Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to on the Fringe, the podcast where we explore the systems, technology and people shaping the future of our work. I'm Ann Larson, CEO of Corellian Software and EPR Live.
Today we're continuing our conversation with Andrew Varvutis, Executive director of Nika's Gulf coast chapter.
We talk about purpose, impact, the we've always done it this way mentality, and so much more.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: So let's dive in.
So I think a lot about callings beyond work. I think about what I, how I want to like, devote my life after my kids are gone. I, I kind of decided I would give myself until my kids are gone, but now my, my son's going to be a senior in high school, so I'm looking down the barrel how I want to devote my time and energy outside of work. And you and your family have fostered, I think you said, 13 children to date.
What brought you to that and what have you learned from it?
[00:01:12] Speaker C: Yeah. Wow. So.
So having purpose for every individual I think is critical. Right? You know, they talk about, know why you do what you do and, and that can come into play our jobs, but more so life and how those things interact and how you combine those things.
So our journey through foster care in some ways started for me as a small child.
My mom was a social worker who supervised a unit that trained foster homes. So I grew up around it. We had.
Have some foster siblings. There were some, some that she kind of took home from work for a time. Our, our house was a, was a, an approved home. And so we had some kids in our house and then moving into adulthood and marriage and family.
My wife and I were really just convicted and felt called through study of, of the book of James, where it talks about a pure and undefiled religion is to care for widows and orphans.
So we started pressing in and say, okay, if there's this big idea that we should take care of widows and orphans, what does that look like for us specifically in our home? And as we pressed into that, more and more, we were led to start serving through being a foster home.
And it has been really one of the biggest joys of my life to be able to see the way that I personally, my marriage with Layla, my biological kids, Nico and Sophia, who were. Nico just graduated high school and Sophia's entering her sophomore year. So it has allowed us, I think one of the biggest things is to see the impact that most of us are operating through what we consider to be normal based off of our lived experience.
So every child whose history I know that we have had in our home is at least second generation in the foster care system.
So the fact that some of these parents struggle to keep custody of their kids is really just them repeating the cycle that they were born into.
And my wife and I are doing the exact same thing. We're repeating the cycle of generally what we saw in our home. We're trying to do better. Everybody's trying to do a little better.
I talked earlier about empathy and trying to understand the position that other people are in.
So being able to be involved with people who are in some really difficult personal situations and seeing kind of some of the events that led to that has helped me understand, one, that I didn't get here on my own.
And two, that kind of everybody's doing the best they can.
And so being able to realize that, give them grace in where they are.
So that's a big purpose for us. But, you know, I struggled for years in finding purpose in what I did, because I think there's ways that this gets out of control. But I do believe that we should find purpose in our work. Some people maybe find too much purpose, but I struggled with that and trying to find purpose. Like, at the end of the day, what does this really matter? What did I really do?
And. But I started to see how people who come into this and go through an apprenticeship program and get a career with insurance and retirement, this can be generational change for a lot of people.
This opportunity that we have for this career that we're a part of, when we're processing millions of dollars in payroll and overseeing billions of dollars in retirement, that's a significant. Can be a significant generational change for families to get involved in.
And so it does matter.
Beyond this week's paycheck or the next negotiation cycle or the next benefit change that we've got to build an epr without the infrastructure for these things, some of that other stuff doesn't exist.
So that's been good for me to see as well.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: I agree. Sometimes we. I think we look at wanting to give back as, like, wanting to make some, like, superhero move where you just make this massive change.
But the reality is we all have to do, like, our little bit to make that change.
The purpose of EPR Live, as stated, our mission statement is to make it easier to be a union contractor. That's what we want to do.
That's our mission.
But it's just a teeny, tiny piece of what they do. It's just this. Hopefully we make it easier for them to do this one piece that they have to do this contracted bit and make it better for everybody, get the union member the. The benefits that they are entitled to help the downstream offices just make it easier for them. All those little bits. And of course, like, what a union contractor does is so much more than that, but it's just this, like this one brick in the wall.
[00:07:02] Speaker C: Yeah. I think when you look at whether it's kind of the concept of the butterfly effect, that just when we talked about big problems with manpower, you can kind of throw your hands up, you can look around your local community at problems, or you can look at our country and problems, or you can look around the globe at problems and you can put yourself in a place of feeling overwhelmed that what is the solution to this? You know, how. How can I have an impact on this? You know, Israel, Palestine and Gaza and what goes on there. Right.
But if just for today, I can have a positive impact on the life of someone in and around my circle, there can be eternal difference made in some of those ways.
And so I've heard it said that people who say it can't get done need to get out of the way of those who are doing it.
And we talked about foster care. The foster care system is really, really broken. And it's a tragedy. And it has brought me to tears many, many times just hearing stories of little kids that are just in terrible, terrible situations and really unspeakable harm has been done to them.
And that can get to be overwhelming. But if you've got a bedroom in your house that you can put a crib in, like, you can take one of those kids out and you've changed the world to that kid, you know, so it matters.
[00:08:44] Speaker B: I agree.
Sometimes I feel like we're BFFs. Andrew.
[00:08:50] Speaker C: I'll take it.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: So you are right now training a new person in your office. And of course, you see six locals, soon to be eight locals, that you have perspective on. You also, as part of Nika national, saw a broader array of areas.
How do you approach.
When you see people get into the mentality of we've always done it this way or this is the way we've always done it, what is your response?
[00:09:23] Speaker C: Yeah, some of that's varied. Some of the response to that is varied based off of exactly what we're doing.
So I guess the first kind of filter to run that through is, does it matter? Right? Is this. Is this something that's inconsequential, that they, hey, we've just always done it this way. And so that's why we do it. And, and if it's okay, then we can keep on doing it that way.
The next thing, one of the things with that is, is it. Is it legal? Right? I mean, we have a lot of legal obligations around these funds, and there are some things that we just cannot do.
And with the way most of the practical training gets done, it is generally done by the predecessor.
So if you have a new business manager, he probably was an assistant, and so he learned from the guy who was business manager. When you have a NECA person who comes in, they probably learned from the person before them. And so we have to be cognizant of what else is going on out there. And our national entities give us a lot of resources. We just have to take advantage of those resources so that we're aware of it.
People are naturally averse to change, and so trying to come in and make change for change sake is probably going to fail.
So getting people to understand why things need to be done differently is one of the things that can help us move forward with partnership specifically to epr. I've been having a lot of.
So we transitioned in the summer of 21.
And so we've been at this now four years and I still get a couple paper reports.
And trying to wean people off of paper has been interesting. There were some early adopters that said, wow, this is perfect. This is so much better. Why on earth were we continuing into the 2020s with paper and snail mail?
There are others who are hesitant for a variety of different reasons.
Most of that seems to come down to some concerns about access to banking and electronic fund transfer, ach EFT sort of things is really where I'm getting the most pushback from the few remaining who are still trying to mail things to us.
And so working through that process mostly came through education.
But being able to help not just the decision maker, but the staff behind them get a feel for it and understand how it's going to be better in the long run.
Being able to then use a variety of different examples of how we track man hours. Right. So being able to get to that data, if you don't have all of it, you kind of have none of it.
Right.
So showing the importance of that.
And we've, I think, been generally successful as far as the specific EPR side of making that transition, but we've always done it that way. You know, the Department of Labor sees that as probably the worst excuse ever.
And unfortunately, I've had a. A couple of different opportunities to meet Department of labor investigators and go through some different concerns and situations and audits and whatnot that have exposed that the way we always did things was not okay.
And then trying to kind of be forward thinking with that and say, okay, well, what are other things that we've just continued doing the same old way that, that need to, that could be improved to, whether it's resufficiency or accuracy or allow us to operate better as a collective unit, then we can kind of investigate each one of those separate situations and dig into, you know, have we, have we been doing it this way because it's best, or have we been doing it this way because it's how we've been doing it? Another part of that too, that I've seen, even from a contractor perspective. So there have been new evolutions into the electrical industry.
And years ago prefabrication was just a hot topic and it was a growing word. You're just kind of hearing around prefab, prefab, prefab.
And I was talking to my contractors and they were just saying, that just doesn't work for what I do, my type of work. We can't do that.
And I'm not an electrician by trade.
Even in the Nika world, it seems like a lot of people were electricians at a time.
So I first had to investigate do I know what I'm talking about?
And really what I kind of came down to is saying, well, I don't know the ins and outs of what you do versus what other people do, but I can see some people who are being really successful. And so I was, I was banging my head at meetings, talking about prefab, prefab, prefab. And I wasn't getting any traction. What I ended up doing was finding one individual who was interested in it. And so I just dedicated more resources into that individual.
And you know, all of a sudden it wasn't a short period of time, but that individual's working 400 people.
And I think there were some turned heads at that, saying, what is he doing?
Well, he's got a 50,000 square foot prefab facility and you know, that's part of what he's doing. He's done a lot of other things that are really, really good. But so what I try to do is identify one person who is interested and help them be successful and then let success build success. Instead of me, the non electrician, the non electrical contractor, trying to come in and tell individuals who have been doing this a lot longer than me and have been very successful at doing it, that they need to try something new, that they need to risk capital and try something that is unproven.
Instead, we just got it proven right. So we proved an example that was close by. And I think that helped other people start to consider if that would be a possibility for them too. So to bring it around and summarize some of the. We've always done it that way.
Again, if it's a legal issue, if there's high level, then hey, we have to stop immediately, right? We had an instructor at one of my schools whose son passed away. So we sent an arrangement of flowers to the funeral and when we got audited from the dol, they said, you cannot do that. That is not approved.
And so we opened up our wallets and went around the room and chipped in enough money to cover that oral arrangement and reimbursed the fund for that. But that's an example that I use when people talk about, well, we've always done this well, you just haven't gotten caught yet. So that's a big level kind of filter that we need to make sure, like, is it legal? Is it not legal?
And then from there kind of working through some of the specifics of different situations to use kind of the nudge principle and economics to try to set some things in place to at least allow the horse to get to water and see what happens.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: I love the strategy of using peers to kind of, you know, get, get the rest.
Not jealous exactly, but like, oh, okay, well, my peer is doing it successfully, therefore I, I can do you. Are you involved in the Nika peer group?
[00:17:46] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I've got a peer group.
I got your six, as is my peer group. So we were the sixth group and we're out there trying to protect each other and watch each other from the back. So and, and it's been great. So we, we meet in person generally once a year, have a zoo month where we go through some things. But it's been a great resource for me just kind of in an email thread.
So here, within the past probably six weeks, I had a situation that came about. I was looking for a better way to do things. And so I just shot an email to the peer group and just said, hey guys, will you send me what you do for this situation?
And I got back, you know, I don't know, 7, 8 responses and found that everybody's was similar except for mine. I was the one kind of outlier. And I'm smart enough to know I'm not the smartest person and so if everybody else is doing it a different way than the way we've always done it, then it probably is us that needs to change. And that change has led to some other issues. Right. So I had to go by a contractor shop this morning, meet with some of their people for about an hour and a half and kind of go through these changes like, well, you know, I've been here over 20 years and we've always done it this way was what somebody said. Yeah, well, I understand, but I think there might be a better way. And once I explained the new structure and organization and what they were doing, they caught it and said, yeah, that works, what you're doing is better. But it was just kind of a shock to some of the people in the back of the office when something looked different. It needed a little explanation.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: The NECA peer group is one form of professional development for you. Are there other things you do for your own growth?
[00:19:34] Speaker C: Absolutely.
And there are a variety of ways that that comes about.
Personally, I try to remain curious.
I like to be able to look for new things and find new things. I've been in this position with the chapter for about three and a half years and, and I've overseen a lot of change and it really wasn't my plan.
But just some of those things have kind of happened and we're navigating through them. And I think one of the things that is important for me is some attention to just physical well being and making sure that I'm doing everything I can to continue to remain sharp. And so I've set out different challenges for myself.
When I turned 40, I did a 40 mile run. Then a couple years ago did a 50 mile race with actually one of the guys who works for a contractor.
We went and did a 50 mile run together.
I've done some triathlons and exercise different things.
And I'm one of these weirdos that has a sauna and a cold plunge at my house. And facing adversity is, I think, important. And so, you know, when you wake up in the morning and you spend three to six minutes in a tub full of ice, you've faced adversity for the day. And a little bit, you know, you kind of conquered some things. And so I try to do some of that just to continue to grow and to not be stagnant. And then I'm a big podcast person, so lots of podcasts, books on tape, those kind of things as ways to just get new information in and find out different ways that other people are attacking what could be similar problems that we face. You know, we have a really niche market and there's a lot of it that is unique, but some of that is transferable across the board. Right. And so, you know, all of our acronyms and abbreviations of things may be unique to us and it may take a little bit of time to get your head around exactly what all these things stand for.
But, but from a big picture standpoint, I think there's a lot that we can see that transfers across into other fields and other areas that we can learn from and, and bring into the Nika world.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: I agree.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: I have a new.
[00:21:59] Speaker B: I did a 75 day challenge earlier this year and one of the things that I took away from it was every day taking a walk, regardless of the weather, taking a walk, listening to a business book for half an hour.
And I think that walking and listening is so helpful to integrate it into your brain and your body.
And one of my favorite takeaways was from the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It was prioritizing the things that are important but not urgent.
And I think that speaks to exercise in particular. It's like this one of those things that you just have to do every day. It's not urgent that you do it, but it's so important that you build that into your life every day, every week in order for that like that long term benefit. There's no other way to do it.
It's never going to be urgent to go for a run.
I mean, unless there's a lion after you or something that doesn't happen.
[00:23:06] Speaker C: Yeah, there's, there's a great book called the Tyranny of the Urgent that that's been, been even just the idea of, of what that kind of brings about. I think just in the title, the Tyranny of the Urgent. You know, we talked about earlier looking into the EPR data, It's not urgent. Right. There's no, there's nobody saying we've got to do this right now.
And so those urgent things that come up can imprison us to getting done really what we need to prioritize. And so I've started trying to make some habits to do things like set all my devices to do not disturb and focus in on what I'm doing.
A five minute disruption in what you're doing can really derail upwards of 45 minutes of productivity. And so having some times where I'm not even getting the notification from anybody about what's going on in the outside world, I'm taking care of the one task that I need to get done and then your brain needs a little bit of a break and so you can turn those notifications back on and take an opportunity to get back to all the things that you missed and then kind of, kind of refocus.
So that's been a big thing for me. And then just consistency. It was said, consistency looks like nothing is happening until everything changes.
And I've got a buddy that I've had for years where we go hiking together a good bit and just kind of in our little Birmingham area. There's a state park near us. It's got some what we call mountains. Other people would not consider them mountains, I'm sure, but he, over the course of about the past eight months, has lost over a hundred pounds.
And I've been a part of his up and down weight loss journey for probably 10 years.
And so now a lot of people are asking like, hey man, what's going on? And he's just like, man, it's really just consistency. I've just been able to do these couple of minor, eat less, move around more kind of things, but I just keep stacking one day on top of the other.
So the consistency is, you can see it visually represented in his physical appearance right now.
And we don't always have those sort of snapshots in what we do to see how the consistency over time has transformed things.
And that may be even again, a product of the tyranny of those urgent things. We don't really look back and kind of see what it is.
So having some awareness to how those changes have come through over time, I think helps us celebrate the wins, which is important, but also helps us play that forward into how we can make improvements in some of the other situations.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel like that goes right back to. We've always done it this way. Sometimes it's not right.
Make tiny changes. Small changes are the easiest ones to keep doing too. Just make small changes, tiny little things, whatever you can handle in that moment. You know, cutting out this or cutting out that or adding this little thing and just like seeing what works for you over time. We're so impatient. What, anything else that you do for professional development.
[00:26:49] Speaker C: You know, formal, structured stuff. Probably not.
And maybe, maybe you're pushing a little nudge there to make me consider other options.
But I mean, I'm trying to just find some of those things. So now with, with the growth and in the number of areas to cover, that brings upon a lot of different levels. So something new I started this week is Just trying to have to make time to call people when there's not a problem.
And it was pretty funny because the first business manager that I called with this new idea, he answered the phone and he said, what's wrong?
And it kind of hurt a little bit. But it was an indicator of exactly what I knew to be the problem is that, you know, we just deal with each other when we got problems. And when he saw my name come up on the caller id, he thought I was going to complain about something or ask him to do something or whatever else. And so I said actually nothing.
I was just, I was just calling because I hadn't talked to you in a little bit. I just want to check in.
So, you know, that's a new habit I'm trying to form of just. It's. It may have to be that, you know, certain people have a day of the week where just at some point during the day, maybe I've got some windshield time or whatever it is that I'm just going to reach out, touch base, check in. Maybe I get a useful nugget about something that's going on. But maybe we just chat for a minute or two about anything and move on. But we're kind of building that brick by brick sort of relationship that's going to be a lot more stable when the winds come and the difficulties arise.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: We did almost the exact same thing. My goal, my new KPI, is to reach out to two people, whoever, it doesn't even matter. I don't even have a particular. No agenda, just reaching out.
And we went through the Rockefeller habits in our lead meeting and that was one of them, is that everybody, especially on the lead team, should be talking to, at least I think, one user client every week.
And I hadn't really thought about it. I kind of thought I did that already, but I don't. I looked back and I'm like, I really don't. Or not, if it's not a more formal thing, an account review or there's an issue or it's a sales thing.
So I have really enjoyed it. It's only been a couple months, but I love it.
You get interesting information from people that you wouldn't get otherwise because, you know, people don't think of things. There's not. When you're in an account review, it's all about EPR live. But when you just call them up, it can be about anything. It can be about life.
And that's just been so amazing and helpful for me.
So I hope I continue it this is my little habit I'm trying to build also.
[00:30:05] Speaker C: Yeah, well, we get into these transactional relationships, and it's great. That's one thing that excites me about the fact that you're venturing into this podcast thing is, you know, I listened to you and Ian talk about some stuff, and I got to know a little bit more about Ian.
We've moved especially with the. With what technology allows for.
That's good to be able to do, you know, zoom calls and teams meetings and all of those kinds of things.
But we get real transactional in our relationships, and so we lose the personal side of that. And maybe that improves our business relationship, maybe it doesn't, but I think it definitely improves us as people.
And what are we trying to do if all we're worried about is transactions one to another?
Our.
Our marriages or our relationships with significant others would not function very well if they were solely transactional.
And so similarly with the people that we work with in whatever capacity, if we can extend the relationship beyond just, hey, I need this, and hey, here's that, and hey, yeah, EPR is this, or we're doing that, and whatever, then I think we benefit as a whole for those kind of changes.
[00:31:31] Speaker B: I agree.
As I've said many times in this conversation, we're never going to disagree, Andrew. That's just our future.
[00:31:40] Speaker C: We can find something.
[00:31:41] Speaker B: What do we disagree about?
[00:31:44] Speaker C: Who's your college football team?
[00:31:45] Speaker B: Oh, I don't have one because I went to a little, tiny, tiny college. What's yours?
[00:31:51] Speaker C: Alabama, number one of all time. Roll, Todd.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: Yeah, we have to root for ducks and beavers, and everybody always has to pick a side between ducks and beavers. And I'm like, oh, it's fine. I like them all. They're all good.
[00:32:04] Speaker C: So across Alabama, it is very common for people to ask, who are you for? And of course, we had some friends move in, and she was a professor at Samford, which is a small Baptist school there in Birmingham. This lady was asking her, who are you for?
And so new to the culture, she didn't understand the question, and she debated it and didn't really know socially what was the appropriate answer. So she said, I'm for Jesus, and thinking that was a good Bible Belt answer. And the lady said, well, that's great, honey, but Auburn or Alabama, we draw some pretty firm lines around Alabama.
[00:32:50] Speaker B: That's funny. I actually did grow. I should say I forget my roots. I grew up in Iowa City, so I'm really a Hawkeye.
[00:32:58] Speaker C: Well, we kind of found something we can almost.
[00:33:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
I'll just be a fan. I can be a fan of everybody.
I love to go to baseball games and really any professional sports games I follow. No, no teams and I just root for them all. I just I like or I pick one and I just randomly. So we're just root for the hope.
[00:33:19] Speaker C: I've seen a shirt that says I.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: Hope they both win, win, win. We want to win, win always.
Thank you so much for being here today. I loved our conversation. I really appreciate your time.
[00:33:30] Speaker C: Well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for what you do for our industry through work, but even more so through opportunities like this podcast to be able to to get to know others. And so I hope that it's been good and I'm looking forward to hearing other episodes so that I can get to know more people across the industry and get some interesting tidbits out of them. So thank you, Ann, for and all the team for what you'll do for us.
[00:33:59] Speaker B: Thank you so much.
[00:34:10] Speaker A: I'm sure you could tell I just love talking to Andrew. I think he's a great example of someone who is always working to be the best version of themselves and that's how you become a great human being.
Make sure you're subscribed, and as always, if you have feedback or guest ideas, we'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on on the Fringe.
