Transcript

 

Michael Palumbos (00:58.274)

Welcome everybody to the Family Biz Show. I'm your host, Michael Palumbos with Family Wealth and Legacy in Rochester, New York. And today we have Ben Brandstetter from Brandstetter Caroll Welcome, sir. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (01:16.962)

Welcome. Thank you, I appreciate it. Looking forward to the conversation. 

 

Michael Palumbos (01:20.61)

Yeah, pretty, I'm looking at, going through your website and just taking a peek at what Brandstetter Caroll does. You've got some pretty impressive projects that you've put together through the years. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (01:35.918)

Well, I appreciate that. It's we've been around since 1979, so we really had an opportunity to make an impact in a lot of different communities. Starting out in Kentucky, moving into Ohio, and I really spread that out around the eastern half of the US. 

 

Michael Palumbos (01:50.574)

That's great. So we like to do two things. One is I'd love to hear your story about how you entered the family business. That's a different path for everybody. One and two from there, I want to talk about when the company was founded, what were the founders thinking? What were they doing? What did the company do then versus what it does today? So give us an introduction of Ben and your journey. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (02:19.318)

Yeah, so I'm actually fourth generation family business owner going back to my grandfather, great grandfather. They had a asphalt painting business in Cincinnati. And so we saw I'm actually technically fourth generation in that overall lineage, but second generation in our business. And personally, I grew up down in Lexington, Kentucky. And the cover. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (02:48.876)

The rule in our house was you can go to school anywhere you want as long as it's not in the state of Kentucky. whole purpose was to get out, do something else, explore, find out who you are. so in September of 95, I moved down to Atlanta and enrolled at Georgia Tech and got an engineering, civil engineering degree down there. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (03:16.302)

I'd say I squeezed four years into five. And it necessarily the easiest curriculum, but I did end up getting through that and actually met my wife while we were down there. So that was a lot of fun. And getting out of school, going to school for an engineering degree within that architecture and engineering space was great. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (03:45.59)

the first step, so to speak. But the good and the bad thing about our industry, there is a artificial barrier to entry with professional licensure. And so the way it works in engineering and architecture, a little bit different, engineering, you got to pass an exam when you graduate college, and then you've got to work four or five years and then pass another exam to get licensed as a professional engineer. So 

 

Ben Brandstetter (04:14.528)

I kind looked around and made a decision to stay in the Southeast and moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and with a fairly sizable civil engineering firm that had a national presence, but they did not have a presence in Kentucky or Ohio where Brancetor Carroll was located. because the other kind of rule in our family was you can't come back to the family business, to Brancetor Carroll, unless until you get license. So kind of that's the 

 

Ben Brandstetter (04:44.098)

the good and the bad of the artificial barriers to entry. so I, long story short, I passed the PE exam and got those results in early 2005. And my wife was pregnant with our oldest son and we left town and moved to Northern Kentucky into Cincinnati area, which is where all of our engineering at the time was done in our Cincinnati office. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (05:13.848)

Yeah, so. 

 

Michael Palumbos (05:15.19)

You spent how many years and not including college, how many years working for somebody else? 

 

Ben Brandstetter (05:20.622)

Uh, about five. So started graduated in 2000 and left there in 2005. And I'll tell you what that company really, I still maintain a relationship with, some of the people there, but, uh, from a recruiting standpoint, it would, they, I specifically asked them, do you guys have a problem that there's another firm with my name on it, my family's name on it somewhere else? And they said, no. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (05:49.6)

And this is what really stood out. said, we want you to have such a good experience with us that you don't want to go back. They didn't see that as a risk factor. They saw that as an opportunity to recruit somebody. that's what pushed me over the edge to go with them. I'm thoroughly glad that I did. 

 

Michael Palumbos (06:11.81)

That's awesome. That's awesome. In twofold. you know, every family has, and that's why I always ask because I haven't had this journey in a couple or three, four five episodes, be honest with you. It's been a lot of, you know, well, you know, I woke up and, you know, after I was born, we started, you know, shucking corn or doing whatever on the farm or in the, I was behind the seat of an excavator by the time I was 13. 

 

Michael Palumbos (06:40.982)

And there was a lot of journey right into the family business, but this is the other side where it's the family has a rule that says, you've got to go and prove, you know, prove that you want to be here, prove that you can be here. And that this is not, know, you're not entitled to working here, but you got to, right. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (07:02.638)

But 

 

Ben Brandstetter (07:02.918)

and I will add a caveat. I did work for the company while I was in high school. Sure. But running blueprints in a blueprint room and being the rod man on a survey group. So I did have that level of exposure, but it was a different, it was a different experience, it's a different level of professionalism. And actually many of the people that were with us when I was in high school are still with us today. And so it helped 

 

Ben Brandstetter (07:31.816)

having that kind of teenage experience, getting to know various staff on just a very basic level. It's really been fascinating to see how that has evolved over time and many of them are now actually not my partners in the business. 

 

Michael Palumbos (07:47.864)

That's great. When you think about your time with the other firm, what would you say are a handful of things that they did differently than your business, than the family's business that you were able to bring back and introduce and do things? Did anything come to mind? 

 

Ben Brandstetter (08:07.262)

there was a lot. and I thought, you know, when I, when I came back, I thought I was hot stuff because I came from this big 2000 person firm. know all what they know what they're doing. They, they do a real, they did a really good job of getting me to drink the Kool-Aid that they were, that they were making in-house. and so I, and it was from being an engineer, something, it was a concept of very easy to wrap your arms around and they have been 

 

Ben Brandstetter (08:36.31)

very successful using that model. But being a 20 something person coming back, I come in the door and say, okay, well, we need to be doing this, this, this, this. And yeah, and you're laughing, that's great. But, and I tried to implement some of that stuff with the stroke of a pen or overnight, and it just fell flat on its face. But. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (09:02.766)

I have been able to implement a lot of those, the foundational elements that make sense from a cultural perspective. When I was in 20s, you don't understand culture. I'm not even saying I understand culture today, but how culture influences behavior and some of the how and why people do things, especially from an organizational structure. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (09:31.694)

I did bring a lot of those elements. I had to tweak them and modify them to fit the type of professionals that we have within our firm. And it's taken a long time. But I thought it was a phenomenal learning experience to see how somebody else does it. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (10:00.91)

And that was really a two way street because they were open to sharing all that. 

 

Michael Palumbos (10:05.166)

That's fantastic. I love that idea because basically you're going out, you're bringing out, you know, new information and being able to bring it back. And yes, I get at 20, you're not implementing it, but there's a lot of things that you probably learned that through your career, you're like, I remember how we did this there. Hey, you know what? We're having some issues with X, Y, or Z. 

 

Michael Palumbos (10:31.042)

There's let me just show you something that they're doing. It might apply or might not apply. You probably have implemented some of those things through the years. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (10:38.988)

Definitely. Yeah, definitely. 

 

Michael Palumbos (10:40.334)

Oh, 

 

Michael Palumbos (10:41.174)

I know. appreciate you sharing that. 

 

Michael Palumbos (10:44.642)

Talk about the founders for a second and when was the business started? I want to hear a little bit more about the second generation, the fourth generation being in the family business. was that? What happened to that original business? Where did that go? I love the history of how did we get to where we are today kind of. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (11:08.3)

Yeah, so there's lot of different elements to that story. With respect to Branstad Carroll, we were founded in 1979. I was two years old and my dad Larry Branstader and Mike Carroll were working at a firm, architectural firm up in Ashland, Ohio. And they wanted to go out on their own. so they actually picked up 

 

Ben Brandstetter (11:36.844)

their families and drove down to Lexington, Kentucky and essentially just kind of hung out a shingle. And it's really something you don't really hear that story a lot today. You move into a new town, especially with today's communication is, you we have phenomenal opportunities, but, know, back in late 1970s, that was a lot of much different story. And they didn't know a single person in town. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (12:05.71)

and they hung up a shingle and said, hey, here's what we want to be doing. And then a couple of years after that, father's younger brother, Bruce, joined the business and he started our Cincinnati office in 1982. So that's kind how it grew organically at the very beginning. so going back to that, the third and the fourth generation, 

 

Ben Brandstetter (12:36.142)

My grandfather and great grandfather had an asphalt taping business. was George Branstetter and son. there, think, believe there were three sons and they were involved in the business. So three brother, the father and three brothers. And that was, I mean, that was an operation really up until the last 15 years, maybe, yeah, 10 to 15 years. You know, but my grandfather, 

 

Ben Brandstetter (13:06.38)

didn't have a high school education. And so the education was very big to him. And so he made sure he told his boys, hey, look, go get an education so you're not slinging a pick and a shovel every day. And so that was kind of the genesis behind that the original construction business shifting to professional services. And really that kind of that generational shift in educational attainment and expectations. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (13:36.002)

And that was, I think that was part of that. actually, and I think it's really neat. There's a friend of mine in Cincinnati that he is fourth generation in a construction business and his great grandfather and worked with my great grandfather and kind of, we've just maintained that relationship. it's, so it adds, by developing those relationships, it gives you a chance to talk about 

 

Ben Brandstetter (14:05.038)

with somebody else that at least you feel as though that maybe not in the same exact same boat, but you're at least paddling in the same direction. 

 

Michael Palumbos (14:14.358)

Yeah. So up until about 15 years ago, the asphalt paving company existed. What was the how did that did it get sold? Was it who was running it at the end? 

 

Ben Brandstetter (14:27.854)

Yeah, it ended up being a transitional issue. My grandfather actually got out of business in the early 90s. And so it was his brothers and there was one more generation beyond that. it just kind of slowly faded away over time. 

 

Michael Palumbos (14:51.29)

You know, it's, need to hear those things because, know, there's your grandfather was wise in terms of, let's go get, know, get you educated. Let's change the dynamics a little bit in terms of who we are and what we're doing. And I want you swinging the pickaxe as you said. and at the same time, you know, that generation wasn't always open to planning and conversations and thinking about things differently. 

 

Michael Palumbos (15:21.154)

You know, I don't know a single founder that loves the word succession planning or exit planning. They just won't. And it's because, you know, it's, this is my baby. This is, I created this, I did this. And so it's kind of interesting when we would do, I'm a second generation wealth advisor. And so we would create exit plans and help with the succession plan and just think about it from a technical standpoint. 

 

Michael Palumbos (15:50.402)

And then we'd leave them this laundry list of here's the 20 things that the systems and processes you can include and how you fix your finances. And, you know, you need a, you need a leadership team that can help take the load off of you. And we would give them this list and say, good luck. And so think about that, right? If they knew how to do those things, they would have done them already. They might, if they were smart, they'd hire a business coach. 

 

Michael Palumbos (16:18.446)

Well, so what we just did is we said, know what? Yes, we do all the exit planning. Yes, we come up with these plans, but let's become business coaches. And here's why I'm telling you this is because then it's like when I'm meeting with owners now, and especially again, the founders, you go through and you say, yes, we're going to do exit planning, but wouldn't it be more fun to grow the business and then get it to the point where you don't have to do all the work instead of being the CEO. You can be the CEO. And they're like, 

 

Michael Palumbos (16:48.14)

That sounds better than exit planning and succession planning. And they're identical things. It's two sides of the same coin. Cause if you get, if you get that where I can be the CEO and not have everything on my shoulders, now you have a sustainable and a transferable business. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (17:04.225)

So right. And, I'll you what, I've been very blessed to develop some great relationships with other business owners in our industry and kind of the market, in the marketplace that I live in and other parts of the country. And, you know, I've gotten enough relationship capital built up with some, with some of my guys that are in their late fifties or early sixties, you know, I'm challenging them. What is your exit strategy? They don't want to talk about it. They don't want to talk about it. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (17:32.31)

And I get it, but I kind of feel like though as though that's my responsibility to them as a friend and a colleague is to say, how are you going to get out? know, and they, you know, the third or fourth time that the top of conversation comes up, well, you know, OK, I'm talking to this person internally, you know, so we're going to we're going to start having those conversations because. I would I what I observed is that even if the. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (18:00.962)

the senior leadership or the principal or the owner isn't talking about it. The rest of your staff are. They know that time is gonna catch up at some point and you're gonna have to do something. So in my mind, planning for that and laying out a strategy and trying to be transparent with your key people is critical, not to retaining them, but all. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (18:28.972)

also given them a level of confidence that the organization is going to be around down into the future. 

 

Michael Palumbos (18:36.128)

Agreed, agreed. And that's by doing for us doing the growth strategy work and helping them to do that. We don't do CEO development or we don't do succession plans that are around the CEO. We do CEO plus leadership team. And so when you add that second layer in the stage one is the CEO training and helping the leadership team take more responsibility so that they can slow down. 

 

Michael Palumbos (19:03.246)

and enjoy life a little bit. go back to you, you started the conversation about culture. I want that CEO being the king or queen of culture. You know what I mean? And I want them to really help build that culture and take the culture to the next level so that people can start to see this organization is going to be here for another 20, 30 years. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (19:23.948)

Right, yeah, and I do believe that the skill set that it takes to start something from nothing is a unique skill set. You can make the argument that it's very American, but it takes a distinct skill set to get that done and to drive the growth from zero to 

 

Ben Brandstetter (19:51.476)

what it might be 10, 20, 30 years at a lot. But I also believe that it takes a different skill set to grow it from where it is today to that next level. And we've all been blessed with different skills and abilities. We're not blessed with all of them. I think that's probably been one of the biggest struggles that I've had is realizing that there are things I can't do. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (20:20.3)

and things that I need to, I'm not going to be good at. So I've got to find people that are better at that or reach out to colleagues, build a relationship and try to fill in that gap. 

 

Michael Palumbos (20:31.472)

Talk about when the company started, are you still in the same industry, still in the same business? 

 

Ben Brandstetter (20:42.518)

We are actually we are. I mean the the simple explanation is the the firm was founded to work with public sector clients to implement their projects. And for the most part, we've stayed with that. And I can probably go back and track over the last even 10 to 20 years. We are a majority public sector design firm that serves cities, townships. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (21:11.586)

county governments, local recreation departments, utility agencies, generally aviation airports. But I will say that as we have grown, we have larger and larger clients, whether or not it be larger cities or now, or states, or even some federal design work. so that's where that growth has occurred in 

 

Ben Brandstetter (21:39.299)

adding on to some additional marketplaces while also adding layering on geography at the same time. 

 

Michael Palumbos (21:44.876)

Yeah. Tell me about your role with the firm and how it's evolved and what are you doing now with the firm? 

 

Ben Brandstetter (21:54.638)

Yeah, so when I came back in 2005, I ran our transportation engineering practice in the Cincinnati marketplace, and that served mainly Kentucky and Ohio clients. And then in 2017, I took over as president of the firm, and my dad stepped down and, well, stepped us over and became chairman. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (22:19.842)

So I think he enjoys that, the title, the chairman. But essentially that gave him a chance to still be involved in a day-to-day operations of the business. And so we could kind of transition that overall leadership over a little bit longer timeframe. So it wasn't just gonna be a one day shock to the system. But in that previous role, I was still engaged with 

 

Ben Brandstetter (22:48.494)

nearly all of our division heads within other divisions of the firm. building relationships with those people and a lot of those people are still with us today, they've been with us 10 to 20 years. even though I was focused from a practice standpoint on that engineering side, I was still able to open up my experience and still build relationships with people that were outside of just the clients that I was 

 

Ben Brandstetter (23:17.634)

that I was serving and working with. So I think that really helped me as I grew into the president role in 2017 and kind of helped with that ramp up period, so to speak, to allow that to happen a little bit smoothly or smoother than otherwise, just trying to come in on day one and take things over. 

 

Michael Palumbos (23:43.438)

Sure. So Mike, Larry and Bruce started the business. They're running it. What's their level of involvement today? You know, what did, yeah. Are all three of them involved? 

 

Ben Brandstetter (23:59.558)

Yeah, they're all actually still involved in the business. They're still on the payroll, which is fantastic. Dad stepped down from his full-time role a few years ago. Mike Carroll did that a couple years after him and then Bruce more recently. But they're still involved in the business. They're still out there serving clients. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (24:27.342)

I like to say, to oversimplify, I like to say they're still doing all the things that they enjoy doing, but they're just not doing the stuff they didn't enjoy doing. And, you know, and so it, and there's, obviously there's still things that I don't enjoy doing or things that I struggle with, but I, know, at my age, I've been a little, little more energy and I'm a little bit more closely tied to the 20 and 30 something workforce that we've got. Cause we've had a lot of, you know, there's been a lot of, um, 

 

Ben Brandstetter (24:57.272)

challenges that we've had with adapting to people that we've got people in our firm. I don't know what the youngest age is, maybe 19 with a co-op or something like that up until they're early to mid 70s. And so that's a pretty wide band. And if you think about the things that the workforce, the workplace has been dealing with, especially just even the last three years. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (25:25.806)

remote work policy, all the technological innovations, including Zoom and Teams, all that kind of stuff. We could probably have a whole separate discussion just on that topic. But it was a struggle for myself and our crew to manage that rate of change that happened so fast in 2020. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (25:53.002)

March, April, May, end of June of 2020, the rate of change was so fast. And I think we were uniquely positioned to be able to adapt faster and handle some of that stuff just because of the underlying knowledge of the technology and how it was going to work. the crazy thing is myself and seven other partners 

 

Ben Brandstetter (26:19.406)

closed on buying the firm from Larry, Mike and Bruce on March 1st of 2020. And then, yeah, thanks for laughing. Three weeks later, COVID hits and the world gets turned upside down. If we didn't think that we knew what we were doing already, we really didn't know what we were doing. But I think that time period, we adapted really... 

 

Ben Brandstetter (26:47.886)

gave us a chance to kind of come together as a leadership team. We did for about, I don't know, the time kind of shifted during that period, but for maybe two or three months, we were doing daily 5.30 PM conference calls on what do we need to change here? What do we need to change here? What's going on? Just because things were changing so fast. Then we kind of backed it down to three days a week. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (27:15.406)

Uh, and then ultimately one day a week and now, and now we're not having to do that, but I also had to change my communication style as well. I'm an engineer. don't, know, I'm words are a challenge sometimes, but there at that time, there was so much uncertainty. was, you know, so I was, I ended up doing, writing a kind of firm wide letter every night for probably about two or three months. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (27:45.542)

And sometimes it was two paragraphs, sometimes it was three pages about what's going on. really, and I saw that evolve into as much keeping up morale within everybody because everybody was going through this and there was so much uncertainty that, you know, I would, I would layer in, you know, family elements and stuff that I probably ordinarily would not have done because 

 

Ben Brandstetter (28:14.082)

just kind of how my mind works. it really, and it struck me a few months after that, and I was doing daily for a couple of months, and sometimes you'd be up to 11, 12 o'clock at night writing this stuff. And then back down to kind of three days a week, and then one day a week, and now that's kind of, it's gone away. But it was really interesting. One of the people that worked for us in Lexington said, 

 

Ben Brandstetter (28:42.88)

Hey, know, my family really enjoys reading your emails every night. They were reading it to their kids and it was mostly appropriate stuff for kids in that content. But, you know, it was kind of a rallying grind. think that did a lot for, going back to culture, I that did a lot for our culture. 

 

Michael Palumbos (29:10.414)

That's awesome. I hope that all of your, you know, team members that you have kept some of that personal stuff and that vulnerability with your team alive. I think that might be one of the biggest gifts that COVID did for business owners. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (29:31.97)

You're right. I think vulnerability because that is that I think that's one of the most challenging thing because you always want to show, you know, hey, I'm in control. I know what we're doing. Hey, you need to follow me. But being but trying to be vulnerable at the same time is very challenging. And so I think you're right. It probably was a very good thing for society because we. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (30:01.09)

about a year and a half ago, we updated our core values, we simplified them, and we add an authenticity was one of those. that was a really interesting conversation to have with our staff firm wide and talk about why is this important? But I think the workforce of today really yearns for that authenticity. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (30:28.206)

And the challenge that I've got as we get larger is maintaining that authenticity, kind of the personal touch with everybody. And it gets more challenging every day as we're up to about 80 employees firm wide. And I even talk about that with other friends that are business owners. As their organizations have grown, that's something that they struggle with as well. 

 

Michael Palumbos (30:57.462)

Yeah. And that's, what I say is the CEO's number one president's number one job, whoever's running that company, it is culture. And it's, and it's working really hard and beating that drum over and over again and keeping that rhythm in terms of what is our culture. Along with, I think the two are culture and strategy. It's here's our strategy. And this is, we need to, it needs to be clear and simple and communicated over 

 

Michael Palumbos (31:27.274)

And over and over. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (31:29.708)

Yeah. And that's a very challenging thing to do. Number one, because you don't want to have the same content. You want to keep things fresh. But then that puts a lot of stress on the person who's developing that content to keep it fresh and keep it relevant at the same time. 

 

Michael Palumbos (31:50.158)

I'll share something with you. try to, know, every once in a while, if I get a little, think I have a nugget to share with you. I had, I had a 401k plan that I was managing for one of our families. They had 75 employees would come in for the employee meeting once a year that we would do. And I created the, you know, here's the employee education process. And I use the same slides over and over again, every single year. 

 

Michael Palumbos (32:20.258)

And I was really nervous about it. Somebody, heard this from somebody else and they're like, just trust me, Michael. These are the seven things. These are the five things that every employee needs to know. Just keep using the same slides. And I was the guy that said, I need new things. Well, three years into doing it for this, you know, group of employees, one of the employees comes up to me that had been at every single one and said, I just want to let you know, Mike, this year was so much better than last year. 

 

Michael Palumbos (32:50.478)

And you're laughing and that's exactly it. It's so, you know, I don't, would challenge you or just, or, or encourage you not to change the content too often. And then it's keeping it that same. doesn't have to be fresh because it's, they just, people need to keep hearing the same thing over and over again. That's what keeps it clear and concise for them is to say, it's still this great. no confusion in that. 

 

Michael Palumbos (33:19.19)

you know, until it, until it does change. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (33:22.162)

Right, that's a point. 

 

Michael Palumbos (33:24.352)

I was really, that was a shocker for me. And so when it happened, I'm okay, let's keep it simple, keep it on target and make sure they hear that message repeatedly. So you have seven partners today. What's the leadership team look like for the company today? 

 

Ben Brandstetter (33:42.67)

So we've got, serve as president and then we've got division heads that essentially report back up to me. We've got three divisions in Lexington, one in Cincinnati, one in Cleveland and then one in Dallas as well. And so we get together over teams every Monday morning at 10 a.m. and we get, yeah we. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (34:10.358)

We go through kind of our normal weekly reporting and it's very consistent and in terms of the format. But we also, that also gives us, gives us all a chance to be in the same room together and talk and chat about things that we're working on together. But also gives me that touch point on a weekly basis that, if I need to reinforce something or say, hey guys, if we're having a major IT implementation, we've got, we've got that. And then, you know, another thing that I do is I've 

 

Ben Brandstetter (34:40.206)

On Monday morning at 7 30, I do a, just a team's conference call with, um, uh, with kind of what I consider to our senior staff in, uh, in our Lexington office. And we, it's, it's everybody's kind of on their way into the office at that point in time. And it just gives us a chance to check in and I'll just kind of say, Hey guys, here's what I, here's what I've got on my radar. Yeah. This upcoming week, next week, whatever it is. 

 

Michael Palumbos (34:48.558)

you 

 

Ben Brandstetter (35:09.71)

Sometimes that phone call lasts for five minutes. Sometimes it's 30 minutes, but it gives us that regular touch point because you get down, you get to the course of week, people get busy and you're tied up, you're serving clients and working on projects. So I think those little elements give us a good chance to kind of just do a touch base. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (35:36.384)

I try to keep it as open as possible. I don't want it to be me talking to them and saying, hey, here's what, and just assigning tasks. It's like, okay, what does everybody think about this? And try to, the challenge is asking open-ended questions and trying to elicit some responses. And we've made it really open. We've opened that up to really anybody on the kind of on the senior leadership position within the firm is welcome to join. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (36:05.262)

And some do and some don't. It's like, that's fine. I'm not going to criticize you or if you choose not to. But that provides an opportunity to give people a seat at the table in the decision making process. And then I have a controller, full time controller that reports to me as well. so that's kind of the basic organizational structure that we've got. 

 

Michael Palumbos (36:33.486)

Michael Palumbos (36:34.829)

When you're looking at the last 15 years or so and looking at the projects that you've performed and put together, what are some of the ones that are your most proud of? 

 

Ben Brandstetter (36:48.66)

wow. You know, this is some of these are sound a little bit odd. We do a lot of the public safety space and we did a fairly sizable county jail facility in Kentucky, probably about how she made it actually about 15 years ago. And we provided it was a brand new facility. And and the thing that I'm most proud of about that aspect of that project. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (37:17.664)

is the fact that we gave an environment for the people that work in that facility, we gave them a quality environment. We improved their quality of life because they had been in the facility that has, it had been long past its prime and jail facilities are tough to maintain. get, and so, 

 

Ben Brandstetter (37:45.962)

I frankly, I don't know how they recruited people to come in and work in that previous facility on a day-to-day basis. And so, you know, then we build this new facility and it's, you know, bright, open. It provides them a better way to manage the people that they're housed in there. Frankly, it gave the people that are spending time in there a better space as well. But I think 

 

Ben Brandstetter (38:15.29)

seeing the impact that it has on the people that work in those buildings is really fascinating. our firm mission is enhancing community and quality of life. And so really everything that we do, whether it be a water line project that provides clean water to a new part of town, a public safety and a fire station, the really easy one 

 

Ben Brandstetter (38:45.07)

to identify are the parks and recreation projects, because those are all, they're fun and the kids are out there and doing a lot of things, especially on the aquatic side, because they make for great pictures and people are rushing to get in. Those are a lot of fun. Those are easy. It's easy to identify how those enhance community and the quality of life. Some of other ones, it's a little bit more challenging, but really at the end of the day, everything we do touches that. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (39:15.042)

the community and the quality of life for the clients that we serve. 

 

Michael Palumbos (39:19.724)

Right. Through the time, you know, the again, before the transition, what were some of the, you know, you're in a family business, you've got your father, your uncle, you, what were some of the challenges of working as a family together? 

 

Ben Brandstetter (39:37.768)

besides thanksgiving and Christmas. 

 

Michael Palumbos (39:43.022)

So here's a question. Were you the family that, know, if you were together outside to work, you're, you're talking projects and you're talking shop. Cause it was just. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (39:53.198)

You know, I think we did that in an appropriate amount. Right. It didn't dominate the conversations. And I'll have to give my wife a lot of credit. She never complained about that. And when we were driving home from a family function, you know, why this, why that? But she kind of knew what she was getting into when she said yes. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (40:21.07)

Yeah, she had a choice and so that was she had a choice. But no, I think it was an appropriate amount and we and it depended on the the the location, what it was. But yeah, and I think different people have different love, different tolerances for how much they want to they want to do that. And everybody has a different manner in which they kind of decompress. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (40:51.52)

outside that Monday through Friday environment. there is no right or wrong answer to that. It's much more based on the individual personalities that are involved. 

 

Michael Palumbos (41:06.294)

When you know if if you and your uncle or father had you know didn't didn't see eye to eye on something what was the the process for getting from point A to point B for you guys. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (41:23.278)

You know, Richard Nixon said, you know, agreement should be, you know, what do you say, announced in public and discussed in private or, you know, agree in public and disagree in private. Yeah, I'd say for the most part, we respected that type of approach things. And, you know, fortunately, I wouldn't say that we really had too many major disagreements. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (41:53.705)

amongst everybody. And so I think we've been very fortunate with that. So, you I think you kind of disagree, but then however it ends up, you walk out of the room and say, okay, I'm on board with this. This may not have been how I wanted this to turn out, but this is the decision that we made and we're gonna... 

 

Ben Brandstetter (42:21.804)

this needs to be implemented for the good of the organization. 

 

Michael Palumbos (42:24.898)

Perfect. You just put a page out of Patrick Lencioni's five dysfunctions of a team. It's healthy conflict is good, but then regardless of the outcome, we commit to the path forward together. And we trust each other and it's all based because you guys trusted each other enough to be able to do that. Right. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (42:47.052)

Yeah. And as, as that circle gets bigger, the more you're going to have discredits. And I think that's, I think that is, like you said, I think that's healthy. because you, call it creative destruction. You've got to get in there and get a little bit and lay everything out on the table. but at the same time, I do believe you've got to take a motion out of it. You've got to take a motion out of that decision-making process. 

 

Michael Palumbos (43:15.822)

Michael Palumbos (43:16.267)

And it's not personal, right? 

 

Ben Brandstetter (43:18.062)

It's not personal. Two people can disagree, and that's fine. But at the same time, we also need to learn through that process, how can we make this better than next time? Not everything we do is unique. There are constant themes across what we do, not only in business and serving a client, but in running the business. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (43:48.142)

And, you know, we can always make something better. All right. How are we going to do this next time? And do it a debrief. Okay. This is how we did it. This is how this went. And I think the Blue Angels are a great example. They do that after every single mission and after every single show. And they go around the table and talk about, here's what I didn't do, but you know what? I'm still glad to be here. And so that's something that I've been trying to work on the last little while. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (44:18.312)

is to develop that culture where we do a debrief. Where it's not crazy, it's not a, why'd you do this or why'd you do that? It was, okay, here's how we arrived at that decision. Time has shown either yet that was a good decision or it wasn't, but how do we learn from that movement forward so that we can do better the next time? Because we can't change the past. The only thing we can do is influence the future. 

 

Michael Palumbos (44:44.61)

Right. You mentioned you have kids. How old are your kids and is anybody, think there's anybody that's doing internships or you know, doing something? 

 

Ben Brandstetter (44:48.035)

I do. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (44:56.878)

They're they're 15 and 17 two boys. I've got a sophomore and a senior in college and Know they're actually and they played in a golf tournament this morning the older one won his his age bracket the younger one came in second, so they Which is which is great. So no, I think the older the older one has an interest in engineering, but you know, he's 17 years old and and 

 

Ben Brandstetter (45:26.446)

But, you know, so he, what I've tried to do, and I think something that Karen and I have tried to do, or trying to do here in the next couple of years, is to get them a little bit more engaged in various aspects of what we do. Because not only do we have the Francis Carroll Inc., we also have some real estate interests and other things that we're involved in from a business perspective. And a lot of those things that the 

 

Ben Brandstetter (45:54.254)

You know, the kids have been involved in that or they've seen that or they grew up and they had to go wash walls at the office building or sweep the floors or do those types of things just to get them to understand the responsibility of ownership. And I think the next level that we've got to do is begin to start educating them on, you know, cash flow and value and talking about what what those different things mean. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (46:23.104)

And value is not just, have a dollar in my pocket. I gotta go buy something. So I think that's part of that evolution of, as our kids get older, we're blessed they're only two years apart. So we can kind of work on similar things together with both of them. that's actually one of our, what we need to do during the summer is I'm gonna have both of them. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (46:50.604)

develop a cashflow forecast for one of our properties and start to see, okay, here's how you manage cash and you've got taxes that are gonna hit twice a year. And just because you have X dollars in the account doesn't mean that you get to spend it today. And so we're gonna start working on that and kind of laying that groundwork to have, so that we can have more fruitful generational discussions about these topics. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (47:20.032)

And I'm hopeful, I think, you know, that the greatest generation probably didn't really have very many discussions about value and wealth. And I think the Boomer generation's probably done a little bit better. And I'm hopeful that my generation does that better because I think there's more people like you that are out there driving this conversation. 

 

Michael Palumbos (47:43.8)

But as you're looking at who's we talked about, you know, the transition and whatnot. Now you're sitting in the presidency. If you look out over the next 12 months, what are your top three priorities for the business and where you're going? 

 

Ben Brandstetter (48:01.914)

Number one is people. And I know that's been a consistent theme. I'm in a CEO group and we get together once a month and we're all dealing with that. From the startup guy to the guy with 500 employees or even a couple thousand employees, how do you attract and retain good staff? Our industry is very blessed right now. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (48:30.818)

we've see it feels as though everybody is at capacity. We're concerned about employee burnout. How are we gonna make sure that these people don't just say, I'm done and go somewhere else. That's a real challenge. So, I think the people aspect of things, 

 

Ben Brandstetter (48:58.638)

Frankly, Michael, I would say people, people, that's that we had to shift how we do recruiting a couple of years ago. And we now have our business development director involved in our recruiting aspects because she was out there selling the business every day to clients. Well, in today's environment, the last few years, we have to sell the company to employees as well. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (49:28.078)

and people don't just knock on your, you know, back in the 80s and 90s, it was, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll give you a job. people were begging for them. The tables have flipped. you know, and it's, I've kind of followed this one way, this is a good problem to have as a society, that anybody that wants a job can get it. But it really changes how 

 

Ben Brandstetter (49:56.152)

how we as a business recruit and how we as a business retain employees and trying to manage all those expectations all at the same time. It's very difficult. 

 

Michael Palumbos (50:11.662)

I mean, not good, I mean, good that you've got your fingers on the pulse and you're paying attention to it. You know that it's not going away either. That this issue is not going away anytime soon. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (50:25.012)

it now. 

 

Michael Palumbos (50:26.798)

COVID changed everything. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (50:31.448)

Well, I think COVID was one element of that. I think there are some more macro demographic challenges that have been taking place. I also think that the 2008, 2009 financial crisis, when the development and the construction industry really got hit hard, that was a time when a lot of people, the kids that were graduating college and 

 

Ben Brandstetter (51:00.014)

08 09 10 couldn't find a position, couldn't find an entry point to the industry at that point in time. Well, then you fast forward 10 to 15 years. We really we have a gap in that 30 something cohort within our within our organization. We've got we've got we've done a really good job of the 20 somethings and everybody else. But that that 30 something cohort is really 

 

Ben Brandstetter (51:28.802)

There's not a lot of people, at least within our organization, that they've fit that bill. it's, yeah, I think it was, I think it was COVID, I think it, but I think it's as much demographic, macro demographics. And, you know, the, the labor attraction is not, like you said, it's not going to get any easier. We're bringing back a ton of manufacturing to the United States that's going on. And we're seeing that in nearly all the markets that we serve. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (51:57.27)

And I serve on the local economic development corporation. We're seeing that every day as well. So the lower skilled labor is being gobbled up right at the same time. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (52:13.346)

technology, innovation, robots, whatever you want to call it, that's going to solve part of that problem. But the technical base and the knowledge economy, AI can't solve everything. So you still need those people that are creative, innovative, and collaborative to get out there and serve the clients. 

 

Michael Palumbos (52:41.71)

You mentioned your boys and one of them was interested in the professional engineering or architecture. We have a wonderful school up here, Rochester Institute of Technology. And if he spends four winters up here, I guarantee he'll get them back. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (52:50.03)

All right. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (53:01.074)

Well, 

 

Ben Brandstetter (53:01.714)

he, yeah, he, starting that process and, we're, he goes to a relatively small Catholic school in our area. And so it doesn't have football, you know, he's on the basketball team. So he's never really had that athletic experience. And so he's only looking at big schools in the South that have big time college athletic. So I'm sure Rochester would be fun. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (53:28.866)

phenomenal for him, that is not on his short list right now. 

 

Michael Palumbos (53:33.006)

Understand. I forgot to mention when you mentioned Georgia Tech, you went there. Our daughter is at Georgia Tech right now doing her masters in what is it? Human-computer interaction. know, how, what is that? It's like the user interface, user design, you know, that user experience kind of stuff. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (53:47.586)

Wow. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (53:55.522)

Right, neat. Yeah. 

 

Michael Palumbos (53:58.102)

if you're sitting, you're part of a CEO round the table, which I highly recommend to everybody, if I'm not mistaken, that's how we met. That's how we got in touch with each other. I'm also, you know, I do that. I highly recommend it. If you're sitting in front of a hundred family owned businesses right now, and you're going through your top three list, of, you know, 

 

Michael Palumbos (54:26.444)

Don't miss these things. These are, these are what we, what we have found work and are important. And I know you laid a lot of that stuff out, but if you were to summarize, what's your top three hit lists for the family owned businesses? 

 

Ben Brandstetter (54:38.422)

You know that that's an interesting question. think the first thing that comes to my mind is transparency and that that can cut a lot of different ways is transparency with with all the employees, transparency within within the family network, but really showing that and finding way to be overtly transparent and communicate that stuff. And I think that 

 

Ben Brandstetter (55:08.458)

That's one of the things that technology has allowed us to do within our organization is that we share a ton of our data internally so everybody knows what's going on. The last phone call I want to get was, well, they never told me I needed to do this. Well, we've created forums, this, this, this, and this, for you to have those conversations, to foster those conversations. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (55:38.271)

Frankly, I think that's one of the things that's helped us succeed over the course of the last five and 10 years. 

 

Michael Palumbos (55:46.67)

second, 

 

Michael Palumbos (55:46.88)

because I want to make sure people get that. There's very often, especially in family owned businesses, there's a lot of that, you know, I don't want everybody to know our stuff. And, and I challenge people to listen to what you said, because what we've seen is that people know, you know, that people don't always understand the amount of reinvestment that goes in, and the amount of money that's going out. And they just think that everybody 

 

Michael Palumbos (56:16.49)

is a millionaire, you know, and that you're making gobs and gobs of money, and there's no responsibility and they do all the work. And I think that comes from that secrecy. And that when you do get to be more transparent and start to show, you know, how much you know, this piece of equipment costs or, you know, the the taxes that we pay, or, you know, the amount of money that's going into the retirement plans. Yes, I'm paid well. I'm but most 

 

Michael Palumbos (56:45.826)

presidents of family-owned businesses are not paid. If you've took a comparable public company, you're probably underpaid in comparison. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (56:57.476)

I'll make sure my partners hear that. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (57:02.818)

So I think transparency. Yeah, no, I think the other one is simply to have, enjoy yourself, have fun. And I think that's what, one of the things that the CEO group I'm in, we're very intentional about enjoying the time that we spend together. Now, we're gonna work hard, we're gonna tackle a lot of issues, we're gonna talk about these different things. But at the same time, 

 

Ben Brandstetter (57:31.826)

It can't just be all business all the time. You've got to enjoy the time you spend together and all while celebrating successes. And I think that's something that we do not do a good job of. We need to do a better job of that. So I think that's very important to get as an overall cultural aspect. 

 

Michael Palumbos (57:56.706)

Great. One of the things I'll share, this is, I'll share this with you. Another CEO, he noticed as he went through COVID, there was a rallying cry and everybody kind of came together to get through it. And we talked about that for you as well, that you experienced that, you there wasn't a common gather during that period of time. And he said to me, you know, Michael, really want that back. And I missed that. 

 

Michael Palumbos (58:27.118)

And I'm not the bad parts of that, but was all of the people working together. I, and so there's a, and you kind of alluded to this, that's why I'm sharing it. It's, call it a thematic event. And so you can make them fun. You don't design them. You, tell it, you set a goal around X, Y, or Z that the leadership team does. And then you put together a team to say, this is our goal. 

 

Michael Palumbos (58:54.71)

I want to create a thematic event so that everybody understands it and knows what we're going for. And for this next quarter or for this first half of this year, this is what we're going after. And when we get there, we're going to celebrate. And this is what the celebration is going to look like. Here's the budget. You guys go figure it out. And you bring people from different walks of life and different departments and different divisions and have them put together the 

 

Michael Palumbos (59:20.886)

you know, the thermometer for lack of a better word and create the theme based on the goal that you're trying to achieve. And by doing that over and over again, once a quarter we're having a celebration, assuming that we hit the goals, but we should be setting goals that are attainable. And it can be fun. It can be fun. One story I'll share, one last one. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (59:45.378)

Hit and 

 

Michael Palumbos (59:48.366)

Share it with you. They said they wanted to get the $3.14 million. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (59:53.889)

jeez. 

 

Michael Palumbos (59:55.214)

You get it? the scene was if they got, you know, in a quarter, 3.14, if they got their back quarter, they got to pie the top guy. yeah. And so they had cream pies and they got there and they took pictures and all kinds of fun. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (01:00:16.526)

Yeah. And I think that, you know, that, collaboration, you know, uniting people around a common goal is great. And really, you know, we started doing this a few, uh, a few years before COVID was getting everybody from all of our offices together in one location because people talk on the phone, you don't really know who that, who that is. And to a lot of us, that was, it's like, Oh man, we're wasting a day. Everybody's going to be out of the office. Nothing's going get done. All this kind of stuff. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (01:00:45.292)

But the feedback that we got after those events, be like, man, I'm so glad I got to meet so-and-so. And I never even knew what that guy looked like. And then we didn't do it for a year or so during COVID. And then we started back up the last couple of years. And the level of participation that we get, the level of attendance that we get is really, it shouldn't surprise me every year, but it's 

 

Ben Brandstetter (01:01:14.708)

it does in a positive way. And we do the mandatory fund type stuff while we're there. We have a good time. We kind of talk about the big picture of where we are and where we're going. But we place a renewed emphasis on making sure we do that on an annual basis, not just every other year, every three years. 

 

Michael Palumbos (01:01:38.638)

That's great. Any other words of wisdom? 

 

Ben Brandstetter (01:01:42.592)

No, appreciate it. I really enjoyed the conversation and I appreciate you reaching out and good luck to you and continuing this podcast. 

 

Michael Palumbos (01:01:54.998)

We'll be celebrating episode 100 sometime in 2024. So we're trying to figure out what that one looks like. But we're pretty booked for all these episodes. This was a blessing from COVID. I appreciate you sharing your wisdom and your experience and being part of a family business. Thank you so much. 

 

Ben Brandstetter (01:02:18.808)

So thank you. 

 

Michael Palumbos (01:02:19.928)

Thank you, everybody. My name is Michael Palumbas. You've been listening to the Family Biz Show. I'm in Rochester, New York with Family Wealth and Legacy. And we look forward to having you listen in on the next episode. Have a great day, everybody.