Brian and Chris Mueller, co-owners, Badger Contractors Rental & Supply, Madison and Janesville, Wis., are proud that they can carry on what their father, Glenn, started. Yet they realize running the family business “is an opportunity, not a birthright. That is why we believe in servant leadership,” Brian says.
What is servant leadership? “It’s leading from behind,” Brian says. “We really work at listening to our employees and customers. We came into the business humble and continue to be that way. For instance, our mechanics have been doing their jobs for a long time. It doesn’t make sense for me to go in and tell them how to do their job. Rather, it makes sense for me to listen to them and see how we can help them do their jobs. It’s about having that humility of knowing them and what they are capable of and putting them in positions to succeed — and knowing their success is the company’s success. It’s about treating people with respect, which also means being there for our customers, understanding their projects and helping them be successful. For us it’s all about the relationship.”
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means never taking any aspect of the business for granted. “We are very appreciative of all the work our employees have done and continue to do for us and our customers. When our customers come in with a need, we have the opportunity to put our knowledge to the test and help them succeed,” Brian says.
That leadership style came from their father, who had been owner of A & E Equipment in Madison for 15 years. “My brother and I grew up helping out at A & E Equipment, first doing janitorial duties and moving up to working the counter and delivering equipment. In the 1990s, the business was bought out by Hertz. When Hertz closed that location, our dad wanted to get back into rental. Both my brother and I had been working in different industries. My dad brought me into the operation in 2002, when we started Badger, and then my brother came on board in 2005. Dad passed away in 2017. Having this type of leadership style really helped in our transition to ownership. It made it an easy and natural change, especially with some of our longtime employees who have known us since we were kids,” Brian says.
Their way of doing business has resulted in low employee turnover and loyal customers at both locations. It also has helped their rental operation, which caters to the contractor and homeowner markets, face challenges over the years.
The first significant challenge was the Great Recession in 2008.
“We had just opened our Janesville location when General Motors closed down its manufacturing plant in Janesville. Then the overall downturn in the economy was a big hit as we deal with a lot of commercial contractors. Even so, this challenge forced us to dial in and focus on what was and was not working. It ended up being a good education for us. A lot of positives came out of that hardship,” Brian says.
Those positives resulted from a lot of self-reflection and self-study. “We looked at each location as each has different needs and opportunities,” Brian says. “We looked at where our success points were, either in sales or rental. We looked at our rental inventory. We examined what was creating customer satisfaction so we could duplicate that, what we were specializing in and what was creating customers to frequent us vs. the one-offs. We did a good analysis of our best practices regarding what we were offering as far as customer service and our internal controls. It forced us to dive deep and look at almost everything we were doing. We learned what we were doing right and saw what we needed to correct, which was good. We came out of that much stronger. When things rebounded, we came out full-steam and did very well.”
Going through that thorough analysis “benefited us immensely when COVID-19 hit last year,” Brian says, “When COVID hit, we had that experience under our belts. We were able to take those lessons we had learned.”
From the beginning the intention was to keep all employees on the payroll. They were able to do that because they were deemed an essential business and didn’t have to shut down. During the first two months of the pandemic, they “saw a huge swing in homeowner activities, including new customers and a lot of referrals. That is where our customer service abilities shined. We talked with our customers, walked them through the process, helped them understand how the equipment they were looking for could help them and assisted them in becoming comfortable with the process,” Brian says.
During this time, the company also took advantage of the American Rental Association’s (ARA) Clean.Safe.Essential. program. “It was fantastic to have a best practice we could lean on instead of having to come up with it ourselves. It was good for our employees to have that baseline and know that we can do what we are doing and do it safely. It also was good for our customers — to know there are best practices and that we were following them — to alleviate any concerns they might have,” says Brian, adding that he also listened to the ARA webinars and followed the posts on the Facebook pages.
Now that Wisconsin has lifted COVID restrictions, business is even busier. “Demand has been very high. At the same time, we, like other rental operations, are dealing with supply hurdles. What we have learned through our past experiences is that being flexible, not spending a lot of energy being mad at the situation and figuring out how to take advantage of it are key for us. We are now starting to look for what our needs will be in 2022,” Brian says.
It all goes back to the concept of servant leadership and helping everyone succeed together. It is a way of doing business that flows from the top down. It’s about being there for each other and their customers — always looking for the path to success.
“Our customer service is what makes us stand out,” Brian says. “At the end of the day, that is what we are offering and how we can differentiate ourselves. You can rent the same piece of equipment, but what makes your customer want to rent from a particular location is that experience you can provide. From the initial phone call or website interaction to understanding what our customers need, explaining how the equipment works and, if there is an issue, handling it in the best way possible. We try to maximize every customer’s experience at every point. We all work together to make it happen.”