it sort of fits for
two ways. One, I've sortof built a resume as a transformation agent,
whether it was a business, wantedto grow profitability, wanted to access

(02:13):
a market adjacency, wanted to transformthe product portfolio, whatever that sort of
going from A to B was.I sort of found my way over the
last twenty two years doing that forcompanies and really enjoying the work. Secondly,
as I'm a firm believer in servantleadership, so the style and approach
of which I've taken that has beenreally focusing on frontline employees, gathering and

(02:34):
capturing the ideas from those employees thatinterface with customers every day, and then
helping develop a strategy that everybody canget behind and run. And that was
really the two big things that theywere looking for in a leader. For
big gest fans standing with thank youfor sharing all that Ken. In just
a moment, I'm going to askyou about mission statement and also what you
do, capabilities, and of courseall the different products that you have and
being a worldwide company, which isvery impressive. We're going to talk a

(02:55):
lot about that too. But Ican get past the name. It's fantastic.
It's not always it funny, butit's catchy. There's a lot of
names of businesses out there that they'rethere but this one's fun. Do you
know the origin story behind the nameof the company. I do, I
do. It's awesome and it's youknow, I remember the first time I
heard of the company. And mostpeople when you talk about big gas fans,

(03:17):
the first thing they'll tell me isthe first time they saw the name
or the first time I saw oneof our products. So it's not only
catchy, but it creates a memoryburn. So the history here is there
was a gentleman who started the companyin nineteen ninety nine, Kerrie Smith,
and he started the company with avery what I would say was a engineering
name. It was HVLS Fan companyfor high volume low Speed Fan, very

(03:40):
good description of what we made,very clear of what it does, and
we started to go out and promoteproducts. However, after a couple of
years, they found that customers thatwere calling in had no idea what HBLS
was. So they would call inand say, are you the ones that
make those big ass fans? Andthey kept hearing that question over and over
again. Both the same team andour customer serve fantastic. And I'll give

(04:01):
all the credit to Kerry Smith tosay, you know what we're going to
change the name of the company,and so they change the name of the
company to Big Gas Fans. Ilove it as simple and fun and obviously
and intention and get our Okay,let's do this before we get into all
the products and capabilities and the clientsyou work with. What's the mission statement
of Big Gas Fans. Yeah,so our mission statement is we we basically

(04:23):
our job is to deliver comfort andcomplex environments and make employees more comfortable and
productive in their workplace. I likethat our focus is one hundred percent on
the frontline worker in any of ourour complex environment businesses. So if you
think about warehousing, manufacturing, amphitheaters, fitness centers, all sorts of places

(04:44):
where you could not get comfortable.You just had to deal with whatever temperature
you had. Didn't matter if itwas hot or cold, you just dealt
with it. That's what you hadto deal with. Those are Big Gas
Fans markets. We want to goafter those places and find a way to
make peple more comfortable, whether that'smore productive, more comfortable and they and
like the environment better or even aswe start to span into residential, you
find people don't use a porch becausethey live in Texas they think it's too

(05:05):
hot. We are enabled them touse more of their home and have better
environments with their families. And sothat's what we do is really go after
those places you couldn't go before they'reeither too hot or too cold. Okay,
you're starting to touch on it,but let's get a little bit more
into it. If somebody was introducedto big gas fans for the first ever
time, what would you tell themthat you do and how you service them?
What we do if they're introduced tobig gas fans for the first time.

(05:28):
In most cases, we get introducedto people because they call us because
they're hot. They call our oneseven to seven Big Fans phone number and
they've had employees quit or they won'tuse their space and they need help and
they can't find on the internet anwhere that can help them. We do.
So the best thing we do iswe provide turn key services to people
to call our phone number. Whetherit's residential or commercial environments, we can

(05:50):
do a complete assessment of their facility. That's an airflow assessment. We can
actually take in their building and lookat exactly how air flows through the facility.
We can take into account all theirfurniture, infrastructure equipment. Secondly,
we can come up with a customizeddesign for them that uses a myriad of
products. And Thirdly, we cannot only provide those products, but also

(06:12):
all the installation services that they want, and we can do it probably within
fourteen to twenty one days. Andso when you have this problem and you
need a solution, we are thebest people on the planet to be able
to come out and answer that call. For you, Ken, I'm not
going to assume that there's any othercompany that does exactly what you do.
But with that said, in yoursix hundred and fifty plays, when you're
pitching your product or somebody calls onyou, how do you differentiate yourself from

(06:33):
any of the competition out there.I think it's really what you just heard
is the is the portfolio of thesolutions. We have companies that make products
that you know they would pitch inthe category of what we do, so
you could see people make fans.Fans is not a new thing. You
can go to a retail outlet andbuy a fan for one hundred dollars,
right, So the concept of fansis not new. What is different about

(06:56):
big As Fans is the uncompromising quality, performance and service that we provide to
deliver a solution of air movement toyour facility. It is not just we
hang a fan and walk away.The fan we would provide is perfectly designed
for your specific environment to move yourright amount of airflow in your space.
By the way, our fans movemore air than anybody else's. So yes,

(07:17):
we have that sort of check thebox. Do we put our money
where our mouth is? Secondly,when we do the design, we have
created a software platform that is unlikeanything out there to actually look at your
individual rows and aisles and you knowthe complexity of your space to see exactly
how air moves. And then thirdly, having the opportunity of over one hundred

(07:38):
and sixty installers in the US alonethat can make sure we can be at
your facility and install it and guaranteeit for fifteen years is something that none
of our competitors from a portfolio perspectiveprovide. And so you know, we
are the absolute best at what wedo and we want to continue to be
that. We're obviously always tempted tomake cheaper, you know, smaller,

(07:58):
more competitive products, but we willnot. We are resolute in being the
best. One of the things Isaw in You're easy to navigate website,
By the way, whoever designed it'svery cool because it really is beautiful and
it's easy to navigate around it isthat I was looking at the industrial and
commercial part of that with agriculture,automotive, aviation, commercial and public spaces,

(08:18):
distribution, education, fitness, government, and manufacturing. This makes sense
because we're talking about very large buildingsthat can use your products. So your
portfolio of the different kind of companiesyou work with is great, and i'd
also like you to get into someof the products that you offer to just
to educate our listener. Sure,sure, that's great. So the product
we're most well known for, inthe product eacheed to most is the most
visible, is our high volume,low speed fans are our big fans.

(08:41):
These fans range from eight foot totwenty four foot in diameter. We even
actually have a thirty foot diameter fanand they spin slowly, but they move
a lot of air. Our biggestfan moves almost three hundred thousand cfm or
it's an airflow metric for you,so we can pump a lot of air.
That's what we're most well known forWe have a bunch of different series

(09:01):
of those types of fans. So, whether you have an environment that needs
to be wet rated, you wantto have a spray down environment, you
have extreme temperatures, you know,these are industrial machines. These are not
giant ceiling fans. We have acustom design motor that we spend years developing,
we have specific materials, they're madein the USA. This is not,
you know, again, a giantceiling fan. So our big fans

(09:22):
is what we're most well known for. We also have a series of residential
and commercial fans. So many manyfolks don't know that we make residential fans.
One of the reasons why you wouldn'tknow is that they're not at a
retail outlet. They're not you know, sold easily. That these are the
absolute premium. We've taken all ofour knowledge and technology from our biggest fans
and built residential fans for people thatwant the absolute best and it provides the

(09:45):
absolute best airflow and the absolute bestconnectivity options. You can integrate with your
thermostats, you can integrate with yourhome automation system, and we move more
air. So if you've got atwo story arch porch and you're in Texas
or you're in Arizona or California.We can make that space comfortable and usable
year round. The third product categoryis what we call directional fans. So
these would be smaller fans mounted onwalls, on wheels, you know,

(10:11):
I say small. Our biggest oneseight feet tall that we use it to
blow air through an airport or aairport hangar. And we have a range
of those fans. Again, youknow, our fans are going to have
ratings where they can you know,take a beating, it can be sprayed
with water. They are built forthese complicated environments. These are not your

(10:31):
you know, run to a retailerby a fan. We also have a
line of what are called evaporative coolers, and so i'd tell you Dennis,
this is something that I think moreand more people are going to find out
about it. I had no ideawhat anvaportive cooler was a year and a
half ago. But essentially, there'sa technology where we can run a very
thin sheet of water across a mediaand blow a fan through that water and

(10:54):
it creates a It creates a verycool airflow that's about thirty degrees lower than
ambient temperature. So think of itas a water based air conditioner, is
how I would sort of classify it. Except it's incredibly efficient. It uses
very little power, and it's veryrobust. You can roll it around,
you can plug it in anywhere.It takes no additional equipment. It's very
easy to use. So I thinkit's particularly as we're seeing extreme heat,

(11:16):
this whole market for abafforative cooling isreally about to explode because I just so
many people when they're hot, theyeither jump from nothing to air conditioning,
didn't really understand what was in between. The fact that we can provide a
mobile product that's on wheels, wecan roll it into your facility and drop
for temperature thirty degrees to every employeethat it's near, I think is just
a great new category, and sothat line is called abaffortive coolers. Lastly,

(11:41):
we're now starting to dabble into theheat business, and so you're seeing
us launch a series of gas unitheaters as well as infrared heaters, and
that's really an emerging category force thatwe're starting to really bring to the marketplace.
With the same big gas fans performancewell cool Ken. Thanks for sharing
all that, and you got myattention. And for full disclosure, somebody
who's worked in res you and livedeverywhere in the United States. I've lived

(12:01):
in New Mexico. We've had swampcoolers there, which is very old technology
and you're obviously updating it. Butyou don't have air conditioning in the Southwest,
and that's what you have to dealwith. So they do the best
they can with swamp coolers out there, which is a little bit different from
AC. Okay, I want totalk about your footprint. Obviously, the
company has grown immensely. There's beensustainability, but the growth looks like it's

(12:22):
been incredible. The United States,Canada, Australia, Singapore tell us about
that growth and while these different countries, Yes, so the growth has been
very strong. We've gone through periodsof meteoric growth and periods of you know,
what I'd say is just basic doubledigit growth. But the reality is
with the mega trends we see numberone, climate change. We're probably going

(12:43):
to argue about it forever about whereit comes from and how it starts,
but the reality is the temperaures aregetting more extreme. Places that have never
been cold hot are getting hotter andplaces that have never been cold or getting
colder. It's nod in Texas twicelast year it was over one hundred degrees
in northern Minnesota. So what reallyis happening is more and more people that
have a couple of weeks a yearthat it's excruculating a hot need an answer.

(13:05):
And so you're finding our growth asreally stems from one temperatures and escalating
temperatures in different environments that weren't weren'tan issue before. And secondly, with
the labor shortages, as soon asyou have a labor shortage and you're fighting
for labor, you need to deliveran improved environment or manufacturing facility. People
are not going to deal with eightysix to ninety five degree weather anymore.
They don't have to walk down thestreet and go somewhere else. And so

(13:28):
those two things anywhere you see hightemperatures and a labor shortage, which obviously
coming out of COVID we had tonsof it is really pulling us into those
markets and creating substantial growth because weare the best solution for that. If
you think about a price point,if you have a distribution center and you're
looking to mitigate some of this concernair conditioning anywhere from eight to fifteen dollars

(13:50):
a square foot to retrofit our fans, a full solution anywhere from fifty cents
to two dollars of square foot atmost. And so just if you're looking
at a facility you've got one hundredthousand square footor five hundred thousan square facility,
it's a whole different ballgame. Andparticularly if you need a solution for
a month out of the year,right you need it for July, you're
in Wisconsin. And so this iswhat you're sort of seeing that is driving

(14:13):
our growth. From a geographic perspective, the US is by far and above
our biggest market. We are seeingrapid growth in Canada. We have built
a very strong business in Singapore andAustralia, and now we're seeing after last
year's record heat in Europe, Centraland southern Europe is becoming a fast growing
market for US or opportunity for USas we go forward. But I tell

(14:35):
you you know, the opportunity ifyou think about where's it hot and where
their labor shortage is is in basicallyevery country of the world these days,
is having you know a wide rangeof temperatures and challenges in recruiting and retaining
people. Right, well, whydon't we stay with that ken And it's
an impressive footprint. I did wantto talk to you about leadership and specifically
if your six hundred and fifty employees, which in itself is an extraordinary number.

(14:58):
We have a lot of future CEOsand currencyos that listen to this series,
and I always like to ask,especially when there's a large number and
hundreds of employees, as president andCEO, how do you make sure that
your vision is executed? But there'salso that great work life balance for so
many employees. Imagine you have greatmanagers and you have to just drill down
and trust people that are good toyou and you're good to them also having

(15:20):
access to you. But how doyou manage that many people? Yeah,
it's a good question. This businessactually is much smaller than my last business
that I came and so I've hadleadership positions and businesses anywhere from three million
dollars in sales to two billion insales, and so you know sort of
the range of an experiences I've hadin leadership. You know, it's a

(15:41):
continually learning process. But here's whatI tell you about our philosophy and Big
Guest Fans. So, firstly,we have been both internally and externally committed
to saying we want to be thebest place to work in the towns that
we that, where we employ people. We are convicted and committed to being
that. And as soon as youset that precedent with the entire company,
at least within Big As Fans,it creates a tone of our leadership and

(16:03):
managers of the first thing I needto do is listen to my employees,
because if I'm going to make thisthe best place, I need to ask
them what I'm not doing or whatit is. And that sort of just
mentality changes how the company thinks aboutour front line. And I say,
I would say, you know,I'll give credit to Home Depot. They
have this thing called the upside downtriangle. If you haven't heard of this
day when you walk in the facility, right, it's customers first and it

(16:25):
walks down the CEO's the bottom.That sort of mentality I'll give them credit
for seeing that many years ago,is really the servant leadership culture and where
employees are making choices now about wherethey want to work. It's culture and
mission have become some of the mostimportant pieces, or if not the most
important. They want to be aplace where their voice matters. The leadership

(16:47):
is there to support them, andyou know, the organization is built behind
that. So if you take thatas your philosophy, and then you challenge
yourself to say, do I havethe right communications systems in place to provide
that sort of bi directional communication?Am I asking my employees in a structured
manner? Once I asked them?Am I doing something with that information of
my surveys or whatever else? AmI actually repeatedly demonstrating that I'm listening and

(17:08):
making the changes to the company theexpect And what we found is so many
things that we do that our employeerequests are so easy to do and so
simple, you know, having cornholetournaments or or having free pizzas on certain
days, or having celebrations of bigorder days. These are not expensive and
not complicated, but they came fromthe employees and it shows just a little

(17:30):
bit of respect and it shows thatwe're here to continue to enhance the organization
in every way we can. Soit's a constant journey in big ass fans.
You know, we, because ofour brand and our commitment to our
customers to fight for their frontline sothat they can have a great productive work
environment. The first place we haveto do that is in our own facilities,

(17:52):
and so in our facilities, weare constantly asking our frontline workers in
our factories, our frontline workers andsales and customer services, how can we
make your day better? How canwe make you more efficient and more productive?
And just having that mentality as aleader and a leadership team runs through
the whole organization of how we shouldoperate. Ken, I know you know
this. It's not always rainbows andunicorns when it comes to running a company
out there, especially a large onewith that many employees. What kind of

(18:15):
current challenges are you having in yourindustry today? There are plenty. You
know. The good news is someof the supply chain stuff has started to
abate. But I would say themarket is, you know, an interesting
market now. Late last year,you know, capital started and dry up,
So even though people wanted our products, you know, they weren't spending
capital, particularly large public companies.So you've seen that come in and out

(18:36):
right, which pressure tests it.Residential is tough so residential market. You
know, most of our customers arethe very very premium and so that's been
less affected. But i'd say ingeneral, you know that the market pieces
are are still a challenge. Recruitingis a challenge for us. But i'd
tell you in Lexington, Kentucky,where our headquarters is, and it's about
three quarters of our employees are here. You know, Big Ass Fans is

(18:59):
one of the the best recruiters intown. You know, we're known to
be one of the best places towork in town, soon to be the
best by far. But so i'dsay recruiting and retaining talent is always a
challenge. And then lastly, youknow, every company loves growth, Every
company loves talking about growth, everyleader loves talking about growth. But anybody
that's really had repeated growth knows growthcan be painful. And so I would

(19:22):
say our challenge is as we aredriving growth and serving customers in more and
more places, our products are gettingmore complicated, our physical reach is getting
broader, driving developing and growing ourtalent aligned with that is also a challenge.
Right we want to We're taking managersand giving them more responsibility. We're

(19:44):
bringing it outside folks to help supplantthat, but just the people side of
growth is always a lot of workto do well. And I'd say those
three things sort of wrap up ourbiggest challenges. Stanning, thanks for sharing
all of that. I really appreciatethat. I didn't want to ask you
as we wrap up and put abone in our conversation about maybe a takeaway
for our listeners out there when itcomes to big ass fans, if you
had one or two things that youwant to make sure that everybody goes away

(20:07):
with when it comes to your company, what would it be? The first
thing? First is our mission.We are here to bring comfort to complex
environments, and we're going to doit in an uncompromising way. And what
that means is the absolute best product, the absolute best quality, the absolute
best performance. But we can relieveyour employees and bring improved NPS scores to

(20:29):
your company by making you a betteryour company a better place to work with
our products. And we have lotsof data and examples to show that and
demonstrate it. And we have lotsof major accounts style that are using us
as more than just a product supplier, but asually as a comfort consultant for
their frontline employees, and so I'dsay that's just number one. Number two,
we're just getting started, you know, the Big As Fans brand.

(20:49):
While people know that no warehousing orno manufacturing or note because they've seen it
somewhere. You know, I lookat brands like YETI, or I look
at other brands that just mean somuch and have such a great cult following.
We are just getting started and welook forward to really taking this and
being a provider of comfort in residentialand commercial and industrial applications all over the

(21:11):
world. Outstanding. I mentioned thatgorgeous website, so we're going to give
them in just a second. Butif you have a phone number, of
social media channels and that website soeverybody can catch up and see what you're
all about. How do they dothat? Ken, Big Assfans dot com
is the place to go. Everythingstems from there or one eight seven seven
Big Fans is our phone number.Feel free to call us anytime. We'd
be happy to help. Kat.It's been a pleasure. I know you're

(21:32):
busy. Thank you so much.Continue success. In the short amount of
time that you being with Big AssFans, you've done some incredible work,
So continue success. And thank youso much for joining us on CEOs.
As you know, we really appreciateit. Thanks N, it's been great.