Episode 6 – Rising through the Ranks: Leadership Summit CEO Panel

Welcome to the TRSA podcast. Providing interviews and insights from the linen, uniform, and facility services industry. Most Americans might not realize it, but they benefit at least once per week from the cleanliness and safety of laundered, reusable linens, uniforms, towels, mats and other products provided by various businesses and organizations. TRSA represents the companies that supply, launder, and maintain linens and uniforms. And in this podcast, we will bring the thought leaders of the industry to you.

 

This is Jason Risley, the senior editor of digital and new media at TRSA. Thanks for tuning in to the Linen Uniform and Facility Services podcast. If this is your first time listening to us, make sure you go back and listen to our previous episodes. In the last episode, we featured a live speech by former AmeriPride Services CEO Bill Evans, who will participate on the legends of the industry panel at TRSA’s upcoming annual conference scheduled for October 16th through 18th in Napa, California. For more information on the annual conference, visit www.trsa.org/annualconference.

 

Other episodes of the podcast include Vivek Wadhwa, a technology expert that will also talk at the annual conference, David Varner, a superior linen service executive and US Navy veteran, and Josh Linkner, a tech entrepreneur that spoke at TRSA’s Leadership Summit. While you’re browsing through the archives, make sure you subscribe and leave a rating and review for our show on iTunes. We are also available on Google Play and Stitcher. For more information, go to www.trsa.org/podcasts. Speaking of the podcast, sponsorship opportunities are available.

 

If you’re interested, make sure you talk to your advertising representative today or send us an email at podcasts attrsa.org. Now let’s get to today’s episode. T RSA held its inaugural leadership summit in June 2018 in Chicago. The event featured a panel discussion titled rising through the ranks, what it takes, with 5 high level executives in the linen, uniform, and facility services industry. Panelists included Scott Farmer, Chairman and CEO of Centas, Jim Kearns, CFO at ALSCO, Juha Lorio, President and CEO of the Lindstrom Group, Steven Sintros, president and CEO at UniFirst, and Tom Watts, president at Prudential Overall Supply.

 

The discussion was moderated by TRSA president and CEO Joseph Ricci. Each individual shared their experience in the industry and how they advanced their current role. Additionally, the panelists held a lively question and answer session with audience members. Without any further delay, let’s listen in on Rising Through the Ranks, What It Takes, a panel discussion recorded in front of a live audience at this year’s Leadership Summit. So first of all, we have Scott Farmer.

 

He’s a CentOS CEO since 2003. He became president and chief operating officer in 1997. He joined the company full time in 1981 as a management trainee and moved into a variety of production sales and service management positions. He was later in VP slots and national accounts, marketing, merchandising, and retail division. Jim Kearns began his career with KPMG in Houston, which I didn’t realize.

 

I started my career at KPMG in Washington DC. So, and then with Pricewaterhouse in Salt Lake City, he joined ALSCO as the internal audit director in 1993 and was a controller and treasurer from 99 to 2,006. In 2007, Jim was promoted to his current position as VP of finance and CFO, and maybe he’ll share with us his role as the contract coordinator for their new HQ in, in Salt Lake. Zhuha Lorieux joined Lindstrom in 2,006 as executive VP and COO. He also has served as its managing director rising to president and CEO in 2008.

 

Prior to joining Lindstrom, he had several positions at Finland based Pyros Pyros Group, which is a telecommunications electronics group, and was including America’s regional president. And Juha has been with us before. I really appreciate you traveling the distance, to be here. Steve Centros, CPA, became UniFirst President and CEO in 2017. Arriving in 2004, he was Finance Manager, Corporate Controller, then Senior VP and CFO.

 

In the later role, he oversaw all operations in the line of responsibility for finance, information technology, and financial reporting. And before joining UniFirst, he was with Ernst and Young and Arthur Andersen. Tom Watts started as a customer service representative or CSR route salesman in 1975 at Prudential’s office, overall supply at 10. I think you were 10 at that. Yeah.

 

4. Yeah. Where his father had worked in the same role. He would later become utility route salesman, a route manager, a sales and service manager, GM, regional manager, operations VP, and now president. So really rose through the ranks, and we’re happy to have him here with us.

 

So with that, we’ll start with, with looks like Scott Scott and working this way. Just a couple minutes of introduction, then I’ll go out there and ask questions. So Joe mentioned a bunch of the different positions that that I had as I as I move through my career. So let me just say that, in 1981 when I joined our company, we were a regional player, we did about $30,000,000, it was a private family business, and we had started at that point what we refer to as a management trainee program, and management at that time came up with a concept to hire young people coming out of college, put them through a rotation to get them experience in different parts of our company, you know, the service department, in the plant, and in the I moved around to a number of different operation or a number of different jobs, to learn the business, and as a result of that, that sort of springboards our young people into certain positions in the company. They give them their first full time job.

 

Many times that winds up as a sales rep, or some level of lower management, and they see a career path developing in front of them like like I did in those days, that would move them into various areas of the business. And once they got a good exposure, once I got a good exposure to all the different aspects of what happens in the business, then we start fine tuning that towards people’s particular skills and interests. Some people want to grow up in the sales area, some people want to get into management and general management and so forth, so I did a lot of that sort of thing over the years. I would tell you I had operations experience, I had some staff positions, and I’m sure everybody out here has the same feeling to me, some of those were assigned to me. I didn’t really wasn’t particularly excited about taking some of the staff roles that I had and that sort of thing, but looking back on it, it was all great experience and so for me it was one set of experience after another and you know the company grew from a $30,000,000 businesses.

 

I was going through this, to where we are today. And so, you know, the the, the experiences have been pretty incredible, and I’m happy to talk about any of them with you, But I’ll I’ll turn it over to Tom. I’ll start out low just in case. So I started, 1975. I was working at, another facility before that.

 

My, facility shut down. So my dad said, why don’t you come and do, laundry? And I said, thank you. No. Laundry was not, the most appealing thing to me at the time, but, I did have a wife and child.

 

So I started on a route, slowly progressed my way just doing more and more things, acquiring a little more responsibility, supervisory ranks, service manager ranks. Finally in 1984 got my first plant. Did, okay there, I guess. They gave me one of the larger plants, after that, and then at some point brought me to the corporate office, in the more advanced executive roles. Worked well with the, ownership of our organization, and they saw fit to, let me advance to the rank of president.

 

Very good. So I’m Steve Centros. My background, a little bit different than some of my peers up here. I started in the finance industry working for Arthur Andersen in Boston, coming out of college, working with a number of high-tech clients primarily. Arthur Andersen went out of business in 2002, and I went with some of my clients over Ernst and Young for a couple of years.

 

But eventually was getting burnt out in that industry, which had become more of a compliance based industry, and and I had kind of missed the more consultative part of the business that, I enjoyed earlier in my career and was fortunate enough to get introduced to the old CFO at UniFirst, John Bartlett, who had been with the company for about 30 years. We lived in the same town of Andover, Massachusetts, so I got introduced to him. I came on board in 2004 in some, various finance roles, eventually corporate controller. And really, at that time, I’d started my partnership working very closely with John who I eventually replaced when he retired in 2009, working very closely with Ron Crotty, who as many of you know, an industry legend for sure. And, obviously, a great experience working side by side with Ron over the years through the budgeting and planning process for the company and really allowed me to kinda get an in-depth view of the operations from someone who didn’t grow up in the operations, but developed a lot of over that time within the company and obviously with the Crotty family.

 

We’re a little unique. We’re a big public company at this point. When I joined the company, we’re about $700,000,000. We’re doing about 1,600,000,000 today. Still public company, traded on the New York Stock Exchange, but at the same time, it’s still a company that’s controlled by the Crotty family shares.

 

And so, different aspects of being a public company, but still a family company at heart, is something I love about who we are and, something that I think has helped me be successful getting where I’ve got to. My name is Jim Kearns. I’ve worked for OBSCO for 25 years, and I think it was just a couple years ago that I wasn’t the new guy. And so, I know how you feel. So, you know, I finally arrived after 25 years.

 

But, I work in public accounting, similar to Steve. And and when I was in Salt Lake City, I was with Pricewaterhouse and my largest client was Steiner Corporation at the time. And and I worked closely with Kevin Steiner and we’d had a problem with a leasing subsidiary. And based on that problem, Steiner wanted to to develop a worldwide internal audit function. And so Kevin Steiner asked me to go out and recruit, recruit people for this job.

 

And I did this for about a year for him and he never really could find anybody that he liked. And he ultimately offered me the job and I said, sure. You know, I thought this would be a good opportunity. And I think the 2nd day on the job, I went and got a passport. I hadn’t really traveled anywhere.

 

And so early in my career, I got to go all over the world. It was a pretty exciting time. Went to Europe, went to Australia, went to Brazil and set up an internal audit function. And then, you know, the way that I advanced at Alsco is I just volunteered to do everything that they would want me to do. I’d go work a strike.

 

I’d work on various different projects. And then the controller job opened up. And then I took over more responsibilities. And then finally ended up in the job that I have today. So it’s been a fabulous career for me.

 

It’s kind of unique in Salt Lake City to work for a privately held company and get to do all that sort of travel. People ask me how I did it. And I think I was lucky. I was just in the right place at the right time, and it’s been a wonderful wonderful career for me. Okay.

 

And, my name is Joel Auriou. First of all, I’m really pleased to be here. I’m CEO and a president for the Lindstrom Group. Maybe a couple words about the company. So it’s European based.

 

We have operations in Europe and in Asia, 24 countries totally. And like I said, I have been now there for 12 years working for the company. Before that, I worked for that company on mobile manufacturing and there I did business here in in US, in Mexico, in Brazil, and as well as in Europe and in Asia, specifically in China, and in that company I worked in many different positions starting from the sales and then finally being the president of the Americas region, and before working for that company, I worked for another company and worked as an R and D engineering for the for the diesel engines, and someone asked me already that was that the Volkswagen but it was was not not the case. And I think there’s a couple things how I see, how I have been able to build my career. One of those is that I think I was still on elementary school.

 

I I decided that I want to be one of the day one of the days I will want to be a CEO for the good size of company, and I think that’s when you have a goal then that helps you and the other thing is that have had an opportunity to really to work in a very different kind of positions in these companies I mentioned and it’s very clearly, when you’re working as a R and D engineer, the company and looks very different comparing when you are working on sales and when really having this experience on difference, then you are able to at least I am able to build up the total picture how the companies work and how the world looks like. So that has helped me a lot. Thank you, gentlemen. Let’s go out for some questions. Anybody, I’ve got the microphone here if you’ve got a question.

 

We’d love to it to be a little bit more interactive. Somebody’s gotta have a question. Right? You can roll out David for a question. Thank you, David.

 

We didn’t even plant this one. So I I guess something that, I think a lot of people in this room would be interested in hearing about was you you’ve all been involved to maybe different degrees based on the time you joined your company and and the, the size of the company today and and what that difference has been. But in looking back on how you’ve, been part of be part of the system that’s gotten your business to the size it is today, what advice or or, you know, not to oversimplify it, but what advice or thoughts would you have on what’s been effective in scaling your business, and what’s been a pitfall in scaling the business? And kinda how did you maybe not think about it at the time, but looking back now, if you were to give somebody advice whose business was, you know, smaller than yours, but had aspirations, now what would what would you have you know, what would you provide as advice for people to focus on in terms of how to do it? You know, advice, I can tell you that many, many years ago when we were a family owned business, my dad and the executive team in our company at that time sat down and said, what do we really want to do?

 

What do we want to accomplish? And they all agreed that they wanted to build something bigger than what it was. And so they started writing it down, and they came up with, you know, a mission statement. They came up with with a principal objective of what we’re trying to accomplish as a business. They came up with a vision for where they saw the business going and then they communicated that to everybody.

 

And as a result of that and their ability to explain and sell that vision and that principal objective and what they were trying to do, they attracted people to the company that ordinarily a little teeny company in those days that might not ordinarily wanna come and work for a company like that, but bought into the vision and the principal objective and that sort of thing, and the more of that that happened, I can tell you a culture within the company began to grow of that. It still exists today. We still talk about the vision of where we’re taking the business, you know, 5, 10 years from now. We still have the principal objective and it helps us answer all of the hard questions, and that sort of thing. You know, it’s to us it’s the thing that made the difference between us being a small family company and and where we are today.

 

So So with Prudential, I think one of the things that we believe in is, our founder, Dan Clark’s father, John Clark. One of the things that he said is give people the tools, find the right people, put them in the right seats on the bus, and get out of the way, which is a hard thing to do in an executive position. Sometimes, you know, we’re all responsible for a lot of things, but to get out of our employees’ way, is difficult to do. Second thing is, I guess I have to piggyback because some of the things that Scott said, the management training program, we got from his dad. Our founder, got, talking to Dick and talked about that program.

 

We have the same one. The second thing is we pride ourselves on our culture. We are still family owned. The ownership does not wanna go public just for a variety of reasons, but the culture has remained the same. We’ve grown a lot.

 

Let’s see, probably 30,000,000 when I came on board and, smallest of all the organizations were about 200,000,000 now. But, we’ve tried to maintain the culture and that is we’re a family run organization. It gets more difficult the larger you get, but, we maintain that culture of we’re here. We’re family. We’ll support you if you have issues.

 

You help us grow. And again, give them the tools, get out of the way, and let them do what they can do. I would agree with a lot of what, what they’ve said to this point. But I think, you know, you really have to plan for growth. That goes back to a little bit of strategic vision.

 

But, you see opportunities, you want to grow, you get the people, and off you go. But you do have to pace yourselves in terms of making sure the right platform and tools are in place because really, it’s more difficult to put those things in place after you’ve kind of outgrown them. And so I think part of that comes back to the strategic planning and making sure you have that plan, to what you want to do. And the culture is a huge part of that. I think, you know, the larger we get and we talk about the family culture we like to have and the size of the company we are, you really need to work at it every day.

 

And so as you grow, I think you need to spend extra time and investment in in pushing that culture, because you can wake up and it can be gone. And I think we’ve done a great job, and I think the family influence that we continue to have within the company has helped us keep that. But you can see as you grow how you can lose it in different places if you’re not continually working on. So 20 years ago, we did an acquisition in Australia and New Zealand. And it was a successful acquisition for us.

 

And that gave us a lot of confidence that we can integrate and buy new businesses. So I think it’s you need to be successful at it, you need to develop a strategy, an integration plan, however you’re gonna do it. And if you’re successful at it, then it gives you the confidence to to move on and do do bigger deals. But, you know, when we buy businesses with good management because we don’t have the bench strength to go in and change management, We’re successful. If we buy businesses to fix a management problem in an existing facility, we’re not successful.

 

And so I would caution against doing that. We’ve done that over and over again, trying to buy enough business to make an operation successful. And it just doesn’t happen unless you fix whatever problems you have in that existing facility. And if I share my experience, 12 years ago, Lindstrom was less than at the half of the size it is today, and the management practices and philosophy which worked excellent way at that time will not work anymore today. So so companies have a different stages and you need to change the company on a way as you move.

 

So maybe 12 years ago it was a perfect model that decision making was very centralized and nowadays operating in 24 countries, we have been changing our corporate culture very much supporting empowerment and a local decision making. So it’s a big has been a big change as well. Then like like mentioned here earlier is that the easiest way to to make the company successful is to to have a great people around you and that’s makes your own life so much easier. Who is responsible for your development throughout your career? Was it an individual or a group or was it you and what were some of the things that worked or didn’t work throughout that process?

 

You know in any case, it’s it’s a direct relationship with with your boss, and I think that that has to have a, you know, some basis of purposeful development between the boss and and and the mentor mentee if you will, but there have always been clusters. I mean you try to do that in an organization. You know years ago when when I was a management trainee, I reported to one particular person, but the general manager of the operation also built a relationship with me and other trainees to make sure that they have we had other people to talk to, included us in management meetings, and gave us information that you know ordinarily somebody our level might not see on financial reports and things like that, and so we try to build a cluster around that. Today every management trainee will probably hire 275 kids off a college campus this year and they’ll they’ll all have mentors assigned to them outside of who their operational leadership team is, somebody they can talk to, to get advice from and things like that that doesn’t necessarily affect that, you know, boss and and and, underlying kind of relationship.

 

So to us, we try to build it that way on purpose and sort of as a as a cluster of people that assist and it works well. Now there are certain people in my career that have had a bigger impact than others. Many people in the room may know Bob Kohlhepp. I worked directly for Bob Kohlhepp for many years and Bob was, you know, he was he was a great leader and, and an incredible boss and pushed me in ways that I’ve never been pushed before, got me to do things I didn’t think I could do. And, so, you know, I I owe an awful lot to him and and my father as well.

 

So that’s that’s that’s as I the higher up in in, the organization I got, the more those 2 became, important to me. So in my early in my career, first few promotions, the man most responsible was our general manager. Great guy. He was we as we talked earlier today, Deborah’s out there somewhere, you know, he was an older generation guy. I was a young generation, but he took time to understand us where we were coming from and what we needed to do to survive and thrive, progressed up, you know, past that level.

 

I have had, and I don’t know how it’ll come off. I’ve had some terrible bosses, and my goal was just that’s not how I’m gonna be. Learn from those terrible bosses and then, you know, as I got again progressively higher, Dan Clark’s father, John Dee, didn’t spend a lot of time with him because he was definitely up in age at that time. But he spent a little time with me and, really taught me a lot. Taught me how to check for weeds in the parking lot and taught me how to, collect the accounts or see all those things.

 

Since then, I’ve been working for Dan Clark and, he’s helped, me quite a bit. And then to be honest with you, I learned from everybody in this room. I try to talk to as many as I can and learn from, all of you in this room because we’re all different. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. So I guess I’ve been responsible for mostly my own, Alton.

 

I think coming from outside the industry, I came in, and I think it was able to bring some some knowledge to the company and and some perspective that, you know, I was working directly with a lot of people who’ve been in the industry, been in with UniFirst for a long time. So I think it was a great opportunity for me to bring things to the table, but also a lot of the different, you know, the senior operators that are in this room right now, obviously, Ron, I mentioned, and others, but to develop a relationship where I was learning a tremendous amount from them every day across different aspects of the organization, whether it be on the operations side and sales, distribution, manufacturing, but also bringing kind of the unique aspect of what I could bring to the company that maybe was a little bit new from my experiences outside the industry. So it was really a collaborative effort, I think, in my development, but I viewed it as very much as a partnership over the way along the way. And I think, you know, certainly over the last 8 or 9 years, as I reported directly to Ron, that’s you know, I can’t say enough about what what he’s done for my development and, you you know, you really learned everything from Ron as as as some of you, you know, may know Ron.

 

You know, he he was so knowledgeable about all aspects of the business, but really, from human resources to manufacturing to sales, service. So just observing him over the years was just a tremendous benefit. I can’t say enough about that. So the current CEOs of Alasko are Bob and Kevin Steiner. And early in my career, I worked directly for their father, who we call Mr.

 

Steiner. I don’t know if anybody called him by his first name, but so we still call him mister Steiner. And I I spent, oh, 4 or 5 years working directly for him. And I you know, one of the reasons I’m successful today is is what I learned working with him. And, you know, since then, I’ve worked directly with Bob and Kevin on a day to day basis.

 

I learn a lot from those guys every day as well as, you know, there’s a gentleman who has passed away in Italy who I learned a lot from. He was a controller there, A guy that runs our Australasia business, has had a lot of impact on my career. And so there’s been a variety of different people. And we’re just starting to get a hold of this concept of mentoring these young people that are coming into our business. And I think that’s very important.

 

And we need to our company needs to do a better job of it. We’re trying to do as much of that as we can because, you know, our key to success is getting these, these folks into our business and making them successful, down the road. It was, one of these these mornings, my my son, he was complaining that he needs to go to school and you know, that’s terrible and he doesn’t want to do it and I was trying to tell him that, you know, look at me that I’m I’m I’m you know, I’m perfectly fine, and I happen to go to work, and I’m doing that every day. Then he looked at me and he said that, but that that’s different. I said, how come?

 

You love your job? And I think that’s that’s the one thing is that as long as I have been very passionate about my work, all my life and that’s you know, helps you to go forward all the time. Taking a bigger picture, personally I have been using a mentor and then a coach and I’m still still doing that. I believe that it’s a better you know yourself, self awareness. So so that helps you helps you a lot.

 

So I try to try to learn every every day something something new and and go forward. Of course, all the, my supervisors throughout my my career has been had a big influence to my to my work and sometimes it’s even a very single moment can can have a have a big influence. I remember when I started as after graduation and there was something in the work, some issues, some problems and and so I went to my my supervisor and I said, you know, that we are having this issue and kind of expecting that, okay, he will give me the the right answers, but then he just looked me and say that, so what actions have you taken to correct this one? And then I I realized that, okay, that’s that’s very good question and and it’s it’s really and and that’s how I like also this empowerment a lot. Now for a brief message from TRSA.

 

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You touched on this a little bit, about mentoring and retaining talent. You know, challenge we all have in our businesses is creating good succession plans, especially as we work into different generations and leadership. What are some creative ways, that that some things that you’re doing to retain your key talent? I think it’s in in overall. We are talking about a lot of millennials, you know, that the new generation and and and so forth.

 

But I think when we are looking, have a closer look on this one so we all want to enjoy our work. We all want to have a meaning for our work. Millennials are saying it aloud and they are, you know, very pointing it out and therefore, this let’s say, employee satisfaction, job satisfaction, it’s really really a key. It’s not only for the retaining your employees, but, obviously, if you’re only happy employees can provide excellent customer experiences, and that will lead to the good customer satisfaction and good customer retention and and so forth. So I think everything is is linked and everyone wants to be part of the working society which is fun to work with.

 

I think retaining good people is hard to do. I mean, it’s something we have to work at every day. And I don’t have any key you know, processes or procedures that we do that. We try to create an environment where people can can be successful. We try to create an environment that they can move up, and they can take on more responsibilities.

 

But that’s that’s a challenge today, and that’s something that we have to keep working on every day to make sure that we keep our good people, at our company. You know, I think since I’ve come into this position, one of the things that is evident is that people people want to work for good people. They want to work in a healthy environment. People coming into the workforce these days want to work with companies who have similar ethical values and philanthropy and those type of things. And so we’re starting to ratchet up those things.

 

I think it’s things that we’ve always believed in, but the environment is such today, I think, you know, the focus has to really be at the forefront of what we all do. And I think it starts with the leadership. I think everyone needs to do their part in creating that environment. I think as a larger company in the industry, the one thing we can offer is opportunity. And I think we just need to do a better job bringing the people in, developing them, and not, you know, not losing them along the way.

 

So I think, you know, we have a number of programs, you know, some similar to what Scott had mentioned in terms of the the management trainees and really spending more effort, providing people that cross functional development path to showing them that path for the future. I mean, I think you know, there’s a lot of things with this generation that they look for, a more flexible work environment. That’s a real challenge with our industry. We’re a very schedule based industry and, you know, it’s difficult to say you have a flexible work arrangement or work from home or these type of things for a lot of our workers. So we really have to go out of our way to find other things that can that can, you know, show them that path to success and show them that this is a place they want to stay and be successful.

 

So it’s a little bit of everything. I don’t think there’s a real silver bullet. Yeah. I agree. It’s a lot of things.

 

2 of the major things that I look at, Number 1, millennials look at, us baby boomers, as, archaic and that type of thing, and I try to play on that. And I come teach me some of these computer programs, that I don’t know, some of the new operations that I just can’t figure out yet, because I am older. But, you know, I ask them to come teach me and what that does is that gets a line of communication and that stays open. The other thing is, we are in the plants a lot. We’ve talked about it, you know, Dan Clark is at every plant every year, rides 20 routes a year, and does a visitation for our customers with every manager in the company.

 

And I do similar things, but I like to spend time with them. You will not find any one of, the executives of the organization go into a plant without stopping and talking to the management trainee or the young guy coming up. How are you doing? How’s it going? What are you learning?

 

What’s what do you like? What do you not like about the program? Just continually talking with them, keeping the line of communication open so that if for some reason an opportunity, rises, they may not be as inclined to, just jump at it without talking to us first. The next thing that I always try to do when we are talking to them is I point out some of the executives and the color of their hair or the lack of hair and, mentioned that, at some point, there’s a lot of us that won’t be around. And so the opportunity is there.

 

It may not seem like it now. I’m holding down the president’s position, but, at some point, I won’t be, as well as a number of the other executives in our organization. So I try to point that out so they see, oh, yeah. There’s gonna be opportunity. Now it might be more difficult in a smaller or maybe single plant company, but, we’re fortunate enough to where there’s a lot of the old guys that, are getting ready to retire or will soon, and they have every opportunity to earn those positions.

 

Yeah. There’s been some great input here. I agree with an awful lot of what what was said. You know, there’s there’s a lot that goes into retention. There’s compensation and the job description and what the responsibilities are and and the work environment and all that, and a lot of that has been has been covered here.

 

You really got to make sure that what you’re doing for those people is enough. The thing that I would also add though that you heard all of us in some way or another talk about the culture of the company, and we have a lot of similarities in the culture of each of our companies, but a lot of differences too and it doesn’t matter whose culture is right or wrong or anything like that because there isn’t any. It’s your culture. It’s your company’s culture. You need to define that, and then from that point on when you’re hiring people on the front end, you need to find people that are gonna be comfortable in that culture because if you don’t, they’re not gonna be there very long.

 

Sooner or later, they’re gonna find something that they don’t like or enough of that, you know, do they have to wear shirt and tie to work every day or is it casual? They have to call you mister and miss. It’s as simple. Some of it is as simple as that. How many hours are we gonna work?

 

What happens when the customer says Friday at 6 o’clock I gotta have a special deal? What are we gonna do about that? Do they understand that? Do they buy into that? So part of it is upfront when you hire people to make sure they understand what really we do here and how do we do it.

 

And if you can do that and find a good fit, you’ve got a a much better opportunity of keeping people. It’s the Southwest model, I think, for a lot of us, Herb Kelleher. You hire the personality, somebody that’s gonna fit your company culture, and then you can train them to do the job. Mhmm. So if your culture, whatever it is, gotta find somebody who, yeah, I can live with that culture.

 

And I would talk to them. A class on it to everybody. Everybody who’s in a salaried position. So supervisory level and above, if they’re managing people, we teach a class. They go through, you know a 3 day corporate culture class to understand what it is that we do and how we do it and that sort of thing, and it really really does a good job binding everybody together.

 

They understand the purpose and and what we’re trying to do. And and a lot of times people look at that and go, these guys are crazy. I’m not doing this, And we’re better off finding that out now. And I would agree. I think, Tom said there’s a lot of similarities in culture.

 

That’s kinda how I selected the people that I want to serve with the panel. I spent some time with each one of you, and, and you’re very always open with your time, with us and certainly I’m sure with your teams. Recently with Scott and Todd and we have a discussion about new opening new markets and they went suddenly into a sales pitch and they were selling me on, you know, how much how much was my shirt. They can iron it for less than if I bought it at the store. I mean, they were selling me on, get my clothes done at a dry cleaner.

 

Dan, you know, Dan’s on the road all the time. Dan is, you know, and and I know Tom travels with them and they go visit everybody, and they get that message gets out. So it’s reflected. You mentioned Ron and and Steve is following his footsteps for Ron. We have a discussion with Ron and Ron knew what the route drivers in Wyoming were making, you know, off the top of his head.

 

So he was, you know, very instilled in the business, very detail oriented. Alco, I spent a little time in Alco. I showed up for a meeting one day, a little too early, and I ended up having the owners of the company bought me coffee. Apparently, every day at 10 o’clock, they buy coffee for their senior management team, and they talk about their kids and their families and what’s going on. A little bit of business might work its way in.

 

Maybe not when I was there, but, certainly works its way in. As you all know, has the same relationship. I he was chairman of ETSA and had long talked with Robert about kind of the culture of your business. So that’s kinda why we chose this group even though it’s fairly diverse. Is your your personalities and kind of the culture that you’ve developed does permeate regardless of the size of your company.

 

I think that’s a real value that a lot of the folks out here can do because they’re a little bit smaller or maybe have a little bit closer hand to that. So So the title obviously is rising through the ranks and your stories are all pretty much rising through the ranks. And that that mirrors a lot of this industry that it’s a lot of tenure. You kinda earn your experience up and up and up. And there’s a few changes to that either from investment or with a financial background.

 

But do each of you feel that that that is gonna be the way of the future with all the the acceleration of technology, the cultural changes? Are you gonna be able to rise to the ranks? Or is it gonna be necessary to inject into the ranks? And if you agree with that, where from? Okay.

 

I think one of the one of the things is that, it’s always a beauty to work in a company which is growing. So it’s not that you only have the employees who have been there for a long time, but you’re all the time recruiting new ones as well. And that will then help to get new ideas, but it also helps the ones who have a lot of experience under their belt. So they they can learn from the newcomers and the newcomers learn learn from the the ones who have been there for for a longer time. I think it’s it’s always we have the feeling that now we are living the time when the change, our development or the improvements in a society and in a companies are, you know, very fast.

 

But that’s that’s the feeling we had 20 years ago. That’s the feeling we had 10 years ago. And now when we look at that back, so so maybe 20 years ago, the changes were not so rapid than we felt at that time. So it’s all a lot about these changes is also just a mental feeling, how we how we feel it. That if you are if you’re ready ready for the improvements, I think it’s doesn’t matter if you have been for a long time for the company or the newcomer.

 

You can, you know, just it’s an attitude more than anything else. So historically we’ve always wanted to hire people that have been in the industry or have you know quite a bit of experience but I think with the difficulty that we’re having, you know, attracting and retaining talent, I think we’re going to have to be a little bit more open minded to bringing people from outside the industry in with new ideas and see what we can learn from them. So I think we’re a little reluctant to do it, but I think it’s going to be inevitable for us. No. I agree.

 

Jim and I were talking about this earlier. I think, that the path to say location manager through our company historically had come from the route and kind of really worked their way up through the ranks as you referred to. I think more and more, we’re gonna need to find leaders from other places. And I think you know, a simple path, not a simple path, but a different path into the organization coming from the outside through the sales organization or other aspects, We can develop leaders and I think we have to do a better job of developing leaders for the company through other aspects of the business other than people who have just risen up through the ranks. I think we can’t ignore that portion.

 

That’s still a big part of what we push. But I think we do need to, as Jim said, bring in talent from outside the organization into positions. In sales is a typical one that we’ve been successful with and then teach them how to be successful leaders in our company. And I think you can accelerate finding some good, good leaders in the company, you know, through those type of avenues. Would that one more thing?

 

One of the big challenges we face is developing a more diversified management group. And I think the only way that we’re going to be successful of that is doing that, is going you know maybe a little bit outside the industry and bringing people in that will add a little bit more diversity to our our current management team. If I may ask one one of this one as as well. So, for a long time in Lindstrom, we had the management team and the board of directors. We’re all Finnish citizens, Fins basically.

 

And then we last 10 years, we have gradually changed that, and now now it’s like we are operating in 24 countries. We have a have a board of directors from from many different nationalities and the same thing for the management team and and so forth. So that gives a great flavor and and, you know, broadens the view. So in our organization, we prefer to promote from within but we recognize we can’t staff all of the positions. So we have pretty good mix of management trainees or management potential, people that we have.

 

That’s some new fresh ideas coming in. The traditional way is still, heavily in effect and that’s rising through the ranks, but what we’ve tried to do is take off the blinders to you run a route, you have supervisory, you have run a plant and those types of things. And we now have, people that started, in the stockroom, rising through the ranks, people in the front office, office managers. Maybe it’s unpopular, to talk about in here, but traditionally, it’s a male dominated industry. And we’ve been fortunate to identify 3 or 4 females that have the ability and the talent but they had previously been overlooked and we’ve had them rise through the ranks.

 

We have one regional manager and a couple of general managers now. So looking at the nontraditional, you know, vertical, you know, ascension through the ranks, branching out a little bit, I think has helped us quite a bit. We’re a little bit different and part of that is just because of our size. We have 42,000 employees now. We have we’ll do about 6,400,000,000 or thereabouts.

 

That’s what we’ve guided the street to for the fiscal year that ended a couple of weeks ago. And so we have a lot of up and comers and as we go through our succession planning and we look at the talent and the bench strength that we have, we’re pretty confident that the vast majority of future leaders will come from within the organization, but we also then because of that have, I would say, the ability and therefore the luxury to bring in outside talent as we find the needs for them to sometimes specialty areas of the business, engineering or finance and accounting or other area IT that sort of thing, where we need that type of strength, but to us there’s something pretty reassuring knowing that we got a 42 year old that spent 20 years with us, understands the culture, understands the business, they’re in our current rental business, and we need a new VP in our fire business or in our first aid business. It makes more sense for us to move somebody that we know who has been successful in our company into those jobs than it does to look outside the company, and again, I say that not for any other reason, but we’re big enough to be able to do that sort of thing today and I would expect that to continue as I look out into the future.

 

Hi. This is a little bit of a different kind of question, but it’s one that challenges me and I think many people in our company. Could you please, give me your elevator speech of what your company and or our industry does when you first started and what your elevator speech would be today? I think it’s, if if you look at the elevator speech, how it has been changing through the years, I think in a in a past, it was, more focused on what we do, how we do it, and not so much on looking from the customer perspective. And that’s which has been we have been actively changing through the organization that we we understand that we need to look at the world from the eyes of the customer.

 

So, like we are in a textile service service operator, so we are talking now about the flowability, the uniform flowability. We are talking about site flowability where we have a site related services and then we have a person personnel related services on textile so we are talking about the flowability on personnel. So that’s our speech today. That’s a good question. I think when I first started I would tell people that I was in the as we’re riding up the elevator, I would say that we’re in the textile rental business and then when we’d get to the top, they’d say, so what do you do?

 

And I said, well, we’re in the textile rental business. And then that, you know, that wouldn’t get it. And so so I’ve changed it a little bit to say that we’re the linen in uniform business. We operate large commercial laundries. I tell them that we have these big, gigantic washers and dryers and it’s, it’s a much more complicated, interesting business than you might think.

 

And so I go about it that way. But My answer is depends how long I want to talk to him for. So but no. I think, it is difficult sometimes quickly to explain what we do in our industry. And I think I try to focus on the image and identity we’re trying to create for our customers and provide solutions for our customers, and putting their employees in workflows and uniforms.

 

Think when you start talking about mops and mats and toilet paper, they they kinda glaze over a little bit. So but, no. I think, you know, focusing on the solutions for our customers is is where I try to lead. So my elevator speech, we’re only going to the 2nd floor, so it’s very quick. In the original, 40 plus years ago, it was more product, centric.

 

We had the best shop towels, the best uniforms, the best everything. Unfortunately, I think a lot of our products have been commoditized over the years. So the speech that we give now, it’s about brand identity, making their customers, safe at work, you know, show a good in good image, product, that type of thing. So it’s more about our people taking care of their people now as opposed to we got the best mats. When I started in this business, I’m not sure I could even tell you how to describe what we did.

 

Probably couldn’t even find the elevator back in those days. Take a ride up. You know, today, we look at our business and and, you know, we we we like to say, first of all, I think the elevator speech today is designed around getting whoever you’re talking to to ask you more questions about that. I don’t know that you could tell everything that you do in one one elevator ride, but we help our customers get their, get their businesses ready for the workday. We help them by providing products and services that keep their facilities clean and safe and their employees and their facilities looking professional at all times.

 

I typically get asked, wow, like what? And then that’s when I got them, got them into the, you know, how much you charge how much you pay to get your shirt right. I thought it was interesting, what Scott and Tom were saying about, taking an intentional approach to your culture. And, I’m interested with, all you guys having, multiple locations. How do you have any particular, techniques or methodology tools that you’ve used to maintain visibility as a leader of your organization with with, all your employees?

 

We have what we refer to as Cintas TV. So we show it on the, you know, the break room TVs that we have around the operations. We frequently do, you know, video communication recorded messages, about various things going on. And, you know, I, when I, when I’m out traveling, I’ll have people say, oh, you’re you’re the you’re in the TV all the time. So, you know, that I think I think the important thing is that there is that some form of communication, and and that’s important.

 

The other thing that I do is every class that comes through training at Cincinnati, I’m up in front of them during doing doing a q and a session, and I think that goes a long way. I want to find out what’s on their minds and hear the kind of things that they’re asking questions about so that we can kind of create and direct communication to the various themes that we hear. So we do that all the time. I do it almost weekly. So I think Guy touched on it a little bit.

 

The CEO and I visit every location every year, 31 locations in a condensed 5 week period. It’s brutal. My wife forgets who I am. But, we go out, spend time, state of the company by the CEO. I talk about our profit sharing and retirement program and benefits.

 

We sit down with the entire management staff and have a staff meeting and then we walk the facility. So we touch every employee at least once a year. The CEO, again, as I mentioned, goes with every manager doing a customer visitation every year. He runs about 20 some odd routes, Jeff. 22 routes a year.

 

Puts on his blues and works those young guys to death almost. I don’t have that kind of time. So what I do is I try to hit many of the locations, and I sit in on their staff meetings and listen to their staff meetings. What are they talking about? We don’t have, we’re too small yet for the CCTV, you know, closed circuit and that type of thing.

 

We will get there at some point but, that’s how we touch them. Yeah. We do some of the some similar things. We have TVs in the lunch rooms where we provide communication. And then like Scott does, I talk to all groups that come in for training at corporate and it’s really my favorite part of the week.

 

The other thing we do, which is a little unique, we’re getting a little large for, is we still do budgeting and planning meetings with every location manager every year. It was something Ron was real passionate about and we continued it. So we’re sitting down with each local team, plant manager, general manager, sales manager, branch managers, and having those discussions about the plan for the next year, but also about the culture and what’s going on with the company. We do a location manager meeting annually, and those type of things because you really just need to continue to hammer that culture. So it’s one of the other things I think, I don’t know if it’s unique or not, that we do with our HR team is they go around and visit a number of our locations every year, we can’t get to all of them, and have roundtable discussions with the employees, production employees in small groups, our route drivers, sales, the office, really to have that kind of 1 on 1, you know, without management in the room kind of view of how they view the culture.

 

We can get a good sense of are these locations, you know, operating with the mentality that we want them to be. So I think as as they’ve talked, I mean, I think it’s important to get out to the plants and particularly if you have we have operations in 14 countries, and we recently completed an acquisition. And Kevin and Bob Stein are in the UK visiting those people this week, and they’re taking those people and they’re you know, touring them around to our German operations, our Italian operations. And so, you know, we need to get out in front of these people so that they know who we are, you know, where we live, you know, what our culture is. And you have to talk about it.

 

When we have management meetings, we talk about it at every management meeting. And we participate in management meetings in our foreign locations, and we talk about it there. So it’s it’s a constant communication that takes place so that they know who we are and what we’re about. That’s, actually, I see it nowadays, thanks to technology. So so it’s, helps a lot of lot of ways to communicate and it’s all about like all the gentleman here has been mentioning.

 

It’s about the communication and using the different channels. We have also a live video streaming so on a quarterly for our employees. We used our internal social media like a Yammer. Very actively, I’m very active there as well. Until now, we still have the luxury.

 

We are only in 24 countries and I’m I’m visiting every country at least once a year and so also have this face to face time and have a dinner and and so forth, that’s that’s very powerful. Alright. I’m gonna last ask the last question. We hear at this conference and other conferences you hear about disruptors and what’s your Uber and what’s gonna challenge the industry. So, as individuals, what is the the the number one challenge you think we have facing us as an industry?

 

And I will start with with you, Juha. Okay. Always a challenge is always an opportunity as well and I would, this challenge I will turn as an opportunity. I think we are living more and more in this online society, which means that our customers and our customers’ customers wants everything right now and the right time, not yesterday and not tomorrow. And that gives a lot of opportunities also for for our business.

 

Just to what I’m talking about, maybe to explain is that there’s a tendency for example to hotel guests are booking, leaving their bookings for the last minute and there’s even mobile applications which are encouraging consumers to do the booking at the last minute to get the best deals and that’s, that’s, of course, a challenge for the for the hotels, for the the textile linen services that you send. Obviously, the answer for that is that we need to really integrate with the data sources of our customers and in some cases to their customers. So we really have the online information that we can react on the right time. And I think that’s a big challenge but also opportunity. Labor, you know, recruiting and retaining good talent at all levels.

 

I mean, it’s on the production floor, you know, up until the management step. I’d say that’s our biggest challenge. I think they took, you know, both of the ones I was going to refer to. But the continuing staying relevant with the technology is is a huge thing for all businesses and our industry is no no exception. But if I had to pick 1 right now over the next 3 to 5 years, I would say the labor situation and the competition is high for the best people.

 

And I think we all have talked about some of the things that we’re trying to do to keep the best people that fit into our organizations in place, so they can be successful and we can be successful. Yeah, same thing. It’s all about staffing right now. That’s the topic of, every meeting we have, one of the agenda items, attracting people at all levels, retaining people at all levels. It’s not a glamorous business, you know.

 

Well, maybe it is for some. I mean, doing dirty laundry is probably not what most people went to school for. So convincing them that we are a good industry, a stable industry, a growing industry, I think that’s the key. It’s just getting our people and bring getting them in and keeping them. I agree with everything that has been said up to this point.

 

I couldn’t agree more about what’s going on with labor and talent, and so I’ll throw something else out there that’ll just take a completely different viewpoint. I think the biggest challenge that we have is our biggest opportunity, and I look at this and I say, we’ve been doing this for over a 100 years and there are still businesses out there that ought to be in a uniform rental program that don’t even know what we do. There’s a 150,000,000 people in the United States that go to work every single day wearing some sort of work apparel. We’re the biggest in the industry and when I look at what we do and total up in my own mind what the whole industry does, it’s such a small fragment of that. Our biggest competitors aren’t sitting in this room.

 

They’re retail, they’re online, it’s Walmart, it’s Amazon, they do more revenue and work go into a Walmart and go into the area where they have work clothing. It’s 1500 square feet, and how many Walmarts are in your town? So we have to kinda break down our mindset and look at this in a little bit different light about who we’re really competing against and where the market is because it’s out there, It is out there, and, I think that is the biggest challenge that we have, to break down that mindset, and then that becomes the biggest opportunity that all of us have, and and so that’s something for Yeah. I think that’s that’s a good segue into into my closing. We’ve seen what Scott’s talking about in health care where we took OPLs and brought them to the commercial side.

 

You’re seeing it now with the hospitality industry starting to to take over some of those businesses and and outsource those laundries. And and I will will add too that these gentlemen that are here and their companies have, have offered to put their their money where their mouth is. So we’re we’re doing a marketing program in December and the focus of that is gonna be on non programmers. How do we find new business that we’re not taking from each other, but we’re growing the industry pie, which we think is really critical. And they’ve all offered to to support that and to sell in some expertise to that.

 

So I really thank them for that. And I think really thank them for being here today, and addressing this this group at our first time we’ve done this leadership summit. So thank you very much for being here. Thanks again for listening to the Linen Uniform and Facility Services podcast by TRSA. Hopefully, you gained some perspective from these industry leaders that will help you advance in your own career.

 

If you liked today’s panel discussion, TRSA has another great panel coming up at its marketing and sales summit scheduled for December 12th through 13th at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The panel will feature Jim Divers, the director of sales and marketing at ALSCO, Ryan Flaherty, the vice president of sales, marketing, and business development at Aramark Uniform Services and AmeriPride Services, Dave Katz, the senior vice president of sales and marketing at UniFirst, and Bob Mitchell, the senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Cintas. The panel will discuss identifying and expanding markets and converting non programmers to new customers. For more information, visit www.trsa.org/marketingsummit.