I Didn’t See All the Danger Signs

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Mel Gravely the newest addition to our podcast team tells Sean busy and William Vander blumen how he bought a Cincinnati construction business in 2005 even though the company wasn't doing well even though he knew nothing about construction and even though the company had been shopped to everyone who did know construction as you've probably guessed things worked out just fine for Mel who's now focused on putting a plan in place that's designed to keep diversity Construction in business for a 100 years that goal Mel explains can mean taking some counterintuitive steps including not always maximizing profit and not planning to stay in the CEO job as long as he might have preferred plus we learn why the construction industry is unlikely to be an early adopter when it comes to Ai and William tells us how he did this year on his mission to make himself less essential to his own business even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations brought to you by our principal sponsor the great game of business will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which Jak magazine named the best newsletter for business owners and which you can subscribe to for free at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews joining me this week on the podcast are regulars Shan busy CEO of Kinesis which is based in Portland Oregon and works with small businesses on marketing culture and strategy Mel graveley CEO of triversity construction a construction business based in Cincinnati and William Vander bluman CEO of Vander blumen Search Group a houston-based recruiting firm that works with churches and other faith-based organizations the episode is titled I didn't see all the danger signs welcome Sean William and especially Mel Gravely Mel you've been on dashboard before but this is your first appearance on the 21 hats main stage and it's really great to have you here I'm excited to be with you guys well in in case there's someone out there who hasn't memorized every 21 hats podcast can you tell us a little about triversity construction how big is it what kind of work do you do yeah we are a um Cincinnati base uh Commercial contractor um got about 105 110 people um we'll do about 120 million in construction volume uh this year we service private uh large private customers who are buying construction all the time about 40% of our business is Healthcare maybe a little bit more than that on some years and we're founded in 2005 and we and we self-performed some of the Interior trades drywall how about that that's good um how's this year been for you I would call it uh steady we'll we'll exceed plan uh on from a profit standpoint we'll miss our Revenue Target uh we can talk more about why that is but um mainly because of the capacity of our team just ran out of gas to to to say yes to to more work and uh so I would say getting to back to a normal normal disruptions in supply chain which we think are going to be the future normal um in pricing so in general but those are the norms of our industry and so we've settled in to to execute against those Norms when you talk about the capacity of your team and the impact that's had on revenue is that a labor shortage issue you're talking about yeah I would probably call it picky mail we we probably could have hired to meet our Revenue targets but you know we're betting on a long-term play here and and what we keep talking about at our executive level is let's hire people that if they were on the bench with nothing to do we'd be fine with it because they're that talented and when you set the bar that high you know we don't hire for projects so you know we're hiring steady but we we want people who are going to be here a long time aren and and sometimes hiring the projects doesn't get you there so yes I shortage it's it is tight but this is structural right so this is not a economic reality for for construction this is Construction Construction labor market is tight it will always be tight and productivity gains are the only way to get us hey Mel so you use the term self-perform and maybe you can talk about the difference between a a contractor who does self-performance and and those that don't and also why you chose to go that route well thanks for making me clarify that Sean yeah so the difference is most General Contractors or construction managers which is a lot of how we deliver our services to our customers they own the risk of the outcomes of the project but they're subcontracting everything to Plumbers electrician drywallers asphalt people roofers but they're managing that process but the work is actually being done by subcontractors we do subcontract a great deal but we also self-perform and that's the term when you are doing the actual work people wearing tool belts cutting drywall putting in ceiling ripping out floors putting them back that that's the self-performance part so we do SUB still a lot of our work but we self-perform a a growing uh piece of our work your second part of your question is uh intrig we didn't start out self-performing work we actually bought this company in 2013 and they were a drywall uh contractor at the time and the reason is twofold number one a little bit of vertical integration so I get a little more margin from the self-performance and I can self-perform my own work the second reason though is gave us control of the edges of projects so sometimes you get to a project and and and there's stuff in between what the drywaller does and the electrician does and you need somebody to feel that Gap well if you don't have anyone that has a tool belt on and a truck into some tools you sometimes are are fighting and trying to figure out who's going to fill that Gap so it gives us more control around the edges of our projects to just have people be able to come in and fill some of those gaps so the like little random stuff that crop crops up the the stuff that maybe doesn't fit real nicely in terms of a scope of work for a sub contractor yeah absolutely you know like you go into a hospital again we do a lot of work and you need to set up a containment wall so so you separate the work from the from the patient you know that containment wall is a bit of a pain in the butt someone's got to put it up someone's got to maintain it someone's got to make sure you got negative air flow you know our folks can pop that stuff up for us and we can go in and then do the work so things like that um that our folks can show up and take care of just gives us more control and if we get behind our folks can paint so if the painter gets a little behind we can supplement the painter even if we subcontracted we can supplement the drywall we can supplement the demo guy if we if we have to so it just gives us a lot more flexibility around edges so the consequence of that is now you have a fixed cost in terms of a Workforce right yeah which is you know a lot of these contractors they try to protect themselves by basically not carrying any fixed costs other than the you know the owner and maybe a small administrative crew so you found that this the advantages of this offset the risk that you take on well let me start with the answer yes there's no doubt I mean our our ability to deliver a a differentiated value to our customers is pretty high because of our self- performed capability but also we did two things with our our Interiors business one we kept it small so it's still a pretty small organization they'll do about six and a half seven million this year the second thing we did though is they competitively bid work to the to the open market so they are competing against other interior companies for work with some of our competitors so they'll bid work to our competitors and go out and be a subcontractor to them and to being able to balance that allows them to run their business from a complete p&l standpoint so they do some of their work with us some of their work with other contractors and uh and we found that that balance if we can keep it in Balance uh works pretty well Mel I think you said that you're hitting your uh profit goals for the year but not your Revenue goals H how have you managed to do that uh well first I think we were pretty conserva planners so uh as my board would say we sandbag a bit and so so so there's a little bit of that in there but also uh our drywall business which is our higher margin business is far exceeding their plan and uh going back to the value of having them there have been years that they didn't far exceed their plan but this year they're far exceeding their plan which is adding a disproportionate amount of income to to our bottom line and so listen the business that we have although it's below what our projections were um is good profitable business and um it's given us the opportunity to to to have a pretty good year Mel you and I met at a tugboat event uh I believe you're the first regular on this podcast who who belongs to the group which believes in building businesses to last a hundred years part of the idea is not selling to private Equity or other investors but by the way I think this is a group that would be of interest to both William and Shawn if they don't already know about it I'm curious what is that concept of building a business to last 100 years meant to you and why are you part of the group yeah that's a great question and yeah I'd love to share it with William and Sean anytime they if they show any interest at all right now yeah Mel I'd love for you to sell that to me I uh looked at Tugboat I get their Journal I think it's a great idea for me it comes down to love the concept but don't have the time to get to the events and then that value money becomes question as well so cell Tugboat to me yeah I I I would agree with you let's start with that that end can't make the events I I agree with you the the value diminishes to just not not enough in my mind for the cost but but let me tell you why it's been a transformational Organization for me personally and I believe over time for our organization it helped me clarify and find the words to articulate what I what my Vision was for this organization so it helped me with that and there's so many different ownership models Scale Models how do you vertically integrate models how do you deal with employee issues there's so many models and things to learn but all of the people there are subscribing to the same set of Core Business principles around people and profit and Longevity and every Green so you you've got this this commonality with all this difference and so the models that I'm seeing are um I mean it's just it's just an incredible opportunity for me to learn and grow as a leader and to get very practical there are times in our organization where I could maximize profitability and I choose not to because my Horizon is so long that it allows me to say no we don't need to optimize that because this is more important because we're trying to not just accumulate profitability but we're trying to accumulate culture and the power that goes in that we're trying to accumulate management talent that can take things from one generation to the next so the intentionality around the decisions around seccession and decisions around ownership structure and decisions around Investments and Horizon are just terrific in this group you've got you know Edward Jones which is huge and you've got companies that are $10 million or $5 million even I they can get that small so and everything in between and you've got esops and you've got familyowned and you've got partner owned and so no matter what you're trying to solve for you can find it in the group the last thing I'll tell you is I've never been around CEOs and none of them are beaten their chests none of them are blowing smoke up your skirt about how great life is for them none of them are holding back information you want to know it you can ask them they'll share it with you under a Code of Silence that I've just just I just never experienced this openness we have the same thing here by the way Mel except for the Code of Silence part so I I just think it's been a great group for for me uh our the president of our company uh Jim Watkins is is joining now he's he's attended one event my team goes to a team event they do in February uh we went last year we'll go again this year so I'm exposing them to it at the next level and it's not cheap guys and I'm not a guy that spends money like that except on clothes and um so it's that valuable to me so so William that's what I would say buddy and and here's the problem with tug motive it's got a problem and and I don't know how they can fix it it is hard to articulate the value without going to an event so no matter what they write or no matter what they send you it is just hard to articulate the value unless you've been to an event and and once you've been to one and it only takes one I think you either connect with it or you realize this is just not for me that makes sense can you give us an example of a decision you've made differently because you have that 100-year Horizon in mind yeah I'll give you a great great example so if you're G to be around for a 100 years you've gotta do a couple a bunch of things right one of them is you got to have strong smooth secession you got to be able to go from one management team one leader to the next so three or four other tugbo companies got together they all had presidents and CEOs in some phase of going through transition and to be able to model and Benchmark and discuss how did you do it what are you planning how are you working on it so the president here and I are going through a similar transition that we've been working on for two years but we've been working on it with the insight and input and of others who are a bit ahead of us some behind but some way ahead of us that they finished their their transition already so just that alone the the things that we've planned in and the development that we've sent the president through to get him ready and the way we brought along our board of directors and we do have a fiduciary board of directors the way we brought them on the way we're positioning the executive leadership team for the transition and even to how we're pring this our plan for PR as we make the announcement are all intentional and are informed by by our affiliation with this group and I would have never thought about any of that to be honest with you I mean the details of transition are very very important but but if you don't get that right um you're not going to be around for 100 years how far along are you Mel is the plan in place the plan is in place it's got dates to it so I'll say we're in the Red Zone if I can use a football analogy we're in the Red Zone Mel I'm interested we do quite a bit of succession planning for our clients your transition is moving you out of your current role I'm assuming correct it will be moving the president into a president CEO role okay and me out of a role where I'll continue to be the chairman of the board and I'm the primary shareholder too but I'll also move to a role we're calling executive chair which we gave its own job description it will not be a day-to-day job it won't have an office in the in the uh in the facility for a number of reasons but the title is executive chair how did that process start what was the first Domino to get pushed over my recognition that I wanted to demonstrate orderly management transition that was the first Domino that's awesome gota be honest with you guys feel like I'm in a counseling session but I've got the best job I've ever had like this is a really cool job we got a really cool company I've got a great executive leadership team and I'd kind of like to stay in the seat for a little while longer but the truth is is that I came to realize that b small limitations and the need of of the business that it's time for me to to to take that step and I think I don't think I'm sure Tugboat helped me real ize that reality so so the first Domino though was mod realization we had to we had to make that transition and so we we began the process from there well yeah I am convinced that success in succession begins and ends with the outgoing person and so that just backs up what I'm thinking well it does I mean you know yeah I agree with you yeah I agree I agree and that's one of the reasons I won't have an office so you know some of the people we've modeled and benchmarked against the outgoing person had an office and I got a big personality I'm very outgoing you know I've got an opinion on everything and I I won't be able to not be me and so I got to not be in the building and I just have to know that about myself but we learned that by watching some others and like oh that's just not going to work either the team is ready or they're not if they're not then you you you got work to doing a succession but if they're ready then get the hell out of the way you're making me nervous Mel are you going to be okay with this I'll let you know when it happens here's the truth um I think I am because I've had time so you know secession is is not just preparing the next person it's preparing you too and I've talked to these folks who have already uh stepped out of their role about what it's going to be like and what to expect and the biggest thing is is that no one calls you for your opinion and and we've all gotten addicted to that so I'm uh I'm really preparing myself emotionally for that I think I'm you people are going to say I retired and some people fight that I'm not retiring but I'm not going to fight that whatever you want to call it that you know but yeah I've been working on myself too Lauren so it's a great question I think I'll be okay William you've talked to us in the past about how each year you've been taking more time away from the business sort of to prepare the business for a transition eventually did you follow through with that this year as well I did I did I'm actually somewhere in midst of the five stages of grief that Summer's over right now so we started by going away so I'm not there present you know in the office as Mel says which I think is critical and then we started spreading it you know one more week a year for the last I don't know six seven years or so my annual review with my board is Lauren's heard this before it's one question and it's past fail the question is did you make yourself less essential to the growth and running of the firm that's my one task every year to make myself less essential and I think uh we've done a pretty good job of that I'm learning a little bit more each year this year and last year was the first two years that we've seen growth while I'm not involved we've seen it run itself and I would might be my ego which is way too big but uh I think we could probably grow faster if I were more involved but that doesn't get me a 100-year outcome that doesn't make this sustainable and at the end of the day when when I do decide whatever trigger I want to pull with succession right now I want to have all the options open whether that's hand it off to a CEO uh do an ESOP sell just be chair of the board just be a passive income owner I I want all those options available so that's the one question this year we were gone well be gone about half of September kind of in and out but we were fully detached for about two months and uh that went well and and I say fully detached I had a 30 minute call once a week with my coo to Resource her in any way I could but uh that that's about it what got you thinking about uh the hundred-year goal where did you get that thought you know I've watched succession in in our clients particularly among clients where they're Founders and if it's a a company where the founder has done a great job and grown the company it's pretty rare for the succession to go well and um so things turn into one generation companies and I I I just don't want that I feel too deeply about the work that we're doing and I don't need to be the lid I don't need to run it I don't even want it named after me but as you all have heard before it's just the Google people told me we had to use my name because it's that messed up um and you can misspell it in Google a 100 different ways and still get there but I think it's watching other people spend their life building something great and then it just dying and i' I'd really rather that not happen Sean is this making you think about anything yeah I'm Mel I'm I'm really encouraged to hear uh about your journey and I've I've also heard really good things about Tugboat I think they're doing something smart too I was noticing they have kind of a $5 million annual revenue thresold as as sort of like the entrance point because I think at that point you're you have a company that's that's self- sustaining that's the journey I'm on too right I mean for a long time our business development was largely me being on stage talking to groups of people and you know creating interest in our company um that's that doesn't work uh you know if you want to leave the company ever so you know building that ecosystem that doesn't rely on me is is really first and foremost I've gotten out of doing the work a long time ago but getting out of the marketing and business development side of it is is it's a big challenge yeah I agree I you know I um my my brand around town is pretty well known I'm pretty pretty engaged and that was the fear and William's point about when he stepped away a little bit that at first it didn't and grow I experienced the same thing and I've not tried couple of months but uh for the last few years I've taken a full month off get another idea from a tugboat guy but uh but but zero contact like uh like zero contct no check-ins no emails nothing zero contact and what I found is they they can keep the wheels running on it and what I worry about worried about I don't worry anymore was how will we on culture how will we on those decisions that really had to focus long term how are we on growing the business and what what's happened over the last two years is I've been convinced now that this team can actually grow the business I think they can grow geographically they've looked at some Acquisitions that they brought to me pretty darn cooked already which I I just love that that and we've got a management Cadence of strategic planning annual planning and then day-to-day management that you know is allows for it to be a of a routine but I I get it guys this is this this transition is tough which is why people don't do it I'm I'm curious you do a good job of getting out there you've got a strong personality you know you're compelling figure how have you handed over the business development and and I'm not talking like closing deals that are coming in the door I'm talking like generating new interest yeah well first we've got a a part of our business model is to be in in the community so if you're an executive on our team you're in the community giving and so you're on board which generates you know relationships and so forth so as I'm getting this team ready they're growing in their own breth of relationships so that's part of it so as an example the the president of our company now Jim Watkins came to Cincinnati a decade ago when we recruited him here but he next year will be the chairman of the board of our chamber and in our city that's pretty big deal but it's because he and had to get immediately engaged because that's what we do here to as a means of making us relevant in in in the community therefore relevant from a relationship and business development and then we've got a business development engine that supports that so relationships are helpful but then someone's got to bird dog opportunity you know differentiate the market blah blah blah so we've got a department of folks who are driving toward Business Development efforts once relationships open the door and the last I'll say is and this is a discipline that's been hard for me is I I I just say no and I ask is it okay if I send someone else and and many times I want to go or I want to be on that board or I want to be on that commission or I want to be the face and uh and I say I try and try try hard to say no and and let someone else on the executive team step in that spot Mel I recently highlighted a story in the morning report about the many ways artificial intelligence is being put to use in the construction industry to try to make it more efficient yeah I'm curious are you seeing examples of that are you playing around with it yeah the short answer is no we're not playing around with it I I do think it's going to make an impact around the edges but the challenge with our industry and Innovation is this magical thing that happens at bidday and um at bidday here's how our business works we win a project so we're the general contractor we will have all of the subcontractors bid to us and we're going to take the lowest bid because the specs are the same and everybody we talk to is is competitive and so they have to go figure out the cheapest way to do something because at bid day I'm not evaluating the best way to do something I'm evaluating the cheapest way to do something and Innovation is almost never initially cheap so you know we don't buy out uh buildings as a building we buy them out as subparts so we optimize the individual Parts on price and we deliver a project that is I would argue it may not be the cheapest it may have been the cheapest we could build but if we' have put it as a system it might have been different so Lauren the reason I think we're slow in our industry on innovation in the actual building of a building is because of bid day it's the way we buy out projects if we start to buy them differently and buy them as systems I think think you can find innovation in Pre prefabrication so taking rooms and building them in a manufacturing environment and shipping them to the site there are a lot of people playing around with that but it's never cheaper at bid day it is safer it is faster it is cleaner it is less waste it is all of those things but very few people do it because it's not cheaper at bid day so right now we still Hammer Nails the same way we did generally we use a gun but the the operation is the same there's a striker in there and it drives na in well and you you started out this podcast Mel talking about what does a contractor do a contractor owns risk yep and if you are in a business where your primary function is to diminish risk you're in absolute opposite ends of the spectrum from Innovation absolutely you know it's like the entire industry is this is their fundamental problem I mean problem this is why construction is not I mean it's like the oldest industry in there but it's like the slowest to change you hit it on a head the word new that's bad is met with a it's with a no if if you lead was new then the answer is no that's what William always says about churches y yep well and you know in our sector I see this all the time I've made this mistake as a leader I will want to you know you find how do you get something done you ask a busy person right so a mistake I've made over the years I made it this year it wasn't a huge mistake but it was a repeated mistake is I got a great person who for lack of a better way of saying it is bent toward quality control or as as I think I hear uh Sean saying managing risk right so I put them in charge of developing a new product line well that was a terrible thing to do to them they're frustrated they're trying to get it absolutely perfect which is not the way to get a new product started right you get it good enough to ship and then you move on but I keep have to keep reminding myself that people who are good at quality control by definition are not good at Innovation and probably the flip side too so I I don't know if you guys have experienced that or not but yeah 100% there's no doubt AB absolutely I totally agree I mean getting a new product out like you say you got to you got to accept that's good enough and some people just can't they just can't do that Mel the the premise of that article on AI was was that there are tremendous inefficiencies in construction and it talked about you know the sequence of subcontractors and managing that appropriately it talked about making use of a work site properly because parts of it may be sitting there with nobody doing anything when somebody could be doing something and and those were the opportunities that were envisioned I think for AI was the article right about those inefficiencies the article was right about what they said the the question is are those true inefficiencies right so I don't know the answer so so for example if 42% I think I was say percentage of the site is not being used by anyone is that an inefficiency I don't know the answer to the question because the sequencing of the job uh is not just about who can I can fit on the site it could be working the sequence goes some by inspection because I can't finish the drywall until someone comes in to see how I've done my electrical in my plumbing and some of the sequencing is to do with those things lawren so I think it's an oversimplification but there's no doubt if I have better sense of what's going on where I can learn so that's the AI part I can learn to make better decisions or it can it can tell me direct me to better decisions on deploying labor but if I I'm still I will say to you if I if I buy it the way I buy it today um it's just going to be hard to change subcontractor's Behavior because you stuck them to a price so they're going to work on that thing the way they want to work on it you're going to be hard pressed to get them to change their behavior I'd be curious to hear your thought on this maill you know you talked about how you do self-performing work right you know okay we've got our own team that can do stuff and then and then it creates efficiency by having guys around that can do little things here and there it seems like the industry has moved away from self-performance and that it's moved largely towards professional management groups and then you know wide swaths of subcontractors and my observation doing residential construction has been that that sequencing problem and then having third parties who are not really accountable to the to the success of the project they're only accountable to getting the part done it it's massively inefficient and it seems like the industry is just trending in that direction further and further is that fair definitely fair and listen who wants the headache of of uh of Fielding a team of uh construction professionals it's very difficult right now to get people who are skilled so I get it you know I think we've got some International opportunities there if we can figure out our border issues that uh may may help us in that ve but no I I totally agree with you it's it's horribly inefficient and it's built to be that way that's the scary part it's built to be that way you know but but if we can figure it out um I do believe AI can give us some insight but we've got to change not just we can't optimize on pieces parts anymore we've got to look at the system and I think AI can help that for sure William you mentioned that this is the first time you've been away from the business and it's grown while you've been away why do you think that happened well I've got I think the best team I've ever had I'm about to lose one of the pretty big cogs in that wheel but uh I I think that was a big part of it I think not somebody from your vomit list William yeah yeah yeah it's it's all good H she's wonderful she's uh 25 and on our lead team I mean just unbelievable remarkable Young young woman and her husband got a big promotion and they're getting to move where they wanted to move and she's going to go into a a more of a calling driven thing it's much much lower salary I I knew he wouldn't keep her so it's it it not a surprise but not fun but I would say she was a piece of it uh a piece of us growing um I'm I have a hope and I might be wrong but what I started was a brand new idea for churches and churches don't like new ideas is and has since grown to to churches schools nonprofits and values driven businesses but I think either we've gotten some brand recognition we didn't have before or my hunch is the pandemic was uh the great accelerator like it accelerated so many Trends and I'm hoping that our new idea and the adoption of our new idea got accelerated by the pandemic and the great resignation and so forth so I I'm hoping we're hitting a Tipping Point where this is a flywheel that's turning on its own that's not dependent on any particular personality but I'd be remiss not to mention how good the team's been this year you had told us uh a while back that you were planning on taking a more proactive approach to sales this year is that part of what happened I think so I mean we we have done almost no cold calling and historically we've done none we're starting to do some now and and seeing that take get more traction than it ever has which is not a big statement but I I I continue to think that the biggest lid to our growth right now is not adding more sales people and we're addressing that but uh that that's a good problem for me to have I've not been in that spot before so what you say maybe this is a fly will effect coming out of the pandemic accelerated some things did you mean an increas in Clarity around values driven companies or people looking to work in value or following their values in their work is that the qu is that what you were saying yeah no that's that's a great question I would say uh at least 50% of our work is for churches right and we are the first to Market and I hope the best in the market I think we are uh at least at the moment but the church adopting executive Search as a common best practice I thought that'd be about a 20-year process and I'm not overblowing that I really thought it'd take 20 years we've seen more and more churches just assume they need to call a search firm now than ever before and I think well I think I think we got an acceleration from the pandemic the pandemic made the church do different things digital giving went through the roof it was already happening it was getting adopted but now is the way you do things online church that been happening for years but it was for those fancy new fangled churches you know not our church well the pandemic forced my mother's church that's 250 years old and lovely but not Innovative they started doing online so it forced a sector that doesn't do change into change and and I'm hoping that that means that the what I thought was a 20year run toward normaly has been shortened quite a bit does that does that make sense yeah so so much so can I go back to something you said before when when you you said you when you were out for a few months you checked in once a week I wanted to ask what is that 30 minute meeting a week look like does it have a standard kind of approach to it uh I have a list Jen has a list we flip a coin to see who goes first so and and it's and it's very small things sometimes it's William there's nothing to do here I just want you to be aware that this person's leaving and that and we have a plan and here's how we're doing when Christa our Allstar 25-year-old left she William you're not going to like this you may want a trash can I'm like ah and she said yeah so and but but I have a plan and here's what we're going to do and we've got it so sometimes this will bring me up to date if it's uh please weigh in on this it's either something brand new that we've not seen before or something that's very broken that there's not a lack of wisdom on Jen's part it's just William probably wants to weigh in on this and then my list was is usually expansionist ideas that while I'm gone and not in the dayto day I can actually start looking out over the horizon and thinking about new things so it's usually pretty quick we only have a couple of minutes left Mel I just wanted to go back to one thing with you you made reference to when triers construction uh was started I think you said around 2005 is that right correct I was not here then that was my question you were not involved yeah no I bought it I was not involved I bought it in 2009 could you tell us a little bit about your path how did you end up uh CEO and largest shareholder it was a going concern that was struggling and one of the three Partners the the one that kind of pulled his party together one of the three Partners just did was not working out with the other two and um you know wanted me to buy them out after they had shopped it to everyone on the planet no one no one wanted to touch this thing I because I don't have a construction background didn't see all the danger signs so I bought them out so that that's the short answer to it um I bought them out went on a search to find an operator because I didn't know construction found the the uh about a year later found the gentleman who's now president what gave you the nerve to buy a construction business when you didn't know anything about construction and the people who did weren't interested in buying it yeah well I didn't know he had shopped it to everyone until after that came after but but but this this business checked all the boxes in what I uh wanted to do it was a time in my life when I wanted to go prove some of the things some of the theories I had espoused as an author and as a consultant that it had an opportunity to grow to scale and and and to be a model for the kind of diverse and inclusive organization that I thought would be that kind of model it had a great partner the one partner that was going to stay in the deal and it had one customer uh they still a customer today at at Cincinnati Children's Hospital and I say this and I mean it if you can't grow a business with an amazing high quality customer like Cincinnati Children and a partner uh like Master construction um you you you just don't know what you're doing so I knew I could bring you know Business Development to it I knew I could bring strategic to it I know I can bring culture to the team so it's really not that hard to find some some people who know what they're doing in construction who line up with your values and and run as hard as you can all right my thanks to Sean busy and William Vander bluman and especially to uh Mel Gravely for joining us for the first time today uh and to our sponsor the great game of business which helps businesses use an open book management system to build healthier companies you can learn more at Great game.com thanks everybody wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's L ren at21 hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think you can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcasts follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by Jess Theron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]