Shakin' Hands

Ep.31 | Beyond the build - Sean Oddis

• Jack Moran • Season 1 • Episode 31

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Jack Moran interviews Sean Oddis, founder of Spire Contracting, a Charleston-based construction company. They explore practical business scaling strategies, from leveraging profit-and-loss statements to creating detailed growth plans and adapting to market trends. The conversation highlights the importance of building a solid team culture rooted in clear values, leading to better hiring and stronger collaboration. Sean also shares insights on managing customer relationships and navigating challenges in the construction industry.

Spire Contracting

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Hello everybody, and welcome to episode 31 of Shakin’ Hands. I'm your host, Jack Moran. Today on the podcast, we have Sean Oddis, the founder of Spire Contracting, and we do a little. Doing great. How are you? Not too bad to start wrapping it up here on a Wednesday. That Wednesday. I think it's Thursday. Perfect. Now, you know, it's going to tell us a little bit about your business. I own Spire Contracting here in Charleston. We're a full service construction management firm. We also have, Roofing Division two, our company as well. And we, you know, focus on the customer experience. We always say we're relentlessly committed to doing what we say we're going to do, which is actually rare in my industry. So it's been really good. We're about six years in business now. Started here in Charleston, a team of ten and, really strong team looking to grow a lot of a lot of good projects. How'd you get into the business? So do you want the. The long story short. Sorry we got the time. So I've always been pretty mechanical myself in high school. I took a vocational route, but also completed all my on my math and Spanish credits to be able to go to college. And so me and my buddy were actually the first ones to graduate from our high school with the vocational degree and still go to college. So went to college at Coastal Carolina University for Entrepreneurship and Business Management. And during that time, I was actually doing a lot of wakeboarding and so thought I was going to be a professional wake boarder, move to Charleston to kind of pursue that. And after, a couple injuries and figuring out the, the payroll for the wakeboard industry decided to pivot a little bit and move downtown here in Charleston, actually on Nassau Street. And just started talking with my landlord. My place was not very well managed at the time, and they needed help with their property. Some investors out of Atlanta and so I was like, let me let me help you out. I need a job. Let's go. And started working with them. Just doing some property management, basic maintenance stuff and then renovating their properties, turning a lot of a lot of properties and Elliot Borough Canyon Borough into these single family homes. Charleston singles into short term rentals. I started doing basically all their GC work for them because I could not get anyone to do what they say they're going to do here. And so I was renovating all their places and then kind of reach my ceiling with that, and decided to get licensed myself and went to grad school at that time as well. And I got my masters in business with a focus in project management. And as I kind of started my business as I was in grad school and been doing it ever since. Do you think you got more education from the experience of being in the field, or from your masters in business? So the master's in business becomes more applicable every day. It seems, you know, when I started out, I was I was being an hamers myself. And and so your accounting classes don't do much for that. But every day I'm applying more of what I've learned in my masters. When it comes to marketing, HR, accounting. You know, as I learn in the construction industry, I'm able to apply those things that I learned at The Citadel in my master's program. So it's it's super helpful to have that foundation. What are the most important skills that you got from that master's program? I didn't get any formal like, business education from college. I went to school for environmental science. And I'm curious to hear. Like what? Yeah, I think, you know, even normal college and and masters, it's just kind of foundational things for learning and your process of how you intake information and apply it. And so by going through school, you know, taking those classes, doing my master's program, I really learned how I learn and how I can continue to learn and apply those things. So it's really just habits, right? And, you know, of course, the accounting classes taught me what a profit and loss statement is and things like that. But it was really how do I study? How do I find information and then how to apply it? I think that's kind of the most applicable part of, you know, going to a university or really any formal education. Yeah. I think it's a good, interesting segue. We've never really talked about it on the podcast, but the PNL on the balance sheet or kind of the over, you know, bird's eye view of your business. How do you utilize your PNL and your balance sheet to drive growth within the business? That is a great question. I actually sat my team down yesterday. We have team trainings. Every Tuesday. We moved to Wednesday this week because it's it's Thursday today. And and so we moved to Wednesday. And I've been getting questions and having to make a lot of financially driven decisions and you know, to my employees, it may just seem like I'm just saying no to to buying the new thing or, as far as my project managers are concerned, I'm pushing them on these projects to get them done faster because I understand the implications of that. Right? And so when it comes to the profit and loss and balance sheet, it's just keeping an eye on them on a regular basis and and looking for trends and hopefully looking for that success in revenues and profits. But but also having a plan having a plan is key. And I've really learned that in the past, past couple of years. And I'm working on our plan for 2025 right now and just laying out what did what did 2024 look like, because we obviously had a had a plan for that and a budget that we were tracking to. And you go over in some areas and you don't spend in other areas. And so taking a look at that, extrapolating it for growth and applying it to 2025 so we can have a healthier year. And what I was doing with my team yesterday that I had never done before is making sure that everyone understand, understands what, profit and loss is and why or how we use it and why we use it. So I was really setting, setting the stage for a conversation we'll have in December where we will look at our budget for 2025. And everyone on the team will understand where we can spend, where we should tighten things up and the goals that we're tracking to for 2025, because we have very aggressive goals for growth. If you were to look at how quickly we've grown and how we plan on growing, you know, a normal business equation would not say that doubling revenues is is normal. But we have the team and we're really pushing we have the ability here in Charleston to do that. But it has to be a well thought out plan financially. And, you know, from a marketing standpoint and all of that. And that's a long winded way to say that your PNL really drives that being able to, have a plan for moving forward and analyze how that plans doing on a monthly, quarterly and yearly basis. Yeah, it's great that you're utilizing that. I think as entrepreneurs, we can tend to live in the abstract, you know, especially me. And the numbers don't lie. I learned from one of my mentors. You know, I was showing him the business in the early stages of our business, and he didn't care about all the, you know, the nuts and bolts and the abstract and the story. He just went straight to the PNL and again, yeah, the numbers don't lie. And you can utilize that data to kind of reverse engineer it into a plan. And especially when you're scaling up, like if, you know, these are my inputs for this much revenue, this is my per, you know, due diligence. It is if you want to double your revenue, you just double that input. Yeah. So there's a lot of interesting things that you can do with the panel and the, and the balance sheet to forecast out and grow the business and do it in a methodical way. Yeah, yeah. And it's just having a full understanding because I didn't do that for a while. Right. And I tell my employees and my accountant, it's really all for my sleep. Yeah. It's the more I know and I know where our money is being spent and how it's being spent and how we're performing, the better. I'll sleep at night. And so, you know, we're we're working to better understand those things and, and apply them. So are you guys doing more commercial roofing or residential? So we do both on on the roofing side of things. We do both commercial and residential. And on the general contracting side, we lean a little more on the residential side right now, but we have a handful of projects going into construction or handful of commercial projects going into construction and one in construction. Right now, it's a it's a pretty cool one. But, yeah, it's kind of tough to explain. And, you know, working on the marketing side of my company right now because we do have that roofing division, but the majority of our work is in that construction management, general contracting realm, and they're both under the same name. There's Spire Contracting and Spire Roofing. And so when I first started the business, it was, I thought it would be more the cross marketing aspect of it would be very beneficial. And over the past couple of months, my team and myself have kind of come to the conclusion that it's confusing people more than it is beneficial. So we're kind of working on that right now. The roofing business is pretty hot right now, is it not? Oh yeah. That's on the model. Yeah. You know, we we hate hurricanes when they ruin people's homes and, all of that. But, you know, the storms have definitely helped out the, the roofing industry around here. And it's a it's a good business to be in. It's a consistent revenue stream. And really for me starting this business, it was just a diversification of my portfolio. And when you're in general, contracting projects kind of ebb and flow. They come on really hot and then you see this dip and, and it like a one off work. Yeah. Yeah. And it's directly correlated with the economy too. However hurricane is not coordinate coordinated with the economy or correlated. It's correlated. There we go. Too much coffee, flood emerging markets. Yeah, I was there too. So I've seen, like, roofing under the Doorknocking model. How are you guys generating your leads? Yeah. So we generate, couple of ways. Obviously, you have to have your online presence, and then we have sales individuals, roof consultants that go out Dornoch. They call around, you know, real estate agents provide a pretty good flow of business. And then we can also work for other general contractors. We do a lot of shingle roofing, but we also do some high end metal roofing. And we are really good at doing the historical roofing for, you know, downtown Charleston in the in the bar jurisdiction. So we definitely employ the the door knocking. But kind of pull on other elements of marketing as well. And honestly, in Charleston, signage is one of the best forms of marketing. Really. Oh yeah. It's interesting for our industry. Really? Yeah. Have you guys, done anything with solar other than pull them off and throw the panels away? Because the solar companies will not come back and put them on? Not too much. No. Yeah. So you know, we often take them off to replace a roof, but have not kind of moved into that industry yet. Yeah, it seems like they go kind of hand in hand. I remember when because I started before I started my company, I was knocking solar door to door lights and, we were able to roll the roofs into the tax credit. Yes. So if you know, we had to do a solar job, but they didn't have a roof, that was a good foundation for that solar project. We could fix that. The cost or the ticket for that roof into the tax credit with a solar. So they're essentially getting a free roof. Yes. So in that capacity, yes, we have a couple solar companies that bring us business. And I actually love those relationships because you guys go out and basically sell it. And then we just come in, install the roof and get paid for it. So those relationships are great. My, my mind was go into the installation of the actual solar. Yeah, yeah. You know, because there are some roofing companies that will do that. And there's actually solar shingles. Now that can be. Oh yeah. Is that are developed now. Yes. Really. Yeah. I don't know that I thought those are just concept. Yeah. So, we're certified installers and they have a nail a shingle now and not many people are doing it. I don't think the, the numbers really shake out for the tax credit equation. Yeah. But it's coming. And obviously Tesla has one as well that looks like slate. And those numbers definitely don't shake out. But yeah it's a good looking solar roof. Yeah. Yeah. What has been like the biggest hurdle that you've encountered developing your business. Biggest hurdle is probably accepting the fact that I'm more in the air business than the construction business. You know, I've actually never really worked in a corporate environment. And so it's always worked for myself pretty much. And so learning what goes on in a corporate environment, I am the leader of my corporate environment. And, you know, making sure that I'm leading my team the right way and managing my team the right way. And that's been a little bit of a learning curve. I don't know if I would necessarily categorize that as a hurdle. Yeah. I think your understanding you're you're managing people now and not solely projects to follow up on that. What's the biggest oh shit moment that you've had through your years? Because oh shit moment. Well, I'll tell you a funny one that that is not working out very well for me right now. So a couple years ago, I was probably 4 or 5 years ago. And, my, I left my trailer to a buddy of mine and just a friend. I did not advise him on how to do any construction, and he decided to take his chimney down. And I don't know if you've seen this video into the dunk trailer. And he filmed it and he posted it. And to this day, my phone rings 4 or 5 times a day, you know, with people asking me about this video and asking if I can take their chimney down. And, and so when I didn't think it was a big deal, I mean, five years ago, things didn't trend like they do now. And it just it just spiked again. And now I'm starting to realize that it could be affecting my business. And I had nothing to do with it other than lending a trailer. So my phone number was on the side of the trailer, and my business was on the side of the trailer. So that was probably one of the it's more become an oh shit moment as of late. And, there's no money in the chimney removal business there is on TikTok. I'm sure people are monetizing it. But, yeah, not the way that he did it because it totaled the trailer. Yeah, yeah. There's a, actually a good amount of contractors that watch this podcast. And I have heard, like, as a trend, that it is difficult for them to scale their business up. You know, they kind of have this like revenue that they're hitting. And it's difficult because I know in the least in my business that one off work, you know, you have, like you said, ebbs and flows and the revenue that comes in and it can be difficult to cover that burn rate that you have when when you don't have those jobs. How do you deal with that? Yeah. So, you know, the construction industry, I always say construction is a contact sport, right? It's you're you're dealing with humans, you're dealing with projects. And it it totally ebbs and flows and and gross can be difficult. But you really just have to keep pushing. And I think it's really in the people. I have some really great people on my team. Now that help me to grow. And, I think contractors are, you know, very money conscious. And so they want to they want to build something, make their profit margin move on to the next when you know that works. But, it's it doesn't work so well in growing a business. You you need to see that you can build that and you can build that and invest in this while you're doing that to grow your business. And so what I have done or what I have learned to grow my business, is hire the right people and hire them quickly. If you have a good backlog and you see projects coming, get that superintendent on board. Get that project manager on board. Make sure you have the right staff and own those projects as quickly as you can to move on to the next and continue to do that. I you know, my first couple of hires were tough for me to swallow. You know, it's a big ticket item and especially when you're hiring someone when you're new and paying them as much as you're paying yourself. But you just have to accept that as a business person, not necessarily a contractor, but a business person. If your goal is to grow, you need to back it with the manpower and back it quickly because there are a lot of contractors in this industry that do not do that. And I think that's a big driver of why the term contractor gets a bad rap, because they want or a lot of contractors want to move on to the next project and or double their workload and keep the same manpower and make more money, which is great. No, I want to make more money, but that's not how you're going to scale your business. You need to hire the right people right before you double your work load, and then continue to do that. But accepting that is is is the hardest part of growing a construction company. Yeah. And I think it's, you know, not just limited to construction. I actually had this conversation this morning about team building. And it's probably the biggest or the most difficult challenge that I've encountered is building, you know, a a good team. What is your methodology for attracting the right people? Is it through your messaging or do you have filters that you create? Went through your hiring process? How do you get the right people? Great question, because I've gotten a lot better at this and I'm taking notes. And it's really to always be interviewing and always be hiring. And what it really starts with is happy employees. If you have a good culture and you have happy employees, they're going to talk about it and they're going to share their experience with their friends. And so that paired with always having conversations. So I don't need a superintendent today, but I am talking to superintendents right now for the future. I think that's very key because when you do need that employee, it's too late. And and then you're going out and you're going on in deed or whatever, which brings you the worst candidates, and you're hunting for someone, and then you're in a pinch and then you're hiring someone that's maybe applicable, maybe aligns with your team, or maybe maybe not 100%, but you need them at that time. And so you can offset that by always interviewing, always having conversations. I have 5 or 6 numbers in my phone for multiple positions in my company right now, that when I do need to fill that position, I'm talking to those people. And we've actually one of the hardest or biggest hurdles is creating a good culture in in your company. You know, I didn't think about that getting into the construction industry. I was like, oh, I want to build cool stuff. And then slowly started to realize that culture is huge and creating a good energy within your company. And like I said, people will start talking about that. And we've been very lucky. Our past couple hires have been friends of friends or past coworkers, and they they have come to us because they've heard about spire and they've heard about their friends experience. And one example is he was an indeed candidate, our superintendent. I had a conversation with him, brought him on board, and actually one of his references that I spoke with his boss in in Nashville. So Josh moved from Nashville, he came on with our company, and then his boss followed him here and started working somewhere else, but knew about his experience this entire time I'm talking with him, we're just having very loose conversations because he's moving to Charleston. And, you know, I may or may not need someone. And the day he got here, I did not need someone. And two weeks later, I needed someone. And, he heard about Josh's experience. And, you know, he came in and we had some conversations, got him on some job sites, and now he's working for us. He's running three projects in Wagner Terrace and great employee. They're both ex Marines. It just happened really organically because of that mentality of always interviewing and always talking to candidates. It's interesting you take like a sales approach to onboarding. It's like always keeping that pipeline full. Exactly. It's the exact same. You have to you talked about culture before. What are the fundamentals to a good culture. How do you drive culture within your company? So there's a number of ways that I've learned to to drive culture. It really starts with values right at spire. Our values, our respect, rigor and responsibility. So as far as the workplace is concerned, being respectful of your coworkers, whether it's time or their space or all the above rigor, just working hard and then responsibility being accountable for your actions. And we we preach that everyone eats, sleeps and breathes it. It's on every bit of our letterhead and and all of that. And when having conversations with your coworkers or your employees, you can always go back to that. That is your baseline is your values. And I've I make decisions every day about, you know, with my employees or about my employees based on those values. You know, if I get in a pinch and I'm thinking, which which way should I go on this, just go back to the values. Does it align with your values or does it not. And so I think that's the baseline of having a good culture is defining your values and sharing those values throughout the company. And then outside of that, it's hiring a cohesive team, making sure that the candidates not only have the skills, but really have the attitude that you're looking for. I always say you can hire for attitude, train for skill, right? Interesting. You can't train for attitude. So as long as we're hiring for that attitude that we're looking for, then it's going to be a good fit with the team. And one way that we do that as well is the personality assessments. So everyone tends to use Myers-Briggs or something or no, it's predictive index and it's a very simple one. Actually. One of my mentors that owned a construction company introduced it to me and you can just kind of see, you know, people's mentality and their skills and their weaknesses. There's no wrong personality assessment, but it's just kind of understanding how people approach work and relationships. And so taking a look at that early on really helps with understand is, is that person a good fit for the role, and is that person a good fit for the team as well? You're having that data. You're setting them up for success from the beginning, right? Right. We're in construction, so urgency is key or else we'll never get anything done. And so anyone that that joins our team, we look for a certain level of urgency in the majority of our positions now estimating you know, maybe that's a little different. But but those personality assessments really help with understanding how a person operates and how they're going to fit into the team. And it also helps with conflict resolution. And I'm not talking about squaring up with one of your employees, but really just when there's issues in the workplace, maybe someone is a little frustrated with someone else. And every time that that happens my senior year, you're asked immediately, what's that? And needs to be addressed immediately, needs to be addressed immediately. But you pull out those personality assessments and you can usually see, okay, this person is extremely detail oriented, some urgency, not so social or whatever, and their coworker is extremely urgent and not that precise. Okay, well, she wants things really fast and he's trying to figure out everything that goes into it. And so that's the problem. You guys need to come to a common ground, stop looking at all the details, give them a little more time. You know, and it's it's it's really helpful in that sense. But going back to creating a culture, all of those things help. But really just being a strong team, doing doing things together and getting together on a regular basis. Like I said, we started doing these Tuesday trainings and some of them are extremely organized and some of them are more just like a town hall. Just a conversation. Yesterday I wanted to address those financial conversations and help everyone understand where I'm coming from, making these financially driven decisions that they don't really understand, that they're financially driven and they just think, maybe I'm saying no, or I'm saying yes or whatever for whatever reason. But those Tuesday trainings have really helped to bring the team together. Everyone always learned something and sometimes our our project manager will teach it, our business development guy will teach it will all chime in. One of the best ones that we had was everyone just going around the room. And I mean, we're a team of ten. We're not that big, right? But everyone has their own role in talking about what does your day to day look like? What is the easiest part of your job, and where could you use help? Because we are a team and we employ that team mentality. We're only a team of ten, so everyone should be chipping in when they're a coworker in the field, you know, needs needs, help cleaning up a job site or whatever. Our business development guy, you know, if he's free to go clean up the job site. And that training was a great one, because you would think that a team of ten, everyone would know what everyone does, but they really don't because everyone goes out in the field, does their own thing, comes back, maybe they lunch together and, you know, talk about family stuff or whatever, but every employee doesn't know what each other do. And so that was a great one. And that has really helped with our culture, because people appreciate learning really at the end of the day. And it's very simple stuff. But everyone has their own skill set and usually there's 2 or 3 people in that room that whatever we're teaching or talking about that day maybe don't have that skill set. And so it's super helpful for them. Yeah. That's interesting. I could take a page out of your book. I think, you know, I ten my pattern tends to be to run kind of a siloed business where it seems like you have kind of that open line of communication. That's interesting how people can play off each other's skills when there is that collaboration. It didn't happen overnight. It was it was a bit of a long road to get there and to get the right team. The I don't know if there's ever the perfect team, but the team that we have now is totally in-tune with being collaborative, helping each other out, open line of communication and just sharing information quickly with each other and my, you know, our administrator will be out in the field one day and helping. The guy is just walking around taking notes or whatever. Like she doesn't have to stay at her desk. Go have some fun, see what's going on in the field and things like that. And our team now is is super in tune with that teamwork mentality and helping each other out. I had a recent like moment. I was reading, at the airport, Harvard Business Review, and currently in our company, we're really trying to like focus on culture. And I think in the past our methodology was to be like, this is our culture. And like, you know, transparency, say transparency is one of our values. And we'd be like, don't lie to customers. Yeah, but what the Harvard what this case study said was that people retain the information and you can facilitate a culture better by training through case studies. So instead of saying like, we don't like looking at a case study and saying, in this situation, the customer sales rep relationship was this and this was the problem that they encountered. And this is how we approached it in correlation with our values. And that is retained better. And we've had a lot of success, training that way through those case studies and past problems to instill our values. Instead of just like throwing them at the person saying, this is how you can should conduct yourself, right? Yeah. Providing context to values is is very key. And looking at case studies or lessons learned and things like that is extremely helpful for for people to understand. And documenting all those case studies is really important too, so you can utilize them in the future. Yeah, yeah. Especially now being six years in the construction industry, even just in our company, we have plenty of things to look at, to look back and say, you know, it was it was good. But we could have we could have done this. And, you know, a lot of, a lot of the people that are here with me now may not have been with me back then. And looking at, you know, something that's applicable to their day to day is extremely helpful. And I have an interesting question I think our audience might find useful. But as a general contractor, you're probably dealing with a lot of subcontractors. And I know a lot of people with startup businesses are relying on a lot of freelancers. How do you vet a subcontractor that you haven't heard you haven't previously done work with? And how do you like, you know, essentially determine if they are going to get the job done and they can be trusted, and they're the person that you should utilize for the job. Great question. We would be nothing without our subcontractors. So they're very important. And I think, every day because they're really the heart and soul of or they're the fuel for our business. Right. So to answer your question, like day one, what are you looking for? My first step in finding a new subcontractor would be reaching out to my network. So we're involved. Testimonials. Yeah. So we're involved in AIAA, Urban Land Institute, Chamber of Commerce. And then, of course, we have a big network of friends and associates in the construction industry. And anyone in the construction industry or an owner of a construction company knows the struggle of finding good trade partners, trade partners, not subcontractors. And so I have a handful of other owners that I'll reach out to and say, hey, you know, we have a ton of work right now. I'm looking for another another framer, for example, and then hopefully he shares a number two or whatever. And we get to reach out to that individual. And from there, our process is first getting to know the individual, looking at their portfolio and then bringing them into the office and doing a bit of an interview. The contractor that goes to Lowe's and picks up a crew and goes straight to his job site. That's the one that gives us a bad, bad name, right? So we try to make it, a simple but thorough process. Bring them into the office, have a conversation. Hopefully we're talking the same language at that point. Usually we are. And then from there, we'd like to visit a job site or two and speak with references. So we'll go out, send a project manager out and take a look at the job site. And there's so many things once you're in this industry, like, you know, you walk on the job site, look in the back of his truck. What kind of tools to the app is it organized? And then he's not going to take you to his worst job site. Right. But does he have control? Does he have good guys? He or she have good guys or gals? And are they practicing good safety, safety measures, things like that? And when you get on that job site, you can you can usually tell is this a professional setting? Are these good guys? And can they come work for us. And so that's usually our first stop. And then from there if we bring them on we just keep a close eye to start. We keep a close eye on all our projects. And we have superintendents in the field, you know, boots on the ground every day. But those new guys, you want to really understand how they work. Because in our industry there's guys that will send you an estimate on QuickBooks, and there's ones that'll send you a screenshot of their Apple notes. And with no scope of work and like just a number. So and how you do things, how you do everything. Yeah. However some of those Apple Notes guys are my best guys today are my best trade partners. So you can't fully judge on that. But are they sticking to their their word? And like I said, we say we are relentlessly committed to doing what we say we're going to do. And that has to be top to bottom. And so are they showing up on time? Are they doing what they say they're going to do? Because if I'm telling my client I'm going to do what I say I'm going to do, and my superintendent says it, but then our trade partners are not living, not as well, and they're not showing up on on the day that work is supposed to be done, then we've kind of dropped it on our promise. Right? So as far as we're concerned, that's unacceptable. And we keep a close eye on that from the start. And then, you know, if we bring them on and they're doing all right work but not doing what they say they're going to do, then we'll try to kind of pivot from there, get them in in the right zone. And if we can't do that, we'll have to move on from there. But so really, just like a quick pilot test, keeping a close eye and then moving on. But we are we're lucky at this point that we have some really good trade partners. We have a a good core group to facilitate our projects and they show up. We've trained them on our values, we've talked values with them. We talked about being relentlessly committed to doing what we say we're going to do. And they understand that. They understand that if we grow, they grow as well. As far as trade partner retention is concerned in our industry is just pay them fast. You know, if you're paying them fast and you're able to do that, then they're going to stick around. You don't want to overextend your payments. You want to pay them the right amount, but pay them quickly. And and they're going to be by your side. True to my you want to be treated. Exactly. Yeah. And I think, you know the message I'm taking away and I think it's a really important message, is you have to take the extra time to do that due diligence because this person is going to have an effect on your product, which is so important for you guys. Your product is your reputation. And so you have to ensure that you do that due diligence in the beginning to ensure the quality on the back end. Correct? Yeah, 100%. In a competitive industry like the roofing business, how do you guys, you know, get a client to go with you? What are the fundamentals that you believe. Move the needle on why a client chooses you over someone else. I'm guessing it's not just price, right? Well, we would hope it's not just price. And sorry, I was your question referring to just roofing or in general, what do you think is like why? What influences a person to choose your company over someone else's? So we hope that at the end of the day, that they're choosing us based on our values and our communication. That's how we want to be competitive and have a competitive edge, is showing them that we aren't the contractor that shows up and disappears for for a week or two. We are not the company that you're not going to know exactly what's going on at all times. And so it is a bit of a process for them to see that. Look, these these guys are on it. They're they're quick, they're professional. And they care about what they're doing. And so we try to create a relationship with them through really our pre-construction process and show them, look, we're working hard. We're here, we're acting in your best interest and we're all a team. It's not our client versus us. We're all in this together. And, our goal is to not be racing to the bottom on projects. We want to we want to get in and show the clients that we have the team that's going to work hard and we're going to deliver a budget to you that we know we can meet, and we're going to deliver a schedule that we know we can meet and we're going to create that certainty of outcome for your project. You know, everyone homeowners, developers, most everyone has been stung by that contractor that comes in, tells them one thing, does something else. Whether it's the project takes forever, it costs way more. I would say 90% of the homeowners that I meet with, their biggest thing is not being stuck with a big bill that they did not expect at the end of the project, and so we just have to show clients how we do not do that because we don't. We track to our budgets, we track to our schedules, and if there's major unforeseen, they're the first to know. I always, I always tell my employees good news, fast, bad news faster, right? Because if you get it out of the way, then we can deal with it and we can pivot from there. It's great advice, but if you don't talk about it, then you end up with the same guy that sticks you with that bill. At the end of the project, you end up just like that guy. And so good news, fast, bad news faster. As far as setting ourselves apart and competing in the marketplace, it's exactly that values creating a certainty of outcome for our clients and also sharing references with them, making sure they're talking with our past clients or even current clients about their experience.

For example, today at 3:

00 today, we're bringing a client by a project we have going on in Wagner Terrace. And, you know, they're looking to do a project on their house. And so they're going to meet with our superintendent. They're going to walk through. He's going to show them that he knows everything that's going on on that project. And when the project's going to be done, exactly how much the client has spent at that point, what they have to spend and just show him that he has control of his job site, and that's really how we want to compete in the marketplace, is show our team, show our clients that we have the ability to deliver and bring them to job sites, check references, things like that. Those have been our best clients to date. The clients that are not ideal for us are the ones that don't check our references, and they're too busy to come to our job site. You're going to spend half $1 million or million or however much with us, but you don't want to come meet our superintendent and look at our work. Well, then you care about just price. Most likely. Now it's really going to us. What is your goal for your business, and how do you take that goal in that vision and bring it into like a actionable plan? So when I would have told you a couple of years ago that my goal is to build the biggest things possible, it's it's changed a little bit. My overall goal is to be a sought after employer and, sought after company to work with. No growth comes after those two. Growth is and we obviously have financial goals that are pretty lofty over the next 5 to 10 years. But the growth doesn't matter if we're not a sought after employer. And if people in this town or other towns don't want to work with us. So our goal is to attract talent while attracting clients by being a good company, and then growth will kind of fall into place from there. What's your own personal definition of success? My personal definition of success would be creating, successful and respectful legacy, whether it's in business or in life. Strong, strong relationships, both in business and life. And looking back at the end of the day and, you know, looking, saying, I built a bad ass company and had a great life. You know, what's the biggest thing that you've learned through your entrepreneurial journey that you wish you knew when you started? Be humble. Because when, when I started, I thought I knew everything I was doing. Small renovation and things like that. And I was like, I know everything about construction. But come to find out, I knew nothing. And, you know, I knew how to somewhat build things. And I went to school for management. But being humble and accepting that you're going to be learning every single day. And that's really the favorite. My favorite part about what I do is learning every day, because if you think you know everything, then you're not going to be taking it in and learning it, right. But since I'm humble and I know that there's so much more information out there than I can be learning every day and building a better business and becoming a better person in general, you know, that's a great perspective. Final question is what habits do you have that you think, support your productive habits that I have are important to your success? Yeah, 100%. For me, it's exercise on you know, I have to exercise, you know, at least five times a week. And, when I, when I don't do that, then work starts to creep in. And I don't have that release. I have a number of hobbies surfing, golfing, disc golf, boating, fishing, all of that. And so, you know, taking the time to do those things, I think is important for a reset as an entrepreneur. But outside of that is, for me, another habit is especially when I'm, feeling overwhelmed. I'm a big pen and paper guy. Just get it out. You know, I, I don't even use lined paper. Just a white sheet of paper. And and writing everything down that's on my mind. And then and getting it out, and then I can organize it and address it from there. But in entrepreneurship, you know, there's times that you feel like there's nothing to do, and then there's times that you're extremely overwhelmed and at those times that you're overwhelmed, or when you feel like there's nothing to do, I just brain dump. And, that's a very important practice for me. And then I can start to kind of manage priorities from there. And then habits, really scheduling and scheduling things out is an important habit that I've had to learn. My fiance does a great job of it. You know, you look at her calendar and it's just everything's lined up and she knows exactly when she's doing everything. Mind is not quite like that, but planning ahead and understanding that there's plenty of time to get to things and having a habit of pushing the low priority things out and moving the high priority things up and and getting them all on your calendar. And then you can you can start to to manage from there. So fantastic advice. I could definitely use some organization within my life. Yeah, we're males. We are good right? The females have it down. Yeah for sure. Where can people find you if they want to reach out or they're interested in your services? So our website is www.spirecharleston.com. And then you can find us on Instagram@spirecontracting. Fantastic. Well I appreciate you coming on. It's apparent that you're, you have an in-depth knowledge base and your success is inspiring. So congratulations. Yeah. Thanks so much. Thanks for the invite. Well, that concludes this episode of Shakin’ Hands. I'm your host, Jack, and if you have any suggestions for guests that you want to see on the show or questions that you want to ask to, please don't hesitate to reach out. But, other than that, we'll catch you guys next time. Thank you. Thank you.

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Jack Moran

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