In this episode, join host Carrie Charles as she explores the essential elements of workforce enhancement for sustainable business growth and prosperity. Carrie sits down with Kelly Lazuka, the CEO of Fullerton, for an insightful discussion on building high-performing teams.
Discover how Fullerton, a tier one provider, has harnessed the power of mentorship programs, leadership training, and skill development workshops to create an exceptional team that propels business growth. Additionally, gain valuable insights into Fullerton’s recent rebranding journey, aligning their vision with their evolution into a premier tier one provider.
Tune in to gain valuable perspectives on optimizing your workforce, fostering inclusiveness, and driving business growth through continuous learning and progressive leadership strategies.
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Redefining Success Through Customers and Culture with Kelly Lazuka of Fullerton
We have with us the Chief Executive Officer of Fullerton, Kelly Lazuka. Kelly, thanks much for joining me. I’m excited about this conversation.
Thank you for having me, Carrie. I am too.
Kelly, I love your story. Your journey and how you got to where you are, please, can you tell us?
I started in the industry in ‘99. I started with SAC. It was a very small company at that time. I might have been the 22nd employee, if I remember right. Over the years, they grew into this enormous, turnkey service offerings company. It was a great journey there. I had a lot of good experiences. I was able to move from a site acquisition specialist. I remember my first assignment was out trying to get farmers to sign leases for AT&T for a big piece of their land. They would invite us in for dinner. They felt sorry for us kids, on the road, eating fast food all the time.
I had the best experience doing that. We met some nice, wonderful people. Over the years, I followed the leadership tracks there. I went from a project manager to a program manager, to a troubleshooter. I had these various titles. In 2011, my boss came to me and said, “I have this great idea, and here’s what it is. Now, go figure out how to architect it.” It was a trademarked idea from SAC called the Engine Room. It was a centralized concept of performing front-end services, almost a factory. We opened the doors to that concept in April of 2012.
From there, it took off. It was a panic for me. I had to hire all these people. We had to hire and start off with 110 people. There weren’t 110 people sitting at home waiting for my phone call, that’s for sure at that time. We had to get a little creative. We partnered with our staffing companies and got people who had relevant and transferable skills. I used to joke when I said I had everything from hairdressers to MBA there. I called a lot of my family members to get them in. When I look back at that, it was crazy.
I look at where all of these young people ended up now, and a lot of them are in positions where they are customers of mine, and in positions to give out work, manage vendors, and manage teams. That is rewarding for me to be able to see that. It was time for me to leave as Nokia purchased SAC. Honestly, in 2021, I thought about opening my own thing, and I’m glad I didn’t, given the industry as it is. I was approached by Fullerton. They said they needed somebody to run their wireless division, which included their site acquisition, engineering, and utility coordination. I came into Fullerton as President of that division, and a year later, they named me CEO.
It sounds like in your career, you said yes over and over again. You were always hungry for growth.
That’s the message. Don’t be afraid to learn something new. What do they say about being uncomfortable? That’s how you grow. I was fortunate enough to have great people behind me, teaching me as I went. I was very lucky.
Don’t be afraid to learn something new even if you are uncomfortable. That is how you grow.
Who is Fullerton now? I know that there’s been a few changes.
They started out as strictly an engineering and design firm in ‘98. They did that for a long time, and they were very successful at it. In about 2012 to 2015, they started adding all these other services, fiber, design, DAS design, DAS installation, and site acquisition. They started adding all of these new services and started to grow. In 2019, they added in-house and some construction services. Now they went from this boutique A&E firm to this full turnkey services provider. That’s exciting and scary, that growth that quickly. It’s exciting because it makes Fullerton way more relevant now in what’s happening. Customers want to give out work where they can have a vendor do more than one service line.
That’s where we’re at now. Along that journey, Fullerton became not just a tier 2 or tier 3 vendor to the big dogs that were providing services directly for the carriers and tower companies. We’ve now become a tier-one provider. We do work directly for carriers and tower companies. We still provide tier two services, for the other companies that we have in the past. We were a nice mix now, a nice combination of both.
You underwent a major rebrand. Tell me the why behind it. I love your new website. We’ll talk about that.
Thank you. We did. We went through a rebrand. It became very clear to me that our website and our logo still screamed, “Engineering only.” I have people that would say, “I didn’t know you guys did construction.” My customers say, “You guys do utility coordination. I didn’t know that.” It became very clear that we had to get a better message out to the industry and our customers that we are now a larger player. We always did engineering very well. We still do it very well.
It is our core competency, but we also do a lot of other things very well. That was the crux behind the rebrand. We are still Fullerton Engineering, LLC. That is our legal entity name. We dropped that moniker. We design, develop, and construct. That sums up the service offerings regardless of the division like DAS, fiber, and site acquisition. It sums up everything that we do as an organization.
Kelly, one thing I know about you, and also that people have told me, is that you are masterful at building a powerhouse team. When we talked earlier, you said that you changed a little bit the way that you attract and develop talent. What would you say is different now?
Our industry is not that large. It may seem big, but it’s not that big. There is not this pool of talented leaders sitting out there constantly looking for jobs. I do have a powerhouse team, and credit to them because they’re amazing. A lot of that team was built from within, whether at my previous organization or here. We have a commitment to building a leadership pipeline from within the organization because, to me, I always thought that was super strategic and forward-thinking when it came to talent development. Recognizing that potential and value of those existing employees adds to our culture of growth and opportunity, which is what we’re trying to do here. We achieve that by creating these leaders in various ways.
Mentorship programs are one, and Fullerton’s getting ready to roll up our Pathway to Leadership Program, which we’re excited about that. Leadership training is something everybody talks about, but how do you bring someone in? What training do you do? It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Your benefits provider, your payroll company, if you’re outsourcing HR, these companies sometimes have those leadership training built in. You just have to tap into them.
We’re making those available to our future leaders. Skill development workshops are something that I believe in. We just don’t do it. We are going to start on a regular basis throughout the years, bringing in, hosting different workshops and bringing in speakers to talk about things like being a better negotiator and better time management, the topics that are tailored to nurture and cultivate these emerging leaders.
Employees are encouraged to take on new challenges and responsibilities. I had a young woman come to me and say, “I’m a PM for site acquisition, but I want to learn construction.” That warmed my heart. We found a way for her to start learning that. She became a PM on the construction side. We named her the director of our construction services. We encourage people to learn. Like you said earlier, you don’t say no. You let them try new things. You’re investing in the employee’s professional growth.
Business leaders must encourage their employees to learn and try new things since they are investing in their professional growth.
It not only gives you this great pool of leaders, but it creates a sense of loyalty and commitment from your employees. They don’t leave then. That’s great because now you’re providing stability within your organization and for your customers. There’s no disruption with turnover. That’s what we’re doing here because the leadership piece, whether you’re a man or a woman, I don’t care. If you’re interested in it, we’re going to give that to you here at Fullerton.
We can learn from that for sure. Can you go a little deeper into the Fullerton culture? What is it to work at Fullerton?
I like to think it’s okay, but you’d have to talk to my employees, I suppose. It’s gone through a change. There’s no doubt about it. Since I’ve been here, I’ve even noticed a change. It used to be that each division was every division for itself, every man and woman for itself. That doesn’t work when you have customers who are asking for multiple service lines for either the same program or multiple programs but the same customer. Our culture is we’ve shifted to a more collaborative culture. We have all of these skilled people, engineers, project managers, and designers. It was vital that they come together to be able to develop these creative solutions for our customers. When customers require more than one of our service lines, internal communication and collaboration have to be tight.
Otherwise, we’re not doing what we’re saying we’re going to do for them, which is to reduce their PM burden. Collaboration is big here in the culture now. It didn’t use to be. The pace of change in our industry is fast. It’s rapid that we do put that emphasis on continuous learning, but we also put it on adaptability. The culture here is one of very malleable in that we structure our organization and our delivery to that of our customers to make it easier for them. I mentioned that we empower our leaders here. That’s another piece of our culture that is important. Trusting people to move quickly and make the right decisions is very hard for all of us. What I stress here is that if you are hiring these people, you need to hire people that you trust.
They’re going to make mistakes. That’s okay. First and foremost, that’s a learning experience. Secondly, we’re not doing brain surgery here. If they make a mistake, it will be very rare that you can’t help walk it back. It is a learning experience. Giving people the right authority can be hard, but it comes with unique ideas and solutions to problems that we may not have otherwise thought of. Lastly, the culture here is one of high ethical considerations. Transparency and honesty, whether it’s internally or with our customers, it’s practiced daily here.
Being a woman in telecom, I know that we’ve gotten better with diversity in our industry since I’ve been in the industry, but we still have challenges here. What is your strategy to attract, retain, and even promote women to leadership roles?
We talk about this a lot. Carrie, you’ve spoken on this topic in depth. I’ve spoken on this topic a couple of times. The first thing that needs to happen is the company has to buy into it. If we can talk about wanting to be more diverse, we can talk about wanting to promote women into positions of authority and leadership. If the company doesn’t make the commitment, it’s just words. For Fullerton, we have a board that is committed to doing that. The first step is to get a buy-in. Then the next step for me is we change how we recruit. We reworked our job descriptions. We looked at what we want and what is necessary in a candidate versus what we’d like to have.
We could also teach because statistics show that if women don’t have almost 100% of the qualifications listed in that job description, they will not even apply. Whereas men feel that if they have 60% of those qualifications, they do apply, and they should. It’s there’s that huge confidence gap there. How do we, as an organization, close that gap? For us, it’s making sure that we are attracting female candidates by understanding what it is that’s necessary versus what our wishlist is. What we’ve also started doing is not limiting ourselves to the resource pool that we think would be appropriate. We need to open up our minds. I’m going to give you an example.
Take a chance on moms. Moms take care of their business. They’re organized, they’re multitaskers, and they’re great in a crisis. We’re built for a crisis when we have kids. They care about their children, which means they will care about their employees. That empathy, you see it all over LinkedIn. You see it all over social media, empathy. Mothers have empathy, and they get things done. Maybe they’ve been out of the workforce a little bit, but we need to tailor our approach to make sure we’re not missing out on this untapped resource.
Lastly, what is important to attract and retain is we need to tailor our benefits. The benefits of some of these companies are outdated. We’re working on our benefits package as well now. Many women, married or single, if you’re working full-time and you’re raising a family, you’re taking care of a house, you’re doing laundry, you’re pegging lunches, you’re doing homework, all of these things are happening.
We need flexible hours. It’s important that we don’t measure. Companies have to take into account not measuring productivity by quantity of hours but rather by the quality of impact. Maternity leave access to additional training, a transparent view of salary bands, and career pathing on how to move from level to level, those types of things are important to women. They would be important to me if I was out there looking for a job now. That would be attractive to me even more than pay or title. You can build that once you get in there. You can show what you bring to the table and what’s in your wheelhouse once you get in there. If you have some flexibility to work with it initially, that is incredibly attractive.
Many women have had male mentors, and I know that I’ve had incredible men who have helped me in my career. How would you say what role can men play in supporting the career growth of women?
I’m like you, Carrie. I was fortunate to have a couple of men advocate for me as I grew up in this industry. There weren’t a lot of female role models many years ago in our industry, unfortunately. That has changed now, and I’m glad to see that. They recognize my value and what I bring to the table. I, like you, feel very lucky. Nowadays, men can play a crucial role by, first of all, actively participating and fostering an inclusive work environment and being allies and advocates. Men don’t realize that they can use their positions of influence to truly amplify the voices of their female colleagues and ensure that their contributions are recognized and valued.
Men don’t realize that they can use their positions of influence to amplify the voices of their female colleagues. They can ensure that women’s contributions are recognized and valued.
We have a lot more female mentors these days. Men can still actively mentor and sponsor women and provide guidance, advice, and opportunities for skill development and career advancement. By championing women’s achievements and potential, men can start to break down those gender stereotypes. They have more clout in that area than they realize. Most importantly, men can give credit where credit is due and deserved. I’ll leave it at that.
I love that answer. In the industry, especially in construction, companies find it very difficult to maintain diversity. When we’re talking about a diverse candidate pool or diverse teams, they find it very difficult. Especially in this environment, when it is even still in these economic times we’re in, it’s still difficult to find good people. What could we do better as an industry when it comes to diversity?
It starts with the individual organization. It goes from there. Diversity, not just gender, but diversity in general, is what you’re talking about, Carrie. It starts with diversity and inclusion training. The company needs to commit to providing that on a regular basis, basis. Here at Fullerton, we started our employee engagement committee, and it has five pillars. One of the pillars is diversity and inclusion. The very first thing on that agenda is diversity training for all of our employees. If people are trained properly, it does lead to advocating for equal opportunities and fair representation at all levels.
Maybe now for me, my leadership level is lacking in diversity. I’m focusing on how, whether that’s new hiring practices, targeting more diverse resource pools, or implementing ERGs, but I’m working now on how I can increase diversity, especially at that leadership level because that’s important. Leaders need to actively listen and engage in conversations with their people so that they understand the experiences that they’re having in the workplace and the path that they want to take. It fosters this deeper understanding of the challenges that the underrepresented groups may face, but it’s not just listening to them. It’s taking that feedback and making it actionable in ways that will create that more inclusive and diverse workforce that everybody wants to be a part of.
Let’s switch gears a bit. The economy, industry, and everything shifted. How are you adjusting to these new conditions? Are there any changes that you’ve made at Fullerton?
That’s a hard truth. It has slowed down on the macro side considerably. Fortunately, we’re still seeing the spending on the DAS and the fiber small cell program. That’s good for Fullerton because it does keep 2 of our 4 divisions busy. However, our wireless services and construction teams are being hit like many others in the industry. We had to pivot like a lot of companies, and you and I spoke about this in the past, Carrie, on how you expand your service offerings. We got a little creative. We focused on what additional needs we can fill for these customers in the meantime. Those are little things that are still very important to our customers, but things they might not get to when they’re super busy in the midst of huge deployments.
It is things like data integrity, audits, maintenance, mopping their bathroom floors, whatever we can position ourselves, even if they’re lower ticket items in the whole revenue game. If we keep ourselves in front of these customers doing the smaller things that are important, we can then position ourselves with those same clients when the floodgates open back up. For us, we looked at our two slower divisions and came up with a couple of different things that might keep us afloat now. It’s about listening to our customers along the way. We knew that there were some data integrity issues with some of our customers’ files because we heard them saying that, and we bank that. Now that they’ve slowed down, we figured out that need and figured out a solution to fill that need. That’s the best advice I can give, even if it’s not in your traditional scope.
There’s so much talk now about the funding, the $42 billion, the infrastructure money that’s going to be flooding the economy and the industry. How will Fullerton participate in bridging this digital divide?
That was a great announcement. Fullerton has done design work for many of the companies that will most likely participate in this program. We do have relationships built, which is good for us. We already do several large fiber-to-the-home programs on the design side. We do have a ton of experience in this area already. This is such an important initiative, one that was highlighted during COVID due to the lack of connectivity in many rural areas. We’re excited to be able to bring our knowledge and experience and participate in supporting these efforts for these underserved areas because it is critical as we bridge that digital divide. We’re excited about it. A hundred million plus per state is significant.
Yes, it is very exciting. Let’s look into the future. Give me a picture of Fullerton five years from now. What’s your vision?
I get this question a lot since I’ve taken this role. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine, especially during a downturn like this. You’re thinking about, “How am I going to keep things afloat?” It is important that we set those goals. We’re now focusing on our construction division, and the growth of that division will help us meet the revenue and profitability goals we’ve set for the next five years. In five years, my personal goal is to have Fullerton operating at three times the revenue it is now. More importantly, in the next five years, I’d like to say that Fullerton will be our industry’s first choice for turnkey providers. That’s my wish for Fullerton. That’s my goal.
Kelly, I have no doubt that you are going to achieve that and your incredible team because we know your team. We work with you. Everything you’ve said is spot on, and it is the way it is. You walk your talk and your team is amazing. Let’s hear about this new website. How can we find out more about Fullerton?
Yes, you can go to www.Fullerton-US.com. You can see our shiny new website. It looks amazing with our new logo and a full rundown of all of our services, along with example projects by each division so you can see where our specialties and our expertise lie.
Kelly, this has been fantastic. I always love talking to you and catching up with you. I leave our conversations feeling motivated and inspired. Thanks for coming on the show.
Thank you so much for having me. It was fun.
Take care.
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About Kelly Lazuka
Kelly Lazuka has been in the wireless industry for 23 years. Before joining Fullerton in 2021, she was with SAC Wireless, a Nokia company, for over 20 years serving in various operational and business development roles. Kelly found her niche as VP of Operations and the principal architect of SAC’s centralized concept for front end services. This new assembly line-like model brought site acquisition, A&E, scoping and close-outs under the same umbrella resulting in reduced cycle times for customers and reduced annual overhead.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!
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