Did you know ECS launched a podcast? Coffee Talk: From the Ground Up is meant to be educational, entertaining and encouraging with practical advice you can apply directly in your work and life. Listen and subscribe now on Anchor, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Apple Podcasts.
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Introduction
Steve Gosselin:
Welcome to Coffee Talk, From The Ground Up, an ECS podcast, where we strive to provide a more plausible way to communicate with employees. I’m Steve Gosselin, but you can call me [Goose 00:00:21], and I’m part of our senior leadership team and I’m joined here by Julie Smith, who is part of the marketing communications team, and our resident chocoholic. Say hi, Julie.
Julie Smith:
Thanks, Steve. Hey, everyone. I’m glad you’re joining us today. Steve, what are we doing here?
Steve Gosselin:
Great question, Julie. One of the struggles with the company our size is getting a message to the masses without it being diluted along the way. From projects and people, to services and career insight, we hope this podcast helps provide an avenue to communicate the stories that are worth sharing. It’s to learn about our culture and feel more connected, and to have some fun along the way.
Julie Smith:
What you’re saying is we hope this podcast is educational, entertaining, and encouraging with practical advice you can apply directly to your work and life.
Steve Gosselin:
Well said, Julie, and that’s why you’re in marketing.
Julie Smith:
Grab a cup and settle in.
Our attorney makes us say this. This podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only. Nothing here-in shall be construed as providing professional engineering services or used to establish the standard of care. This podcast and the comments contained there-in represent only the personal views of the participants and do not reflect those of ECS. While we make every effort to ensure that the information we are sharing is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestions, or correction of airs.
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Steve Gosselin:
Safety is incredibly important at ECS. We start every meeting with a safety minute. Today’s safety minute is about driving safety. The days are getting noticeably shorter and our typically work day now starts at or before daybreak. Two things. One, many kids are out walking to school or waiting for the bus before daybreak. Take your time. Go slow in neighborhoods and school zones. Keep an eye out for young folks on the side of the road. Also, have sunglasses handy. As the sun rises slow in the sky, the intense sunlight will blind you first thing in the morning if you aren’t wearing sunglasses.
That’s happened to be many times. Always keep sunglasses handy while driving. As always, be sure that your phone is in a secure location and hit play before moving your car so that you remain hands free and do not drive distracted.
Welcome to Coffee Talk, From The Ground Up, an ECS podcast, where we strive to provide a more plausible way to communicate with employees.
I’m Steve Gosselin, and here with me is Julie Smith, my co-host, and today we’re going to be talking about … Wait, what? Me? Come on, Julie.
Julie Smith:
That’s right, Steve. It’s day one, and I’m already keeping you on your toes. Today’s going to be a little bit about me and a lot more about you. For this first episode, we want our listeners to get to know who it is they’re hearing from. You okay with that?
Steve Gosselin:
All right, Julie. I see what you’re doing here and I’m up for the challenge. Let’s go.
Julie Smith:
All right. First things first, Steve, what are you drinking this morning, and is it your normal or are you drinking something special?
Steve Gosselin:
Well, of course, I knew you’d ask that question. I’m drinking my Quad Grande Americano. That’s right. Four shots of espresso from Starbucks, and then I usually finish it off with a cafe especial medium-dark roast made by Community Coffee, which is a South Louisiana coffee company.
Julie Smith:
Awesome. Well, as most of you know, Steve is principal geologists and executive vice president for ECS. He joined our team in 1996 and has had several different roles through the years. He’s based in Charlotte, and when he’s not in this office, you can find this Aggie on the golf course or with his wife chasing his grandkids.
Steve, thanks for allowing us to steal the name Coffee Talk for this podcast. Can you tell us a little bit about how the original coffee talk started and what that purpose was?
Steve Gosselin:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Actually it started a little over a year go, not long after Tony took over as CEO of the company. He and I had a long conversation about communication, leadership, management, how to get the word out, and it was really Tony’s idea. He wanted to have some sort of monthly call to get information out to the folks. It was a way to share information and the purpose really was to create a dialogue so learning could be shared amongst the leadership of the company. We decided to call it Coffee Talk. Typically, the topics are about things that are challenging or important to the company.
For instance, tomorrow we’re going to be talking about what is employee engagement? We grab some articles from periodicals, magazines, business journals, send them out to the group as a way to prepare, set the context of the call and talk about what some of the challenges are we’re facing in relation to the subject. Then I like to assemble what I call an all-star cast of experts, but really it’s folks across the company that are in leadership positions that can share stories about what the topic is that week or that month. It’s really been received well. Folks get a lot out of it. We first started, it got off to a slow start, but now we’ve got people volunteering all the time to talk and people jumping in during the call. It really is meeting our mission of sharing dialogue and learning across the leadership of the company.
Julie Smith:
Yeah. If you’re not familiar, we stole the name Coffee Talk from that monthly call, and after listening to just a few episodes, we felt the message was important enough to share with our employees and build upon it for a larger audience. That’s how we got here today. All right, Steve. Now I’m going to ask you some rapid fire questions. Are you ready?
Steve Gosselin:
Okay. Let’s give a shot.
Julie Smith:
All right. What’s your favorite food?
Steve Gosselin:
Well, I’ll eat almost anything, but if I had to choose, I’d say Mexican.
Julie Smith:
Yeah, I would agree. There’s a number of queso and guacs that we have shared together over the years. What is your favorite book or author?
Steve Gosselin:
Well, the last book I read was Capitalism in America by Alan Greenspan. Boy, favorite book. I’d say there’s a lot of business manuals I read, but one of my favorite leadership business manuals is True Professionalism by David Maister. I found that really a valuable book.
Julie Smith:
Awesome. Favorite movie.
Steve Gosselin:
Coal Miner’s Daughter.
Julie Smith:
Favorite sport or hobby.
Steve Gosselin:
College football is my favorite sport. Really enjoy the pageantry, the tradition, just the sheer passion of the sport. My favorite hobby is fishing. Even though I know I do play a lot of golf, if I had to choose anything, I’d be fishing right now.
Julie Smith:
Best vacation spot.
Steve Gosselin:
Best vacation spot is probably fishing in South Louisiana with my fishing buddies.
Julie Smith:
Nice. All right. Now that we know a little bit more about you, let’s talk more about your experience at ECS and your career journey. First question, what’s your ECS story?
Steve Gosselin:
Okay. Let me spin up the memory banks here. This is going back to late 1995, early 1996, Steve Neas, Brian [Moss 00:08:43] and I were working with law engineering along with many other folks that ultimately came to ECS, and we were becoming more and more disenchanted with the direction of the company and some of the financial challenges they were facing. As it turns out, inside of law engineering, some of the major leadership and management of the company not only had the same feelings, but they were in the process of trying to go out and form their own company. We found out about that and actually got invited to a clandestine meeting of law engineering leadership about forming this company.
After the meeting, Steve and Brian and I were driving back home, we were talking about the meeting and what our feelings were about it. We felt like they didn’t really have a clear direction and they were going to be underfunded and we didn’t want to start out like that. We actually talked about forming our own firm. During the conversation, Steve Neas mentioned, “There’s one more thing we need to consider. There’s this guy I’ve been talking to, Henry Lucas and he’s with ECS. He’s actually offered me a job. I turned him down once,” but he said, “I think that’s really a viable alternative,” and he explained to us about not only Henry and ECS, but the company’s feeling about entrepreneurism and how quickly they were growing and opening new offices.
He said, “Let me call Henry and get something set up,” and we all agreed. Well, you know Henry. He’s very rapid, very fast on the draw, and so we actually had dinner with Henry on Tuesday evening and pretty much consummated the deal. The next day, we went to lunch with our wives to talk about the decision, making sure that everybody was on board, everybody agreed and talk about what some of the potential problems might be. Steve called Henry on Thursday and said we were ready to go. Our offer letter showed up at our houses via FedEx Saturday morning. We signed them over the weekend and sent them back to Henry and resigned Monday morning. In about 10 days, we went from meeting with leadership at law about forming our own company to resigning and coming to work for Henry.
Julie Smith:
Wow. Obviously, you’ve been here a while and you’ve had a variety of different roles. Can you talk about your leadership, moving along the leadership ranks a little bit?
Steve Gosselin:
Yeah, you bet. Steve and I opened up in Greensboro early March 1996. I started out as a principal geologist working in environmental group there, along with Brian Moss, Denise [Pulis 00:11:41] and a few others. We quickly started grabbing market share and growing the office. In about a little over a year in, I’d say almost 18 months in, we decided we needed a full-time business development person. I was asked and actually tentatively agreed. But my agreement to Steve was I wanted my old job back in a year because I wasn’t really excited about it. But after about six months in, realizing the challenge, the commitment it took to do full-time business development, really how hard it was, the professionalism of the position, the things I was learning, it was a great transition and really a good position in my career.
I went back to Steve and I said, “This is a little bit more gratifying than I thought it was going to be. I’ll go ahead and give it a try,” and he laughed and he said, “I figured that would happen.” I did that, I’d say for almost six years. I was full-time business development and worked along with some of the other business developers in the company, did a lot of traveling, and it was really valuable in my career. 2003, I took over branch management of Greensboro as we were rolling out and starting to form subsidiaries and subsidiary presidents. Steve Neas got promoted up. I moved into that role. Then in January of 2005, I moved to Charlotte as branch manager, and that was a great move, not only moving to Charlotte, but the opportunity down here.
A few years later, 2008-2009 timeframe, the regional management was taking hold, the subsidiaries were taking hold, and ECS Carolinas at the time was large enough to break up into regions inside the subsidiary. Originally, I was given the Western region. Then the Great Recession came along and we tightened everything back up. In 2010 timeframe, we were starting to come out of the Great Recession, and I decided along with Steve and Wally to take over what we considered the Southern region of ECS Carolinas, which is all South Carolina and Western North Carolina, including Charlotte. A few years later, 2013, I took over as subsidiary president of ECS Carolinas. A few years later, we merged with ECS Southeast and formed ECS Southeast, which was essentially the size that it is now.
Then a little over a year ago, I stepped out of the way to let Derek, Paul, Ben, Eric, Raul and others take over and manage ECS Southeast. I’m in my new role as executive vice president. I’m supporting ECS Southeast, supporting Grant Walker in National Accounts. Grant and I are also working together on leadership and management, leading the masters in leadership program and helping Tony out as well with some executive leadership positions as well too. That’s, in a nutshell, my career here at ECS.
Julie Smith:
A lot of our listeners are interested in learning more about leadership. What are a few simple things our listeners can do every day to help grow in their leadership?
Steve Gosselin:
Wow, good question. I think the main thing is focusing on yourself, focusing on your strengths and growing personally and professionally each and every day. Always striving to learn more. I know that I’ve always immersed myself in books, periodicals, things like that, plus taking a lot of courses as well too.
Never stop learning, never think you’ve arrived, never think that you’ve got it all figured out. Really what happens is you reach a series of plateaus in your life and you’ve got to continue to push yourself to strive and break through. The other thing, you got to surround yourself with great people.
I mentioned earlier certainly working with Steve Neas, Brian Moss, some of the folks in Greensboro was great experience and helped in my journey and shortly helped in management leadership. Then the same thing in Charlotte, getting to work with Derek when I first came down here, hiring Paul Blake, working with John Lair, working with several others. That was really, really great experience. Then as I moved up to, I guess, senior leadership in ECS Southeast president, surrounded myself with Beth, Paul, Derek, Ben, Eric, many others, getting to work with Bob [Garing 00:17:09] along the way, working closely with Raul. You really got to surround yourself with great people. Then communication is really important.
We talk a lot about that and that’s why we’re doing this podcast and why we do the monthly coffee talks. But you really do have to dig in and understand the needs and the concerns of your folks. You’ve got to understand what it is they want to achieve, how they want to grow, and what some of their challenges are. You pull all that together and in creating a vision, a direction, and each and every day waking up with a purpose, knowing that I’m excited about coming to work, that I’m going to win that day, and just being ready to meet the challenge and take on each and every challenge that comes along every day, making quick decisions, making sure you’re moving the needle, making sure that you’re progressing each day.
Julie Smith:
Talking about those challenges and the importance of communication and the great people that you work with, as someone who’s worked under your leadership, I know firsthand that work-life balance is a extremely important to you. What does that mean to you? You’ve been doing it since before it was really cool or trendy? Can you share what does work-life balance mean to you and how has your family contributed to this becoming part of your leadership style?
Steve Gosselin:
Yeah. Thanks for those kind words. I’d say first and foremost, I learned work-life balance, partnership and trust from my wife, Karen. She grew up in a family where her dad was a committed professional and working hard every day, and she saw now out only how he took care of his family, but how hard he worked. This guy was traveling all around the world. She saw that. Karen’s a geologist as well. She’s a professional and she always understood that I was committed to the company, to work, to my folks, and that I needed to spend time away from home and traveling and doing my job. But I also knew that the most important thing in my life was my family, was Karen and Greg and Danielle. Now it’s my extended family, including my grandchildren.
I’ve always had a clear sense of that. Karen always supported that and I kept that as the number one priority. I really think it all starts with trust, and that is for my folks and the people I work with. I trust them. I trust that they’re responsible. I trust they know what their job is. I trust that they know what needs to get done, and I know that everybody works hard. I really believe that deep down and that all of our folks are working hard. I ask for people to get their job done, commitment, to work hard at work, but at the same time I wanted to make sure that they had every means of communication to stay in touch with their family during the day, whether it was they needed a phone, an iPad, a computer, access to ways to communicate, and that they had the freedom at any time that if they needed to be home with their family or their kids or to help out or support, that they felt okay to ask, to talk about it.
That wasn’t going to be held against them, that we have PTO, that we have sick leave, that we have great benefits that they could use to their advantage. There’s laws out there like the Family and Medical Leave Act and things like that. But I would always spend time talking with folks and making sure that not only were they working hard, but find out about their wife, their kids, their dog, what was going on at home, and that they had that freedom to be able to spend time with their family and enjoy themselves and enjoy their time with their family too.
Julie Smith:
Yeah. Steve, you’ve been here since 1996. I’m sure there have been a lot of memorable moments throughout the years. Besides that time when I may have stabbed you with a fork when you tried to eat my dessert, what’s been some of your funniest or your favorite memories along the way?
Steve Gosselin:
Oh man. There’s so many great memories that I cherish, and a lot of it has to do with our folks and their successes. I just love [inaudible 00:22:01] outs every week, reading about the things that people are doing, the things they’re accomplishing, the compliments they’re getting from our clients. I love seeing things with their family and new kids and giving back to the community, and things like that. There’s just so many. There’s really not one best or favorite moment. There’s just so many things that I enjoy. I can just think of all the major projects that we won and the euphoria and the excitement about that. But even some of the folks we’ve hired, some of the things they’ve done, it’s just that there’s so many that … I don’t want to say there’s one best because there’s too many, but that’s a great question.
Julie Smith:
Yeah. All right. We’re getting to my favorite part. We’re going to call this section, Our Listeners Want To Know. How would Steve Gosselin answer the question, what does ECS do?
Steve Gosselin:
I get asked that a lot, and usually it comes up in conversation when people find out I’m a geologist or Karen’s a geologist. They’re like, “Really? What do you do?” I tell them, “I work with an engineering consulting firm,” and you give them the 30-second commercial, the elevator speech and [inaudible 00:23:26] geotechnical environmental stuff like that, and they look at me like, “Well, what is all that?” I try to pull it, boil it down a couple of different ways. Not to offend any geotechnical engineers out there, but typically, what I do is I tell folks I drill holes in the ground and tell you what kind of dirt you have, and they’re like, “What?”
I said, “Yeah. Either the physical characteristics of the soil or the chemical characteristics of the soil,” and they’re like, “Oh, okay.” I said, “Essentially what we do is we observe, test and report. In all aspects of all the work that we do, we observe what’s going on. We’ll collect some samples sometimes, we test and then we report.” That’s essentially what we do.
Julie Smith:
Awesome. All right. How many messages are in your inbox right now, and how do you manage your email?
Steve Gosselin:
Oh, wow. I know there’s several folks that were at this manager’s meeting and I’d say it was at least … Oh man. It’s probably 15 years ago. It was in the mid 2000s, and there was a guy that did a quick 20, 30- minute seminar on managing stuff, and I try … You’ve seen me, I’m borderline OCD, and I got things organized, not quite as to the degree that Beth is and everything’s color coordinated, but I try to keep things organized. But one of the things that I always … What challenged me was email. I would have thousands of emails in my inbox and always trying to go back and find things. This guy talked about setting up files. Important things that you need maybe later or to keep, you stick in the files. You would start at the top, you would knock emails out as that come along, and then you would delete things that weren’t important. Right now, I’d say I might have eight emails in my inbox that have to be responded to.
Julie Smith:
Wow. That’s impressive. I hope to get to that level soon. All right. Steve, in one word, how would you describe yourself?
Steve Gosselin:
I’d say trusting.
Julie Smith:
All right. We’ve reached the end. We have one final a question. You ready?
Steve Gosselin:
Sure.
Julie Smith:
All right, here it goes. What fills your cup or what brings you joy?
Steve Gosselin:
I’d say really family brings me joy, spending time with Karen, pretty much anywhere, and then in particularly, my grandchildren. I hope everybody on the call someday gets to have grandchildren and gets to experience that joy, that level of joy. It’s really hard to describe. I remember my friends as they were becoming grandfathers or grandmothers and trying to describe it and you can’t put it into words. It certainly is a feeling. But the moment I became a grandfather, and I’ve been a grandfather now almost seven years, it’s pretty incredible thing. It’s family, my relationship with Karen and my grandchildren.
Julie Smith:
Awesome. Well, Steve, you made it. You did great. Thanks so much for sharing with us today. We’re extremely excited to have you leading us through this journey that we are calling Coffee Talk. I’ve enjoyed playing host today, but graciously handing the reins over to you.
Steve Gosselin:
All right. Thanks, Julie. You made it easy and did a great job. I really appreciate it. I look forward to engaging in conversations and connecting with our guests and listeners in our own upcoming episodes. Thanks again. I really appreciate it.
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Outro
Steve Gosselin:
Thank you for listening to Coffee Talk, From The Ground Up. We hope you enjoy today’s episode. If you have an idea on future topics, guests, or up for round of call, you can call me, text me, email me, just get in touch with me and I’ll get it to Julie and we’ll get it set up.
Julie Smith:
For those of you that don’t want to play golf and you may hate talking on the phone, that’s okay. You can send us an email at ecsmarketing@ecslimited.com. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode.
Steve Gosselin:
Thanks, Julie. Here’s to having a great day.