Episode Details

Connect with Steve Burke:

Website: https://www.hitech-industrial.com/

Phone: 219-707-5956.

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan, and welcome to the Manufacturer's Network Podcast. Our guest today is Steve Burke. Steve is President of HiTech Industrial, a multiline distributorship representing over 30 manufacturers. They support many sectors from steel, chemical, healthcare, transportation, automotive, and manufacturing. And after being in business for just over two years because of their focus on customer service, they have both made a profit and exceeded their goal. So, Steve, welcome to the show.

Steve Burke: Good morning, Lisa. Thank you for having me.

Lisa Ryan: Absolutely. So, Steve, share a bit of your journey and what led you to found HiTech Industrial.

Steve Burke: My background is as a pipe fitter. For about 23years, I had the privilege of working in many different industries. I then moved into a service technician, multi-state, working in all the industries we

usually cover: steel, chemical, heavy manufacturing, automotive, and more. And this allowed me to see exactly what's going on in their maintenance teams and some of the issues they're having.

Lisa Ryan: Okay, so share a bit of that background, like where you were and then why you decided to start, what were you looking to create that was different from what you are seeing out there.

Steve Burke: As a hands-on technician, I saw a distinct repetition of maintenance issues lubrication, hydraulics piping things that were not being done in their optimum way. Frequently, I would make suggestions, which would positively influence the customers' maintenance. So they would ask me to do other things like, Can you show some of my guys this? Could you work with me on that? What's this stuff about a Lubrication audit. So I broadened the spectrum of just being a parts replacer or providing a part to someone who provided a consultant service to increase reliability and help their maintenance teams.

Lisa Ryan: And so then, how have you translated that into what you're doing with HiTech? Because, again, starting a business and meeting goals and making a profit right off the bat, you have to be doing something right. What do you attribute that to?

Steve Burke: Well, I worked as a distributor for a pipe fitting for about ten years. So again, this took me deep into the engineering and the maintenance teams, working with them on significant problems that they were having and finding out other issues in hydraulics and lubrication things of this nature. Once I saw that I started asking questions and saying, Well, is this the first time this has happened? And often I heard, no, this happens all the time. I've got to make this repair. I've got to do this process over and over again.

And when you started to ask why the answer was Gee, I don't know. It's the way we always did it. Henry Ford had a saying where he said, if you've always done what you always do, you always get what you always got. And I think that's true. And HiTech industrial is trying to bridge that gap and help them move into an area where they can find solutions to reliability and their maintenance problems.

Lisa Ryan: So when some of the things that we talked about, some of the things that you focus on, things like being transparent, taking a sincere interest and actively listening to your customers and doing service, that goes one step beyond what are some of the philosophies that led you to do that, like transparency. I'm sure that you sometimes have to tell your customers things that they don't necessarily want to hear, but that transparency also does well for you. So talk a bit of that. We'll start with transparency.

Steve Burke: Sure, it's been a key for us to work personally with our customers, whether it be a maintenance manager, whether it be the President of a manufacturing company, or whether it just be a technician. And we h