Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I only have so much capacity that I can take on my plate as much as I think it's big and awesome. I can only take on so much to where I actually become a weakness in the business, a limiting factor, because I'm the keeper of all the secrets, so to speak. And my team actually can't grow and expand and be more successful because I'm holding them back.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: I'm Dennis Sorensen, and this is the Think Big, Win Bigger podcast. This is the podcast for sales leaders and salespeople who know they're capable of more and are looking for a system that is predictable, repeatable, scalable, and forecastable for growth. It's not theories. It's not motivational speeches. It's an ambitious way to operate your business.
[00:00:44] Speaker C: Mac, welcome to the podcast. I'm so glad to finally have you here.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: Dennis, my friend, pleasure speaking with you today and thanks for the opportunity to chat with you.
[00:00:55] Speaker C: I wanted to have you on the podcast for a long time. I mean, I thought that the work that we did together, to me, you always really stood out, and so I thought it'd be a really great opportunity to have you here and to introduce you to the listeners. So thank you very much for your time. Appreciate it today.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Yeah, my pleasure.
[00:01:16] Speaker C: Mac, if you would. If you maybe just take us back a little bit to your beginnings, introduce yourself a little bit to the listeners of the podcast and just kind of take us back to the beginning.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: I grew up in a small town called White River Junction, Vermont. You know, lots of snow, middle of the tree line. My mom was a worker at Dartmouth College. Spent my better part of my youth down there. And then 2001, when the world Trade center event happened, I decided I had a higher calling. I think most people in life feel like they have a purpose, but really from that tragic event, I had something that I was destined to do. So that led me to going down to the local plaza and going to the Armed Forces Recruiting Center. And it happened to be by fate, I guess you'll say that the Marines were the only ones there that day. And by destiny, I decided to join the United States Marine Corps. It was something I need a little bit more discipline in life. And, you know, I served 10 honorable years in the Marine Corps, served in a lot of the modern conflicts that we've all lived through.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: And.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: And really through that time is where I kind of felt I learned who I was and how I was going to be a leader and a leader, leadership positions are always something I wanted to do. So served 10 years doing that and then in 2014, I decided to transition out. I just decided I had my fill of the military and I had a higher calling to get out and be a contributing member to the, to the Society. So in 2014, I was at a veterans event and met a gentleman who is the president of a company called PAR Electric Services, which is one of the subsidiaries of Quanta Services, which is one of the largest specialized contractors in the United States. And the gentleman asked me, do you want to go build power lines? And I kind of was like, yeah, telephone poles. And I learned really quick. And as I learned today, power lines are very different than telephone poles. So it's something I reflect on a lot when I'm driving it on the right of way. Don't call a telephone pole, it's a power pole. But I had the opportunity to get on a really large EPC job developing large scale heavy transmission in the Los Angeles county area, doing a renewable transmission project, bringing new load into Los Angeles. And it was something to me, as soon as I joined that group of eclectic characters that gave me that military feeling. But I had the same purpose and selfless service that I had was in the Marine Corps. I was serving something larger than myself.
So I worked for PAR and Quanta for a better part of four years. And that's what led me to you and I meeting a few years ago when I had the privilege of running National Power Line. And we were scaling at such a pace, I kind of needed to reach out for some support. And that's where you and your team came in and kind of taught me the ropes of sales and how businesses kind of set up for the future success. So through that, I sit today as the chief operating officer of Bird Electric, a wholly owned subsidiary of Black and Veatch. I'm privileged to serve almost a thousand talented professionals in the blue collar trades across the nation.
Been here for a couple months now, but I'm really excited about the future, where our nation's going, the power delivery, the impact I could make on young minds, is kind of what makes me wake up in the morning.
[00:04:29] Speaker C: If you would maybe just go back a little bit to that Marine Corps experience. Because one of the things I noticed when we started working with you and as we got into working with a lot of companies in the space that you were in, I saw an interesting thing. There were a lot of really talented former US Military people working in that industry.
And so I'd love to get your perspective on what did the Marine Corps, how did it prepare you for that what did it teach you about leadership? What did you learn through that experience that really comes into play for you in the industry that you're in today?
[00:05:08] Speaker A: I could answer this in probably a hundred different ways and we can speak for hours on my impact that I had in the Marine Corps. But for me, you know, when I got to my first platoon as a young buck, 21 year old Lance corporal joining the fleet, I had a gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps. The gunnery sergeant is an iconic character. They are, I will say they're brash. To say it nicely, there's probably some other more colorful words I can describe this individual.
It's like the father figure that's really tough on you. But when that gentleman stands in front of 65 people, just through their presence alone, they command your respect and your leadership. But through their actions is where the leadership piece kind of set tone for me. I'm like, if I can be that man one day, if I can stand and earn the trust and respect of those in that platoon or in that company or in that group of people, and that's what I want to do. And I learned through the Marine Corps that leadership is one of the highest regards you can ever have. To be in charge of people's lives and make a decision that impacts them for the good or for the bad, it's all on your shoulders. But also through leadership, I learned in the Marine Corps that to be a good leader, you have to develop more leaders. And I think oftentimes in my career I find that the leaders there's really good ones that are very about themselves and I think ego. But the Marine Corps has set me up for success where it's not about me. You know, I elevate because I have really good teams around me. But that also increases my, my requirement to take care of them and set them up for success. Right. The mission's only going to be as good as I communicate it. And I think, you know, reflecting on a story is I kind of think the Marine Corps we're talking right now. Dennis. So after my first enlistment, I went to a school's training battalion and how they check how they picked me, I'm not sure, but I was entrusted to train second lieutenants, brand new officers as an E5 sergeant. But really in that time, developing those leaders is kind of where I really appreciated developing young minds and what the Marine Corps was trying to instill in young minds. When I talk about leadership, when I saw that gunny, I actually got to be in a position where I got to Stand in front of 20 lieutenants just out of college, didn't know north from south or east to west, but the three months they had with me could one day be a four star general that was advising the United States President. So I took that with the highest regard. It was a great honor. But for me, leadership, leadership is not something you should take lightly.
Showing up is harder than it sounds sometimes. And also the second thing is sometimes getting out of your own dang way is the hardest thing to do. And listen, listen to people. I think we've both worked with folks before that, Dennis. This is the way we should do it. Okay, well, if you're a good leader to me, you listen to them.
[00:07:54] Speaker C: No, I think you're exactly right. And it's one of the things that you and I have talked about and that I talk about a lot today with the different companies that we work with, is as a sales leader, when you move from being an individual contributor as a seller to becoming that sales leader. And this is something Mike Weinberg talks a lot about in his books, Sales Management Simplified is you really are learning how to win through your people.
And I think what you described in what you have to do to sort of set yourself up to be able to win through your people was key.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think a little biased. As I kind of sit in my seat today in front of almost 1,000 employees.
One of my charges that I make sure all of my direct reports have is I really focus on the succession. The succession piece, Dennis. I think as companies, you know, I happen to be in infrastructure, it could be in any industry. I think leaders at times need to understand as you're scaling at a certain pace due to the markets that we're in, there's a lot of pressures from private equity. If you work from publicly traded companies, even if you're a family owned company, there's pressures to grow.
[00:09:06] Speaker C: Right.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: Inherently those pressures require us to develop people below us. That's where the true success happens.
[00:09:12] Speaker C: As you think about that transition that you made from the Marine Corps into, into the electric business, how did what you learned in the Marines, you know, maybe about preparation or accountability or leading under pressure, how did that help you as you begin to make that transition into, into that electric business.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Yeah, for me, kind of focusing on, you know, there's an acronym in the Marine Corps, an acronym that I still use today, and it's called osmiak. So that stands for orientation, situation, mission, execution, admin and logistics, command and control. And if you break down those basic facets and I always tell people I work with, brilliance in the basics works 100% of the time. You know, the same way I used to tell you lieutenants, there's 360 degrees in a circle and it's perfect. You don't need to add two more degrees just to be, you know, Lieutenant John Doe and get credit for the two degrees. It's already a perfect circle.
But for me, when I transitioned from the Marine Corps using that OSMIAK acronym of how I approach project management, I approached project management the same way I did mission planning in the Marine Corps. I would never leave a forward operating base with lives under my charge if I didn't plan, practice, prepare, and play. As you've told me countless times as we work together, I. When I heard that from you the first time, it resonated. I'm like, it kind of makes sense across the spectrum of kind of working in anything. So for me, as I transition into these different roles throughout my career, brilliance in the basics. But that OSMIAK acronym that I took from the Marine Corps to every role I've ever done, the biggest part of that is communication, right? And then trusting the folks you're communicating with to go execute their piece of that mission, of the overall thing we're trying to achieve together and trusting them to do so. But through the communication, they know what the task is, what the purpose is and what they're accountable for and how they will be measured against things we're trying to achieve.
[00:11:16] Speaker C: I'm interested in in osmiak, so walk me through. Just a little slower. So walk me through each one of the.
The letters.
[00:11:25] Speaker A: Yeah, so OSMIAK is orientation. So what? Orientation means orienting on a geography, a target, an area in the Marine Corps could have been a neighborhood, but for me, in the infrastructure industry, what that is is a specific market segment, a utility customer, renewable energy partner. That's orientation. So I can take that text from mission in the Marine Corps to orienting on my growth target today.
[00:11:54] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: Situation in my context is why are we doing what we're doing? What is the why so? Situation in my current business with Bird Electric is we need to scale and grow our company by X percent year over year. Okay? That's the situation. So it set the tone for what we're trying to achieve. Now, the mission. The mission is where we're going to gain teeth of how we're going to accomplish those kind of things. All right? So if I'm trying to grow in a transmission infrastructure space, because our load in the United States is growing you know, 3 terawatts, which is a lot of power.
They need contractors like us to bring new power to those load centers. So how are we going to go do it? How are we going to go talk to those customers and understand their challenges, their problems and then how do we earn their trust as a partner to provide a plausible solution? Whether that's more people, whether that's engineering, whether that's just talking with them for six months and having a cup of coffee and understanding that they have an ear to talk to, we can work through some challenges together for the hope that maybe one day use my company and then the execution piece is kind of where we get through is I think execution. I'm going to reflect on, on your go strategy, right. Something you taught me and John and Lee in the years ago we worked together is kind of focusing on those goals, objectives, strategies and tactics. So as I have that mission, I'm breaking down those executionable steps to get us to mission success. But again, brilliance in the basics. What's your goal? How are you going to achieve it? What do you need to do to get there? And then admin and logistics is just working through your systems, processes and the piece, how you execute. Right. To me, I always tell my team three things. We'll find operational success in our contracting way of life if we have good sound systems within those systems, we have good processes that are repeatable and executable. And two, if we can go exit, execute and deliver for our customers in a very safe and high quality manner, then we've earned the right to be their trusted partner. Without those things, we've got gaps to fill and they're going to go to our competition. That's where I kind of break down the oceaniac.
[00:14:04] Speaker C: I think that was great. And as you went back through it for me on the remedial course, the thing that was so interesting was as you talked about it, I could say, okay, ambition and the way that I think about ambition and understanding the real potential of things really fits well with your orientation and your situation.
And then when you talked about the mission, that's where I think about, okay, this is our strategy. So ambition, strategy and then execution encompasses the execution part and then the administrative part that you're talking about. And so I can see and that if you think about those three disciplines all underpin that process driven system that I talk about in plan, prepare, practice, then play. And so that we get it right and we make sure that everybody understands that the vast majority of our effort really happens in planning, preparation, and practice. And then it's the play, the execution of it, you know, like 80% of the success is happening before we actually go play. And that really comes into play, you know.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: And Dennis, I'd be remiss to say I forgot to cover the sea. Command and control. And I think that's the piece that the leader. Leaders listening to our conversation here today, the command and control piece is really the air traffic controller. Because every well thought about plan will always run into a challenge.
Or as I've heard some past colleagues of ours, creates a point of friction, right? And through that point of friction, sometimes it is the leader that has to provide a new orientation and develop a new situation and then reorient the mission for us to keep going. So command and control, right? Leaders need to focus on. Of all those things that I said on the Ishmael thing, leadership, Whether it was me in the Marine Corps or as me as a COO today, command and control is leadership. And good leadership on that piece is what could be a catalyst to success or inherent inertia because a leader is not engaged, right? And leader engagement will also lead to negative impacts as well as you're talking,
[00:16:19] Speaker C: I'm thinking about Mike Weinberg talking about, you know, sales management simplified, you know, the three jobs of the sales leader, to point the team, to arm the team, and to monitor the battle. So I can see osmiak across those three things as well and just sort of simplifying it into point the team, arm the team and monitor what's happening as the team goes to execute. So that's really good. So as you think about it now with your COO hat in the operator's mindset, how do you think about this concept of really field first decision making and how do you make sure that the right decisions are getting made at the level that you need them made? Because you can't be everywhere to make those decisions. So how are you making sure your teams are prepared to make the right decisions in the right situations?
[00:17:11] Speaker A: I have two different pathways. As you say that, right? So the field first decision also for me is first and foremost. I have quite a few hundred four or five person crews out there building data centers to building transmission lines, substations throughout the United States. So focusing on those folks and listening to them as a COO is really important. But also for me, my role is to develop our middle management enough to where they understand our vision and our mission and our key strategic imperatives, and understand how we're going from current state to our future state. And Then giving them the tools, processes, systems to be successful and from there just have the regular check ins, right? So there has to be some accountability measure for us to trust them, let them go forth and do great things. But also we have to come back to the center and say are we on mark? Are we not on mark? What do we need to do to fix it?
[00:18:05] Speaker C: What is, what does accountability look like? What do accountability measures look like?
[00:18:09] Speaker A: For me right now it's KPI. So the KPIs on growth would be we need to grow double digit CAGR over each year. Well, how do we do that? And that's where I would have KPIs through each geographic region. We need to identify, we need to have four or five new accounts, new accounts to our business development sales strategy. So then through that I would use something similar to how you guys taught me on the ghost plan and start putting those things together and have actionable things whether we're achieving those or not. Deliverables on that. From that, what I can tell is I'm looking at what I consider two different things within our sales and business development areas. I'm looking at what our backlog is and how long of a Runway with the current revenue I currently have booked in our system to know how long the business can sustain today. If I got no new business right, how long could our doors stay open based on all the revenue that we have booked today? And then within that I'm also trying to see what's our churn rate, how fast are we consuming that revenue that we've earned. To know how, how many more months to kind of set our sales trajectory and our business development strategy to say hey, sales team operations only has 18 more months or 24 months of Runway. That's setting our new sales strategy with some new founding KPIs to say we need to go find some new ambition. Go find me some new targets. How do we can we grow our business? Because we still have to hit the 15% growth ratio year over year. So how are we going to do that?
And then through that, that's where the sales team would provide new KPIs to know. I call it EKGs, right? So I go to the doctor and get my heart checked. I have EKGs to know. Well, do I need to go PT some more? Maybe I don't need to eat steak five days a week or you know, maybe I'm doing everything perfect and you know, we're just business as usual. Keep being awesome, right? But those KPIs keep us honest. Right. It's a metric to know if we're doing what we say we're going to do or not what we're doing.
[00:20:04] Speaker C: How do you create that accountability without creating unnecessary bureaucracy or theatrics in the business?
[00:20:13] Speaker A: That's a great question. I've always been a person that sometimes I don't want to be the loudest voice in a room. I think those people that are going to have those accountability metrics should have a say in what they're going to be accountable for. I think it's easier for them to set their targets sometimes. I'm more of a collaborative leader in that standpoint. And then once we've kind of set our targets, that's when we can be a little bit more direct.
[00:20:36] Speaker C: Yeah. The interesting thing though is when you know that the organization's looking for 15, somehow all those sort of bottom up metrics have still got to get to that 15%.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Correct? Correct.
[00:20:52] Speaker C: Yeah. How has the industry traditionally thought about sales and traditionally thought about how it accomplishes growth?
[00:21:00] Speaker A: This may be a point of contention for some of my peers in the industry who could be listening, but that's okay. I think traditionally in the infrastructure construction space, a lot of business development has historically been through reputation.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: And so as a business, most of these businesses within my industry started from family owned. Their father was a journeyman lineman who married a woman that was good at business or she was an accountant. And off you go get a business license. And we started a power line company.
Through reputation, you start to build rapport with utility clients. Right. So you have a bunch of crews, they got some work that needs to be done. You just years over years, you just through reputation, gets around the industry. And inherently, I think contractors, similar to what I do today, think that reputation is just going to continue to grow. Well, I think you hit a plateau or a ceiling with reputation alone on kind of growing in that manner where you eventually can only go so far. So that's been the traditional model, but when that scaling happens, Dennis, I've also seen that as the business continues to scale and grow, if I'm the initial owner of McConnell Construction, I only have so much capacity that I can take on my plate as much as I think it's big and awesome. I can only take on so much to where I actually become a weakness in the business, a limiting factor because I'm the, I'm the keeper of all the secrets, so to speak. And my team actually can't grow and, and, and expand and be more successful because I'm holding them back. I think that is a limiting factor too with where I've seen traditionally the infrastructure, companies either work through that and bring on a sales team or think sales in a different light or they kind of just get past.
[00:22:47] Speaker C: And the same is true in a lot of tech startups. You know that there's a lot of founder power in tech startups and that founder is doing probably the same types of things that the founders of the types of businesses you're talking about do. They essentially move around the business and they remove points of friction for their team and they've created something that allows them to grow. And they are growing through some pretty great relationships that they build because initially, early on, the founder needs to do that. They need to be the face that's going out and helping to win those new clients and bring those new clients in. And then as the business grows to your point, there comes a point at which the founder stops being the one removing points of friction and potentially is introducing points of friction because of the limitations of the founder.
Like you said, the founder's plate.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: I've also seen it's, it's hard for founders sometime. Right. And you got to respect the blue collar worker has pride in what they built. Right. It's. To be an entrepreneur is a really fun thing. You got to take on risk to have a good return. But when you scale at some point, you have to do a little ego check sometimes and say, what is the best position for me today as the leader to take the business and support the team that I'm entrusted to lead to hit the new mission that we've got to do.
Sometimes I've seen in this industry that is really, really hard to do. But when those leaders can step back and think and innovate and listen to those that they've developed, that's when those growth ratios really start to launch. Because now they're trusting their team a lot more than they used to. I think for leaders that sometimes that's really hard to do.
[00:24:34] Speaker C: You know, if you can think about sales as an asset to the business, not necessarily a, a necessary evil to the business and really think about sales the way you would any project that you were going to go build. Think about essentially, you know, building sales as an asset, the way that you build everything else in the business as an asset.
[00:24:54] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, I'm reflecting on my, my time when we first met, you know, the company that I was leading at the time. We had spent four years of high double digit growth and then we kind of hit A wall. And it's because, you know, I gotta be honest, I was probably one of the traditional mindsets until I kind of worked with you and your team and kind of understood this new way of thinking about sales and how sales is actually now. I will view this until I retire or win the lottery, which the chances aren't great, but we'll keep wishing to. Me, being a good operator in my position today is I have a new pillar in the business that I have some, some really clear understanding of, of the success it has. Right. These teachings that you talk about on this podcast, it really works. And to scale in a capacity. If you think about sales in a different light from the traditional, more use. Like you said, a lot of the same industries are thinking the same way that infrastructure does. If you can get past that and think of sales as actually a catalyst to future success, that they're actually the leading edge of the spear, so to speak.
[00:26:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: For operations.
Operations is only successful because I've seen the continuity of effort when they know they have a sustainable, growing business.
Those operators that are actually doing the work, the hard blue collar work, they're like, man, this is fun. They get to go put their hands on it, but they can't go do that if we don't think about our sales strategy and put some effort and thought behind that.
[00:26:23] Speaker C: Yeah, apply the same level of rigor to creating growth as you do to, you know, the actual project itself. And I think that's kind of the key is making that shift 100%. This gives us probably a really good part one to your visit here with me today and really appreciate it and, and look forward to having you back on part two.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: Thanks, Dennis. Appreciate you.
[00:26:51] Speaker C: And we'll, we'll have Mac back on part two of this. And I really appreciate everybody joining. And until next time, just win.
Thanks for listening to the Think Big, Win Bigger podcast. Until next time, think bigger and just win.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: This episode is brought to you by Castos Productions.
