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.
———–
Introduction
Steve Gosselin:
Welcome to Coffee Talk: From the Ground Up, an ECS podcast where we strive to provide a more personable way to communicate with employees. I’m Steve Gosselin, but you can call me Goose. 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. So Steve, what are we doing here?
Steve Gosselin:
Great question, Julie. One of the struggles with a 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:
So 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:
So grab a cup and settle in.
Our attorney makes us say this, this podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only. Nothing herein shall be construed as providing professional engineering services or used to establish the standard of care. This podcast and the comments contained therein 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 errors.
***
Episode
Julie Smith:
Before we start today’s conversation with Tony, we wanted to start off with a safety minute. As we are in the winter season now, be sure that you are keeping safety in mind. If you’re outside, make sure you’re wearing layers of clothing, wear a hat and cover your hands and ears and things like that to stay warm. When you’re at home and it may be freezing at night, make sure that you are keeping your pipes from freezing over, make sure that they are dripping at night. You can also open up cabinet doors to allow more heat in to those uninsulated areas like under a sink or near an outer wall. And make sure that your heat is left on and set no lower than 55 degrees. These are just a few things to keep in mind this winter season. And now, let’s start our conversation with Tony.
Steve Gosselin:
So as you know, as everybody on a call knows, Tony took over as president and CEO a little over a year ago. And boy, what a memorable year. While this was always the plan, it fell under very strange circumstances. Today we’re going to hear from Tony about ECS, about the future of ECS, his vision for the company, what he’s most excited about and probably just a little bit about him as well too. Julie, you want to jump in for a minute?
Julie Smith:
Yeah. As said, Tony actually began his career at ECS as a field technician in 1993, but now in his role as president and CEO, he works with the board of directors and subsidiary executives to establish short term and long term goals, strategies and ensures that operational goals are met. He currently sits in our corporate office in Chantilly, Virginia. And when he’s not in the office, you can find this Auburn tiger volunteering in his local community, coaching one of his children’s sports teams or traveling with his family.
Steve Gosselin:
Most excellent. Good. So Tony… Where did he go? Yeah. Good morning. You ready to get this started?
Tony Fiorillo:
Yes sir, let’s do it.
Steve Gosselin:
Okay, good. As is our tradition, we always start out with some rapid fire questions. So you okay with that?
Tony Fiorillo:
Absolutely.
Steve Gosselin:
All right. So what’s your favorite food?
Tony Fiorillo:
Man, I’ll tell you. I have so many, but I’m going to have to go with pizza. I’m originally from Long Island, New York, home of the nation’s best pizza and I’m definitely a pizza snob. I measure all pizza against a place called Ancona Pizzeria in Valley Stream, that’s where my family’s from. And I’m on a quest to make my own perfect pizza. I make my own dough, pizza sauce and I use fresh buffalo mozzarella and burrata as well. But I do need to make like my own wood-fire pizza oven if I want to take it to the next level.
Steve Gosselin:
Excellent. So last book you read or your favorite book or author?
Tony Fiorillo:
Well, the last book I read was a book called Level Headed by Doug Pruitt and Richard Condit. Henry gave this book to me in early 2020. I read it about a year ago and again last month. As you know, it was assigned reading for a recent senior manager’s meeting. The book is about suit construction. It’s a company that was founded in about 1890, who became one of the most profitable companies in American business, but it later was on the verge of bankruptcy. The story is about their rise, fall and their rise again to become more successful than ever before. There are a lot of great lessons to be learned from that book and I highly recommend reading it.
Steve Gosselin:
Yeah, it was an excellent book. Thanks for sharing it with us. I particularly enjoyed it. Remind me a lot of some of the struggles we went through, not quite as severe but over the last 15, 20 years, dealing with a couple of recessions and the pandemic and things like that and how resilient we are as a company. So I know during the group discussions, we were all gratified by how far we’ve come and a lot of the things we’ve done and the things we put in place and that book really helped. Favorite movie?
Tony Fiorillo:
I got to say The Godfather trilogy. I grew up loving gangster movies. The trilogy is a fictional story but it’s rooted in very real history. Godfather II is the best sequel of all time, in my opinion, and arguably better than the original. Some of the greatest movie quotes came from this series, “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.” “Leave the gun, take the cannoli.” “Is to send you a message. It means that Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes.”
Steve Gosselin:
Yep. I couldn’t agree more. That definitely was the second most favorite movie, and you can ask my wife. I think I can sit there and watch all three movies and just talk along with the characters. It’s amazing. I love them. Favorite sport or hobby?
Tony Fiorillo:
Well, my hobby is coaching. Julie mentioned it earlier. I’ve spent a number of years coaching soccer, basketball and lacrosse, probably for the better part of the last 10 years. I actually just finished coaching my youngest son’s soccer team and my oldest son’s lacrosse team. Lacrosse is my favorite sport to play, but as you know, college football is my favorite sport to watch. I don’t watch that much TV, but I can tell you, you can find my boys and me on the couch every Saturday night watching college football during the fall.
Steve Gosselin:
No doubt. Yeah, I think that’s why we have such a good friendship. But there’s no question that we share that passion of football, college football, recruiting, coaching, the traditions, all those things. And for those of you on the listening today, whenever the college recruiting, signing periods, now there’s an early signing period in December and then there’s the traditional one in February, I always get a phone call that morning from Tony. After all the letters of commitment have gone in, he’s like, “All right, how you feeling about the Aggies this year?” So yeah, we share that pretty closely. Best vacation spot or favorite place in the world?
Tony Fiorillo:
Well, I’ll tell you, I think the best trip I’ve ever taken was a trip, a number of years ago, to Costa Rica. It really is one of the most amazing places on earth. If you like adventure trips, Costa Rica really has it all. It has the jungles, cloud and rainforest, active volcanoes, hot springs, waterfalls, amazing rapids if you like white water rafting, world class fishing and of course the beautiful beaches. They go by the Pura Vida, pure life, motto. So it’s just amazing spot.
Steve Gosselin:
I’ve never been but I’ve heard so many great stories so I’m looking forward to my trip there someday. Okay. You’re off the hot seat now so we’ll move on. Now that we know a little bit about you personally, let’s talk about your experience here at ECS. So tell us a little bit about your ECS story, how you got here, your career path, some of the jobs you’ve done, things like that. Just tell us about your ECS story.
Tony Fiorillo:
Well, I will tell you it was an unexpected journey, but let me just start by saying that my father was a marine aviator and I grew up with a passion for flying. I always thought that I was going to join the Marine Corp and become a pilot myself. Now, as a matter of fact, when I was in college, I joined the Corp and I qualified for an aviation billet. Upon graduation, the Clinton administration was in the process of base realignment and closure, which is otherwise known as BRAC. And at that time, the administration was also cutting military spending, which really created some budgetary issues for many of their programs. So as such, I was instructed to go find another job and the Marines told me that they would call me when they were ready. Unfortunately, the Marines never really panned out for me, but that’s a much longer story for another time.
So interestingly enough, I actually became a substitute teacher, but that was only good until the end of the school year. And about that same time, I attended a Young Life event. I attended Young Life throughout my high school and even college. And I met Matt Eckert, and Matt Eckert of course is Jim Eckert, our CFO’s brother and our co-founder’s son. So I told him my story and he encouraged me to reach out to his dad who, as we all know, was a formal Naval officer himself.
So in about July of ’93, I joined ECS as a field technician. I worked there as until about 1995. And about that time, that’s about the time that I got out of the… I was never on active duty in the Marine Corps, but I really terminated my contract with them. So I was looking for new opportunities and at the time ECS didn’t have those opportunities available to me, so we agreed to part ways at that point and that we would stay in touch. So I ended up moving down to Miami and I went to work for Brasfield & Gorrie, working on some healthcare projects down there.
But I will tell you, even while I was down there, I was having a great time. I was young and living in Miami is not a bad spot to be. But I really loved working for ECS and working with our clients and solving their problems. So, as I mentioned, I stayed touch with Jim Baldridge and eventually he rehired me in September of 1996 as the director of marketing and I was also a part-time geotechnical and materials testing project manager as well. I will say I knew nothing about marketing or business development, but I recognized it was an area that I needed to improve for future growth entities.
So I remained in that position until about 2000, when I became the Frederick, Maryland branch manager, which was also a great situation for me, it was already an established office. John McCarthy had been there for a couple years and it was an opportunity to also work with Nancy McCarthy. So these two people are folks that I have a lot of admiration for. And then shortly thereafter, Sal Fiorentino joined us and I was able to pass the torch to him upon my move to Orlando to open our first office in Florida.
I will say Orlando was a very challenging market with many well established firms. My learning curve was steep in both Chantilly and Frederick, but I can tell you that curve really steepened in Orlando. As you know our business model, we really expect our branch manager to be the lightning rod for the office. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a lot of strong relationships that would win us work in the short term. Fortunately, we were able to hire some really great local talent, Cliff Hendrickson is one of them to help build the operation. And then about 2015, I moved back to Chantilly to work in the corporate office where the learning curve began to be steep again while I was learning the roles and responsibilities of corporate services. It’s been a challenging but rewarding journey and I’m really excited about the future of our great company.
Steve Gosselin:
Excellent. So tell us a little bit about your leadership style. I mean, how do you keep yourself and your team motivated? Tell us a little bit about that.
Tony Fiorillo:
Well, I’ll say for me, it’s all about work life balance. It’s setting goals and really focusing on our people. It’s important for us to communicate and communicate often to stay true to our core values and business discipline, holding each other accountable, mentoring and supporting our people in their work. Our people are really what make ECS great. It’s our role as leaders to support them every step of the way.
Steve Gosselin:
Who do you look up to, or who do you look to for inspiration, mentorship, coaching? Who have helps you out?
Tony Fiorillo:
Well, I will tell you, my family is my greatest inspiration, but I also gain a lot of inspiration from our people. I love to visit offices and talk to our amazing people. My parents are my greatest mentors, but Henry and Jim Eckert and Jim Baldridge have had the greatest impact on my professional career. But I’ll tell you, there are so many others that have been very influential along the way. Steve Neas was regional manager. He was very influential. And there’s a guy by the name of Steve Gosselin, maybe you guys have heard of him. But I’ll tell you, there’s also a lot of… When talking to our leadership and management teams, I learn something from them every time we speak. So they provide a lot of insight. And I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to the good Lord above. There you go.
Steve Gosselin:
Yeah. There are other good firms out there and I know that they must have good people and good leadership, and some of them I know. There are a lot of, I guess, competitors but there are also peers to some degree in companies and I know that they’re good folks. But the folks you mentioned, I can’t think of a better group to not only work with but to have as coaches, mentors, leaders. I know my journey is somewhat similar and to be able to work with you, Henry, Jim Eckert, Jim Baldridge, Steve Neas, Brett Gitskin, Leo, on and on, all those folks, we’re really lucky. We’re really fortunate to have assembled that team and have the opportunity to work with them.
Tony Fiorillo:
Incredibly lucky.
Steve Gosselin:
Yep. So tell us a little bit about the direction the company’s headed. I know we all have our own personal styles, our own personal vision, things like that. I was fortunate enough about eight or nine or 10 years ago to take over the Carolinas at the time from Steve Neas. And it was in great shape, heading a good direction, but we’re all going to do it our own way and I had my way of doing it. So tell us a little bit about your way and the direction we’re headed and what your plans are for us.
Tony Fiorillo:
Well, I will tell you, first of all, I’d like to address a couple of the biggest challenges that I think that we face here and then I’ll get into some of the opportunities that I see down the road. And in my opinion, the biggest challenges we currently face are personnel management, that’s recruiting, retention, and then obviously we’ve seen a lot of challenges with our IT systems. I’d first like to just re-address the recruiting and retention. This is not only a challenge for ECS, but I will say it’s a challenge for many industries across the entire country. As you’ve seen and others have seen, you go to restaurants and they’ll be closed on a Monday or they’re not doing lunch service or a variety of other things. And it’s really because we’re having a hard time finding people to fill positions, quite frankly.
Tony Fiorillo:
As a company, we’ve done a great job in building our recruiting team, including recently hiring some technician recruiters. I think we really need to focus on building a pipeline by incorporating recruiting into our culture, very similar to the way we’ve done that with business development. And I just want to touch on a couple few key points real quick. Just like everything else, recruiting really starts at the top and involves people at all levels of our organization. We’ve got to ask ourselves, do we recruit our people like we recruit a customer? What are we doing to build relationships with potential employees? How do candidates feel when they walk in the door? How are they greeted? How does the staff treat them? Simple things, is the office well lit? Is it clean? Can a candidate envision themselves working in the space for the rest of their career? I just challenge everyone, try entering your office from the perspective of potential hire. Can you see yourself working there for a long period of time? Have we shown that candidate, including field personnel, our career path? Have we discussed our growth and the vast opportunities that will present themselves in the future? There are many things to consider, and I will say we have created a task force that’s working on improving some of these recruiting procedures so stay tuned for more information.
Tony Fiorillo:
I do want to also talk real quick about IT for a moment. I will say it’s generally the first question that it’s asked when Leo or I visit offices. And I just want to say that we recognize that we do have some serious problems that we need to resolve. We learned a lot about ourselves during the cyber attack last year. Some of us rose to the challenge while all of us, others, did not. And I will say those that did not are no longer with us. Our company has grown significantly over the years. We really need our IT platform and our programs to grow with us. Our goal is to regain that competitive advantage that we once had. We’ll do that by adding more staff and contract employees and improving processes and delivering quality programs and enhancements before rolling them out. One of the best ways to help out with the process is joining standing committees and being actively in involved.
Steve Gosselin:
So what are you most excited about when it comes to the growth and potential of VCS?
Tony Fiorillo:
Well, I’ll tell you it’s really the principle of compounding growth that makes our growth extraordinary at this size. If you think about it in 2021, the revenue to enter the ENR top 500 is just under 24 million. If you think about it from that perspective, at our current size and our historical growth rate that equates to adding nearly one to two new ENR top 500 firms to our organization this year and next. It’s only going to grow as we get larger as an organization. If we hit our growth rate targets, we’re going to double in size every five years. And if that’s going to be the truth, we should hit 500 million by about 2027. And we may even hit a billion by 2032 so long as there’s not a major recession in the interim. I’ll tell you, what’s most exciting is the opportunities that will present themselves for our people through both geographic and service line expansion, opportunities that will present themselves that don’t currently exist. I find that very exciting.
Steve Gosselin:
Couldn’t agree more. Yeah, we’re in a really good position, lot of good stuff on and we are really poised to continue our growth. So thanks for sharing that with us and letting the listeners know kind of what
the direction we’re headed and what our potential is. So earlier, you talked to us a little bit about how you started ECS, you started out as a field tech and now you’re the leader, president, you’re CEO. So how’s your career path impacted your passion to create opportunities for others at ECS?
Tony Fiorillo:
Well, I’ll tell you, I’m a firm believer in pay it forward. I mentioned Henry and Jim Senior and Jim Baldridge just a few moments ago. They always talked to me about new opportunities. Nothing was ever promised but I always knew the requirements and the expectations if I wanted to advance in the organization. As a high growth firm, there’s always going to be opportunities for our people at all levels of the organization. And I just feel as leaders, it’s important for us to promote those opportunities and to coach our people, to allow them to attain their goals. Our people are number one asset and if, I tell you, if we don’t take care of them, someone else will.
Steve Gosselin:
So you mentioned earlier about part of your path was getting into marketing, business development and doing that up in Chantilly and how it enhanced your career. I had a very similar path as well too when I was in Greensboro for about five or six years. I was a full-time business development, marketing and pursuing that and I’ll tell you, it’s really set a firm foundation for my success in the consulting business. So as consultants in this business, relationships are really at the heart of everything we do, either inside the company or outside the company. We’ve always had a big emphasis on networking, business development, marketing, sales, at every of the company. So do you see that continuing, if so, what’s it going to look like?
Tony Fiorillo:
Well, I couldn’t agree with your statements more. Networking and business development are ingrained in our culture and it’s a vital part of our continued growth and success. As Henry always points out at the managers meeting, rapid revenue growth is number one predictor of long term success. The key to that success is personal relationships with our clients. Clients with whom we have personal relationships are more likely to give us work, give us last look on proposals, tell us when we make a mistake and give us opportunity to fix problems. They’re more likely to pay us on time and they’re more likely to refer us as well. And more importantly, they’re less likely to sue us. So networking and business development are key to our success and will always be part of our culture.
Steve Gosselin:
Well said, couldn’t agree more. And I think the networking part of it, developing an extensive network throughout the industry has been not only the most gratifying but it’s the most fun for me. I’d tell you what it’s… I’ve got not only good business relationships but I made lifelong friends as well too. Keeping on the growth theme, and for our listeners out there, if you haven’t been paying attention, I don’t think Tony has a conversation at all about the company if he doesn’t mention growth, it’s always in there, it’s ingrained in every message he sends us. So in the past few years we’ve grown the company a little bit through mergers and acquisitions, long term, it’s always been organic growth. I know we’ll continue to do that, but just give us your vision and how and where do you see ECS growing in the future?
Tony Fiorillo:
Well, I’d just like to say, first of all, that growth is primarily a natural outcome of taking care of our people and taking care of our clients. If you want to go back to the great recession, our sales bottomed out at about 93.7 million in about 2009. Since that time, we’ve sustained a compounded annual growth rate of about 10%. But that in figure really includes several years of low growth, low to flat growth, as we exited the recession. It really, historically, we’ve grown by about 15%. If you think about it, early on, we were able to go into markets and out hustle our competitors through marketing, business development and execution excellence. But now our competitors are far more business savvy than they once were. We were also able to go into high growth markets and grow with the markets. As you remember, it was the next major market down the road where we oftentimes had name recognition and perhaps even some work to go along with it.
Tony Fiorillo:
As we continue to grow westward, we’re going to enter markets with very little to no name recognition. And as such, we’re probably going to expand, initially, through acquisition and through the infusion of ECS people to instill our culture. That doesn’t mean that we’re not going to continue to grow organically.
I firmly believe we can sustain 15% growth. On average, I think about a third of that will come from acquisition while the remainder will come through market penetration, new organic offices, strategic candidate recruitment, we’re seeing a lot of success through that right now in service line expansion, just to name a few. We’re going to continue to close the gaps between the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest and then between the Southeast and the Southwest. We’ve really seen a lot of growth and opportunity along the Gulf Coast and the I-10 Corridor. We’ve picked up some great people and I look forward to some of the new, exciting opportunities that we’re going to see down in that area.
Tony Fiorillo:
We currently have personnel in Denver and Phoenix. We also plan to put a senior manager in Salt Lake City next summer. We will look to grow our operations in those markets through some of the apprehension tactics. Once we finish that expansion, we’ll likely move into areas like Las Vegas and then along with Pacific Coast. And then once we finish our coast to coast expansion, we will continue to infill and then we’ll begin to introduce new service lines. We’re not going to offer services that compete with our clients but rather we will outlook to add complimentary services that share our current client base.
Steve Gosselin:
Wow. I mean, I know I’m excited about direction we’re going and I’m sure our listeners are too. But it’s always good to hear it, especially from you and our leadership because our folks are out in the field, they’re working hard every day and they don’t always get the message. So thanks for sharing that with us. Yeah. So now we’re going to talk about what our listeners want to know and I’m going to let Julie ask these questions because she’s always on the forefront asking folks about what do we need to know, what’s going on out here, stuff like that, and she gets a lot of feedback. So Julie, you want to jump in?
Julie Smith:
Yeah, sure. All right Tony, so listeners want to know, why are you passionate about what ECS does?
Tony Fiorillo:
Well, I will tell you, one reason I became an engineer is because I’ve always been interested in how and the why, how do things work and why do they work the way that they do. Our engineers, scientists and field personnel impact everything in our society from roads and bridges to retail and commercial projects, to residential school buildings and so on. And during the pandemic, there was a very good reason why we were deemed as an essential business. And really it comes down to we’re there to help protect the health, safety and welfare of the public.
Julie Smith:
Yeah, it’s excellent. So you spoke earlier about mentorship and leadership and encouraging our leaders to continue to read and grow and develop themselves. So what are three books that you can recommend on leadership?
Tony Fiorillo:
Well, Julie, I will tell you, first of all, I read a lot of books and I listen to quite a few others on Audible. And I just want to take a quick moment just to talk about that Audible it’s a great app that allows you to listen to books on the road. A lot of times I’m on long road trips and I generally set the speed to about 1.5 or faster and I can really zoom through a lot of books. It’s a great tool, but a few books that really stick out to me… Henry for many years made Patton on Leadership mandatory reading. It’s a book that’s always on my desk. The book consists of about 183 lessons on management, leadership, attitude, execution, mentoring, communication and courage. It’s all the things that we need to be thinking about on a daily basis. And if you don’t have a copy, I would really highly recommend getting one.
Another one is a book called Extreme Ownership. A number of years ago at our managers meeting, we had one of the owner or one of the partners in that organization, I don’t remember his name right now, but he came in and he offered the book to us. And I tell you, I really like the book, Extreme Ownership, because the authors really do tell lot of interesting battleground stories. And then they relate them to leadership principles to business. This book really emphasizes accountability, not only holding others accountable but also holding ourselves accountable. We’re a team, we should hold each other accountable. And as leaders, we must take the extreme ownership of all actions of the team. If the team fails, we got to assess the failures and set an action plan to fix those problems immediately. There can’t be excuses, no blaming others or circumstances. It’s important for us to set a winning attitude. Winning is contagious, but unfortunately, so is losing. But at the end of the day, it’s not about what we preached, it’s what we permit.
And I’ll say the third book, I had to think about this one a little bit. We talked about being a big sports fan, I’m a huge sports fan. A number of years ago, my oldest son started attending the Duke Basketball Camp and at the beginning of each camp, Coach K delivered a really inspirational and motivational speech to all the campers on the floor of Cameron Indoor Stadium. And I’ll tell you, regardless as whether you’re a Duke fan or not, I didn’t grow up as a Duke fan, but I’ll tell you that experience will leave you in all. I could tell you, you could hear a pin drop during the speeches.
So he inspired me to read one of his books so I grabbed a copy of The Gold Standard. And this book is filled with lessons about his approach to getting different people, sometimes very difficult people, to work hard and succeed in reaching their goal. He coached the U.S. Olympic team where he had to deal with some very big egos and personal rivalries in order to create a team that every other team in the world had circled on their calendar. There’s just a lot of great lessons to be learned from that book.
Julie Smith:
Yes. Well, I grew up a Duke fan so I appreciate that last book, especially. Okay. So the last question about what our listeners want to know, a lot of listeners have noticed that you and your emails, any conference calls you’re on by asking people to call you and you’re always providing your direct phone extension. What’s your motivation behind that?
Tony Fiorillo:
Well, leadership it’s not a right, it’s an honor, it’s a privilege and it all goes back to that servant leadership and the concept of paying it forward that we talked about earlier. And I mentioned it a couple times, Henry and Jim and Steve and others, Steve, Denise, and others. Along my career, I was always able to reach out to those senior leaders and they were always there for me. I just think it’s important. It’s important to me to be there for others, to help others overcome their problems, to listen to their ideas, to give them a different perspective or even share war stories, just to be personally involved and connected to the organization. We should never lose that connectedness even as we grow beyond a billion in revenue and beyond.
Steve Gosselin:
Man, I agree Tony. And as you well know, it is an honor and privilege to serve in this capacity and it really starts with gratitude so thanks for sharing that with us. Okay. So we’re just about to the end and we like to wrap it up with this question, what fills your cup? What makes you happy or brings you joy?
Tony Fiorillo:
Well, I will say, I kind of mentioned it before, my family really fills my cup. I spend nearly all of my free time with them, whether it’s coaching my kids’ teams, watching their games, taking the dog for the walk, movie night, watching college football, cooking dinner, just throwing the football, I really love spending time with my family. Just like leadership is a privilege, parenthood is also a privilege. And I tell you, I love the opportunity to mold and shape their lives. I will say a close second is the opportunity to impact the lives and careers of our employees. And we just talked about leadership as a privilege and I really don’t take it lightly. I’m very hopeful that I can have the same impact on others that my mentors had on me. I’m just extremely grateful for that opportunity.
Steve Gosselin:
Yep. I agree. So before we sign off Tony, anything, any final words or parting shots, anything you want to share with us and the listeners?
Tony Fiorillo:
Well, just to say that it was… I really had a great time talking this morning. I think that we’ve got a great company, we’ve got great people and I’m very optimistic about the future. And if there’s anything that I can do to help others with their problems or career advice or really just anything, just like you were talking about the way we sign off, if there’s anything I can do to be of assistance to our people, please reach out to me. I don’t just say that and just, I really do mean it. And if anyone wants to reach out to me, my extension is 6038. You can call me on my cell phone or shoot me an email anytime.
Steve Gosselin:
All right, T made it. Good job. Thanks for spending time with us today, taking time out of your very busy schedule. I mean, really it’s important to our folks to hear from everybody that we’ve been talking to in these podcasts. We’re sharing a lot of good content, a lot of good material, great information, stuff about leadership, safety, work life balance, parenting, on and on, I mean, really good stuff and you have really set the bar today. So thanks again. We really appreciate it.
Tony Fiorillo:
Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you all too.
***
Outro
Steve Gosselin:
Thank you for listening to Coffee Talk: From the Ground Up. We hope you enjoyed 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:
And 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 ECS marketing @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.