Zachary Oliphant:

So welcome everybody back to the Integrity Podcast. I’m the host, Zachary Oliphant. We’ve had seven episodes now. They’ve been fantastic episodes. Got to interview a lot of great people. But today we’re going to do something a little bit different. We’ve received feedback from folks and they’ve said, “Hey, we want to hear a little bit, Zach, about your story, your background, and how you started Exo.” And so today we’re going to do things a little different. We got Jason Pizzitola, our VP of Marketing Today. He’s going to interview me and flip the script a little bit. So it should be a lot of fun.

Audio:

Integrity is everything. Our way of life in this country rises and falls on the integrity of our leaders and the integrity of our infrastructure, because integrity impacts everything. This is the Integrity Podcast, powered by Exo, hosted by Zachary Oliphant.

Jason Pizzitola:

Well, Zachary, it’s so good to be here with you today interviewing you for a change. We’re going to talk a little bit about your vision for your business. Look, we’re going to hear a little bit about some of your influences and inspirations. But before we get to that point, let’s talk a little bit about where it all began. If you would, tell us a little bit about how things got started for you.

Zachary Oliphant:

Certainly. So thanks, Jason. It’s going to be fun today to chat a little bit about my backstory. So I’ve always been somebody that’s enjoyed doing things with my hands. When I was a little kid, I helped my dad build fences, build houses. And as a little kid my dad worked in our industry, utility industry, at a big manufacturing facility. And as little kids we’d go and play at the facility. I don’t think you’d be allowed to do that today, because it wasn’t very safe. We’d go out on the shop floor. And you’d get to see these mammoth press brakes and all this welding equipment operating. It was just unbelievable and fascinating to me. So I always had this fascination with building things. Later in my life, I started working at a machine shop all through high school, which was a great experience. Got to meet a lot of unbelievable craftsmen and women, the work they were doing every day and how just building something has value to society.

It was really hard work, really hot work, but I learned a lot about myself and I learned a lot about trades and just trades people, which I really enjoyed. I thought that was a really neat experience and how you have these tracks of people going off to college or university versus trades folks. But at the end of the day, we’re all just people. We’re all trying to make a living. We’re all trying to do something that we enjoy doing. And so that was a fun and unique experience for me all through high school, and even part of college I did some of that work. Then I went off to Baylor University to get a degree and ended up getting a degree in entrepreneurship. I love business. I love the strategy of business. Love the financial components of starting a company. And graduated in ’02 and at that point, decided, my younger brother and I, to start a company. And it was a big kind of leap off a cliff to think about.

Coming out of school, I had some great job offers, but I was like, “No, I want to do something for myself. I want to build something for myself.” And had some great advice. I was talking to my pop about that and it was like, “I really want to start something.” And he’s like, “Look, I’ll tell you the best time to do it is now. You’re young. You’re broke. And what’s the worst case scenario? You’re still young and broke a couple years from now if it just fails miserably. You don’t have a whole lot of responsibility. You don’t have kids. You’re not married yet. Now would be the time to try that.” I thought that was great advice. And great advice for other entrepreneurs, because a lot of times it’s tough for people to take that leap, to say, “I’m going to go back myself and I’m going to go make it happen.”

So that’s what I did. So I started a company right out of school. I had no clue what I was doing. And the original business that Garett and I started was really a small manufacturing business. And we specialized in lighting and traffic infrastructure, so poles for area lighting and poles for traffic signals. So it was a great experience. Learned a lot about myself [inaudible 00:04:12].

Jason Pizzitola:

Well, let me back up real quick, because as an entrepreneur, more information wasn’t necessarily going to help you. I mean, you had great resources around. You had started in the shop. You’d seen some of the work that your father had exposed you to, but entrepreneur listening right now, who may believe that more information is going to help, what would you say to that man or woman?

Zachary Oliphant:

So I would say I’ve seen lots of folks that get paralysis by not having all the info. And they just, they’ll never take the leap to go start their business. I’ll tell you, you’re not going to know everything. Guarantee you won’t know everything. And so you’ve got to surround yourself with good mentors that you can draw from. You’ve got to learn from people you work with or for, the good and the bad. I mean, you get all of that. And then you just got to dive in and make it happen. And people ask me all the time, “You’ve owned several companies. We’ve sold a couple businesses. What would you say is the fundamental thing that’s worked?” It’s just really hard work, digging in and working really hard.

I’ve got friends that have said, “Oh, I’d love to own my own company, because I get to set my own hours.” And I said, “You work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You never get a break, because you’re always seeing opportunities.” And that’s a challenge in and of itself to have basically unlimited opportunities and try to stay focused on what’s your core business and what’s going to add value for you and your employees.

Jason Pizzitola:

And that is that you’ve done a tremendous job with that. So let’s go back then to the origin of Exo. A lot of young men and women set out to be doctors, lawyers, baseball players, whatever it may be. You initiated your first business in a really specific industry. And today Exo specializes in the engineering, inspection and remediation of critical infrastructure companies all over North America. That’s a broad… You reach a lot of big companies and in the retail market as well, but it’s still a very specific industry. Take us back there, you coming out of Baylor, got a business degree, have an eye and a nose for entrepreneurship. But why this critical infrastructures business? How did that start? Take us back to there and unpack that.

Zachary Oliphant:

So I think part of it was just being exposed to it most of my life. As a little kid, we’d go on vacations. And most normal people go drive somewhere, go on vacation, and they try to get to their destination as safely and efficiently as possible. We’d actually stop and jump over fences and go walk down transmission right-of-ways to look at some structure my dad or his company designed or manufactured. Looking back on that, I’m sure that had an impact on saying, “Look at this a cool, critical infrastructure that’s all around us.” Most folks that aren’t in our industry, it almost just blends in with the background for them. You’re driving down the road and they’re not seeing structures, bridges, and transmission structures, and lighting structures, and all this sort of infrastructure around us. You just live in the world. You’re almost blind to it.

But as a little kid, I saw that stuff and a lot of it was my dad making me. “Hey, we’re going to go walk down this right-of-way. Let’s go check this out.” And I always thought that was somewhat fascinating. And as I got older I realized the critical infrastructure business is not going anywhere. It’s a very safe place to start a company, because people like having their power on. Flip a switch and the power comes on. Most folks don’t understand the complexity of all the work, the tens, the hundreds of thousands of people it takes to generate power, and transmit power, and distribute power so that when you flip that light switch on, it works. And that fascinated me. And I just enjoy being in a market or an industry that is somewhat resistant to ebbs and flows economically. People need power. People need water. People need these kind of critical things.

And the market was heavily dominated by a couple players. And so for me, that’s a great opportunity. It’s a good, stable, growing business and growing market with very few competitors. And so from an entrepreneurship perspective, I said, “Hey, I think I can be in this space and play in this space.”

Jason Pizzitola:

So take us back to coming out of Baylor and your brother Garett Oliphant, who today is the VP of our Operations, correct?

Zachary Oliphant:

Yep.

Jason Pizzitola:

Tell us about what was that conversation like as you guys started? What were you guys doing? What were some of the first projects you did?

Zachary Oliphant:

So for us, it was one, trying to figure out roles and responsibilities. There’s two of us. We’re trying to figure out strengths and weaknesses and how we settle in. And that took time for that evolve. But we finally got there, where his real strengths are kind of operational-minded, dealing with people, and dealing with our field guys, and dealing with challenges out in the field with the infrastructure. My view is more on business development and sales, all the financial side of running a company, the strategic piece. And so it was a good fit for us. We had to figure that out over lots of, I’ll say, tense discussions, and arguments, and all those sorts of things, but a lot of that is coming from passion, because we both wanted to be successful and work really hard. So we got lucky.

I mean, a few weeks into starting our company and officially being a real company, we booked a nice order. I still remember it, 20-something years later, City College Station, all their traffic infrastructure. And it was fun, because my in-laws were there. My father-in-law was a professor at A&M, College Station Texas at Texas A&M. So that was the first project we did. We book an order a couple weeks to being in business and we go, “Oh, crap, we got to figure out how to run this company!”

Jason Pizzitola:

And what were you guys selling and what were you guys doing?

Zachary Oliphant:

So that was traffic and lighting infrastructure. And they had a bunch of new intersections they were building. And we sold all the poles and had to go partner with manufacturers at the time and oversee all the detailing work, all the engineering work, and then all of the purchasing and quality of the materials that we were supplying. So we started off really as a broker of material. Eventually, that morphed into us manufacturing ourselves. So the first step was we were brokering materials, so putting together partnerships with manufacturers and then going from there into doing our own manufacturing.

Jason Pizzitola:

Great. So I know the company grew. You and Garett did, in fact, figure out how to execute. And you start finding yourself competing with bigger and bigger players. Tell us a little bit about that phase of the company and how that influenced your family.

Zachary Oliphant:

Absolutely. So my dad at the time was still working for a company called Sherman Utility Structures. It’s the largest manufacturer in the US of big spun concrete transmission poles. And so he was primarily working on the transmission side of the industry. Garett and I were working on the traffic and lighting side of the industry when you think about monopole infrastructure. And so we weren’t competing with one another. And we were purposefully making sure of that. Flash forward a few years, I think it was 2003, the company Wes worked for was acquired by a company called Valmont Industries, which to this day I believe is still the largest manufacturer of monopole infrastructure in the world. But at that point, Valmont had a big division that was in traffic and lighting. And obviously, their transmission business they had, but they acquired Wes’ company as well to help grow the transmission side of their business.

So at that point, we ended up being at a crossroads where the things that Garett and I were doing were starting to compete more and more with things that Wes was doing with Valmont. And so we made a decision and Wes made a decision, hey, he wanted to join Garett and I help us grow our business. So that happened around 2007. And it was a great experience. And a big leap for him. I mean, the guy that had been working in the corporate world since he got out of the military in the mid 1970s, had a great career, was a pretty senior person at Valmont to take a risk on Garett. And that was a lot of fun. Looking back, it all worked out really well for him, but it was, I’m sure, a big risk.

Jason Pizzitola:

And Zachary, I’ve heard him say it looked like you and Garett were having a lot more fun than he was having. But from your perspective, adding Wesley Oliphant to your team opened the door to services and expertise, a technical bench that was not there previous. What did that do for the business and what kind of doors did it open for what Exo was able to do?

Zachary Oliphant:

So for our manufacturing business, we started now playing not just in the traffic and lighting space, but also in the transmission and distribution space. And so that opened that door. We didn’t have a competitive issue anymore with Valmont. We were still a small business. Probably Valmont didn’t know what we were doing very much, but we’re growing our business through good customer service, unique solutions for the market. And so that’s what it opened up for us, is to be much more holistic about the types of materials and solutions we were providing for our client base and allowed our business to grow and be diversified a little bit across the infrastructure market. So that was a lot of fun.

We ended up taking that business and growing it to a point where we started attracting suitors and folks that wanted to buy our business, which was flattering. So it’s always fun to start a business. At some point, you’ve invested all of your sweat equity and real equity in growing that company. It’s nice when people start calling and you and saying, “Hey, we think you’ve got a unique expertise. We’d like to acquire that business.” And so that ended up happening for us. In 2010, we sold the manufacturing side of our business to a big publicly-traded company out of Dallas and all went to work for them and grow the infrastructure and transmission infrastructure business within that company pretty significantly over the next several years. So that was a fun experience.

Jason Pizzitola:

Awesome. So where did that leave this? It left the door open though for another opportunity. And the next generation of Exo. So you’d moved on. You had joined the team, the large, publicly-traded company that acquired your first business. You’re contributing to that company. Meanwhile, Exo has become something else. Talk to me about what type of work Exo started to do from there, the next generation of Exo.

Zachary Oliphant:

That’s right. So we sold the manufacturing half of our business in 2010. And we had just started this inspection and remediation business that was really a sister company with our manufacturing business that ultimately became Exo, about six months prior to our manufacturing business being sold. So it was a really interesting conversation with the buyer of our business, the manufacturing business. We said, “Look, we think there’s this really great business that we’ve started. It’s only six months old. We get it’s tiny. It’s just growing. But there is a ton of aging infrastructure out in the market and somebody has to address all of that aging infrastructure and we’re uniquely positioned to do that, which is why we had started Exo in 2009.” But the company that acquired us was a big, heavy industrial manufacturer and they said, “Look, we’re not really interested in the services business. We want to build stuff.” “Great, then let’s carve it out.”

And so that’s what we ultimately did, is we carved out and split it, split the manufacturing and sold that off. And we allowed the inspection and engineering business, remediation business, to separate and was not part of our transaction. Looking back, I’m happy we did that. And so it allowed Exo to grow over the next several years. We had a good group of managers that were running that company while we were all working for this big, publicly-traded company. In about 2015, the timing for me was right. I had been working now five years. It was a big, publicly-traded business, which was great experience for me to go from being an entrepreneur and making all the decisions to having to navigate a big, publicly-traded company where you’re really driven by quarterly earnings every month, every quarter, just very different. I learned a lot.

And said, “Hey, we’ve got this great inspection business that continues to grow. I think I can take what I learned as an entrepreneur. I can take what I learned working for this large, publicly-traded company and have a significant impact on coming back and running our inspection business.” So that’s what I decided to do in 2015. So I came back and joined and took over leadership of Exo.

Jason Pizzitola:

Zachary, your talent and love for leading an organization is clear. Let’s talk a little bit about the DNA of Exo and I think your thumbprint is all over it. What are a couple of the things that really matter to you as a leader of the organization?

Zachary Oliphant:

So it’s I’d say, it comes down to probably two primary items. First and foremost, I’d say it’s our people. I take great pride in our whole team developing people. Again as I hit on early in this podcast, talking about working with my hands as a young kid and then all through high school into college. And then really when I got out of school, I mean, I spent a lot of time welding. I spent a lot of time out in the field working with our guys. I’ve probably done everything our company does today at one point out in the field. And it taught me this appreciation for all the men and women that do that for us today. I did all that for years, and years, and years. And to see the opportunity to give people that don’t want to go down a track of a traditional college degree an ability to grow a really great career and grow a trade skill is just awesome to see.

And Garett and I having these two different skill sets and really seeing Garett do that for a long time and me doing some of that, for me, it was out of my comfort zone. I want to know how all of our shop guys weld. I want to know how all of our inspectors inspect, ’cause I want to be able to connect with them. And Garett was doing that work day in and day out for our business. And so for me to see the success he had and the success all of our fuel guys and gals have had, is just awesome. And I think being a proponent of trade skills, whether it’s linemen that we work with on transmission projects, whether it’s our welders, our inspectors, it’s just fantastic to see people be able to be developed and grow in a career that’s not necessarily academia.

Jason Pizzitola:

What’s it like welding?

Zachary Oliphant:

Hot! Hot! It’s a lot of fun. I mean, the hand-to-eye coordination that welders have is really unbelievable. The skill that a welder or a fitter has to take all of these parts and components of a structure and be able to conceptualize how do you fit and weld these things into a final product is really neat. I mean, it takes a real skill. I mean, these are craftspeople. And it’s a lot of fun. It’s hot, it’s smokey, but you learn a lot about yourself at the end of welding for 10 or 12 hours in 105-degree heat. What we ask of our people today, having done that for a long time, I mean, I have a lot of respect for the work our people do. And really, all trades folks, whether it’s plumbers, or electricians, or linemen, or welders, or fitters, or inspectors. I mean, it’s hard work, but it’s critical work that has to get done.

And I don’t think a lot of folks that take an academic route or are on Wall Street or whatever understand our society does not exist without great trades people. It doesn’t. All of this plumbing works, and water works, and electricity works is a complicated, complicated industry and business that takes a lot of really skilled people to make that happen. So I’m fortunate that we have hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of people that work for us and give them this kind of career path and return those skills to society.

Jason Pizzitola:

Well, I think your respect for the trades and your experience firsthand is a tremendous benefit to the company. It comes through. And this hard work ethic that I think is part of the DNA of Exo naturally comes, I think, first person, from your respect for that. And obviously, Garett Oliphant, your brother’s experience there.

Zachary Oliphant:

I’ll say, Jason, I think we’ve built a team of people that are willing to work really, really hard towards a common goal. And I tell our team all the time, “If everything we’re doing every day is not to make our field guys’ lives easier, then we’re not focused on the right things.” If we can make our field folks job easier, it’s going to make our client relationships better. It’s going to make our customers happier. We’re going to solve problems more effectively, more efficiently, more cost effectively. And so we really strive hard to do that. We’re not perfect and there’s still a lot of opportunities for us to improve and engage with our staff on how we get better. But we’ve built a really strong team that everyone understands you got to work as hard as the guy out welding in 105-degree weather, 15 hours a day. It’s easy to sit in the AC and not feel that pressure.

But our folks have to feel that pressure, because that’s what we’re asking of them. We need to ask the same of ourselves, maybe in a different way. But you’ve got to put in that same hard work that someone in the field is putting in to make our business successful.

Jason Pizzitola:

I think that comes through. So Zachary, we talked a little bit about the influence of your father, his career, on your career, on the direction of your business. Talked about your interest and your first-person experience in the trades and your value on that. What are some other things that we wouldn’t know that have influenced you as a leader? Things you care about?

Zachary Oliphant:

So when I think, Jason, on other influences, I played sports for a lot of years, all through junior high and high school and into college, various sports. And I was fortunate to be selected on several teams as captain of the team or in an administrative function, president of a team. And that was really a unique experience for me. And I loved it. I mean, it was great. It taught me a lot about how do you lead people that all come from different backgrounds, have a different vision, different skill sets? And how do you get all of those folks together towards a common goal? And really love that about sports as a player.

And to this day I enjoy coaching and coach my kids. And to be able to get the most out of people, even when you’re not always aligned on what the vision and goal is, is a skillset that, I think, all of us are exposed to at some point probably in our lives, whether it’s through sports, or through being part of a music ensemble, or whatever. You’re part of a group in the team and you’ve got to be able to work together for a common goal. So I’ve taken a lot of those experiences and use it in our business.

Jason Pizzitola:

Well, Zachary, I know as a undergrad at Baylor you were a part of the men’s rugby team. Rugby’s a unique sport, especially in the US. We’re not quite as familiar with rugby as maybe football or baseball. Tell us some of those unique things. I know you played on a national team, still a big fan of the sport. What is it about rugby that’s captured your attention as it relates to how you lead and guide folks today?

Zachary Oliphant:

I’d say the main thing about rugby, in particular, which I like lots of different sports, but rugby in particular, it’s a very dynamic sport. So everybody that plays, you have 15 folks per team, but everyone’s got to play offense, and defense, and special teams, if you want to think about it as a football analogy. And so you have to think on your feet. And you’ve got to make very quick decisions that are affecting the person to the right or left of you in either a positive or negative way. And so you can apply that to business every day, as well. The person to the right or left of you are above you in the org chart or below you in the org chart, every little micro decision you’re making is either having a positive or negative influence or effect on that individual’s career, or their performance in a sporting event, or what have you.

And so I see that in our business today. I’ve got to make a lot of really good decisions. They’re probably not all going to be great. And I got to own the mistakes and course correct, and I ask our team do the same. But it’s around this common goal that all of us, whether it’s in a rugby game, all 15 of us are trying to win this match or whether it’s in our business, all hundreds of us are trying to improve our business and take care of our clients every day. The corollaries are very similar. And that doesn’t mean every day of training was easy or every day of dealing with somebody that had an issue was easy. But fortunately, we had a great team and a great staff all working towards a common goal. And I feel like if you can do that, if you can have this visionary piece of where we want to get and then break it down to these tactical components that you’re attacking relentlessly every single day, it’s amazing how you can be successful.

And you see it today in sports. Tom Brady’s been playing forever it feels like. But what people don’t see is the thousands of hours of work he’s got to put into training, in his body, and film study and all those things to survive in such a brutal environment like the NFL for 20 years. That takes a unique person to do that. Obviously, my sporting background pales in comparison to athletes like that. But you learn some of the same skills about work ethic and hard work. And when you’re not your best, you still got to pick yourself up and put in the effort to be successful. I think there’s great corollaries in business.

Jason Pizzitola:

Zachary, a couple of months ago you had the opportunity to deliver a talk at the opening session at the ETS Conference in Orlando, Florida. In that talk you shared a story that I’d love for you to share with the audience today.

Zachary Oliphant:

Sure. So when I think back to what I shared, it was really the story about me being, I was 30 years old. It was the first day on a new job and that was with this publicly-traded company that just acquired our manufacturing business. And I really decided, first day, what I want to do. And as we talk today and this podcast about me loving to be hands on and interacting with our trades folks, so I want to go on the shop floor. We had a factory that was part of this acquisition. And I want to go spend time on the shop floor just seeing what they were doing, how it was better or different than what we were doing, because we had to merge our two companies together to be successful. And so I get down the shop floor and I’m looking at all this welding we’re doing. We’re building these huge structures. And I noticed pretty quickly we don’t have any weld procedures. And not having weld procedures is a huge problem, huge, huge problem.

And so I go find this executive at this company that I was working for that just acquired our business. And I said, “Hey, we got to shut the factory down. We can’t be shipping out product where we don’t have weld procedures.” And for folks that don’t know, weld procedures are basically the recipe to bake a cake. You have all these ingredients. You have your weld wire, and your gases, and your temperature and the speed you’re welding. You have to get all of that stuff qualified so that you’re putting down a weld that you can predict its successor failure rate. And if you don’t have that, you’re really just guessing on whether or not you’re going to be successful on putting out a product that’s going to last a really long time. I told him, I said, “Hey, we’ve got to shut the factory down till we get this fixed.” And he looked at me like I was crazy and he told me a couple things.

He said, “One, who the hell are you?” That’s how we met. And I thought, “That’s good question.” It was my first day on the job. And he was this 30+ year veteran of this business that acquired us. And the second thing he asked me, which I thought was an interesting question, was, “Why don’t you just go back to the corporate office and go back in the AC and stay in your lane?” And I didn’t have responsibility to run that facility. That wasn’t my responsibility. And I was at a real crossroads moment. I knew what we were doing was wrong and it had to be fixed. We had to address it. And all of a sudden I’m faced with someone that’s resistant to me wanting to make this significant change or fix to our business. I wasn’t used to that. As an entrepreneur, it’s like, “No, I run the company. It needs to be fixed. Let’s fix it.” And we go do it. So I was at this big crossroads moment. I said, “I got to figure out what I’m going to do here.”

And so I really harken back to a mentor of mine, which happens to be my father, Wes Oliphant, and I call him Pop. I said, “What would Pop tell me to do in this scenario?” And at the end of the day, he would’ve said, “Just do the right thing.” And it sounds simple, but sometimes it’s not. I mean, you’re under pressure, whether it’s political, whether it’s career pressure. There’s a lot at stake. And financial pressure. And probably everyone listening to this podcast has been at that point at some point in their life, whether as a spouse, as a parent, as a leader, as a business owner, where you could take a path of cutting a corner that may be financially beneficial to you. You could take a path to let somebody slide on some mistake they made and not try to fix it. But I said, “No, I’m going to fight for this and I’m going to fix it.” And I told him, “No. We’re shutting the factory down. And that’s the right thing to do.”

Jason Pizzitola:

So what was the ramifications of that?

Zachary Oliphant:

I mean, it cost me politically within the organization for probably a couple years. I mean, I fought for a couple years. The guy’s a 30, 35 year veteran of this company. He had a lot of credibility within the business. Very senior guy. And I’m the new guy. Their big, publicly-traded company acquired our small business. You do what we tell you to do. And I said, “No, that’s not right. Right is right.” And at the end of the day for me, and this is a mantra for our business at Exo today, is really integrity is everything. Not only the structural integrity side, or the integrity of the infrastructure we inspect, but our inspector’s integrity, they’ve got to make the right call, the hard call. The end of a 12 or 14-hour workday, man, it’s easy to mail in, pencil whip a report and say, “Oh yeah, I could do it right, but I’m just going to say it was good or it was bad.”

No, you got to have integrity in every decision you’re making every day. And that’s tough. It cost our business a bunch of money at the time. And we had to shut a huge factory down until we get these weld procedures in place, which took a couple weeks. I can tell you, I didn’t make a lot of friends doing that. But ultimately, it set the tone for our business that we’re going to do things the right way. And if nothing else, I mean, ultimately, it worked out and we did things the right way. But if nothing else, it was a lesson for me as a young leader in a business to say, “Look, I’m going to do what’s right. And I’m going to try and work diligently and work my tail off to do what’s right every day. I’m not saying I do and I’m perfect, but I’m going to work really hard and I’m going to put pressure on our team to do the same.”

And whether it’s the new employee that just started yesterday or whether it’s someone that’s been with us 10 or 15 years, my expectation is they’re going to put integrity in every decision they make. And I think if they frame it that way, we’re going to make a lot more good decisions than we are bad. And that ultimately, we’re going to have a really successful business because of it.

Jason Pizzitola:

Zachary, great story. Thank you for sharing that story of practicing personal integrity for all of us. Another thing I know you value from being around you a little bit, learning, growing, mentorship. You’ve got a tradition as you interview your guests on this show of asking, “What’s the advice you’d pass on to the next generation?” So posed to you, Zachary, what would you tell?

Zachary Oliphant:

So I think, great question, Jason, and probably lots of things. They’d probably tell me to shut up at some point and quit talking. But I think for me, it boils down to a couple fundamental things. One, be willing to work your tail off. All of us want work-life balance, but I can tell you, you better pick a career that you enjoy what you’re doing and the people you’re working with, because it’s going to consume a huge chunk of your life. I mean, it takes time to learn a skill. And in today’s day and age, you’ve got so many young people that just want to jump from one thing to the next, to the next. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be exposed to lots of things, but to really be skillful at something you’ve got to put a lot of effort into whatever that skill is. It doesn’t just come naturally. The Steph Curry that shoots whatever, 50% three-pointers, that doesn’t happen without shooting millions of shots in practice.

So for me, for young people, a lot of it would be, pick an industry you love, work your tail off and be willing to learn every day. And I think if you do those three things, you’re going to be successful in whatever you decide to do. It doesn’t mean you’re always going to pick the right company the first time. And certainly there may be some migration there. But you got to be patient and be willing to learn a skill and learn a trade, whether that’s in the corporate world or whether that’s in the field as a technician, you’ve got to have a willingness and thirst for knowledge and then you got to back it with hard work.

Jason Pizzitola:

Well, I think that’s such a important thing to say. You’ve got a unique seat where you’ve seen the hard skill of let’s say, an engineer, a career of an engineer as well as the career of a trades man or woman who have had to put in the work. Paint a picture of those two, both of those two.

Zachary Oliphant:

I think the success ultimately ends up being the same formula. Thirst for knowledge. Whether you’re a field technician for us that’s starting as a, you’ve never been an inspector before and we put you through school and training, you’ve got to be willing to learn. And then you’ve got to take that practical application and apply it and work really diligently. Same on the engineering side. You’re going to go get a formal education, engineering principles, but then you get out of school and you’ve got to go, “What type of engineering do I want to do? Maybe I’m a civil structural guy. Well, do I want to go design bridges, or buildings, or transmission structures in our industry?” You’ve got the fundamental principles just like you have coming out of a technical school, but now you’ve got to go apply those. And both of those, the education in both the trade skill or a traditional engineering education is just the foundational component.

Really, what you do with that is the work and effort you put in and the willingness to continue to learn every day. I’ve got a lot of great mentors around me, that to a person, they say, “A willingness to learn every day.” It doesn’t matter how long they’ve been in the industry. Their willingness to learn is what makes them better every single day. Their willingness to listen, ’cause a lot of times the only way you learn is by listening. Makes you a better person every day. Makes you a better employee every day. Makes you a better leader every day. So if I were to juxtapose those two, I think you have the same criteria, whether you’re a trades person or an engineer, you got to build some foundational education, you got to work your tail off and apply what you learned to your skill. If you do those things, you’re going to grow in your career. No matter what, you’ll be successful.

Jason Pizzitola:

It sounds like you’re saying what you do matters. Who you are as you go matters. Neither can exist independent of the other. Well, Zach, we’ve talked extensively about where you’ve come from, the kind of origin of Exo, some of the influences on your leadership. Tell us a little bit about where you are now as a leader in the organization and what you see on the horizon. What’s next?

Zachary Oliphant:

So great question, Jason. I’d say today I’m somebody that still has a thirst to learn as a leader. I don’t pretend that I have a monopoly on good ideas. And so for us here at Exo, it’s about how do we continue to build a top-performing team? And when I say top-performing team, that’s not just at the top. It’s got to be a top-performing team to the individual that’s walking in the door today to join our business and how do we continue to push our business forward? We have the great fortune of employing hundreds and hundreds of people that are doing this amazing work all over North America to keep our infrastructure healthy, and safe, and running the way we all want it to and the way we expect it to. So for our business, it’s how do we continue to do that? And how do we continue to get better every day?

Complacency is a very easy thing to sneak into a business. You can be very successful and get fat and happy about your success and all of a sudden you blink and someone’s passed you by. And it’s critically important that we keep this entrepreneurial spirit within our business, that we’re here to solve problems every day. We’re here to be lean and mean every day. We’re here to support our people every day. And we’re here to support our clients in their challenges every day. If we can keep doing those things, we’re going to continue to grow this fantastic business while solving these really fun, challenging problems in our industry.

Jason Pizzitola:

And I see, Zachary, you setting the tone for many of the leaders at Exo to be innovative. I’ve heard you describe innovation as taking principles and adding the right people, the right net technologies to create new things, to forge a new way. Talk to me a little bit about what are some of the ways that Exo is innovating and forging a new way for the industry for our clients and customers?

Zachary Oliphant:

Absolutely, Jason. So there’s a lot of things we do for our industry. I would say internally, the way we ask our folks to think about innovation is, one, we’ve got to communicate with one another. What are your challenges, whether it’s a client challenge or it’s an internal challenge? And then how do we put this just unbelievable brain trust we have at Exo to work on solving those challenges? And what’s the right economic way forward? What’s the right structural way forward? What’s the right solution for our client and their budgets? So I would say that is our challenge every day, is how are we the best stewards of our clients’ dollars? And how are we taking all of this great knowledge and brain trust and applying processes and principles and technology to solve their problems the most effective way? If we can continue to do that, I think we’ll continue to be a market leader in our solutions.

We’re having great use of technology and analytics in how we solve challenges. And we’ve got all of this data set. I mean, we collect millions and millions of data points on infrastructure. And `to be able to sit down with a client and show them, “Hey, this is when we believe this is going to fail. So you should spend dollars today. If you spend those dollars today, look how much it’s going to save you moving forward.” Those are great conversations to have. And you can show that empirically, because of all the data we collect and all of our knowledge and experience with the assets that we’re helping our clients serve. So that’s exciting. I think there’s still more work to be done in our industry to get tighter and better at doing that. I think Exo’s the best there is at doing that. I think we will, hopefully, continue to be the best there is at doing that.

And if we continue to do that, our clients are going to be happy. We’re going to save them money. And we’re going to solve their challenges, unique challenges, in a unique and efficient way.

Jason Pizzitola:

Well, Zachary Oliphant, CEO, founder of Exo, you’re a thoughtful and effective leader. Thank you so much for sharing a little bit about your personal story, your experiences, and your vision for Exo.

Zachary Oliphant:

Sounds good. Thanks, Jason. It was fun to share. I appreciate it.