Lynn Electric
| 2018 Q4 | photo by Steven Hertzog
What is your company’s most important commodity or service?
By far our most important commodity is how we treat our customers. In a service business, there is no competitive advantage. Especially in today’s world, the smallest company has access to the same technology as a Fortune 500 company. The only competitive advantage we have is our customer’s experience with Lynn Electric. From the moment we first interact with a customer all the way to when they pay the bill, how we make them feel is our only advantage. Warren Buffett once said in an interview with Savannah Guthrie that, “I have never seen a business fail that has delighted customers. Don’t settle for having satisfied customers. Have delighted customers. Long after you purchase a car, you forget about how much you paid, but you never forget about how they made you feel when you bought the car.”
What is your company’s most important priority?
Our most important priority is providing our employees with the proper training, resources and support so that our daily interactions with our customers reflect the values and priorities of Lynn Electric as a company. We commit to understanding our customer’s business and solving their problems; we commit to delivering on time what we promise; and mostly, we commit to making it easy to do business with Lynn Electric. We spend a lot of time and resources to reinforce this ideal to our employees.
What have been some of the most important aspects of your success?
I think without a doubt the most important aspect of our success has been our relationship with long-term customers—customers who have been using our services both on the construction side and the service side. We are also fortunate to have a leadership team in place that has an average of over 20 years of employment with Lynn Electric and combined industry experience of over 149 years
How many people does Lynn Electric employ? Serve, interact with on a daily basis, and are responsible to?
Lynn Electric has 45 employees. We have a large and diverse customer base. Our electrical service business is mostly comprised of residential, commercial and industrial customers in Douglas County. Our electrical construction and underground divisions perform 95% of our work in the Kansas City metro area on both the Kansas and Missouri sides.
How do you and Lynn Electric, make a positive impact on the Lawrence community?
I think the biggest impact we make is that we help support 45 families, of which 90% live in Douglas County.
What do you see as your personal responsibility and your company’s responsibility to the community?
I think as a small business owner, my responsibility to the community is to support the small-business community by not only buying local as much as possible but also supporting the organizations that support small business, such as the Chamber of Commerce. From a company perspective, we like to support a variety of nonprofits each year in a small but impactful way. Some of our favorites are the North Lawrence Improvement Fund, the Old-Fashioned Christmas Parade, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, among others.
Why did you become involved? or What inspires you? Is there a specific thing, person or incident?
I think I became involved because I like to meet and help people, and I also like to be part of a solution rather than standing on the sidelines and complaining.
What is the biggest challenge you feel Lynn Electric faces?
Like any business that hires people, Lynn Electric is faced with two overwhelming challenges besides the normal challenges of running a small business. First, there is a large gap in skilled labor that every businessperson talks about despite his or her industry. Every industry, blue collar or white collar, has a labor gap. But in my personal opinion, the largest challenge that faces small business is how we, as leaders, are adapting and changing our business models and business thinking to accommodate the needs and desires of millennials? Fifty percent of the workforce will be millennials by 2020, and 75 percent of the workforce will be millennials by 2025. That’s only seven years! Whoever is the most creative at developing millennial leaders will have a competitive advantage in their industry, a happier workforce.
What do you foresee as being the biggest challenge for the future of your industry? And how are you addressing or preparing for it?
As I mentioned earlier, skilled-labor shortage is our biggest challenge. Lynn Electric is actively recruiting high school graduates and individuals who want to make a career change interested in the electrical field. We put them to work and pay for their four-year apprenticeship program in partner with Associated Builders & Contractors Heart of America Chapter in Kansas City. The apprentices work during the daytime and take night classes and online classes for their electrical training. In return, the apprentice agrees to work for Lynn Electric for a certain amount of time after graduating from the apprenticeship program. We are also providing our workforce with leadership training, software training and project-management training. All of our project managers have graduated from the Purdue University School of Construction Management Technology Project Management Institute.
