Rising Through Resilience: Kyle Hough of Champion Painting Specialty Services Corp On The Five Things You Can Do To Become More Resilient
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
The first step that someone can take is to stop complaining. Complaining about your problems will not make them go away. Also, stop blaming people or situations for being the reason you did not achieve your goals — only you can stop yourself from achieving your goals. Understand that no one owes you anything. This is the main key to becoming resilient. When you allow yourself to feel that others owe you things, you allow yourself to be disappointed when they do not follow through. Life is hard and making the hard decisions is something that no one wants to do, but you must make hard choices head-on. Lastly, run to your fires, not away from them. The only way to put a fire out is to tend to it.
In this interview series, we are exploring the subject of resilience among successful business leaders. Resilience is one characteristic that many successful leaders share in common, and in many cases it is the most important trait necessary to survive and thrive in today’s complex market.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Kyle Hough.
Kyle Hough, executive vice president of Champion Painting Specialty Services Corp. “CPSSC” is a South Florida-based leader in heavy construction, specialty services, road and bridge, military, and industrial specialty services. Hough is a passionate industry leader with more than 20 years of experience in industrial coatings, which includes terminals, power, pharmaceutical, chemical/petrochemical, water and wastewater, food and beverage, theme parks, pulp and paper, commercial construction, road and bridge, cranes, cruise ships, universities, stadiums, military, and more.
Hough is a proven leader who excels in business and customer growth. He is a crucial member of the CPSSC senior executive leadership team. He strives to improve vice presidents and operations managers’ development and performance. Hough remains ahead of the industry trends and continues to push the boundaries and set standard expectations.
Hough completed his apprenticeship at a young age with the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades and has worked his way up through the industry’s ranks.
Hough is an SSPC-certified Level 3 Protective Coatings Inspector (PCI), a C 3 Supervisor/Competent Person, a Protective Coating Specialist (PCS), and a Master Coatings Inspector (MCI).
Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory?
I grew up in Pennsylvania and started my career in 1999. I started in the field working as a Union Steel Painter. This allowed me to better understand the operations from the ground up and experience first-hand what our people deal with day in and day out. With this knowledge, I developed a business plan to remove the field hurtles and built resilience into our company’s fiber. Once in the office, I had to learn an entirely new skill set and go through the process again in a very different setting. This offered a very different set of needs but again I attempted to understand how we can be better and build a system to achieve our goals yielding a consistent systems-based approach to the back of house.
Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
I don’t have one most interesting story or lesson but many boring stories that have built a strong lesson. Resilience as a leader can be summed up in a few words. Do what you said you were going to do, be humble enough to accept a better idea and master it and give people the authority and the tools to do their jobs and hold them accountable.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Our company is about surrounding ourselves with great people. The executive team and I have made it our mission to develop a workplace that allows growth to all employees. Our organization’s culture allows employees to enjoy coming to work each day. When you like what you do and where you do it the hard times are easier to get through. During COVID-19, CPSSC grew our revenue and had a record year. We also had a record year for employee bonus. Not one CPSSC employee missed an hour of pay. We supported our people, and they supported the company.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
My wife Tracey has been with me every step of the way, supporting our family as the business grew. When I was in the field working, our two sons were in grade school. Tracey would make lunch for all three of us. When I got to work and opened my lunch box, I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, juice box and some sesame street fruit smacks; you can imagine the fun the other guys on the crew had, but I never said anything because I was grateful for her thoughtfulness. As time went on and we began building up CPSSC, my wife would help day in and day out with the operations. I was glad to always have my biggest supporter by my side.
Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. We would like to explore and flesh out the trait of resilience. How would you define resilience? What do you believe are the characteristics or traits of resilient people?
Resilience and toughness go hand in hand, but many tough people are not resilient. You must be tough enough to take on anything that comes your way and flexible enough to pivot and find success regardless. You cannot accept failure as an option in your mind, and it cannot exist as a thought or possibility. A genuinely resilient person understands how to achieve their goal by looking at everything between them and that goal as an obstacle to overcome rather than a stopping point to cause failure. The systems, culture, and directives at CPSSC are built with this understanding in mind.
When you think of resilience, which person comes to mind? Can you explain why you chose that person?
I think of my late mother. She was one of the toughest and most resilient people I have ever known. When she put her mind to something, nothing could get in her way. She fought through the depths of poverty, and as a single mom, raised my brother and me while putting herself through college. She worked two jobs and went to school while dealing with two rambunctious sons. I often think of her when I make life decisions today.
Has there ever been a time that someone told you something was impossible, but you did it anyway? Can you share the story with us?
I have been told my entire life I could not do things. I do them anyway.
Did you have a time in your life where you had one of your greatest setbacks, but you bounced back from it stronger than ever? Can you share that story with us?
I do not believe in setbacks. I believe in doing what you set your mind to, and this takes work. A setback would mean you conceded to something other than meeting the goal.
Did you have any experiences growing up that have contributed to building your resiliency? Can you share a story?
My brother and I grew up very poor, and this has influenced our outlook on life. My brother Duane wrote about an instance in our life when we went to get food from a food pantry stating, “Mom said we were going to get food, so my brother and I were excited. She said the people at the site were going to help us, that we would have food and I was excited. When we got close, I saw all the people around the tables covered with boxes of food. They were all well dressed and smiling and joking with each other. I saw the family in front of us open the trunk of their car. The driver was an elderly woman in flats wearing a plaid dress that was clean and pressed but worn thin and the colors had faded. She was either a grandmother with her grandchildren, a toddler aged boy and girl, or a mother who had her children later in life. She kept her head down and the people loading her car did not acknowledge or speak to her, only smiled, and joked among themselves. They slammed her station wagon hatch and walked away. She briefly lifted her head and glared at their backs. One of the men holding a clipboard gestured impatiently for my mom to pull up. My Mom rolled down the window with the old crank handle that was missing the knob, which hurt the hand and made it slower to roll the window down. “Umm, hi, hello… we are here to get food.” She said in the false high pitch she used when she was nervous or uncomfortable. I recognize an echo of it in myself in situations where I feel that people are looking down at me or when I am uncomfortable in a group setting. “Driver’s license” Mom fumbles in her purse looking for it, the man leans closer trying to look down her shirt. My mother had us when she was young, and she was a young, beautiful woman. She found it and handed it over. “Debbie, this has a Hawley address, where is Hawley?” “We recently moved down here from the Poconos” “Do you have proof of residence?” “No, we are staying with friends while we find a rental” “This food is for the needy and poor of York County, we can’t have just anyone showing up and claiming free food” “Please, we need the food.” A woman walks up in high heels, tight jean skirt white blouse and an 80s style blond perm framing her face. “What’s the hold up?” “They don’t have proof of residence.” “Just get them loaded up and get the line moving.” As the woman turned and walked away my Mom called “Thank you!” She did not look back or respond but gave a short wave over her shoulder. Her hand next to her head the palm briefly moving side to side. The other volunteers who had been muttering to each other impatiently quickly loaded up the car, putting the boxes of food into the back seat.
As they were putting the seat back up and moving away from the car, they were shaking their heads and frowning at us. I saw the shame on my mother’s face, a deep red blush, and I suddenly understood the anger in the old woman’s eyes. We drove away from the community center and drove into rolling hills and green forests that dominated the countryside between rolling farms with fields of corn and electric fences with cows grazing off the land. We stopped at a remote section and turned off the two-lane road onto an overgrown stone road, more of a trail, and drove out of site over the hill. We pulled up to a ramshackle two-story farmhouse that had an old wooden outhouse and a moss-covered stone spring house with a stream trickling down the hill to meetup with the creek. Most of the windows on the ground floor had missing or broken panes, the old white paint had discolored and was worn away or peeled up and cracked, most of the floorboards were warped with time and from the harsh freeze thaw cycle of the seasons the structure had endured. We went into the house to examine our newfound bounty before the sun set. The box was full.
We had (1) box of powdered milk (1) block of government orange cheddar cheese (1) loaf of extremely stale white bread (8) assortment of odd, canned goods -baked beans, green beans, tomato soup, pumpkin puree, mostly out of date (1) box raison bran (4) boxes of spaghetti (2) cans of tomato puree That night we snuggled by the empty fireplace in our thread bare sleeping bags. In the morning we mixed the powdered milk with water from the spring and poured it on the cereal. I had eaten several bites before I noticed the black flecks floating in the milk. At first, I did not know what it was, so I scooped some up with my spoon and poured off the milk flavored water, and realized they were bugs. I have never had cereal again, to this day, without checking for bugs. The only good thing about powdered milk is that you can pretend its real milk and not nasty clumps of chalky powder staining the water white. The best part of the box was the government cheese that we sliced off in blocks and made into sandwiches with the stale bread. The next morning our Mom went to look for work and my brother and I played in the area around the house. We searched under rocks in the creek for salamanders, played outside sword fighting with sticks and searched through the abandoned house for treasures. Kyle was 6 and I was 9.” Our lives are filled with stories that resemble this one, and it influences a lot of our lives. We often talk about the lives our children have as these instances are something they could not even comprehend.
Resilience is like a muscle that can be strengthened. In your opinion, what are 5 steps that someone can take to become more resilient? Please share a story or an example for each.
The first step that someone can take is to stop complaining. Complaining about your problems will not make them go away. Also, stop blaming people or situations for being the reason you did not achieve your goals — only you can stop yourself from achieving your goals. Understand that no one owes you anything. This is the main key to becoming resilient. When you allow yourself to feel that others owe you things, you allow yourself to be disappointed when they do not follow through. Life is hard and making the hard decisions is something that no one wants to do, but you must make hard choices head-on. Lastly, run to your fires, not away from them. The only way to put a fire out is to tend to it.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I would promote a movement that encourages true critical thinking. Nowadays, media has seeped into everyday life from the minute young children are born and can push agendas based on what someone wants to see. Without critical thinking, it is easy to get caught up in what is right in front of you and allow that agenda to dictate our thoughts. As time goes on, I think people forget that someone’s life experience and upbringing mold their opinions as an adult. It is essential to understand and be cognizant of the different lenses’ individuals see things through. Overall, we should look out for one another and remember that we are all human.
We are blessed that some very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them.
Truthfully, I would pick someone in my family to have lunch with. Having quality one on one time with family is something that I value deeply.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
My main source of social media is LinkedIn which you can connect which you can connect with me at Kyle Hough | LinkedIn.
Thank you for your time, and your excellent insights! We wish you continued success.
Rising Through Resilience: Kyle Hough of Champion Painting Specialty Services Corp On The Five… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.