From a Multinational to the Canadian Marketplace with GNI's Bill Maginas

Leon Goren speaks with GNI's CEO, Bill Maginas, who made the transition in the fall of 2020 from the large multinational Johnson Controls to the Canadian firm, Great Northern Insulation. Bill discusses the challenges and opportunities of making the switch and what his experience has been working with fewer resources and bringing new employees onboard.
 
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Episode Transcript

Leon Goren (00:08):
Welcome to our snippets podcast. I'm Leon
Goren, CEO and president of PEOleadership, North America's
premier peer to peer network andleadership advisory firm. Today
we welcome bill McGinnis, CEO ofNorthern insulation JNI for
short and a member Miko key hosadvisory team at PEO. DNI
services homeowners and industryprofessionals in the

(00:30):
residential, commercial,industrial and agricultural
sectors offering solutions thatinclude insulation, air sealing
fireproofing panel and claddingand a lot more. They operate
throughout Ontario with eightlocations and over 300
employees. Bill has been amember of pa leadership for a
number of years having recentlymoved from the big corporate job
at Johnson Controls to DNI inSeptember 2020. He's an advisory

(00:54):
board member with another PLleadership member or proceed and
also a member, a board member atpatriot technologies. For fun, I
can also tell you Bill's a hugecyclists, and the winter weather
doesn't seem to pull them offthe road. Guy is extremely
passionate. Belle, it's great tohave you with us today.

Unknown (01:12):
Thanks, Leon.

Leon Goren (01:14):
So the move from a big multinational corporate to a
Canadian corporate head office.
I know I always have members whoare thinking about this, it was
think Well, anyway, they alwayssome of them consider the grass
is greener on your side now. Butand they always think the move
is going to be easy. And soyou've been doing this for a
number of months. And I'm justcurious, maybe there's a couple

(01:36):
of insights you can share withthem, like maybe two or three
insights. Yeah.

Unknown (01:42):
So I grew up in my industry, the multi industrial
space. In in Canada, it's thebiggest curse, but also the
biggest benefit. So we have theability to feed off of products
that are out of the US. But theproblem I had in my industry,
and it's not the same in everyindustry is that although I was
a significant size in Canada, inmy industry, for my competitors,

(02:03):
I was 1/10 for all my otherAmerican compare all my American
peers. And so what I always gotfelt like we prepared just like
everybody else would prepare, wehad a billion at JC I have a $2
billion business and but whenyou're preparing and you're
spending all that time on it,you get to a meeting that's
significant. Your team spends aweek preparing for a board
meeting or or an SBU presidentmeeting and you get treated like

(02:27):
new I keep saying New HampshireI hope no one's from New
Hampshire, it takes a personallythat we get treated like a
really small state in the US.
And so that to me, just over toyou, I did this for I've done
this for over, I was almost 15years doing this in some way.
That it just became frustratingfor me and my team. It's like I
say it's the biggest curse. Butthe biggest benefit, I would
have never had the experiences Ihad in the big corporate

(02:48):
setting, international as wellas Canadian based, without,
without being there. But it wasit's kind of funny to see that's
over my career. And all mycoaching and mentoring I've had
before PEO guys would say to us,what do you wanna do and grow
up? And I said, and even when Iwas in the EU working in the US

(03:08):
and doing some internationaljobs, the they would always ask
me, What do you want to do, Isaid, I kind of want to go home
and run like, you know, 50 to$60 million business and be the
CEO. So I didn't plan it thisway as this serendipitous. I
actually left JCI thinking thatI would I probably wanted to go
the PE route where I was more ofan owner operator as well as you

(03:31):
know, I was more connected to myshareholders which the distance
to share the distance whenyou're running any business
between what you do and theshareholders also challenging.
So having a closer connection tothe shareholder, which I thought
is what I wanted to do. And Iwas just started by by
consulting in an organization tohelp them they were putting

(03:53):
together a package to sell on Gand I was a portion of the
businesses they wanted to sell.
And then I got lucky. Ironbridgecame in to buy GSI and
Ironbridge is the PE firm that Iworked for, as it's one of their
portfolio companies. And I kindof really enjoyed working, you
know, in discussions and itwasn't really an interview
process, we'll see a discussion.
And when the purchase happened.

(04:16):
I kind of became the GI CEO, Idid become the GI co CEO. So
that's kind of the been I wouldnot say that I would give up my
15 years my almost 20 years ofmultinationals but 15 years kind
of being in that Canadianentity. I spent five years in
the US where I was more HQ thatI wouldn't give that up because

(04:37):
I thought there was greatopportunities and it was great
learning and experience. But Ithink the transition, the
transition, and I know a lot ofpeople think it's easy. It's not
an easy transition. No, it isnot easy. I have a lot of
friends that think oh my gosh,you're just running a $70
million business now. You know,how easy is that? Well, it's not

(05:00):
Easy because you actually arerunning everything. There's very
little, there's a lot less backoffice support. So it's not
easy, but it's it, it's fun, youget the ability to take
everything you've learned andkind of like when you when you
grow up in business and youknow, a lot of a lot of people
follow me they go engineeringroute or business route, I went

(05:22):
business route and, and got myMBA and then when you get your
MBA, you learn how to run bigbusinesses. And so I always say
that I see to some of my peersor friends, I got my master's
degree in business from WilfridLaurier, I got my PhD in
business from the multiindustrial space. So that's kind
of you learn a lot, because fromthe firehose, and now it's the

(05:43):
ability for us to put that forme to put that into a smaller
business. And I'm enjoying thatI'm really I'm enjoying that.
So it's funny you talked about,and I've heard this too, it's
always when moving from thelarge organization where you're
surrounded with incredibleamount of resources. And smart
people to it's at JohnsonControls, Holy smokes, you got
incredible people, where thenyou move into a smaller

(06:04):
business. The one issue I alwayshear is about, Oh, my God, I
don't have the same resources.
So I am a man or a woman. Yeah,basically full of trades, like I
am working every aspect of thisbusiness. And have you found
that like, are you in gross intoevery element of the business
now?
Yeah, so just most of my careeras well. So my last four years
before that was JCI. But thesame, they're both large multi

(06:27):
industrials, I think thechallenge. So I think that what
you just said, you have a, youhave a support organization in
those big businesses that youdon't have in a smaller
business, that's for sure. Butif you're good enough, in a
smaller business, you canoutsource some of that which
we've done, I think thechallenging part I had was, or
is, is when you're trying tolook for seat people to fill

(06:51):
seats. So you've got a gapsomewhere in the business. And
you usually in a larger company,you've got this large group of P
talent portfolio or talentanalysis that says, Well, this
guy's ready for his next role.
And you just kind of pick fromthat and you bring them up into
that role, or move peoplearound. That's really the hard
part. Because you're just you'rein a smaller business. So you
need people are all doing thingsthat are impacting the customer.

(07:13):
And so you can't really pullpeople away, because then you
can't drive revenue orperformance for the customer. So
that that to me has been thehardest thing is you can't move
people around as easily as youcould have in a bigger company.
What about the fact you jointhem that I know you were
involved a little bit earlier?
Because you were doing someconsulting there, but you really
came in in the middle of COVID.

(07:34):
Right? So what's happened likefor you, because you're, you're
stuck within your home, the fourwalls? I know, part of your
business is essential, right?
You're going into theselocations, your but your admin
part is not So how have you beenmeeting everybody?
are you dealing with yourmanagement team and stuff?
Biggest challenge? I thinkthat's been the biggest
challenge when I talk about. SoI look at this as kind of in my

(07:56):
career, I did a few jobs thatwere I would I got into high
growth regions that Honeywelland I went to Brazil, Turkey,
Russia and ran companies wherewe had to integrate these
businesses into our corporatesetting. So I look at this as an
integration job. And everyintegration job I've ever done,
I went and spent time live withpeople across in boardrooms. And
we did, we had, you know, whatwe call war rooms with sticky

(08:19):
notes. And those are not, youcan't do that anymore. So thank
goodness for the technictechnology with teams and zoom
and WebEx. Those are all thingsthat have helped us a lot. But
it's been a significantchallenge, because you can't
just have, it's a lot harder.
You can't have water coolerchats, you can't just it's not
like you're popping intosomeone's office and
whiteboarding, an idea that youwant, you have to do this a lot

(08:40):
differently with a lot moreplan. And I think the first few
months we're chatting were very,very challenging. I think we
found a way to deal with it. ButI don't know that we can. I
think we are all looking forwardto getting back into an office
and actually sitting across fromthe table and working together.
It has been definitely achallenge.

Leon Goren (09:00):
What about Have you guys been doing any onboarding
during the time as well, likeit'd be brought new people on
and your business? And how doesthat work?

Unknown (09:06):
Yeah, so it's a good question we do. So the funny The
funny thing is, you have tosplit our business. So we have
the office folks that are mostlydealing with anyone that can
work from home, was sent home.
And then you have the branchbusiness and the branch business
is very essential. It's kind oflike, you know, running a gas
station. So you actually have tobe there, the trucks have to be
loaded, there's inventory. Sothe branches have been very

(09:28):
little affected. So thelocations are everyone's there.
So the onboarding that happensin those locations has been very
similar. You bring in someonethat's going to come in in a in
a junior position to learn howto be a former and installation
truck on boarded the same way.
The staff when you talk aboutbringing in staff from a sales

(09:48):
rep perspective or a leadershipperspective, that's been a
little bit more challenging. Sothe onboarding has definitely
been more challenging because wehave now everyone's remote,
there's no one in an office. Andso we do a lot more computer
based stuff, and we're doing alot more CBT, which is good. And
I think that's very, veryvaluable. But we're also trying

(10:09):
to force a cadence in place,we're trying to put in a more
welcoming management operatingsystem. So we've launched a
management management operatingsystem where we have regular
cadence for folks to come in andbe part of discussions and
business discussions. So that'sgoing to help us but you're
right onboarding is somethingthat we viewed as a gap for us.
And we need to fix a bit of ablind spot.

Leon Goren (10:30):
Yeah, well, no, it's a blind spot for a lot of
people. That's why I was curiouson how you were handling it.
Because all these companies aredealing with it, you're just
unfortunately, face. So if youcome right in the middle of
COVID. So not only do you get tolearn your team, work about
strategy, and then you gotpeople changes, or new people
coming on, you got hit on allfronts, essentially, in terms of

(10:50):
running that business. So

Unknown (10:52):
yeah, just to add to that, so one of the things we've
tried to do so an integrationjob like this to CEO, would go
to locations and spend time withthe field staff. So I have
visited all the locations in avery socially distant. And I've
been very cautious having goneto the dispatch time when
there's a lot of people there,because I don't want that to be.

(11:13):
That's not what we're supposedto doing during the pandemics
we've been been not doing that.
But we've worked really hard onis doing taped town halls. So at
dispatch, what we do is we do atown hall with the leadership
team where we'll talk aboutthings mostly through pap mostly
through PowerPoints some video,but we're also we're also doing
that we've launched a newmission vision values campaign,
which has been which has beenduring the pandemic which has

(11:36):
been great. We've also pulledtogether two board meetings,
it's been 180 days, we've hadtwo board meetings, our team's
been able to pull that together,which is been the first first
time I've done a board meetinglike this where we're all
remote. So it's been that's beentricky as well. But the team has
really come together we've hadto every there's no real book
about this. We all have had tofigure out ways to make this
work.

Leon Goren (12:00):
Well, it's been great chatting, thank you for
sharing some of that stuff. LikeI said, I know we have a lot of
members not even members I knowpeople in the larger community
everybody's thinking about youknow, those at least that have
been career guys multinationalguys, what's it like to jump
into the Canadian market to runand spearheaded Canadian coming
plus, you've got the experiencealso working with private equity
now, which is also a new dilemmaor a different dilemma on

(12:23):
dealing with that. So thanks forjoining us and sharing some of
those insights with us today. Ifyou're interested in any of our
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(12:48):
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