April 24, 2024 • 29 mins
Matthew Timler shares his captivating journey, from fiddling with wires during his childhood days to being fascinated with the science behind electrical systems and eventually establishing his own company - Plug Light Bulb Electrical Services.
Discover firsthand how Matthew cultivates an environment of empowerment and growth within his team, fostering a culture where every member feels valued and inspired to excel. His approach to leadership isn't just about giving orders; it's about instilling confidence and providing the necessary support for individuals to unleash their full potential.
Matthew's adeptness at embracing technology has revolutionized the way Plug Light Bulb Electrical Services operates. In this episode, he discusses how his team is leveraging on AI to streamline and enhance efficiency in their day-to-day operations.
Discover firsthand how Matthew cultivates an environment of empowerment and growth within his team, fostering a culture where every member feels valued and inspired to excel. His approach to leadership isn't just about giving orders; it's about instilling confidence and providing the necessary support for individuals to unleash their full potential.
Matthew's adeptness at embracing technology has revolutionized the way Plug Light Bulb Electrical Services operates. In this episode, he discusses how his team is leveraging on AI to streamline and enhance efficiency in their day-to-day operations.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey everyone, 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 like towelcome our guest, Matthew Timbler, owner
at Plug Light Bulb Electrical Services.Matthew, how you doing today? I'm
(00:22):
doing awesome. Thanks for having meon here. It's a pleasure and a
great opportunity, so pleasure is allmine. We really appreciate you joining us
today. Sounds like you had aninteresting story that we want to share with
our listeners. So we'll kick itoff with when did you decide you wanted
to be an electrician? So that'sactually a really unique story, and I'm
going to go back to when Iwas really young. I was around eight
(00:46):
years old, and I used tohelp my dad all the time. He's
been an electrician his entire well myentire life, not his entire life,
and I used to help him pullwires, cutting boxes. But I hated
electrical did not want anything to dowith it. And my favorite part about
it was driving the scissors lift.So he'd like, let me drive the
(01:07):
scissors lift and go up and downwith it and be pulling wires to and
from light fixtures, helping him hanglife fixtures. That's I just loved doing
that. So fast forward a littlebit. I was around ten, and
my dad would have light fixtures broughthome from work, so he would pay
me like ten cents fifteen cents alight fixture to like preassemble them and put
(01:33):
hooks on them, or putting inground pig tails or pre wire things.
And I loved that because I lovedthe money. But I did not like
to work. So later later onin life, I had went on a
farm from like twelve to fourteen,still trying to figure out what I wanted.
I went into work leave from schoolfifteen through eighteen as an electrician.
(01:57):
Still hated it. Like the entiretime, I was only doing it for
money. I looked at it asbeing a very boring job, and I
didn't have a lot of comprehension onwhat I was physically doing. I was
just being told, Hey, runpipe from here to there, run wire
from here to there, put thesewires here, plan these wires here,
put this label on it. Ididn't. I had no clue what I
was doing. I was just beinga mindless monkey per se and just doing
(02:23):
whatever somebody told me to without anythought process behind it. College and I
could not figure out what I wantedto do. So I came back to
electrical I was like, hey,this is a good fallback. I can
get an associates degree after my apprenticeship, and then I can go get my
bachelor's and whatever I want. I'llhave a journeyman's at the end of it.
So then I went to school forit, and that's when I fell
(02:46):
in love. I'd always liked scienceand math, and all of a sudden
things started clicking. I felt likea magician because now I was manipulating electrons
instead of just pulling white from pointA to point B, and I could
visualize things like now I understood howmotors worked with state or windings, and
(03:07):
I'd like and how transformers worked whereyou're taking energy and you're taking it from
one location to another without them touchingeach other, and that just like blew
my mind. So once I understoodhow the math and science behind it worked,
I started to fall in love withthe industry and I couldn't get enough
of it, and that's when Iclicked for me. Then I would be
(03:29):
working eight hours, i'd be goingto school for eight hours and I'd be
at home all night long youtubing stuffon what I saw, and I was
like, this is so cool.I want to know how to dissect it.
I went to radio Shack at onepoint and started making my own radio
out of little transistors and lights andlike trying to intercept waves, and like
I started taking into a different levelof trying to intercept phone calls. I
(03:52):
was like, this, this couldbe really cool. Like I could do
a lot of things with it.So I don't know, I all of
a sudden fell in love. OnceI understood it and appreciated it for what
it was. It wasn't ploying wiresanymore. I understood the concept of you're
manipulating electrons, you're inducing magnetism onthings, You're you are in total control.
Now instead of hey, go dothis, go do this mindless work,
(04:16):
it became something that I thoroughly enjoyedand fell in love with. And
I think that's that's kind of whenI happened around nineteen to twenty years old.
I just all of a sudden clickedand I loved it. So,
yeah, awesome, Yeah that's superinteresting. So you could tell kids that
are in school that are interested inmath and science that being an electrician could
(04:41):
be the next step. Oh one. And I always enjoyed it, but
like I just it's because I wasnaturally good at it. I wasn't like
the guy kid who's doing math afterschool, but I was. If I
was in math class, I wasengaged and I wanted to know the behind
things, and it really intrigued me, Like geometry was cool, physics was
(05:04):
cool, Like I really liked learningabout those things. Didn't never think I'd
want to do it in my career, but I was engaged with it and
it resonated with me. So itwas a really cool experience to have that
click later on in life where oh, I enjoyed doing these things, and
I looked at it almost had astereotype of like I don't want to be
(05:24):
a biologist, I don't want tobe a physics teacher. I put things
in a block and said, Hey, if you want to do something with
science, you got to be ascience teacher, instead of Hey, I
enjoyed doing this and now I canapply it to what I'm actually doing in
real life, and it's really cooland I think it helps your passion too.
(05:44):
Like. It's definitely. It keepsme energetic about it because I enjoy
physically doing what I do. Awesome. Well, side question from something that
you mentioned before, is Radio Shackstill around? It actually is now?
Oh? Really? Yes? Oh? I actually just bought what the heck
was it I was doing with myson. There's a kid I bought online
(06:04):
for like learning POC programming and actuallydoing some of the stuff that I had
done on my own. I can'tthink of what it's called right now,
but I me and my son dothat now. And he loves taking the
little wires, Like you get alittle block, oh yeah, just put
wires in it, and then Ican show him, like, hey,
type in this code on the computerand it'll be like a timing relay in
(06:25):
there, and he can make thelight flash and he just absolutely loves it.
And it's cool because, yeah,Radio shot came back and they did
stuff like that. I wish Ihad stuff like that when I was growing
up, to be honest with you, because it would have been awesome.
Yeah. No, we do thesame thing for my son's STEM projects,
So manipulating the wires to make thefan go or you know, build like
(06:47):
a little car or something so thatit can go on its own, always
a lot of fun. I lovethat. Yeah, what inspired you to
be an owner? So I actuallynever thought about owning an electrical business since
I was really young. I alwayslooked at business ownership being like apartments,
(07:08):
restaurants, suit tie. You haveto be very white collar. There's no
blue collar involved. And it's becauseI had this stigma in my mind.
You always look up to your parents, and I looked up to my dad.
My dad was a division manager ata very successful electrical company. I
looked at that as being the pinnacle. So like I looked at that,
(07:29):
so never looked at eling my ownbusiness is being so with that. What
made me want to be an owneris I always respected the owner of Suburban
Electric, and I respected him toan absolute level of to this day,
(07:50):
I still talk back and forth withhim and I absolutely love and cherish him,
and he's a very amazing human being. And what I respected about him
was he was about one hundred andfifty employees at the time, and he
knew us all by name, wouldalways go out of his way to if
he saw you walking past, hehanded you a gate raid and said,
hey, how are you doing,like how are you doing? And not
(08:15):
how are my jobs going? Nothow is how is this company a good
fit for you? Even though likehe wanted to know that, but like
he took the time out of hisday to be like, how are you
personally doing? And I help you? And it was never it never seemed
like he wanted anything else other thanfor you to be happy. So I
always respected that. Well. Ownershipchange, and I don't want to speak
(08:39):
poorly about it, but the atmosphereoverall went into a different direction. People
became more replaceable, people became morelike numbers and not family anymore. And
so I started saying, hey,what do I want? What did I
value in this company? And Ivalued loyalty and respect and I valued that
family atmosphe here and I wanted thatback. So in that coming into fruition,
(09:05):
I decided, I'm going to gostart my own thing. I'll be
my own boss. I won't needto worry about any of this, and
if I end up getting employees,then I can get back that love and
respect that I had received. Andthat's when I clicked for me. I
was like, why can't I bea business owner? I have my masters,
I have enough education behind me thatI should be able to identify you
(09:26):
to do within a business and Ijust want to into it. And now
I've never looked back since, andit's been amazing. That's great. What
is something that you know today thatyou wish you knew when you started?
I think the biggest thing is you'rebig. The biggest problem that you're going
(09:50):
to encounter is always going to bepeople. But your biggest to ask that
as people and going into a business, you get so focused on all the
numbers, so focused on like thejobs, and sometimes, like even with
me wanting to have all this loyaltyand respect for my people, you get
lost at times. And I thinkit had I known in the beginning and
(10:13):
I kept that focus a lot stronger, I think the team might have built
up even quicker than what it alreadyhas and been stronger from the beginning,
because sometimes you get you get draggedinto things in situations where you're going against
what your intuition is telling you andlike what you're feeling and vibing from the
people within your organization, just becauseyou're looking at the financial side of things.
(10:37):
And I think knowing that the peopleare going to empower you and sometimes
you are your biggest bottleneck, andto trust people and get those people in
there. I think just knowing thatpeople are what are going to make and
break you within a business overall,not really your financials, not really like
the jobs that you're going to goget. If you have the right people
(11:01):
and you stand behind them, that'swhat drives you, because I just don't
feel like that's talked about enough andenough people really say it. Like everybody
talks about, Hey, what's yourmargins, where are you coming in,
what's your backlog? Not how areyour people doing? Yeah, I mean
it sounds like you really concentrate onthe culture that you've you've built within your
own business. Is that part ofthe scaling aspect? I know that you
(11:26):
guys are doing pretty well. Haveyou? Do you have any secrets of
scaling your business? I think thesecret is identifying your culture and fully standing
behind it, because if you empowerthe people within the organization, anybody who's
a nasayer or doesn't belong to bepart of it, they will walk themselves
(11:50):
right out the door. You won'teven have to fire them, and your
own people will start to identify who'sgood fits for what and when you empower
people with like core values and cultureand they firmly stand behind it and they
resonate with you. They do thingsabove and beyond what their expectations are.
So I can have a set jobdescription and then the person who's maybe the
(12:13):
VP of sales is all of asudden pulling permits for people because hey,
I see somebody struggling, and I'veseen that as being a huge asset because
now you no longer need to worryabout like everybody who's in. Everybody's willing
to assist in every single lane.Obviously you have a lane that you need
to stay in to a point,and like these these are my designated tasks.
(12:37):
But when it comes to scalability,you all are fully supporting each other
and it becomes a lot easier tobring somebody into the organization and train because
now people are picking up slack.So you see that there's a job needed,
you've heard it, and you bringsomebody in as say an AD and
assistant. Well, we didn't havethat job there before we saw it was
needed. And in the training process, it's not like hey, they come
(13:00):
in and everything gets handed to them. It's a gradual process of everybody supporting
them because we're a team, andI without the culture that we have,
I've just never experienced anything like that. Or you don't hear Patty talking about
Jack and saying, hey, he'she's a you know what, and I
can't talk to him. Like weall hang out together. We'll all go
(13:24):
out to the bar together, orwe'll go like have fun. I mean,
anytime we have a company party,two kids are involved, so like
it's cool that we all know eachother's family at every single level and we
enjoy hanging out with each other.So you just it's not like work anymore.
I really love that because it bringsit to the point when you want
(13:46):
to have like strategy sessions or teammeetings, you probably have a lot of
involvement from everybody in the room.Is that right? Yeah? And it's
so crazy how people take accountability too, Like you don't even have to.
You do hold people accountable, butyou don't have to because people take it
on themselves. Like you bring aproblem, and it's crazy how quick get
(14:07):
gets solved. You bring it,and all of a sudden, somebody who
was not involved has a completely differentperspective because they've taken ownership and they're like,
hey, my teammate is struggling,Like this isn't my job, but
I want to help you figure thisout. So it's so cool that brainstorm
sessions like they'll shrink in time whereoriginally it's two of you. You think
that everything's on your plate and it'lltake you a couple hours to sit there
(14:31):
and brainstorm, where in five minutesI can bring something. I got eighty
seven ideas. Where did this comefrom? I didn't even know you had
an opinion on this, but thisis super cool. So yeah, it
definitely helps. When you put thatplatform out there for people, you will
get surprised. I mean people,people are thinkers. People are smart.
(14:54):
They have their own ideas and it'sideas that you might have never thought of,
and they'll just you. So it'sit's really great that you've created that
culture and environment so that they canshare those ideas with you. Do you
have any family in your business withyou? I have my father in law
in the business with me, andthat is the only family left. I
(15:16):
had two other family members that werein there, but they didn't exactly work
out. And I've been a verywhen I bring family on I'm like,
hey, this is a whole otherfamily. It's a work family. But
understand that I'm gonna hold you thesame standard as everybody else. You don't
get a past. So it's workedout and I have zero complaints on it.
(15:39):
But yeah, no, I meanthat's the only family and my wife
wants no part of it. Youknow, I don't want to. I
see you enough. Do you haveI mean, it sounds like you guys
have a lot of fun over there. Do you hold like any annual get
togethers for any events or holidays oranything like that or celebrate together. We
(16:02):
actually try to do a monthly gettogether, so we try to fun.
Like right now, we have likeBlizzards games where like we were a sponsor
at for the American well it wasn'tan American Cancer Society. It's like a
blackout night for them with cancer,and so like do we have two different
nights that we're going together as ateam, one to support that cancer thing
(16:25):
and then we also got a teamnight. We traditionally try to do something
in the summer that's a little bitbigger with like food trucks and try to
have some of the community come in. So we always try to do two
things once a month, community involvementand some sort of get together. Whether
it's everybody getting together at for aUFC fight or we get together for a
(16:45):
basketball game or something. We atleast try to do that, And honestly,
it always is super cool because likewhen people first start, they're always
like hesitating on how it's gonna be. And then we're like, oh,
no, you can bring your kidsto and they're like, whoa, it's
like that relaxed, Like this isn'tlike a formal get together. No,
like the kids are running around theoffice screaming, playing, Like we're just
(17:08):
hanging out. So we'll get likefood and we'll just do some fun stuff
together as frequently as we can.I mean, we even go paintballing together.
We'll like split up teams and wellwe'll be like your team Alfa,
your team Bravo, and it willbe like office versus field staff. We
do a lot of fun stuff thatis so fun. You got to invite
(17:32):
me out. I love paintball,So invite me out to one of those
little get togethers. I'd love tojoin. So, I mean, it
sounds like you like sports and stuff. Do you have a sports background.
Yeah, I mean kind of likenothing outrageous, like was I an all
star on a varsity team? No, like the did I play sports.
I was like an all year roundathlete. I was in wrestling at some
(17:53):
point, I was basketball, football, track. I do jiu JITs to
know and like I And that's actuallyanother fun thing that we'll do upstairs,
Like every once in a while,a couple of us will roll together.
We all we used to joke aboutit being our HR department. If you
have had you have head gear andboxing gloves and like go upstairs, take
(18:15):
care of your problems and then comeback down. So I mean it's we
just try to have fun. Thatsounds like the dream. So I do
jiu jitsu too, So that's anotherthing to have to come out to the
office and we'll do some rolling.That'd be a lot of fun. Yeah
amazing. Yeah that sounds great,but it sounds like So do you feel
like sports helped build discipline in youreveryday work your kind of like work life
(18:41):
balance. I think it definitely helpedit for sure, did not hurt.
I mean to this day, Ilove being extremely active and I like I'm
always pushing people to be active.We have a gym upstairs as well as
the jiu jitsu mat, and Iadvocate like I pay for everybody's gym membership
so that they can go and dostuff we try to do, Like I
(19:03):
think we're finally gonna have a footballteam this year that we're all gonna jump
on, and last year I thinkwe only like four people sign up,
so we're trying to. I don'tknow. I think as a team we
have a really good team aspect,and some people are really competitive and athletic
driven. But I think it definitelyhas helped because those of us that do
(19:25):
get together and we start to competewith each other, it's like iron sharpening
iron like it's fun that we getto compete and it's not there's no ill
will. That's not so I thinkit definitely has helped having that competitive edge
being an athlete and younger. No, I'm totally with you and all this
(19:48):
great stuff that you're you have tooffer. I'm guessing that you use some
of it when you're doing your recruiting. You have to tell some new guys
out there, like, hey,listen, this is this is what plug
light Bulb Electrical Services has you needto come work with us. Yeah,
I mean is hiring new recruits hardthese days? Or do you have your
own tactics that have worked out foryou. So I hire one hundred percent
(20:11):
on culture, and to be honestwith you, we normally don't have an
issue finding the right people. Imean, we have so many applicants now.
It's like people are trying to jumpship from other companies because my guys,
for instance, like I have allthese people in the apprenticeship, so
they sit in with other companies peopleand they're just talking about the culture,
(20:33):
and they're talking about like what's goingon, and people are constantly trying to
come over to us. So Idon't like poaching, and so I try
to avoid that as much as possible. But like, we have so many
opportunities to hire people that we've hadto base it directly off of culture.
And if we just hire based offof that culture, skill sets can be
learned. I mean, there's Ihave Logan who's with me right now.
(20:59):
He's running million dollars in work andhe's spent with me for a year and
a half. But he's just ananimal. He's a he's amazing human being.
Sticks with our culture. Like Icould trust him with anything, and
he also has this desire to learna skill set. I'd put him against
journey in the bend in the tradesfor seven, eight, ten years.
(21:19):
He's just an absolute animal. Andlike a lot of our people are like
that because all we do is hirebased on colors, morals, and your
willingness to learn. You don't evenhave to. I mean there's people who
learn slower, Like there's plenty ofpeople in our company that don't even they're
like, I don't want to doanything past just listen to you. But
(21:41):
they fail with our culture. Andthat's the important part. That's great.
Throw away the resume. Go makesure that they have the energy, the
ownership, they know how to experimentand just go all out. So I
mean, you can teach him theskills that they need to be the best.
And I love that you have thatthat attitude toward it's the new recruits.
That's great, man, that's awesome. Definitely commendable for you, that's
(22:04):
awesome. So do you ever,like with these new recruits and all the
current employees, do they use anytype of technology to help the business in
any ways? Like how do youutilize technology in your business today. So
I've always have an open floor witheveryone. I love technology and I'm constantly
(22:27):
pushing people incorporate technology as much aswe can, and we would not have
scaled to where we did today withouttechnology. I mean, just for instance,
they leverage AI for scanning emails andbeing able to like identifying what's actually
important for us to respond back toand not and put it all in one
email so that it's like, hey, here's a bullpoint on the last three
(22:48):
hours of reading and you need toanswer it this way. Or even just
like our safety director leveraging AI onceagain for we have toolbox stocks, right
and we're constantly doing training every singleMonday. How do we spice it up
a little bit, take this,make it more interesting and build on it.
Oh, now let's incorporate a quiz. So like, there's so many
(23:11):
different things that we do with technology, even with like timekeeping and job we're
incorporate it all over the board.I can't stress enough with how fast technology
is moving that people need to justget on board on every aspect. Because
even with social media, like youcan implement things that you can leverage to
(23:33):
take a lot of time off ofyour plate and focus it on building content
on it or even helping it orhelping build content. So it's yeah,
we use it everywhere and on contenton a weekly basis. We have a
meeting every Monday at eleven between allthe office staff, and I'm always saying,
(23:56):
what else can we implement this week? What else can we leverage?
Because sometimes they come up with reallycool ideas. They're like, hey,
I saw this on a TikTok onlike an ad over here. Can we
use this? And we'll like betatest it. Nope, we're not using
that, or yeah that was awesome, let's run with it. So definitely
using technology as much as we canbecause it's ever changing and like we're not
(24:18):
married to any one set way.We just want to keep evolving as a
company and a culture. So I'mwith you. That's that's so smart that
you at least test it because younever know how much time it could save
you until you actually put it towork. Yep. So where do people
find your business? How do theyfind you? So? You can find
(24:40):
us online at plbes dot com.You can find us probably on Googles just
by googling electrician in Green Bay,Wisconsin, or to Peter Wisconsin. You
can call us at nine two zerothree, nine six eight seven four five
or and honestly, those are probablythe best ways to communicate with us and
(25:00):
find those okay. And as faras like where you do business, do
you have like a range or geographicalarea that you stick to. Our geographical
footprint is actually the whole United States. So we're physically doing work. Yeah,
we're doing working right now. Ihave my license in twenty two states
(25:22):
now, and I'm working on tryingto at least get forty nine. I
don't know if I'm going to goget Alaska's license. I can't foresee us
going up there. I regally saidno, Hawaii too, but like everybody
inside the company said, no,we want an excuse to go to Hawaii.
If you're getting forty eight, you'regoing You're getting Hawaii's too. So
(25:44):
geographically the entire the entire country.We are trying to at least build a
little bit more presence back up inWisconsin because we have so many projects throughout
the United States right now that someof our guys just want to be home
a little bit more, which Itotally I want to listen to them,
and that's a huge thing for usis we get a lot of projects based
on what our people want. AndI think that's another outlying thing for us,
(26:08):
where instead of directing saying hey,you're mandated to go here, I
pull people on a quarterly basis saying, hey, what'd you get exposed to
you? What did you like?Where do you want to work? Do
you want to work out of town? Do you want to work in town?
Do you want to work on apartments? You want to work on car
washs? Do you want to workon commercial buildings? Like? What do
you want? So that kind ofdictates our geographical setting, but ultimately we
(26:32):
accept jobs through the entire nation.That's wonderful. Before we wrap up,
do you have any advice for newconstruction owners that you'd like to share with
our listeners. Yeah. The biggestthing that anybody who's starting a business needs
to remember is processes. Everything's inyour head, you need to write it
down now because if you want toscale like you had reference before, the
(26:55):
only way that you're going to scaleis having it written down. And the
only way you can delegate is writingstuff down and being able to pass it
on and give somebody at least bumperson what they need. Everybody's gonna do
things a little bit differently, andthat's another thing, honestly, is a
piece of advice. You are gonnaalways do everything the best, So don't
(27:15):
expect any more than seventy five percentfrom anybody else because you care more just
I mean, for instance, wehad two emergency calls last night, and
there's somebody on a call. Butthe phone calls came through at eleven thirty
pm and one thirty am. I'mthe last line of defense. I picked
up the phone call on both ofthem because the other person was sleeping.
(27:37):
Could I get a hold of themwake them up? Absolutely, But that's
just a reference point that I don'tlet the phone go unanswered. And I
guarantee that you're probably not going tofind somebody that's going to also do that
and be willing to just wake upat all hours of the morning. So
I would say processes is the biggestthing, and then the second biggest thing
is make sure that you understand nobodywill do it as good as you like.
(28:03):
You can put up bumpers. They'regonna do it a different way.
It does not you're becoming a bottleneck. If you micro manage people and say
I need it done exactly this way. You just need to put in curves
and say here's my tolerance level,and this is what you cannot exceed.
But for sure processes, because thatis with how much we've scaled in the
last six years since our beginning,it's had I known processes, we would
(28:29):
have scaled even faster. If everythingwasn't in my head and I was written
down, I mean, would havemade my life easier, even for when
you're pulling people into training them insteadof having to actually take the time and
hold their hand the entire way andbuild the process while you're training them.
If you haven't written down this ismy expectations in this realm, it helps
(28:49):
you, it does not hurt you. That is great advice. And thank
you Matthew for being a guest onour show. Please everyone likes the subscribe,
comment and share the builder up ourshow with anyone in the construction industry.
We will see you next time.If you're a construction contractor and would
(29:18):
like to appear as a guest onour podcast, write us an email.
It's Lou at lumberfi dot com.
Hey everyone, 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 like towelcome our guest, Matthew Timbler, owner
at Plug Light Bulb Electrical Services.Matthew, how you doing today? I'm
(00:22):
doing awesome. Thanks for having meon here. It's a pleasure and a
great opportunity, so pleasure is allmine. We really appreciate you joining us
today. Sounds like you had aninteresting story that we want to share with
our listeners. So we'll kick itoff with when did you decide you wanted
to be an electrician? So that'sactually a really unique story, and I'm
going to go back to when Iwas really young. I was around eight
(00:46):
years old, and I used tohelp my dad all the time. He's
been an electrician his entire well myentire life, not his entire life,
and I used to help him pullwires, cutting boxes. But I hated
electrical did not want anything to dowith it. And my favorite part about
it was driving the scissors lift.So he'd like, let me drive the
(01:07):
scissors lift and go up and downwith it and be pulling wires to and
from light fixtures, helping him hanglife fixtures. That's I just loved doing
that. So fast forward a littlebit. I was around ten, and
my dad would have light fixtures broughthome from work, so he would pay
me like ten cents fifteen cents alight fixture to like preassemble them and put
(01:33):
hooks on them, or putting inground pig tails or pre wire things.
And I loved that because I lovedthe money. But I did not like
to work. So later later onin life, I had went on a
farm from like twelve to fourteen,still trying to figure out what I wanted.
I went into work leave from schoolfifteen through eighteen as an electrician.
(01:57):
Still hated it. Like the entiretime, I was only doing it for
money. I looked at it asbeing a very boring job, and I
didn't have a lot of comprehension onwhat I was physically doing. I was
just being told, Hey, runpipe from here to there, run wire
from here to there, put thesewires here, plan these wires here,
put this label on it. Ididn't. I had no clue what I
was doing. I was just beinga mindless monkey per se and just doing
(02:23):
whatever somebody told me to without anythought process behind it. College and I
could not figure out what I wantedto do. So I came back to
electrical I was like, hey,this is a good fallback. I can
get an associates degree after my apprenticeship, and then I can go get my
bachelor's and whatever I want. I'llhave a journeyman's at the end of it.
So then I went to school forit, and that's when I fell
(02:46):
in love. I'd always liked scienceand math, and all of a sudden
things started clicking. I felt likea magician because now I was manipulating electrons
instead of just pulling white from pointA to point B, and I could
visualize things like now I understood howmotors worked with state or windings, and
(03:07):
I'd like and how transformers worked whereyou're taking energy and you're taking it from
one location to another without them touchingeach other, and that just like blew
my mind. So once I understoodhow the math and science behind it worked,
I started to fall in love withthe industry and I couldn't get enough
of it, and that's when Iclicked for me. Then I would be
(03:29):
working eight hours, i'd be goingto school for eight hours and I'd be
at home all night long youtubing stuffon what I saw, and I was
like, this is so cool.I want to know how to dissect it.
I went to radio Shack at onepoint and started making my own radio
out of little transistors and lights andlike trying to intercept waves, and like
I started taking into a different levelof trying to intercept phone calls. I
(03:52):
was like, this, this couldbe really cool. Like I could do
a lot of things with it.So I don't know, I all of
a sudden fell in love. OnceI understood it and appreciated it for what
it was. It wasn't ploying wiresanymore. I understood the concept of you're
manipulating electrons, you're inducing magnetism onthings, You're you are in total control.
Now instead of hey, go dothis, go do this mindless work,
(04:16):
it became something that I thoroughly enjoyedand fell in love with. And
I think that's that's kind of whenI happened around nineteen to twenty years old.
I just all of a sudden clickedand I loved it. So,
yeah, awesome, Yeah that's superinteresting. So you could tell kids that
are in school that are interested inmath and science that being an electrician could
(04:41):
be the next step. Oh one. And I always enjoyed it, but
like I just it's because I wasnaturally good at it. I wasn't like
the guy kid who's doing math afterschool, but I was. If I
was in math class, I wasengaged and I wanted to know the behind
things, and it really intrigued me, Like geometry was cool, physics was
(05:04):
cool, Like I really liked learningabout those things. Didn't never think I'd
want to do it in my career, but I was engaged with it and
it resonated with me. So itwas a really cool experience to have that
click later on in life where oh, I enjoyed doing these things, and
I looked at it almost had astereotype of like I don't want to be
(05:24):
a biologist, I don't want tobe a physics teacher. I put things
in a block and said, Hey, if you want to do something with
science, you got to be ascience teacher, instead of Hey, I
enjoyed doing this and now I canapply it to what I'm actually doing in
real life, and it's really cooland I think it helps your passion too.
(05:44):
Like. It's definitely. It keepsme energetic about it because I enjoy
physically doing what I do. Awesome. Well, side question from something that
you mentioned before, is Radio Shackstill around? It actually is now?
Oh? Really? Yes? Oh? I actually just bought what the heck
was it I was doing with myson. There's a kid I bought online
(06:04):
for like learning POC programming and actuallydoing some of the stuff that I had
done on my own. I can'tthink of what it's called right now,
but I me and my son dothat now. And he loves taking the
little wires, Like you get alittle block, oh yeah, just put
wires in it, and then Ican show him, like, hey,
type in this code on the computerand it'll be like a timing relay in
(06:25):
there, and he can make thelight flash and he just absolutely loves it.
And it's cool because, yeah,Radio shot came back and they did
stuff like that. I wish Ihad stuff like that when I was growing
up, to be honest with you, because it would have been awesome.
Yeah. No, we do thesame thing for my son's STEM projects,
So manipulating the wires to make thefan go or you know, build like
(06:47):
a little car or something so thatit can go on its own, always
a lot of fun. I lovethat. Yeah, what inspired you to
be an owner? So I actuallynever thought about owning an electrical business since
I was really young. I alwayslooked at business ownership being like apartments,
(07:08):
restaurants, suit tie. You haveto be very white collar. There's no
blue collar involved. And it's becauseI had this stigma in my mind.
You always look up to your parents, and I looked up to my dad.
My dad was a division manager ata very successful electrical company. I
looked at that as being the pinnacle. So like I looked at that,
(07:29):
so never looked at eling my ownbusiness is being so with that. What
made me want to be an owneris I always respected the owner of Suburban
Electric, and I respected him toan absolute level of to this day,
(07:50):
I still talk back and forth withhim and I absolutely love and cherish him,
and he's a very amazing human being. And what I respected about him
was he was about one hundred andfifty employees at the time, and he
knew us all by name, wouldalways go out of his way to if
he saw you walking past, hehanded you a gate raid and said,
hey, how are you doing,like how are you doing? And not
(08:15):
how are my jobs going? Nothow is how is this company a good
fit for you? Even though likehe wanted to know that, but like
he took the time out of hisday to be like, how are you
personally doing? And I help you? And it was never it never seemed
like he wanted anything else other thanfor you to be happy. So I
always respected that. Well. Ownershipchange, and I don't want to speak
(08:39):
poorly about it, but the atmosphereoverall went into a different direction. People
became more replaceable, people became morelike numbers and not family anymore. And
so I started saying, hey,what do I want? What did I
value in this company? And Ivalued loyalty and respect and I valued that
family atmosphe here and I wanted thatback. So in that coming into fruition,
(09:05):
I decided, I'm going to gostart my own thing. I'll be
my own boss. I won't needto worry about any of this, and
if I end up getting employees,then I can get back that love and
respect that I had received. Andthat's when I clicked for me. I
was like, why can't I bea business owner? I have my masters,
I have enough education behind me thatI should be able to identify you
(09:26):
to do within a business and Ijust want to into it. And now
I've never looked back since, andit's been amazing. That's great. What
is something that you know today thatyou wish you knew when you started?
I think the biggest thing is you'rebig. The biggest problem that you're going
(09:50):
to encounter is always going to bepeople. But your biggest to ask that
as people and going into a business, you get so focused on all the
numbers, so focused on like thejobs, and sometimes, like even with
me wanting to have all this loyaltyand respect for my people, you get
lost at times. And I thinkit had I known in the beginning and
(10:13):
I kept that focus a lot stronger, I think the team might have built
up even quicker than what it alreadyhas and been stronger from the beginning,
because sometimes you get you get draggedinto things in situations where you're going against
what your intuition is telling you andlike what you're feeling and vibing from the
people within your organization, just becauseyou're looking at the financial side of things.
(10:37):
And I think knowing that the peopleare going to empower you and sometimes
you are your biggest bottleneck, andto trust people and get those people in
there. I think just knowing thatpeople are what are going to make and
break you within a business overall,not really your financials, not really like
the jobs that you're going to goget. If you have the right people
(11:01):
and you stand behind them, that'swhat drives you, because I just don't
feel like that's talked about enough andenough people really say it. Like everybody
talks about, Hey, what's yourmargins, where are you coming in,
what's your backlog? Not how areyour people doing? Yeah, I mean
it sounds like you really concentrate onthe culture that you've you've built within your
own business. Is that part ofthe scaling aspect? I know that you
(11:26):
guys are doing pretty well. Haveyou? Do you have any secrets of
scaling your business? I think thesecret is identifying your culture and fully standing
behind it, because if you empowerthe people within the organization, anybody who's
a nasayer or doesn't belong to bepart of it, they will walk themselves
(11:50):
right out the door. You won'teven have to fire them, and your
own people will start to identify who'sgood fits for what and when you empower
people with like core values and cultureand they firmly stand behind it and they
resonate with you. They do thingsabove and beyond what their expectations are.
So I can have a set jobdescription and then the person who's maybe the
(12:13):
VP of sales is all of asudden pulling permits for people because hey,
I see somebody struggling, and I'veseen that as being a huge asset because
now you no longer need to worryabout like everybody who's in. Everybody's willing
to assist in every single lane.Obviously you have a lane that you need
to stay in to a point,and like these these are my designated tasks.
(12:37):
But when it comes to scalability,you all are fully supporting each other
and it becomes a lot easier tobring somebody into the organization and train because
now people are picking up slack.So you see that there's a job needed,
you've heard it, and you bringsomebody in as say an AD and
assistant. Well, we didn't havethat job there before we saw it was
needed. And in the training process, it's not like hey, they come
(13:00):
in and everything gets handed to them. It's a gradual process of everybody supporting
them because we're a team, andI without the culture that we have,
I've just never experienced anything like that. Or you don't hear Patty talking about
Jack and saying, hey, he'she's a you know what, and I
can't talk to him. Like weall hang out together. We'll all go
(13:24):
out to the bar together, orwe'll go like have fun. I mean,
anytime we have a company party,two kids are involved, so like
it's cool that we all know eachother's family at every single level and we
enjoy hanging out with each other.So you just it's not like work anymore.
I really love that because it bringsit to the point when you want
(13:46):
to have like strategy sessions or teammeetings, you probably have a lot of
involvement from everybody in the room.Is that right? Yeah? And it's
so crazy how people take accountability too, Like you don't even have to.
You do hold people accountable, butyou don't have to because people take it
on themselves. Like you bring aproblem, and it's crazy how quick get
(14:07):
gets solved. You bring it,and all of a sudden, somebody who
was not involved has a completely differentperspective because they've taken ownership and they're like,
hey, my teammate is struggling,Like this isn't my job, but
I want to help you figure thisout. So it's so cool that brainstorm
sessions like they'll shrink in time whereoriginally it's two of you. You think
that everything's on your plate and it'lltake you a couple hours to sit there
(14:31):
and brainstorm, where in five minutesI can bring something. I got eighty
seven ideas. Where did this comefrom? I didn't even know you had
an opinion on this, but thisis super cool. So yeah, it
definitely helps. When you put thatplatform out there for people, you will
get surprised. I mean people,people are thinkers. People are smart.
(14:54):
They have their own ideas and it'sideas that you might have never thought of,
and they'll just you. So it'sit's really great that you've created that
culture and environment so that they canshare those ideas with you. Do you
have any family in your business withyou? I have my father in law
in the business with me, andthat is the only family left. I
(15:16):
had two other family members that werein there, but they didn't exactly work
out. And I've been a verywhen I bring family on I'm like,
hey, this is a whole otherfamily. It's a work family. But
understand that I'm gonna hold you thesame standard as everybody else. You don't
get a past. So it's workedout and I have zero complaints on it.
(15:39):
But yeah, no, I meanthat's the only family and my wife
wants no part of it. Youknow, I don't want to. I
see you enough. Do you haveI mean, it sounds like you guys
have a lot of fun over there. Do you hold like any annual get
togethers for any events or holidays oranything like that or celebrate together. We
(16:02):
actually try to do a monthly gettogether, so we try to fun.
Like right now, we have likeBlizzards games where like we were a sponsor
at for the American well it wasn'tan American Cancer Society. It's like a
blackout night for them with cancer,and so like do we have two different
nights that we're going together as ateam, one to support that cancer thing
(16:25):
and then we also got a teamnight. We traditionally try to do something
in the summer that's a little bitbigger with like food trucks and try to
have some of the community come in. So we always try to do two
things once a month, community involvementand some sort of get together. Whether
it's everybody getting together at for aUFC fight or we get together for a
(16:45):
basketball game or something. We atleast try to do that, And honestly,
it always is super cool because likewhen people first start, they're always
like hesitating on how it's gonna be. And then we're like, oh,
no, you can bring your kidsto and they're like, whoa, it's
like that relaxed, Like this isn'tlike a formal get together. No,
like the kids are running around theoffice screaming, playing, Like we're just
(17:08):
hanging out. So we'll get likefood and we'll just do some fun stuff
together as frequently as we can.I mean, we even go paintballing together.
We'll like split up teams and wellwe'll be like your team Alfa,
your team Bravo, and it willbe like office versus field staff. We
do a lot of fun stuff thatis so fun. You got to invite
(17:32):
me out. I love paintball,So invite me out to one of those
little get togethers. I'd love tojoin. So, I mean, it
sounds like you like sports and stuff. Do you have a sports background.
Yeah, I mean kind of likenothing outrageous, like was I an all
star on a varsity team? No, like the did I play sports.
I was like an all year roundathlete. I was in wrestling at some
(17:53):
point, I was basketball, football, track. I do jiu JITs to
know and like I And that's actuallyanother fun thing that we'll do upstairs,
Like every once in a while,a couple of us will roll together.
We all we used to joke aboutit being our HR department. If you
have had you have head gear andboxing gloves and like go upstairs, take
(18:15):
care of your problems and then comeback down. So I mean it's we
just try to have fun. Thatsounds like the dream. So I do
jiu jitsu too, So that's anotherthing to have to come out to the
office and we'll do some rolling.That'd be a lot of fun. Yeah
amazing. Yeah that sounds great,but it sounds like So do you feel
like sports helped build discipline in youreveryday work your kind of like work life
(18:41):
balance. I think it definitely helpedit for sure, did not hurt.
I mean to this day, Ilove being extremely active and I like I'm
always pushing people to be active.We have a gym upstairs as well as
the jiu jitsu mat, and Iadvocate like I pay for everybody's gym membership
so that they can go and dostuff we try to do, Like I
(19:03):
think we're finally gonna have a footballteam this year that we're all gonna jump
on, and last year I thinkwe only like four people sign up,
so we're trying to. I don'tknow. I think as a team we
have a really good team aspect,and some people are really competitive and athletic
driven. But I think it definitelyhas helped because those of us that do
(19:25):
get together and we start to competewith each other, it's like iron sharpening
iron like it's fun that we getto compete and it's not there's no ill
will. That's not so I thinkit definitely has helped having that competitive edge
being an athlete and younger. No, I'm totally with you and all this
(19:48):
great stuff that you're you have tooffer. I'm guessing that you use some
of it when you're doing your recruiting. You have to tell some new guys
out there, like, hey,listen, this is this is what plug
light Bulb Electrical Services has you needto come work with us. Yeah,
I mean is hiring new recruits hardthese days? Or do you have your
own tactics that have worked out foryou. So I hire one hundred percent
(20:11):
on culture, and to be honestwith you, we normally don't have an
issue finding the right people. Imean, we have so many applicants now.
It's like people are trying to jumpship from other companies because my guys,
for instance, like I have allthese people in the apprenticeship, so
they sit in with other companies peopleand they're just talking about the culture,
(20:33):
and they're talking about like what's goingon, and people are constantly trying to
come over to us. So Idon't like poaching, and so I try
to avoid that as much as possible. But like, we have so many
opportunities to hire people that we've hadto base it directly off of culture.
And if we just hire based offof that culture, skill sets can be
learned. I mean, there's Ihave Logan who's with me right now.
(20:59):
He's running million dollars in work andhe's spent with me for a year and
a half. But he's just ananimal. He's a he's amazing human being.
Sticks with our culture. Like Icould trust him with anything, and
he also has this desire to learna skill set. I'd put him against
journey in the bend in the tradesfor seven, eight, ten years.
(21:19):
He's just an absolute animal. Andlike a lot of our people are like
that because all we do is hirebased on colors, morals, and your
willingness to learn. You don't evenhave to. I mean there's people who
learn slower, Like there's plenty ofpeople in our company that don't even they're
like, I don't want to doanything past just listen to you. But
(21:41):
they fail with our culture. Andthat's the important part. That's great.
Throw away the resume. Go makesure that they have the energy, the
ownership, they know how to experimentand just go all out. So I
mean, you can teach him theskills that they need to be the best.
And I love that you have thatthat attitude toward it's the new recruits.
That's great, man, that's awesome. Definitely commendable for you, that's
(22:04):
awesome. So do you ever,like with these new recruits and all the
current employees, do they use anytype of technology to help the business in
any ways? Like how do youutilize technology in your business today. So
I've always have an open floor witheveryone. I love technology and I'm constantly
(22:27):
pushing people incorporate technology as much aswe can, and we would not have
scaled to where we did today withouttechnology. I mean, just for instance,
they leverage AI for scanning emails andbeing able to like identifying what's actually
important for us to respond back toand not and put it all in one
email so that it's like, hey, here's a bullpoint on the last three
(22:48):
hours of reading and you need toanswer it this way. Or even just
like our safety director leveraging AI onceagain for we have toolbox stocks, right
and we're constantly doing training every singleMonday. How do we spice it up
a little bit, take this,make it more interesting and build on it.
Oh, now let's incorporate a quiz. So like, there's so many
(23:11):
different things that we do with technology, even with like timekeeping and job we're
incorporate it all over the board.I can't stress enough with how fast technology
is moving that people need to justget on board on every aspect. Because
even with social media, like youcan implement things that you can leverage to
(23:33):
take a lot of time off ofyour plate and focus it on building content
on it or even helping it orhelping build content. So it's yeah,
we use it everywhere and on contenton a weekly basis. We have a
meeting every Monday at eleven between allthe office staff, and I'm always saying,
(23:56):
what else can we implement this week? What else can we leverage?
Because sometimes they come up with reallycool ideas. They're like, hey,
I saw this on a TikTok onlike an ad over here. Can we
use this? And we'll like betatest it. Nope, we're not using
that, or yeah that was awesome, let's run with it. So definitely
using technology as much as we canbecause it's ever changing and like we're not
(24:18):
married to any one set way.We just want to keep evolving as a
company and a culture. So I'mwith you. That's that's so smart that
you at least test it because younever know how much time it could save
you until you actually put it towork. Yep. So where do people
find your business? How do theyfind you? So? You can find
(24:40):
us online at plbes dot com.You can find us probably on Googles just
by googling electrician in Green Bay,Wisconsin, or to Peter Wisconsin. You
can call us at nine two zerothree, nine six eight seven four five
or and honestly, those are probablythe best ways to communicate with us and
(25:00):
find those okay. And as faras like where you do business, do
you have like a range or geographicalarea that you stick to. Our geographical
footprint is actually the whole United States. So we're physically doing work. Yeah,
we're doing working right now. Ihave my license in twenty two states
(25:22):
now, and I'm working on tryingto at least get forty nine. I
don't know if I'm going to goget Alaska's license. I can't foresee us
going up there. I regally saidno, Hawaii too, but like everybody
inside the company said, no,we want an excuse to go to Hawaii.
If you're getting forty eight, you'regoing You're getting Hawaii's too. So
(25:44):
geographically the entire the entire country.We are trying to at least build a
little bit more presence back up inWisconsin because we have so many projects throughout
the United States right now that someof our guys just want to be home
a little bit more, which Itotally I want to listen to them,
and that's a huge thing for usis we get a lot of projects based
on what our people want. AndI think that's another outlying thing for us,
(26:08):
where instead of directing saying hey,you're mandated to go here, I
pull people on a quarterly basis saying, hey, what'd you get exposed to
you? What did you like?Where do you want to work? Do
you want to work out of town? Do you want to work in town?
Do you want to work on apartments? You want to work on car
washs? Do you want to workon commercial buildings? Like? What do
you want? So that kind ofdictates our geographical setting, but ultimately we
(26:32):
accept jobs through the entire nation.That's wonderful. Before we wrap up,
do you have any advice for newconstruction owners that you'd like to share with
our listeners. Yeah. The biggestthing that anybody who's starting a business needs
to remember is processes. Everything's inyour head, you need to write it
down now because if you want toscale like you had reference before, the
(26:55):
only way that you're going to scaleis having it written down. And the
only way you can delegate is writingstuff down and being able to pass it
on and give somebody at least bumperson what they need. Everybody's gonna do
things a little bit differently, andthat's another thing, honestly, is a
piece of advice. You are gonnaalways do everything the best, So don't
(27:15):
expect any more than seventy five percentfrom anybody else because you care more just
I mean, for instance, wehad two emergency calls last night, and
there's somebody on a call. Butthe phone calls came through at eleven thirty
pm and one thirty am. I'mthe last line of defense. I picked
up the phone call on both ofthem because the other person was sleeping.
(27:37):
Could I get a hold of themwake them up? Absolutely, But that's
just a reference point that I don'tlet the phone go unanswered. And I
guarantee that you're probably not going tofind somebody that's going to also do that
and be willing to just wake upat all hours of the morning. So
I would say processes is the biggestthing, and then the second biggest thing
is make sure that you understand nobodywill do it as good as you like.
(28:03):
You can put up bumpers. They'regonna do it a different way.
It does not you're becoming a bottleneck. If you micro manage people and say
I need it done exactly this way. You just need to put in curves
and say here's my tolerance level,and this is what you cannot exceed.
But for sure processes, because thatis with how much we've scaled in the
last six years since our beginning,it's had I known processes, we would
(28:29):
have scaled even faster. If everythingwasn't in my head and I was written
down, I mean, would havemade my life easier, even for when
you're pulling people into training them insteadof having to actually take the time and
hold their hand the entire way andbuild the process while you're training them.
If you haven't written down this ismy expectations in this realm, it helps
(28:49):
you, it does not hurt you. That is great advice. And thank
you Matthew for being a guest onour show. Please everyone likes the subscribe,
comment and share the builder up ourshow with anyone in the construction industry.
We will see you next time.If you're a construction contractor and would
(29:18):
like to appear as a guest onour podcast, write us an email.
It's Lou at lumberfi dot com.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.