As the third generation and fourth family member to lead Butler Machinery Company, President and CEO Twylah Blotsky looks to the generations before her to get back to the company’s roots. Blotsky attributes who they are as a company to Butler’s humble beginnings as a dirt contractor in the early 1900s, building many of the roads around eastern North Dakota. Butler was selected to become a Caterpillar dealer in 1955 under the leadership of Blotsky’s grandfather, Francis J. Butler.

“That is really where our roots began on who we are as a Cat dealer,” Blotsky said. “It’s always been about taking care of the customer and knowing the value in parts and service support and what downtime means to a contractor – because we lived it. That has stayed true to Butler’s DNA, all the way through.”

Butler Machinery then expanded into western North Dakota in 1964 with the purchase of Schultz Machinery Co. Blotsky’s father, Matt Butler, took over as CEO in 1969. Under his leadership, Butler acquired the assets of Kearns Machinery Co. in 1988 and expanded into South Dakota. The third generation of leadership under the Cat dealership began in 1998, when Blotsky’s older brother, Dan Butler, became CEO. Dan continued to expand and grow Butler Machinery’s locations in North and South Dakota and ag equipment locations in Nebraska until Blotsky succeeded him in January 2019.

Although Blotsky is at the head of the company today, she had to start at the bottom, beginning with her first job mowing lawns at Butler when she was 12 years old. Throughout her years in high school and college, Blotsky continued to work for her father in the summers, doing everything from credit collections to putting asset tags on products.

After graduating from the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks as a CPA with an accounting degree, Blotsky went into the family business full time as the Accounting Manager. She then became a Six Sigma Black Belt, which allowed her to work more on the product support side as well.

“Becoming a Six Sigma Black Belt gave me the freedom to dig in and learn about what was going on,” Blotsky said. “It sparked a greater interest for me in leadership and the difference that people make in your business.”

From there, Blotsky oversaw everything from marketing to information technology to process improvement and also became part of the executive team. In 2010, she moved to eastern North Dakota to run six locations in that area. Blotsky moved her way up through the company before becoming President and CEO in 2019.

Since taking the reins at Butler, Blotsky has a renewed focus to take the company back to its roots through concentrating on Butler’s mission and core values. Butler’s mission is to build long-term relationships, founded on trust, creating mutual growth and success. Another area she is focusing on is leadership development. Blotsky believes in leadership at all levels of the organization, not just the traditional leadership positions.

“I like to grow from within, and up,” Blotsky said. “Those individuals understand the most basic level from the job that they had and how to take care of the customer. They’ve lived it. If you look at our executive team, we have individuals who started as a technician or through an entry-level job at Butler and have grown through the organization.”

Blotsky also looks at outside sources for recruiting potential employees, such as through the Caterpillar ThinkBIG program. The program gives students from technical schools the opportunity to combine classroom education and hands-on learning with a paid internship at Butler Machinery, in order to prepare for a career in the skilled trades. According to Blotsky, one of Butler’s next big pushes will be a focus on non-technical recruiting to support the company’s growth and retirement needs.

Although Blotsky’s time as President and CEO so far has come with much success, like celebrating Butler’s 65th anniversary in early 2020, she has also had to overcome challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic during her first couple years of leadership. Not wanting to close Butler’s doors on their customers, Blotsky said that the company instead changed and modified how they did business. Very early on, Butler was using precautions such as plexiglass barriers so that customers could still come in and have a personable experience with the parts department or a sales representative.

“It is really the focus of our business to put ourselves in the customer’s shoes,” Blotsky said. “The pandemic did not stop construction. They were up and operational, we just had to figure out how to do it. Overall, I think we were very blessed to be with the team of people that we have.”

According to Blotsky, another challenge Butler has faced in the past is maintaining a small company feel as Butler has grown and added employees.

“We struggled a little bit with who we were, and part of my platform as I took over was getting back to our roots,” Blotsky said. “Our mission and values define us as we go forward. And as we continue to grow our team with new employees, we’re really focusing on what type of person they are and if they believe in what we’re doing with our customers. … I want to be a big company, but I want to act small.”

Butler is currently working on building a new agriculture equipment store in Kearney, Nebraska, and just recently opened one in Sidney, Montana. They also just rented out a facility for a new store in Watertown, South Dakota, with plans to create a more permanent location there in the future. Along with the new stores, Blotsky also wants to focus on growth within the company and the locations that Butler is already working out of.

“For us, it’s really about excelling within the geographic region that we’re already in. … Our customers’ world is changing; what they need from us is changing. Technology on machines is driving big change in how they do business. Internally, how do we support that differently to be more of a consultant to them? We are looking at what opportunities we have to be better in existing and growing organically.”