00:00
and welcome to Power of the Network. I'm your host, Tim Locker, Vice President of Broadband here at CBM. We've got a real special episode. This is actually our first contractor guest that we've had on the show, Mr. Matt Wells with Bob Hole, Inc. He's an underground contractor here in the Midwest out of Kansas. These guys do tremendous work and they've got a lot of relationships with some customers that we share as well.
00:29
I'm anxious to get his take on, you know, as a contractor in the industry. So I look forward to this conversation. Thanks for joining us.
00:42
Matt, thanks again for joining us. Appreciate you getting into the city here. Coming in. I know we had a little parking issue this morning, but it's great parking in Kansas City. Love the public parking, taking a redneck from the country into the city. Did you have to download the app when you got here or did? No, I kind of knew where I was going. We've stayed here before for the Big 12 tournament. parking wasn't an issue then because we had a reserved spot.
01:09
Yeah. Got a little snow still out there. That's one thing I tell you. There's a lot of snow here. There was a, you know, little video I saw on Facebook or YouTube or whatever was kid was snowboarding down the, you know, down the streets of downtown here. was pretty awesome. But I would, I would say if the police drive by out here, they'll get a chuckle because I, I put it in four wheel drive and pulled up over a snow mound to park. Cause I got tired of looking for a slot to park. Yeah.
01:38
Well, we apologize for that. Thanks again anyway. So, you know, it's fun. You know, we've been doing these shows for a while now and you're the first contractor, you know, underground contractor that we've had on. I might be the last, too. You never know. We'll see how it goes. But, you know, so I'm interested, you know, just kind of get into that dynamic and get your perspective. You know, you know, in our role, we're obviously trying to
02:06
know, spec product and sell product to the, you know, the same customers that you're working for. so, you know, I think it's interesting just to see, you know, how we work together and maybe understand a little bit more of, you know, what some of your challenges are, you know, and some of the tougher things you're up against. So maybe we understand each other's roles a little bit better. you know, so I guess what would be one of your biggest challenges?
02:35
Probably one of the biggest challenges for us as a contractor is finding labor. Finding labor helped actually do it. Not everybody wants to, you we're glorified ditch diggers. We got fancy names, but that's what we are. We dig in the ditch. We install- in the ground. Put pipe in the ground. We install cable. We bring people to the internet and everybody, you can toss it up, polish it up. I mean, but that's what we do. And sometimes that requires you to work on the road. You're away from your family. Yeah.
03:04
You know, we, we cover a lot of those expenses, but it's still your, it's not what everybody wants to do. Yeah. You know, and it, if you are married or we have single guys that are dating, I always tell them, like, you make sure you find a good one. Yeah. Cause I got a good one. We've been married, but she killed me right now. I think it's 22 years. Uh, it's going to be, going to be 23, but, uh, you know, she's put up with a lot of crap to allow us to do what we do.
03:32
I'm a president of this thing by default, I think. that right? I I worked for him in the early 90s when I was going to college. The old man that started it was named Bob and his wife, Carleen, started it in 79 and they had two sons that helped build it up, so to speak. And he got cancer there in early 90s.
03:56
And it kept calling. Bob got cancer the first time, I think it was like 92, 93. And I'd only worked summers and he'd offered me a full-time job a couple different times. And I'm like, I'm not coming back to Redneckville. And where did your dreams have you at that point in life? Where did your head have you placed? In more of a metropolitan area. there's nothing to do.
04:24
So I live in a town, well, I live in the country, but my area that, we might have, Neemah County may has, maybe has 4,000, 5,000 people. I don't know. I'm gonna be at six. It's not very big, but- the county. For the county. My town has like 600. I live out in the country and we live in a populated area. We can see like four houses. Yeah. All within a mile of us. So long as they got their lights on at night. Yeah. I mean, some of them, got heckle hellacious Christmas, Christmas. Yeah. It's like Chris walls on steroids. Yeah.
04:53
But, you know, it's very rural area, but we're lucky enough in the area I live in is the exchange is Blue Valley. You probably know Blue Valley. So we have fiber to the home already, and we've had it for several years, you know, and my partner that owns part of this company, he lives five, six miles outside of Pica on Carlson Road. And it was a dead spot for the longest time. No internet. They had a satellite in.
05:23
you know, their speed was like two to three meg. Oh gosh. I mean, we had better dial up back in the nineties, you know, than what these guys have in 2023 now. while Amigo Telephone, you know, through some grants and whatnot, was able to bring broadband internet down that line to not only get Kenny, but to get several neighbors. you know, Kenny bought his first smart TV last fall. Oh, goodness. Imagine putting that into perspective.
05:53
He doesn't know what the internet can all do. He's still kind of learning. His kids go to Rossville and they're a pretty good sized school in terms compared to us. I mean, they already have the internet there in Rossville. Well, Amigo went to Rossville probably four or five years ago. I don't remember what it was. But yeah, I mean, I got way off base there. Oh, that's all good. No, I was just...
06:18
You know, you'd mentioned, uh, yeah, you didn't want to go back. Nothing to do. So I just kind of had a vision of trying to see where your head was at that young age. at the young age, I was more worried about, um, having fun. Yeah, let's put it that way. I was more worried about chasing tail and having fun. Yeah. But, I, I ran a bar when I first got out of college. I ran a bar, had a heck of a good time. Oh yeah. Um,
06:46
Realize that, this isn't going to be a good deal if I keep going down this road. it's a... You're also a patron of said bar that you were Yeah. Well, yeah. I I blew my knee out there on grand opening weekend playing basketball outside. And I come back about a year later and I was like, I need a job. And owner's like, why do you need a job? I was like, I blew my knee out here.
07:10
I'm in here four nights a week. I mean, I need to cut it down. Just give me one night a week off and what I make in tips and what I make here will pay for the other two nights that I'm here. And he felt sorry for me, I guess, gave me a job. A few months later, me and another guy was assistant manager of the place and fast forward to the end of that semester. And I had a job to be the next Al Bundy shoe salesman up in Norfolk, Nebraska, accepted its position, came home and told them, you know, I'll give them a
07:39
four week notice. He said, you're not going anywhere. And I was like, well, I don't think you can match it. And he did. So I stuck around Hayes, Kansas for a while. We was going to put one of these bars in another spot in Manhattan and things kind of fell through with the owners that were going to do it. So I kind of started looking and you know, this whole time since the early nineties, there's Bob got.
08:06
cancer again, he beat it in 92, 93. He got it again in 95, I think it was. And Richard, his son, who was the president before he retired, he kept calling me like every quarter. think they had a meeting with somebody every quarter and he got out of that meeting and be like, hey, Matt, you want a job? I'm like, no, not coming back to Redneck Town. Can't do it. I I like to be able to go get chili cheese nachos and chocolate milk.
08:30
two o'clock in the morning if you wanted to. can't do that in Centrair, Kansas. Can't do that in Seneca, Kansas, I don't think. But that was one of the things that was the drawback for me. And then when, what made me come back, I was just kind of not liking what we were doing anymore. And what I was gonna do is use BHI or Bob Whole Inc. as a stepping stone to go to something else. Cause they was wanting somebody, Bob at that time,
09:00
That was 99 when I came back full time. Dad had just passed away. Supposed to start work that Monday. He died the Friday before. And I'm like, damn, man, what's the, that's kind of bad luck. And Richard's like, just take as much time as you want. I was like, it's life, man. Things happen. So I'm going take a week later to start. first place we drove down to was Leceen, Kansas, South here at Kansas City at People's. We had a job going down there.
09:31
kind of seen what we were doing. And I was like, no, we updated a little bit of equipment since the last time I was here. Cause I think I worked for them from like 92, three, four. And they did some workout around the Hayes area in 95. And that's when I graduated was in December of 95. And you know, we, we did a lot of talking back and forth, I guess. And finally got fed up one day cause I started running a restaurant and
09:59
and labor issues with that are incredible. you have like- Worst than contracting you think or? Well, there's a lot more drama. You got a lot of waitresses and waiters and people don't show up and you're trying to cover and you ended up making a lot of couple of good friends cover a lot of crap for you that wasn't their job. And it just tried hiring the assistant managers and different, the guys- kind of what happens. You get-
10:26
You get a handful of good folks and then they're doing everything to Well, and if you don't take care of them, I mean, that's the biggest thing. You don't take care of them. What happens? They look someplace else. But I come back in 99, Bob Holes is still there and he made the comment of, the hell you coming back here for this for? I was like, yeah, I just need to get out of Hayes. Time for a change. Came back and...
10:52
He's like, this job's not going to last that long. How much fiber do you think we can put in the ground? And I was like, one of them fancy magazines you got there, I noticed they're talking about fiber to the home in 10 years. That was clear back in 99. We put our first fiber to the home in the ground 2004 or 2005. I can't remember what year it was. I think it was five. Blue Valley did some work. They just bought some Sprint exchanges.
11:21
and they wanted to loop them in with their legacy exchanges they already had. So we put a little fiber in to connect them. And then anybody along that way got fiber. And it was a learning experience for the engineering company and for us, because we're like, we're all used to putting in copper, which, you know, for the most part was pretty cake. If you cut a copper, you just fix a copper and cut fiber. You kind of start over or you pay a lot of money to slice it however it works.
11:51
A little better planning has got to go into it. And ever since then, we just took off with it. Do you guys do your own splicing? We have a subcontractor. So go back to the labor issue for us. What do we do for labor? If I can't find it, I try to find the best subcontractors that I feel I can find. have seen that show, Meet the Fockers, right? Yeah. It's a circle of trust. I have that. I trust issues probably.
12:18
So if you get in my circle of trust and I got, you know, I got one guy that does a lot of town workforce. I don't think he's been any work in the last, I think this is his 19th year in business. And he's worked for us the whole time. He started out as a drop contractor, moved him over to a town contractor. He's grown to a pretty good size contractor. He doesn't, he lives a stress-free life. He has
12:46
big old chunk of red hair and full beard and no gray. I'm like, but he doesn't have to find any work either. We just keep them busy. But then you also have a born contractor that's been with us since 2006. A couple of drop guys. I brought one drop guy on here back the most recent was probably in 2020. COVID, know. Yeah. Wow. Were you guys able to work through that? So we had a job with a
13:15
large company. got one of the, we got actually, we bid our largest job ever in 2020 only to have it shut down five days before we were supposed to start plowing by a county wide ban. And in our area where I live at, we didn't take COVID maybe as serious as what some did. We just wanted to work and we were going to be outside.
13:43
I don't care if somebody got a vaccine or not. I just want to go to work and if I get sick, I get sick, I'll take care of it. But there's certain people that needed probably to have those things. I lost one of our slicers, Wayne Gibson. He got COVID. So I don't take it like jokingly because we lost the heck of a slicer when we lost Wayne Gibson. through his brother-in-law who runs it now, Greg, and his son, Luke.
14:13
into a pretty good pickle because all of sudden, know, lot of things that Wayne did, Greg stepping into. But when I first came here in 99, the old man, Bob, told me, don't you lose those guys. Best splicer we ever had. And, you know, to this day, we always use those. So our circle of trust with those guys is- way back. Yeah. I mean, it was before I came back to work here. They, and we have a-
14:41
This past year, I probably brought on the most subs I've ever brought on trying out new people. Yeah. Some may or may not stick around. Is that hard for you? Yeah. Just emotionally to give them a chance or just hard I like to give everybody a second chance because everybody screws up at some point. God knows if they had police cameras and stuff on back over these cell phones like we have now, my ass would have been locked up a long time ago.
15:11
Lots of dumb things people do when they're young. So you try to give people second opportunities, but with the way regulations can be on some insurance, know, if you don't have a driver's license, it makes it real tough to hire you. But we've bent the rules, so to speak, and hired people. We just got to sign a form, basically, that tells them that they can't drive any of our stuff. But our circle of trust with subcontractors
15:41
It goes out to even the people that we work for. like, Walmigo, for example, we've had a relationship with them. Whenever I worked in early 90s, we were doing work with them. Whole different team of management down there and different engineering companies, but I remember doing work for Walmigo Telephone. We did work for Blue Valley when I was there. We did work for JVN when I was there. So a lot of them
16:09
same, those three customers right there, we currently have projects with them right now. Yeah. 30 years later. Yeah. And, you know, it's, I don't know if it's hard to maintain it. I think if we do a good job, you hire good employees and have good subcontractors and, just everybody knows when they work for us, if they're a sub, they know what, what to expect from us. And we have a certain way we want it done. And if you're not going to do it that way.
16:39
After about the second time, there won't be a third because first time shame on you, second time shame on us and get the hell out of here on the third one because we don't like to mess around with it. our clients know that, that we have in the past three to four years, we've started to ease up on some of the
17:01
parameters that we always held true and dear because the engineering companies would always tell us, you know, we got to be 42 inches. Well, in this day and age where they're getting grant money, it's all about, we got to get this in the ground. Well, you're in rock. Do you really want to put that in the ground at 30 inches deep or 24 inches deep? It doesn't mean anything to us. It's just what piece of equipment are we going to need to do your project?
17:28
And so we... And what cost, obviously. Well, right. mean, the deeper it goes in the ground and rock, obviously, the more it's going to cost. And to us, it's more time consumption, obviously. It takes a lot longer to go through it. Sometimes it's beneficial to skip over, know, if it's a drop, but it's all about what phone company wants what. And knowing what your client wants is probably the biggest thing. And making sure that the engineering understands what they want and the communication between the three of us is...
17:57
probably the key to anything getting done. mean, if you're arguing with the phone guys or arguing with the engineering guys, well then you're spinning wheels instead of, you know, getting something done. Yeah. You mentioned the time. I got to believe that, you know, time is probably one of the biggest impacts, you know, on your business. Yeah. I mean, every, every job that, I wouldn't say every job because we don't bid a lot of work.
18:26
we negotiate a lot of work. We've got a pretty good client, but every now and then we go out and we bid one. And, you know, they put out what they want in the job based off of what an engineering company is probably telling them. you know, Google is great, but Google Earth, sometimes I'd like to, you know, take that site down.
18:47
It's not entirely accurate. Because we start drawing stuff off Google Earth rather than actually putting feet on the ground and looking at it. And I understand situations like right now, if you try to go drive down some of the roads where we're working at, there's still snowpack shut. You get 17 inches of snow. It limits how much you can drive down certain roads. Google Earth allows you to sometimes walk down these roads back where I live at. And if it's not a highway, you probably aren't walking down it.
19:16
In the back roads, a lot of them don't have it, but some of them do. And so they get a little, I won't say lazy, but it's harder to see what that depth looks like in 2D versus if you actually took out there to see it. So it's hard to justify. It's better than what they had before, but sometimes I think people rely on a little bit too much. Engineering can't keep up with the amount of work that's going on right now, just like contractors can't keep up.
19:44
Everybody wants it done right away. And we come to Matt's meeting and I cringe when we come because you know you're going to run into three or four people like, man, you busy? No, we're sitting around twill on our thumbs. we're busy. can't, we can't, we don't really. Do you guys shut down in the winter? If the frost gets deep enough in the ground right now, we're shut down due to snow. We got like three projects with Walmigo and all of them got snow.
20:14
It's the drawback when you work in one area too much. You might have too much snowfall when it's not spread out enough. didn't, you know, all the snow that we've got down here, you know, I'm up in Iowa and we missed it. We had a few inches up there before all the snow hit down south here. But everything we've had down here totally missed us. So really? Yeah. We have quite a bit of snow still. The frost is getting there.
20:42
See the, I moved some, I moved some snow off hand holes and off a couple of pond cabinets so our splicers could, could do something this week. I mean, that's construction, but my eyes, it's not putting cable on the ground. So it's a different type of construction, but we moved that and underneath those three foot drifts, the ground's not even froze yet. It's mud. So when those three, four foot drifts do melt, it's going to be muddy. And we get the Arctic blast coming in this weekend. That'll be fun. Cause next two days it's in the forties. We're going to melt a lot of snow.
21:12
And then we're going to turn around and refreeze. So it's probably going go on the ground. So you freeze that back in. You're like, is it, at what point does it make sense to shut down? You know, if it's from a cost perspective, you can't maintain enough. Well, know, our J our, our jobs have so many days in them. A lot of times if, if we, if we get engineering involved at the, if our client gets engineering involved, most of the time they have some days associated with it. Yeah. Certain clients.
21:42
don't even know what we're, because engineering can't keep up with what's going on. We're doing like, I gave you an example, well, me go, Sean, over there, you know, I'm like, hey, you got any unit total? So I know what to order. Just keep coming, showing up to work. That's what he's, just keep showing. You're not going anywhere. I'm like, okay. You know, and then from our side, I got our accountant looking at me going, how much, what's your forecast like this year? was like, I don't know. Is he, it's a hurricane? Hell, I don't know how busy. I mean, we just.
22:12
We just do what we can do. We got a, we get a Google overlay map with some different colors on there. What looks all nice and pretty like a Christmas tree, you know, but in reality it's really what, what those guys say, Hey, we need to get this area done. This is the deadline date. And we start talking at those periodically throughout while we have them. I wouldn't say we have weekly meetings, but if I don't see WTC about once a month, he usually calls to make sure that, know, they're okay.
22:41
You're not leaving me, are you?" I was like, no, no. mean, we continuously try to keep people down there, but they got a lot going on from a construction side. I mean, everybody does. And the time thing, you just try to manage it best you can. Obviously, you put a little more priority maybe towards some of those jobs that have a deadline data in days, but when the weather hits, the deadline days are...
23:08
forfeited because weather shuts you down, and nature. So you just kind of take it with a grain of salt.
23:19
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23:48
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23:55
I mean, it sounds like your business is a lot like ours in terms of just how important relationships are. Oh, a hundred percent. You know, it's. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure you guys, you know, you don't have a good relationship with the people that are buying the products that you represent. Well, somebody's probably looking for another represent representative company. Relationships not only with, with suppliers or clients. I mean,
24:24
your employees too, because I mean, from our side of it, we we arrange anywhere from 12 to maybe 23, 24. I think the most we've ever had was 39 employees. But you're only as good as that last person. mean, your employees make who you are. It's not what Bob Holes started a long time ago. just, Richard kind of kept going and we kept going. We tweaked a few things here and there. I mean, because
24:51
When I come to work there in 99, we need about 150 miles every year, but we need about $2 million worth of work every year. Yeah. Well, that wouldn't fly right now. I first off, phone companies would love it if they could get 150 miles done and only cost them 2 million bucks those days of long past. it's just one of those things that...
25:16
You do the work, you hopefully make a profit at the end of it, you spread it around a little bit. And when you have a lot of subcontractors, obviously you're not going to be as profitable internally, but you're trying to keep your clients happy. like we, get really lucky and negotiate a lot of work. I don't know if you call it luck or skill or just they're hard up and they call us. We've been around for a little while. We do a good job. I mean, I like to think that we got a pretty good reputation out there, but you know,
25:45
It's hard making everybody happy. I'm sure there's somebody down a road, you know, that we dug over in the right of way and knocked a tree over or took some brushes out or something. And they probably was like, man, I hate that crew. I hate that crew. They did such a terrible job. But then there's other times that, you know, you always hear about those situations. Sometimes what you don't hear about is you get to, these guys did a great job. You know, they went above and beyond.
26:13
So it's good to hear those. There are obviously few and far between. I mean, one of my questions on the contractors was, you go back to the circle of trust, is my concern would be, then just then cutting you out and developing that direct relationship with people you've been working for for 30 years. Well, we've had some subs our size or bigger.
26:43
I've heard through the grapevine that tried to do that with some of our good clients. And our relationship was good enough with those clients that- It didn't work. Yes. They told them, we're using VHI. And from our side, at that point, you're like, you got a really good relationship and whatever you do, you don't want to lose that relationship with that client. And that's some of the way it was the subs that's been with us for over 15 years.
27:12
We got a couple of them that way. it sounds like those contractors or subs are really more part of the family. They are. are. They are 100 % part of our family. Matter of fact, I had a guy out of Southeast Kansas that was my last drop contractor that I brought on. He got married last summer. And I went down there to Fort Scott to his wedding. And him and his wife are sitting there. And I put my hands around both of them. I said, well, welcome to the crazy ass family that we have here.
27:42
As long as you want to work and your work ethic because your work ethic goes a long ways especially and it's not an eight to five job And that's why people don't like sometimes they don't want to come to work For us, you know, we during the summer times or spring times. It's we go to we get to shop at 630 and We might shut down at 630 at night. It might be 730 at night It's where you're at right? You're on the road. only thing you got to do is go back to a hotel room or keep them out of the bar. Well
28:11
I mean, if it's raining, it's hard enough keeping them out of the bar. And then they gotta get back up. But there's drawbacks to working on the road and there's positives too. mean, work on the road, you got your crew there for the whole week. We come home on the weekends. If you're working close to home, it's nice because your family gets to see you. You get to attend some of your child's events if you've got a family. My oldest daughter missed out on a lot of things because dad was gone a lot.
28:42
We've been busy enough. My wife is PRN position. So she works as needed at a hospital, which makes it lot nicer because without her to fill in those gaps, dad's a real jerk. I'm still a jerk a lot of time, I mean, at least I'm not quite- At least they're not raising themselves. Right, right. And the subcontractors is the same way. I mean, some of the guys that are our subs used to be employees of us back in the 90s.
29:11
And I'm all for someone trying to make a better life for themselves, go out and do it, but it's not for everybody. Not everybody wants to take that risk of jumping in. And even if it's, you went and bought a $50,000 drop plow back in the day and you started putting drops in, that's what one of the guys did, him and his dad. His dad was a retired school teacher. And I look at Jim, I'll be like, why are you doing this?
29:37
He's a Vietnam vet, know, he's gotta go to work. He'd do something. Right. can't set it home. So, so he helped start putting drops in. They did that in like 04, 05, 06. I was like, you need to buy a drill. You're out. You're gonna, you're really hard working guy, but you're gonna work him too hard for too little. Right. Yeah. You need to get bigger. You need to get a drill. And they did that, man. Ever since that, they, they've really not been.
30:06
They've worked in Oklahoma a little bit, Kansas, Nebraska. I know I got a buddy up in Iowa that's a contractor. He calls every now and then. He's like, I'd to get those boys back. And I was like, if they get a slow time, we'll find some. And they only like to do town work. So I do call Tom up in Iowa every now and then and be like, hey, I got a little free time with these guys. OK, perfect. And they go up there and work. But he's 19 years in the business, and he never had to.
30:35
Never had to bid any work. I was going to ask, that's a good point. So, you know, obviously there's a ton of underground contractors. Oh yeah. In general, I guess, would you say you're all pretty good at working together on things like that? You try to do the courtesy call, you know, background check a little bit. What do know about these people? Sometimes the people that sell the equipment, I call them. Hey, what do you know about these guys? Are they good dudes? Do they show up every day? Yeah.
31:05
Do they got good driving records? their parents needs to be somewhat neat? All those kinds of things. Or do they got junky equipment? know, it's going to break down. Or are we going to be running to the parts store because things break down all the time? they are the good guy? You know, if they give a good effort, that's a lot of it. But sometimes you don't know. I hired a couple of us last year and it's kind of like sometimes you hire an employee. I can run a backhoe. OK. We had a guy come out and he...
31:33
had a hard time getting the outriggers down. Okay, well maybe it's a different type of backhoe. Given the benefit of the doubt, so to speak. But a lot of times it's not that situation. They're applying for something that they can't really do. And sometimes I think there's some subs that probably say they can do some things that they necessarily can't once you get them out in the job site environment. So much of that is just like, you just learn it on the job. Yeah, I mean, like for us, I had a little bit of experience in the early 90s.
32:03
And I started out at the bottom of like literally the bottom of you. walked behind the plow or I turned the reel on a cat and everybody's like, what do mean? If you haven't ever seen how a plow train works, nobody's really going to understand it. But those that watch this that understand that, was the gopher. I was the grunt. I was the guy that dug the cable out, took it out of the chute. I'm still that guy some days. It don't bug me to do any job.
32:33
But there's certain positions, like my partner, whenever I came here in 99, Richard was like, make sure we take care of that guy. And I was like, oh, okay. Well, he's like, he can run any piece of equipment. you know, he ran a four lever backhoe, non canopy, like 70, his dad was a plumber. for a foot swing, there's not a lot of people out there that can run everything like he can on a backhoe, not to mention the other things that he can do.
33:03
And he was a very key part, but that's stuff that, you he was taught when he was 13. Yeah. Richard grew up doing it. Right. Bob's kid, Richard, he started them out on a backhoe covering up. Uh, you know, they did, they did plumbing a lot of times and he was covering up stuff at 11, 12 years old. Is that legal? If it's your own kid, I suppose it is. I mean, they got away with it. You can't do those things now. Yeah. Times are a little different. Times are changed a lot. Um, but we know we don't get into.
33:30
to deep sewer, we don't really do any sewer work or any of that kind of stuff, but you kind of trial and error, you ask around, you find out what you can about a sub and referrals. does your training look like, whether it's a new employee or a subcontractor? If it's an employee that we hire, they start out just like I did at the bottom. Work your way up. Work your way up. can figure out pretty quick.
33:59
Once you start figure eight and cable, hire, I hire, if we got work real close to home, I hire some high school kids. I want them over 16. If they can work and their parents will let them work more than 40 hours, they sign a waiver. A lot of times it's over 18, just for the insurance reasons. We make them sign a waiver so that they don't drive stuff. Just safety sign. Are your crews fairly consistent or do the guys mix it up in terms of who they work together with?
34:29
Um, no, they're pretty consistent. We've a couple of key guys on each crew. Um, you know, we all have different titles. The vice president and he's, you know, head ditch digger. It's like I call him. Yeah. He runs a crew and then he's, he was actually hired full time. Uh, before I was, he was there, think in 97. Uh, when I come on in 99, I knew a lot of the guys that was there previously and I didn't know this guy and,
34:58
I always called him Two Beer Kenny because when he first came, was a good kid. We did a job together and got done at the end of the day. was like, you want to drink some beers? And he's like, sure. So I went and bought a case of beer. After about two beers, he's giggling. I was like, you're not drunk? He's like, not like you. Good God, you're a fish. I was like, ran a bar for a while, so those things can happen. But training-wise, they start out at the bottom. I worked their way up. We've got guys that work for us now.
35:27
They started that way and Woody, example, Vaughn, they started out turning the reel. Vaughn's one of our best backhoe operators we got. Woody, he can run a plow like Vaughn. They got more than one skill. We don't just hire somebody for one particular position. I hire them. I hire them at an entry level position and try to work them into it. I have hired some people that say they've got backhoe experience because we've heard through the grapevine they do. And if they do, then we hire them for that reason.
35:55
I assume there's probably, you know, you've got the overall family environment of the company, but I'll bet there's a sub level of that in those crews as well. Yeah, we try to try to create it. I mean, if you get out of line or you're not pulling your fair share away, the boys are going to keep you. Yeah. And we got, you know, Woody, we call him Woody, Woody named Brian, but he, he's been there 25 years, much like I hired him actually.
36:25
after I came here, he left us just for a little bitty bit and came back to work. He's a Saudi vet. So, you know, I love veterans because thank you for the service to their country first and foremost, but also their work ethic is impressive. mean, a lot of those guys, you know, they got their schedule. Don't mess with their schedule. It's like for Wood, I think he's up at five o'clock in the morning. I got another guy that was in Afghanistan.
36:54
I think he goes to the gym at 3.30, 4 o'clock in the morning. It's their clockwork. They are just every day. It's the same thing. Yeah. they have a very, I wouldn't say thin line of patients, but if you get out of line, they're going to let you know. Yeah. And first time might be really nice. The second time, you know, the younger generation, I call them, they get a little tougher or they quit one or the other.
37:24
because it's not the easiest job to do. I mean, it's not a hard job to do. just really, honestly, you gotta- Well, frankly, I mean, you're outside all the time, in different places. When somebody comes in and asks, what's the requirements here? And this is how hard up we are for labor. I say, you got a driver's license? Can you show up to work not just one day, but like five days in a row? We call that a weekday. I mean, week payroll. Can you do that?
37:52
And last but not least, we would like to see pee in a cup and not piss hot. You know, if you, if you got to be around a heavy equipment for us, it's just a safety thing. mean, just talk, you know, and unfortunately sometimes we lose people that before we even get to the hiring process, they can't get past that part. And I know in Missouri here, it's, legal to do that stuff. Um, but you know, in Kansas it's not so, and on our job sites, it's not either.
38:21
Yeah, we don't really have you got to able to function around the equipment, right? You know, obviously, you know, most of what you do in the broadband industry and you know, be the bead topics coming up and and the Baba compliance. Do you how do you think that's going to affect your guys is roll? Everybody's chasing the bead money. Yeah. I mean, not everybody, but a lot of clients are a lot of people call us and say, hey, we want on your list. And it's like, what list we're to get this bead money. You are. Yeah. How are you going to get it? Are you sure you're going to get it?
38:51
So for us, we take the clients that we can negotiate contracts with. For us, it's better to negotiate something than have to bid something. I feel sorry because we've let some clients down. That's the way I feel. Like Rainbow, they've had some work and we were just too busy. We couldn't do it. I had to tell them no. It got to the point where they actually thought we were mad at them. And I was like, I'm not mad at you. You just can't do it, man. It stinks. But buy an American first.
39:21
We try to buy all of our products and whether it's one of those jobs or not, we try to do that all the time. I think it's good to try to keep your economy in the United States as local as you possibly can, if you can. Sometimes you got to go outsource, know, a years back when that tsunami hit Japan, there was a fiber shortage. What happened here in COVID when they shut down the plants, there was a fiber shortage. We bought cable ahead of time with art off.
39:49
thinking Ardolf was coming down the pipeline. I canceled some of those jobs, should have kept the order out because what happened was the price went crazy, inflation went crazy. You couldn't get certain products. And that was probably one of the biggest challenges in the last two, three years was, is material going to be there? Is the client going to have the material or are we providing it? And you got to find your supplier to help you do that or multiple suppliers is how we had to do it because everybody was in the same boat.
40:19
Tyco closure and not everybody carried them and everybody got him in about the same time Well, you get an allocation of 50 or you get an allocation of 100 and that's where that's where we come in We're able to work with our manufacturers and and a lot of times You know, we take care of the big customers that are having big projects and we can schedule those Schedule those deliveries and and you know, see it may seem like a big huge PO on the front end but we work with the customers to deliver that product so
40:49
you know, they're in the loop. If there's another shortage and you don't have the product, you don't have a lot of work to do. Well, and you know, certain clients plan for it. We got one, we're going to do a project later this year. I know they got all the cable. They've been buying hand holes. They've been buying splice closures to prepare for it because when we did one of their grant jobs, we were waiting on stuff. Yeah. And that stinks if from a contractor side, that stinks. If you got to pull up your equipment and go someplace else rather than finish the job.
41:18
It just cost you more to go back. Added cost. Well, awesome. I think we're going to wrap it up here. I appreciate you coming in again and hopefully you can find your truck out there in the snow bank. Put it four-wheel drive, lock them in, let's go. We'll tell you out if we have to. It's awesome. I appreciate you having me. It's a time. Thank you. Thank you.
41:45
I just wanted to say thanks again to Matt for coming into town and being on the show with us. Matt's a great dude, great personality. He's always a lot of fun, but he can be serious when he needs to as well. And we just thanks again to him and Bob Hole Inc. for what they do with us and for a lot of our shared customers. So thanks again, Matt. And as always, if you need help with...
42:12
a project or looking for representation here in the Midwest, check us out here at CBM, it's CBMRep.com. Thanks again for joining us on Power the Network. Like, comment, subscribe. And until next time, we'll see you next time.
