Bob Brown is the chief executive officer of Modern Companies, the full-service mechanical contractor that has been serving clients for 85 years. Bob sat down to discuss what it’s like to take over a major company at the age of 30, how his family’s legacy has impacted his life, and how three generations of leadership have all benefited the business in different ways. Bob also shared an inside look at what Modern does for its clients, how communication has been key to their success and how their company strives to keep family first.
I learned a lot, and I think you will too.
Sponsored by MidWestOne Bank, this is the latest edition of the CBJ’s Real Success with Nate Kaeding and notable Iowa business and cultural leaders.
Real Success with Nate Kaeding was named Best Business Podcast at the 2024 Iowa Podcast Awards.
Nate Kaeding: I imagine that you have to be one of the youngest CEOs of a major company in the corridor.
Bob Brown: Yeah, I’m 32 now. It’s kind of interesting. Dave and Ken took a step back about two years ago. Ken likes to tell a story: for them, it wasn’t when they were ready to retire, but when they thought that the next generation was ready to take over. I’m not sure quite what they were thinking, but I’m super lucky to have the opportunity and it has been a really fun ride so far.
Were you ready at 30 when that call came?
Bob: I wasn’t sure. I’m still not sure. It was right around the time our second son was born, so our whole world was changing. Back in 2020, when we moved back to Iowa, I remember getting a call from dad. They were really low pressure, which we really appreciated, and they asked, “Hey, we’re curious what time you’re thinking about coming back. If you’re not going to come back, we have to hire some more people.” I talked with my wife and decided that it was the right time to move back, and the rest is history.
What have you learned about being a CEO that you didn’t think about when you took the job two years ago?
Bob: One of the things that has been the most valuable for me is just trying to make as few decisions as possible. We’ve got an amazing team at Modern and the more we can drive those decisions down to where that work is actually happening so people are making the decisions themselves, they become so much more bought into it. They believe in it. We’ve got a really good strategic leadership team too. We’re still figuring out exactly how we’re all going to work together, but we have really good debates and conversations in there and we try really hard to come out aligned even if we don’t always agree on it. We’re also just trying to constantly improve the messaging because we’ve had an enormous amount of change in the organization over the past few years. We’re trying to slow that rate of change down and communicate the “why” to make sure everyone’s feeling heard.
What’s the one thing about being a CEO that you would’ve never imagined was a thing?
Bob: For one, being on this podcast. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak at the Downtown Rotary. It’s a really good group of people down there, so that was fun. I’m not a natural public speaker. Looking back, my dad and uncle both ran it together for over 20 years and my uncle always took on that role of the public figure. So I’m trying to strike that balance doing that while still staying focused on the company. I’m having a lot of fun figuring it out along the way.
Take us back to some of your earlier memories of being in and around the family business as a kid.
Bob: My grandpa worked super hard for a really long time. He was super driven and had super high expectations for everybody, especially as a young company. We still have those expectations today, but it’s a different attitude with different communication than you needed back then.
Looking back to my dad and uncle, they grew it tremendously. I don’t think I have the skillset that would’ve been best for that. I think I’ve got more of a skillset to leverage other people on the team, to try to build that best team around us, and to help continue to build off the infrastructure that they put in place to give us that opportunity to grow into the future in a different way. They were differently-sized companies. I think it’s really interesting to think about what the right type of leader is for the company throughout its lifetime, and I think we’re really lucky with how it has worked out for us so far.
What have been some of the lasting principles that have stayed with Modern as the company has passed from one generation to the next?
Bob: When you say that, I think of integrity. It’s one of our core values. We try really hard to do the right thing. Construction is such a relationship-based industry. Even thinking back to my time in Colorado, there aren’t that many people in the industry. People move around from company to company and you never know when you’re going to run into that person again. So having it in mind to always be building those relationships is super important.
When I started at Modern, I remember working with my dad on an estimate. We got a bunch of parts and pieces quoted from different vendors, and we ended up just getting one part from one vendor. They thought they’d get the whole thing, so they were going to lose money on that one part at that one price, and my dad just said, “Bill me what you need to. We don’t need you to lose money on this even though it’s a small thing.” That mindset of always treating people the right way really means a lot. We’re not perfect. We’re going to make mistakes. But trying to do the right thing is something that I think has been a really strong part of Modern’s history.
Do you find that Modern being a legacy family business is a core part of the company’s identity?
Bob: Yeah, I think it’s important. I wish I would’ve been this age and able to ask my grandpa and grandma more questions about it, but we lost them. I know my dad and uncle are always talking about how family unity is super important. Again, we’re going to disagree on things here and there, but we’re trying to prioritize that family relationship. If we’re strong together, I think that’s really going to be helpful for Modern in the long run too.
What was your involvement like for you when you were a kid?
Bob: I think my first job was tool watch, which was a super manual role of moving numbers around as we tried to track the tools as they go job to job. It was on very rudimentary and not very sophisticated software. It was just an Excel spreadsheet. The guys in the field would turn in the tickets that said which tools went where. I think my dad was doing it for a while and he started handing it to me in the summers. It didn’t seem very exciting, but it’s a good first task to get in the business.
But yeah, I spent some time in the field and some time in the shop just seeing how all the different types of welds are made. I came up through the business with the engineering degree and that’s how my uncle also came through, but my dad went through the trades and the apprenticeship. He became a foreman and ran work in the field. So I just try to leverage all of his experience and knowledge from that side too, as much as I can.
Did it feel preordained that you would take over the company, or did you have a choice in the matter?
Bob: My parents didn’t put any pressure on me at all. I decided to go to Wartburg just because I could play soccer, study engineering, and it was pretty close to home. I knew that engineering would be a good thing to study if I wanted to explore being in the business. So I decided to try it out. It was a great opportunity and obviously super unique. We’re super lucky to have it. I just kind of fell in love with it.
I think construction is super unique in that, regardless of your background or education experience, you can really elevate your career. Over half of our strategic leadership team right now came up through the field and don’t necessarily have a formal education. Construction is the only industry I know where that can happen and I think it’s pretty unique in that way.
For those who may not be familiar, can you give us an overview of what you do at Modern?
Bob: So we break it down into three different business segments: Commercial, industrial, and service, and then piping and sheet metal within those segments. So at a construction site for a brand new build, we’re starting with the underground by getting the waste and storm lines in. Then, as it goes up, you’re building the systems for domestic water waste sewers and then, on the air side, making sure everyone is comfortable in the building by moving the air around and cooling it, heating it, and ventilating it.
One thing that’s unique about Modern is just how many industrial customers we have. Cedar Rapids is a great place to be an industrial contractor, as are the rest of our offices throughout Iowa and Minnesota. But industrial is really a lot of process piping. So at General Mills, Quaker Oats, Cargill, A DM, Ingredion, and others, it’s moving product through the process as they’re cooking it or getting the starches out of their raw supplies there. It’s something new every day. We’ve got a lot of people embedded in a lot of those plants, so we know the plants very well, and we’re really lucky to have people on our team that can come up with those critical solutions to keep that plant running, get it back up and running after a shutdown, and just take care of what the customer needs on that front.
When you look back, what are some of your favorite or most notable projects?
Bob: That’s a really good question. One of the first ones that comes to mind is the children’s hospital. We were super lucky to be a part of that. I left off the medical gas part of the estimate and it ended up crazy close to the next bidder. We like to reflect on that. I don’t know if it was my fault or not, but when you’re plugging in the medical gas takeoff into the spreadsheet, we left off a zero. We wouldn’t have won the job if we had that in there. With every estimate, you miss something somewhere. That was a super challenging project for us. Obviously there was a bunch of attention on that one, but I’m super happy to be a part of it and wave at the kids over there seven Saturdays each year in the fall.
Right now, we’re taking on two of our largest projects in company history at the University of Iowa. They’re about 20 miles from each other. It’s challenging on the resource front to make sure we can get everything done that we need to in the right amount of time, but we’re going strong right now and it’s really fun to see the teams. We’ve taken a new approach to empowering more people to lead those projects. In the past, I think it would’ve been more of an executive like Dave or Ken trying to be involved in that. Now we’ve got people closer to the project who are getting more responsibility and more power to make decisions, and it’s working out really well for us.
What are some of the keys to managing a company of your size through unforeseen construction challenges?
Bob: It’s really all about communication, which is kind of a cop out, but there’s no other way to do it yet. We’ve got to be talking with the other trade partners on site. We’ve worked with them all before. We’ll work with them again on the next one. So you get used to working with the different contractors in town. We’ve got these two really big jobs right now, but we also have to look ahead to what we have next to fill that backlog. We need to keep all these people busy and keep taking care of the customers after these are done. It’s hard as we’re juggling the different markets. We’ve got limited resources on estimating and the question is always around how we prioritize that to make sure whoever needs this resource the most gets it. That balance is hard. Everybody’s got their own world that they’re living in, and everyone thinks their job and their market is the most important.
How have you managed being a dad and husband while also being the CEO of the company?
Bob: If you’ve got any great tips, let me know. Luckily, in my role, we have some more flexibility on time. That’s true for a lot of people at Modern. If we can work within the role and we have flexibility, we really don’t want you to miss that baseball game or that soccer game. You can’t get those back and there’s always going to be more work tomorrow. It fluctuates role to role with how much flexibility we can have, and we rely on our leaders to do that. For me personally, it’s been an extra focus recently to, when we get home, just throw the phone on the counter and try not to look at it until at least the kids go to bed.
We’re just trying to respect people’s time with their family. It’s super important and really hard at the same time because there are customers that are going to call in the middle of the night when a pipe breaks. We’ve got to answer that. We’ve got to take care of that call. But we’re just trying to work hard and play hard by being flexible with family time. It’s super important to us and something we’re always thinking about.
