- PNC is proud to support "Business Forward," where community leaders discuss the issues confronting business in Central Illinois.

(sweeping upbeat music) - Welcome to "Business Forward."

I'm your host, Matt George.

Joining me tonight, Kyle Hamilton.

Kyle is the director of sales at Lincoln Office, and Carissa Sanders, she's the business development manager at Lincoln Office.

Welcome, Kyle.

Welcome, Carissa.

- Thank you.

- Hey, thank you.

- Well, let's get right down to it.

I was doing a little homework, and I found out that you both graduated from Pekin High School.

Is that correct?

- [Carissa] That is correct.

- Okay, so then you left the area for college or jobs or whatever it may be, and then you both came back.

What brought you back, Kyle?

- Yeah, so it's funny, too, because I had run into Carissa at the high school reunion, I believe it was, so- - Yeah.

- I had made a kind of off-the-cuff comment, like, "Hey, Lincoln Office is hiring."

And then I think you called me like a couple months later saying you were moving back from St. Louis at the time.

So that's how we kind of reconnected, but I, from Pekin, I moved to Chicago to do some work, play hockey, go to college.

And then I had just moved back.

All my family's from Pekin.

- Okay.

- All friends live in Pekin.

We wanted to start a family, so- - All right.

- Pekin's home.

- That's good.

How about you, Carissa?

- Our stories are so parallel.

Yeah, I went to Mizzou for school, and I stayed in the area with my husband.

And once I had my first kid, I really missed my family too, so I moved back here to be near family again.

- It's great because we talk a lot about people on this show.

They actually leave, or they come back, and then a lot of people are moving into the, in Central Illinois, and it's great to see that.

So- - Yeah.

- Glad you guys are back.

Carissa, let's start with business development.

Tell us about your role and the difference between sales and development.

- So business development is the bridge between sales and the rest of our team for the customer.

So my job really is to just keep in contact with a lot of our customers, especially architecture and design, those kind of customers, and keep them abreast of what we have going on, new products, things like that.

- So, stewardship in a way?

- Yeah, absolutely.

- You sit there and just hold their hand and take them through the journey while Kyle over here just goes for the cutthroat sales.

- I was gonna say I think Carissa does all the work, and I don't know what I quite do, but she's great.

She does, she manages.

We have so many partners in the community, whether they're general contractors, A&D architectural firms, design firms.

And so Carissa kind of bridges that gap.

And then, yeah, I'm just a overarching umbrella to kind of help our team in sales design and all things for their projects.

- One of the things that I love about small business is the history of it.

And so Lincoln Office started in 1935 as an office supply store.

And when you look at like, one of the largest now stores around, that's pretty impressive stuff.

- Yeah, I think we've, I forgot when our 80 year was.

It was fairly recently, but we've been through so much, like you said, from just general office supplies through multiple ownerships.

And we really have just transformed over the years.

And I think we're really at something we're super proud of today and to share more today about our services.

And we don't sell supplies anymore, but I think what we do for offices has been something great.

- So what do you do for offices?

- So we help really look at the way that people work in their office, and we help them work in the best way that they possibly can.

So a lot of times when we go into a project, the first thing that we do is listen to the way that their teams work, and we help make that happen in the best way possible through furniture.

- Through furniture.

But it's really more than that, too.

It's culture.

- Uh-huh.

- And it's layout, and it's flow.

- [Carissa] Absolutely.

- It's everything, and that's why we'll get to the design piece.

But so you're at Keller Station.

Is that, - That's right, we just moved there recently.

- [Matt] Okay, and you moved there from?

- From, we were in Washington.

- [Matt] Okay.

- What was our address?

- We were over at 205 Eastgate, which is right near, It was right near ICC.

- Well, that's what I thought, and that building is huge.

- It was very big.

It was very big, and we had a warehouse.

So we made a few business decisions that kind of brought us closer to the heart of Peoria.

Keller Station's a beautiful building.

We had known Katie and Charles Kim at The Kim Group before.

We really saw that as an opportunity to grow our business, grow our brand, be back sort of on Knoxville.

Years ago, you talk about the history, we actually used to be on Knoxville.

So it's kind of like returning home for lack of better words.

And it's really a unique space that showcases so much more, even in our older building that was so much bigger.

This space allows us to show many more concepts, ideas, and products, so.

- And you have locations in Iowa, too.

Is that right, and is that true?

- Yes, so we have, We're here in Peoria, Illinois.

We are in Moline, the Quad Cities.

- Okay.

- Right on the river.

And then we also have an office in Indiana in Crown Point.

- [Matt] Okay, nice.

- Yep.

- So do you have to go as being the positions that you're in, do you have to go to all the different locations, or you're just mainly here?

- Yeah, I'm looking forward to visiting some of the A&D firms and other people that we've strategically partnered with and visiting them soon.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, so I like the tagline here.

So whether you're a corporation, small business, school, healthcare facility, government agency, let Lincoln Office put its 80-plus years of experience to work for you.

- That's good.

Who wrote that?

- I think we wrote that, didn't we?

Yeah, okay, no.

So what's awesome about that too is I've had so many people, we do have such a long history that it almost gets confusing.

Like, what does Lincoln office do?

Are you the supplies people?

Do you sell copiers?

Are you the cubicle people?

Like, what are you?

And I think that's why really it's important right now and this move to Keller Station, but we do so much more than just workstations.

- Yeah.

- Commercial spaces.

We do a ton of healthcare projects, education, whether it's K through 12 or higher ed.

People don't even realize we do restaurants, hospitality, outdoor spaces.

We do so much more than I think people realize.

And so we're just, we're here to talk about it.

- You know, what's interesting is when you look at a business that's 80 years old, and as I was doing my homework on it, I never really thought of it originally starting in Lincoln, Illinois.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, mm-hm.

- And obviously that's the name of the business, but I didn't know that.

But in 1990, the business moves over.

And now one of the things that I like about Bob Domnick, your CEO, is that he cares about the community.

- [Carissa] Yeah, he's amazing.

- And he cares about a lot of things, obviously, but in turn, that is pushed down throughout your team, right?

- Mm-hm.

- [Matt] So how many people do you have on your team?

- So I think locally here in Peoria, we're running about 18 to 20.

And then I think we have a few remote in Bloomington and the Moline, and then I think we have five or six in Indiana.

So close to 30, probably, I would say.

- Yeah, I mean, that's a pretty strong team.

So we're gonna get to some of the things that are happening in the office here in a second, but your leadership over the past quarter century, we were talking before the show, Tom Spurgeon.

- Yep.

- Bill Pape.

- Yep.

- Bob Domnick.

And if you think about all of them, they were all on boards.

They were all ingrained in the community, and all around great guys.

And so that really sets the tone for the culture, doesn't it?

- Yeah.

And I've been on since Bob.

I think Bob and I started very similar times, maybe about six years ago.

360 Holdings out of Morton, Illinois acquired Lincoln Office.

So we're owned by 360 Holdings.

So that's your 360 Yield, 360 Electric.

That same group of companies is all owned through, with Bob Domnick and that group of investors.

But yeah, that is one of the key things when I first met Bob, was the importance of culture.

And it's so great to see that he has that, and then he stepped into a business that that's also equally as important.

You could have a CEO that steps in and is more focused on other things, but culture's where we started at Lincoln Office.

We'll talk probably later about the new Lincoln Office and the changes we've made, but that, I think, trickles down through our design process.

You see some of that in our customers as well.

So it's just a really great attitude and mentality to have.

- I'm really sick of talking about COVID, but in your business, (Carissa and Kyle laugh) I'll be honest with you, I dissect so many businesses in what I do.

And when you start thinking about businesses that were impacted the heaviest, it'd be offices because there was nobody going into work.

- [Carissa and Matt] Yeah.

- It was such a weird ebb and flow, right?

Like it would be scary one day, and they're like, "Oh, we're gonna be great."

And then it would go back and forth.

And when I say that, it's because there were so many, you know how the protocols were changing.

Knowledge about COVID was changing.

You can go back in 10 days.

You can go back and, And so there was just all this information out there that made offices just this huge question mark.

And so we did flourish in some areas like healthcare.

Healthcare was exploding.

And so, probably for the wrong reason, it was exploding through COVID, but we were able to provide safe spaces, cleanable spaces, disinfecting products, and glass dividers.

Things like that were all in our arsenal to where we could help hospitals as well.

- Yeah.

- I wasn't even thinking that.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, that's interesting.

So let's go back to your job and your role.

The stewardship piece becomes 10 times more important during this time.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- Contacting all of your current clients, but then, so give me an example of your role during this time.

- So there was a lot of handholding and letting people know about products that might be useful to them.

Division, space division, was a huge thing.

It was so funny because for such a long time, we had pushed open-concept working and getting rid of the cubicle.

And then all of a sudden, people needed that division again.

So it was just about letting people know products that were on the market that could help them have employees in there working safely again.

- I was just talking to somebody and their whole office, and they love it.

They love that open concept, basically meaning there's cubicles, but the walls are so high.

- Yeah.

- But you can see each other and kind of have that tight-knit culture.

- [Carissa] That's how we like to work.

- Right.

- Yeah.

- But then COVID hits, and you start worrying about what that means.

And as a business owner, you're sitting there going, "Oh my goodness, I just invested X amount of dollars into all this new furniture.

And now they're telling me we've gotta put everybody in different silos now."

I mean, was that an issue?

- Yeah, absolutely, because we kind of had to look at the way that we had been selling things for such a long time.

And I really like to say that at Lincoln Office, what set sets us apart is that we sell solutions and not products.

So we had to sell a new solution.

We had to tell people that it was okay to have people working apart again, or part of it was doing space planning maybe, too, and taking the way that their team currently was and just spreading them out a little bit with the existing furniture.

- Yep.

- Like that.

- I guess even with some of the businesses that I know, they had this group come in a week.

They stay home.

Next group comes in a week and so on and so.

But it was slow.

I mean, wasn't it?

- Yeah.

- You had to be going nuts.

You're thinking, well, this is only gonna last three months, six months.

- Yep.

- Next thing you know, a year and a half goes by.

- I know, like I said, there was just such a chaotic ebb and flow for six, even eight months of just uncertainty.

We didn't know what furniture, You said it earlier, people are trying to leave the office.

Well, that's not good for people that design offices.

And so we really buckled down, doubled down on kind of our brand and then offering a different, We've adjusted.

I think we've adjusted not just the cubicles or not just the workstations.

We've partnered with key vendors that offer some solutions that I don't think people have ever heard of.

And then we started looking at what was booming.

Like outdoor dining was booming 'cause we couldn't sit inside.

So, hey- - That's a good example.

- Let's design some outdoor dining, and so, provide some furniture there.

And so just trying to be creative with things like that.

- The slow return to work and then now this hybrid model.

- Yep.

- Because the hybrid model has gotta scare you because you're sitting here, and I know there's places, I'm just gonna use Chicago as an example because I know at the Willis Tower and a few of the big buildings there, there were big companies saying, "Well, we have this whole floor.

We're not going to have this space anymore.

My team's gonna work from home."

That affects your business.

- Yeah, definitely.

So even some of our larger customers, they were only allowing, or they were allowing their employees one day a month or something like that.

That was their hybrid, and that is scary.

- Crazy.

- And so how do we as Lincoln Office really look at that and try to still be a business that's relevant, but then try to provide a solution that can be helpful?

And so hybrid is such a split thing right now.

You have different generations.

You have different businesses.

Obviously it'll work for some.

It'll work for other, It won't work for others.

So I don't know, you'll say it's scary.

I kind of like the hybrid.

So I think that it's coming around, and I think that truly is where we're heading just because there's so much digital work.

People were realizing they could be efficient or more efficient at home.

But you still need those key elements, those collaboration, those touchdown spaces.

I think you're always gonna have an office.

It just is gonna look different.

- And Carissa, when you're looking at that hybrid office, you're also looking, you've got other issues.

You've got issues of people are ticked off that my refrigerator takes six months to get now instead of two months or whatever.

I'm making assumptions, but all these businesses have been disrupted.

So I know local businesses like furniture stores, Sherman's as an example, home stores, I can't get this oven in for six months or eight months.

And then all these costs start going up.

Are you seeing an increase in costs?

- We certainly have just like every other industry noticed that our costs have increased.

We've had price increases a couple of times since the beginning of COVID, I'd say.

- I'll say what's a good thing is we have a partner in our main vendor that we supply, Steelcase.

And a lot of that, they have manufacturing all over the globe, but one of their main is in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

- Oh, nice.

- So when they were able to, yes, COVID threw a wrench in everything and caused delays, and even they were having trouble.

Like foam was impossible to get.

So anything soft seating, nobody could get.

But they retooled, and now lead times are starting to come down.

So prices are- - They're so much better now.

- I think, just fluctuating by material across the globe.

But I think lead times are really starting to get better.

I would assume by the end of the year or the beginning of next year, we'll be back to normal.

- I was talking to John Bierce, and he's the car guru, and he's talking about the disruption in the automobile business.

And if you go around and drive around to any one of the places around middle Illinois, there's just no inventory.

And I think that's the piece that's frustrating for people.

I think people are willing to pay a touch more.

- Yep.

- They understand that's whether you're getting a hamburger or whether you're getting a car or office furniture.

But just that lag time and waiting for things.

I mean, my wife and I are redoing our house right now, and we had stuff back from November and still waiting for it.

- November of last year.

- Yeah.

- And so I think that there's the labor.

There's the trucking industry, the overseas pieces, all of those different things.

And now that inflation piece is thrown in there.

- It's nice and easy.

- It's nice and easy?

Well, it's good that your business is you're able to help people, number one, but at the same time, be able to evolve.

I mean, you had no choice but to evolve.

- Correct, yep.

- Yeah.

- That's good.

So, let's talk about the new Lincoln Office.

You had brought that up.

And what does that mean?

- Yeah, and I think in the terms of not like the old Lincoln Office was bad or anything.

I loved how we've gone.

But like you said, you said it perfect, we had no choice but to evolve.

So when you talk about hybrid being a big part, or what does a new office look like, when we wanted to get that word out, what better way to get the word out than live it ourselves?

So when we move to Keller Station, and we invite anybody to come see us, but we are living and walking the talk.

And we have shown concepts that you would really never see, I don't even think, in Central Illinois, just because we're trying to show people and educate people what else is out there.

A lot of businesses, frankly, are scratching their heads.

They're like, "I've got these employees wanting this, this generation wanting this."

They're having trouble attracting or retaining talent.

And so how do you get people to come work for you right now?

A lot of kids, even millennials my age, are job-hopping.

So it's like, how do you keep or design an office that attracts people and gets 'em to stay?

And so I think the new Lincoln Office is all about that message.

So we have the new office at Keller Station.

We've updated our design process, our project management.

So when you talk about you and your wife struggling through all the lead time delays, I think Lincoln Office is, I would put 'em against anybody out there as far as project management to make it to where you have zero worries.

And we manage from start to finish.

We do everything.

We can do anything from the finishes like paint, tile, carpet, flooring, cabinets.

We can do the whole thing.

Just let us know what you want, and we'll do it.

- Well, you're talking about in your position customer focus, right?

- Mm-hm, yes.

- So that's part of this new Lincoln Office?

- [Carissa] Yeah, absolutely.

- [Kyle] Yep.

- When you're talking about trying to attract new employees, that's hard no matter what it.

- Yes, it is very hard.

- So, you know, you have to be trendy, I guess, in your business.

Is that a good way of putting it?

Or staying above, staying ahead of the game?

How do you learn what's hot and what's not in the business?

Just by the customers?

- Well, I think that always watching the trends and seeing what the new products are coming out.

And I hesitate to say trendy 'cause I think that might scare some people away to say, "Oh, you have to be super, super modern."

You don't necessarily have to be super modern.

You have to be functional.

But then I think you always have to have a little bit of an eye on beauty.

Is that fair to say?

- Yeah.

- That you want the space to look nice- - Yeah.

- On top of being functional.

- Yeah, I think, but let's go back and take a step back and talk about attracting new employees.

I mean, you have to look like a cool business.

- Yeah, yeah, I think that we love the way that we look, and I think that the way that we look is cool.

- I use my kids, I have four daughters and a son.

I use my kids almost as an example in every show.

And if I take my two oldest, 28, 26, both daughters, if you take those young ladies, and how would you attract, like what would you have to do to kind of blow them away to work for Lincoln Office?

And it's this new building.

- Yeah.

- It's training.

- [Carissa] Yeah.

- It's leadership.

It is that community piece, Kyle.

I guess I go back to the CEOs.

- Absolutely.

I think it really circles back to that and being a place where the team works well together.

Before we had been really siloed in the way that we work, and then coming in, Bob coming in, and changing things up a little bit, we're so much less siloed now and so much more together as an entire company.

And I think that that's really attractive to people.

- And we joke about it all the time 'cause we just moved to Keller for The Noshery and the food and all the great stuff.

But that's part of it, right?

- I love The Noshery.

- Yeah, exactly.

And Junction City's so close.

We have Cyd's, the park.

And so it's like, when you're thinking about a business, I'm not saying you need to build all those, or you need to be that, but it's things like that that go so hand in hand with what we're doing.

Not only do we design amazing spaces that are cool, but it starts from the top down.

- And close to all the healthcare facilities.

- Yeah, exactly.

- So let's talk about the technology piece here because this is pretty important in your business now.

10, 15 years ago, I remember when I was talking to you guys, you'd come in.

You'd show us pictures in a book and all this, but it's different now with computers, right?

- I mean, it wasn't, I mean, it's getting longer now, but when I was in college, we still did hand drafting classes, so- - Yeah.

- That's kind of no more, like you said.

- I kind of like that.

- I love it, which is kind of sad.

I know, I did.

That was like one of my favorite classes, but- - I kind of like that.

- We do.

I think they'll be up in our showroom.

Some of our old employees did some original hand drafts, and I think we're gonna frame 'em, but.

- So, Carissa, I'm coming in.

I'm saying I have a vision for this board room.

I have a big board room.

And what would you do to make this look good?

You can actually put it to scale and kind of put the, like those TV shows that- - Yeah, absolutely.

We do what we call live design.

- Live design?

- Yeah, so we'll have, we'll come up with an initial design, and then we'll bring the client into our office usually and sit down with them.

And they can make changes to finishes, layout.

They can add pieces right there in front of them.

- And we've kind of found with design and projects, nobody wants a thousand emails back and forth, like, how's this?

How do you like this in red?

How about blue?

How about yellow?

- Right, right, right.

- So it just gets so repetitive.

So we've really created this new experience where it's more fun, like the TV shows.

So you come in.

It's a 3D experience.

We make a day of it.

We order lunch, and you get more accomplished.

We have that welcoming environment, and we just walk through the project.

So we walk through every phase, but then you get the 3D renderings.

We even have VR, virtual reality.

You could step into the space if you wanted.

- [Matt] Oh!

- It's pretty exciting thing.

- That's crazy.

- I think some of the things we do not a lot of others are doing.

And I think we're being on the, Even the software we use, we're one of the first to use it.

It's a smart software.

It's a mix of AutoCAD, but it's like a furniture-happy AutoCAD.

And it cuts down on errors, but it's also beautiful.

It does live renderings.

So you really can do those 3D beautiful images like in person instead.

- And Carissa, think about this.

This has to cut down on your sales team side of just time.

- Yeah.

- Because if like, as CEO, you coming to me, and you say, "I hire you," and I say, "Hey, bring in X," and you are looking at this boardroom as an example, I can actually visualize it and understand that in two minutes instead of you trying to sell me for 30.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- So to speak.

- Yeah, you can get it done in a day, making a day of it, as opposed to four weeks of back and forth over email.

- And I think that efficiency is key.

I think that kind of, I wasn't even thinking about this with this show, but I think that's a very big piece here because in my business, I used to be so busy.

I used to run children's home, and you did something there.

And you'd go back and forth and go back and forth.

I was like, "Man, I don't have time to, We've got a crisis over here.

I don't have time for Lincoln Office today."

And it's no offense.

It's just our business is busy.

- Absolutely.

- But when you started bringing in all of this new technology, it's a game-changer.

There's a cost to it, though, but there's a game-changer.

It's a game-changer, so, pretty cool.

I wanna touch on one thing, Kyle, and we're almost done here, but workplace wellness.

That has to play into the mindset of what you do.

But also you've gotta put yourself in whoever you're selling.

- Yep.

- [Matt] So if I'm the CEO, you've gotta get into my mind.

of what I'm worried about.

- That might be a little scary getting into your mind, I'm a bad example.

You don't wanna get in my mind.

- Yeah.

No, so that ties into even what we talked about with the attracting talent because not only do you wanna attract talent, but you have employees that you need to take care of that have been there for five, 10, 20, I mean, we have some people at Lincoln Office that have been there 20-plus years.

So when you talk about wellness, what does wellness mean for this person, and that's an impossible task.

You could have 500 employees, and it's hard to be like, what's wellness for you and you and you?

- It's very hard.

- But it's a tough, It's a tall order.

But there are some trends, and there are some statistics that we try to follow that we walk through with leadership or management.

And we're like, "Hey, these, we feel, will do a general wellness overview for your facility."

- [Matt] I love that.

- And we talk through like these kinds of spaces, have you thought of, We're not telling you how to run your business.

That's your job.

You know it better than us.

- But I think that's something that gets lost, and so I appreciate it.

I appreciate both of you coming on.

Lincoln Office, a great place.

Thank you, Carissa.

Thank you, Kyle.

- Yeah.

- This wraps another show.

I'm Matt George, and this is "Business Forward."

(sweeping upbeat music)