Earning the Room: How to Lead a Team for the Long Game with Brendan Thompson

[00:07] Jeff McLarty
Ever wonder what it really takes to build a business from the ground up? Welcome to Owner’s Roundtable, where successful business owners pull up a chair and swap stories and lessons from their own adventures in business. From surviving their first half-baked business plan, the time they almost went broke, the time they got lucky, and the strategies and tactics they used along the way.

This isn’t about a polished success story on the company About Us page; it’s about the real story behind the business. The pain, the people, the setbacks, and the big break that changed everything. Each episode, you’ll sit down with the owners who’ve been in the trenches, build something meaningful, and live to tell the tale. Whether you’re starting out, scaling up, or just curious what it takes to go the distance, there’s a seat at the owner’s roundtable for you. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I’m Jeff McLarty, seasoned entrepreneur, executive coach, and business trainer, and I want you to have your own seat with us here at the Owner’s Roundtable. Real owners, real stories, real insights.

[01:16] Jeff McLarty
Hello and welcome to Owner’s Roundtable. Today at the table is Brendan Thompson, President of Bernie’s Electric Supplies Limited. We’ll be discussing what it takes to keep a business going for more than 50 years, handling an EOS, and discuss the merits of succession planning. So pull up a seat and join Brendan and I here at the Owner’s Roundtable.

[01:35] Jeff McLarty
We’re back here at The Owner’s Roundtable with Brendan Thompson, President of Bernie’s Electrical Supplies. Brendan, for the people who don’t know you, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and Bernies Electric Supplies.

[01:46] Brendan Thompson
Yah, I’m an Alberta boy. I was born and raised here in Edmonton. I think I was one of the last babies to come out of the Edmonton General Hospital downtown, actually, before they converted that for other purposes. Raised in Sherwood Park, which is a suburb to the east of Edmonton.

Let’s see, I went to post-secondary here, University of Lethbridge. I took it from downtown Edmonton – they had a satellite campus. I am not the greatest at math, good enough to get my business degree, but I majored in Human Resources. I made that decision in my third year. And then I made the decision to go work in government. And after about four years of that in labor negotiations, and then to being a compensation analyst following along a mentor I had met during that, as he traveled to different positions in government, so did I.

Became pretty dissatisfied with that. I don’t know if they still call it quarter life crisis. I had an examination of what I was doing in life. And at the same time, my father had a heart attack. And that really made me examine, you know, where I was putting in my effort from day to day. And I took a step back and said, how do I help you, to my father. And we worked out a five-year plan for me. I couldn’t just immediately jump in and help him in the business here. I wouldn’t be that useful. So, I stopped working in government, in human resources.

And from there, I got into the apprenticeship for Electrician, and got my red seal in 2011. Promptly never worked as a journeyman electrician, but from there to work for the family business. I’m third generation. Yeah, and third generation, what do they say about that, Jeff? Rags to riches to rags?

[03:35] Jeff McLarty
I hope that that curse doesn’t follow you on this one.

[03:37] Brendan Thompson
I hope not either. So in an effort to avoid that, I think I’ve worked in almost every department in this company besides accounting, obviously, with my track record with math, that wouldn’t be the best place for me. But I have worked all over the place in the warehouse floor, to counter sales, to inside sales, to outside sales. I was purchasing and Purchasing Supervisor before I ever stepped onto the management team. And I’ve been President since 2023.

[04:06] Jeff McLarty
You guys have been around-I think it was your 50th anniversary, right? Is that this year?

[04:09] Brendan Thompson
It is our 50th anniversary year, yah.

[04:12] Jeff McLarty
Well, congratulations. I mean, 50 years is quite the accomplishment for any business, right? And you said it was third generation, so it was opened by your grandfather or?

[04:19] Brendan Thompson
It was opened by my grandfather. In 1976 he was known as BJ Thompson, Bernard Joseph Thompson, and he worked in the industry for a national and he was vice president of sales for them. But in the end he felt the best decision was to go to his old sales territory and open up his own business. At first he did it with a couple of silent partners and then later he got some industry people as partners for the rest of his time with our business.

He did that in his mid-50s. BJ Electric is what we were called at that time because that was just his initials and everyone knew him as BJ and it wasn’t until 1979, a movie came out targeting the college crowd drug dealers and street prostitutes that BJ meant other than Bernard Joseph Thompson. So.

[05:11] Jeff McLarty
Well, you’ve been in business that long, things change, and vernacular changes, so I could see that happening.

[05:18] Brendan Thompson
Yeah, yeah, so we can leave it at that. Needless to say, he was a bit more serious than I am. And I don’t think he ever-I don’t think he ever found out, you know. He would have been in his early 60s by then or late late 50s anyway, and he didn’t go watch that movie. So he didn’t notice everyone started calling him Bernie.

But me being born in 1980, I didn’t know him as anything other than Bernie. So that’s the reason for-we did a rebrand in combination with our 50th anniversary. Yeah, just to focus back on the founder.

[05:49] Jeff McLarty
How was the rebranding experience? Was it like always finding one more thing that you got to update? Are you still going through that or?

[05:57] Brendan Thompson
I thought the process of the rebrand and the details like that, I found that to be relatively…there’s some minor hiccups, but we registered it as a trade name. So our legal name remains BJ Electric Supplies operating as… And that makes it hell of a lot easier. And that was on the advice of our lawyer, actually. Know what you don’t know, right, Jeff? So, and that’s one thing I didn’t know how to proceed with.

Most of the rest of the pushback was just people who don’t like change, didn’t see why we needed to change the name and just didn’t quite see how this name change would differentiate us against our competition.

So it’s a bit of an internal sales pitch to get the rebrand going in time for the 50th. But we did. So I guess I am a good salesman after all, despite what my former boss might tell you.

[06:51] Jeff McLarty
How long did that take from when you had that idea in your head to actually rolling that out?

[06:56] Brendan Thompson
Well, I had the rebrand idea in my head for years. It really didn’t make sense to spend the money. It was just kind of like something I’d like to do one day. You know, when it’s your 50th anniversary, your marketing budget kind of goes through the roof anyways to celebrate that. So I thought it’d be a great time to do the rebrand.

[07:19] Jeff McLarty
Were there other name changes you considered or was that always the one that you kind of were fixated on, or?

[07:24] Brendan Thompson
Yeah, no,I never considered any other name. were some put to me, but I kind of had it decided in my own head.

At the end of the day, Jeff, you know, you just want people to wear your merchandise. And not everybody wants to be part of an unintentional joke or even a wink nod nod joke. And so, you know, the time of the leaning in the name was well passed.

[07:48] Jeff McLarty
I mean, it makes a lot of sense. The 50 year track record does still focus on founding family members. I think that’s a great rebrand for you guys.

[07:57] Brendan Thompson
People didn’t know who BJ was anymore So we got to reintroduce him to a whole new generation in the industry, not just a new generation at this business, right? So.

[08:07] Jeff McLarty
That was one of the other things I wanted to talk to you about as a third generation. Like being in business for 50 years, what struggles has the company had to like deal with over that long history? I mean, you start out doing things the way they did them 50 years ago. How does the company adapt and how has that played out when you took over?

[08:27] Brendan Thompson
I think when the prior generation of ownership was in the business day to day, the introduction of new ideas was harder. I would say the play there to gain trust was to giant rust in a lot of smaller ideas that I and know what hill to die on, and also keep that hill small. And then if you come out with a success, you’re building a platform for yourself to advocate for further change. Right. So, pick your battles and start small and make sure you win them. Because a lot of the direction, of this private company anyways, depends on the head of the company and to an extent inertia.

[09:016] Jeff McLarty
I’m assuming that you’re also through several generations of managers, also. Do you have an plan of, okay, this is kind of how we’re going to continue to transition and evolve or how do you handle that?

[09:19] Brendan Thompson
You’re asking an HR major if there’s a succession plan at this company. Come on.

[09:21] Jeff McLarty
That’s fair. That’s fair. I should have seen that one coming. Yeah, of course there is.

[09:26] Brendan Thompson
Of course. I do that on weekends, it’s that much fun. Jeff. It’s actually something I’m doing this business quarter. I’m going to refresh the whole thing.
And this time I’m going to get down all the way to entry level positions cause we’re trying to poise ourselves for expansion. Now that we’ve done a lot of internal rework around here, that becomes much more important.

[09:48] Jeff McLarty
Yeah. You’ve probably done that on a pretty regular basis just for your own entertainment. But what advice would you give to other people that are, you know, looking to go to the next generation or to create the same kind of longevity? What do think you guys have done right over those-that time period to stay in business that long.

[10:07] Brendan Thompson
I can only speak to what I’ve noticed for myself. When you come on board as a new generation, everybody’s nervous. I was subordinate to two of the executives. And both of them were nervous when I became the leader, the functional leader day to day, right?

And I think…you’re talking about succession planning. That’s what you got to start thinking of, learning about if you don’t know what a succession plan is and getting together in your mind. And I think it’s important to win over the long-term employees that are sufficient, and the effective ones, right? It doesn’t take a lot of change, you know, a lot of negative change. Let’s say there’s some that need to leave, there always probably is, which is always the purview of whoever takes over. But I think that can be minimal and you can maximize the effectiveness of that get people on side with you with a lot of carrot and a lot less stick,

[11:05] Jeff McLarty
How do you stop becoming complacent when you’re got that kind of time horizon? Like, I feel like as a company that’s been around that long, it would be easy to get to a place where, okay, well, we’ve got everything organized, then we can just go golfing now and everything will run itself. And I just wondered like, with your HR background, I’m sure that you’ve thought a lot about that, but do you have kind of a set schedule where you revisit different parts of the operation or how do you handle that?

[11:36] Brendan Thompson
You know, I would think was source of friction between second generation ownership and third generation ownership. Exactly what you said. Things were going along just fine and I had different things I wanted to do. So I haven’t yet reached the point where I’m at that frame of mind.

I was looking for direction, as it was apparent that I was going to become the top level leader. And there’s all kinds of places for you to go to and look for direction, from business books to consultants to Tech Alberta to, you know, those kind of forums. It’s all over the place.

I happened to land on a particular business book. and the way it won me over was it didn’t really give me any new information. but as I read each chapter, I had already read that business book before, or learned that concept out in the field. and it was just like everything was checking the boxes all the way down. And in one book I could be reminded of things I should think about to bring to this business and so I just kind of stuck to that

I said, you know what? A lot of people read a business book. It sticks in their mind for a few months. They don’t have the power to implement everything in whatever business book they might have read that inspired them. That’s one thing I can do as the leader of the organization is stick to one idea and give some consistency to the change that I wanted to see around here. Not always changing the way I’m approaching change.

[13:04] Jeff McLarty
I’m gonna ask you what that book was in a second here, but I read this book called Leadership 2.0 not too long ago. And there was lots of good stuff in there, but one of the things that stuck with me is every time you’re sitting in a seminar or reading something, you’re like, yeah, I know all this. I’ve heard this before.

There was a phrase in there that said, ask yourself where you’ve not fully applied the thing that you already know. Ever since I read that, every time I go to a seminar, because I’ve read lots of management books and stuff. But that totally changed my frame of reference for where have I not fully applied this thing that I say I already know. And I’ve able to re-implement a bunch of things instead of just going, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[13:44] Brendan Thompson
There’s books that you can read about how to manage the organization and there’s books you can read about how to manage yourself. And that sounds like one of those, Jeff, which I always need more of those, how to manage myself.

[13:56] Jeff McLarty
Don’t we all.

[13:58] Brendan Thompson
Yeah, no, the book I’m talking about is-it’s very famous. It’s nothing new. I’m sure a lot of people have heard of Traction, the US system. And that invites all kinds of consultants into your company should you want or need that. We’ve only ever self implemented and I tried to take the concepts and tie it into different consultants that we did have come in for the executive team and make those kind of-those kind of connections. You know, rather than subjecting the executive group to yet another consultant and yet another viewpoint.

[14:30] Jeff McLarty
US is a pretty popular system and I really like the straightforward simplicity. It covers a lot of the internal communication pieces. One of the things I’ve noticed with it is it really does rely on good relationships in between the operations team and being able to have that internal communications. How hard was it to get everybody on the same page where you were doing like your L10s and having that conversation happen smoothly?

[14:57] Brendan Thompson
I think that’s where I just kind of lucked out or maybe that’s why the books spoke to me was, I saw lot of firefighting internally. And being a peacemaker, where if you could just delineate properly to someone: Don’t even think about that. Let me think about that. Let me judge if the person is doing the right thing in that area of the business, and you think about these things. You know, sure they can talk about their opinion of what is going wrong outside of their department to you, right, but not to continually harp on it.

But I think being aligned, at least with your direct subordinates. Having them totally aligned and knowing that they’re in a safe space in the weekly meetings, and when they’re outside of this room, we’re to be aligned. I think that’s really important. Presenting a united front at the management level really flows down to your employees.

[15:51] Jeff McLarty
Traction is a really good overall system. Each of the concepts in there, like you’re right, is pulled from another book, but it does a really good job of giving you a well-rounded system that’s easy to understand. And it’s amazing how much of business is about simple things done well over and over again.

[16:11] Brendan Thompson
It’s amazing how many of the concepts speak to an HR guy. In the book, I think it recommends, rather than annual reviews going to quarterly reviews. I went overboard and we do monthly conversations. And we tie those to a budgeted variable incentive pay. And I think that’s been the most effective thing I’ve done around here. And I think actually everyone else would agree, now that they’ve lived through it and grumbled, and the next month they have to do it again with their employees, and the next month they have to do it again. And then eventually it’s like this is effective. This is way more effective than an emergency meeting gathering all my subordinates together and lecturing at them or, you know, the one-offs that you do.

[16:50] Jeff McLarty
Having ran the OS system for a while, are there things that you feel are missing pieces from it or are you pretty happy with the system overall, or what are your thoughts on it?

[16:57] Brendan Thompson
I think it acknowledges its own weaknesses. It says that at this level of revenues and this level of employees, this book is not effective for those companies. And I can see that. You end up bogging yourself down with too many manual tasks if you’re at a certain volume. I hope to get there.

[17:16] Jeff McLarty
You’d love to have that problem, hey? I appreciate you sharing with me because that is a pretty common subject. And among leadership development people like me there seems to be two camps either, know, EOS, I don’t like that or I love EOS. And I think for different businesses it’s different systems, right? For a lot of businesses it’s a really great tool, at least as a foundation, and then to build other things on top of it. So I appreciate your perspective on that.

So you mentioned you’re on a trajectory. What’s the next thing? Second location in Calgary, or do you got big plans?

[17:55] Brendan Thompson
Second location is definitely in consideration. It all comes down to the people you have at the table. I took a chance on filling a finance manager role with a guy that, was most people would consider way too green.

But, you know, that has really just paid off in such dividends because he’s just absorbed all of the things that the position needs to do, and moved into things that the position could do, and the benefit of doing those things. Such as you know doing a lot of market research and making a business case from a finance perspective on a new branch to the shareholders. Like he’s really going at it.And I think that’s a big part of our success recently. And also having the veteran executives believe in him as well, right? Like he had to prove to all of us we took the right chance and he did.

And we set him up to succeed with reallocating resources to that. Rather than going out into the market, paying what you need to pay to get the person that’s been doing it for decades, taking a chance on somebody who doesn’t have that experience and instead we brought on a fractional CFO as a mentor. And go ahead, prove to us you want this position. That’s what we did there. And now we’re going to open a second branch, which is the end result.

[19:18] Jeff McLarty
The thing I love about what you said there is… a lot of people complain about how there’s no good people. But when you ask, who’s the last person you trained? They’re like, well, we don’t really train. And the fact that you’re growing people into roles versus waiting for them to be ready finished before putting them in a position, I think is a really good way to look at business and be strong over the long term.

[19:42] Brendan Thompson
Again, it’s just, you set your organization up for savings if you put the work in in time, rather than upfront in pay. And the other thing is, it’s great for the morale of the company. When people see that they have a career with your company and they started at the bottom and they got to, you know, wherever here is, it motivates your staff on the-at the entry level floor of what you’re doing.

Another thing that I did is obviously I’m going to be involved in recruitment. That’s the funnest part of HR, why wouldn’t I, you know?

What I do is I let the line managers choose. The line managers do the interviews. I’ve set them up with, you know, a behavioral interview template. The line managers judge the responses. The line managers pick the successful candidate. I pre-screen every candidate that applies. And I select over-credentialed candidates. Our floor entry level position is warehouse associate. And we hire people with a project manager professional certificate background, right? Because maybe one day they become a project coordinator in the projects division.

This person works in AP. They started on the warehouse floor. This person’s the finance manager, actually, he started on the warehouse floor.

[20:55] Jeff McLarty
I think that’s a great way as you grow your executive leadership team. They have an understanding of how different aspects of the business work when they’ve come up through it versus having a disconnect from what’s actually happened in the warehouse floor.

It’s easy to make a policy in the boardroom and then not connect with the guys that have to implement it in the back.

[21:16] Brendan Thompson
I think it works very well. People always wonder how I got from HR major and a commerce degree to red seal electrician. And then it only makes sense when you realize what company I’m going to end up work for.

But, you know, again, got the vice president of operations, is an engineering tech, an electrical engineering tech. The finance manager is a Red Seal refrigeration mechanic. I like the mix of practical and business sense.

[21:47] Jeff McLarty
I think when you have a technical background you think about companies in the same way as you know machines and different systems and how it works together. And that makes a lot of sense to me.

Well I really appreciate you making the time. Any last words of advice you’d like to offer the listeners of the pod on having a 50-year business?

[22:06] Brendan Thompson
It was there for 50 years for a reason. So definitely don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. If you’re taking over a well-established company and you want to put your mark on it, be clear early about what you should not put your mark on, because it’s working just fine. You

[22:23] Jeff McLarty
That’s really good advice. That was certainly a lesson I’ve had to learn in the past so that’s great. Awesome, well thank you very much Brendan for coming on.

[22:31] Brendan Thompson
Thanks, Jeff.

[22:36] Jeff McLarty
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