350 - Building Bridges: The Human Side of Construction Leadership with Riley Construction's Vince Montemurro

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. Vince Matamoro, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the Chief Financial Officer of a company in southern Wisconsin called Riley Construction, and based on what I could learn from looking at the website, It engages in all kinds of different projects, including mostly industrial and commercial, if I get it right, and also public works. I used to be a construction litigation lawyer in a former life, so I know a lot about the business. So welcome to the show and tell us a little bit about your backstory.

Oh, Doug, thank you. Thank you for having me today. I'm excited. I've listened to some of your podcasts.

Oh, thanks.

It's good work. A little bit about my backstory. Born and raised in Kenosha, Wisconsin. That is approximately an hour north of Chicago, 40 minutes south of Milwaukee. And I loved— I've loved Kenosha my whole life. Went to college at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, got my undergraduate in accounting, loved it so much I went back and got my MBA. Wow. And I grew up in a traditional Catholic Italian family. And my dad was my hero and he went into accounting. I will admit that I started out my, my college days unsure which route I wanted to go in. I started in biology thinking I wanted to be a doctor and I quickly ran into chemistry and decided that's not for me. So I quickly pivoted, Doug, and I knew that business was interesting to me. I wasn't entirely sure which route I wanted to go. But I felt like accounting would give me the foundation or the fundamentals, if you will, to be able to analyze business. And I felt if I understood the financials that like some of the other aspects of business, I could learn over time. So I decided to go into accounting and right when I got out of school, I went to work for a small lighting manufacturer up in Mequon for about 2, 2 and a half years, which was about an hour drive for me. So I was looking to find an opportunity to get closer to Kenosha. Back home. I knew I was going to be transitioning to wanting to start a family someday, and I knew Riley was a great firm. So I wasn't exactly sure that construction was for me. I'll be really honest with you there. Construction— I often joke a little bit around here, Doug— I'm probably the least handy individual in the building. I, I will also say though, I am working on that. There are some things that I can do nowadays. But I started out that way, and I just felt like construction maybe wasn't the route I was going to go. I thought about going into public accounting or considered staying in direct manufacturing or something like that, but really thankful for construction and what it's done for me over time.

Good for you. So what made you go back to school and get an MBA?

Again, I'll attribute it to, I don't know if this will shock you or not, but I knew that accounting was a good need in terms of understanding business. I like a good starting point, Doug, but I don't know that I always wanted to be exclusively in accounting and finance. I thought about how, like, I wanted to work in teams. I wanted to drive a business. I wanted to have— be involved in making decisions. And I think even a little bit wanting to work with people and maybe eventually help people build out their own careers and have a hand in that. And I really like, you know, what that has afforded me the opportunity to do in the community as well, right? If I'm driving a business, the company is doing well, we can make an impact here at home. And I felt like getting an MBA was Can I add more tools to the resume to allow me to do that?

Did you find that the— your MBA studies were a little different than your accounting studies?

100%. I gotta tell you, Doug, I don't know if this is going to sound weird or unusual, but I felt like I learned so much more in my MBA program than I even did in my accounting undergraduate degree.

Wow, that's amazing. You've been— you've worked up your— you worked your way up through the ranks with Riley Construction. And tell us a little bit about responsibilities today? You're obviously on the senior executive team as a CFO.

Yep.

How have you been able to— you were talking a minute ago about how you had a desire to be able to lead people and grow people and work with people, and how has that manifested for you at Riley?

Yeah, can I tell you a story first? Um, I'd like to just start by saying like a little bit more about how I got into Riley. Sure. I think, I think the thing I need to share is how it was Riley Construction. Of course, there are other companies that I could have latched on to, but when I was working in Macon, I was working for that, that manufacturing company. It was— I remember it vividly— it was January 8th, 2008. And January in Wisconsin is very cold, very cold.

Not to mention the collapse of the— our economic collapse. It—

we had an unusual warm system come through Wisconsin. It was 60 degrees on January 7th and 8th. And with that unusual weather came storms. I was still living at home with my mom and dad, just getting started in my career. But I knew a big storm was coming and a potential for tornadoes or thunderstorms. Sure enough, as I was driving home in the afternoon, a massive hailstorm came and with it came a tornado. And the tornado, unfortunately, I was on the phone, I pulled over because of the hail and I was talking to my mom and I could hear as the tornado was coming through our neighborhood. Tornado jumped on my parents' house, ripped the roof off. My mom could see, could see the chimney literally floating like the Wizard of Oz through the basement window. And I didn't know what kind of shape things were going to be in when I got home. But the connection to Riley there is Dave Riley was the president at the time of Riley Construction. And he was, he was our neighbor and he was always very neighborly, a kind individual, but I didn't know him real well. I just knew him. At a cursory level. But Dave was actually at my house before I got there, checking on my mom and my brother and making sure that everyone was okay. It wasn't long that he had an entire crew of some of Riley's best superintendents working to patch up our house. Again, this is January 8th. We just had a warm front and the cold weather was coming, right, Doug? It was going to be below zero before long, in a couple of days. And I just think that connection matters. It's kind of why, again, I, I wasn't real tied or interested in construction. But the connection to Riley through Dave and through those tradesmen who came back after a day's work to come patch up our house after a tornado had just hit, that's always meant something to me. And it's just a story I wanted to share here.

Wow. So I don't think I've ever heard a story like that before. That is so cool. I guess that tells you a lot about the company, doesn't it?

It really does. Really does. And I could spend this whole podcast talking to you about the things that Riley has done, Doug. I'm very proud of it and I'm just Thankful to be a part of it.

That's really great. So let's turn back to your growth through the company. Today you're CFO. You have, I presume you have a team that you work with underneath you. And of course you're on the executive team. So, right. Kind of work in all kinds of different directions. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah. Well, one of my, probably one of my most influential mentors, his name was Pete Sinski. He was the CFO before I was here. Pete decided back, I think in 2018, 2019, that he was going to go back to his roots, which was in public accounting. But he had a lot of faith in me, and I'm tremendously thankful for him because he saw the opportunity that was there for me in addition to him leaving and going back to his roots. But the CFO role has largely had responsibility for finance and accounting here, in addition to HR, a little bit of risk for the business and insurance, and also IT. The executive team that was in place when Pete was transitioning, a along with Pete recommending me, they gave me an opportunity to take the lead in accounting. I was the controller at the time. They said, hey, listen, we're not going to go find an external CFO. We're going to give you the opportunity.

Wow.

In addition to that, over the next couple of years, we'll start to, to add some responsibilities to get you to a full CFO role. So I was really thankful for that. I got a chance to, after a couple of years as taking on CFO type duties, I took over IT and then eventually I took over HR as well. So I have those two areas of the business and the corporate responsibilities. I'm, I enjoy those. I really do. And again, my background is in finance and accounting, so that I know the numbers, of course, but I enjoy the people side of the business. I'm sure we're going to get into some of that, Doug, but that's my favorite part of the entire day and the job.

Tell us a little bit about, I described a little bit, just based on what I saw on the website, it's a— am I correct that it's a commercial industrial public works firm primarily?

Yep. So we have— we are a commercial general contractor and construction manager.

Okay.

We perform our own trade work, so we do carpentry, concrete, masonry, drywall, and a little bit of demo.

You don't sub that stuff out?

No, we do occasionally, but we prefer to do it with our own people. We can control the schedule and the quality. Quality and the craftsmanship. Exactly right. We have 4 offices. So our main office where the company began is here in Kenosha. We also have an office in Pewaukee, which is just outside of Milwaukee, an office down in Waukegan. It services a lot of our science and tech or pharmaceutical clients. And then we also have an office in Madison that is growing. We just opened that office about a year and a half ago.

So are you principally working in Wisconsin or are you also working in Northern Illinois?

Northern Illinois as well.

Yep. Yes, sir. So that's your general region. Correct. And what kind of projects do you typically take on?

Yeah. So we alluded to it. We do a lot of industrial work. We do work in hospital systems.

Complex. That's complex construction.

Yes, sir. We also do a lot of work for school systems, both K through 12 and certainly upper education as well. And then we also have commercial office space.

Mm-hmm.

So we do a lot of that. We pride ourselves on trying to perform construction in a way that we try to find repeat clients. We are looking for people who want to build relationships. And we look for clients who look for value construction. And we, that's really been our history in the past 60 years. We just had our 60-year anniversary. Wow.

So I, I read on the website that 60% of your business comes from existing clients.

That's right. Exactly.

That says a lot.

Yep. Just gotta let us in the door.

Yep. Contract us for life.

That's great. That's great.

As I listen to you, you're really pretty pumped up and excited about the work that you do. I'm curious, what is it that gets you up in the morning, gets you excited to show up and lead?

It's all people. It's funny, one of the things I learned from my mentor was like, hey, listen, we realize people, when you think about going to work every morning, we realize that people would rather be with their families. They might rather be doing a hobby, right? Work doesn't have to be your favorite thing to do. But what you don't want is you don't want it to be miserable coming to work every day. You want to be like enjoying the space that you're spending all these hours with people.

Right.

I can't agree with that more. Like, I enjoy coming to work with the people that I work with. It's more people-based than I thought it was going to be, Doug, when I came here. I get to work not only with peers and certainly employees who work for me, but I also get to work with other stakeholders. I get to work with clients that we're working with. I get to work with our subcontractor network, vendors that we buy materials from. It is very people-driven. And with that comes a lot of things, a lot of people issues and joy that can come from the relationships that are built with people.

That's interesting. I think of accounting and engineering as two disciplines that people go into because the bottom line, black and white, this is the way it is. And not so oriented towards working with people because people can be messy. No, I don't think that's just an attitude that people have. I think working as a peacemaker and a mediator, of course I'm working with people all the time. And like you, I love that work. But I'm just curious how you found that you really liked that in addition to doing the more black and white stuff that financial accounting and financial management entails.

Yeah, it's a good question. I don't think that I realized how fulfilling the people side of it was going to be. I think I was raised in a way that, like, be tenacious, get work done, deliver results. Constantly grind. If the job requires more than 40 hours, then you put in 20. If it requires more than 20, find a way to get it done, right? I think that is not exclusively how I was raised. I think there were more qualities that I learned, but I think that, that was instilled in me through school systems and the adults that helped instill ethic in, into me. But over time, I don't think I've lost that. I certainly still would like to think that I have that tenacity, but over time I've realized the value of relationships and working with people. And you can achieve and accomplish so much more by having quality relationships, even in business, right? Our subcontractors, there's a relationship there, there's a contract, right? We're working together. And at first, I kind of looked at it like, hey, they're performing for us so that we can deliver this building or this space to our customer, right? And I think the naive perspective when I was really in my career might have been, hey, they're working for us and let's make sure that they do everything they're supposed to do by the contract and deliver everything that they're supposed to deliver. And over time, I started to learn that, hey, listen, this is a partnership. We want to deliver the highest quality product, not only for the current customer, but how about the future customer, right? Like, how do we ensure that we have a productive, quality relationship with them so that we can have just a long-lasting history of delivering? And like you said, if most of our work is 60% repeat customers, Let's have that benefit everyone so that everyone can win, the subcontractors as well.

As I told you, I was a construction litigation lawyer for a large part of my trial career, and I got involved in all kinds of different— all the different— all the disputes that can arise in a project. Sure. How are you managing— how do you manage the inevitable disagreements that come up on a job site where Maybe, for example, maybe the plans are not as well drafted as they should be, or maybe the subcontractors made a mistake, or maybe you guys have made a mistake and given wrong instructions, something like that. These are inevitable problems that arise on every project. How do you manage that?

Wow, that's such a great question. I would say there's a lot of things that we do. I'll start by saying that our executive team has— everyone on the executive team has over 15 years of experience, so there have been a lot of situations or scenarios that we've seen that you're alluding to.

Right.

But I think it's, again, another team effort. We have a lot of consultants that we utilize, attorneys, right? Formal auditors, whatever it may be that we like to leverage. We also utilize peer groups. Every one of our executives is in a peer group. Some of them are with like-minded construction firms throughout the states. Others are peer group companies that work in different industries entirely. But we like to leverage resources to help us get through some of these issues. But I think each instance is different. What we strive to do is identify a scenario where everyone can win. And I know that it, that doesn't always happen. It's not always achievable. I understand that. But we're always striving to find that. At Riley, we believe that uncertainty is unacceptable, right? Like we want to provide clarity. And we're talking about this a lot outwardly at Riley about construction does not need to be as painful as everyone assumes it's going to be.

Right.

That's what we think is a differentiator for Riley. We're striving to bring joy for our customers. We want them to look back and not only realize that their project came in under budget and on schedule, but that the experience was not as stressful or create as much anxiety as they might have thought or been led to believe.

Right.

Go ahead.

I was going to say, it sounds to me like you haven't said this, but I'm getting the sense that your subs have the same experience, that they want to keep working with you because you treat them fairly. You guys work as partners. Problems come up, you compromise, you do what you need to do to get the job done. And everybody knows that it's the long-term relationship that counts. It's getting the project done on time, under budget, with the highest possible quality.

Correct.

But it's also long-term relationship.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah, that's a great attitude. I didn't have many projects where I saw that.

Oh, it doesn't always happen that smoothly. Of course.

Of course not. Sometimes it can get a little rough. What did— I'm curious, Vince, what is it that you think you bring to the table now that you've been doing this for a while that has made you personally successful?

Yeah, I talked a lot about the table stakes, if you will. The financial acumen is important. Riley has been transitioning, transitioning for a while. Our owner, who was a family member, is going to be getting closer to the end. He's going to ride off to retirement and we're excited for him on that. But that's new for Riley Construction. Riley's going to be transitioning to a new set of owners. And I think with that, there's, there's maybe some inherent uncertainty. I get excited about what I can do on the financial side of that deal, but also about what we can do to create, I guess, create a vision, if you will. Like, I get to work with the other executives on our team to talk about what the next phase of Riley Construction looks like. How are we developing our people? What's going to happen with our tradesmen, right? We want to continue to promote that. We adamantly believe that the best version of Riley includes our tradesmen. And the correct quality craftsmanship that they perform. Again, excited about what we're gonna do to continue to grow the company, what we're gonna get, continue to do to grow our newest professionals, how we're gonna develop that, and just what, whatever the next phase is for Riley Construction. I think I'm gonna have a hand in that. I'm excited about it.

Cool. I'm just wondering, if you look at yourself personally, just be really honest with yourself. What is, what do you think the single one or two most important things that you bring to the table? That make all of this work?

Yeah, I would say, I would say that when people talk to me, they know that they're going to get somebody who's genuine and authentic, and they know that I'm working to listen. It's still a work in progress. I'll admit that. I'll admit that, Doug. But they know that I'm going to try and be a good team player and I'm going to help them. We are again in the business of solving problems and building buildings, and that takes a team mentality. And I think that I'm somebody that is reliable and I can help us get to the goal so that everyone can win.

Okay. You just mentioned listening. How'd you learn how to listen?

That was an evolution. I think, uh, I don't think I got— I look back, I look back, Doug, and I I don't think I listened very well at all. And I'm still working on it. My wife would tell you I'm still working on it. But I think I've learned the value of listening. Be curious. Be curious. And I'll talk about that. I'm confused. Help me understand. Right? I've learned you don't have to go to solving problems right away.

You shouldn't solve problems right away.

Right.

You should listen for a long time before you start solving problems.

Yep. No disagreement for me on that. And I think that's something that occasionally you fall back into bad habits, but I'm learning that. I think I'm getting better at that. And I, I just, I absolutely value it. And I can tell you, like, when I see it happening with other people, it's like nails on a chalkboard.

That's when they're not listening. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, it becomes like a pet peeve. All right. No, let's take a step back. Let's start over. Let's make sure that everybody is clear on What's happening here?

Right. Yeah, listening, it's interesting. I got into this whole listening thing as a peacemaker and mediator because in my business, that's what I do. I listen to everybody and I've got typically one side, the sky is blue, the other side says the sky is black and they come from different universes. And how do we bring all that together and resolve the conflict? But I recognize that listening is not a skill that we're taught. When you think about it. It's just assumed by adults when we're children that we'll know how to listen because we hear the words, but we're really not taught the discipline of listening. And so it becomes, as you're experiencing, it's a trial and error process. And the older you get and the more gray hair you get, the more you realize how important it is because it's not about you anymore. Yeah, when you're young, it's all about you. I get it. But as you get older, It's not so much about you. Sure. And I think that's just an evolution that everybody goes through. I keep thinking about how can we teach young people this? Teach them that, yeah, you're young, you're full of yourself, and that's the way you have to be, and you're going to go through all these phases in life, but learn how to listen at an early age, and it'll make, it makes a huge difference in your life.

I think back about it sometimes, and I say to myself, like, what did I, what opportunities did I miss because I didn't listen better?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, really important skill. I really enjoyed talking with you, Vince. I got one more question for you and I'll let you go. What's one thing about yourself that we would never know unless you revealed it to us?

Oh man, it's a great question. I would say that I try to look into the future and plan with my wife, of course, but I aspire to someday when I retire, I'd like to write. I'd like to, I don't know if I'll ever publish anything, but I look forward to the day when I can write and maybe share some of the experiences that I've had.

Oh, good for you.

I have an uncle who's an author and I've always been, really enjoyed hearing the stories and reading his books. And I think it'd be neat to put some energy into that.

Good for you. My 5th book is coming out next year. It's called The Empathy Edge. It's all about leadership empathy. So I've written 5 of them. I would just as a matter of advice from a publisher author to somebody who wants to do this, start collecting your stories now. When you run across crazy stories like the story that we started off with when Dave Riley came to your house after the tornado hit when you were a young man, start with— gather those stories and if nothing else, the technology is so amazing now, you can just dictate the story and it'll transcribe and then put them in a folder somewhere. And when you have a couple of hundred stories, you've got your first book.

Sure.

And it'll write itself.

Good advice.

So just do it. And then when you do have the time, you'll say, God, what was that? No, I've got it in my folder here. I've kept track of all my stories of life as I've gone through it. So, sure. That's a great, great advice.

Thank you for that.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for taking your time outta your busy day. I just really appreciate it. And I just, you've got a, a really beautiful presence. So I can see why you are as successful as you are. Good, good job.

Thank you. Thank you. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you.

You're welcome, Vince. Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnoell.com.

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