Rich Benninghoff & Rebecca Talbot – All Things Malco Products - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Rich Benninghoff and Rebecca Talbot Of Malco Products. You can Read the interview below, Listen to the podcast or Watch the video.

Intro: Welcome to Roofing Road Trips with Heidi. Explore the roofing industry through the eyes of a long-term professional within the trade. Listen for insights, interviews and exciting news in the roofing industry today.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello and welcome to Roofing Road Trips from Roofers Coffee Shop. This is Heidi Ellsworth, and today we are here to find out all things about Malco. And what is that? That's tools, that's HVAC, across metal. It is so exciting. We have the experts and leaders from Malco here today, Rich Benninghoff and Rebecca Talbot. Welcome to our podcast.

Rebecca Talbot: Thanks so much for having us, Heidi. We're really, really excited to be participating in our first Roofing Road trip episode, and excited to be having another touch base with the Roofers Coffee Shop and Metal Coffee Shop audience.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. And Rich, welcome.

Rich Benninghoff: Hey, Heidi, thanks for having us. We're excited to be here.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: This is great. Well, let's start out with some introductions. So first off, Rich, can you introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about what you do at Malco and Malco overall?

Rich Benninghoff: Yep, absolutely. So again, Rich Benninghoff, president and CEO of Malco Tools. I joined the company in 2021, it's almost coming up on three years here in April. By way of backgrounds, 25-ish year career in manufacturing, three chunks of time. The first chunk was commercial oriented sales and marketing, product management type work, working for some national brands, larger publicly traded national brand type companies to really cut my teeth in that part of the business.

And then second chunk of time, started to pick up some general management responsibilities and running chunks of business units, a part of these larger organizations. And then third chunk is where I'm at right now at Malco, which is leading the entire effort. So yeah, that's who I am. Malco Tools, a great company that we can spend some time talking about some of the history of the company and some of the plans for our future, if that sounds good.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That sounds great. Let's get, Rebecca, if you could introduce yourself, then we'll dive into that history.

Rebecca Talbot: Yes, thank you again, Heidi. My name is Rebecca Talbot and I am relatively new to the Malco team. I joined this June of 2023, and it's been a whirlwind excitement ever since. I come from a background of B2B marketing and specific efforts made around branding, campaigns, promotions, as well as channel strategy. So I'm excited to bring all of that previous experience and all of the years of marketing broadly for many, many different companies to Malco and hopefully building upon an already really, really great company.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Rebecca, I have so enjoyed working with you in the six months. It's so fun to have out of the industry talking, sharing strategies. It's been great. So let's hear a little bit about the history of Malco. So Rich, maybe you can start us off.

Rich Benninghoff: Yeah, thanks. So Malco, coming up on 75 years as a company, started in 1950. Our founding father is a gentleman by the name of Mark [inaudible 00:03:39]. And Mark was a young steel salesman back in 1950 who was an inventor-type, pioneer-type person and was working in, like I said, steel business. Back in the 1950s, the sheet metal was a brand new product that people were working with. And so Mark being who he is, decided that he wanted to help the industry and the folks that were working with that sheet metal product in the industry and started to design and develop some tools to work with sheet metal to make their jobs more efficient and safer.

And so the first couple of tools that came out of Mark [inaudible 00:04:24] brain are known today as a crimper and a seamer and used a lot frankly, in a very similar design today than what he designed back in 1950. And so through the '50s and '60s, Mark just continued, with other folks that he had joined the company, to innovate and develop new products and solutions for that industry. So at the core of the business has always been this product innovation identity, and that's who Mark was. And so Mark had a pretty large family, four sons that came into the business and were a big part of running the business throughout the next several decades, '60s and '70s and '80s.

And I would say hallmarks of those decades were more product innovation, product launches, continue to grow the product line, if you will. And it just went through this huge boom. And Mark grew out of his meager start out of his garage and eventually moved out to Annandale, Minnesota where he built a facility to house his business. And the thing just continued to take off and grow more and more and expand the family. The sons started to take on more prominent roles in the business and really take the business from its humble beginnings into this very strong brand recognition stalwart in the HVAC industry that it is today. So the '80s and '90s into the 2000s saw a shift from family ownership to employee ownership.

And so there was a pretty significant transition in the late-2000s from the [inaudible 00:06:23] family to the employees and employee ownership. And so really cool because as we might talk about here in the next segment or two, is it really establishes the culture of the business as it moves into the early to mid to later parts of the 2000s into where we're at today. So this idea of employee ownership or an ownership mentality is with the company because it literally is a model that's based on what was first a family owned business and then turned into an employee owned business. But I would say if you look from the early beginnings to where we're at today, it's been a company that's been rooted in product innovation and solutions.

At its core, that's our identity. There's been a very loyal following in the end user side of our business and the trade pro side of our business that has been second to none. And I'm not kidding you when I say that. It's a very strong brand loyalty that's been built over the years because of this idea of being proud of making a product and using that product the way that it was intended. So really cool business with a lot of legacy, and I think our job is to try to continue that legacy, maybe keep an eye on the history of the past of the company as we look forward. And so look forward to talking about that a little bit.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well, my dad was a general contractor, and I know when I first met John and Rebecca and I saw Malco, I was like, "Oh, I know those tools," because we grew up under metal roofs. And so I think it is, it's such a strong brand. It's really, what I see is a lot of times really in the heartbeat of the country of all the craftsmen and women who are out there. And I have to say I love that story about those first inventions because those are tools that everyone uses today. And to think those came from Malco. So Rebecca, when you look at this rich history and over the company, that has to be exciting to be able to really continue to talk about it, to educate, to share this rich history.

Rebecca Talbot: Yes, I would agree. There is so much work that was done by my predecessor and the predecessor before them to really instill the values and Malco's culture and how it appeals to people outside of the four walls in Annandale, Minnesota. As part of our EOS traction, our Vision Traction Organizer as an organizational platform to optimize our business, not only the business but our people, we've identified training as a key component to our success. And that didn't come from me, that came from programs that already existed across Malco.

There's so many resources for individuals who are visiting our site and programs that support the promotion of those resources as well as the promotion of the entire trade pro journey and the industry of roofing, siding and gutters, HVAC, building construction trades at large. We have a head of the class program that any educator who may be listening to this is familiar with. We've recognized hundreds of students all across North America and the programs that they're in. We also have national programs that celebrate the knowledge and the skillset of those trade pros as part of our Trade Pro of the Year for HVAC and building construction.

And more recently, we introduced a new program to bring our distributor partners into the fold of recognition by announcing our counter person of the year, which is really intended to celebrate the staffing and the personnel within our distributor partner locations who just does a really, really great job not only upholding Malco's values, but understanding the value of the trade pro, how to use the tools and just being an ambassador in general to the building construction industry.

And so making sure we're recognizing those counter people as well. I mentioned EOS traction, our VTO, but if there's anything too around the training and the history that Rich has to bring to the conversation over the last few years, I'll turn it back over to him to speak towards EOS traction and just how we're bringing the brand outside of our four walls and really doubling down on our efforts to our distributor partners and trade pros.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love that. And I want to go to Rich because we also have implemented EOS in our small little company of Roofers Coffee Shop. And so I love this topic, I love talking about it. So please share a little bit about what you're doing. And just for everyone listening out there, this is Entrepreneurial Operating System. It's from the book, Traction. It is an amazing thing. So Rich, I would love for you to talk about that a little bit.

Rich Benninghoff: Yeah, I actually can see over your shoulder there. You've got a few [inaudible 00:11:51]-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I do.

Rich Benninghoff: ...On the shelf, so good for you. Yeah, so Entrepreneurial Operating System, Gino Wickman, ingenious operating system that was designed and developed to basically do three things, in my opinion: increase focus, help with discipline and be able to achieve some accountability in the business. So, I think its goals is to try to improve those three things: focus, discipline and accountability. And I think it does a good job of doing that because it prioritizes and organizes your business. There's a few famous quotes within the principles of the EOS that speak to the whole thing.

And one of them that I really like is that EOS teaches that you need to give yourself time to work on your business and not always be in it. And I think a lot of us that come from these entrepreneurial backgrounds or spirit enjoy being in the business, it's a part of why we're here. And so we can get caught sometimes not stepping back and looking at the bigger picture or the things that are really important. So in traction, they call those things rocks, and those rocks are priorities every quarter to get done, and just it lets you move the noise away and focus on the things that are really critical to moving the ball forward.

So I've been lucky enough to be a part of EOS or Traction at two different businesses now. And so cut my teeth learning the system at my previous employer, and then took that opportunity to deploy it here at Malco. And I got to tell you, it's just a home run of events because the other, and I'll just maybe close with this, one of the other key things to this is that it sets up this concept of small wins. I'm a big believer in small wins versus big splashes. And if you have a big splash, great, hopefully it's a part of the plan, but the small wins are really what turns the flywheel, if you will.

And Traction does a really good job of letting you just figure out what those small wins are by celebrating rocks, for example, which are just things that you decided or priorities that you need to accomplish in a given quarter. So it gives you a chance to not only name them, prioritize them, but then celebrate them every quarter and allow everybody to join in on that celebration. So yeah, it's a very simple, yet very profound set of principles that I think really help you increase those three things: focus, discipline and accountability.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It does. I just finished all of our one-on-ones. Like I said, we're a very small company, but to be able to talk to every single employee and the word accountability came up. And we've just rolled it out to our employees this year. The year before was working just the leadership, getting ready and stuff. And boy, everyone loves it. It's such a huge difference. And it goes to the culture. It supports the culture and builds it up.

Rich Benninghoff: You know what's amazing about it too is that one of the things that's amazing about it is, some of these words sometimes can have some connotations that people are like, "Well, don't talk about accountability in your business." And it's actually the direct opposite. We find at Malco, our associates, they want to be accountable to stuff. Matter of fact, they're driven by it. So another one of those famous phrases in Traction is, "What's your number?"

And we feel like everybody has some things that resonate with them as it relates to their number. And we find that we couldn't get to those numbers fast enough. When we started to roll this system out to our folks, they were like, "What's my contribution? What's my number?" I think it's okay to talk about results and accountability because I think if your culture's sound, you've got a team that's looking to knock the walls down. And this system just allows you to do that in terms of the optics and the visibility around accomplishing these things.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I do too. I've found it to be great. And Rebecca, talking about culture, it's so important. And having been with Malco being such a strong part of the trades for so long, there's a special culture about the trades. About HVAC, about metal, about roofing. But I am just taken by what you all have said about being employee owned, going from family to employee owned, which I just think is one of the ideals. Rebecca, tell us a little bit about that, just about that EOS and that employee owned culture that has been created and now you are promoting.

Rebecca Talbot: Yeah, thank you for asking. As being the newbie, it has been really rewarding to join a company using EOS. I think a lot of businesses try to set up a lot of these things and they're coded as milestones or quarterly goals, but there's not that same level to use the same keyword, a callback to the accountability. So it's been really refreshing to realizing the company goals for Malco in the framework that is EOS Traction. Regarding the ESOP and the employee ownership, it is a 100% employee owned company. I found it interesting seeing a few other companies in the Midwest where they really do, they promote their ESOP, they promote their employee ownership, but many may or may not be 100% employee owned.

And when I joined, I thought that that was something that was really important to make sure we communicated as an American company and as 100% employee owned, because I believe that those values that we feel at Malco are very relatable to the trade industry and to the trade pros, building construction professionals. And I just really feel that how we are walking the walk and talking the talk is just really important. And it's not only part of the brand in part of a marketing campaign or spiel, but it really is who Malco is, who we are and the type of face that we present when we're speaking externally to all of our partners and customers.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And it seems like it's obvious too that, just like you said, taking it out of the four walls. I really love that expression, Rebecca. And you mentioned earlier about the educators, what you're doing with teachers and the head of the class. And that's where I met John, and that's where actually I was able to get involved with all of you was with Skills USA and Metal Construction Association. And so to me it was like, they're really walking the talk and they're really going there. So Rich, I would love your thoughts on career technical education, the CTE movement and the fact that you've been doing it. This isn't just something like, it's a new shiny object, this is really part of your core.

Rich Benninghoff: And I'll say that we're blessed with Rebecca being here because it's a passion of hers too, and I can tell just early on with some of the energy and projects we're working on. So it's a nice... There's a million reasons why it's a great fit, and that's just one of them. So anyway, we have a program initiative within Malco called Look Good, Feel Good, Do Good. The last part of that, Do Good, is really all about giving back. We've done in a deliberate way, an intentional way, in a focused way. And so we do a lot of things in the community in terms of trying to do good and give back, which I won't go into detail here, but another part of doing good is to try to give back to the trades that support who we are.

And so the trade groups, the building trade groups are our customers. They're our end users, they're our partners. And literally everything we do is designed around making their jobs easier or making their jobs safer or efficient. And so some of those opportunities are, and Rebecca's naming a few of them, the occasions that we have to reinvest in those people. People matter, at the end of the day, that's what this whole thing is about, in my opinion. And our job in that relationship is to try to invest in it. And sometimes we invest with our time, sometimes we invest with our products and sometimes we invest with our resources.

And however we're doing it's with the same goal, which is to advance the cause with the trade pro and somehow impact the development of their journey. And so, one of the few that we've been doing for a while, head of the class stands out as one of those programs that we have spent a lot of time in, and I'll tell you they're popular. We go to these various trade shows or Skills USA is a great example, and the young folks that come up to us with a new Malco backpack on and a Malco cap and tell us that they got those from... They were nominated by their instructor or teacher as the head of the class, and they're just genuinely excited about the fact that a company like Malco is investing in their future.

And I'll say it ties back to the beginning of the discussion. It goes all the way back to the beginning of the business and its founding, it's always been about giving back. We mentioned employee ownership, and I'll tie these two things together. Employee ownership and our trade pros, it's about investing and giving back to them so that the family from the very beginning decided that it was going to give the company that had founded in blood, sweat and tears poured into develop it, gave that business to the employee owners.

Just like we're giving our time, energy and resources to the folks that are in the field working every day to make their lives better. So it's a core of our business. We're going to continue to invest in it. Rebecca's working on some things right now that are exciting that will expand our reach into other organizations. And I'll tell you, it's real. It's walk the talk stuff from Malco.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well, with what you're doing also in metal roofing and now what we're doing together with the roofing industry overall and with the tools and how important that is, Rebecca, as you're looking at that, and I want to tie this back together like you did earlier, between the education and then with the distributor partners. Because first of all, I have to say I love the fact that you celebrate counter person of the year.

I've been in many distributors many times and unsung heroes. So I think it's just so cool that you do that as putting all that together and really looking at how you are... So branding it from the minute they get out of school all the way through their careers. Talk a little bit about that and some of the new initiatives, some of the new things you want to continue doing.

Rebecca Talbot: Yes. There is really a lot of emphasis that already has been paved for me to stay the course on, but also room for us to continue to grow. And a lot of our focus and marketing throughout the next year to two years, it's going to be on that entire customer journey. And customer journey in a marketing sense is really used as centric to business, to growth, to revenue growth, namely. But along the lines, when I mentioned customer journey, it is also inclusive of those things that are important for the business, but that are also important more broadly to the support of the customer journey from the minute they choose to enter a trade to the minute that they decide to exit.

And whether that is because they need to be cross-trained, they need to have soft skill training, they need additional tools, new tools, innovation brought to them to make their lives easier all the way through people who are making decisions to invest and begin their own business. So really it is a broader brush to the customer journey that we are approaching. And I would say as well, as far as how we're looking at that customer journey and combining it all and wrapping it into traction and to the employee ownership is Malco being a learning and innovative company, is also acknowledging that innovation does come from anywhere and from anyone.

And that is really an earmark in how we go about creating new products and new initiatives for Malco and how we think about those new products and initiatives, how they touch our distributor partners and our trade pros. We consistently get field feedback when John is at Skills USA and Rich joined him last year we were just at Metal Con where we saw you face-to-face in our booth, but we're soliciting field feedback. We are always open to new ideas. In fact, we just had a new idea contest and awarded a first and second place winner, that first place winner, that contractor, he's going to be joining us in our booth at AHR, and he is so excited to be winning.

He said, "I never win anything," but also to be recognized as a person who not only had a good idea but is integral to the continued innovation for his field as a contractor, trade pro for HVAC. We promote the new ideas all the time. And that innovation internally, externally from the field, from a distributor, from a trade pro, from somebody just entering to making a decision to exit, it's coming from all different places. And again, as Malco being a learning, listening and innovative company, we're really open to hearing all of that feedback. Its innovation is coming from all these places that we play in and that we have presence in on a national and global level.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It really shows. You are listening and hear the voice of the customers from the minute they get out of school through their whole journey. To me, that is incredible, and I can't wait to meet the gentleman, the contractor who won the contest and see those new. So I know you get product ideas submissions, you have your awards. What is some of the inspiration? You already said you started out as an innovative company and that's what you're doing today. So that is really the focus. What are some of the newer tools that our roofing contractors and HVAC folks and metal roofing companies would be interested in? So Rebecca, why don't you start, tell us some of those new tools that are out there.

Rebecca Talbot: So, some of your listeners, if they were at IRE last year or if they were able to visit with Malco in the booth recently at Metal Con in Las Vegas, saw a variety of new metal roofing tools that Malco is introducing to their portfolio. That includes single station modular benders, two station fixed benders, single and double station discs or hemmers, as well as seamers and cutters that are power assisted. So, we just are continually releasing product to enhance and simplify that trade pro who is in the roofing, siding and gutter industry.

We also have a variety of products that are launched that are anticipated to serve both HVC and RSG equally, and some of them have recently won some really great awards, a [inaudible 00:28:56] innovation award for our MC12L, which is our offset snip. That was a really exciting launch this year as well as something more specific to your audience. Our adjustable sighting gauge also won a [inaudible 00:29:10] innovation award and in general recognition from the AHR group for HVAC and Excellence in Hand Tools. So aside from these new products we have launched this past year and the year previous, we've got some great things coming up on the roadmap as well as just some real classic products too.

You want to talk about a history of innovation. One of our top sellers to the RSG market and to HVAC is our TSHD, which is the turbo shear. That is a line that is celebrating 20 years of innovation. There's I believe nine other turbo shear, turbo crimper, turbo products that fall under that for a variety of different materials. 20 years expanding upon a category that's been really, really successful.

Same thing with our building construction CRX line, as well as our Andy sub-brand. So just continuing to bring not only new products to very, very popular lines, but brand new high level launch products to the RSG market as well as more broadly, like I said, to building construction with the use cases justified across all of those different industry sectors.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's the thing. And there's nothing better than tools. I have to tell you, we celebrate tools every day here. Rich, I would just love for you to add and just bring us to a conclusion here on the innovation part, and the voice of the customers and really listening to what they need and how that's coming and how important that is to your overall culture.

Rich Benninghoff: Yeah, absolutely. Give it a shot. So I talked early on about as part of our history walk, the founding of the business and the fact that it was a sheet metal business product line, and which was predominantly in the HVAC industry, but halfway through that endeavor, from 1950 to today, the building trades have become a significant part of our business, and specifically the roof, siding, gutter elements of those building trades like Rebecca has been talking about. We think of ourselves as a company that makes tools that cut bend and shape and fasten sheet metal, whether that's sheet metal in an HVAC duct system or a sheet metal on a roof somewhere. That's the idea is that we make tools that works with those kinds of products.

And so this new product line, the vendors and cutters and seamers that we're showing at various shows currently is more of that. We're cutting, bending, seaming, rolling sheet metal for metal roofs in a way that's innovative. And so we're going to continue to... I was talking earlier about small wins and we're going to continue to just move, inch forward on product innovation that might come in the form of fasteners. Fasteners is a big part of our business. You can't walk into a house with a sheet metal system of duct work most likely without a Malco zip in holding it together, which is amazing. I was down in my basement two days ago with a heating contractor and looked up in the air-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: There it is.

Rich Benninghoff: There were several zip ins, screw fasteners holding the system together. So it's just ironic, but fasteners are... We have a superior technology as it relates to our fastener system, and utilizing that at various applications in that roofing business makes a lot of sense. So exploring ways to do that is probably one of, if not close to the top of the list, but it's just expanding on existing core portfolio products, extending into some adjacencies that make sense for us, that lend itself to those applications. And then we have a spirit about us too that I refer to or is pretty popular right now talking about it, but it's been a part of our core for a while, and that's a growth mindset.

So we're being vigilant about things that we could add to the business that would make sense for the end user customer that we're supporting. And so those three different scenarios of things are where our innovation focus is over the next decade and beyond. And what's cool about all of that, what I just said is that's not new for this business. That's not like we're deciding to get into that business. This is stuff we've been doing for 75 years and we're going to continue to do for another 75 if we have anything to say about it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. I have to tell you, I have loved all this. I told you this at the beginning, but I had listened to some other podcasts that you both have done. They're great. You have such a rich company that I am just so happy is part of Metal Coffee Shop and Roofers Coffee Shop and that we're able to share all this information. So one last quick thing. Rebecca, I know they can find all this information on your directories on Roofers Coffee Shop and Metal Coffee Shop, we're putting all kinds of stuff. But where do people want to go out and say, "I want to buy some of these tools," or, "I want more information on the educators resources head of class." Where should people go?

Rebecca Talbot: So, the first great place to go and start investigating and looking around to learn more about Malco and more about our programs and our products is to visit us at malcotools.com. From there, if you're looking to find a distributor, find an online eCommerce, eTailer, we've got a Buy Now button on every single product that we have in our portfolio that connects you directly to your nearest distributor, brick and mortar or to your online store. We also have a variety of things that are going to get us out of our building, out of the state of Minnesota.

I don't know if going to Chicago at the end of January is much of a change for us, but we will be at AHR in Chicago at the end of January. So you can visit us at Booth S7744, and then after that we will be at IRE in hopefully a little bit warmer place in Vegas at the beginning of February. And you can visit us at 6728 for the booth number. And then just in general, we've got another podcast that we've done with Roofer's Coffee Shop, there's this podcast, there's the Building Science HVAC podcasts that we did with True Tech Tools. There's a lot of different ways for you to listen, connect, engage, shake our hands. We're going to be available out there in Q1 and beyond in '24.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, exactly. And like we said, we saw each other at Metal Con. You also, we have all of this information on the directory for Malco on both Roofers Coffee Shop and Metal Coffee Shop. So Rich, Rebecca, thank you so much for being here today. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.

Rich Benninghoff: Thank you.

Rebecca Talbot: Thank you, Heidi.

Rich Benninghoff: Thank you for having us. Love doing these.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you, so much fun. And thank you all for listening. This is the stuff, you got to check it out. These are the tools that will change your business, will make your employees so happy. Plus it's a family culture just like most of the roofing industry is. So check it out on the directories on both Roofers Coffee Shop and Metal Coffee Shop. And be sure to check out all the podcasts. Enter the read, listen, watch navigation under Roofing Road trips. Also on your favorite podcast channel, be sure to subscribe and set those notifications so you don't miss a single episode. We'll be seeing you next time on Roofing Road Trips.

Outro: Make sure to subscribe to our channel and leave a review. Thanks for listening. This has been Roofing Road Trips with Heidi from the rooferscoffeeshop.com.