Arc Herkimer’s Post

Transcript

Hi, I'm Kevin Crossley, and this is executives and golf carts Having fun. President and CEO of our Kirkhammer. I take big swings for the organization and one of those big swings was our acquisition of the MV Golf and Event Center. 175 acres of pristine property, eighteen holes of golf, restaurant, bar and an event tent overlooking the beautiful Mohawk Valley. Well, welcome to the Envy Golf and Event Center, again owned and operated by our Kirkhammer and my special guest today and executives and golf carts having fun. Is Jim McCarthy of Northland Communications who serves as their President. And we're going to be having a lot of fun with Jim today. And here he is. Jim, welcome to MB Golf and Event Center. Kevin, how are you? Great. Good to see you. Let's load your club. Alright, we are ready to rock'n'roll. So how are you? I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. How are you? Very good. Everything good with the family? Yeah, everyone's great. They had their big Taylor Swift weekend last week. Ohh time. Ohh Foxborough. I didn't have to go but they haven't had time of the life. Ohh fantastic. My daughters and my wife First law. That's great. Yeah. Alright, let's see if we can warm up, make a couple of putts. You know, started by community members, really. There's no telephone service in that area and that's pretty common throughout the country, OK? There's over 1000 independent telephone companies still throughout the country and they filled in the voids where AT&T at that time wasn't serving, hadn't gotten there yet. So a handful of community members got together and literally strum cable across fence post in order to connect, to connect each other. My grandfather started working there somewhere around 1920. Acquired the company in 1926, OK. And so it's been in our family ever since 1926, alright. Up until about 1980 it really remained a sleepy rural independent telephone company, primarily rural residential customers. And 1980 my father started all page small paging business and then 1982 with the breakup of the Bell Companies Northland started fantastic. You know one of the things that I've noticed about your company because I know a number of your employees is that. I get a real sense that it is a family atmosphere and one of the things that I think I'm guessing that you pride yourself on is that you have a lot of employees that have been with you for a very long period of time. And I think that speaks volume to you know who you guys are and what you're doing and how you manage that organization. Absolutely. It's it's more than just a nice thing, it's a strategic part of our business. Our business is about providing higher level service to our customers and that's 100%. Dependent and engaged employees, if we can't provide our employees a great experience, there's no way that's going to translate into a positive team member experience. So yeah, absolutely. Which then leaves, it turns into longevity with our employees, absolutely. As usual, the puts on the practice green all went in. Yes, of course. It's the same thing when you're on the practice range. You know you're gonna always hit the ball beautifully there. And yeah, and you come out here and the world is different. Well, you know, one of the things that I think also that I've been impressed with with your company is that you are very socially conscious. And you know, I think that I'd like you to to kind of speak to that and and what that means for you and your employees in terms of what you do for the community and giving back. Sure. And again, once again this goes back to my father, he had a, he had a couple had three principles they ran in the company. You spend a third of your life at work, It should be a nice place for everyone. Go the extra mile for your customer. Absolutely. And be a good neighbor. Great. And I mean being socially responsible with the communities, give back. And our businesses are all local, they're dependent. And so the better the community, the better our business will be. We've really formalized that process over the last couple of years. We've implemented a system called EOS entrepreneurial operating system. And so it's pretty structured cadence as well as format. And we meet as a executive team every Thursday morning from exactly 8:30 to exactly 10 meeting start very start and stop then Yep, OK And then and then we go into quarterly planning meetings where we determine where we are. Against their annual goals are the most important things we need to do over the next few days. So we make decisions that will enable us to keep that customer for 20 years, not for three years. Our contracts are three years, but we look to, we make decisions, right. What do we need to do to keep that customer to renew for 20 years? Well, because as you know in business it's so much easier to maintain customers than it is to find customers and you know it. I think it speaks volumes as you talk about those numbers in terms of what people feel about working with your. Everybody. And you know what I and I've said forever, people do business with people they like and that really goes a long way and it's obvious what you guys have done is is been a a perfect example of that. One of the things that when I got out of college, I came right back immediately, OK and and I love what I do. So I'm very fortunate. But I think you know one of the expectations is, you know if if any of the grandchildren were to come back, you know an expectation that significant amount of time where they work somewhere else and if so much experience you you gain by working for somebody else, maybe working for a larger organization. Not only is it a benefit to the individual, I think you'll bring back skills and mindsets that. Don't exist currently with their organization. I think it's mutually beneficial. Nothing's forced, right? So if some if, if one of the next generation is interested in in has the skill sets, it can be successful. But if there's an expectation and they're forced into it, I think that's when you start seeing them not going to fly not only the business but essentially the family breaks up. Yeah. And that's always a shame when that happens and it does happen, you know, there's no question that happens a fair amount. So, all right, let's see if we can make a plot here. It seems like you've also thought through the the whole concept of saying do we have the internal talent to do the kind of things that we we need to do and so if we don't let's go out and get it. And I think that is a a great perspective to have as you try to grow your company well, I think we're we're really fortunate in a sense. Just as much as we're learning from the new people that have come on. The new team members are learning an equal amount from the existing team. So it's not that ones better than the other, right. But the combined, the combined output is just is tremendous because we've found so many times that just because maybe you're technically have the aptitude to do, we need to do. It's the cultural aspect. It just doesn't fit. It's a game changer. Yeah. And so, yeah, so that's a key component. We've really worked hard and through our interview process and screening processes. But also my two were possible, UM one of the final steps typically is whatever department that person be joining we'll we'll pull a couple members from that department and they're part of the interview process as well. Ohh, OK and make sure I can get their input. We brought on some great talent but we've had a couple of positions mainly because we're really focused on getting the right person who had open for over a year. So that's that's tough, that is different but fortunately we've but we've had some huge wins. In the past two years of people, we've brought on it not only the executive team but throughout the organization. Yeah, that's great. So it's been a thrill to have you today. Ohh, thank you. It's been a thrill to be here and I can't think of a better way to spend a Friday.