Steve Van Buskirk – Dirt to 6,600 Lots: Building a City

I showed up my first day at work and he'd hand me this, you know,

huge roll of blueprints and said here, figure out how to get this

thing built. So like, you know, that big

180,000 square foot power center called up.

So we're not going to pay rent. The thing that's really

rewarding about what, you know, what we do with development is

that we take these ideas of, you know, this bare piece of ground

and we and we turned it into a building that somebody lives in

somebody, you know, has an office in, or they're they're

selling dresses out of or they're manufacturing fire

trucks out of, you know, it's actually getting used.

I'm. Hey there and welcome to From

the Ground Up Show, the show where we encourage and inspire

the next generation of free thinking leaders by telling the

stories of those that have been there, done that, and are still

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merchandise. Today, I am super excited and

honored to have Steve Van Buskirk joining us.

Steve is the owner and CEO of Van Buskirk Companies in Sioux

Falls, SD Van Buskirk has developed slash established 40

neighborhoods, 120 commercial developments and they have sold

6600 lots. They have built 1125 apartments.

Steve and his company have quite literally built Sioux Falls, SD

Steve has an incredible amount of experience in land

development, construction and property management.

So, Steve, thanks for joining us today.

Yeah, thank you for having me. It'll be fun.

I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, I'm excited to glean a

little bit of your experience and and learn a little bit more

about your business. So we like to start off every

show just getting to know you a little bit.

So could you tell us a little bit about your life growing up?

Yeah, absolutely I will. I will.

The one thing I want to want to talk to your listeners about is

that it's a family business. So I've got I've got partners

and we'll get into that more. So I, you know, got the got the

intro there. My brother's my Co CEO or we're

Co CE OS and my brother and sister in the business and we're

second generation, but we'll get we'll get into that as we go

forward. So it's a it's a group effort.

So all that stuff that you listed off is way too exhausting

for one person to do by themselves.

It's definitely A-Team effort. But yeah.

So you're asking about growing up.

Yeah. I grew up in, I was born in

Dubuque, IA. My dad was an engineer at John

Deere. He wanted to get back closer to

Hitchcock, SD, which is close to here on South Dakota, in the

middle of the state. And that's where my mom and dad

grew up, as in here on Hitchcock.

And they are tired of living out in other parts of the country.

So they, they move back and we're, we're always happy that

they, it didn't go quite as far back as Huron.

They stopped in Sioux Falls along the way because Sioux

Falls is just an amazing Economic Community and

opportunity, you know, for people in the construction

development business. My parents came back in 71.

So, so I was, I was just out in Iowa for just a, a minute.

I went I moved back in 71 and and I was born and raised in

Sioux Falls and and grew up as a town grew up.

So it really did when a weird we moved back in 71 Sioux Falls

started kind of the decades. You know that in 70 or 70

thousand, 8080 thousand, you know, 9090 thousand is kind of

how the population of Sioux Falls tracks.

So it really saw that community grow up from a a town that

really, from my perspective as a young person, didn't have a

whole lot going on. It was, you know, one of those

places where you want to grow up and go out and see greener

things in the bigger city when you're all done.

But it's it's been a part of the fun part to be part of that

growth and watch it grow up as as I was there.

You said this was a family business.

I'm assuming it was your dad that started the business.

Yeah, yeah. My mom and dad wanted to start

the business. They their their idea was to

start a manufacturing business. He's a mechanical engineer from

South Dakota State University, but he wanted to start a

manufacturing business. So he came back, started a trust

plant, which is roof trusses and floor trusses that most people

are familiar with. So he started that and then he

figured out he could sell more trusses if he's building houses

and he figured out he could build more houses if he was

doing land development. So one thing, one thing led to

another, you know, as far as their as far as their growth

pattern through, you know, those, those early years.

So, but that was that was the beginning.

So the company actually started in Brandon and then Sioux Falls

came on as a they bought a subdivision in Sioux Falls.

So they end up moving the business in Sioux Falls.

You know, it's 20 minutes, you know, 15 minutes away from each

other, but just be a little bit closer to it.

But yeah, that was that was the start of it.

It just two people with a crazy dream to do something.

Oh, man, yeah, that sounds like a wild adventure.

And you said you were born in Iowa, so you were alive when

they started the company? Yeah, yeah.

Not aware, but alive. My older brother.

My older brother, his memory, the guy I'm the CEO with now, he

he remembers come because he would have been 7 or 8 when that

all started. So they can't they came over and

he remembers helping my dad paint the house, which were

that's always debatable how how good A7 or 8 year old was was

doing. But they bought a house in the

middle of Sioux Falls and you know, came over to get it

prepped for the rest of us to move, move back to South Dakota.

Yeah, OK. All right.

And do you remember that move at all?

How old were you at that time? No.

I really don't. I was only a 1, so a little too

young. I do remember our I do remember

our first house that we lived on because the best part about it

was in the middle of Sioux Falls and Kitty corner across the

street. There's like a convenience store

and you know, I knew it as the candy store.

So Kit, you know, Kitty corner across the street, I grew up

from a candy store. So it really doesn't get much

better than that. So we're we're in that house for

a long time. So yeah.

So to reminisce on the childhood a little bit, we're in that

house for a quite a while. We have some good memories of

that. But then we moved to the West

side of Sioux Falls, which is Kingswood area was really where

my dad, he got started, you know, in that, that neighborhood

probably like the late 70s. And we, you know, we primarily

developed, you know, residential housing gas through like

probably early thousands. So we're, we're developing land

on the West side of Sioux Falls for 30 years.

But when I grew out there, I was one of the, the first houses,

you know, the new, new houses on that whole side of town.

But my, my memories of the kid were running around construction

job sites and taking the wood and stacking it up and nail it

together to build forts and crawl through storm sewer pipes

and biking around and generally cause causing too much trouble

on the, you know, you know, out in that neighborhood.

But that was, you know, kind of the back in the 70s and 80s

where kids were, you know, you just send them out the door and

tell them what time dinner was and they better, you better show

up for dinner. That was the, that was the

cardinal rule around our house. But other than that, you know,

stay out there and try not to get in too much trouble.

So, so a lot of good, lot of good memories of growing up and

got good friends that, you know, to this day they're in Sioux

Falls and business in Sioux Falls and, and you have a lot of

good relationships growing up there.

So it's fun. It's, it's, it's fun to be still

in that same town that you, you, you know, spent so many years in

there, 50 years, I guess in Sioux Falls now.

So really know a lot of people and, you know, it's fun to do

things together, you know, with the, the people that live there.

And, you know, we've grown up to be business leaders and, you

know, advocates for the community and our own right now.

So it's, it's fun. It's a good place and Sioux

Falls is really great place. That's awesome.

Yeah. That sounds like a great way to

grow up. It's not a lot dissimilar from

the way I grew up. So growing up in Sioux Falls,

your dad had already started the business and it sounds like he

kicked it off and and really kicked it into gear early.

When did you decide that you were going to go into the family

business? You know, it kind of a strange

path of that, you know, we, you know, grew up, you know, because

it's we like to joke amongst our family that we're, you know,

we're, we're a bunch of farm kids that happen to work in the

construction business. You know, so we are, we're

always, always working in, in it, You know, there, you know,

those early years in the 70s and 80s.

And I suspect there wasn't many that didn't have one of the Van

Buster kids and they're cleaning houses and mowing lawns and, you

know, trying to keep the, you know, trying to keep things, you

know, in order. I remember growing up with my

mom, you know, she'd pick us up from school and we go, you know,

we go to the carpet store to pick what colored carpet is

going in the house and the tile store and the countertop store

and the paint store. You know, that was that was some

of the after school activities. We just be, you know, dragging

around, running around on carpet piles, you know, having fun

while my mom's trying to concentrate on figuring out how

to make the house look good. So somebody would buy the thing.

It's so I, you know, grew up with it.

And I tell that part of the story.

I grew up with it really had no intention of coming back into

the business. You know, it was I was kind of

had my feel of, you know, you know, construction business and

all that. But went away to went away to

college and ended up graduating in 1992, which in that time was

just AI went to the University of Minnesota was where I was

going to college. So right, as as as graduating

out of Business School, you know, there's a pretty major

recession going on at that at that point.

And it seemed like half of Minneapolis was getting laid

off. You know, you know, the big

companies like, you know, Honeywell and three M and all

those, I mean, putting thousands of people out on the street with

no jobs. Everybody from college was going

out and getting whatever job they could find something to pay

the bills, you know, some sort of service job or labor job or

anything. Yeah.

So there's for the new college grads at that.

That 92 time frame is really, really hard to find a job.

So trying to figure out what to do and I've had enough of that,

but working with my hands growing up.

So I really wasn't too excited to do that.

I was ready to do something professional.

So talking to my dad, he said, well, you know, I'm going to

retire soon. I'm going to retire soon.

This turns into a inside family joke.

I'm going to retire soon and if you know, if you ever want to

come back here and work in the business, you know, now's the

time. Come on back and then you can

have a job. That's my best option at the

time. So I decided to go back and

start in on the business. The joke is, is that my dad is

still, well, he was in the office today.

He's 85 years old, you know, so you know, he hasn't, he hasn't

quite figured out how to retire yet.

So he doesn't do the day-to-day operations.

But he has long since he has not come close to retirement because

he just, he loves hanging out with the family and he loves

what we do. And, and it's, it's fun to have

him there. But yeah, he, he did not retire.

So he, he kind of, he kind of suckered me in on that one just

a little bit, I think. But you know, that's the way it

worked. But you're going to retire soon

in quotes. Yeah, exactly.

Soon, yeah, Four, Yeah, 35 years later, you're still doing it.

But. But yeah.

So anyway, so I came back in 92, you know, really did not, you

know, like a true construction background and didn't have it.

And I got when I came back, my dad had eyeballed a piece of

land and he wanted to build 40 unit apartment buildings on it.

And he's, you know, so I showed up my first day at work and he

hand me this, you know, huge roll of blueprints and said

here, figure out how to get this thing built.

So I really, you know, I had to figure out how to get a bill.

Obviously he's there for a resource and all the contacts

and all the all the history there, but really left it to me

a kind of the secret swim of training methodology is what was

employed. So I just, I went went to work

as a project manager, a Superintendent, you know, you

know, working on banking side of it, you know, you know,

everything that needed to happen to get that apartment, you know,

that apartment project completed.

You know, I really did the whole thing from, you know, soup, soup

to nuts. And yeah, so I'm out there at a

21 year old, you know, no training and construction

really. I mean, I've been observer and

around it and, you know, you know, understood a lot.

You know, so not like I'd never walked on a job site before, but

to actually tell people, you know, this is what we need to do

next for scheduling or show them how to do it.

You know, I was, I was doing a lot of reading at night trying

to figure out how to get all the stuff done.

And that didn't exist right back then.

So it really wasn't part of the resources available.

But so anyway, so, you know, jumped in, started building

apartments and that's where those thousand apartments came

from. So, you know, that was the

beginning of it. So you got that project done and

got it up and built. And, and then we went, went on

to build probably for another 5-6 years.

We kind of went on apartment building spree, you know,

getting, you know, getting some of that, that side of the

business built up. So that's, that's really where

I, I really, I got my construction experience, you

know, because I was there, you know, 12 hours a day or whatever

it takes, you know, you know, to figure it all out and, and

managed all those, all those projects.

So that was kind of a nice baseline of knowledge for me,

you know, for to carry me forward, you know, through the

rest of my career as we got into other other types of

construction, commercial construction or what not, you

know, really got to understand it at that point.

So did that for the early years with the apartments, you know,

that basically up to probably about 90, you know, 899.

And then I met my wife. I moved in with my wife back in

Minnesota and she was, she was living in Minnesota again.

So I took a year off from my career and went up to back up to

University of Minnesota, the Carlson School of Management up

there. Got my MBA in finance.

I graduated 99 or 98, I guess I graduated 98 and I ended up

getting married in 99 and drug my wife back to Sioux Falls

kicking and screaming because she was not happy about it.

But I, I guess I gave her a good enough sales job she could, she

decided to come. But so about that time, you

know, the, you know, the late 90s, early 2000s, you know,

housing was just taking off, you know, because we're, you know,

if you think back, we're leading up to the 2000 and five 2006,

you know, bubble and housing meltdown, you know, so all that

was taking off in Sioux Falls and Sioux Falls continues to

grow about 3 1/2 four percent growth rate year over year.

So there's, you know, you know, you know that, you know, we're,

we kind of expect, you know, 4 to 5000 people a year to show up

in town so that, you know, business, you know, the

community is great for people in our business and always so many

showing up, you know, within reason to buy a buy a house or

rent an apartment. But so those early 2000 years,

housing was taken off, So we really set aside the multifamily

part of the business, started focusing on the land

development, the single family housing to really keep up with

that effort there. So really had some, you know,

crazy busy years in the single family housing development side,

you know, so that that really kept me busy in there and that

and that time we're never we weren't building houses back

then and that in that period. So that, you know, that's kind

of those are kind of those early years.

And I should interject there about four or five years after I

got started, my brother, my older brother Mike, who is our

who we share the CEO duties with right now, he came back in there

and picked up the property management business because

about 93 or somewhere in there we we pulled, we had some people

managing our apartments for us. So they just really weren't

doing that great of a job. I had actually had a had a slow

winter in there right before my brother came back.

And so over the course of winter, I forgot how to manage

all the apartments or, you know, wrote a wrote a thought.

I figured it out, but you know, tried to try to, I started in on

it, wrote a operations book and you know this so that that one

summer we, you know, took over our apartment management.

And then my brother kind of came loose from his career, his early

career, and he came back and started in on the property

management side of the business. So he joined, I would say it was

probably 96 or 7. I think it's probably when he he

came back to the company did when I started in 92, it was

just, it was my dad and a secretary that was it.

And he had a partner that was a building that is building houses

on the land that he owned. So it was pretty small.

We're up to about 65 employees now, so we've grown it quite.

A bit, yeah. Yeah.

So your older brother, he, he did not come back to the family

business as quickly as you did. He had another career before

that. Yeah.

He was a mechanical engineer out of SDSU as well.

Followed my dad's footsteps, but he went to Colorado and he's

working in a manufacturing facility out there.

So he actually got a lot of really good training, which, you

know we can we can use all these, you know, bring these

skills back in as a family business is is wonderful.

So he did a lot of management training, you know, with just in

time inventory. It was, it was kind of a new

thing back then, you know, so he was part of a management group

that was running around trying to teach their, their suppliers

how to supplied the semiconductor company that he

was working for. So he had a lot of really good

opportunities to learn in those, you know, those management

techniques. So he was, he was doing that

till he got tired of it. And then he went out and started

working on his own, following the entrepreneurial track of the

family. He found himself in a little bit

of a wall there and we needed, we needed help in the timing was

right. So he came back for a summer.

Visit and by the end of it, we talked him into coming back to

Sioux Falls and run the property management business and that,

you know, that's where he started, but it's all the roles

have changed since then. Yeah.

So it sounds like growing up, you decided to go to college

without a mind to necessarily come back to the family business

and then eventually return to get your MBA.

Do you still feel like that was a wise track to take, or have

you seen things shift when you're advising your own kids?

But would you encourage them to take a similar track?

Well, that's, that's a, that's a timely subject for us because

we're, you know, we're, we're second.

I'm second generation, my siblings are second generation.

And, you know, we got the, we got the, you know, the young

kids kind of coming out of college now, you know, so

they're that third generation is out there.

And my siblings and I all felt very strongly.

It's that, you know, our kids, you know, our nieces and

nephews, you know, go out and do your thing, you know, go out and

explore the world and explore your careers.

And, you know, if you have a inclination to come back, you

know, and then it makes sense somewhere in the fabric of the

organization, you know, then that could be a possibility.

But we really encourage them to go out and do their own thing.

And and the other the results of that are still outstanding.

But we've got, you know, we've got a civil engineer, which, you

know, he's, you know, got the skill set to do it.

But we've got nurses, we got a graphic art, we got a

microbiologist. We've got one in medical school

and one in mechanical engineering and a couple of

young ones in there. So, yeah.

So nobody really, you don't really see, you know, anybody

but the civil engineer, which he's on a happy track with his

company. So I think he's satisfied for

the most part. So, you know, so I don't know, I

don't know how you know how that'll work.

But what we've, what we've concentrated on within our

organization, because we always knew, because we always all of

us had kids late and that we're going to be pretty old by the

time these kids would want to come in, that we really need to

have a, a really strong, a group of professional managers.

And that's, yeah, that's really what we're working on.

That's our strategic focus right at the moment is, you know, is

getting in that next group of people in that, you know, we got

some good young leaders. We got some really experienced

leaders in there as well. So we've got this really great

mix of professional management coming in that can, you know,

manage the business and all the real estate portfolio that we've

put together all these years. So, so that's what that's what

that's how we're going to continue to manage the business

going forward. And we'll see how the kids, how

the kids all make their decision that we did that.

You know, there's, you know, there's, you know, family

businesses are tricky, you know what?

And there's a lot of failures out there.

And and we've been so lucky with, you know, my parents is

the type of founder that they are where they're not, you know,

not micromanagers and hovering over you and saying what

somebody I've done it for the last, you know, 25 years.

And this is, you know, how how you need to do it.

They've been really good about starting with that first roll of

blueprints, you know, go figure it out for yourself and make it

happen. You know, so they really gave

us, you know, a chance to go out there and, you know, to see

succeed or fail, you know, and, and do and do different things.

And, and we have, we're, we're into, you know, areas of the

development that my parents were never, you know, thought about

and weren't interested in and had very little excitement about

it, you know, you know, during their, during their time of

really making those strategic decisions, you know, so my

siblings and I are so closely aligned, you know, because

we're, we're out sweeping those houses and painting houses and

mowing lawns together. And we, we grew up in it.

We understand what it takes. We can take long term views.

And, you know, so that's, that's, we're really fortunate

to have that. So this this next generation is

this third generation comes in. We really want to have them.

We want we've already started to have a meeting so they

understand the business better. We're laying some of that

groundwork. Even the matter if they end up

being owners of the company and someone else is running it or,

you know, find having to find themselves inside of it.

But we've always thought amongst my siblings is that it does, you

know, these kids are interested. We want them to go out and learn

something and then bring that back and make a stronger.

I just like, I like my brother working in a semiconductor

industry and figure out how to do just in time delivery of

material coming in. They gave him two years of

training on how to, you know, how to manage that.

And then he was out there training people how to do that,

do that. So he brought all that back, you

know, back to the to the company.

And I took that break and got a master's degree and bring that

stuff back to the company to really, you know, find those

next steps, you know, you know, to make us, you know, a better

organization. So, so, so we've, you know, with

the kids, we've always, always wanted them to say, you know,

coach them to like, go do your thing.

Because if you want to be a nurse, you know, we don't need

nurses. You know, that's not what we do,

you know, So if you want to be a nurse, go be a nurse.

You know, that's, you know, that's, if that's your happy

spot, you know, go do it. You know, so we don't want, you

know, we want them to come back for the right reasons because

they want to come back rather than fill an obligation, you

know, which that happens to a lot of family businesses, that

there gets to be an obligation that you got to come back and

take care of it. So it's always, you know, yeah,

it's tricky to balance those out, but that's a path we've

picked. That sounds like a great way to

go. And as a, as a second generation

like yourself, I can appreciate that stance.

That was kind of how my parents approach things.

So you mentioned that you guys are branching into things that

maybe your parents never imagined and you guys just kind

of have your your hands in everything.

Can you help us understand that that development process a

little bit? You said you started as a trust

building company and then kind of moved into a construction

company and a development company more to support the

trust building. How has that growth continued?

What have been the different steps as you've taken on

different avenues of business? Yeah, it it, you know how we've,

we've morphed over time, as you know, really.

And because Sioux Falls is a small town, I mean, it's getting

bigger, but it's a small town. So you know, what we've, what

we've tried to do is that we've always tried to diversify

ourselves. You know, the apartments, you

know, when I started came back in building apartments, you

historically, you know, apartments are doing well

financially and housing is not or housing is doing well

financially in apartments or not.

So is, you know, that was that was, you know, that was the

first, you know, iteration of, you know, trying to balance it

out, you know, so your income, it's, you know, you're not a

feast or famine income. So that, you know, can hopefully

steady out your income. You know, we, we did that, you

know, we did that and built out, you know, built out that, you

know, that asset class and built, you know, built the

apartments are generally pretty nice, steady piece of business,

you know, so that that could, you know, hold us over when we

hit things like 2006, you know, I mean, that was a terrible time

in my career. But you know, so that you can

push through those, even those, you know, that was a really dark

depression at that time, you know, recession, whatever, but

they're trying to, you know, trying to balance the portfolio

out. So that's really where we

started. So kind of going, you know, the

early 90s, you know, started building apartments.

We got a housing going on, then housing took off and then we got

really busy and, and doing land development because we're, you

know, when I say housing, we're building houses at that time.

So we got really a busy building, land and land

development, selling a lot of lots and open up new

subdivisions because part of when my brother and I came back

and join my dad just gave us more people to do more stuff.

And so we went out there and really started, you know,

expanding. So when that housing boom was

happening was early 2000s. We're really in a good spot

reputationally wise within the community and how we had our

business set up, you know, to really, you know, push into that

market and, you know, expand our land development on the

residential side during that time.

So that was, you know, that was going, you know, that was going

good through the early 2000s. And then, you know, somewhere

about, you know, you know, like like 2003, you know, ish 2004.

This is something my brother and I did.

This is the area my parents really weren't that interested

in start getting to the commercial development because

we, we, we found this piece of ground that we really liked, you

know, so we got pretty excited about it and we said, Hey, we

want to tackle this. And my, my dad's like, I really

don't want, you know, anything to do with that, you know, and

so he was, you know, you know, he was, he challenged us a lot

as far as wanting to move forward with it and making sure

that we had our, we had our thoughts in order and our plans

in order that we can actually pull off something.

There's a major undertaking and you know, it's probably a 15

acre commercial development the right off right off the

Interstate, but it's been it been sitting there for years.

Every developer in town have been driving past it just like

we've been driving past it like doesn't make sense.

It's too complicated, You know, whatever reason they passed and

and you know, we're the ones that are kind of putting our

flag in the ground saying, hey, I think we can figure this thing

out and make some money at it. So, you know, those are the

moments when developments pretty scary, you know, because that's

really when you're, you know, you're trying to, you know,

you're putting all your time and energy and resources and making

something like this happen. But it's, it was 15 acres and I

got to say it was probably, you know, 150, two 100,000 square

feet. I forget how big of how many

buildings we ended up putting in there.

But so we, we really got excited about this idea and it really

kind of created a whole new branch of our organization to

get in the commercial development going that that

project turned out really well. You know, our timing was good.

We ended up with a completely amazing opening with a

restaurant that was beyond successful five times the

expectations of the restaurant open operators, you know,

expectations when they opened it.

So that momentum really helped, you know, kick off the rest of

development where we did a mixed-use, you know, multi story

mixed-use building, you know, high end shops, you know, more

pedestrian open type development where we, we're really trying to

take some of the stuff that we saw out of the Sioux Falls

market, brought it into Sioux Falls where Sioux Falls is

basically building, you know, things that are indoor malls or

just strip centers where you pull up, run in the front door

because it's 20 below 0 and run back out, You know, get yourself

a we, we created an environment where is pedestrian friendly or

people could shop, you know, go door to door and shop and really

make it a nice built environment.

And so, you know, a lifestyle center that was the buzzword at

the time. So you still do use those terms

now, but we, you know, it's truly the first lifestyle center

in Sioux Falls and it worked and it worked really well.

Yeah. So that, you know, that was kind

of the the next generation kind of the early 2000s of what our

company was. And that really set the stage

for us to do follow on, you know, we did the office park

that was very similar nature to that.

And we started doing, you know, off our office and commercial

build outs all around town. And it was really kind of

cemented our reputation as a commercial develop developer.

And with all that, with all that activity that, you know, that

got the notice, you know, of, you know, additional partners

that we have or clients that we have that have these very nice

pieces of property, you know, around the Sioux Falls community

that aren't fully, they're not performing financially like they

should because they're just, you know, farm fields or gravel pits

or, you know, those types of things.

So they do. We've got people coming to us

now saying, hey, how do we, how do we take this, you know, this,

you know, this expired gravel pit or this farm field and turn

into something that's income producing, you know, so we

either partner with them or we'll work for them as a fee

developer and we'll do, we'll figure it all out for them and

we can help them activate that, you know, that resource that

they've got for their family and then figure out how to build

some long term income for them. But all that commercial, that

commercial development kind of early 2000s, that super

successful corner that we put together that really paved the

way for us working for another family in town, the Friesen

family. They they came to us and said,

you know, hey, you guys did this beautiful corner over there.

Why don't you come help us with this other project, which you

know, they're calling Lake. Well, it's called Lake Lorraine,

still called Lake Lorraine today, but that's, you know,

it's 100 acre, you know, development around an old gravel

pit that they've been mining out for 40 years.

So they had this beautiful lake that was all fed by the aquifer.

So nice, nice clean water. And around Sioux Falls there is

no water, you know, so if you got a, if you got a lake, it's

really kind of something special.

But they wanted to put out, you know, put a walking path, a one

mile walking path around it, give that whole, you know, give

that whole lake in that walking path with the park, The Walking

path to park around the lake, you know, back to the community,

back to the city of Sioux Falls because Sioux Falls have been

good to that family and they wanted to give something back.

So that was kind of their idea. And they said we need to help

developing this out. And you've done a good job with

these other projects so you can come help us.

But what should we turn that into?

The first thing, one of the first things is 180,000 square

foot, you know, National Retail Power Center, you know, Hobby

Lobby, HomeGoods, DSW, you know that that typical lineup of of

retailers. So that was kind of our landmark

piece and then we lost in that development.

We wanted office, you know, so we got a 6570 thousand square

foot, you know, office building to come out there.

We got some neighborhood services, we're going to put in

some, you know, some restaurants and some eye doctors from

chiropractors and a vet clinic and sushi place.

Then we ended up with Al Cash. There must be 150 rooms in

there. But we had Ryan companies on

Minneapolis buy a piece of land and they built just a absolutely

beautiful, you know, a senior living facility, you know, as

another anchor piece. And, you know, we had a

apartment developer to really build a, you know, urban, you

know, very urbanized, like at some you'd see in downtown Sioux

Falls, we come out to our lake is on the West side of Sioux

Falls and build this really nice apartment building with a lot of

amenities. So all that's kind of our core

out there that we've managed to build and fill up, You know,

probably about 90% of this lake over the last 10 years.

We got caught in COVID in there. So that put us back a little

bit. But we got a hotel out there.

And then Sam Klikman, that's how he introduced us and that's why

I'm sitting here today. But you know, he joined out

there. We built him a building sitting

right on the lake and the big lost meter E right there on the

lake. And it looks just like his other

store out West. And it's just absolutely

beautiful and looks like it's doing quite well for him.

So but that's small world, right?

So that's how, that's how well, that's why I'm here is our

mutual connection with Sam. Well, you, you mentioned in that

story if a few difficult steps kind of venturing into different

avenues of business, different sectors, the 2006, 2008 time

period, what has been the most difficult thing you've faced in

running your business, you know? You know, it's always, it's

always, you know, people is the biggest thing.

You know, that's the most important thing, you know, So,

you know, it's running a small business because we've always,

we've always kept our kept in too small for too long, you

know, to a fault, you know, because we're just, you know,

we've being, you know, you know, entrepreneurs in the family, you

know, I haven't grown up in the entrepreneurs.

I mean, before 2005, my parents lived through 25% interest rates

in late 70s, you know, so you know, they, they had a huge run

through the 70s and then the 70s and the early 80s.

It was a disaster, you know, so it was, you know, my dad's

generation calls that the the builder depression is in because

there's, you know, hardly anything going on back in those

years. So there's been these major

cycles. But you know, it, you know,

really all depend, you know, the the people is probably been the

the biggest thing. Yeah, because we've always been

too tight organizationally, you know, not adding a, you know,

adding, you know, you know, too many people is in the

organization. So we've always run very thin to

finding that, you know, finding those people that are, you know,

that that work with us. That's always been our

challenge, you know, and so it's we've, you know, historically

has been our biggest challenge. But in the last couple years,

we've really made major strides and in trying to round out the

company, fill all the, all the, all the departments in the

company. We, we hired a marketing

director, we hired an HR director and we hired ACOO, you

know, to come in, you know, those are all new roles, but

you're probably five years behind when we should have hired

them and brought, you know, brought those, you know, people

in. So, so that's, that's always

been the challenge of trying to keep trying to keep that in

balance, you know, because it's, you know, you had these big,

huge projects. You need a lot of people and

then, you know, it's a small market and things slow down so

that you're not so busy for a while.

So, you know, it's, we're always been hesitant to, you know,

staff things up, you know, more than we, you know, didn't more

than we should. But I think we might have

finally learned our lesson. Well, and that that's kind of

the entrepreneurs curses. You think you can do it all

yourself, right up until you can't.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So and, and and we did.

And a big part of our story too, is my my younger brother came

back in about 15 years ago and he was running our commercial

construction and then up until about 3 years ago too.

So he stepped out and decided to yeah, yeah, pursued a different

path, you know, a couple years ago.

So we lost it, you know, a leg of earth, you know, the three

legged stool with the brothers in there.

So we lost a leg of the stool so that, you know, that's been a

crank, you know, back to the people part of it, but you know,

back filling him with director of operations and, and, you

know, getting ACO in there and getting the right personnel has

kind of fulfilled all that stuff.

Are you kind of the strategic, the, the strategic drive to get

get a professional management group in place?

You know, we're really, we're there.

We were just getting everyone working really well as a group

now. So it's it's fun.

It's fun to be a part of. Good.

Well that kind of leads me into my next question.

I know you guys do you do development, property

management, building apartments, building commercial properties,

single family homes, you kind of have your fingers and

everything. Which sector of your business is

most rewarding and which sector is the most profitable?

Well, whatever is working well is really rewarding.

This, this stuff that's not working so well, that's not,

that's not rewarding, That's just a lot.

That's where they end up spending a lot of extra time.

You know, I think, you know, the part that we love, I mean, and I

think this is universal, not just me or my family, my

brothers, my sister, you know, the people that work there.

I think it's just universal. But the thing that's really

rewarding about what, you know, what we do with development is

that we take these ideas of, you know, we this bare piece of

ground and we, and we turned it into a building that somebody

lives in, somebody, you know, has an office in, or they're,

they're selling dresses out of, or they're manufacturing fire

trucks out of, you know, it's actually getting used.

And after all the, after those projects are done, you can go

back, you know, 10/15/20 years later.

It's like I did that, you know, I was like I had a piece of

that, you know, I had a hand and, you know, getting that,

getting that there and. People are coming and going and

enjoying and, you know, so that's, that's all the rewarding

stuff, you know, because it's, you know, it's, it's, it's

really fun to be that process. It comes out in so many

different ways. You know, we, we have a, a lot

of opportunities to work with the, you know, fellow

entrepreneurs, you know, you know, a new law firm or a

dentist or an eye doctor or someone that wants to open a

daycare. You know, you're just, you know,

and they, you know, they come to you.

And it's like, I'm going to quit my job and I got all this money

saved up and I'm going to do my own thing.

And I'm super nervous, but I've been planning on this.

And now I got to figure out how to like get a facility put

together. And when I've got a super tight

budget and everyone's always got a super tight budget, you know,

but you know, really working with those people where it's

just like, hey, it's going to be OK.

You know, it's just like, you know, we're going to figure it

out because we've been, we've been done this so many times,

you know, because, you know, our our job as a developer builder,

our job is to help, you know, help the project get done in

whatever form that makes sense for the client.

Yeah. So it's, it's a lot of it's a

lot of fun to work with the entrepreneurs to help them, you

know, get to a spot where they can go to work and, you know,

sell the widgets that they're selling, you know, how the front

door. So that's, you know, so that's,

that's, that's really fun, you know, so I really enjoy that.

But it's, you know, it's also difficult.

It's all, you know, just difficult because you know,

everyone's got different experiences and different

expectations. So it just takes a lot of time

and energy to get that. You know, as far as the, you

see, what's what's the most profitable, you know, you know,

a lot of the service stuff that we do, you have the commercial

construction, you know, property management, you know, home

building, you know, now we do build houses now, you know, all

that stuff is, you know, very tight margins, you know, you

know all that, you know, all those activities, you know, so

it's not, you know, it's not an easy business, you know, So, you

know, going back to what's your biggest challenge is the people.

If we didn't have good people helping us, you know, keep those

businesses running, you know, at a high level, delivering quality

on time, on budget, you know, be really difficult to make money

in those areas, you know, so, so they're, they're all real tight

margin businesses, but they they make sense to us because we look

at it holistically, because we're really trying to build it

out where we could take care of, you know, a customer wherever

their needs, their needs might be.

You know, we, you know, we might rent somebody an apartment and

they're they're moving to town to go run Walmart, you know, and

that's happened, you know, so they're going to be the new

assistant Andrew at Walmart. You know, what do they need

next? You know, they're going to live

in an apartment for six months until they could figure out

where they want to build a house, you know, so then they,

you know, we do a good job renting an apartment and

servicing them in the apartment, making that a good experience.

And we tell them, Hey, we build a houses too.

And it's like, you know, we hopefully we get a call, you

know, and it's like, you know, you guys did a great job over

here. It's a group.

It's a group that's not related to our own building.

Group. But that our home building group

has a good relationship already built up.

And then they'll do a good job building a house for them, you

know, And then you know, then you know.

Then that person hopefully tells their friend that we did a good

job and they know that we do brokerage work and that friend's

looking for a new office space. They'll hire one of our brokers

to go, you know, help them rent a new office.

You know, so, so it's very, you know, we, we like this idea that

we're, we could really take care of any real estate services that

our clients might need. So that really makes us unique

in the, in the Sioux Falls market that we can handle all of

it, you know, on the consumer side, but also on the business

side. And do you know, do any,

anything that they would need, you know, and build that

customer for the long term is what we're really trying to

strive for. Oh man, you can rent them.

An apartment and sell them a lot and build them a house and then

build their business and. Yeah, yeah, do pretty much

anything they need. Yeah, yeah.

And I think you know. That's just that, you know,

that's that's what makes it hard, you know, in the business,

because then you got to be good at all those different, all

those different things, you know, because we're, you know,

we're because there's just home building companies, there's just

property management companies, there's just brokerage

companies, you know, so it's, it's hard to run.

Yes, we're running several different companies under one

umbrella, but up for the diversification of of income,

you know, so you're healthy over the long term, you know, so we,

you know, we have a good place to for, you know, people to work

is in everything we love to do in our organization is that, you

know, if we really want to create a place where people can

stay for the long term, you know, as we know them and build

trust with each other. But we can get young leaders in,

you know, they might start in one area of our company.

And if another opportunity works as an, you know, opens up in

another area of the company that, you know, if their careers

maybe hit a lid for, you know, whatever reason in one part of

the company that they can look at another spot and say, you

know, I want to go help over there and work in that area.

So we we keep that good person as they progress through their

career. You know, that's one of the

things that we're trying to do to, you know, make a, a better

working environment, you know, as as people who spent a lot of

time together in our our work environment.

So we want to make as good as we can.

Yeah, that's awesome. And I think.

That's a laudable goal. I know that was one of the big

motivations for me and growing my business was I had people

working under me that wanted an upward track and wanted to go to

the next thing and I didn't have something to hand them.

So we have to grow and get bigger to create more

opportunities. So great.

You've now been in. This business for quite some

time, you've seen a lot of ups and downs and and been in a lot

of different businesses essentially.

At what point in your career were you most afraid and what

was the threat that you were afraid of?

Well, 2006 was a big one. That was, that was, that was

pretty intense. I mean, we're pretty heavily

weighted towards housing at that time and, you know, because we

had stopped building apartments there for quite a while, you

know, so that, you know, that was, you know, we were, we had,

we had times, you know, well, the year before I'd say like

2005, I think we sold 197 lots, single family lots.

And then in 2007 we sold 17. Yeah.

So that's about, you know, 0 in that business.

It doesn't, you know, that's not enough to pay the light bill, so

to speak, you know, so that, you know, that was pretty nerve

wracking. You know, we hadn't seen a

banker in our office for five, 6-7 years.

And and when that that hit in 2000, you know, six, 2007, there

came out every month like what's going on?

Because, you know, because, you know, back that time, the

federal regulators were pulling every single housing and land

development loan that they had, you know, in the entire country

and reviewing those with high scrutiny.

And so the banks would come out to us like what's going on and

you know, what's activity? And we're like, there's not much

activity out here. We're we're just flat.

There's just no one was buying anything.

I'm so that was, that was pretty scary time.

That was, that was nerve wracking, you know, because

it's, you know, you never know how long that stuff's going to

last. And your family history.

You know, my dad, my dad went through that as big of a

disaster in, you know, in the late 70s.

And he says, he says worse, it really was, you know, because

nobody could even afford to buy anything back then.

It's he said nobody wants so anything right now, but the

interest rates are cheap enough that people still could do it,

but everything can kind of shut down.

So that that was that was that was a wild time.

We had three developers go bankrupt in Sioux Falls.

You know, major developers go bankrupt in Sioux Falls at that

time. And so it was real.

It hit Sioux Falls as hard as the rest of the country.

You know, I think what saved our our community is that we had

some good long term developers, you know, that in community

minded people that, you know, just felt like we could, you

know, I don't, no one got together and decided this.

But in retrospect, I think it was just enough of this is like

our mindset just kind of that, you know, we just need to ride

this out and, you know, not dump a bunch of inventory and crash

all the prices and create a bunch of equity losses, which

would have rattled the market more.

You know, everyone kind of everyone kind of, you know,

dripped the steering wheel a little tighter and rode it out

is really what happened. Yeah, that was that was pretty,

that's pretty intense. And then, you know, the other

one was COVID for sure. I mean, that was that was wild.

I mean, we, you know, we have, you know, hundreds of leases

with national retailers, local retailers, the local offices,

you know, whatever. So COVID did it and the

nationals calling up like, you know, that big 180,000 square

foot power center called up. So we're not going to pay rent,

you know, done. It's like, well, you got to pay

rent and your real estate taxes are due twice a year and in

South Dakota, so they're not paying rent and real estate

taxes are coming. That's a, you know, that's a

gigantic bill, you know, so that's a pretty big cash flow

crunch that you're staring at, you know, because we got a

loans, you know, so the bank, you know, so you get that phone

call like, well, the bank wants to get paid, the power company

wants to get paid, the county wants to get paid real estate

taxes, you know, how's this going to work out?

You know, So, you know, so that that was that was a while, which

that would, it would turned out that everyone did the same thing

as, you know, the banks froze their payments for a while, you

know, for, you know, 6090 days just, you know, because they

knew all of this was going all the way around the country.

So they didn't want everything to meltdown, you know, because

all the rent payers quit paying, you know, and then, you know, so

then we're caught in the middle. So the bank, you know, stopped,

you know, frozen payments. But then what they did is we

reworked our loans with the banks, you know, you know, redid

everything linked and everything out.

And it worked that out with the banks.

And then we had to rewrite, you know, I don't know if it's right

or not, but we say, we wrote, we wrote every lease that we had

that summer, you know, so it's just a massive, massive effort.

Our property management department was absolutely

amazing, you know, to get through that because it's, it's

just a mind boggling amount of work.

And I mean, we talk, you know, talk to the local restaurant

owners and dress shops and coffee shops and you're talking

to these people that made their, they've got payroll.

You know, you think about it in their on their perspective,

they're trying to figure out how to make payroll and they're

trying to figure out how to make rent and pay insurance and

everything else that they've got.

You know, they're all a lot of them are sole, sole proprietors,

you know, so they get a home mortgages to pay and no jobs.

You know, this is their job. So they're on a cash crunch.

I mean, they're absolutely freaking out would be the best

way to describe it. You know, so the whole the whole

system is like completely in disarray.

So those are the two big ones. So hopefully we don't have that

again. But you know, they, they seem

to, you know, you, you think about it, you know, seventies,

2000s and you know, 2020 every 20-30 years you get a pretty,

pretty nasty 1. So ads are, is going to, it's

going to, it's going to happen again.

Hopefully we got a good decade. Or so ahead of us.

So yeah, exactly. Yeah, I.

Don't, don't want it, but yeah, you just, you know, so the, the

key is that, you know, you got to be prepared for it in, in

2005 and 6:00. We, we by 2007, I think we're

starting to say this about 2007 because we're into it pretty

good. And we, we always thought we

had, we were joking. We thought we always had a

contingency plan, but we didn't realize that we have a disaster

plan because we're conservative enough that we could, we just

survived a disaster, you know, But we're always playing our

cards tight, you know, because you know, it when the it's, it's

easy to get eaten up in, in the development construction world

very quickly with cash flow, you know, So you got it.

You know, it's a, it's a, you know, it's like, it's like

farming. It's a big equity game.

Oh man, yeah, for sure. Is there a lesson that you've

learned that you wish you would have learned earlier?

Well. This old guys are right more

often than they're wrong because they've been through it before.

So they always like, this is what's going to happen.

And, you know, as a young as a young guy, like, yeah, OK, I

hear you. But and then you get you get

through and like, Dang it, they were right again.

So, yeah, you know, find, find, find some advisors, you know,

some people that have been through it before and, you know,

maybe not even the same industry, but find some advisors

that have been through it before because, you know, they've seen

it. I I remember super involved in

the Home Builders Association, Sioux Falls and on the national

level, you know, starting back, you know, to the 90s.

But as we're coming up to, we're into the three O 2, 2003, 2004,

you know, guys that are my age, but new, you know, new to the

industry. They didn't have the, you know,

the, they didn't have a dad sitting in an office keeping

your head on straight and then they didn't have, you know, your

dad's friends that you go hunting with and hang out with.

You can have these casual conversations with the guys that

have been through the 70s and 80s and what it took to get them

through. So I remember talking to guys

that are pretty close to my same age and we're hanging out at

home builders and everything's great, right?

It's 2005. You know, there's people are

lining up to buy, you know, whatever you build, someone's

going to buy it, you know, So it's just that easy.

You know, that time frame and I'm like, you guys, you know,

get ready, you know, just make sure you make sure you're

putting money away and you know, you know, keeping your debt low,

you know, because you could see them buying new trucks every six

months and stuff, you know, think, you know, obvious things

that they're spending money on. We all work and it's just like

you got, you know, keep your, keep your head down because this

thing could shift. And, you know, I remember some

of those guys, you didn't believe it at all.

You know, I got, you know, we're contemporaries, you know, so I

don't, they have, I'm passing on the wisdom I'm hearing to them.

And some of those and some of those guys that he's just, you

know, they're gone, you know, by the time that's all over, you

know, they don't have a business anymore, you know, But someone,

you know, some of them, yeah, you know, that he don't keep and

play the cards a little tighter. They survive that.

If you survive those things, you know, that's the good news.

When you survive those things, there's usually a lot of

opportunity afterwards, you know, because if you're if

you're stable enough and you get through, you get through that,

you don't operationally, financially, there's a lot of

opportunity because people are. So, you know, you know, the rest

of your competition's a bit hamstrung because they're,

they're, they got hurt a little bit more.

So it takes a little while to get going.

But when things start turning around, you know, if you're, if

you're in good, if you're in good shape coming out of it, you

know, coming out of a recession like that, that's, that gives

you a lot of chance to really, you know, fire.

I don't know, I guess one thing I say is you can, you can start

running if you're not in a hole first, if you're in a hole, you

got to dig your, you got to get yourself out of the hole to

start running. If you're standing, if you're

standing around just waiting for something that happens a lot,

you can start running a lot faster than the guys trying to

get out of the hole. Yeah.

So. But it's.

Yeah, Yeah. So it's, it's always felt, you

know, like even, you know, those are the big ones.

And there's been, you know, absolute little dips here and

there along the way, too. But, yeah, so it, it pays to be

conservative. Yeah.

Good lessons there. Is there something like an

opinion that you once held strongly that you've changed

your mind about throughout your career, boy?

No, I think not really. You know, it's you just, you

know, it just seems like it's got to work hard.

You know, I never felt like I'm going to, I'm going to change,

change the thought process. I mean it when I started out, I

didn't know what I was doing building those apartments and

told you that story, you know, that when I got that roll of

paper and said, go build these apartments, I didn't know what I

was doing, you know, So what I figured out is that the people,

you know, when I wouldn't talk to the plumber or the

electrician or the framer or the concrete guy that's been doing

this for 25 years. And I went up to them and said,

help me understand what's, you know, you know what I'm looking

at here, you know, and you know, what should we be making a

decision on you and that which I be making a decision on?

What should we be making a decision on?

You know, and they'll help you, you know, they'll help you get

through that and they'll, they'll give you all, you know,

all their information, all their experience and help you make a

good decision. So the project turns out well,

but you just need to be confident in yourself enough to

listen to them, you know, and humble enough to listen, listen

to to them and, and, and really find out what they're trying to

tell you what they're saying to you is.

So I think that shaped me. And so getting back to your

questions or something that ever have this really hard opinion on

something that I had to change over the course of time, my

answer's no, because I figured out that I just, you know, the

world keeps changing, you know, and there's, there's all sorts

of things that I don't know that I'd need to know, but I just

need to, you know, I just need to go ask the people that know

those things to help help us make the best decision possible.

I haven't really, I don't really have these hardcore beliefs that

this is the way it should be because stuff all changes

everything, you know, everything changes and moves, moves along.

So you just got to be curious and, you know, ask the ask

people the right question. So I just haven't just keep

moving with the times, I guess, is what I feel like more than

having a stuck opinion on something.

The kids might disagree. There's some wisdom in that.

No, there's some wisdom in that of, you know, you observe and

see what's going on and then make a decision rather than

coming in with an opinion to begin with.

So, yeah. And.

Ask yeah, and ask people. Learn from the people if you

could go back to. 1992 coming out of college with the option

to pursue a career elsewhere or come back to the family

business. Would you choose to do it all

over again? Not 92, no.

That's that's part of where by my my personal opinion applies

to, you know, the next generations is like, go out and

do your thing first, you know, because I came back and and it

felt like I settled for a long time, you know, just to, you

know, that I didn't really want to be back here.

I want to be doing something else.

I don't know what that was, but I didn't want to be back in

Sioux Falls at that time. And, you know, working as hard

as I was, I found myself at that time.

So I wish I would have had a chance for a long time to go out

and and, you know, find my way and see if there's something,

you know, something else that was out there.

So, yeah, I wouldn't have come back.

You know, if things would have been different, I wouldn't have

come back. But I mean, it was, you know,

long term, it's right. It's clearly the right decision.

So. But it was, yeah.

I think go out and explore and, you know, take your time to

figure out what you know, where you want to be long term because

it's it's a long life. You know, you can change your

career multiple times. So go out and learn some stuff

and bring it back. So yeah, I would hold off.

I guess would if I was going to advise myself back in 92, go

wait tables for a while until you found a job, I guess.

OK. All right.

And what has been your biggest win as a leader?

What are you most proud of? You know, I think one, one thing

that I'm pretty proud of, we within home builders, we cooked

up a street of dreams concepts, you know, because I was always

on the education committee. We're trying to figure out how

to raise fund fund to raise money, you know, for

scholarships, you know, because you know, get, you know, keep

people in the trades, get people in the trades and interested in

the trade. So home builders are always

active in like tools for schools is one of their programs where

they the industrial arts programs have been complete.

We, you know, line itemed out in our, in our area, you know, so

the home builders go out and buy table saws and drills and, you

know, get it to the high schools, you know, so they can,

you know, the kids can learn how to use that stuff to, you know,

get them into the trades. Because if we don't have, if we

don't have builders out there, electricians and plumbers out

there, you're not going to live anywhere.

So home, there's always been super involved.

So it was, it was a lot of it was a lot of finances.

We always did fundraisers and, but we, we ended up working

together and, you know, kind of a integral part of that was

getting a like a, you know, we always have a parade of homes

every year where there's, you know, you know, 20 houses that

you can go visit and, and, you know, go view.

And that's kind of, it's a nice marketing event and it's good

chance for people to connect with new housing, great chance

to connect the new housing. But we did a Street of Dreams

where we did cul-de-sac where we did 5 houses built at the same

time, open at the same time. And we had them open for you

know, 3-4 weeks. And we, we charge an entrance

fee. So we knew people love to go to

that stuff and we saw that another market.

So they pay interest in entrance fee to get in there.

So that ran for three years was such a heavy lift such, you

know, so many volunteer hours. But it is, it is really

gratifying to be a part of that just to see how much money we

raised thousands. I forgot how much it was now,

but it was a it was a big deal to really set up that and

endowment. So that's fun, you know.

So I mean, doing doing things like that as a leader has been

fun along along the way I see in.

At least in my area here in Wyoming, there's been a shift

back towards the trades and our local high school is is doing a

great job of funding their, the woods department, their

construction classes, that kind of things.

Do you guys see a swing back that direction or are you still

fighting an uphill battle there? You know it's.

I'm a little removed from that now but like 3-4 years ago one

of our school districts, we got 5 school districts in town.

One of our school districts partnered with the Home Builders

Association and the home builders like those that street

engineers project, I was telling you, and all the other

fundraising provided the money built like a indoor or a built a

building that the kids in the Harrisburg School District can

go build a house in, you know, So, you know, the school

district stepped up to it, home builders stepped up to it and

didn't, you know, paid for the building and the tools.

But then the school district is running the program for the long

term, you know, so it's, you know, it's built, it's building

back in building back up. We've had a lot of you know, so

I think the answer to the question is yes, there's been a

lot of momentum, you know, back, you know, back towards the the

trades in Sioux Falls in South Dakota, we've had really good

leadership on the state, the state side, you know, they do

this build Dakota scholarship. It's pretty, you know, a lot of

kids could get scholarships into the trade schools like, you

know, get the two years totally paid for if they agree to work

for a couple years after. So we got a lot of that going

on. It's been it's robust now.

It's been going on for a good ten years.

And the tech schools are expanding.

We actually opened up a Community College, you know, so

you can get an associate's degree, maybe not so much trade

schoolish, but you know, it it, you know, but it gives you a

technical degree that you can, you can use to get that, you

know, first good job. And then if you want to go

finish college online somewhere, you could go do that, you know,

later on if you choose to keep moving forward.

So there's been, it's been a lot of shit, but there's been a lot

of momentum in our community. Home builders, the Chamber of

Commerce, the Sioux Falls Development Foundation, trying

to build out and expand those programs, you know, really

trying to get people engaged with the jobs.

Because it, you know, half, half, it's like 50% of the kids

don't make it through college. They enter college.

And I was shocked when I first saw those.

I think it's over 50%, you know, So, yeah, so we got to, we got

to give our kids a better path, you know, rather than to send

them to college that they don't make it through, you know, get

them into a trade that's meaningful.

And there's, you know, there's plenty of work.

You know, we've got super low employment.

We always have two 3% unemployment.

I think 1 was like 1 and 1.7 here not that many months ago.

I mean, Sioux Falls is, you know, it's growing so fast that

the unemployment's always way below everybody else in the

So, yeah.

So it's nice. It's nice to see some of that

stuff coming, coming back. And I mean, it's there's a lot

of people paying attention to it, putting energy and dollars

behind it, you know, those opportunities.

Yeah, I've been excited. About it in our area and man, I

think that the opportunity available in the trades for the

next generation is just going to be incredible for those that are

willing to take it. Yeah, agree.

Has any? Of that.

Shifted your opinion about education and what advice would

you have for someone pursuing a career that's maybe in high

school now? Do you feel like colleges as

important as it was or extremely important?

Or are there more opportunities in the trades?

What? What educational advice would

you have for a high school student looking forward to their

future? Get it.

Keep going, you know, get. You know, whatever, whatever

makes sense to you. I mean, if you know, if college,

you know, college makes sense to you, go do it.

Or, you know, Community College or trade school, you know, just

take that next step, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever

works, you know, So if, I mean, if you, if you go to, if you go

to a trade school and finish that program and go get a job,

and then we're going to start working your way through

college. If, if you choose to do that,

you know, down the road, those opportunities are always there,

but just keep building up, you know it, you know, so whatever,

whatever the right, whatever the right Ave. is for you is just,

you know, find it and and do it gets, you know, education can

never be taken away. And when you learn, when you

learn how to learn, you get curious and you can, you know,

figure out, you can figure out more things and and, you know,

expand, you know, expand your career.

Yeah. So I, I think, yeah, just find,

you know, find, find a way to move forward.

You know, some, you know, beyond high school, you know, we got a,

you know, you know, high school career or a high school

education, you know, isn't really enough.

You know what I think to, you know, find those good jobs out

there, you know, they're having a technical school or a so just

free from, you know, a Community College or, you know, a

bachelor's degree. And if you need those things to

really prove yourself out, yeah, I think it's it's it's

important, but it's every, every answer is not for every person.

But just go get one of them. They'll move yourself ahead.

This is my. Favorite question that I ask of

every guest are you a person of a particular faith tradition and

if so, how is that shaped your leadership?

Yeah, we're. Just joking about that the other

day. So I was raised Catholic and

then I married my wife's Lutheran.

So I got married in a Lutheran Church and one of our friends

is, is their daughters converting from Lutheran to

Catholicism this weekend actually.

And we're talking about all the stuff that he had to do.

My wife said, I said, you didn't have to do that to be a, a

Lutheran. And, and I said, well, I don't

know if I am a Lutheran because no one ever asked me to send my

Catholic card back in. So I, so I don't know if I'm a

Catholic or a Lutheran. You know, it's a, you know,

it's, it's, you know, we, you know, always been around it.

You know it. We took our kids all the way

through confirmation in our, our local church because we wanted

them to be aware of what, you know, what's going on, you know,

and that, you know, inside those big buildings and you know, why

people get so much out of it. We thought it was important to

expose our kids and the values are great.

So we're not active members per SE and my wife is more than I

am. Try to live by the values that

you know, are, are common throughout this, you know, is

what we're what we're about. It's good.

A lot of good people spend a lot of time there for sure.

Good, good. So your dad started the

business, you've been involved for over 30 years.

You've been running it for quite a while now.

Guys have grown it to incorporate a lot of different

aspects and, and different sectors.

What is next? Where do you go from here?

You know, I, I. The fun I mean, we keep, I mean

it's always fresh, you know, so we're we're working on I spent

most of my week working on a new development, you know, on, you

know, and another one of our communities surrounding Sioux

Falls this week. And so I spent half my week

working on that and it's, you know, it's the same, you know,

things that you got to get done. But, you know, we're coming up

with a new twist on it to make it exciting, to make it a better

place to, you know, to, to live, You know, you know, for the

people in that community have a, you know, you know, a better

place to live and give them a reason to sell their house and

go build a new one. That's really what we're that's

what the housing is about. However, we're, you know, we're,

you know, in last week, I spent a whole bunch of time working on

a new office park that we're working on, you know, working on

the South into Sioux Falls, you know, so the work is, is very

variable, you know, from week to week and, you know, think

different things seem different attention at different moments.

So, you know, it's, that's what's, you know, I'm, I'm not

quite sure what's next. Just we'll keep finding more of

these, more of these projects, but that's, you know, that's

it's, it's fun, you know, to work through those and try to

figure out a better way to, you know, you know, present, you

know, the, you know, make the product new and exciting and

people want to engage with it and buy it or rent it or, you

know, build on it, whatever the case.

So that's, you know, we'll just keep finding, finding those

things. So that's that's, that's the

exciting part, you know, on the project side, you know, the

business side of it, you know, really, I'm, I'm really am truly

excited with the staff that we've got within our

organization and, and, you know, we've got this great team now

and we're we're really gelling up and, and able to do a lot of

things that we need to do and want to do.

And it's going to be fun to watch them grow and, and, and,

you know, take the company to, you know, baby places we weren't

expecting by, you know, giving them some room and some latitude

to, you know, be the leaders that they are.

So there's a couple exciting things going on.

There's always the the daily developments and but you know,

the long term strategy of getting, getting, you know, some

great people in place. That's that'll be fun.

That'll be gratifying. Is there a?

Particular part of your business that you really get excited

about and you kind of hang on to and like doing yourself.

Is it the, you know, finding the new development or or building

homes or the commercial or customer interaction or is there

a particular part of your business that you really enjoy?

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean the development side of it, I mean that's, that's the

really tricky part. Like the land development I

always call it, you know, the entitlement work and trying to

get, trying to get a cornfield to be build ready or have a, you

know, have some sort of structure on there that's

usable. It's really, that's the part

that's going to, that's, that's going to be the hard part to let

go because you have to, you have to have a lot of knowledge about

a lot of different thing. Because we view as a, a

developer as as filling the gaps between, you know, the real

estate broker who understands the market, between the

architect who understands how to build things between the civil

engineer understands how to put land together between the banks

and how to finance it. You know, there's, there's all

these like really good professionals around, but the

developer's job is the all those cracks you have to get a

project, move forward. You got to be able to, someone's

got to be in in the middle of it just saying, yeah, we can do

that, you know, civil engineer. But if we do that, when I go

down to City Hall and talk to the city's engineers or the

city's playing department, they're going to say no, you

know, because they got a whole set of rules that we need to

abide by, you know, So, you know, so being able, you know,

having that, you know, that instead of, you know, that

knowledge of all those different areas and not being an expert in

all of them. But you know, I haven't gone

through so many projects that you know, where you know, where

to find the answer, you know who's got the answer, you know,

which direction not to run down because it's going to end in a

dead end, you know, and so you can avoid those pitfalls.

So that's that's the tricky part, you know, because it's so

multi dimensional. So that's, that's that's hard

for us to envision, you know, how to how to replicate that.

But you know, all the all the individual pieces, we've got

good people, you know, either employed or working for us that,

you know, can fill in, you know, fill in all those roles.

So you can get that to go. So it so anyway, so that's

that's the tricky part, but it's also the fun part.

It's also the frustrating part, you know, so it's you get, you

know, you get the, you know, you get it all when you're, when

you're doing it. But, but that, that's the place

that I'll be the, you know, the really the, the last, the last

spot that we'll exit, you know, as far as my brother and I and

you know, our family is, you know, the actual development

work because that's that's tricky.

But there's people out there that there's people out there

that can do it. You know, we just need to, you

know, keep training our people up to, you know, to do that over

the long term, But we'll hang in there for a long time.

Sounds good. Is there somebody that you'd

like to see on the show, somebody you know that has a

really interesting background and interesting business works

in the in the interesting industry that you'd like to

learn more about? Yeah, I actually I got.

I got a young man that is from Sioux Falls.

He has been in China since 20/19.

He went there as part of the state State Department exchange

program in high school and in and that was a senior in

college. Our kids grew up with them.

You know, our families know each other.

He went to China, went to that program, loved it.

So he went, ended up going to NYU Beijing.

So he's starting, he's starting a whole company over there and

I'm not quite sure what he does, but he's he has an office in

Shanghai. He has partners, he has

employees and he's just lighting the world on fire over there.

But I, but I do know a little bit what he's doing.

But he's what he's trying to do is get consumer products from

this area of the country because he understands this area of the

country or anywhere in the United States, but this area in

the country and try to get them, you know, help us sell stuff in

China, you know, is what he's working on as I understand it.

So yeah. If that were interesting, I can

introduce. You to a person like that so

he's oh man, dynamic guy yeah, that would be fantastic.

I might send you an e-mail after we're done here, see if you can

introduce us. I'm always interested in an

interesting story or an interesting background, so if

you don't mind connecting us offline, I'll probably reach out

and have you do that. OK, my last question here to

either fuel or settle the debate.

If you have a job to do and have to use a cordless tool, which

brands do you prefer? I saw that on.

Your list, I was going to you, you asked it a slightly

different way. So I was going to answer the the

Apple iPhone because that, that is the tool that I use most of

the most of the time. So but yeah, I, I beyond that

Ryobi I use, I use the Ryobi because it's all

interchangeable. I can keep swapping out those

things and it's a lot of it's a, it's a yard guide stuff is so

not, not the professional grade stuff, but it work, it works

good. The batteries seem to last a

long time and yeah, yeah, get good power out of them.

So can't, can't argue with that. They do, and they have a great

warranty I think. When I was a kid, I had a set of

Ryobi stuff and. And that was great stuff.

Yeah, well, you have to keep your eyes.

Open My wife had just read me an article that in the school of

mines out in Rapid City, these guys just developed a battery

out of biomass. So they're using corn like a

corn derivative and they're they're created, it works, but

they they've created a battery out of it.

So maybe that'll be the new one that'll that'll win someday, but

you never know. Oh man, yeah, that would.

Be impressive. Awesome.

Well. Steve, thank you so much for

joining us. You bring a wealth of knowledge

and an incredible amount of experience and a number, number

of different industries. I just appreciate your time and

your wisdom and thank you so much for lending it to us.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, thanks. For having me hope thank all of

you guys for. Joining us again here on From

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