The Noble 'Bud' Quandel Interview: Coachability Built This

This episode of the Coachable Players Podcast features Noble 'Bud' Quandel, Chairman of Quandel Enterprises, a company founded in 1882. When Bud joined Quandel around fifty years ago, they were doing about one million dollars and he helped direct its growth to where it is today at nearly $500 million annually. 

Before Bud was a highly respected construction executive, he was a youth athlete playing sports in Minersville, PA. Many lessons from the ballfields and hardwood court are still carried with him today, like discipline, teamwork and delayed gratification. In this interview he shares how his sports experiences translated into his business leadership philosophy, emphasizing the importance of intellectual curiosity, self-awareness, humility and building strong teams. 

Bud explained the growth strategies of Quandel, including the need for vision, risk management and continuous improvement, while sharing his criteria for hiring successful leaders: intellectual curiosity, insight, engagement skills and fortitude.

The conversation concluded with Bud expressing hope that his legacy would be remembered for treating people with respect and integrity while upholding American values.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the show. I'm your host, John O'Brien, and on this podcast, we explore a simple belief. The most successful athletes, employees, business leaders, and coaches all share a common trait. They are coachable. Today's episode is called Coachability Built This. Our guest is one of Pennsylvania's most respected construction executives. He grew up playing youth sports, excelled in high school playing sports, and played some at Bloomsburg University too. And eventually he went on to help lead his family's construction company, a company that has been building America since 1882. And of course, I'm talking about Noble Bud Quandle, the top executive at Quandle Enterprises. When Bud started at Quandle in the late 70s, they were not a large, powerful company that you see today. Far from it. Before we jump into the coachability conversation, I'd like listeners to hear this. I think it's an incredible story of growth at Quandle Enterprises. When Bud joined in the late 70s, the company was generating around a million dollars in revenue. And if I'm off on that, I'm sure Bud will correct me. But today, that same company is around close to 500 million annually and is recognized as one of the top premier construction firms in Pennsylvania. What's fascinating is that if you ask most successful leaders how they achieve success, they rarely start by talking about themselves. They talk about the coaches, mentors, teammates, coworkers, employees, all the people that help them along the way. Today's conversation is about coachability, it's about leadership, it's about culture, it's about building great teams and surrounding yourself with people who challenge you to become better. So let's get started. Welcome to the show, Bud Quandle. How are we doing today, sir?

SPEAKER_00 2:13

We're doing very well, John. Thank you. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

You bet. I know it's been probably close to a year. We've been talking about this interview, and I've we finally got a date on the calendar, so I'm excited. Um, let's start right with the early years and talk about sports. Let's hear the bud story right from the beginning. What sports did you play growing up, and what role did athletics help in shaping who you are today?

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Well, certainly athletics, I think, played a huge role in my development and um every bit as much as education, um, and uh learned a lot of lessons from the from the very beginning. And uh one of them I can I can I can recall here in my hometown of Minersville, Pennsylvania. Uh I tried out in second grade, the summer after second grade for for little league baseball. And there was a the tryouts were right here on this block. Uh there's a there's a pretty big lot next to the football field, and that's where our tryouts were. So I went out for little league, and lo and behold, I didn't make the team. And I was crushed. And I remember go going home, and um it was my one of my first experiences at really losing something, and uh, and I remember how my parents had to bolster me, um, convince me that next year we can try again, dust myself off and practice, and uh things will change. So I went back the following year and got picked to a to a different a different team and started started, I made the team this year. Awesome. And uh it was the summer after third grade, I was eight years old, going on nine. And I sat on the bench for a year, and uh the following year I started to get some play when our team would get ahead. So I really learned that uh this was equal to my performance and it was competitive, and that um, you know, if I if I worked out and had the discipline to continue to um practice, this would all come around. And eventually it did.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

And then you moved on to the high school, you uh excelled, and and what what sort of sports did you play in high school?

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Might as well back in the in the these days had a had a very good uh athletic program specific, particularly football. And it was it was it was never an option whether it I would play football, it was a given. And he was totally dedicated to his players, and um and that was a an incredibly valuable lesson in life as far as um delayed gratification. And um and he treated every every player like they were some somebody special. He he he recruited, um, and and it was just a wonderful program. And then um, and his practices were uh brutal. And this this uh I mean we would we would have to be in summer summer prep prep August 18th. We had to prepare for that. And if if you didn't go out a month ahead of time and start getting yourself in shape, um you people paid a price for that because his practice sessions were like four hours. I remember one time uh being on the field, I think it was sophomore junior year, and it was like quarter to one in a summer day, and we started at like 8:15, and we were still on the field, and he he was um uh he had a pretty good uh he was a line coach, but he was also very he was our head coach, but he he was a lineman, I should say. And he he he went to the University of Pennsylvania back in those days where people like Chuck Bedneric, uh some people may not know who he was, but he was one of the stars of the Philadelphia Eagles back in the back in the the days when they were in the 60s. But this this coach was uh his name was John Gersky, and he came from Shemokan, Cole Township area. And uh, and he he he was just known for um the basics and uh and line drills and and he just he worked what what we didn't have in talent, we got through discipline and hard work and delayed gratification. Awesome. And then and and then in basketball, uh, that was another thing I was I had the very good fortune of a coach that came to to my high school in my freshman year. And miners will have always had decent players, but they never really had uh the coaches, the coaching that we had was almost uh some of the teachers would do it by default. So we had a had a had a uh a coach, but they were they weren't um they did it for this because of their dedicated to the school rather than really being basketball coaches. This guy was the real deal. He was older, he was he was maybe 60 years old, and his name was Thomas Fitzpatrick. And everywhere he was prior to coming back to to this was his home area, he had some champions, no accident. And I gotta tell this story. I mentioned it to John one time before, if anyone ever saw the movie Hoosiers, where Gene Hackman came to this school in um Indiana, small school in Indiana. It this that movie brought back so many memories that reminded me of this in basketball. And uh we couldn't scrimmage. And after having a grueling football season, we wanted to get to play basketball inside and had the comfort of a gym instead of freezing, yeah, uh freezing our asses off outside in in late November, December. And and he he made us do these drills, weaves, and uh and PT prep. And it was, you know, you read about uh John Wooten when he went to to I think UCLA and he had uh cream up Bill Jabbar and those those players. He he he made them he actually taught them how to put their socks on, yeah, so that they didn't have creases which would give them blisters. And his whole point to all this was that they they needed to understand that the details and the basics are important. Well, this this coach we had was the same way, and and he, you know, we had to do calisthenics and running it. I put I would think for the first hour, and he wouldn't let us scrimmage for like two weeks, and and and and he had these rules like before you left the court, you had to shoot uh 50 foul shots, and you could not leave practice until you shot your 50 foul shots. And and there was you know, it was incredible. And we came back, and out of my my time in high school, we took three out of four championships on a county level. In my senior year, we were in the district, we played the district 11 state playoffs, and the team that beat us went to the quarterfinals. Awesome. So, I mean, it was and it was discipline, everything he did was discipline and uh and structure. Pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Well, so you had some good coaches in high school, and it sounds like they were able to drive you to success and make you a better person, a better athlete. Yeah, but looking back, what what lessons from sports still influence you how you lead people today? Any sort of lessons out there?

SPEAKER_00 11:33

Well, um I think the the the biggest lesson is um delayed gratification and discipline. Um and teamwork uh creates a synergy that that's you know two plus two equals five, and if and if you're lucky, maybe six. And and if you're prepared for this, I think if you're if you if you really work this in your life, I think, I think it's it's a secret to success. I think it requires self-reflection to to do it correctly, self self-awareness. Um and you know the humility is one way to be self-aware. I think that's huge. And and it whether you're in business or anything else, and if you read the book Good to Great, um, there's humility is mentioned throughout in a book by Jim Collins. That this the most successful companies are uh they they they focus on what they really do well, um, get it, get a team together that uh can work together and recognize their strengths and weaknesses, and then deal with their weaknesses, work together and stay humble. And it's and it's because when you start having success, I think there's an it's human nature to start uh becoming uh overconfident and in some cases worse. And that's that's when I think in any business or in anything in life, when you're when you're not self-aware and you lose your uh your your humility that gives you self-awareness, I think it leads to huge problems. But the teamwork is is is is essential. And um I think that it in helping that helped me in building an organization here. I mean, I I've looked at it as any organization can only get lifted as high as the components of its team will lift the leadership. It's up to the leadership to provide the opportunity, um, the incentives to you know uh give people engage people and get and secure their commitment. And that's huge. All of these things were things that I witnessed in winning with athletics. And and yes, education was important, important component. Um, especially I had high school teachers, and at that time, all the all of our coaches were um nothing against coaches who are not teachers, but that's the way it was back then. Yeah, but I had some good teachers and good mentors, and my parents always had a a strong um uh my mom was a teacher, and she was also um uh a female athlete, and um and my father was also, so it was I think um building an organization is like anything else, it's just a matter of scale. Yep, and what size you're gonna be, and but it it's still all these components, none of that changes.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Agree. So we got a nice foundation of of who Bud is, you know, from the early years and how sports played such an impactful role in your development and your leadership style. Um, but now let's let's jump to you entering the family business. Your your family company dates back to 1882. So, I mean, obviously you you grew up, you know, being associated and being around the family company. But what what what was it like officially joining the company, you know, after college, and then and then what what were some of like the biggest challenges in those early years?

SPEAKER_00 16:03

There was several families involved. My uncle was involved in the family business, my father was involved in in the business. And they they their my my grandfather had them involved in the family business. Um, I don't have much documentation on my great-grandparents who founded this in 1882, other than they started as a uh lime killing, a lime kiln. They they they call it slacking lime, they made lime. And that that was a pretty pretty tough business. My grandfather got into that um and somewhere when he when when he was very young, he didn't have any uh college education, though I I've read about him some very interesting stories. That uh he was such a hard worker and he was a learner and studied um what he didn't know, he went and found out. That's another issue that I think is necessary for success, and that's uh intellectual curiosity um is is absolutely necessary. Uh self-awareness, and you start looking and saying, Well, what do I need to do here? Where do I want to go? What do I want to be? So he was in this business and he started with this lime, selling lime and plaster, and then at that time they went from horse hair, which was what they they used to plaster on, to wood last. And he started selling accessories to the lime product and got into lumber. And back in those days, most lumber companies became construction companies, and it was not unusual for that. And he had a couple hundred employees uh at the at the at course that was at the turn of the century, uh coming into the 1900s, and uh coal was uh huge here, and there was all kinds of um uh opportunities, and he took advantage of that and and sold both building supplies and construction services to these big coal companies, including the Reading Company, which was developed into the Reading Railroad, that had a big presence up here and owned like 40,000, 50,000 acres of ground, big coal operations, and they used to ship it down to Philadelphia by rail. So uh he and he not only had um was educated himself to grow and scale the business up, but uh I read an obituary uh okay, it was in a business publication after he his uh after he passed away. I read this article about him that that described him, and this is in the days, like the night he died in 1937, that he was very well known for his upright business dealings and um and I and and and and his discipline. And I think that that became that struck me. My father always was an honorable gentleman, also. My dad was was an my dad went to to college, he went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and graduated in architecture. So he it was just unnatural for him to be in the construction business because he was technically brilliant. And um, then they they and then he scaled up the the the lime and building supplies into ready mixed concrete and um in the early 1940s. And my uncle and my dad started my two cousins and I uh in doing doing work in the family business at um like 13, 14 years old, where we had we had to engage. And and they gave us everything from you know sweeping the warehouse to uh in high school loading loading cement, which was loading bags of cement, which I remember were 93.2 or 93.5 pounds each. So that was good for physical fitness and dovetailed into our sports.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

So um my cousin and I, that's Greg's father, who Greg is now my successor at Quantal Enterprises, Greg's father. Um they had they had all of us working, um, my dad and him in the in the family business. And we knew pretty much everything from the from the manual labor work uh right through to uh doing chores, um sweeping warehouses, driving nails, and working as carpenter helpers and carpenter apprentices at one point. And it was uh it was a real experience. We started from the every one of us from the ground up. And my my first cousin Jim went into the Ready Mix business full-time. He passed away earlier this year in February. My cousin Charles uh became an engineer and was a graduate of the Naval Academy, and um and then worked in the precast business and started his own engineering firm. And then he uh he and I started a uh I started as partner with him in 2006 we created an engineering firm to do high high inner city rail and and uh light light rail and um accelerated light rail and he's he's based in chicago um but that that whole all of us had to start here and that uh that gave us a work ethic and a discipline and family the family uh history that uh is is been um treasured by us and um and we and we we make a big deal out of the the the heritage being based on discipline and um doing the right thing and uh functioning the business um with and we have a saying integrity always and that's that's that's one of our rules for nice being here so the the company has seen a lot of growth as i mentioned early on to to kick off the show from from a million dollars when you first started to getting close to 500 million were there any key decisions or or key stories about that help that growth or any sort of anything to point out to to get to that level any leadership tactics you know in scaling up a company um it requires uh it requires thought thought and planning it's not just going out and working hard you've got to have a vision first for your company and what do you want to be what do you want to do and and how are you going to get there and then you got to create you know you need to create a roadmap for that vision to fulfill it and that roadmap needs uh you need to anticipate the obstacles and you will never anticipate all of them but you can anticipate if you're uh self if you're educated in the business you can anticipate you know how what's going to happen and how are we going to prevent this and that's basically comes down to risk analysis so you need to anticipate risk and you will never get all of it but you got to deal with it and manage it when it comes up and just about the time you think you have everything nailed something will always happen something will will come up that will uh cause you a problem it's it's just the the nature of life but um and you got to question when you when you're taking steps you know what what are you doing after you get a process established you're gonna do you know you you have to get foundations in before you can erect steel and if you can't get foundations done you can't erect the steel once the steel's up you got to put a roof on it but they have to be scheduled you don't wait your steel is up to get your roofer to come in and say start so uh it there's sequences that need to be followed in this business and they need to be planned out and to have everyone do that appropriately and and and and in a real ideal world that's the same way on every job without getting without getting um you know it it's it's it's controlling without being a bureaucracy and uh and keeping a sense of oh this is where we're going and and and we have to get done and date we need to we need to anticipate the weather and but we still when we when we commit to a date we need to get it done by that date. In the perfect world there will be obstacles and they need to be managed so I think um eliminating the obstacles is uh there's there's all kinds of books out on that the first one I read years ago was called the goal written by a gentleman by the name of Goldrat and it was basically what no matter what you're doing you you look for where the choke points are you know if you're driving down an interstate and there's two lanes converging to one you'll find traffic backed up sometimes miles and that that's because it's a constraint and you have the same thing when you're building a building or wherever you're building there's a there's a constraint so you got to anticipate them and eliminate them or be prepared to deal with them. And if you do that I mean you read about there's there's a a gentleman who has a book out right now called the algorithm his name is John McNeil and he was one of Elon Musk's star players and he talks about this very same subject that um it there's you look at what you're doing and then you have to ask the question how can we do it better? Because you're doing it a certain way and even there's there's a prescribed way to do it in the industry but that that way may become especially with with the uh the the coming of AI and all the other technology uh productivity enhancement tools that we have I think it's important that you you said you start to question well do we really need to do this or how can we do it better? And that was that's literally the success that Musk has had I mean who would ever have thought 15 20 years ago you could land a rocket boost backwards onto a landing pad crazy mind blowing yeah but it's possible yeah and and I think with with what we have today I think that's the the secret is to always be I I made that the statement earlier intellectual curiosity is one of those things that you you need to be um focused on and there that that same issue ties into self-awareness too I think in that say okay we know what we're doing but maybe we can do it better yeah and and if so how and question that yeah so I've known you for maybe 20 years prior to case prior to KCA part of the statewide organization we we work together with and over the over that time you talk a lot about the smart people that you employ the smart people at Quandle um and the talented people that you have like minded people like you that that that look for growth and and and look for obstacles and and are like minded like you coachable are there are there certain qualities that you see when hiring people and future leaders certain yes yeah I think the first one I'll come back to it self uh is like intellectual curiosity and I think there's usually four things that we look for and that's not that's one um the um someone has to be willing to learn and continue to learn and here I am at the autumn of my career I'm I'm uh you know working my way out I'm still involved but nowhere near Craig is is doing a an incredibly great job and and our and and his leadership team um so the in the intellectual curiosity is and the ability to continue learning is absolutely key the second one would be um um having insight into things being insightful and that um you know you want to you want someone that can um so so called I've heard it described as looking around the corners of life being able to think around the what the corners of when you go around a corner in life what what what might be there I heard Pete Heggseth say that in the in a somewhere in an interview um that stuck with me that was that that that description of that the the third the third is the ability to uh engage with people and I think uh engagement is is is is being able to have uh fulfilling communications and that would be uh something like um uh I I think really what I view it as being able to understand a situation be I always equate that to say I try to discipline myself and sometimes have problems doing it with but listen and this comes in Stephen Covey has seven uh I think he has a book out the seven principles of uh highly effective people and one of the things he he talks about is uh uh understand before trying to be understood so I would say listen to understand the situation clearly before being compelled to to be to communicating your you know your opinion on something I think um listen to understand before communicating to be understood that's a the third one and and the last one would be um fortitude um uh and that's not just you know like they say intestinal fortitude that's being able to keep your keep be persistent enough and determined enough to focus on what you're trying to accomplish and don't give up keep keep you know never lose sight of uh your vision if you want to do go somewhere um I think that that the fortitude to stay focused on having the courage to to to stay stay in the game it because there's going to be setbacks and again you got to dust yourself off and go back in the game and play it to win yeah and uh subject to the good to the to the right rules yeah but I think that those are are are issues I think that are if if you if you think about it there's some other things that add to that but they're if you want to break it down into some basics I think that's a pretty good yeah awesome list so we started the conversation talking about sports and you played on some awesome awesome teams growing up and and and we're talking now about the growth of Quandle an awesome company what what similarities do you see between successful sports teams and successful construction companies well I think anyone who's been in sports yourself included I know you have I'm not mistaken you were a quarterback on a yep state championship not state championship no i wish I wish we won the state championship well you guys have a very I think you came from a very good sports background but I think having the ability to um have a team that plays that has the the the wisdom and that as that that's a wisdom I'm talking is different than intellect being smart's one thing they know a lot of very smart high IQ people but they're not they don't want a lot of wisdom yeah wisdom is something that where you keep what those qualities that I was talking about in balance they gotta be self-aware they gotta they gotta be humble um and if they are I mean and you can be humble and be confident i uh it's it's where you get supremely confident or arrogant that it starts running into problems and that's where teamwork gets disrupted by by that type of behavior so I think it's it's important to keep that um uh those things in focus and uh they're all they're they all constitute the same characteristics that a winning team would have and and if there's a leader uh let have the leader lead and if the leader is good he'll be watching his people to see who needs a pat on the back and who needs uh who needs who needs to if they need if they're becoming unself aware of something how they can how they can go and correct that without uh destroying the person's drive yeah and you know a good coach anyone that has a good coach the coach can get you aside and give you corrective measures to take and and work with you and sometimes you they need to be in your face it just depends on the situation that's a last resort but I think it's important to uh to treat people with respect and uh respect their dignity I think that all of us um uh you know and some of it I mean here we here we're we're dressed casual and when where I came from in high school they got into this thing where when we would go like on away games uh maybe you guys did this I'm not sure but we couldn't talk on a bus we couldn't talk we have to be they'd say everybody'd be like keep it down we need to be focused on a bit on winning this game and we had it and uh in basketball we had to wear sport coats yeah we did coaches one of those guys if somebody didn't have the money for it he'd find he'd get one for them yeah so I mean it was crazy but it was it was uh there there was lessons to be learned by all this when I think back on it when we w when we got out we had a tough we came from this tough cold region town we could we get out of a of a a bus going somewhere in a way game with sport coats and a and a tie on yeah for a basketball game it was crazy yeah but that there there was there was messages instilled in in us doing that yeah dress the part you're important you gotta look important so yeah so do you have time for one more one more question here yeah so this has been an awesome conversation here but when people look at your career what do you hope they remember the most bud quandel built a grew a company to extreme growth here with a great team what do you want them to remember the most um I think I think it's it's it it's supremely important to be remembered uh in in what for me I think as as a uh a person who um respected uh people uh treat treated people um properly and uh was was uh a person of integrity and someone who um was well intentioned and kind to be to kind to other to other people to his uh fellow human beings because I think that's important and and while sometimes we may uh accidentally offend someone but it's not it's not intentional I I think um it's important to uh treat others the way you want to be treated it's biblical and it's important and I think um if you can accomplish that and and and and thank god for our founding fathers we are given a country that allow us to um fulfill our our visions for our for our lives and they turn into opportunities uh we have the greatest nation in the history of yeah of civilization agree and I love how you started out by respect for others and respecting the team and it's it's a strong culture you have there.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

You know success isn't built by one person it's built by people who are willing to learn willing to adapt willing to accept coaching and willing to help others along the way Mr. Bud Quandel thank you for joining us on the coachable players this has been an awesome conversation thank you until next time stay hungry stay humble and stay coachable thank you bud