Sky Carp owner believes people should treat others as well as cell phones

BELOIT — Beloit Sky Carp owner Quint Studer believes that most people today pay closer attention to their cell phones than they do the people around them.

“We treat our phones better than anything else,” Studer said. “We always make sure they are charged. We don’t do that with the people around us.”

On Thursday, Studer, who lives in Pensacola, Florida, and has most of his business and nonprofit interests there, was back in Beloit as the featured speaker of the second annual Ignite Business Summit hosted by the Greater Beloit Chamber of Commerce.

Madysen Wade, chamber director of investor relations and marketing, said about 90 professionals signed up for a day’s worth of professional development that included sessions at Irontek and Hendricks CareerTek and Studer’s talk at the newly renovated Visit Beloit event center.

Studer actually built his career around building customer and employee satisfaction and he built Thursday’s talk around that as well.

“At our businesses, when we go to talk to an employee, not always, but a number of times each year, we ask them, ‘if you were a phone, what would your charge be right now?’” Studer said. “All of a sudden, we hear things like ‘I’m at a 60, 50 or 80 right now.’ That gives us a chance to ask questions and to build a relationship. If I have a lower battery today and I don’t tell somebody that they might wonder, ‘what’s wrong with Clint today, he doesn’t seem to be as productive.’ So you’re building a personal relationship instead of a transactional relationship.”

While Studer talked about how to build relationships with customers and employees, the event also gave people a chance to look at the renovated Visit Beloit building.

Last September, Gilbank Construction began working on rebuilding the upper level of the former St. Paul’s Catholic Church at 656 Pleasant St. so that Visit Beloit could hold parties, reunions, corporate meetings and receptions for up to 150 people.

The first big event in the new space was showing movies during the Beloit International Film Festival in late March. Last week, Visit Beloit hosted the Wisconsin Downtown Action Council, which held vents at ABC Supply Stadium, the Beloit College Powerhouse and the Visit Beloit event center.

Studer was born in LaGrange, Illinois, but spent part of the early part of his career as a special education teacher at Janesville Parker High School and then as director of marketing at Mercy Hospital in Janesville.

In 1999, after gaining industry attention for turning around the fortunes of Holy Cross Hospital in Chicago by focusing on patient satisfaction, Studer launched the Studer Group, a private health care consulting group. He sold 70% of the company in 2011 and then the group was acquired in its entirety by Huron Consulting Group in 2015.

In 2010, Studer bought the Pensacola Wahoos, a minor league baseball team. In 2021, at the urging of Minor League Baseball, he acquired the Beloit Sky Carp as well.

“I like coming to Beloit and talking because Beloit is doing the right things,” Studer said. “If you look at the research, keys to strong cities, do they support businesses? Yes, they do in Beloit. Do they help startups? Yes, you do that very well (at Irontek). Do they have a strong downtown? Beloit’s is getting better every year.”