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Schnier

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WS: Our top leaders must have an entrepreneurial streak in them to be successful in the seller-doer model that we de- ploy. Our leadership features strong sellers, strong commu- nicators, and inspiring leaders. Conceivably, our top 30 peo- ple could all be very successful as CEO of their own 10 to 20 person engineering firm. Our open-book management poli- cy and leadership style ensures that the younger generation of engineering talent at our firm is exposed to the business side of engineering from their first day here. As individuals and as a firm, we’re either growing, or we’re dying. Stagna- tion is not an option. TZL: Monthly happy hours and dog friendly offices. What do today’s CEOs need to know about today’s workforce? WS: Today’s workforce is not yesterday’s workforce. And the scary part is that it’s also not tomorrow’s. The post-mil- lennial generation coming up next is something that will change everything. I’m a millennial myself, so I don’t know what all the fuss is about today. I grew up with the internet and email and instant information, so this is all normal to me. We have monthly happy hours and dog friendly offices, but that’s not even 1 percent of it. It’s the entire culture of a company that matters. I’ve been at two other firms previ- ous to BIG RED DOG and it was very clear that their sys- tems were designed to reward tenure, rather than results. That doesn’t work today. What it amounts to is reverse age discrimination. Why the hell can’t a 30-year old engineer run a $5 million book of business? Failure to change leads to obsolescence. Information flows freely in this industry. If people know something better is out there, they won’t give leaving your firm a second thought in order to come to a place like BIG RED DOG. “It’s easy to grow organically in our existing businesses. Our brand and our BIG RED filter is so powerful in our local markets, that organic growth is natural for us. For new service lines and geographic locations, we love the acquisition approach.” TZL: As the co-founder of a firm, what was the biggest lesson you learned on the business side? WS: We’re almost eight years old now as a firm. But about four years into running our firm, we realized that it really was possible to grow so fast that you run out of cash. That was a lesson that I was not expecting. Being a sales and mar- keting guy, I thought more sales cured all. Well, there is a lot more to it than that. With more sales comes more in- vestment spending ahead of the cash wave coming in from those investments. Now take that lesson back to the first question about collections, and you’ll realize why we have to have such a strict collections policy. We’re not going to slow

servers in each office. This allows each of our offices to work on projects across the entire firm seamlessly with zero downtime or waiting for files to download. We also have ful- ly networked video conferencing between each office so that project teams can meet in person, virtually, and look at each other face to face. We used to have leadership meetings that required people to get in the car and travel. Now they can travel a few feet into a conference room and be face-to-face. It’s saved us money all around and increased efficiency. “We used to have leadership meetings that required people to get in the car and travel. Now they can travel a few feet into a conference room and be face to face. It’s saved us money all around and increased efficiency.” TZL: What’s your preferred strategy for growth, M&A or organic? Give us a synopsis of how your firm effected growth in the recent past. WS: We have grown organically and through acquisitions. We love both. It’s easy to grow organically in our existing businesses. Our brand and our BIG RED filter is so power- ful in our local markets that organic growth is natural for us. For new service lines and geographic locations, we love the acquisition approach. As CEO, I charge our leaders with growing their existing businesses 15 to 25 percent each year. Any growth beyond that which our business plan calls for is my responsibility to spearhead, and that means buy- ing other firms. I am a very outgoing person and it’s easy for me to make decisions. On top of that, I could negoti- ate all day long. It really charges my batteries. So acquisi- tions, both in execution and pursuit, are near and dear to my heart. Having said that, we’ve done two acquisitions in the past two years, and integration is much more challeng- ing than making the financial deal work for both sides. TZL: What’s the greatest challenge presented by growth? WS: Easy answer – scaling our operational systems and pro- cedures. No doubt about that. It’s come so fast for us in our first seven years that we’re playing catch up on a lot of our internal processes and training programs. We can sell all day long, and we can execute as experts, but we also have a lot of room for improvement in our behind-the-scenes pro- cesses. 2017 really is the year for us to catch up in that re- gard. This year, we’re putting the investments in place that will allow us to double in size in the next two years. That’s a painful process at times, but being able to show our team members, prospective team members, and potential acqui- sitions that we’ve got a fortress in place for our back-end in- frastructure will make it all worthwhile. TZL: What is the role of entrepreneurship in your firm?

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