Host Taylor White welcomes Lynn Miller, the President of Miller Earthworks, to the podcast this week to explore his remarkable journey from a rather modest start to leading a successful family-owned business. Highlighting his unique approach to excavating which involves focusing on niche projects that larger companies often overlook, Lynn discusses with Taylor the importance of fostering strong relationships with customers and employees, the challenges of steady growth, and the benefits of keeping business local.
Lynn’s story emphasizes key themes such as balancing business expansion with personal life, cultivating a supportive company culture, and the value of mentorship. From making smart financial choices to prioritizing work-life balance, our guest provides practical advice for anyone looking to start or grow a business. His conversation with Taylor here today also covers navigating economic shifts, investing in employees, and building a company rooted in loyalty and integrity. In essence, Lynn's journey serves as a powerful reminder that success isn’t just about growth—it’s about staying true to your values, investing in people, and creating a legacy of integrity.
Episode topics:
- The importance of focusing on smaller, niche jobs in the excavating industry
- How to foster a loyal, motivated workforce through employee involvement and care
- Balancing business growth with personal and family life
- The value of mentorship and having trusted advisors in business
- Keeping operations local and building strong, long-term relationships with clients
- Navigating financial challenges, from debt management to strategic growth
- The role of faith, family, and community in shaping business decisions
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Episode transcript:
Lynn Miller: One of those things that happened and this blew my mind. I was like, “That's the dumbest idea I ever heard of.” One of the guys was like, “We need AC in our shop.” And I was like, “Are you kidding me?” And that was an important thing to most of my guys. So we got AC in our shop.
Taylor White: Welcome back, everybody, to the CONEXPO-CON/AGG Podcast. I am your host, Taylor White. This podcast is brought to you by our good friends over at Komatsu. Thank you, Komatsu, for being the sponsor of this show. With me here today, I have somebody that we actually just discussed, and we both share this love for black trucks, which is fantastic. So we already have something in common. I have Lynn Miller from Miller Earthworks. Thanks for coming on.
Lynn Miller: Hey, Taylor. Nice to be here. Great to hang out with you. Looking forward to it.
Taylor White: Yeah, 100%, man. I'm very excited about this one. Like I said, I was doing a little bit of research on you beforehand and you guys definitely, I love that because your wife is a big part of the business as well, too, right?
Lynn Miller: That's correct. Yeah.
Taylor White: Yeah. You guys are like a family run business, and much like us as well, too. And I want to talk about your growth. And because you guys were originally started in the ‘90s, but rather than me maybe kind of share a little bit about your story, because I find it very interesting. Maybe you could just kind of explain to people if you were to summarize what it is you do.
Lynn Miller: Yeah. Basically started out trenching back in 1997. Now we're pretty much a full fledged excavating company. Our niche market, I would say, would be doing the small jobs with the larger equipment that the big guys don't want to do. So we do have larger equipment, and a lot of our jobs are smaller jobs. They're one, two, and three and five day jobs where a lot of guys that have the size equipment that we do maybe aren't content with that.
Taylor White: I can relate to that as well, too. That's us. And honestly, sometimes, I know that there's different struggles with different scales. And what's interesting about the podcast is I get to talk to people that are doing projects that they're on for multiple years, and then I have people that are on projects like yourself for a day, two days, and every week you're rotating through jobs. And that's kind of like our business as well, too. And I know that the back end of that is actually, I find far more than these longer commercial projects because it's a constant battle of, okay, you're pricing enough work to stay ahead of the guys and stay away to stay ahead of the business, but you're rotating through the job so quick, and there's a bunch of different moving parts, and you got to float your machinery. So what do you find about the size that you're at right now? If you were to compare it to a larger commercial business, what makes what you do dynamic or interesting?
Lynn Miller: We have the privilege of designing or solving people's problems, rather than maybe going off of somebody else's idea of what would make a project correct or do exactly what the customer wants, we get the opportunity to help the customer walk alongside them and find out what they want and bring a solution. That brings me a lot of life in what I do. I do mostly sales and a few other things that business owners do, I guess, but I'm solely in charge of sales, and so I love to bring people solutions.
Taylor White: Nice. And you're very humble with saying a few other things that business owners do, because I know and you know that that's a lot of things. And it's not just a during the day kind of deal, but what inspired you? I guess what I'm interested in about your story is kind of like the slow growth approach to building your business to where it is today, because you're not a small business in my eyes, but you're also not a large hundreds and hundreds of employees. So what was kind of your approach for getting your business to where it is today?
Lynn Miller: So, first of all, we've had some very humble beginnings. We started out with pretty much nothing. I grew up on the farm helping dad. We're in the midwest, so nothing happens in a big way. For example, our population in our county right now is right around 61,000. I just turned 50 this year. Thanks. And when I was 16, our population in our county was 65,000. So our population is decreasing. So slow growth was not necessarily an option. It's just the way it works. So small communities, very loyal people. So there's not a lot of people jumping on board with a young contractor and saying, “Oh, hey. Let's use him.: You've got to earn people's trust. So we have a lot to be thankful for. Most of all, Jesus Christ’s saving grace. But we have a lot to be thankful for in people growing with us over the years. I got the opportunity to work with some of the grandsons of my original customers way back in the day when I started trenching. So that's really fun.
Taylor White: Yeah. I love that. We share the same thing here. A big part of our business is septic systems. And what's really neat is there's a lot of replacement septics that we'll go to because I'm in a rural area as well, too. And they'll be like, “Your grandfather installed the original septic 45 years ago.”
Lynn Miller: I love it.
Taylor White: Or, “Your dad did this 30 years ago.” And that's a really cool kind of turnaround thing. It's interesting because I'm from a smaller town as well, too. We don't have as many people as you, but I'm near our main hub, Ottawa, which is a big big city. But what do you think is kind of interesting being like where you are and what would you advise to somebody that was starting their own business in a smaller town? What was your mindset into it? Like, “Okay. Here we go. Don't try to overextend or overreach and try to keep money in the bank. Don't try to finance everything. Don't try to leverage yourself with too much debt, grow with the economy,” sort of deal.
Lynn Miller: First of all, back to those humble beginnings. I'm going to just tell you a quick story. I don't want to get lost in the weeds. That first trencher, that first piece of equipment that I bought, I was working part time on the farm for dad and he was encouraging me, like anytime you got digging to do, you go do it because farming isn't great. All right. I borrowed money from a neighbor to buy that first piece of equipment. And I'll never forget I couldnt make my payment one time. And so my wife and I sat in his living room and I was like, “Man, I'm sorry.” And he was like, “You know what?” He said, “Pay me whenever you can.” And that's where we started out with, yes, debt is a real part of our business model. I would love to say that, “Hey. We're cash basis,” but that's just not the way it works. And back to that slow growth thing. It's a huge investment. Yes, overextending is a big part of it. That 25% debt versus total worth, that's a pretty important part. For me, once I start getting up into that 50% range, that's too risky for me. So yeah, slow growth is part of that.
Taylor White: Nice. What were some key milestones in your business that you notice are like turning points that were like, “Okay. This is now allowing us to go to that next step.”
Lynn Miller: So, good question. So back in ‘07, that's 10 years after I started. At that point, I had three pieces of equipment. I was full time, overwhelmed. My first long term employee started with me, and he's still with me today. He's my project manager. He's dispatching guys. He's scheduling people, that kind of thing. That was a milestone for me. ‘08 and ‘09 were kind of banner years for us. We started doing some bigger jobs that proved to our neighbors and actually probably proved to ourselves that we were legit. Then I would say the next big milestone was 2015 and ‘16, probably. We did a 200-car rail siding that was about 5 miles from the shop here. And that was pretty significant in our company, just getting us to the next level. And then in 2019, we actually rebranded. I split the hauling and the excavating and still very much run it from the same office, same sister company, basically. So we rebranded, went to Miller Earthworks. So that was challenging. There's a lot of work. But I'm really glad we did. Kept saying bank accounts, everything. We just changed. We just rebranded. And then at that same time, I hired a business advisor. Probably one of the best things I ever did. And his advisor, maybe I'm showing my pet peeves a little bit, too. He's not a coach, all right? He's a mentor. He's a business advisor. He helps me through some, maybe it's an HR issue. Maybe it's trying to figure out when the right time is to upgrade a piece of equipment. And he's a solid dude. He's been with me for a long time, has no skin in the game, but he's a mentor. He's an advisor. That was monumental.
Taylor White: More and more guys and girls that we talked to on the podcast, they say the exact same thing, though, that they have found a third party that mentors them that they seek advice from and they find a lot of solitude or a lot of, I don't know, just advice. And good things come from that. And I love hearing that. And I'm third generation, so for me, that's kind of my father so I was able to use him still to this day as an advisor, or we go back and forth or we bounce stuff off each other. But that's really interesting that you say that. But what I am interested in, though, ‘08, ‘09. Historically, when you go back, those were some bad years for the economy. Pretty interesting for you to say that ‘08, ‘09 those are some pretty banner years. Why do you think that?
Lynn Miller: Again, we’re in the midwest. We don't have the highs and lows in our economy that affect the coasts or the larger populations. So we're really ag based in our economy here locally. So to be honest, our economy is always a little bit depressed. So we got some big jobs locally. We have a couple large pipeline companies that have gas storage fields. We have salt underground, so they wash out caverns and actually store petroleum products underground in those salt caverns. So it was during that time that some of those companies were doing some big stuff. And, yeah, that helped us through times when others of you probably were frustrated and struggling with a bad economy.
Taylor White: Yeah, I can imagine that that was super tough. But that's interesting. And also for us, too, we're kind of in a protected economy here, too, because I'm close to Ottawa, which is the nation's capital. So it's a lot of government money, a lot of federal employees and stuff like that. But one thing that we dealt with over, and you mentioned 2019, but when COVID came out, the construction industry here absolutely just boomed. Was it the same where you are, or is it, like you said, it just stayed where it normally is?
Lynn Miller: I would say we saw something similar to what you did, Taylor. The last few years were super busy. I would say it's maybe tapering off a little bit more to the 2019 level. We're busy. We're working every day. We're putting in the same hours we were putting in. So we're still busy. But we don't have that backlog that we did two years ago.
Taylor White: Whenever you're super busy, are you seasonal at all where you are? Do you get winter and stuff like that?
Lynn Miller: That's pretty random. There's winters that we'll get at least 18 or 20 inches of snow throughout the winter. There's other winters where we don't even get six inches. So we'll never freeze up for a month at a time. Our ground might freeze for two weeks and then we'll hit a thaw, and we'll have some 40, 50 degree days and a week or two of that, and then it might get cold again. We're in a really dry climate, unfortunately, and so we don't get a lot of moisture. Often our moisture in the winter comes more as ice than snow.
Taylor White: So are you able to keep going year round? For us, we're seasonal. I got to make a year's worth of revenue in essentially five months, maybe six months. So are you guys year round? Like month to month you're good to go?
Lynn Miller: Yes. For the most part, winter is not as profitable. We usually, up to Christmas, we're going pretty strong. By the time Christmas hits, we start getting into that really cold weather. January, February are typically not as strong from a sales perspective, but that varies on weather. If we get sunny days, my phone's ringing. If it is wet and cold, my phone doesn't ring as much. And so I do guarantee my guys 40 hours a week. I see it as a cost of doing business, but there's not a long enough winter to kick them to the curb.
Taylor White: Wow. So, no winter layoffs and guaranteeing them 40 hours a week.
Lynn Miller: Yeah. And I've tried to do that all my years. So for what we do, we're very diversified. It's not like one guy gets in the same piece of equipment and does the same thing every day. So expertise and experience that's not really sitting at the coffee shop waiting for a job in the spring, I usually figure about a four year learning curve. If you hire somebody green from the time that you hire them to where they can do about anything on any piece of equipment, I usually figure four years. So the last thing I want to do is say, “Hey, I don't have any work for you,” and take the risk of them finding somebody that will give them a year round job.
Taylor White: Yeah. The more versatile that people are, the easier it is to keep them busy. And even when we hire people, I say that as well, too. I'm like, “Listen, the more versatile you can be–” For us, we have extreme winters like -40 celsius. We plow snow. We get 300 cm of snow a year, which is feet and feet of snow. So I tell them the more prone you are to learn how to plow snow or run a loader, run a skid with a plate on it, the easier it is to keep you busy. But do you find that it's easier than to keep your employees motivated or like culture up and just that kind of energy in the business? Because they know, “Hey. The person I work for now, Miller Earthworks, they're going to guarantee me 40 hours,” versus the next guy or girl who isn't.
Lynn Miller: Keeping morale up and keeping your employees, that's kind of the million dollar question. For me, I often tell my guys, “We're nothing without you guys. I can't do this without you. This company won't go far without you guys.” So, they are willing to overlook my mistakes and my fumbles and they're good dudes. They're the face of our company as far as how to keep morale.
There's several things I do that I don't feel like I'm at the top of the pay scale locally. I'm probably at the top end, but I'm definitely not the top, top employer as far as pay. I treat my guys how I want to be treated or how I would want to be treated if I was working for the other guy. And I don't know how many deep tails you want, but I give them perks. You've got to take care of your guys. All my guys carry credit cards. All right. Company credit cards. So often they're working by themselves or maybe with one other guy. And we often work directly with the owner as a customer. And so I buy their lunch and I pay them straight through lunch. I would rather they take the customer to lunch and say, “Hey,” and get to know the customer. Relationships are key. We all know that. So customer relations, man. I can't be everywhere. So I can't take every customer to lunch. I can't do that. So if your guys can interact in a healthy way, build those relationships with your customers, maybe that's through lunch, maybe it's something else. That's one of the ways.
I love to involve my guys in decisions. Small, large. I like to discuss it here at the office. So we meet at the office every morning before we go to work. They get hop in company trucks and, and go their different ways. In the evenings, they all come back here. We got a pretty healthy, healthy environment. I usually have to push them out of the office. They clock out, but they hang around and talk. And I'm like, “All right, guys. I got to go in. I got a family inside. So get out of here.” So anyway, that's super healthy. I like to involve them in decisions. A couple years ago, the last quarter of the year, I had some extra money to spend and I brought them in on a rainy day, and I said, “All right, guys.” I said, “I've got some money to spend.” And I gave them all a piece of paper and a pen. I said, “Everybody, write down the top 10 things that you think our company needs.” And I said, “There's no limits, you figure?” And so there were obviously a variety of things. And so the trucking guys, they focused more on some of the things they saw we needed on the trucking side. The guys that spend more time in the shop– All of my guys spent a little bit of time in the shop. Some spend more than others. All of my guys can run equipment, too. So the shop guys tended to focus a little bit more on tools and that kind of thing. And then I gave everybody the opportunity to explain what their 10 things were and why they felt they were important. And then I gave them a new piece of paper or I typed them up. A couple days later, I gave them these new papers with a list. And I said, “Now, number these in order of importance from 1 to 10.” So one of those things that happened and like, this blew my mind. Like, that's the dumbest idea I ever heard of. One of the guys was like, “We need AC in our shop.” And I was like, “Are you kidding me?” And that was an important thing to most of my guys. So we got AC in our shop. And it rained from a new work truck to AC in the shop to this and that. So stuff like that, just involving your guys in decisions, letting them know that, “Hey,” you might not go with what they recommend, but you would like their input. That brings a lot of ownership for them.
Taylor White: Yeah, it means a lot to the employees. Again, like a big point where you said is treat employees how you would want to be treated and it's treat people how you would want to be treated. You learned that in elementary school, and that is something that is so undervalued in saying. Because when you actually think about it or on a day to day basis as a business owner, if you actually thought about it, you're like, “Okay. if I was that guy sitting in the excavator, how would I want to be treated? What are the things that I would want to hear from my employer? And I love that you did that because it doesn't necessarily mean, Oh, I want a new work truck or this or that. But they're like, “Okay. Well, he's listening. He's listening to us.” And that is awesome, because that speaks volume.
Lynn Miller: We have a lot of fun together. We have pretty serious chats, and we laugh a lot. So I love to treat them well. I can always treat them as well as I'd like. And obviously, there's limitations with what you can and can't do, just from a financial standpoint and also tax basis. One of the things I can do is I've tried to brand in a way that has us pretty clean as far as just the way our equipment appears, how we keep our job sites, and then also how we appear personally. That's important to me. So, I buy all their clothes. Obviously, we have shirts that are, have company logos or coats, all of that stuff. And then their jeans and boots. I'm like, I don't want anybody wearing ratty jeans. And the way I can control that is if I buy their jeans for them. So, they can go buy the jeans they want, the style they want, they've got a company credit card, and they can buy the type of steel toed shoes that they want. So there are just things like that that you can do to help them understand their value.
Taylor White: I love that. And it raises a good question, because I would say probably four or five years ago, we were more like that as well, too. But with growth, and this is what interests me a lot, is there's too many employees, and there's too many things going on that last time we bought all the high vis for all the guys. It was $17,000, $18,000, and that was just shirts and sweaters. And then you get everybody's input. And we used to all come to the shop in the morning, and they'd clock in at the shop, come back, clock out at the shop. But once you get 20, 25 guys, and it's like, “Okay. There's 25 guys that I'm paying a half hour, 45 minutes in the morning to just drive from the shop to the job site. And at the end of the day, from the job site to the shop,” you start adding that up. We did the math one year and there's like $100,000 to $105,000 in wages that we spent on travel that we don't account for when we estimate a job. Because we estimate, “Okay. We're going to be on this job site for 40, 55 hours, work 20 hours, whatever the job takes.” In your profit is covering your overhead, but necessarily all these extra hours that we were adding up. So it's interesting because when you have fewer employees, I found that it was really easier and controllable to do those sorts of things and be like, “Okay. We're all getting new jackets.” Well, now we wanted to give everybody new jackets for $350, and eventually, yeah, you have to do that, but not every year or getting all their input all the time. So do you plan on staying, I guess kind of like how you are? Or do you kind of see, “Okay. We want to get more guys,” and then do you kind of see maybe, “Okay. Some of the stuff that we do now maybe wouldn't work if I had 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 guys.”
Lynn Miller: You make an excellent point, Taylor, and thanks for bringing that up. I understand that position, and I respect it. Because of the business model and the size that we are, I can do things that larger companies can. And obviously, bottom line, we have to make money or we're not going to be in business. So I get that. And there would come a time, obviously, there's a threshold there where you can't do as much of that stuff. And so I totally understand that. So because of my business model of staying close to home and all that kind of stuff, it does limit my growth. I'm not saying I'll never have 20 people. Right now, that's not really an option with where our local economy is. But, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. That's a very good point. And I don't want to isolate or make people who don't have the ability to do something like that feel like they're not doing enough.
Taylor White: Yeah, for sure. And ultimately, we can make the decision. And don't get me wrong, the guys need all new gear, and we'll be buying them all new gear and stuff like that. But for me, it turns into, whenever you do stuff like that, or we're going to switch back to everybody coming and clocking in, all you're doing, essentially it's not going to bankrupt the company, but you're just taking from your net profit. That's pure profit that you're grabbing from. Which in my eyes, when we had the tough talk with the guys– Because it was just this year that we started saying, “Hey, guys got to drive to site and you're clocking in at site and you clock out when you leave site.” And some guys have been here 9, 10 years and they're like, “What? Why are you changing it all of a sudden?” And it's like, “Well, because the numbers don't lie. And if we keep running like this and everybody keeps like–” There's going to be nothing left over. And they're like, “What are you going to do with that money?” It's like, “Guys, we need GPS. That's $67,000. Okay? We can upgrade our loader. We need a new loader. There's different stuff in the shop that we can upgrade. Tools, equipment, gear, all that stuff.” That money we're saving is not for us to be like, “Oh, more profit for the business owners. They’re going to buy a Rolex or something.” This is for you guys so that we can have nicer stuff, newer things, and allow us to keep growing, pay you guys more money and do all those sorts of things. So I love it because I think that that's how it has to be. And especially when you're a smaller company, I love that. And I try to, I guess, be nice to build a bigger company because we're around kind of the same size as you as well, too. We have like 15,16 guys this year. Last year was 23.4%. And my main goal, I think, when people ask about growing the business is I want to remain– My grandfather started the business in ‘68, and my grandfather was the type of guy where at the end of the day he had beer with his guys, shoot, hangout, talk. And I respect that. And I love that because we're rural– We have a lot of farm kids and valley kids, we're country people, blue collar and I love that. So trying to grow the business and stay true to who we are is really important. But at the same time, taking that leap and growing and having to adapt to some of that corporate kind of stuff, it's just an interesting take, that's all. But I really like that. You said keeping your job sites close, so you're not traveling super far for work. And what's the reasoning, I guess, behind that?
Lynn Miller: I feel like, for myself, and once again, I've kind of tailored the company to what's important to me, and so my guys fall victim to that. And so we usually put in about 50 hours a week. For myself, I always felt like there's more to life than just there's life outside of work. So a lot of us have families. A lot of us want to go to church on Sunday. There are other things that we want to do. So working seven days a week or working 14 hours days was something that I just wasn't super interested in. And so because of that, if you're driving two hours away, that really cuts into your day. If you're only putting 10 hours in, all of a sudden you're working 6 hours. Well, that doesn't work. So I like to keep my jobs close. So some of the challenges to that, first and foremost, are sales. So that's on me. So what am I bidding my jobs at? And am I taking every call? And during COVID and the years after that, am I weeding through the stuff that we don't need to mess with? So that sales thing can be a challenge.
One of the things that we talked about earlier was relationships. And so most of our work orders are busy, busy, but they're also on paper so that we can see them at a glance, see the whole group of them. And so I had a customer walk in the other day, and we got a counter full of work orders, and he started looking at those work orders. He was like, “Man,” he said, “I know most of these people.” I said, “Yeah.” I said, “That's a fun part, but it's a scary part, too.” And so you're working with people that you know outside of work, and you're working with people that have been in the community forever. And if they go to the coffee shop and they talk, you want them to be saying good things. So treating people right with integrity and honesty is huge in being able to work close to home.
Taylor White: Yeah, 100%. I think that that's key. And it's the same around hereBut even if you didn't know them, word of mouth honestly gets us a lot of our direct business to owner relationship for septics or something. Or they're in the same neighborhood. “Oh, who did your septic? Were you happy with them?” “Yeah, Ken White Construction did it,” and it kind of carries on through there, which is pretty interesting. But what I like about what you said is there's life outside of work, which I struggle more with that. I'm 29. I have two young kids, 3 and 1. And I really struggle with getting home especially in the summertime. Like I said, our season is so short, so when it's go time, it's go time. But it sounds like you really prioritize that work life balance or making sure that you are present or something at home. So is there any kind of tips that you would say to a guy like me that maybe is struggling to get home and his wife's kind of like, “Hey, 7:30 again. What are you doing?”
Lynn Miller: So it's easier for me. Stages of life make a difference, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. So our youngest daughter graduated from high school this spring. So I don't have the young kids at home as an excavator. I think most of us just love our job, maybe not, but I do. I love my job. I could work a lot of hours. But at the end of the day, or no pun intended, we do what we want to do. If we don't want to be at home, we're not going to be at home. So that's one of the things that we prioritize what we love the most. So, I guess, I just encourage you, man. So it can be said that you can sacrifice temporarily for the long term, but I feel like work is the temporary part, the long term is your family. And so what I've always tried to do is to sacrifice the things that will always be there for the things that may not always be there. So my kids aren't always going to be here. So anyway, that's one of the things that helps me try to keep it right. I don't always get it right.
So interestingly enough, now that you asked that, I'll tell you, I had four of my top staff do an evaluation on me here a couple months ago. I've been wanting to do it for a while and I couldn't really get my hands on it. Anyway, I found one that I really, really liked. We tailored it a little bit to what we wanted, but it was really good for me to hear. I got some really, really low marks from some of my staff on how I separate personal life and business. And I was surprised because, man, I thought I was doing all right. And the funny part about it is our oldest daughter is my office manager and so she gave me high marks on that. And she's honest enough. She would've been honest if she thought it was bad, she'd have told me. And so it's kind of funny. But I think part of that is stages of life. How your kids perceive it at 25 is different than somebody might see it when their own kids are 10. And so I think some of that, but it's something I try to get right and I don't always.
One of the things that helped me a lot early on is I got my office out of the house. That changed a lot for me as far as separation. Another thing that I do better with now that I didn't do as good with early on is we train our customers. So if our customers are calling in the evenings or text in the evenings, if I blow their call or I blow their text and I get back with them at 7:00 the next morning, they'll figure it out. All of a sudden they're like, “Oh. He won't answer if I call.” Or, “Oh, he won't text me back. I'll just wait till 5:00 in the morning and he'll text me.” And so I think that's part of it, too. As your wife and kids get older, ask them. Most of the time for me anyway, if I'm going to ask them, usually I know the answer before I even ask it. But I think a lot of us, most of us have enough of a moral compass to know what's a good separation. And it's different for everybody. Culture has something to do with it. You mentioned having to get all your work done and in six, eight months. Well, that's a big difference for somebody that can work year round. Well, there's not quite the pressure. So everybody has a little bit of a different line.
Taylor White: Yeah, it's interesting for us around this area. When I grew up, my dad was not around at home a lot. And then my mom was a hairdresser by trade, so she would cut hair really late at night. So we always kind of had a babysitter looking after us. But in the wintertime is whenever my dad would be home more because the winters were slow. So then that's when we would go snowmobiling or do some ice fishing or stuff like that. Honestly, I remember being super young, and because dad not being home a lot, it always caused a lot of stuff. My mom would be like, ‘Dave, you need to be home more for the kids.” And I just remember growing up hearing that, and I remember telling myself. “I'm never going to be like that.” And I remember saying to my father, “I'm not going to be like that. I'm going to make sure I'm home.” When we had our daughter, Kara, three years ago, “I'm not going to be like that.” And then here I am, kind of self reflecting. And like you said I am aware and I do understand that I should be prioritizing that more. But I look at the business, we've grown over the past three or four years. And if I didn't put in what I put in and the team didn't put in what they put in, I truly don't think we would be set up like we are now, where we have a lot of great assets. We bought another property with a bigger office, and our business is great. And in return, my family gets the fruit of your labor. My family gets to enjoy that. Maybe this march, we're going to go to Disney, enjoy and spend time together. I see it kind of a trade off like that. It is difficult. And it sounds like you kind of really have the understanding of the demands of your business and relating that back to your personal life. But I like the points that you were raising about somebody starting out in business. You got to figure out what's more important and what's not. And I guess, yeah. Did you find it a little more difficult when the kids were younger?
Lynn Miller: Yeah. So one of the things that comes with business is sacrifice. And I get that especially when I was was working by myself those first few years, we had toddlers at home. I would come home and I'd be working on my junkie equipment to try to make sure it was going to work the next day. And fortunately, I was working out here at the house and my shop is right beside the house. So that was nice. But yes, to your point, when you're starting out, there are sacrifices to be made and you can't draw clear lines and say, “I'm locking the office door at 5:00 at night and I'm not going to think about work again until the next day.” That's just not possible. So, although to be fun, it's not an option. And so I understand that. We're almost at the 30-year mark, so I have the opportunity to be able to do some of those things that I would have never been able to do in year 3 or 5.
Taylor White: That's awesome. A lot of our podcast listeners, they listen to for advice on business, obviously, and they get lots of dynamics. They have guys like me that are it's generational business and maybe the generations are growing it, maybe they're not. But also, what I really like hearing about as well, too, is from your perspective and your point of view. So somebody that's listening, that is starting from zero, starting from nothing, what advice would you give to somebody just starting out in the industry?
Lynn Miller: I have a very supportive wife. So early on, my wife was a very vital part of the business. She did all the bookkeeping. She did everything. She came from a family that was pretty low risk. And so we were working through everything together. So if one of us didn't feel comfortable with the purchase or whatever, it didn't happen. So as the business grew, she was more and more involved. That made her busier at home and that was tough. But finding a good wife, like a supportive spouse is a huge thing. And if they're your biggest fan, your biggest cheerleader, that just goes a long way. I know not everybody has the opportunity for that. I'm not, you can be a good businessman without that or business person without that. Don't understand me that way. But that's a huge thing. Having a mentor is a big thing. A banker and an insurance company and an accountant that share similar values. There's good people out there, but they don't all share similar values. And so when you find somebody that sees life kind of like you do, that goes a long way.
The other thing, I know I didn't do well with this, especially early on. I try to do better with it now, just get good input. Ask people. Be more curious. Curiosity is a big thing. Ask people questions about themselves, what they think, what they think about your company. Just be curious about life. So learn to ask advice. Learn to listen to people. Most people have something that you can take away from. It may be on a variety of levels, but most people have something to give just when you're talking to them. If you have employees, this is something that I didn't do well with at all in the earlier years. I'm trying to do better with it now. Have difficult conversations with your employees. It takes it from possibly losing an employee to working through something that causes tension and coming out with a healthy result. Man, that's huge. So having those difficult conversations is a big thing. If starting out, if you cultivate that culture early on, it just gets easier and easier. And so if you're trying to cultivate it at 45 or 50, it's harder. So if you can do it when you're younger, it's just easier to fall into that habit. Building strong relationships with your customers and your employees is so, so big in business.
Taylor White: Yeah, I think relationships, just understanding people. I would say to your point, if you could summarize a lot of your points, it's understanding people and that falls into building relationships with new clients. It falls into understanding your spouse, your kids. It falls into understanding what your employees want, your employees, people that are working for you. And I love the point about confrontation and dealing with that sort of stuff head on. Because there's a lot of times when I'm up in the office or in the morning, the guys are standing around and you're tossing around your head. It's kind of bothering me that this guy's been late for the past two weeks. I go out there and have the conversation with them, but then it's first thing in the morning, and now I'm giving them kind of some crap first thing in the morning. But having those tougher conversations, the smaller, tougher conversations, obviously, there's worse ones than that. But I'm just saying if you let that stuff fester, not the small conversation of talking, telling him to show up and make sure you're on time, it will turn, if you don't have that conversation, it'll turn into something bigger down the road, which is what I've kind of found is just deal with it as it is and kind of grow from there.
But I am interested. I want to ask you about your day to day. How has your day to day kind of changed from when you were running equipment all the time and doing it all? Are you still on site in equipment? Are you in the office? You're estimating operations, that sort of stuff?
Lynn Miller: I'm mostly in sales and operations. I do some estimating. I have a guy in the office here 90% of the time, and he does more estimating as far as off of a print. We do some work off of a previously designed project. So he does all of that. I don't do any of that. I'm on the job site quite a bit, just like in the mornings, getting guys started. If it's a new job, I was the only one that interacted with customers, so I know what he wants. So I'll go out and get guys started. But actually spending time on a piece of equipment, I don't. I love to run equipment. I would still be on equipment if I didn't have anything else to do. Oh, about a month ago on a Saturday, I was like, “You know what? There's an excavator out on the job, and all we're doing is hogging dirt on a pond. I just can't keep my hands off this thing.’ Saturday morning, I went out. Saturday mornings are slow for us at our house because I'm a dad. I'm a girl dad. And so. So there's just really nothing happening early mornings and on Saturdays. So I went out on the job, and I threw dirt for half a day, and it was a lot of fun. So if I don't have any other pressures, I would love to be on a piece of equipment, but it's not the way it works. And I love to interact with people. I love finding solutions to people's problems. So running equipment, probably my first love, but sales, I really enjoy that, too.
Taylor White: So what about succession then? You said your oldest, she's in the office with you. What do you think about succession? Do you and your kids talk about that, what the future of the business is? Do they have any interest in maybe taking it over?
Lynn Miller: So that's actually been a discussion for my business advisor. And I this year, 50 years old, a little ways from retirement or at least it is in my world. So we're talking about it basically what we're putting in place right now is talking about positions without names attached. There's clear management. As far as actual business owners, that's not quite as clear at this point, but in my mind that there's a little bit of time to work that out yet. So I don't feel a lot of urgency. But also, I don't want to be a man at 65. I want somebody else to be the man or woman as far as it goes. I want somebody else to be the day to day guy, the person that answers. So yes, we are talking about succession, but it's not super, super detailed and super urgent at this point.
Taylor White: Yeah, well, I love that. I always like asking, especially you started the business and then you have kids. And I think that that's something great to think about. Like you said, you have a lot of time to even plan for that.
Lynn Miller: I do.
Taylor White: Yeah, you do. And I love talking to people about that. My dad's 60 and he'd say the same thing. He still got lots of time.
Lynn Miller: Right. Well at 60, I want to have it figured out. I want have it figured it out. I want to have names, you know.
Taylor White: Yeah.
Lynn Miller: But one of the things, I want to add this and one of the things that I do have the privilege of, and being a girl, dad, we've got three daughters and I've got the privilege of working with all three daughters. Our youngest daughter details trucks and equipment. And like I said earlier, one of our branding things is keeping everything clean. So she's keeping the cabs clean, she's keeping the windows clean, she's washing. She works hard every day. Our middle daughter, actually, she replaced our middle daughter. Our middle daughter got married and is now living out of state where her husband's from. But she did that before. Our oldest daughter, still an office manager. She does a great job with that. And so the opportunity to work with my kids as a girl, dad, I never expected it.
Taylor White: That's awesome.
Lynn Miller: And so to be able to work with my kids every day, that is super cool.
Taylor White: I love that. I think my father would say the same thing, and I hope for that one day.
Lynn Miller: Right.
Taylor White: I think that would be awesome. But listen, it's crazy how fast the time flies when you're talking to you. And I know that you're a super busy guy, and I really appreciate you coming on the podcast today, Lynn, and sharing your story and what you're doing down there.
Lynn Miller: Well, thanks for having me, Taylor. I want to say, again, we got so much to be thankful for. My family, my employees. As a one man show, I can never do what we're doing today. And there were so many days in the early years that we were praying for that phone to ring, and today that doesn't happen as much as being desperate for work. So we just really have a lot to be thankful for in spite of the boss, you know?
Taylor White:
Yeah, I 100% agree with you there. And it sounds like your employees, the way you talk, it definitely sounds like you are very thankful and you understand, you're very self aware with that. And I look forward to seeing you, your next steps and all that stuff. So thank you very much for coming on today.
Lynn Miller: Thank you, Taylor. Thanks for having me.
Taylor White: This has been the CONEXPO-CON/AGG Podcast brought to you by our good friends over at Komatsu. Thank you very much. Have a good one.