From the U.S. Navy to M.J. Electric

An honorable discharge from the Navy and ultimately finding a role at M.J. Electric while training to become a PGA Pro.

Meet Skyler Phillips

I'm Skyler Phillips. I work at M.J. Electric, and I oversee the quality and project controls departments.

I grew up in Kansas. Spent most of my early years there and, just kind of through chance, wound up in the military.

I joined the Navy at about 19 years old and went into their nuclear power program. That sent me up to the Great Lakes for boot camp, so I experienced my first winter before I ever lived this far north, a lot of snow. I moved to Charleston, South Carolina and then to upstate New York in the Saratoga Springs area, and that was all just in that training pipeline.

I ended up out in Virginia Beach, stationed at Norfolk Naval Station and went on four deployments on the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier. It was there I met my wife, Jamie, who is from this area, so that's really the progression of the timeline of how we ended up in Iron Mountain.

The life of a nuclear electrician in the Navy -- a lot of time spent inside the hull of the ship in the engine room spaces. What we were essentially doing was using the nuclear reactors to create steam to drive the turbine generators and main engines for the carrier.

We're generating all of our own electricity and all of our own propulsion. There are several different roles, from reactor operators, electricians, mechanics, and folks working on the chemistry of the primary system of the reactor system. By the time I had become a bit more senior on the ship there, through those deployments, I was the senior load dispatcher.

Basically, sitting in central control looking at all the electrical panels of all the generators that are producing that distribution throughout the ship, like a small city. And making sure that we can react timely to any casualties, fire, flooding, loss of power, any of those sorts of things. Just always highly trained and ready to respond.

That's primarily what you're doing there. A lot of secondary roles and administrative oversight of the reactor department by the time I was done.

All of that time as a nuclear electrician builds up towards your 10,000 hours that you need to get certified as a journeyman in the electrical field. A lot of the folks I served with nowadays work at nuclear power plants.

My wife was a reactor operator. We met on the aircraft carrier. We were on the same watch. Talk about getting to know somebody before you ever go on your first date. That describes our relationship. We would spend five hours together at a time, locked in a room no bigger than this podcast recording studio. Talking about everything--life, where you grew up, and a lot of the stories about, you know, Iron Mountain in the Upper Peninsula. I had a love for that, just thinking about the scenery, the small town, and all the different outdoor activities you can do with the seasons you can experience here.

I was pretty hyped about the U.P. before I'd ever even been there. We spent countless hours together just learning about each other, and that developed over time. We both found ourselves single, and we said, "Alright, maybe we should try this," and that was really our first date.

My wife's family is in the Hermansville area, and still to this day. I traveled up here with her, after we were dating for about a year, and we spent Christmas at each other's folks' houses. That was my first experience up here. Snow on the ground, and we went on snowmobile rides. What's not to love about going from Virginia Beach, where that time of year is kind of dreary, to a kind of winter wonderland? I left with just great memories, and I felt like I could see myself setting up roots with a family in this area before we moved here.

My wife ended up getting out of the military before I did by a couple of years. She was working for Panasonic and helped them with the installation of their huge 100ft screen at the Dallas Cowboys Dome. That was pretty fun. Then she took a job at the time with Oldenburg Group, which had a presence at the shipyard in Newport News, which is right near the Hampton Roads area. She was able to work out of that office and be a little bit remote, and then ultimately moved up here on my last deployment and kind of set up shop for us. When I got back, I immediately got my honorable discharge, grabbed my papers and ran to Michigan.

From the US Navy to PGA

Golf has always been big in my family. My dad played collegiately. I'm the oldest of four brothers. We all play, and we're all very competitive. When I was getting out of the military, like I said, my wife was already employed up here. I just wasn't really sure of the direction that I wanted to go.

Something just kept on calling me passion-wise to try to find myself in the golf industry. During that time, I was also working on my degrees online with my GI Bill.  I had some income coming in from that, but just supplementary, so I found out that we had an amazing golf course, not just one, but multiple golf courses in this area.

At the time, the director of golf at Timberstone, Joe Rizzo, took a chance on me and brought me on the team and I learned the ropes of the whole operation. There is a lot more to swinging a club, and being able to do that well, versus what it takes to run an operation like Timberstone at Pine Mountain. 

My first season there was in 2013, so as soon as the snow melted, we got to work.

My daughter was also born that same summer, so I found myself, now a father, obviously running a household and managing that budget. I was trying to figure out -- I've got this nuclear engineering degree, and I'm in this apprenticeship program to become a PGA professional.

I've got all these things going, but how cohesive are all of those things? They look a bit scattered, but I was doing what I loved. I loved every minute of being out on the golf course. I loved every minute of coming home and being a new father. Life was happy for me, but I knew I wanted to develop a career, especially with having a five-month golf season here.

I was kind of working in ski operations at Pine Mountain Ski Hill. I think I love skiing more than I loved working at a ski resort, which wasn't the same with golf. I love every minute about that. 

What really brought me into the progression of how I ended up working at M.J. Electric was, at the time, Ed Farrington had recently become M.J. Electric's president, and he was a member at TimberStone. A guy full of wisdom. We would talk. He'd come there to decompress, hit some balls on the range, or go play a few holes. I’d give him a lesson or two. Sometimes, if things were slow, we'd go out and play a few holes together. 

Without even knowing that he was the president of M.J. or even knowing really how big M.J. Electric was, we talked a little bit about me being an electrician in the Navy and kind of working down that avenue, and not really sure what I wanted to do with my life. I'm enjoying what I'm doing now, but I had bigger aspirations, and he said, " Well, I think that you've got a lot of the qualities that we look for in project management. If you're ever interested in that, maybe we can connect more and talk about it.” After being there for three seasons at the golf course and the ski hill through that winter, I said, " You know what? I think I want to pursue this.”

I talked about it with my wife, and she thought that was probably a great opportunity not to pass up. I got out of the golf business, which, leaving a passionate job, is tough, but I was really excited to jump.

Working at M.J. Electric

I started in January of 2016 at M.J. Electric.

I definitely have Ed to thank for that. I would also tell you that a guy like Ed sees something in everybody. He just has these conversations that help you bring it out. You learn things about yourself talking to him.

I started off in the renewable energy division of M.J., which was growing at the time, a lot of wind farm development. Starting off in field engineering, that was really mostly a full-time travel job.

I went to lower Michigan for maybe a six-month job, went to New Mexico, near Albuquerque, but also in the middle of nowhere at the same time, like old Route 66 before I-40 was built. I went to Illinois and Iowa. I love the guys that I worked with, and we still are very close. I think the issue was, now all of a sudden, I've got my second daughter on the way in 2018, and I have apartment leases around the country and I come home once a month.

It was just causing a lot of turmoil, as it would in any household, especially with a new growing family. I worked with our HR department, and I said, I love working at M.J. Electric, but I don't know that I can sustain seeing my family for a few days every month. Anybody that does that, kudos to them because that is a tough gig to manage.

We were growing our quality department and developing a sustainable quality management system for the organization. I had some experience with that from the military. They were developing a new role as a quality assurance engineer, and I was lucky enough to interview, get offered that spot, and be based out of Iron Mountain. I still travel frequently but spend more of my time at home.

That's one of the things that M.J. is good at. It supports its employees and treats them like a family and a unit. They want everybody to be in a place that is mutually advantageous. They realize the value in that, and not only does it keep those employees there longer, but those employees have better things to say about the company.

I think that's what draws a lot of people to want to work there. I can't tell you the number of people that have come up to me, and when I tell them I work at M.J., they go, oh man, lucky. It's amazing because it's a rare comment when you're speaking about an organization.

I was honing in on my skills. I still had some, some GI Bill left. While I was traveling, I went back to school and got my MBA from Excelsior University. I think that helped open up some opportunities as well, just being a little bit better versed in the business acumen on the finance side. It gave me some opportunities with project controls.

There's a definite transition from being assigned tasks and responsibilities and executing those and the pleasure of doing a good job, to becoming a people and team manager. That's been my progression in the past several years, developing teams and overseeing a couple of departments.

We're still looking at the next five years and the amount of growth that we're seeing, just figuring out who to put in the right spots so they have these skills polished or who do you want to provide mentorship and opportunities to develop their leadership skills so that they can become team leaders.

It's a dynamic that is so much different than I thought it was going to be. You really have a whole lot less time to really do all the things that you're technically proficient at that you've been doing for many years. You have to make sure that others are able to do those and that you're supporting them, supporting others, and especially in support department roles like we are.

We're always looking at operations internally, our customers, and making sure that we provide them the best service. I don’t know that I had a sense of the size of M.J. Electric for

quite a while.

M.J. Electric started here in Iron Mountain, going 70-some years strong now. We've got over 4,000 employees at any point in time. That includes our partnership with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union (IBEW). We rely on them for craft labor. We've got all of the operation, lead support, and senior management, are all direct hires within the company.

We've got a presence all over the country. We're in the U.P., Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, and lower Michigan. We're strategically aligning ourselves with our customers. If they need a lot from us, let's set up shop next to them so that we can provide them the best services and make sure that we're the contractor of choice. We've done that so well that we've allowed to expand nationally and really touch on a lot of different utilities out there and even new industries. We're getting into data center support, which is just a booming industry right now.

The number of opportunities that we've gained just from showing that we can go out there and do it on time and stay within budget. Everybody looks over, and they go, "That M.J. Electric, we should have them come take a look at this opportunity.” All of it is also backed by being a subsidiary of Quanta Services. Having the backing of a powerhouse like that, we've got the largest specialty fleet in the country.

About Pine Grove Country Club

We enjoy being members at Pine Grove Country Club here in town to get out to golf and have a great dining experience. They've expanded their back patio, with a beautiful overlook of the golf course. We spent a bit of time there. I'm obviously not retired like a bunch of the folks that are hanging out there, but we have Women's Day on Tuesdays and Men's Day on Wednesdays. There are standing tee times, and I have my normal group that I play with. We head off just a little bit early on Wednesdays in the afternoon. For the last few years, our company has put on a modified summer hours program that allows folks to work a bit longer and take a half day on Friday or the full day off on Friday. Some of the folks on my teams are electing to do that, and I can just take off a couple of hours on Wednesday afternoons.

I got to know a lot of people in this community from being a member there for the last several years. When it comes to being a transplant, you gotta find not just a place to set up shop and develop a household in the home and a family, a place that further your career, but you also want to find opportunities to get involved in the community. I think the Dickinson County area has a lot of opportunities. If you take them up to get involved in and meet folks, Pine Grove is one of those ways.

We play in the couples events, they're always fun. Pine Grove holds a few of those a year. We've had a history of playing really well, even though my wife only picks up her clubs a

couple of times a year. She comes and shows up. It's great. There's a lot of cheering and a lot of excitement, and that's one of the reasons why we chose Pine Grove, it's got a lot more of a community and family feel.

It is never unsolicited when people are looking for golf pointers. I will help people out. My wife will not be one of those folks. She wants me to leave her alone. 

Living in the Dickinson Area

We have two daughters, they're twelve and seven, both born and raised in this area, so they're Yoopers.

My wife is the PTO president at Woodland Elementary, which is where our younger daughter goes. I enjoy being the first husband. We spend a lot of time trying to make sure that the teachers at the school are well taken care of and that we can show them our gratitude and provide memorable experiences for the students there.

Our kids are heavily involved in sports. My daughter's in the Dickinson Community Youth Theater, and we always go check out the ballet production, so that's always something to look forward to.

The quality of golf courses up here is incredible. The density of amazing courses, even just going down a little bit south into Wisconsin, the top 100 courses that you can play within driving vicinity, it's here.

Beyond that, I would say any time throughout our summer, it is such amazing weather. There's only a handful of days that get up into the 90-degree range. I have played a round of golf at the Emirates Course in Dubai, and that was 120 degrees that they've got whipping sand off of the greens. Between shots and downing bottles of water, they give you ice rags and all that. That's not Yooper golf. That's one of the reasons that I love this area so much in the summer, the weather is always so mild. 

When did you feel like you were home?

Once I saw my kids in school, they were really developing friendships and bonds with other students and even with teachers. It's a small enough community that you can have multiple connections. Our kids are friends when we're also friends, or you’re my daughter's favorite teacher, or I know you from being at this event. It's like you have six degrees of separation. You can always evolve the conversation to, oh, I know that person through this. I like a community that size. It's not so small that everybody's bored, but it is the size where I feel like if my daughters were walking down the road and somebody saw that they were in trouble or needed help, it would be a very short amount of time before somebody they knew pulled up and said, hey, what can I do for you? That's one of the easiest ways to describe the size of this area.

I feel safe. Feel supported. And I feel… Growth in this community. It's alive. Life. It's great.

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About M.J. Electric

MJE, a Quantas Services Company, provides an experienced technical and professional management team capable of managing projects from concept through completion. For over 60 years, M.J. Electric (MJE) has built long-standing working relationships and an industry-wide reputation as the single-source solution for its customers’ construction and maintenance needs across industries, nationwide. Learn more

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About Pine Grove Country Club

Pine Grove Country Club, one of the oldest clubs in Michigan's beautiful Upper Peninsula, offers a quality golf and hospitality experience for its members and guests. Located in the city of Iron Mountain, in a pristine north woods environment, the 18 hole championship course weaves through stands of old-growth white and red pines, oaks, and maples which is home to abundant wildlife.