Masonry Magazine February 2011 Page. 16
PRESIDENTIAL VISIT
Brendan Quinn
CEO of Ernest Maier Block Company Store
President Obama and the
Future of Masonry
The President describes our industry as the "bricks and blocks of our entire economy."
On Oct. 8, 2010, President Barack Obama visited Bladensburg, Md.-based Ernest Maier Block Company Store to deliver a speech about the September employment report and the state of the economy. Most of the questions I have received regarding that visit center on my politics or the politics of the company. Those questions could not be further from the most important aspect of this visit: President Obama endorsed Ernest Maier's story and our industry's products, and he spoke about the story of fixing Ernest Maier.
That story and the President's words about "bricks and blocks" will be a guide to changing our industry for the better. How did this happen, given what you hear from the media or see every day in your business? It is a story about faith. It is a story about people. It is a story about resolve.
Faith
Everyone assumes that faith has to do with God only. Faith is a belief in something for which you have no empirical evidence.
At age 23, in June 1995, I became the interim CEO of Ernest Maier. Ernest Maier had 3,000 8-X8-X 16-inch block on the ground, no sales backlog and no money. I had to fix the company. The customers weren't the hardest people to convince but, rather, the employees and the owners. No one believed I was competent, due to my age and lack of experience in "the business" Making people believe in something for which they have no evidence is tough, especially when they are there every day seeing the lack of evidence.
After getting a $50,000 short-term loan from a bank, faith that was inspired by credit instilled faith in the most important person: me. Now, I had to lead. It meant shoveling material under cubers, cubing open bottom bond beams by hand, delivering block in a pickup, dispatching at 5:30 a.m, making deposits, cleaning up the general ledger, going on sales calls, writing every memo in Spanish and English, and getting to know each and every employee.
My example made them believe, and that belief saved the company. Faith had gotten us out of the hole. Now, we had to learn how to walk.
People
Brendan Quinn and President Obama
While faith carries you to a certain point, people carry you to the finish line. Investing in people always will yield more return than investing in a new block machine, new scaffolding or a new forklift. Those rely on the human element.
A block machine only runs well when the people who work with it make it productive. Productivity, especially in the masonry trade, is a function reliant on the people more than the machine. The scaffolding may move people more quickly up and down or "swing" them around faster. The people will determine the profit more than the scaffolding.
What we did at Ernest Maier directly contradicted everything that the Maier family told me. "Don't give them more money. We need to cut our coverage on the health insurance. We don't do a retirement plan. We give turkeys for Christmas."
I told them that we were going to pay 20 percent more than anyone else in the industry. We were going to cover 100 percent of each individual's health insurance. We needed to start a retirement plan, which we did. We were giving cash at Christmas, rather than turkeys.
Investing in people meant increasing the expected return. Our return would exceed the industry average. Our people would perform tasks such as delivering material, collecting money and taking blame that other company's employees would not have to do.
Paying people less and expecting less is a recipe for disaster. This industry has