Ken Dickson – Building What Lasts: Leadership Lessons from the Construction Industry

you don't want to own the project that a contractor went bankrupt on.

No,

And the next morning you wake up and go, my gosh, now we have to do the work.

Right, the hard work begins.

that's what I tell my sales guys.

Selling it's easy.

Doing it's not so easy.

And doing it and making money at it's even harder.

that creates an opportunity for somebody that has some energy and is smart and wants to get into this industry.

once I get the right people in the job, then my problems really go away because they take care of business.

one of the things that Bill taught me was everybody has problems.

It's how you deal with your problems that makes you

the person you are.

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 getting it done, building a life that they love with their hearts, their hands, and their hustle.

I'm your host, Erick Loden.

If you guys are enjoying the show, please help me out.

Subscribe, like, follow, share, leave us a five-star review.

That moves us up in the algorithms and helps get the content out there.

And this morning, I am super excited to be joined by Ken Dixon.

uh Ken is the owner of AMW Architectural Metal Works based in Oregon.

Ken has spent the last 30 years building AMW into a regional powerhouse, installing architectural metal exteriors and commercial roofing.

So Ken, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me, Erick.

Well, we start out every show.

We like to just learn a little bit about you and your background.

So can you tell us a little bit about your life growing up as a kid?

So I grew up in uh a suburb of Portland, Oregon called Twaleton.

It was uh at the time a really small town and we lived on some acreage and raised some cattle, livestock, was involved in 4-H.

uh

It was uh a good lifestyle, it was in the country.

We had some friends around that we were able to hang out with.

um My grandfather lived a few miles away, they had a farm, they were farmers, so I worked for him as a child, working on his farm.

road dirt bike, golfed a lot of sports, just had a good childhood.

and we lived in the same house my whole life.

Great.

I imagine Tualatin has changed quite a bit in the last few decades.

Yeah, there was 1,400 people in Tualatin when I was a kid, and now there's about 28,000.

And so it's changed quite a bit.

And our shop, we're in Tualatin, our shop is.

So.

Okay.

So how far do you live now from where you grew up?

Oh boy, maybe eight miles away.

I live in Sherwood, a neighboring town, kind of out in the country between Twalton and Sherwood and Wilsonville, just kind of a little quadrant on the south side of Portland.

Yeah, it's beautiful there.

just spent a little bit of time there last week and, man, the weather was beautiful.

Everything was green even here in the middle of winter.

So.

We've been having a really mild winter, a lot of rain, but it hasn't gotten very cold this year.

I think that's true here for a lot of the Northwest.

know that's true for us anyway.

We had a weird weather pattern that they say pushed winter back about a month.

So we'll see if it comes at all.

Not much snow on the mountain.

No.

So can you tell us a little bit about your education?

Did you pursue any education after high school?

Yeah, I from high school.

went to em I went to community college for two years and got an associate degree in business and then I transferred to Portland State University and I finished up my

bachelor's there in also in business.

It was a it was a small business degree.

They don't I don't think they offer it anymore.

It was a lot of

different types of classes.

So you had accounting, operations stuff, management, marketing, law, just different disciplines that you might need if you were going to run your own business.

That sounds like a great degree, ah a small business focus rather than just a generic business degree.

Did you find that education very applicable when you actually started running your own business or was everything different?

No, mean, it all applied.

wish, you know, I'm not going to say I learned everything in college that I needed in business because I didn't.

I learned a lot of expensive lessons along the way.

um But uh there was like the law portion and the accounting portion.

And those would be the two that were most applicable.

Yeah, I can relate to that.

uh One of my degrees is in business management and for the most part, it seemed like most of the classes in the business degree kind of taught what I thought was just common sense.

I'd sit in class and they'd teach a topic and I'd be like, somebody made up a name for that.

uh I thought that was just like doing the right thing or doing the thing that made sense.

uh accounting and HR were probably the two that have been most applicable for me.

Yeah.

So I worked my way through college as a, so I had a friend that had his older brother owned a roofing company.

And so I worked there in the summer, uh roofing, single ply roofing, that would have been back in like, I think I started in 82.

And we would put down, was Trocal.

and Goodyear rubber.

So those were the old days that we'd weld the seams with chemical welding or glue.

Pretty, things have changed a lot.

man, yeah, those early days of PVC with the chemical welding and you spread your chemicals and then drag a sandbag over the seam to get it to, you know, that things have changed a

lot since then, especially in that PVC world.

the EPDM, maybe not so much, but.

Yeah, yeah, so that's how I, that's where I got my start in roofing

Okay, so you uh grew up on a farm, kind of a rural upbringing or um country living anyway, went to college and worked your way through college as a roofer.

Did you have any other jobs between college and starting AMW?

ah Well, I worked for a food broker for a while, uh selling food to grocery stores.

ah But that's...

And I sold shoes.

Okay.

JCPenney's.

So those are, and then I worked for my grandfather.

So those were my, oh, and I had a paper route.

I started when I was 12.

That's uh quite the diversity of it.

learned a lot of things.

You got to learn sales and hard work and roofing.

It gave you pretty diverse education outside of school.

Yeah, no, it was good.

I did learn some sales techniques.

Good.

So how long did you do those other odd jobs between graduating and starting AMW?

Well, let's see.

I worked for the roofing company during college and then in the falls when it was time to go back to school I started estimating for that company.

and I and I estimated I learned how to estimate with them and I so while I was going to school I would estimate and then when graduated from college I went I couldn't

I didn't really find anything that I liked better than what I was already doing, which was estimating.

And so I went to work back full time with them as an estimator project manager.

And I worked for a couple more years for him.

And then I um went to work for a gentleman called Bill Mackey, William Mackey, Mackey Roofing up here out of Portland, Oregon.

They were a...

Mostly a built up roofing company commercial.

We would go around, really only had a couple clients.

We had client, Fred Myers, and then a client, Payless.

And we would start out the year in, say January, and we'd go and we would uh review and analyze their roofs around the Northwest and make our recommendations.

then in March, they would pick,

know, however many stores they were gonna reroof.

And then we would spend the rest of the year reroofing just those projects.

And that was kind of the cycle that we ran there.

I started a single ply division there with him when I was 28.

No, 26?

A little earlier maybe, because I started my company when I was 28.

So maybe 26.

I learned a lot from him.

was a good teacher.

He was a third generation roofer out of California.

So he had a lot of history in the roofing business.

So I met a lot of the old characters, so to speak, from him throughout the Northwest, going down to the shows and stuff.

It was a good experience.

And then I went back to work for the gentleman that taught me how to estimate and roof Worked for him for uh another year or so and started.

what I was doing there was I was estimating single ply roofing and sheet metal.

And we were subcontracting out all of our sheet metal.

We didn't have a shop.

And we were using a gentleman out of uh a town called Albany, Oregon, which was about, I don't know, an hour south of Portland.

And he wanted to retire.

And I wanted a company.

I wanted to do it on my own.

So I bought him out.

It was a company called Cambridge Metal Works.

And so really all I did is me and me and my friend, bought his equipment and then we moved it up onto a some property that my parents owned in Wilsonville, Oregon, a small shop.

And that's where we started.

So so that's kind of how that all started.

And then I worked, I sold estimated and sold sheet metal with.

em

where I was working full time and then we would sub it to myself as a subcontractor and then we would work nights fabricating metal.

That's quite the grind to be working a full-time job while you're running your own business.

It was a lot, but it didn't seem bad, you know, because you're working for yourself.

And so at some point you had to make the...

take the plunge and you can only do that for so long or I could.

And I some clients, I had picked up other clients besides where I was working.

One of them was uh Mackie Roofing, Bill Mackie.

And the other one was uh Interstate Roofing.

They were a roofing company up here in Portland, uh Mike Satran.

And those two guys convinced me that I needed to just...

um go to work full-time.

So me and my partner, who I started the company with, that's what we did.

So that would have been 1991.

Okay.

And when did you first kind of develop the dream to become self-employed?

You said when that company went up for sale that you really wanted to own your own company, when did that dream start?

Probably back when I was about, I mean, when I was young, a child, I would read books about em business leaders and people that ran companies and that's what I wanted to do.

And so I always wanted to do that.

like my grandfather, he was self-employed.

and other people I knew that were self-employed.

So I didn't, I guess I didn't have a fear of that.

I was willing to take that risk because I saw success that way.

And so I always knew that that's what I wanted to do.

Not exactly, you know, I didn't have, it was fuzzy.

It was fuzzy, but it was something on this line.

Yeah.

Did you think it would be in the trades and roofing and sheet metal or you just wanted to be a business leader?

No, I really didn't think it, I had no idea.

I didn't even know what roofing was,

really.

It was like, when I started in roofing and sheet metal, ah I had no idea what it was, but I liked it.

I liked the industry.

I liked sheet metal because I like to design visual things.

And that's what kind of pushed me when I got going kind of away from the roofing portion of it and more into the sheet metal portion because people could see what I did in the

sheet metal and in the roofing.

I just didn't get that same feeling.

Yeah.

When you're installing, especially commercial roofs on, you know, flat roofed buildings, you put in a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of energy, and nobody ever sees it.

Uh, there's not a lot of, if you build a, a faquette or put up a new sign or do something else with exteriors, can, people drive by and see what you did.

And you can really be proud of that work and how it looks.

And, you can still be proud of your work roofing, but nobody ever sees that or appreciates it.

Nobody notices that they're not getting dripped on when they're inside a building.

Right, the best roof is the one you don't think about at all.

Yup, yup.

Yeah.

So you said it took a little bit of convincing to leave your full-time job and go full-time doing your own thing.

What did those early years look like?

Did you stay pretty busy right away or was that a struggle?

no, we were busy right off the get go.

I had good clients and they kept me busy.

They were, I guess the lesson that they taught me was, you know, is to just treat them, treat your clients the way you want to be treated.

So I try to, I always try to do the right thing.

You know, one of the things that Bill taught me was everybody has problems.

It's how you deal with your problems that makes you the company that you are or the person you are.

And so I've always remembered that.

we've had problems too, just like everybody, but we always take care of our issues.

That's just the number one.

I've found that sometimes the customers whose projects we have problems on uh often end up being uh our best customers as far as reviews or referrals ah even though we had some

issues when they saw how we handled it and took care of them.

That almost won more points than if we did the project without any issues at all.

Have you found that to be true?

yeah, people appreciate when you take care of them.

And it might not be your fault, but you you take care of them anyway.

So.

Yeah, yeah, that's great.

You mentioned that you started that business with a partner.

Is he still involved?

No, he got out after the first year, but he's still in the roofing business for a competitor.

He runs a commercial roofing division for a local company.

Of course, he's getting ready to retire too, like the rest of us my age.

But he was a good roofer.

has a lot of integrity.

So you guys started out just the two of you estimating and manufacturing all your own metal.

1991 you said?

1991.

Yep.

uh

it look like to build that company?

How long did you guys do it?

Just you?

And when did you start bringing more people on or taking on larger projects?

Well, the first year was just the two of us.

then year two, year three, we brought on a couple of helpers, workers, or I did.

He was gone by then.

And so I uh would estimate, and then I did it all really, except for the book work.

My mom actually was a bookkeeper for a

company out here in Tualatin and so she ran our books for me on the side just because.

So I would estimate and then I would help fab and then also help install.

So we were for probably the first three years or four years until I got just so busy selling.

and I'm assuming I didn't have time to install anymore.

So then we just, had the install crews doing that.

But we...

has doing the install always kind of been a part of your business model?

I know in our area anyway, a lot of the sheet metal shops do primarily just the fabrication and then the contractors that they sell to do a lot of the installation.

you guys always done both?

We've always done both, But we have, you our excess capacity, we do fabricate for other people.

We didn't use to.

I always just fabricated for myself and then installed.

But now we fabricate for other roofing and sheet metal and window companies, masonry guys, because we have excess capacity on our fabrication side.

Yeah, all the new technology in that space has made it so you can fabricate stuff a lot faster than we used to.

I'm sure you guys probably have way better stuff than I did, but when we went from uh a manual break to some of the new CNC stuff, holy cow, you could do twice as much stuff with

half as many people.

Yeah, I can't even operate the equipment anymore.

yeah, the old leaf brakes and slitters and all that stuff.

There's no way we could get out the metal these days with that.

We run computer leaf brakes mostly.

I think we run four of them and then some CNCs.

It's just kind of a different game.

Yeah, man, that's a that's quite a production line if you're keeping four breaks busy.

Not always it comes and it goes but we're we we have right now.

We're kind of slow, but We're we're set up to do we you know we we buy everything in coil Now and then we We have cut the length lines so we we cut out cut all our own metal we

stock every everything and then um

and then bend it up.

So it's more efficient that way and we save money on work.

We kind of, we like moved up a tier on our suppliers.

So we buy from the mill so we can increase our margins a little more.

Yeah, yeah, that's great.

What has been the most difficult step in building your company?

Well,

I would have to say, well, there's a couple things that I, One is,

hiring the right people.

That's been a tough one to learn, that lesson.

And then financing has always been a struggle, cashflow, especially in the early days.

uh Even when we were uh smaller, it seemed to be more of an issue.

And so...

Part and that lesson about what markets we were in and how that affected the cash flow um was also kind of a hard lesson to learn because you want to sell, you want to make sales

and create revenue.

But if all of our clients are paying us a net 20 and we don't have the financing to carry the...

the note like that, then you can run into some problems, which I have done before.

So

that's...

markets that you had to pull out of or back off of because of that?

Well, new construction out here pays not quite as good as um say the reroofed business to business model.

m

We used to do a lot of new construction and a lot of government work, which pays, but also kind of pays slower and then has a high retention, or it used to have a high retention

rate for a long time.

So I know you know that probably.

Waiting for your 10 % or whatever for a year, that's your profit.

So that's a

tough game.

It is.

It gets real old when they're hanging on to the last 10 % and especially working exteriors as we do.

Yeah, it might be a year before the retainage is released at the end of the project because we get our work done before anybody else starts for the most part.

That's right.

So that's a challenge.

ah What has been your strategy for growing your company?

Do you have a particular strategy you've applied or a methodology?

Well, we're more, nowadays we're a little more sophisticated in what we do.

m But it was always before it was build it and they will come.

So, or sell it and we will get it done.

So I would just go out and just sell.

Sell, sell, sell.

And then we would just get the work done.

So we do a little more planning now.

We're not.

running that game anymore.

uh But for a lot of years, that's what we did.

Yeah, I think that's been a way we've grown successfully over the years too is you get excited about something big or new and um it kind of a change of mind from day to day.

The day you land the job or win the bid, man, you're riding on uh clouds.

That's a big point to celebrate.

And the next morning you wake up and go, my gosh, now we have to do the work.

Right, the hard work begins.

Selling, that's what I tell my sales guys.

Selling it's easy.

Doing it's not so easy.

And doing it and making money at it's even harder.

Very true.

There's a reason most contractors are in and out of business within a couple years.

It's quite a feat to have lasted over 30 years like you have.

Determination maybe.

So you mentioned staffing and finding the right people was uh a difficulty and a pain point.

ah What have you figured out is your secret to finding the right people for your culture and your company?

Well, so as we've grown, I find now that it's easier to attract talent.

When we were small and we were really um just kind of grinding it out as the newcomer, was hard to attract uh real A-list talent.

And it's also possibly could be because I was younger.

So I was looking at younger people instead of maybe hiring seasoned people that could have helped a little more.

And that could have been my own uh insecurities.

But now we're able to, find that I always would, I will rather pay a little more money

or whatever it takes to get the right people in the job.

And once I get the right people in the job, then my problems really go away because they take care of business.

And I don't have to deal with inconsistencies of maybe somebody that's less experienced.

So that's probably the biggest change.

Yeah.

How have you seen the labor market shift over the last 34 years?

Have there been times where it was easier to find those people and times that it was harder or has it kind of been a steady grind the whole time?

Are we talking, so boots on the ground people, you mean?

well in the office,

you know, I find that it's pretty easy to find talented people now in accounting and office back room work, kinda.

uh

But it's gotten more and more and more difficult to find operations people, operations people and actual people actually doing the work.

Because I can remember back in say around, you know, early 2000s, maybe late 1990s, uh we were able to run apprenticeship programs and we would have.

as many applicants as we wanted of guys that wanted to go to school and work and learn a trade.

And now we that's pretty much dried up.

we just don't get the response that we used to.

um So we've you know we've we've gone to more immigrant labor.

than we used to.

So there's that, which causes its own kind of issues, challenges, but that's the labor that's out there to do the work now.

And we've also started using, we're using a lot of subcontractors, which is another model that we never used for a long time.

was all in-house labor, but we can't get everything done anymore without subcontracting.

Yeah, was that a difficult change to make?

sound like, it seemed like there's a little bit of pride there in doing it in house.

on the commercial

side of the business, on the commercial roofing side, think it's, uh they've, that industry's adapted that model.

uh

more readily than on the sheet metal side.

Although they're related, the skill set's a little different.

A sheet metal fabricator or installer is a different mindset than a production flat rougher.

it's that, the sheet metal segment, least out here in the Northwest, the subcontractor model hasn't...

uh

hasn't really flourished.

People don't really use it.

And so there's really not much, there's not very many subcontractors out there that are doing sheet metal that are willing to work on a labor model, if that makes sense.

Yeah, everybody kind of does their own thing instead of a sales and production separation there.

Yeah, there's a lot of uh smaller, it's more segmented market on the sheet metal side.

There's a lot of smaller shops, even in Portland, there's probably, I don't know, probably 12 or so that run around doing work and self-performing.

So it's harder to scale, a lot harder to scale.

It's a lot more detailed work.

I guess fine skills or refined skills involved in the sheet metal too.

That makes it a little more difficult to scale and to find labor like you're talking about.

Yeah, so about, I don't know, probably 10, 15 years ago, know, lot of roofers, commercial roofers decided that they were going to be sheet metal, commercial sheet metal roofers and

do sheet metal.

And so they came into the market.

A lot of the residential roofers who were thrown comp up, they decided they'd do metal.

So the margins on the work kind of took a dive and

A sheet metal shop, usually the wages that we have to pay are a little higher, so our costs are higher.

So we had to go at that point.

uh We went to more complicated work.

stuff that they couldn't do, they didn't have the skill set.

So we're always having to do a little more difficult, complex work to make the margins that we have to make to cover our costs.

And that makes things more difficult.

um

And then maybe about 10 years ago, the Hardy sider guys decided that they were gonna be clatters and they were gonna do ACMs and all of the systems that we were doing on the

sidewall work.

And so that took a hit out of what we do.

so we've adapted by now, we do Hardy, we do any kind of siding on the sidewall.

You know, we pick up, we do windows now.

We basically started just wrapping the whole exteriors so that we could get a more market share on less projects.

And our clients like to deal with one company.

And so oh that was kind of one of the reasons why five years ago when Grant came and pitched, you know, his idea,

to me, thought that was kind of where we wanted to go.

That was the last, really one of the last oh scopes that we weren't covering anymore, which was the roofs.

So even though, you know, we've had single ply roofing divisions before I had one back in the late 90s, um we hadn't done it for a long time.

And so getting back to that.

skill set or that scope was a move that I thought we needed to make.

Yeah, I feel like that's a trend and then a correction I've seen, especially in exteriors is it used to be a contractor was a contractor and they did everything and seemed like

they're in the the 90s and early 2000s everybody got really really specialized and you had the window guy and the door guy and the siding guy and the trim guy

And in the last decade or so, seems to be trending back the other direction where people are doing more of, we'll take care of all of it and not quite as specialized.

Right and that's what we've So and it's been it's been successful.

It's um the other thing on the single ply commercial roofing it's a lot for us it seems it's a lot uh faster to scale.

Yeah.

because we're not making it.

It's like going to the store and buying everything and then all we have to really do is install it.

So it's uh a lot easier to scale, which is why we've grown so fast.

If we were trying to grow the sheet metal that fast, I don't think it wouldn't have, it just doesn't fly.

It's too complex.

Yeah, I can see that.

know, we kind of had a, an in-house sheet metal shop.

didn't do all the exteriors.

just did kind of our own, roofing flashings and stuff.

And, and then the membrane roofing.

And I actually really prefer the sheet metal work.

That's a lot more interesting to me, but, um, the roofing was more profitable for us.

It was easier to find labor.

didn't take quite the level of skilled labor.

And so that was kind of the direction we veered, just for those reasons, but.

It sounds like you guys have stuck it out and fought for it and become successful in both arenas.

Yeah, think so.

we will never be, um the sheet metal side will never be as big or have the revenue driving as the flat.

It's just...

Yeah.

It's not gonna happen, it's be too much, but we are successful at it and we've been doing it a long time.

And we have a good client base for sheet metal, people know us.

And em so it's something that we've always been able to do successfully.

Good.

So I know you got your start in single ply.

um Sounds like you had a single ply division a couple different times throughout your history running the company.

And then you mentioned you kind of brought Grant in to spirit head that division four or five years ago.

um What was that transition like or how did that feel maybe to uh turn in somebody else loose with a division that used to be your thing?

It's been, it's had its challenges trying to, because what we did was we brought Grant in and then Grant brought all his own people in.

so, they were, Grant already had a system and he knew how he was gonna run it in the operation.

he was...

he went from zero to 100 really fast.

So like within two years we went from zero to, I don't know, I think 8 million in flat without really any effort.

And that caused some issues for the rank and file that had been here for 20 years that...

a lot of jealousy, em there's mistrust, there's a lot of issues that we've gone through, growth issues that we've been working on for like five years to try to really become a

cohesive unit.

And it's just been in the last really, the last year I see things are really the synergy, because there's a real synergy there that can be had between

the sales guys when they're like the flat guys when they're selling they can sell sidewall the the the sidewall guys can sell roofing so we're we're that's kind of spinning up now

and it's becoming better but there was a lot of jealousy and a lot of and i i kind of just let it go i let the division just kind of run and grow

and do and so they had maybe deserving perks that they got that caused rifts amongst other parts of the company that I was not really paying enough attention to and uh so as a

leader

know, 2020 hindsight, I would do things a little differently, but it's um as far as profit and revenue goes, it's been wildly successful.

Great.

It sounds like you almost had kind of two separate businesses running under the same roof for a while and now you're starting to pull them together so they're working together as a

team.

Right, I mean that's always been the challenge is they kind of ran with autonomy.

really for my vision of a real robust company, AMW in the future oh is we are all one.

And we all work together for our own best common good, which is the AMW.

And it doesn't matter which side you're on.

So that's what we've been working on.

It's a challenge.

We're still working on it.

But it's what I think really needs to be, uh that's the key to the future.

Yeah.

So what, what steps are you taking to bring those two cultures or almost those two separate companies together?

Do you have any, uh, tips or tricks to build that unified culture?

Well, we've so we were in two separate off it.

were we were as uh autonomous as we were running out of two separate offices.

And so we were we we we all moved in together.

That was the first thing we did.

We've all moved in together.

All the sales guys are together now.

All the flat commercial guys are working with the sheet metal guys all in the same space.

That made a difference.

They all got to know each other and on a personal level, so they have more trust.

And then we started having more leadership meetings.

So we have uh weekly meetings with the ops crews on both sides and then we have sales meetings with all the salesmen and the estimators together.

So we all started uh working together and then.

leadership meetings with the different divisions.

So Grant runs the flat roofing division and then Erick runs the metal division and Larry also runs the metal division.

They all meet every week and get together and work together.

So we're able to more work on more common goals.

So it's helping.

Yeah, it sounds like you took quite a chance on on Grant and like you say, kind of turn them loose to almost run autonomously.

ah It seems like that has paid off for you, but I imagine that was that's a pretty big swing to uh go for it on that level.

Was that a little bit scary to have somebody turned loose doing their own thing under your umbrella?

I would, no, not really, I guess not.

I've always been kind of a risk taker with business.

I don't gamble.

I feel I gamble every day just coming into work.

But I was right in the middle of when I made that decision, I was right in the middle of I was either going to buy a company out of Seattle, Washington.

It was another sheet metal company that a couple guys that wanted to retire that had been around for a long time that I knew.

And so I was getting ready to pull the trigger on that one.

And then Grant came in with his deal.

um

I don't know, I'm familiar with Rufy and I just thought it was the way to go.

I liked Grant.

He's a sharp guy and I just let him go and it worked.

Maybe not 100%, but it never does.

Everything takes longer than you think, everything's harder than you think.

That's been my experience.

I've started a couple companies that I've spun off from AMW.

And every time when I do it, it takes way more effort and way more time, way more money than I think it's going to.

That's the three rules of business, It takes twice as long as you think, it costs twice as much as you think, and you are not the exception.

That's the truth.

Yeah.

At what point in your leadership journey were you most afraid and what was the source of that fear?

Hmm.

Well, leadership journey, would say probably the last, probably just the last five years have been the most challenging because we've grown so fast and my role has changed a lot.

We went from like a mom and pop organization for years and years to a big organization where we have to give

give the players the power to make the decisions that they think are right and then be okay with that.

And I've always been kind of a meddler and I've found that that's not successful.

So that's been a challenge.

Frankly, my age and where I'm at in my life, it's made it a little more difficult when I was in my 30s and 40s and even 50s.

I had a long runway.

I could see where I was going.

I had no plans on doing anything except for growing A &W.

And now that I'm in my 60s.

I know that the ride's gonna end at some point.

so that creates indecision for me, which also reflects on the company and it makes it more difficult for the managers because they don't know exactly where I'm at.

So that's been a challenge.

So it's hard to lead and have a real direction when you don't know if you're gonna be around for another five years, three years, 10 years.

And that's a tough place to be for the people working for me.

Yeah, yeah, I can imagine you, uh, you make decisions a little bit differently if, uh, you're all in for the foreseeable future versus if you're looking for an off ramp, or at

least considering that there, might not just go on forever.

You make decisions a little bit different.

Right, and even though you're having fun at the time, like right now I can't imagine doing anything else, you have to kind of plan for that.

That plants that seed in your mind.

m

Yeah.

Was there anything that significantly delayed the growth of your company?

And if so, how would you handle it differently if you had the chance to do it over?

I would say our delayed growth would be through probably we took on work that we should not have and we had projects, couple projects that were not profitable which sucked the

growth out of the company at times.

So we would run, would do well, we would grow and then we would have a, for whatever reason, a bad project.

and that would suck all the money out.

And so we would stop our growth for a while and then we would have to rebuild and grow some more.

And then that happened quite a few times for different reasons, at least twice in a real big way.

Back in, once in...

I think it was like 1998-ish area.

I am over expanded.

I had the sheet metal company going.

I started a single ply roofing company division.

And then I started uh manufacturing steel buildings.

And so I was doing all of that and they were all for the same kind of the same market, which was not super fast pay.

And I didn't have my financing.

I didn't have any financing in order.

I was all just self-financed and it just sucked all the money out of us.

that was a, had to work, I had to do a workout on that.

That took me.

of probably three years to work myself back out of that almost bankruptcy situation of over expansion.

And then I did the same thing for different reasons, kind of a different thing happened back in 2011.

Same thing, only on a way bigger level.

oh I over expanded again, had some really, really poor projects and even the projects that should have been good, we had way too much work so a lot of those didn't make any money

either.

So we were in pretty bad shape and that workout took me five years, I would say.

And that took everything that I had.

Everything I made, I had to put back in the company.

and just kind of rebuild again.

So I've done that to myself twice.

Hopefully I've learned that lesson.

I think I have.

both of those times, if we didn't have those setbacks, we would be definitely in different spot right now.

um

or we would have been here a lot sooner.

Yeah.

So it sounds like maybe both of those instances were um trying to grow too much too quickly.

You feel like kind of settling for steady growth or focusing on a steady growth rather than pushing it forward would have served you better.

Well, well, possibly, but this time around, we, you know, we grew even fat a lot faster and it's been, it's been fine.

It's been better.

Our cashflow is, is, uh, really good.

Like we have, we haven't been indoor.

We have a line of credit.

Um, so we've, I've set up financing now.

So we have, we have a backstop.

And as we've grown, I've been able to make the backstop more robust.

But we haven't had to use it for three years at all.

But we've grown from 8 million to 28 million.

So why?

It's all about the market, really, that we're in and where we're trying to grow in more so than the growth and the way that we are growing.

So taking on...

a different mindset that we don't have to do all the work ourselves, that we don't have to hire every employee, that we can sub out work to people that are competent, that want to

do it on their own.

so changing that up, those are the lessons that we learned back in, you know, 2011 era when we tried to do all this work and we had to do it on our own and we just couldn't get

it done.

So we learn those lessons.

So now when we go out to a big job, we may sub out a third of it.

Let's say we don't want to do the tear off, or we don't have the manpower for the tear off.

We'll hire a company that can roll in 20 guys or whatever they do and do that work for us so we keep our guys doing what they do best.

And that's made a big difference.

Yeah, it sounds like I'm hearing a little bit of hesitation or a lot of caution with using subcontractors.

um What kind of vetting or what kind of a process do you use to make sure that you're getting competent guys that you can trust?

Well, we use the same subcontractors on every job.

So we don't go out and try new guys.

We put one of our own guys on every crew as a kind of a project manager, manager that sits out there and kind of directs the show and makes sure everything's done correctly.

uh

And so we don't take a lot of chances on the subcontractor thing.

We just don't want to get burned.

There's a lot of guys that don't do the job right, but we watch them really close.

Yeah, that's, uh, we've been through a similar journey.

I took a lot of pride for a long time in the fact that we did everything in house and we never used subcontractors.

And, we kind of hit the same point where if we were going to grow or even just to finish the work that we had secured, we had to find something different.

we were pretty picky in selecting some very qualified subcontractors and, and parked a supervisor on the job with them to work with them, train them to do it our way.

and uh it paid off and worked out well but uh I see jobs done by other contractors that use subcontractors that did not turn out well frequently.

Yeah, they suffer the consequences of hiring somebody that can't do the job properly or isn't competent.

Yeah,

I think that's common.

And even with this contract, know, the subcontractor you use all the time, you still run into the little things that aren't done quite right or their actions aren't what you think

they should be.

I mean, there's all kinds of challenges.

Yep.

Yeah.

What is a lesson that you wish you would have learned earlier?

Well, I wish we would have paid more attention to what market I would be more successful in and then spent more effort actually pursuing that market.

instead of, I think a lot of the market that I did for a long time was just because it was easy.

I had people, so there was work out there that people would throw at me.

And so I would do it and that would keep us busy.

And so we were busy doing work that although we made money on, it didn't allow us to really go into the markets that we could.

have made more money on.

And then we weren't going to market the same way.

So now we go more direct marketing.

We run actual sales guys.

And always before, we just ran estimators.

So now we're out doing business to business, basically, you know, if not actually knocking on doors, we're knocking on, you know, we're talking to uh property owners direct.

And that's where we're finding we have the most success.

The margins are better, the pay is better, the timing on the payments better, the jobs are easier because we're in control of the schedules.

there's all the advantages and for years we just didn't do that.

We mostly focused on GC work, maybe some developer work and we just didn't go out to market on the business to business side.

So that's a big deal.

Do you still do some work with GCs and developers, or have you kind of moved entirely towards business to business and direct to consumer?

No, we still do.

do about, probably about 30%, I would say, is um GC developer work.

Mostly GC now.

We were doing a lot of developer work a few years ago, but that's in the Portland area right now.

That's kind of like dried up a little.

Our clients aren't building when the interest rates went up and the...

All that went down last year, they just kind of put a pause on what they were building.

We were doing a lot of like four over twos or three over one uh mixed use jobs.

we haven't done one of those for a while.

And so now we're back to doing um GC work again.

Yeah, I think that 30 % mix that seems like a pretty good mix.

That's kind of 20-30%.

That's where we found our sweet spot too of um staying in with the GCs taking their work but being able to control our schedule a little better.

Definitely.

And we're doing a little more government work again, too.

For a while there, for probably 10 years, we did no government work.

um But now we're back doing a little bit of government work, just kind of getting a better mix.

As the developer jobs kind of dried up, we kind of moved a little bit um to some government work.

Yeah, yeah, different, uh, different customer bases kind of go up and down with the economy.

seems like, like you said, when interest rates are high and, people aren't building, man, we've seen a lot of state and federal government work coming out and that's been filling

our schedule.

Whereas a few years ago, there wasn't a lot of that, but the building was booming and getting big.

Yeah.

So you got to do, I tell the guys, you got to do it.

You got to, you know, got to do something.

Got to build something.

You know, we, used to work all over Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

And then as we got bit, you know, older and busier, we, we, we just got our, our geographic radius got smaller and smaller.

So then we were really just working around in Portland.

for a long time.

And now we're moving back out again.

We're looking back up into Seattle a little bit.

We're working up in the Tri-Cities.

We're working down in Eugene, Oregon.

We're down on the coast.

So we're kind of, we're spreading back out again, which we always did that before, because we traveled and did Fred Meyers and Payless stores.

But it's a little different than what we've been doing for a long time.

Okay.

Has that been challenging trying to manage your company as it's broadened its footprint again?

I haven't really noticed it.

We've done it better this time.

It hasn't been as much of a challenge, or least maybe because I'm not as directly involved in that now, but it seems to be working pretty seamless.

Whereas before, there's always been some challenges.

It's been good.

We've been doing a lot of workout, know, in Eastern Oregon, Bend.

It's about three and a half to four hours away.

uh Successful, profitable.

We're down in Calamath Falls, Oregon.

That's a good five, six hours.

We're making money there.

We're down in Eugene.

We're doing real well there.

So we're doing it a little differently.

We're hiring locally.

I'll bring in, depending on the size, I'll bring in maybe a crew, a small crew.

uh I'll rent a house or a house and a shop or whatever I need to.

And then we'll hire maybe three to five guys locally that come to work.

So I don't have to bring everybody back and forth.

And that seems to be working.

Yeah, that seems like a great model traveling like that and spreading out, especially if you have jobs of some good size that are going to keep guys on them for a while.

You know, and on the flat side, when we're bringing in a subcontractor, they don't really care where they're working.

some of the subcontractors we use, they're all coming in from out of state anyway.

They may be coming in from Texas or California or Georgia or wherever they're coming from.

So they don't necessarily need to feel like they're working in Portland.

They might just go to...

Kent, it's the same thing.

So that's really pretty seamless.

Yeah, good.

Is there uh something that you've changed your mind about significantly throughout the 30 years, 34 years you've been in business, maybe an opinion that you held pretty strongly

early on and you've changed your mind about?

No, I can't think of anything really.

I mean, we've definitely changed, but I've always just kind of had an open mind.

I like to listen to different ideas, think out of the box a little bit.

So I've always entertained different ideas.

So I've always been willing to try an idea and I still am.

Yeah, it sounds like that's worked out well for you with the different businesses you've started and spun off and different markets that you've got into.

uh Yeah, it's evident you kind of have an open mind and are willing to give something a shot.

Would you say that has paid off for the most part?

I know you said there were two times where you maybe got out over your skis and it was detrimental, but in the larger picture, has that paid off for you?

yeah, it's been successful.

I would say probably the next phase here at AMW anyways is becoming more of a uh managed company.

Now we have a controller and uh division leaders and managers and it's just, I'm more of an entrepreneurial type person.

So I'm excited by an idea and get going on it, but I'm really not a, m

I'm not a detail person.

mean, I have a vision.

I kind of get the big vision, but I like to leave the little details to other people.

And that's kind of how I am.

And so I've had to, once again, kind of learn how to just let the managers manage.

let them do their job or help pick the kind of projects that we're gonna be most successful for or what we're gonna do.

So, because I still have other ideas for other businesses and stuff to do and I'm always, that's what I like to do.

That's probably one.

An idea of a new company, a new product, that excites me.

And uh designing skins on buildings, that excites me.

those are the two things that I like to do.

So I kind of um move towards those directions.

Managing a company on a day-to-day basis, it's not really what I like to do.

well sounds like you found some people that are doing it well for you and allow you to focus on what you enjoy.

I have, yes, which makes it easy to stay and keep working.

That's great.

That's not true for all entrepreneurs.

think a lot of us get bogged down dealing with the things that were not the things we got into business for.

Right.

Is there a major mistake that you wish you could have avoided?

Well, almost bankrupting my company a couple times would be right there in my mind.

Over expansion.

It makes you really cautious, you know, because you're only, you're, you know, a few big bad projects away from problems.

And so you got to really, you can't, you can't make up in the field for a slip of the pencil.

and so your sales price, your estimate, that's uh critical.

Yeah.

Have you changed the way that you do things or maybe changed the way that you manage your estimators because of those mistakes?

Well, yes.

So we run, you know, I developed my own spreadsheet a number of years ago that we use on the metal side.

And then on the flat side, we use a CAN system or FCS.

And we run our estimates in there.

And so on that side, Grant reviews all the bids, all the estimates.

And then on the metal side, I review all the estimates, which takes

takes extra time, but that's where I really ran into trouble back in 2011, was some bad estimates that I didn't review that ended up being poor projects.

And so I'm real cautious about, and we have now, before we bid a job, we have a pre-bid meeting with the operations and the...

uh

division manager and the estimator or salesman and we go over whether or not we really want to the job and what are the m what are the pluses and minuses does it meet all the

criteria and then before we bid the job we have a another meeting and we go over the estimate and the plans with the operations and go over all

parts and pieces to kind of make sure that we're all thinking on the same page, that we have all the parts, all the scopes covered, that we think we're not gonna run into any

challenges on the operations side.

And then they sign off on that and we then bid the job.

And then if we're successful, then we have another meeting and the operations goes through the whole job again.

And we really look at it before we sign a contract.

And then once all those boxes are checked, we sign the contract and move forward.

Everybody takes accountability.

The operations team is accountable for the margin.

And they take the ball from there.

So that's kind of before we just we didn't have any of those procedures or checks and balances.

So

it's made a big difference.

that sounds like a great process to get the operations involved on the bidding side.

Because like you said, the uh execution can't make up for a poor bid.

so trying to hold operations accountable for a bid done by an estimator, that's something I think a lot of us contractors struggle with is if a job's bid wrong,

they can't make it up.

does that tie into your compensation as well as do you have a performance based compensation package that holds those people accountable for all steps of that?

Yeah, so on the estimator sales side there are sales guys are on a commission basis based on the margin, the net margin of the job.

then um operations also has a uh compensation bonus plan based on the margin of the job and the slippage up or down.

And so there's a minimum, a minimum margin where nobody wins or there's a m

there's an upside for both if it's a winner.

So that seems to help.

It compensates for winners and it protects us on a job that's maybe not quite so profitable.

Yeah.

Yeah, that sounds like a great system.

That's something I struggled with a long time.

I love performance based compensation, but when you have kind of two different sides of the business there, the person estimating is not the person installing.

It can be difficult to gauge, you know, where did it go wrong?

Was it misestimated or was it poorly executed?

And, um, sounds like getting them both involved there from

upfront and agreeing to the metrics uh allows you guys to do that in a good way.

Right, mean, operations signing off on the job before they take it kind of makes them accountable that they can do the job the way it was estimated.

And it puts the onus on them.

On the other hand, if they feel that there is an estimating mistake before we sign the contract, then we'll push back to the estimator or the client.

uh

and either go in, you know, and basically we'll just be honest and upfront with the client.

It hasn't happened much, but it has happened where we've had to go back and say, hey, we've made a mistake, you know, and most of our clients are the people that we deal with.

They appreciate that upfront.

And

we would rather not do the job if, I don't wanna do a job if we're gonna lose money.

And they don't wanna be on the other side of that ball either.

so-

that makes a big difference.

Yeah, that's good that they understand that.

think a lot of people don't is you don't want to own the project that a contractor went bankrupt on.

No, we're taking over jobs all the time for on subcontractors that can't do the work for generals that shouldn't have signed them up.

But they're just, I don't know, it's that low buck allure.

They think that they have to use the low guy or they think they're gonna maybe they can manage their way through the.

the issue, they all know that it's going to be a problem or most of them that do that, if they're experienced at all, they know they're going to be having to hold the hand and see

if it even makes it through.

But a lot of times it doesn't.

You every year you get these two or three companies that are going out of business.

And that's that's just painful for for the general, the client and the sub, you know.

m

We're glad to take the work on, but if they would have just used somebody reputable at the beginning, it would have saved a lot of heartache.

Yeah, the best general contractors that I know have a pretty limited number of subs that they work with and they don't necessarily just take the lowest bid.

They might have two or three subs for each scope of work, but they only use those two or three.

They don't open it up to uh just the lowest price of anybody in the market.

Right, that's not a good way to go.

No, we have one general contractor we work with that he assembled what he calls his team.

And even before they take on a job as a GC, he calls all of his primary subs and you know, Hey, I'm looking at doing this job.

This is the timeframe.

This is the schedule.

Are you going to bid it for me?

And when we get it, can you do the work?

And if any of his, you know, primary subs can't do it, he doesn't take on the job because he doesn't want to work with somebody else.

That's conservative for sure.

That's, I think, smart.

It seems to work well for him.

Their projects finish on time and they're done well and they don't have to manage through a lot of problems.

Right.

If you could go back to the late 80s the early 90s and had the opportunity to do this all over again, would you?

yeah, in a heartbeat.

I love this industry.

I love what I do.

That's why I'm still doing it.

It's fun.

You deal with, you know, you're helping people with a problem, which is uh beneficial.

It makes you feel good.

uh You meet a lot of really nice, uh just normal people.

in this industry.

There's a lot of nice, helpful people, hardworking.

I come from a blue collar background, so it's kind of, I like blue collar attitude.

So that's been nice, I'm comfortable in it.

No, I love this industry.

I can't imagine doing anything else, really.

Great.

Do you think there's still opportunity for a young person to uh start today and do what you've done?

I think um probably more so.

I

mean, if they do it right, there's a whole generation of people that are maybe a little bit uh older than me or my age that have established companies, subcontractor companies in

specialty markets that don't really have any kind of an exit strategy.

And uh

And that creates an opportunity for somebody that has some energy and is smart and uh wants to get into this industry.

The other thing, some of the younger generation, I don't know, it seems like they want to just get in and then work for a few years and just uh try to blow it up and get out.

which is a different attitude than, know, my generation, we got in and we kind of grinded out, just kept grinding.

So I think if a person has the attitude that they're gonna want, they wanna do it for a while or a long time, it's a good opportunity.

um The roll-ups that are happening are gonna create some challenges.

But I think if a person is young and start, know, a young, smaller company is more agile.

They can kind of move around the edges.

You can make money.

You can do what you need to do.

The big bad boys, the roll-ups, they're here and they're gonna disrupt, but they have costs too.

they...

If you position yourself in the right place, I think you're still you're still in a better position than they are uh And one of the reasons they're being so successful is they're

running into this these people like well people that are my age and older that are that are looking to They have their they need to get some sort of an exit strategy And so

that's that's kind of fueling that too

And it's, you know, what you did with your company is a harder little bit, in some ways, maybe a harder thing to find.

You got to find the talent that you have confidence in that can take your company to the next level.

And that's a little more challenging, I think, when somebody comes in a private equity group and they think they have all they already have, or maybe a roll up that's already

working that already has all the procedures and talent and

going in other places.

But yeah, think there's a lot of opportunity.

Yeah, I think uh all of these, the roll ups and uh private equity and building these big conglomerates, think is actually going to uh increase the opportunity for the startups

because those bigger companies, have so much overhead and so much going on.

as you know, know, back into office, it takes just as much work to sell, administrate.

invoice to do all the steps for a small job as it does for a big job and so The the bigger that machine gets the bigger that engine gets the less profitable those smaller

medium-sized jobs are and I know around us anyway, there's uh one big uh Conglomerate that I have some employees that used to work there

And they said, you know, any job less than a half million dollars, they don't even look at it because it takes too much resources on the back end.

It's not worth the effort.

Whereas for a uh small guy, you know, him running the business with one crew or a few guys are kind of getting started.

uh Man, that would be a big job for them.

And there's huge opportunity.

so.

As all these kind of medium sized businesses get bought up in the conglomerates, I think it's going to open up lot of room for new startups and small companies to grow and really

thrive.

I agree 100%.

And the young guys, they're more savvy with the social media and web and doing all of the marketing online.

The new guys would go into market a little differently.

It's more successful with the society we live in now.

Whereas the old guys, know.

the old line company, just, I mean, I don't know how many, we just threw a bid out.

We would just throw bids, throw bids.

There was no marketing.

And there's a lot of companies like that still, at least out here.

There's, I would say the majority of the roofing and sheet metal companies, they don't do any kind of marketing push.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's true.

A lot of the young people that know how to work in that space can get a lot of momentum early on simply because, well, even I consider myself one of the young guys on the younger

side, but even the age I came into the industry, that just wasn't how you did things.

That wasn't where leads came from.

You got jobs by throwing bids out there and

So we've kind of become so set in our ways that somebody new coming in with a new idea upsets the market a little bit.

Yeah.

I've seen that for sure.

That's what Grant came in and did.

Yeah, he's a great example of that.

So you mentioned uh a trend maybe with young people that are wanting to get into the business and blow it up real quick and have a quick exit.

And almost in the same breath, we talked a little bit about some of the big roll ups and private equity that are really getting involved in service businesses.

um Do you feel that attitude of the young people of wanting to do that and have the short career, the quick exit?

ah Is that an just an attitude of the that younger generation or is that a product of the opportunity with private equity getting involved in the service businesses?

Well, that's a one.

um

So first of all, I really think the private equity guys don't really understand the risks of the industry that we're in.

uh Maybe some of them do, but I don't know if they're gonna have a rude awakening because it's a tough, risky, super risky business.

But on the younger generation, is it because of the opportunity of the, maybe there's some of that.

I think that creates a, for a young person that has that frame of mind, it would create that opportunity and a vehicle to make that happen.

But I think maybe that,

attitude is maybe based upon society and maybe what we how companies have treated their workers possibly and and how they see there's really no uh loyalty on the other side of

the fence and so that they're just kind of in it to in it to win it and get out i mean i don't know how many times i've talked to well people younger people that they're just uh

They just want, they want to grow the company and get out.

Now, do they know what they're gonna do?

They don't really have that really planned out.

They just think that they need some sort of security.

it's a, like, I have a son who's uh late 30s, almost 40, he owns a solar company.

And he's been in business now maybe eight years, seven years, but they're talking, you know.

They're always talking about, you know, if the industry firms up or when's the right time to get out and go on to take the risk off the table.

And these are kind of the things that when I was their age, I really never really even really thought of.

And we didn't have that opportunity either.

There was really nobody that was going to come in and take the risk off the table for us.

and now the private equity, they're out there.

So it's probably a little, I'd say it's both.

Yeah, I agree 100 % but being one of those younger guys that kind of falls into that, I was really curious to hear your viewpoint.

But I think my generation and even the generation behind us were that the instant gratification generation.

grew up with the internet.

Those younger than me grew up with the magic wand that's the smartphone in their hand and they can push a button and have stuff delivered to their door the next day or even that

same day.

Um, just anything is possible and everything has sped up.

The concept of working hard grinding for something has kind of just gone away because most things you can get with the touch of your button, touch of a button and have it right

away.

Um, but then the other side of that is also, uh, you know, the opportunity for that to happen.

That, wasn't there.

mean, um, 20 years ago, if you were starting a company, you were committing.

That was going to be your life was to build that and you know, 20, 30 years from now, hopefully you can pass it off to somebody else and have made enough money along the way to

make it work.

But this idea of building it up real quick and selling it off or something like that just really didn't exist because the opportunity wasn't there.

So.

And I'm not saying that that's a bad thing.

I mean, it's just different.

It's like, so somebody in the right mind could have maybe three or four careers, or it gives you an opportunity to do uh different things, like yourself.

You're taking the, it's not like you're gonna just go fishing every day.

You're not retiring per se.

You're just gonna pursue other pursuits.

And I'm not, that may be, that's a good thing.

So is it good for the industry?

I don't know, I guess we'll have to see.

Big corporations don't tend to.

I don't think they're really good for uh society maybe, or for people in general, or for the industry.

I don't know how that's gonna play out, but for the individual that's on the other side of that, that's a good thing.

Yeah, yeah, I think it'll be interesting to watch.

ah I agree with you.

think a lot of those, um you know, the roll ups might be a different thing.

It's a company that started and was successful and starts acquiring others is a little bit different than, you know, an equity group coming in and buying up a whole bunch of

businesses and trying to put them together is, um man, service businesses, there's a there's a personality that goes with the service business.

And uh

Like you said, there's a lot of risk.

It's a high risk, high reward business and managing risk is a big part of it.

And if you didn't grow up in it, if you don't know the business inside and out, if you don't know the risks to watch out for, um, man, you can get yourself in trouble real

quick.

So it'll be interesting to watch.

Yes, yes it will.

And that's what, you know, and they don't care if it starts going down or bad, they just shut the doors.

And then you're just, everybody's out of work.

Got to move on.

There's a company out here in Portland called Schoolhouse Electric.

I don't know if you know who they are.

They were bought in, I think it was 2019 or 2020 for...

I disclose some they're very successful bought by a uh private equity firm and now they're closing their doors.

It's only been four years, five years and out of biz.

you know, it's it's kind of sad.

um I mean, the owners, the former owner, he got out all right, but all the employees and everything else.

They're just out of luck.

Yeah, yeah, the very first company, I had no intentions of exiting my company or selling.

The opportunity was kind of brought to me.

I was looking at grinding it out for the next 15 or 20 years.

And the first company that came to us and presented an option, we ended up not pursuing that.

But one of the acquisitions they had around that same time, which is only about two years ago, two and a half years ago, they're closing the doors and going out of business as

well.

they, they got a little bit over their skis with financing and didn't understand the risk side of things and, didn't understand the personality centric, aspect of that business.

And it, dried up pretty quick.

So, we'll see, I'm, really excited that I get to hand ours off to, uh, somebody that's in the family, so to speak, and, sell it to somebody that's been here working with me for a

while instead of an outside firm.

Yeah, makes a difference.

What has been your biggest win as a leader?

What are you most proud of?

um I'm proud that I have employees that have worked for me for 25 years.

I've got a lot of guys that have been here for a long time.

um All on the sheet metal side, my foremen have all been here for 20 years or more, plus the management.

And I feel that that's...

because we treat them fairly and we respect them and we care about them and so they care about us.

And that's probably my greatest achievement, I think, is having guys that have been working with me for so long.

Yeah, that's awesome.

I love to see that, especially in the trades, because the work that we do is not always easy and it's not always fun.

So if somebody sticks with it, it's because they're being taken care of well, not because they just absolutely love the work that they're doing usually.

Yeah.

What has been your best resource to grow as a leader throughout your career?

I would say mentors, older people running their own companies that have kind of taken me under their wings and given me advice.

That's been very helpful.

Kind of been there, done that.

Yeah.

that's great.

ah They're not all released yet, but I've done like three interviews here in a row.

Guys with stories similar to yours started a company around the same time period and have built it over a 30 year career.

And every one of them, that's been the answer is they had, ah you know, older, wiser people that they were smart enough to pay attention to.

And it took the time to mentor them and walk with them.

And that's been a big resource.

That does seem to be kind of a generational gap when I ask younger people that question.

That's usually not the answer that I get.

uh Do you have any thoughts about uh what might cause that?

it?

Well, because they've never, they haven't, I don't know, they haven't put in the time maybe.

So they don't really, m I don't know, it's just a whole different, maybe it's a whole different attitude.

Maybe that's not important to the younger, younger person so much as it is to ah my generation.

I don't know.

It's good when you can look at somebody that's been around a long time and they've grown and done well.

And it gives you a sense of pride when you know that they're doing well financially and mentally.

And they're kind of living a dream that you helped them create, at least for me.

maybe a younger leader isn't.

so focused on that.

And I probably wasn't that focused on that when I was in my 30s either or 40s.

I was more focused on just maybe myself and my dream.

And it takes time to develop a different attitude.

Interesting.

So you've mentioned a couple pretty difficult things at least twice that you said you were close to losing everything and had to fight for a long time to build it back.

uh What motivates you to keep pushing when things get hard?

I'm pretty determined as a person.

just keep doing, I don't give up.

I just keep grinding out.

um The second time it happened, was pretty, it was severe.

And I actually did think about throwing in the towel.

It was at a point where it was...

I could have easily thrown in the towel and that would have been okay.

So in this case, I was doing some joint venture work with a company called Cobra Corp.

I don't know if you know who they

were.

one of their former employees worked for me or still works for my company, but just not for me anymore.

Okay, well, so they I was doing some joint ventures with them up in Eastern Washington

and I'd go up and roll.

had I was running role farmers and doing metal and they they didn't have they weren't doing they were doing some metal they were expanding into from the single ply world into

the metal world.

And um so I was doing the metal some of the metal for them.

as a subcontractor or a joint venture.

And the owner at the time was a gentleman, Pete Dix, was his name.

When this all went down, I flew up to see him and I talked to him.

And they were running, at the time, a real successful company, or at least appeared to be successful.

It was successful.

They were a powerhouse, and they were expanding and doing a lot of different things.

And I told him, because they were thinking about, they could just take me on or buy me out.

or kind of merge me in and I could go that route.

He told me, he gave me the story of when he was younger and his father, they had a company called the Dicks Corporation, which is still in business.

They do dam work.

They do heavy industrial type construction.

His dad started that and...

He told me his dad had bought an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and was bringing it through the Panama Canal up the West Coast.

And he invested all of their money in this thing.

I mean, everything, huge risk.

And his father passed away, had a heart attack right in the middle of this whole thing.

And so the two brothers who were young, him and his brother were left holding the bag of no money, uh this project going that was super crazy.

uh So they were like in a bankrupt situation.

And he told me how they just got in and just worked it out.

So they worked it out with their suppliers, the government, everybody and made it through it and just grinded it out.

so um that was his recommendation for me.

And so I took that to heart on the second and I just, you know, just got down and just started working it.

um he was right.

So instead of giving up,

I just kept going.

I found you can achieve basically anything if you have the right frame of mind and you just stick with it.

And you're honest.

I worked it out with all my suppliers, all my back taxes, everything, and it took a long time, but everybody got paid.

And everybody was grateful for that.

And I still have the same suppliers.

and it was a good lesson.

Maybe I should have been, become a turnaround specialist.

I don't know.

I thought about that, although it's tough work, but that would be, that's why I stayed, that helped me get through that.

Yeah, that's, you gotta be a glutton for punishment to be a turnaround specialist.

It sounds like you might be well suited for it.

Right.

Was there a point in your career that was a real turning point for you?

Maybe a point that you really worked and worked and worked for.

You felt like you kind of hit the top of the hill and gained some momentum going down the other side.

Not yet.

It's coming.

No, I've got a vision of like, you know, because we were kind of doing that private equity deal together.

And I've always thought that we could be more.

It's always in my mind, it's always more.

We can do more.

We can be a little bit better.

And so that drives me to, guess I haven't got to the top of the hill in my mind.

I'm still climbing up the mountain.

When I get to the top and start going down the other side, think that's when I'll be, it'll be over.

It'll be time to quit.

you.

Yeah.

Where do you think that drive comes from?

Oh boy.

Probably insecurities on myself some.

um

just a, I don't know, a vision that I have that I wanna do, that I have.

I don't feel that we've made it there yet.

There's always something that we can do better.

Maybe a little bit of a streak of perfectionism.

Although I don't look at myself as a perfectionist at all.

I just, I'm always thinking that the team can be better.

I kind of look at it as a sports team.

I'm always trying to trade up for a better uh quarterback maybe um to get a little further.

I don't know, I'm not really sure.

Well that's a good honest answer, I can appreciate that.

Well, this is my favorite question.

ah Are you a person of some sort of faith tradition?

And if so, how has that shaped your leadership?

Well, I grew up as a Christian in the Methodist faith.

uh

I married a Mormon girl and so I went to the Mormon church for a number of years, 25 years.

I do believe in a higher power and I um believe in values of the New Testament um and the teachings of Jesus Christ as a kind of as a guide for me for what I should be doing or

striving to do.

I feel, it's kind of interesting as I've gotten older, I kind of feel I'm more accepting of other, maybe other avenues to um love, possibly, or whatever that means, you know, the

love of Christ or whatever love that is.

I feel that's missing in this society.

And I think possibly that, um

if we could each do our own part to be more loving and have that attitude, that's going to give us the synergy to become a better society.

And so I think it's important for me anyway to try to act that way.

And I'm not perfect.

I have my own personal issues.

and problems, but if I can kind of try to go back to that and keep that in my mind, that's kind of, that's where I'm at now with the higher power and spirituality right now.

I'm a work in progress, but that's my thought.

Okay, I think we can all say that we're a work in progress if if we don't think that about ourselves, that's probably a big problem.

I know you've talked a little bit about ah maybe getting towards the end of your career.

um What is next for you or next for AMW?

What do you see in the next few years?

Well, we're trying to plan a new branch down in Southern Oregon right now.

So we're getting ready to um deploy down there on a more permanent basis.

um So that's exciting.

We have quite a bit of work lined up down in that area.

So we're going to plant a flag there.

And also we're going to...

um

going to start in a serious way of planning another flag up in the Seattle area again.

We've done that before.

We haven't done that for a number of years, but we're going to that's our our other spot that we're really going to plant a flag.

So we're in the growth mode.

We're going to be you know, we're projecting our biggest year yet next year.

And we're going to continue to

to grow in those two markets.

So I'm excited about that.

It means we're going to be able to hire some more people, some good leaders, I hope, and get that off the ground.

It's fun for me to see that happen.

That will probably take the next three to five years.

And then who knows?

I guess we'll see where we're at then.

Okay, all right.

I know you mentioned you have one son that's in the solar industry.

um Any of your kids have any interest in the business or have any of them worked with you there?

I have, well they've all worked with me.

um My oldest son worked with me for a number of years.

But he didn't want to wait around for me to retire and take over.

So he moved on on his own.

I helped him start a business, which worked out to be a better move for him.

He's way smarter than me um and has grown way faster than I ever did successfully.

got another son Jake who he's our fabrication manager he runs he runs the fab shop on the metal side so and he's been working for me for his entire life too em he's good too does

he want to take over the whole business I don't really I don't really think that's really what he is thoughts are um

Possibly at some point.

He's he's pretty young.

There's a lot of moving parts as you get bigger.

It's um It's it's more complex.

It's not like just you know you and four guys and kind of learning it as you go, so He he does a good job at what he does.

He's smart and also so We'll have to see how that goes You know and I've got some other young guys that are really really sharp to you know like grant

and some other people that are good.

I don't know, maybe an employee sale or something might be in the works.

Who knows?

Or a key employee buyout.

Okay, yeah, that sounds interesting.

You brought up a point that kind of has my mind spinning here of, yeah, it's totally different stepping into running the business that you're in now versus like when you

started and there's some things that are probably easier.

You get to take some of the shortcuts and benefit from some of the lessons learned, but you miss out on growing through the process.

And um yeah, when you start out with just a couple guys and

you're out in the field doing it and grinding it out, you learn a lot about the business as it grows.

And when you step into something that's already established, that's a pretty quick learning curve.

Yeah, well that's where you went, your second generation, right?

I am.

ah I think I got kind of a hybrid of when I bought out my dad, we were down to, I think when I bought the company, there was only five or six employees and I was still in the

field with the guys every day all the time.

And so I, I probably got the best of both worlds.

I got the shortcut of the name was out there.

We were well established.

had systems and processes and things were working well and churning well.

didn't have to.

gutted out from a zero start.

ah But I got to kind of grow through the process as the business grew as well.

yeah.

He is.

ah He still lives here in Buffalo.

He hasn't had any involvement in the business for quite a few years, but he still meets me in my office for coffee almost every morning.

And ah yeah, we get to spend a lot of time together.

It's nice.

How old was he when he retired?

He was 54 when he retired, so.

did he just go and start doing something else or is he a rancher or what?

ah He had a rental portfolio, bunch of residential rentals, and he was doing both for quite a while.

And then he sold the business to me and kind of focused on the residential rentals and that kept him pretty busy.

ah everybody, all the young people on the internet right now are talking about uh real estate as passive income.

And I can tell you watching him, there's absolutely nothing passive about it.

Yeah, I've got quite a...

I'm in the rental business too, so I know, I know, I feel that pain.

Yeah, yeah, you don't just sit back and cash checks.

There's real work involved.

No, yeah, always.

Yeah.

Is there anybody that you'd be interested to see on the show?

Somebody that has a cool story, uh maybe works in a really interesting industry or has a unique business that would be fun to learn more about?

Well, my son has a good story.

They have quite the solar business going.

Yeah.

be great.

That would be a first.

We've not had somebody in the solar business and man, I've got a lot of questions about the solar and energy sector.

That would be fun.

I might see if you can connect us.

Yeah.

sharp on all that and where it's going to go.

That's awesome.

I'd love to learn more about it.

I know that's an industry that I've seen people be wildly successful and I've seen people lose a lot of money and I can't tell the difference.

So ah I'd be really interested to chat with him.

That would be fun.

Okay, well we can set that up for sure.

Awesome.

Well, my last question that I ask all of our guests to either fuel or settle the debate.

If you have a job to do, uh which cordless tool brands do you prefer?

So I saw that on your questions like so we run at the company m We run Milwaukee Because they have a program where we they give us kits of all the tools and then we just They're

like a lease thing and we turn them back in and get new kits oh

And that's where everybody runs.

But I've personally never really used Milwaukee on a cordless level.

I mean, we used to use Milwaukee when they recorded.

That's what we used back in the day.

But all I've ever really used is DeWalt.

So I'm going to have to go with, if I was going to buy a Drell, a cordless, I'd be buying a DeWalt.

Alright, well I think that just about evens it up.

Milwaukee and DeWalt have been vying for first place here.

uh Nobody has said Harbor Freight yet, so...

Yeah, there's a reason for that.

uh

Yep.

Awesome.

Well, Ken, thank you so much.

It's been a pleasure getting to talk to you.

You just have incredible knowledge in the industry and leadership and building a business.

And I really appreciate you making time to chat with us.

Thanks Erick, it's been good talking to you too.

I appreciate you.

And thank you guys for tuning in.

uh If you want to be an expert guest on the show, or if you want to ask a question of one of our expert guests, please reach out to me on the web at fromthegroundupshow.com or on

any major social media platform at from the ground up show.

And again, if you guys enjoy the content, please like, share, follow, subscribe, leave those five star reviews.

That means a lot to me and I really appreciate it until next time.

Keep grinding.