December 18, 2023 • 37 mins
Alongside his father Vito and brother Kevin, Keith Battaglia co-founded Battaglia Industries in 1996, fostering its growth into a thriving family-owned business. His commitment towards fostering a nurturing work environment is testament to his role as a transformative leader in the industry. Keith's insightful approach to the construction industry, coupled with his dedication to embracing technological advancements, has positioned Battaglia Industries as a trailblazer in the field.
In this episode, Keith dives deep into the inspiring story of building Battaglia Industries from the ground up, the secrets behind their incredible team culture and how they've harnessed technology to revolutionize the construction industry.
In this episode, Keith dives deep into the inspiring story of building Battaglia Industries from the ground up, the secrets behind their incredible team culture and how they've harnessed technology to revolutionize the construction industry.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome back, lumberjacks and all youconstruction folks. This is episode three.
If you're new, I'm Lou Perez, your host of The Builder Upper Show,
a podcast where we talk about everythingin construction and trades. Now let's
get into it. I would liketo welcome our guest, Keith Batalia,
(00:22):
VP of Batalia Industries. Welcome Keith, Thanks Loud, thanks for having me.
Really excited to be here today.Tell me who is Batalia Industries.
Well, we are the premier electricaland HVAC contractor in Chicagoland area. We
specialize in commercial and industrial electrical andHVAC work. We're design build good portion
(00:47):
of our work, probably seventy toeighty percent of what we do is design
build. That's it. That's us. When did you get into construction?
I started out young. You know, the families in construction, So it
just always seem to I always seemto be a tinker. It seemed to
be somewhere I wanted to go andbe in. What is the thrill of
(01:07):
construction? Like how did everything begin? The ultimate thing is you put your
mark on the world. Right thereare things that you put in that will
be around long after you're gone.You know, on one of your previous
interviews, one of your interviewees talkedabout driving his family around and, you
know, pointing out all the buildingsthat he built. I think we all
(01:30):
do that. My daughter goes toschool in Louisiana and she brought a friend
up and as she's walking through theairport to meet us, she tells her
friends, now, I'm gonna warnyou, as we're driving around the town,
my dad's gonna point to random buildingsand say, we built that.
It's the fact that you actually,you know, change the world, put
(01:51):
your mark on the world. Atthe end of the day, you've accomplished
something, there's something physical that you'vedone I think that's really the thrill of
construction. How many kids do youhave? I have four, four oh
four kids. What's the ages.Well, I've got a daughter who just
got married this year's graduation up inGreen Bay. I've got a daughter who
(02:12):
in Louisiana was finishing her chemical engineeringdegree. I've got a son who just
finished his at civil engineering. He'sa structural engineer here in Aperville. And
my youngest son, he's a seniorin high school and his football team just
won the sixth eighth Chance State Championship. Oh man, you have a lot
(02:34):
going on in your life right now. That's great. Doesn't sound like the
apple falls far from the tree tome? Is the kid, Mom,
I got to be honest earlier.Mom. So I hear a lot about
how Batalia is a really successful company. I would like to kind of dig
into that a little bit. Howdid you make Battalia Industries successful to where
(02:54):
it is today? The company ismy father, my brother, and myself.
We really started on the dining roomtable on a Sunday dinner almost thirty
years ago, talking about our jobs. My brother and I were electricians by
trade. Everybody on my mother's sideof the family is an electrician, except
for one cousin. He's a plumber, but nobody really holds it against him.
(03:15):
We were talking about our jobs andmy father. He has more of
a corporate background. He was kindof a big wig for a multinational corporation,
and my brother and I figured weshould we should take advantage of his
knowledge. So we started doing someside work together and Dad said, okay,
now you do this, and nowyou do this. We got a
little busier. We hired a coupleapprentices one of them is still with us,
(03:37):
been with us the whole time.Sean's you want to know any of
our secrets. Talked to Sean,Sean, I'll let you know. And
then we got a little busier.We quit our jobs, we moved into
a place in Arlington Heights, gota little busier. Dad took a early
retirement. We started the HVAC divisionabout twenty five years ago. One of
our first HVAC employees is still withus and been growing since then. The
(04:01):
last two years ago we moved intospace, a larger space in Elgin,
Illinois. We've got about one hundredand forty guys total in the company,
and we've just been very blessed bythe people that we have work here and
the culture that the people who haveworked for us and work for us now
have built. So it's been reallygreat. It's been a really fun ride
(04:24):
so far. After you said allof that, one of the first things
that popped up in my head was, these employees have stayed with you for
so long. What is Batalia doingto keep these employees around that long.
Well, it's really the culture thatthe guys have built, first of all,
for us our deliverables to our customer. It's quality craftsmanship and we do
(04:47):
that through our training and our apprenticeshipprogram. On time delivery. Everything in
our industry, especially on the commercialside, is getting that place open right.
If you're a car dealership and you'renot in the business too build car
dealership locations, you're in the businessof selling cars, so you've got to
get open on time. Innovative thinkingsome of that we do with our prefab
(05:09):
group and looking ways to cut timeoff of the customer schedule, how can
we get out of the customer's wayquicker, and then we work with you.
You know, things come up.Construction isn't always a clear path,
so our guys look to and Iknow it's hard to believe for electricians,
but we really try to work withthe customer, work with the other trades,
(05:32):
work with the general contractor to getthe project done as quickly and as
easily as possible. Do you doanything internally with your employees that kind of
help their growth mindset well? Tradinghas always been a huge part of Betagulia.
We have our own in house apprenticeshipprogram. It's a four year Department
(05:53):
of Labor proof program. We've alwaysfound it easier to grow our own electricians.
So currently we have three three cohortsfirst year, second year, third
year. We're gonna start our fourthyear next year and we start the training
on the apprenticeship includes. The curriculumincludes not only any CE knowledge and electrical
(06:15):
knowledge as well as management and safetyand basic math. I mean, we
really try to help our guys bethe best that they can be. And
then we also do journeyman training.We have a complete training lab as well
as classrooms in this new facility.It was one of the advantages of moving
(06:36):
in here, and we do journeymantraining once so we get both in terms
of safety and management and electrical skills, electrical and HVAC skills. So we
really try to help guys. Youknow, you're not going to find a
company that that's more concerned about yourprofessional growth than you will hear. Our
(07:00):
guys really feel that, Hey,we're not the kind of company where somebody's
going to come in and say,I'm not going to teach Joe how to
do that because I'm afraid Joe mighttake my job. We're really the company
that says, hey, in orderfor me to move up, I've got
to have somebody behind me who's goingto take my place? And that's part
of our company culture is our guys. Our guys are very very concerned with
(07:26):
each other's professional development. How dowe make each other better? You know.
One of the things that I likeworking about working here is that the
guys don't have any fear of callinganybody and saying, hey, I need
a hand with something. You know, sometimes guys get a little bit of
an ego and hey, I don'twant to call anybody. I'm having an
issue. I don't want to callanybody because I'm afraid somebody is going to
(07:46):
think less of me. Here,it's very very common that when a guy
calls me and says, hey,Keith, I got an issue on my
job, my answer is always well, what do you think? And they
inevitably come back with, well,I talked to Marty and Marty said this,
And I talked to CJ and CJsaid this, And I talked to
Sam and Sam said this. Sothey feel open to enough to collaborate with
(08:09):
each other, even though it's anotherleague guy, a guy who's maybe on
the same level as he is,to problem solve and try to find the
best answer, rather than being afraidof you know, somebody might think less
of me. You know. Thatkind of cooperation and work spear of working
(08:30):
together really one of those things thatthere are key to our culture. It
sounds like you've created the formula forgenerational success and I mean, I love
the setup. It sounds like thatgrowth opportunity within the company is there,
and I feel like that's definitely what'sneeded. Are you doing anything? Is
(08:52):
there any I guess secret sauce tohow you're scaling your business because one hundred
and forty employees is quite a lot, you know, it's you know,
you're about a mid size construction company. How did you get to that point?
Did you do anything special to grow? Well? I think that the
key to us, you know,is our people, you know, our
guys. Having were really blessed withthe crew that we have. We really
(09:16):
have an unusual group of guys thatyou know, just you know, they
work hard, they play hard.They're really the key to this our ability
to grow in that amount of time, you know, and they've really built
the culture I look at. Igot a call yesterday from a guy that
used to work for us, andhe said, hey, you know,
I got a customer and can youhelp me out with this. You know,
(09:39):
even after guys leave, they feelfree to call and say, hey,
can you help me out with somethingthat's great? That definitely says a
lot. How does Batalia get themselvesout there? Do you guys go to
trade shows? Do you have toexpo? Like? How do you meet
your clients? Largely? Our clientshave been doing work with us for a
(10:00):
very long time. Some of ourfirst customers are still some of are still
our best customers. My job isbusiness development is pretty easy because we have
such a great reputation. Our guyshave built such a great reputation that people
tend to come to us with thoseprojects that you know, are a little
bit more difficult and need a littlebit more higher expertise. And our customers
are really loyal. Most of ourcustomers, we are their only subcontractor that
(10:26):
they use in that trade, youknow, And like I said, are
some of our customers have been withus since the beginning and we've really close
relationships with a lot of them.Congratulations on that success. It's wonderful to
hear you guys do holiday parties.How do you keep it fun for the
guys to just love coming to work? And you know, shout out from
(10:46):
the mountaintops that Batally has the bestplace to work for well, we've done,
we do well. We have anannual bags tournament in the spring.
Guys get together and they make up, you know, they pair off together.
They come up with funny names fortheir teams. And then we go
out to the park District on aFriday afternoon and and throw bags and there's
(11:07):
prizes for the for the best.But it's really about just hanging out with
each other, you know, theguys. We have a holiday party coming
up here this this week and theguy here at the shop and the guys
will you know, Uh, itjust gives the guys a chance to get
together that because we have so manyguys and we have different jobs. Sometimes
(11:28):
you don't see the same guy forsix, six, seven, eight months,
and it's nice to get everybody togetherto kind of talk. We've done
motorcycle rides for charity before. We'vedone in October. In October we do
pink shirts for the guys. It'sit for us. The pink shirts aren't
a marketing item for us, whatit you know, sometimes you see in
(11:52):
October guys roll out pink trucks andall this. Where that really came from
is one of the guys who worksfor us, a long time employee of
ours, Mike's. Mike's wife wasbattling cancer and he came to us and
said, hey, can we dopink shirts for Fridays? And of course,
Mike, we will. And thensomebody else had the idea that,
(12:13):
hey, let's put the family memberswho are fighting currently fighting, Let's put
them on the back of the Tshirt. So every year we come out
with a new T shirt and weasked the guys, hey, if you
want, we can put your familymember's name on there, because sometimes you
don't realize what everybody's going on intheir life, you know, And it's
just for us, it's more ofa personal let's support each other then,
(12:37):
rather than hey, look at us, we're trying to market it, you
know what I mean, We don't. We don't advertise it, we don't
say anything. It's just kind ofsomething we do internally, so you know,
we can support each other. Thatis really impactful. Making that part
of your day to show your supportreally means a lot. That's that's great
to hear, and something that yousaid really stuck out to me because I
(13:01):
love riding motorcycles. So uh so, next time you have that charity event,
that definitely invite me. I wouldlove to go along for the ride.
What kind of motorcycle do you have? I got a I got a
Harley, I got an Ultra,I got I got an old man's bike.
My brother, I mean tells methat's my last bike. I have
a little ripper U seventy eight YamahaBobber. It's a lot of fun.
(13:24):
I probably can't go as far asyou can on the Ultra. Uh you
have a little more of a comfyride over there. Do you take a
Do you take any long trips?Uh? Not not anything overnight, not
with the family. But I dohave a group that will go out and
you know, put five, fouror five hundred miles on in a day
and kind of hang out, youknow. But hey, we'll stop at
(13:48):
a gas station every couple hundred milesif that's what you need. It's okay.
I don't need to stretch legs alittle bit. Yeah, I would
definitely need it. The ride getsa little rough. I mean I I
go just like an hour and ahalf two hours away from me up north
in Wisconsin here and the scenery isbeautiful, but I still need to stop
(14:11):
and just jump off the bike andand hang out. I don't know if
I'm up to the to the partof camping out just yet. I'd probably
say my maybe two more year goalis to do something, you know,
cross states, maybe go out eastor go out west, just depends.
I know that they have this trogshow in New Jersey or something where they
(14:35):
bring their bikes out on the beachand show off all their old bikes.
If mine can truck it all theway out there, I think that would
be the ultimate goal. Well,you got to ride the dragon, oh
Tennessee, and ride the dragon atsome point. I hear that the tail
of the dragon is something that isunforgetful, Like I think that's going to
be on the bucket list, Anduh yeah, I think I'll I'll have
(14:58):
to h plan that one out accordingly. And maybe for that one I bring
you along for the guide. Thatwould be helpful. Oh amen, awesome,
So shifting gears no pun intended.How do you recruit young workers for
your business? So, I knowI've heard that it's getting harder and harder
(15:20):
by the day of bringing in newblood to come into the workforce and get
them interested in jumping into the trades. Do you see a lot of workers
coming directly from high school or youknow, how does that all work out
for you guys? Well, you'reabsolutely right. I mean, it's hard
for skilled trades in any trade tofind workers, to find new workers to
(15:46):
come into the trade. I rememberwatching Bloomberg a few years ago and they
had a panel they were interviewing,and the subject of the panel was how
much would it cost to build aneye pad in the United States? And
one guy said, well, itwould be ten thousand dollars per I pad,
and the other guy was like,it'd be a million dollars to be
(16:08):
to build this iPad, And thethird guy was like, well, it's
not really about the money. It'sthe fact that we've shipped out. We've
shipped off all of our skilled tradesin manufacturing to other countries. We don't
have the tool in die makers,and we don't have the machinists to create
the machines to build it. Andthat's kind of what we're seeing in the
(16:29):
trade as well. We're not seeingyou know, when eight hit, a
lot of guys left the trade.So we give this big gap of guys
that were skilled and at this pointwould be good mentors to the young guys.
On top of that, we don'thave enough kids coming into the trade.
And so how we're doing that iswe're working with the local high schools
(16:52):
and we're trying to bring kids inand show them how what a great career
this is. In the four years. You can go to college and end
up with debt, or you canstart out in the trade, earn while
you learn, and then at theend of the four years, hey,
maybe you've got a new car,maybe you've got your own place, you're
well established in your career, you'remaking great money, and you're on your
(17:15):
way. We have a mini internship. We've got a couple of high school
kids students in it now. Sothey get out of school. Maybe they'll
attend a class or two in themorning one day a week, and then
the rest of the day they'll comeout to a job site and they shadow
a technician or an electrician for theday and kind of get introduced to what
(17:37):
it is like to actually be inthe trades, and then they can make
an informed decision about is this thecareer that they want to take the path
that they want to take, ormaybe this isn't for them, So that's
really cool. Yeah, So we'vebeen working with the local high schools to
get more kids interested in it aswell as our safety and Education director goes
out to the high schools and givestalks to the industrial arts classes about you
(18:04):
know, the trades in general andhow to how to get involved. That
is so cool. Yeah, that'sgreat, and you put a really nice
value prop on there. You know, you don't want to go into debt,
just go start making money, youknow, go go after it.
You're all set up. Not everykid's cut out for college, and it's
good to know that they have somethingthat can that they can jump towards and
(18:27):
have a really great career out ofif they decide to come on board and
be an apprentice with us here atBataglia. Because it is a Department of
Labor approved program, they know ata thousand hours I get an increase,
So thouars thousands of a thousand hourson the job, I get an increase,
(18:48):
and those are regularly scheduled increases,so they already know, hey,
at the end of the four years, this is where I'm going to be
at. This is my journeyman wage, and this is what I'm going to
be at. And all that isregulated with through our agreement with the student
and with the Department of Labor,as well as the student's agreement with the
Department of Labor. So you alreadyknow where you're going to be. All
you got to do is put inthe effort to get there. It's a
(19:10):
great setup. How did you buildthis program? How did you even make
that available? We got really lucky. We got a gentleman that works for
us. He was an associate professorat Loyola University and he was looking for
change your career, so we broughthim on board, made him an electrician.
He worked really hard, he wentthrough the apprenticeship, became a journeyman.
(19:33):
He began running jobs for us,and my brother said, you know,
we should tap into Wes's prior knowledge. So we made a March Safety
and Training director and he put thecurriculum together. He went to the Department
of Labor and did the heavy lifting. He teaches two of the classes.
He teaches the first year and thethird year. He roped me into teaching
(19:56):
the second year. So that's kindof how we got started. It was
again everything that I look at thatwe do, it goes back to how
blessed we are with the employees thatwe have. How I mean, how
lucky is that just to come byassociate professor at Loyal and then bring him
in house and build out an academyfor kids to take advantage of it out
(20:18):
of high school. That's amazing.Oh yeah, we are completely plus And
we have other guys coming in thatmaybe they have a year or two experience,
so they want to join the apprenticeshipprogram too. I mean, we
really you know, the guys thatwork for us, they really want to
be the best that they can be. You know, like I said,
you're not going to find a companywho's more concerned with your professional development than
you will. Hear one of ourprefed manager, he just had a baby
(20:41):
yesterday and to him texting everybody inthe office pictures, you know, individually,
not a group, text individually becauseyou know, sharing that great news.
So yeah, absolutely sounds like youhave a real family there at Batalia.
I'll swick it up here. Iwanted to ask you about technology,
(21:03):
so I know the younger generation,technology is at their fingertips there's almost like
a you could say, a generationalshift within the construction industry where more people
are utilizing tech within the business tohelp modernize the way that they do business
in general, even within the backoffice. How does Batalia take advantage of
this technology? If you guys dotake advantage of technology today, you know,
(21:26):
Liu, you hit it on thehead. It has changed so much
during my career. I mean whenI first started, we were ripping cardboard
off the box and taking a sharpieand writing down our lists of material we
need for the next day. Noweverything is on the pad, everything is
on the phone. We just wentthrough and upgraded all the phones, all
(21:48):
the field guy's phones to get thema little bit more power. We're constantly
adding software. We're going through nowand we're changing the hardware in the office.
We added a server, we're changingsome of the desktops out in anticipation
of some new software coming up.The everything from punching in and punching out
(22:12):
and keeping track of time and payrollas well as you know, the guys
can do their vacations and their theirtime off requests through there. Then you
know, we're the the software thatwe use to communicate with the field.
I mean, it has changed somuch that we don't even have drawings in
(22:33):
the office. You walk around,you know, you walk around the office.
When we first were in Arlington Heights, everybody had a drawing rack.
Everybody had paper everywhere. Now youwalk down our estimators hall and the guys
of big screens, nothing's really printedout anymore. They mark up their drawings,
they can send them out to thepms. The pms can do their
(22:55):
markups, send them out to thefield. You know, the technology,
the layout technology. You know,our prefab group can lay out the entire
underground downloaded to the machine, sendit out to the job site and the
guys can lay out perfectly. Nomore strings all over the place where guys
are tripping off of and then youknow, oh we missed this wall.
(23:18):
Now we got to chip the concreteout. You know, It's just amazing
the way the construction has changed,how technology has changed the construction industry.
And I'm really looking forward to wherewe're going to be in the next ten
to fifteen years. We were ata prefab conference in we met our peer
group, belonged to a really goodpeer group, and we met in Phoenix
(23:41):
and toured a prefab facility and theyhad the goggles where you could put them
on and you could see the duckwork in the air. Right, you
could see the electrical lines in theair. You know that when that starts
hitting the job site, that's reallygoing to change things. It's no longer
you're looking on the path. You'relooking through a pair of glasses that are
(24:02):
showing you what that room's supposed tolook like, with that layout supposed to
look like. I mean, andour prefab group is really really leverage technology
and communicating out to the job sitewhat they're building and that how that should
go when it gets out to thefield QR codes. I mean, it's
(24:22):
just it's it's crazy the amount ofchange that's happened because of technology. Do
you see using like automated time sheetsthat can tie into payroll, Absolutely,
Lou. I mean, if youthink about it, when I first started,
you'd get this paper time sheet thatyou had to fill out, right,
(24:44):
then you had to get it tothe office somehow, whether you gave
it to your site supervisor right,and then he had to collect them all
and then he had to drop himoff at the office at the end of
the week, or you emailed themin or mailed them in. Timesheets would
get lost because back in the daywhen we were much I was the guy
that was inputting the time sheets intothe into the computer, and then my
(25:04):
mom would cut the checks and youknow, go from there. The amount
of time that it took it was, it was, and we didn't have
we had but forty guys at thatpoint, forty forty five guys. It
was half a day for just mywork, in addition to what my mom
had to do just to get payrollout. Now everything it just gets downloaded
on Monday afternoon. They go throughthe timesheets, the guys can make the
(25:26):
corrections on their time sheets in theirapps. It just makes it so easier.
You're not calling guys, hey,where's your timesheet? Oh I left
it on the dashboard of my truck, or forgot it on the counter at
home. That efficiency, that amountof time that it cuts down is really
in the accuracy of those timesheets andthe payroll. Now you don't have to
(25:48):
go back because oh, he missedthe day, or there were two hours
overtime or this was unclear. It'smade it so much easier payroll on the
administrative side of it so much easierthan it was when I started. Even
just to unpack it a little bitmore. You mentioned previously you use even
software for like dispatch and stuff likethat, So you know, how does
(26:11):
that benefit you as far as usingsoftware just do scheduling and dispatching. Our
service crews when they start in themorning, they don't have to come in
the office and get their work ordersand get going. All they got to
do is open up their app andthey have all their service calls and then
they can take pictures. They candownload pictures onto the site. They can
(26:32):
generate emails and invoices to the customerright on site. We also use it
for change orders. Used to bethe same thing with change orders in the
field. The end of the job, somebody would show up with a stack
of change orders that they kept intheir gang box because they didn't have a
chance to run it to the shop. Now they can enter their change orders
on the app. It gets emailedto the PM. The PM can get
(26:53):
the change order over to the customer. Because paperwork is always an issue for
your general contractor. When I talkto our customers, I always say,
hey, what are your pain pointsone, two, or three is always
paperwork, right, nobody likes toget change orders at the very end of
the job. By using the appand processing that paperwork faster, we can
get we can be more responsive toour customer. Right. If there's service
(27:18):
calls come up in the middle ofthe day, well, Nicole takes care
of our service guys. She doesa great job. If changes come up,
she can send it through the app. They get all the information that
they need. She has past historyin front of her of the of the
customer, what we've done before,and it just makes things so much more
efficient and so much easier than theold three part work tickets. Remember those
(27:41):
three part work tickets. I thinkI might have a box somewhere in the
attic of that and it was crazy, right, Yeah, it makes a
huge difference having these applications at yourfingertips and pricing. You know, we're
able to load the material into theapp so the guys can come up,
they can price it out on thejob site and let the customer know this
(28:02):
is what your cost is going tobe for this change or you want or
on a service called hey, thisis what this is what our estimate or
this is what it's going to take, not an estimate. This is what
it's going to take to do it. Technology. I mean, if you're
not leveraging technology at this point,you're behind. I'm with you on that.
One of our secret sauces. Oneof the advantages we've had is that
my father has this business background.Most guys, most tradesmen, they were
(28:27):
really really good tradesmen and they sawtheir boss and they said, hey,
I could do that. But theydon't understand it's a different set of skills
that you need to manage a businessrather than working a business. You know.
I talked a little bit about mypeer group before. I remember we
were having a peer group meeting andI made I made comment like, man,
I wish I could go back andyou know, just one day be
(28:49):
an electrician again, throw my toolsdown and just rough out all day,
right, just bend pipe all day. And one of one of the most
senior peer group members, Guy lookup to he said, you know,
you got to stop thinking to yourselfas an electrician. He goes, I
don't want to do that. I'mnot an You're not an electrician who owns
a company. You're a business ownerwho happened to be an electrician and you
(29:11):
have to and that kind of changedthe mindset for me. You know,
all of a sudden, you know, he's right, I'm managing a business
now, and it's a completely setdifferent set of skills to managing a business
than being an electrician who's running jobs. And a lot of guys, don't
you know, they get to thatsix ten, twelve guys and they can't
(29:33):
seem to get over that hump becausethey don't have the business skills to get
them to that next level. Thetechnology is a big part of that,
you know, and training and learning. It's like I said, it's a
different set of skills. One ofthe worst things that I hear from guys
is I'm busy as heck, butI'm not making any money. I don't
know if I'm making any money.That's very difficult position to be in,
(29:55):
right. I strongly recommend the guysto, hey, get yourself those sets
of sk join an organization like AssociatedBuilders and Contractors. And because a lot
of guys join those organizations or Chamberof commerce. A lot of people join
those organizations because they think, oh, I'm going to join and all of
a sudden, I'm gonna have allthese customers come in. Well, that's
not really the biggest benefit of beingpart of those organizations. We met at
(30:19):
ABC of Illinois Construction Symposium this year, Right, it was a whole day
of skills that companies need, ownersneed to help run their company. That's
really what those organizations. The bestbenefit of those organizations is they help you
learn the skills you need to takeyour company to the next level. In
(30:41):
our apprenticeship program. Part of theapprenticeship program is job management. Is management
in general, right, how tomanage people, how to manage materials,
how to manage the schedule. Mostof us started when we got to the
point where we're ready to run jobs. Their boss handed them said as drawings
and said call me in two weeks. Right, Well, our philosophy has
(31:03):
always been, hey, we needto teach our guys before they get there,
what their responsibilities are and how tohandle those responsibilities when they manage when
they get to that management position.And it's the same if you're running jobs,
and then the next level, ifyou decide to get into further management
PM or own your own company,you know, it's really a different set
of skills and you got to learn. You got to have those skills or
(31:26):
you're gonna get stuck. There's newregulatory compliance laws that come out that affect
the construction industry. Do you doanything to help you keep up with any
regulatory compliance laws that go on?And I know that you work majority in
Illinois, Is that correct? Yep? Yep, Illinois and southeastern Wisconsin and
northwestern Indiana. How do you keepup with all these laws and regulations that
(31:52):
they have in the construction industry.Well, it's a lot of it is
relying on our industry partners, youknow, relying on ABC. They really
do a great job with local andnational government keeping us informed of what the
changes are and how you know,they have seminars, they have their Coffee
and Construction series ABC Wisconsin. Ithink they have their super convention coming up.
(32:13):
We really rely on our industry partnersto help us keep up with that
and keep informed. We also belongto a couple of peer groups. One
for our electrical division, one forour HVAC division. Our electrical group,
which I'm more involved in. There'scompanies all across the country. We're all
about the same size, We're allbasically in the same markets. And we
get together three times a year andwe do a little bit of business development,
(32:37):
but then we also do talk alittle bit about how things are going
in our companies. And it's reallygreat to be able to have somebody who's
doing the same thing and having thesame struggles that you can talk to and
help each other out with, butnot being so concerned about being a competitor,
you know. So that's one way, and you hit on something too,
you know. We Yeah, wewant to see our competent do well,
(33:00):
because if they're better, we're better. I have certain competition that I
would rather be bidding up against ona job than other guys, because I
know the guys that I want tobid on they're more organized, they have
a better work crew, they havea better handle what's going on. I
know that when it comes time tobid that they're going to be too validated.
Two good bids, right. Idon't want to get into a situation
(33:22):
where we're bidding on a project andthe guy that makes the biggest mistake is
the guy that gets the job.What I mean, is there any secret
to winning bids? For us?Winning the bid comes prior to the opportunity
to bid on the project, pastperformance, it's reputation, it's culture,
it's being able to get the jobdone. We have customers that come to
(33:44):
us and say, hey, I'vegot a project you want to work on.
Sometimes it fits, sometimes it takes. We take a look and say,
hey, this isn't a good fitfor us. We can't. Oh,
we don't want to over commit andthen fall down on our face,
especially for somebody who's approaching us.So we have a list of people that
we say, hey, hey,these are people we could we could probably
bring into customers, we just don'thave the bandwidth to properly service them at
(34:06):
this point. That's really commendable too. You know, you're not going to
overpromise and underdeliver. That's gonna meanthat every time that you do business with
somebody, you're going to be deliveringan amazing product a result, and they're
going to keep coming back for more. You know, we want to service
the heck out of our customers.We want to be able to We want
(34:28):
to make it easy for them topick up the phone and call us.
We want to be their experts.We have a customer, We've been doing
work with them for a long timeand they have a unique program. They
have a Vendor of the Year program, and what they do is they go
out to there. It's not likea couple of executives sit in their office
and say, oh, let's giveit to this guy. They go out
and they pull their site superintendents,their pms, their financial people and say,
(34:52):
who are the vendors that you wantto work with? Well, we've
won that award five years in arow. That is huge for us.
That is that's when that comes out. You know, everybody in the company
celebrates that because that speaks to usthat hey, we're we're hitting our marks,
we're hitting we're doing what we wantto do, we're following our culture.
That award means a lot to usinternally, and we're really appreciative that
(35:15):
we've been able to achieve that andit makes us work harder to try to
get it again next year. Youguys really set the bar high. Where
do people find Batalia Industries? Whatif they want to work with you?
How did they find you? We'reon the web at www. Potagli Industries
dot com. Give us a callin the office. We're located here in
(35:36):
Elgon, Illinois. Give me acall. We'll talk awesome. I love
it. I know we're at thetop of the time here. Before we
wrap up, I do have onelast question for you. Do you have
any advice for new construction owners thatyou'd like to share with our listeners.
Just a little bit about what wetalked about. You know, make sure
that you're constantly working on the business, not for the business. You know
(36:01):
what I'm saying. Yeah, getyourself involved with ABC and attend those seminars
that they have that will help youget those skills that you need. You
know, they're coffee and construction.Pay attention to the regulatory stuff. Get
involved with you know, if youfeel you need it. Get yourself a
business coach. There's a lot ofgreat guys out there who do a great,
(36:22):
great, great job of helping guyswho are just starting out. Don't
be afraid to ask for help.It's not about the skills that you had
as a technician. It's about thisnew set of skills that you have to
develop as a business owner. Man, great advice, Keith, I think
(36:43):
everybody can note that down. Don'tbe afraid to ask for help. Go
get a coach, concentrate mainly onthe business, and let the business work
for you. I love it.Keith, thank you so much for being
a guest on the show. Everyonego ahead and like and subscribe, comment,
share the Builder Up Show with everybodythat you know. We look forward
to bringing you a great show nexttime. Thank you, Thank you,
(37:05):
Loud, thanks for such a thoughtfulinterview. If you're a construction contractor and
would like to appear as a gueston our podcast, write us an email.
It's Lou at lumberfi dot com.
Welcome back, lumberjacks and all youconstruction folks. This is episode three.
If you're new, I'm Lou Perez, your host of The Builder Upper Show,
a podcast where we talk about everythingin construction and trades. Now let's
get into it. I would liketo welcome our guest, Keith Batalia,
(00:22):
VP of Batalia Industries. Welcome Keith, Thanks Loud, thanks for having me.
Really excited to be here today.Tell me who is Batalia Industries.
Well, we are the premier electricaland HVAC contractor in Chicagoland area. We
specialize in commercial and industrial electrical andHVAC work. We're design build good portion
(00:47):
of our work, probably seventy toeighty percent of what we do is design
build. That's it. That's us. When did you get into construction?
I started out young. You know, the families in construction, So it
just always seem to I always seemto be a tinker. It seemed to
be somewhere I wanted to go andbe in. What is the thrill of
(01:07):
construction? Like how did everything begin? The ultimate thing is you put your
mark on the world. Right thereare things that you put in that will
be around long after you're gone.You know, on one of your previous
interviews, one of your interviewees talkedabout driving his family around and, you
know, pointing out all the buildingsthat he built. I think we all
(01:30):
do that. My daughter goes toschool in Louisiana and she brought a friend
up and as she's walking through theairport to meet us, she tells her
friends, now, I'm gonna warnyou, as we're driving around the town,
my dad's gonna point to random buildingsand say, we built that.
It's the fact that you actually,you know, change the world, put
(01:51):
your mark on the world. Atthe end of the day, you've accomplished
something, there's something physical that you'vedone I think that's really the thrill of
construction. How many kids do youhave? I have four, four oh
four kids. What's the ages.Well, I've got a daughter who just
got married this year's graduation up inGreen Bay. I've got a daughter who
(02:12):
in Louisiana was finishing her chemical engineeringdegree. I've got a son who just
finished his at civil engineering. He'sa structural engineer here in Aperville. And
my youngest son, he's a seniorin high school and his football team just
won the sixth eighth Chance State Championship. Oh man, you have a lot
(02:34):
going on in your life right now. That's great. Doesn't sound like the
apple falls far from the tree tome? Is the kid, Mom,
I got to be honest earlier.Mom. So I hear a lot about
how Batalia is a really successful company. I would like to kind of dig
into that a little bit. Howdid you make Battalia Industries successful to where
(02:54):
it is today? The company ismy father, my brother, and myself.
We really started on the dining roomtable on a Sunday dinner almost thirty
years ago, talking about our jobs. My brother and I were electricians by
trade. Everybody on my mother's sideof the family is an electrician, except
for one cousin. He's a plumber, but nobody really holds it against him.
(03:15):
We were talking about our jobs andmy father. He has more of
a corporate background. He was kindof a big wig for a multinational corporation,
and my brother and I figured weshould we should take advantage of his
knowledge. So we started doing someside work together and Dad said, okay,
now you do this, and nowyou do this. We got a
little busier. We hired a coupleapprentices one of them is still with us,
(03:37):
been with us the whole time.Sean's you want to know any of
our secrets. Talked to Sean,Sean, I'll let you know. And
then we got a little busier.We quit our jobs, we moved into
a place in Arlington Heights, gota little busier. Dad took a early
retirement. We started the HVAC divisionabout twenty five years ago. One of
our first HVAC employees is still withus and been growing since then. The
(04:01):
last two years ago we moved intospace, a larger space in Elgin,
Illinois. We've got about one hundredand forty guys total in the company,
and we've just been very blessed bythe people that we have work here and
the culture that the people who haveworked for us and work for us now
have built. So it's been reallygreat. It's been a really fun ride
(04:24):
so far. After you said allof that, one of the first things
that popped up in my head was, these employees have stayed with you for
so long. What is Batalia doingto keep these employees around that long.
Well, it's really the culture thatthe guys have built, first of all,
for us our deliverables to our customer. It's quality craftsmanship and we do
(04:47):
that through our training and our apprenticeshipprogram. On time delivery. Everything in
our industry, especially on the commercialside, is getting that place open right.
If you're a car dealership and you'renot in the business too build car
dealership locations, you're in the businessof selling cars, so you've got to
get open on time. Innovative thinkingsome of that we do with our prefab
(05:09):
group and looking ways to cut timeoff of the customer schedule, how can
we get out of the customer's wayquicker, and then we work with you.
You know, things come up.Construction isn't always a clear path,
so our guys look to and Iknow it's hard to believe for electricians,
but we really try to work withthe customer, work with the other trades,
(05:32):
work with the general contractor to getthe project done as quickly and as
easily as possible. Do you doanything internally with your employees that kind of
help their growth mindset well? Tradinghas always been a huge part of Betagulia.
We have our own in house apprenticeshipprogram. It's a four year Department
(05:53):
of Labor proof program. We've alwaysfound it easier to grow our own electricians.
So currently we have three three cohortsfirst year, second year, third
year. We're gonna start our fourthyear next year and we start the training
on the apprenticeship includes. The curriculumincludes not only any CE knowledge and electrical
(06:15):
knowledge as well as management and safetyand basic math. I mean, we
really try to help our guys bethe best that they can be. And
then we also do journeyman training.We have a complete training lab as well
as classrooms in this new facility.It was one of the advantages of moving
(06:36):
in here, and we do journeymantraining once so we get both in terms
of safety and management and electrical skills, electrical and HVAC skills. So we
really try to help guys. Youknow, you're not going to find a
company that that's more concerned about yourprofessional growth than you will hear. Our
(07:00):
guys really feel that, Hey,we're not the kind of company where somebody's
going to come in and say,I'm not going to teach Joe how to
do that because I'm afraid Joe mighttake my job. We're really the company
that says, hey, in orderfor me to move up, I've got
to have somebody behind me who's goingto take my place? And that's part
of our company culture is our guys. Our guys are very very concerned with
(07:26):
each other's professional development. How dowe make each other better? You know.
One of the things that I likeworking about working here is that the
guys don't have any fear of callinganybody and saying, hey, I need
a hand with something. You know, sometimes guys get a little bit of
an ego and hey, I don'twant to call anybody. I'm having an
issue. I don't want to callanybody because I'm afraid somebody is going to
(07:46):
think less of me. Here,it's very very common that when a guy
calls me and says, hey,Keith, I got an issue on my
job, my answer is always well, what do you think? And they
inevitably come back with, well,I talked to Marty and Marty said this,
And I talked to CJ and CJsaid this, And I talked to
Sam and Sam said this. Sothey feel open to enough to collaborate with
(08:09):
each other, even though it's anotherleague guy, a guy who's maybe on
the same level as he is,to problem solve and try to find the
best answer, rather than being afraidof you know, somebody might think less
of me. You know. Thatkind of cooperation and work spear of working
(08:30):
together really one of those things thatthere are key to our culture. It
sounds like you've created the formula forgenerational success and I mean, I love
the setup. It sounds like thatgrowth opportunity within the company is there,
and I feel like that's definitely what'sneeded. Are you doing anything? Is
(08:52):
there any I guess secret sauce tohow you're scaling your business because one hundred
and forty employees is quite a lot, you know, it's you know,
you're about a mid size construction company. How did you get to that point?
Did you do anything special to grow? Well? I think that the
key to us, you know,is our people, you know, our
guys. Having were really blessed withthe crew that we have. We really
(09:16):
have an unusual group of guys thatyou know, just you know, they
work hard, they play hard.They're really the key to this our ability
to grow in that amount of time, you know, and they've really built
the culture I look at. Igot a call yesterday from a guy that
used to work for us, andhe said, hey, you know,
I got a customer and can youhelp me out with this. You know,
(09:39):
even after guys leave, they feelfree to call and say, hey,
can you help me out with somethingthat's great? That definitely says a
lot. How does Batalia get themselvesout there? Do you guys go to
trade shows? Do you have toexpo? Like? How do you meet
your clients? Largely? Our clientshave been doing work with us for a
(10:00):
very long time. Some of ourfirst customers are still some of are still
our best customers. My job isbusiness development is pretty easy because we have
such a great reputation. Our guyshave built such a great reputation that people
tend to come to us with thoseprojects that you know, are a little
bit more difficult and need a littlebit more higher expertise. And our customers
are really loyal. Most of ourcustomers, we are their only subcontractor that
(10:26):
they use in that trade, youknow, And like I said, are
some of our customers have been withus since the beginning and we've really close
relationships with a lot of them.Congratulations on that success. It's wonderful to
hear you guys do holiday parties.How do you keep it fun for the
guys to just love coming to work? And you know, shout out from
(10:46):
the mountaintops that Batally has the bestplace to work for well, we've done,
we do well. We have anannual bags tournament in the spring.
Guys get together and they make up, you know, they pair off together.
They come up with funny names fortheir teams. And then we go
out to the park District on aFriday afternoon and and throw bags and there's
(11:07):
prizes for the for the best.But it's really about just hanging out with
each other, you know, theguys. We have a holiday party coming
up here this this week and theguy here at the shop and the guys
will you know, Uh, itjust gives the guys a chance to get
together that because we have so manyguys and we have different jobs. Sometimes
(11:28):
you don't see the same guy forsix, six, seven, eight months,
and it's nice to get everybody togetherto kind of talk. We've done
motorcycle rides for charity before. We'vedone in October. In October we do
pink shirts for the guys. It'sit for us. The pink shirts aren't
a marketing item for us, whatit you know, sometimes you see in
(11:52):
October guys roll out pink trucks andall this. Where that really came from
is one of the guys who worksfor us, a long time employee of
ours, Mike's. Mike's wife wasbattling cancer and he came to us and
said, hey, can we dopink shirts for Fridays? And of course,
Mike, we will. And thensomebody else had the idea that,
(12:13):
hey, let's put the family memberswho are fighting currently fighting, Let's put
them on the back of the Tshirt. So every year we come out
with a new T shirt and weasked the guys, hey, if you
want, we can put your familymember's name on there, because sometimes you
don't realize what everybody's going on intheir life, you know, And it's
just for us, it's more ofa personal let's support each other then,
(12:37):
rather than hey, look at us, we're trying to market it, you
know what I mean, We don't. We don't advertise it, we don't
say anything. It's just kind ofsomething we do internally, so you know,
we can support each other. Thatis really impactful. Making that part
of your day to show your supportreally means a lot. That's that's great
to hear, and something that yousaid really stuck out to me because I
(13:01):
love riding motorcycles. So uh so, next time you have that charity event,
that definitely invite me. I wouldlove to go along for the ride.
What kind of motorcycle do you have? I got a I got a
Harley, I got an Ultra,I got I got an old man's bike.
My brother, I mean tells methat's my last bike. I have
a little ripper U seventy eight YamahaBobber. It's a lot of fun.
(13:24):
I probably can't go as far asyou can on the Ultra. Uh you
have a little more of a comfyride over there. Do you take a
Do you take any long trips?Uh? Not not anything overnight, not
with the family. But I dohave a group that will go out and
you know, put five, fouror five hundred miles on in a day
and kind of hang out, youknow. But hey, we'll stop at
(13:48):
a gas station every couple hundred milesif that's what you need. It's okay.
I don't need to stretch legs alittle bit. Yeah, I would
definitely need it. The ride getsa little rough. I mean I I
go just like an hour and ahalf two hours away from me up north
in Wisconsin here and the scenery isbeautiful, but I still need to stop
(14:11):
and just jump off the bike andand hang out. I don't know if
I'm up to the to the partof camping out just yet. I'd probably
say my maybe two more year goalis to do something, you know,
cross states, maybe go out eastor go out west, just depends.
I know that they have this trogshow in New Jersey or something where they
(14:35):
bring their bikes out on the beachand show off all their old bikes.
If mine can truck it all theway out there, I think that would
be the ultimate goal. Well,you got to ride the dragon, oh
Tennessee, and ride the dragon atsome point. I hear that the tail
of the dragon is something that isunforgetful, Like I think that's going to
be on the bucket list, Anduh yeah, I think I'll I'll have
(14:58):
to h plan that one out accordingly. And maybe for that one I bring
you along for the guide. Thatwould be helpful. Oh amen, awesome,
So shifting gears no pun intended.How do you recruit young workers for
your business? So, I knowI've heard that it's getting harder and harder
(15:20):
by the day of bringing in newblood to come into the workforce and get
them interested in jumping into the trades. Do you see a lot of workers
coming directly from high school or youknow, how does that all work out
for you guys? Well, you'reabsolutely right. I mean, it's hard
for skilled trades in any trade tofind workers, to find new workers to
(15:46):
come into the trade. I rememberwatching Bloomberg a few years ago and they
had a panel they were interviewing,and the subject of the panel was how
much would it cost to build aneye pad in the United States? And
one guy said, well, itwould be ten thousand dollars per I pad,
and the other guy was like,it'd be a million dollars to be
(16:08):
to build this iPad, And thethird guy was like, well, it's
not really about the money. It'sthe fact that we've shipped out. We've
shipped off all of our skilled tradesin manufacturing to other countries. We don't
have the tool in die makers,and we don't have the machinists to create
the machines to build it. Andthat's kind of what we're seeing in the
(16:29):
trade as well. We're not seeingyou know, when eight hit, a
lot of guys left the trade.So we give this big gap of guys
that were skilled and at this pointwould be good mentors to the young guys.
On top of that, we don'thave enough kids coming into the trade.
And so how we're doing that iswe're working with the local high schools
(16:52):
and we're trying to bring kids inand show them how what a great career
this is. In the four years. You can go to college and end
up with debt, or you canstart out in the trade, earn while
you learn, and then at theend of the four years, hey,
maybe you've got a new car,maybe you've got your own place, you're
well established in your career, you'remaking great money, and you're on your
(17:15):
way. We have a mini internship. We've got a couple of high school
kids students in it now. Sothey get out of school. Maybe they'll
attend a class or two in themorning one day a week, and then
the rest of the day they'll comeout to a job site and they shadow
a technician or an electrician for theday and kind of get introduced to what
(17:37):
it is like to actually be inthe trades, and then they can make
an informed decision about is this thecareer that they want to take the path
that they want to take, ormaybe this isn't for them, So that's
really cool. Yeah, So we'vebeen working with the local high schools to
get more kids interested in it aswell as our safety and Education director goes
out to the high schools and givestalks to the industrial arts classes about you
(18:04):
know, the trades in general andhow to how to get involved. That
is so cool. Yeah, that'sgreat, and you put a really nice
value prop on there. You know, you don't want to go into debt,
just go start making money, youknow, go go after it.
You're all set up. Not everykid's cut out for college, and it's
good to know that they have somethingthat can that they can jump towards and
(18:27):
have a really great career out ofif they decide to come on board and
be an apprentice with us here atBataglia. Because it is a Department of
Labor approved program, they know ata thousand hours I get an increase,
So thouars thousands of a thousand hourson the job, I get an increase,
(18:48):
and those are regularly scheduled increases,so they already know, hey,
at the end of the four years, this is where I'm going to be
at. This is my journeyman wage, and this is what I'm going to
be at. And all that isregulated with through our agreement with the student
and with the Department of Labor,as well as the student's agreement with the
Department of Labor. So you alreadyknow where you're going to be. All
you got to do is put inthe effort to get there. It's a
(19:10):
great setup. How did you buildthis program? How did you even make
that available? We got really lucky. We got a gentleman that works for
us. He was an associate professorat Loyola University and he was looking for
change your career, so we broughthim on board, made him an electrician.
He worked really hard, he wentthrough the apprenticeship, became a journeyman.
(19:33):
He began running jobs for us,and my brother said, you know,
we should tap into Wes's prior knowledge. So we made a March Safety
and Training director and he put thecurriculum together. He went to the Department
of Labor and did the heavy lifting. He teaches two of the classes.
He teaches the first year and thethird year. He roped me into teaching
(19:56):
the second year. So that's kindof how we got started. It was
again everything that I look at thatwe do, it goes back to how
blessed we are with the employees thatwe have. How I mean, how
lucky is that just to come byassociate professor at Loyal and then bring him
in house and build out an academyfor kids to take advantage of it out
(20:18):
of high school. That's amazing.Oh yeah, we are completely plus And
we have other guys coming in thatmaybe they have a year or two experience,
so they want to join the apprenticeshipprogram too. I mean, we
really you know, the guys thatwork for us, they really want to
be the best that they can be. You know, like I said,
you're not going to find a companywho's more concerned with your professional development than
you will. Hear one of ourprefed manager, he just had a baby
(20:41):
yesterday and to him texting everybody inthe office pictures, you know, individually,
not a group, text individually becauseyou know, sharing that great news.
So yeah, absolutely sounds like youhave a real family there at Batalia.
I'll swick it up here. Iwanted to ask you about technology,
(21:03):
so I know the younger generation,technology is at their fingertips there's almost like
a you could say, a generationalshift within the construction industry where more people
are utilizing tech within the business tohelp modernize the way that they do business
in general, even within the backoffice. How does Batalia take advantage of
this technology? If you guys dotake advantage of technology today, you know,
(21:26):
Liu, you hit it on thehead. It has changed so much
during my career. I mean whenI first started, we were ripping cardboard
off the box and taking a sharpieand writing down our lists of material we
need for the next day. Noweverything is on the pad, everything is
on the phone. We just wentthrough and upgraded all the phones, all
(21:48):
the field guy's phones to get thema little bit more power. We're constantly
adding software. We're going through nowand we're changing the hardware in the office.
We added a server, we're changingsome of the desktops out in anticipation
of some new software coming up.The everything from punching in and punching out
(22:12):
and keeping track of time and payrollas well as you know, the guys
can do their vacations and their theirtime off requests through there. Then you
know, we're the the software thatwe use to communicate with the field.
I mean, it has changed somuch that we don't even have drawings in
(22:33):
the office. You walk around,you know, you walk around the office.
When we first were in Arlington Heights, everybody had a drawing rack.
Everybody had paper everywhere. Now youwalk down our estimators hall and the guys
of big screens, nothing's really printedout anymore. They mark up their drawings,
they can send them out to thepms. The pms can do their
(22:55):
markups, send them out to thefield. You know, the technology,
the layout technology. You know,our prefab group can lay out the entire
underground downloaded to the machine, sendit out to the job site and the
guys can lay out perfectly. Nomore strings all over the place where guys
are tripping off of and then youknow, oh we missed this wall.
(23:18):
Now we got to chip the concreteout. You know, It's just amazing
the way the construction has changed,how technology has changed the construction industry.
And I'm really looking forward to wherewe're going to be in the next ten
to fifteen years. We were ata prefab conference in we met our peer
group, belonged to a really goodpeer group, and we met in Phoenix
(23:41):
and toured a prefab facility and theyhad the goggles where you could put them
on and you could see the duckwork in the air. Right, you
could see the electrical lines in theair. You know that when that starts
hitting the job site, that's reallygoing to change things. It's no longer
you're looking on the path. You'relooking through a pair of glasses that are
(24:02):
showing you what that room's supposed tolook like, with that layout supposed to
look like. I mean, andour prefab group is really really leverage technology
and communicating out to the job sitewhat they're building and that how that should
go when it gets out to thefield QR codes. I mean, it's
(24:22):
just it's it's crazy the amount ofchange that's happened because of technology. Do
you see using like automated time sheetsthat can tie into payroll, Absolutely,
Lou. I mean, if youthink about it, when I first started,
you'd get this paper time sheet thatyou had to fill out, right,
(24:44):
then you had to get it tothe office somehow, whether you gave
it to your site supervisor right,and then he had to collect them all
and then he had to drop himoff at the office at the end of
the week, or you emailed themin or mailed them in. Timesheets would
get lost because back in the daywhen we were much I was the guy
that was inputting the time sheets intothe into the computer, and then my
(25:04):
mom would cut the checks and youknow, go from there. The amount
of time that it took it was, it was, and we didn't have
we had but forty guys at thatpoint, forty forty five guys. It
was half a day for just mywork, in addition to what my mom
had to do just to get payrollout. Now everything it just gets downloaded
on Monday afternoon. They go throughthe timesheets, the guys can make the
(25:26):
corrections on their time sheets in theirapps. It just makes it so easier.
You're not calling guys, hey,where's your timesheet? Oh I left
it on the dashboard of my truck, or forgot it on the counter at
home. That efficiency, that amountof time that it cuts down is really
in the accuracy of those timesheets andthe payroll. Now you don't have to
(25:48):
go back because oh, he missedthe day, or there were two hours
overtime or this was unclear. It'smade it so much easier payroll on the
administrative side of it so much easierthan it was when I started. Even
just to unpack it a little bitmore. You mentioned previously you use even
software for like dispatch and stuff likethat, So you know, how does
(26:11):
that benefit you as far as usingsoftware just do scheduling and dispatching. Our
service crews when they start in themorning, they don't have to come in
the office and get their work ordersand get going. All they got to
do is open up their app andthey have all their service calls and then
they can take pictures. They candownload pictures onto the site. They can
(26:32):
generate emails and invoices to the customerright on site. We also use it
for change orders. Used to bethe same thing with change orders in the
field. The end of the job, somebody would show up with a stack
of change orders that they kept intheir gang box because they didn't have a
chance to run it to the shop. Now they can enter their change orders
on the app. It gets emailedto the PM. The PM can get
(26:53):
the change order over to the customer. Because paperwork is always an issue for
your general contractor. When I talkto our customers, I always say,
hey, what are your pain pointsone, two, or three is always
paperwork, right, nobody likes toget change orders at the very end of
the job. By using the appand processing that paperwork faster, we can
get we can be more responsive toour customer. Right. If there's service
(27:18):
calls come up in the middle ofthe day, well, Nicole takes care
of our service guys. She doesa great job. If changes come up,
she can send it through the app. They get all the information that
they need. She has past historyin front of her of the of the
customer, what we've done before,and it just makes things so much more
efficient and so much easier than theold three part work tickets. Remember those
(27:41):
three part work tickets. I thinkI might have a box somewhere in the
attic of that and it was crazy, right, Yeah, it makes a
huge difference having these applications at yourfingertips and pricing. You know, we're
able to load the material into theapp so the guys can come up,
they can price it out on thejob site and let the customer know this
(28:02):
is what your cost is going tobe for this change or you want or
on a service called hey, thisis what this is what our estimate or
this is what it's going to take, not an estimate. This is what
it's going to take to do it. Technology. I mean, if you're
not leveraging technology at this point,you're behind. I'm with you on that.
One of our secret sauces. Oneof the advantages we've had is that
my father has this business background.Most guys, most tradesmen, they were
(28:27):
really really good tradesmen and they sawtheir boss and they said, hey,
I could do that. But theydon't understand it's a different set of skills
that you need to manage a businessrather than working a business. You know.
I talked a little bit about mypeer group before. I remember we
were having a peer group meeting andI made I made comment like, man,
I wish I could go back andyou know, just one day be
(28:49):
an electrician again, throw my toolsdown and just rough out all day,
right, just bend pipe all day. And one of one of the most
senior peer group members, Guy lookup to he said, you know,
you got to stop thinking to yourselfas an electrician. He goes, I
don't want to do that. I'mnot an You're not an electrician who owns
a company. You're a business ownerwho happened to be an electrician and you
(29:11):
have to and that kind of changedthe mindset for me. You know,
all of a sudden, you know, he's right, I'm managing a business
now, and it's a completely setdifferent set of skills to managing a business
than being an electrician who's running jobs. And a lot of guys, don't
you know, they get to thatsix ten, twelve guys and they can't
(29:33):
seem to get over that hump becausethey don't have the business skills to get
them to that next level. Thetechnology is a big part of that,
you know, and training and learning. It's like I said, it's a
different set of skills. One ofthe worst things that I hear from guys
is I'm busy as heck, butI'm not making any money. I don't
know if I'm making any money.That's very difficult position to be in,
(29:55):
right. I strongly recommend the guysto, hey, get yourself those sets
of sk join an organization like AssociatedBuilders and Contractors. And because a lot
of guys join those organizations or Chamberof commerce. A lot of people join
those organizations because they think, oh, I'm going to join and all of
a sudden, I'm gonna have allthese customers come in. Well, that's
not really the biggest benefit of beingpart of those organizations. We met at
(30:19):
ABC of Illinois Construction Symposium this year, Right, it was a whole day
of skills that companies need, ownersneed to help run their company. That's
really what those organizations. The bestbenefit of those organizations is they help you
learn the skills you need to takeyour company to the next level. In
(30:41):
our apprenticeship program. Part of theapprenticeship program is job management. Is management
in general, right, how tomanage people, how to manage materials,
how to manage the schedule. Mostof us started when we got to the
point where we're ready to run jobs. Their boss handed them said as drawings
and said call me in two weeks. Right, Well, our philosophy has
(31:03):
always been, hey, we needto teach our guys before they get there,
what their responsibilities are and how tohandle those responsibilities when they manage when
they get to that management position.And it's the same if you're running jobs,
and then the next level, ifyou decide to get into further management
PM or own your own company,you know, it's really a different set
of skills and you got to learn. You got to have those skills or
(31:26):
you're gonna get stuck. There's newregulatory compliance laws that come out that affect
the construction industry. Do you doanything to help you keep up with any
regulatory compliance laws that go on?And I know that you work majority in
Illinois, Is that correct? Yep? Yep, Illinois and southeastern Wisconsin and
northwestern Indiana. How do you keepup with all these laws and regulations that
(31:52):
they have in the construction industry.Well, it's a lot of it is
relying on our industry partners, youknow, relying on ABC. They really
do a great job with local andnational government keeping us informed of what the
changes are and how you know,they have seminars, they have their Coffee
and Construction series ABC Wisconsin. Ithink they have their super convention coming up.
(32:13):
We really rely on our industry partnersto help us keep up with that
and keep informed. We also belongto a couple of peer groups. One
for our electrical division, one forour HVAC division. Our electrical group,
which I'm more involved in. There'scompanies all across the country. We're all
about the same size, We're allbasically in the same markets. And we
get together three times a year andwe do a little bit of business development,
(32:37):
but then we also do talk alittle bit about how things are going
in our companies. And it's reallygreat to be able to have somebody who's
doing the same thing and having thesame struggles that you can talk to and
help each other out with, butnot being so concerned about being a competitor,
you know. So that's one way, and you hit on something too,
you know. We Yeah, wewant to see our competent do well,
(33:00):
because if they're better, we're better. I have certain competition that I
would rather be bidding up against ona job than other guys, because I
know the guys that I want tobid on they're more organized, they have
a better work crew, they havea better handle what's going on. I
know that when it comes time tobid that they're going to be too validated.
Two good bids, right. Idon't want to get into a situation
(33:22):
where we're bidding on a project andthe guy that makes the biggest mistake is
the guy that gets the job.What I mean, is there any secret
to winning bids? For us?Winning the bid comes prior to the opportunity
to bid on the project, pastperformance, it's reputation, it's culture,
it's being able to get the jobdone. We have customers that come to
(33:44):
us and say, hey, I'vegot a project you want to work on.
Sometimes it fits, sometimes it takes. We take a look and say,
hey, this isn't a good fitfor us. We can't. Oh,
we don't want to over commit andthen fall down on our face,
especially for somebody who's approaching us.So we have a list of people that
we say, hey, hey,these are people we could we could probably
bring into customers, we just don'thave the bandwidth to properly service them at
(34:06):
this point. That's really commendable too. You know, you're not going to
overpromise and underdeliver. That's gonna meanthat every time that you do business with
somebody, you're going to be deliveringan amazing product a result, and they're
going to keep coming back for more. You know, we want to service
the heck out of our customers.We want to be able to We want
(34:28):
to make it easy for them topick up the phone and call us.
We want to be their experts.We have a customer, We've been doing
work with them for a long timeand they have a unique program. They
have a Vendor of the Year program, and what they do is they go
out to there. It's not likea couple of executives sit in their office
and say, oh, let's giveit to this guy. They go out
and they pull their site superintendents,their pms, their financial people and say,
(34:52):
who are the vendors that you wantto work with? Well, we've
won that award five years in arow. That is huge for us.
That is that's when that comes out. You know, everybody in the company
celebrates that because that speaks to usthat hey, we're we're hitting our marks,
we're hitting we're doing what we wantto do, we're following our culture.
That award means a lot to usinternally, and we're really appreciative that
(35:15):
we've been able to achieve that andit makes us work harder to try to
get it again next year. Youguys really set the bar high. Where
do people find Batalia Industries? Whatif they want to work with you?
How did they find you? We'reon the web at www. Potagli Industries
dot com. Give us a callin the office. We're located here in
(35:36):
Elgon, Illinois. Give me acall. We'll talk awesome. I love
it. I know we're at thetop of the time here. Before we
wrap up, I do have onelast question for you. Do you have
any advice for new construction owners thatyou'd like to share with our listeners.
Just a little bit about what wetalked about. You know, make sure
that you're constantly working on the business, not for the business. You know
(36:01):
what I'm saying. Yeah, getyourself involved with ABC and attend those seminars
that they have that will help youget those skills that you need. You
know, they're coffee and construction.Pay attention to the regulatory stuff. Get
involved with you know, if youfeel you need it. Get yourself a
business coach. There's a lot ofgreat guys out there who do a great,
(36:22):
great, great job of helping guyswho are just starting out. Don't
be afraid to ask for help.It's not about the skills that you had
as a technician. It's about thisnew set of skills that you have to
develop as a business owner. Man, great advice, Keith, I think
(36:43):
everybody can note that down. Don'tbe afraid to ask for help. Go
get a coach, concentrate mainly onthe business, and let the business work
for you. I love it.Keith, thank you so much for being
a guest on the show. Everyonego ahead and like and subscribe, comment,
share the Builder Up Show with everybodythat you know. We look forward
to bringing you a great show nexttime. Thank you, Thank you,
(37:05):
Loud, thanks for such a thoughtfulinterview. If you're a construction contractor and
would like to appear as a gueston our podcast, write us an email.
It's Lou at lumberfi dot com.
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