Two St. Louis-area business leaders were recently named regional Entrepreneur of the Year winners by accounting giant EY.
KNOWiNK founder Scott Leiendecker and BMC Enterprises Inc. CEO Nathan McKean were winners of the EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year Heartland Award. EY’s Heartland Award spotlights entrepreneurs from Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.
Downtown West-based election technology firm KnowInk is producer of the Poll Pad, which allows election jurisdictions to replace the paper-based voter check-in and verification process with an electronic alternative. BMC Enterprises, based in Webster Groves, is a specialty concrete supplier.
Leinedecker and McKean were among 11 regional winners of the 2021 Heartland Award. Winners were judged on six criteria: entrepreneurial leadership; talent management; degree of difficulty; financial performance; societal impact and building a values-based company; and originality, innovation and future plans.
St. Louis Inno caught up with Leiendecker and McKean to discuss how they’ve navigated their companies through the pandemic and what’s ahead for each of their firms. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What accomplishments are you most proud of that you and your company achieved in the last year?
Leiendecker: 2020 presented extraordinary challenges for election managers navigating the pandemic. Our election support platforms and services adapted to facilitate an election that was ultimately deemed one the safest and most secure elections in U.S. history. I am extremely proud of how our team showed what we are made of by stepping up with solutions to support 900 election jurisdictions. We even managed to enroll 200 new clients right before a presidential election all while working remotely. As the year came to a close, we looked forward and acquired a voter registration company based in South Dakota. Despite all the challenges, we are expanding and adding new positions.
McKean: On a corporate level, having our organization in the financial position and the team in place to take advantage of every opportunity was a huge win for us. We did not let the coronavirus crisis slow us down. In the first 13 months of the pandemic, we closed five acquisitions in the construction material space. On a personal and professional level, being nominated to compete in Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year program was quite an honor in and of itself. To be named a finalist alongside some of the best and brightest entrepreneurial talent in this region and come out as one of the winners is pretty unbelievable.
What have you learned about yourself as a leader in the past year?
Leiendecker: Like others, I had to adjust from leading in person to leading virtually. To be honest, I've never been a huge fan of virtual calls. I'm a face-to-face kind of person. We have been successful because of personal engagement. So I needed to adapt and grow and even force myself to get on Zoom calls.
McKean: I’ve learned that I love to lead our organization, and within chaos lies opportunity. The Great Recession cut the construction materials industry in half, and that unprecedented economic event led to M&A opportunities that created unbelievable value for our firm. Having lived through that chaos before, the pandemic was no different. But this time, we set our own record of completing five acquisitions in 13 months with many more in the pipeline.
What are the next major milestones you have your company focused on?
Leiendecker: We are now in our 10th year of business at KNOWiNK and we are quickly approaching 100,000 Poll Pads sold. To accomplish this in such a short time speaks to the reliability of our products and services and the team we've assembled. My constant focus is on the business and what's next for KNOWiNK. The 2022 midterm elections are right around the corner. We are planning a large investment to advance our technology and are looking to acquire other businesses that complement our suite of products. I'm looking forward to the next 10 years.
McKean: The short answer is that we don’t have a destination. We’re headquartered in St. Louis, which has experienced negative growth in construction materials since the Great Recession, so we’ve known we need to continue to gain both product diversity and, more importantly, geographic diversity to find markets to help us sustain double digit compound annual growth rates. With a few tweaks along the way, we have been executing our sustainable growth through acquisition strategy for more than a decade. The strategy continues to work very well for BMC Enterprises, so we don’t plan on deviating from the plan anytime soon.
