Dave Loden – From Zero to Hero Starting with Nothing and Making it Work

She asked me how kindergarten was and I said well it was OK,

but I don't need to go back. And my day consisted of getting

up and going down to the slump, running my trap line that was

about 3 miles and then I'd walk Rd. tracks on into school.

I always carried a gun with me at that age, a small shotgun or

a 22 and and we haunted our way and that provided pretty good

income for 1011 year old to apply resources that give people

the the help they need on the worst day of their life and to

maybe even save their life. That's a pretty rewarding thing

in order to be successful. I was going to do the projects

right? I was going to do them

correctly. And if there's any money

leftover for me at the end while I'd celebrate that.

That's, I think, some of the best advice you ever gave me,

and something I've repeated a lot.

Hey there and welcome to From the Ground Up Show, the show

where we inspire and encourage 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, Eric Loden.

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

Give us a five star review, like share, subscribe, follow.

All of the things that really moves us up in the algorithms

and that's the best thing we can do to get the content out there.

This week we have a really special episode for you guys.

This is kind of the episode that inspired this whole show.

I recently sold the company that I've been running for the last

decade and in the process of that sales transaction, the the

new buyers were in my office and my dad who started that company,

came in and sat down and chatted with us and they had a lot of

questions for him about starting the company and and his journey

to building what Eventually I took over.

As I sat back and listened to him tell the story to those new

buyers, I was just really inspired.

There were parts of that story that came out that I have never

heard before, and I imagine there's a lot of people like my

dad out there that have an incredible story, have lived an

interesting life and just don't have a platform to share it.

So that was kind of the birth of this show, was finding people

like Dave Loden who have a cool story to share that is inspiring

and interesting. And so that's what we're doing

here is telling interesting stories.

This is an episode I've really been looking forward to getting

to have Dave Loden on the show. So that's what we're doing

today. Dave Loden is the founder of

Dave Loden Construction, a company he ran for nearly 30

years. He has also served in search and

rescue for over 30 years, many of those years serving as

captain. He is a husband, a father, a

grandfather, and my dad. So we are super excited to have

Dave on the show. So with that, we'll dive right

in. And Dad, welcome to the show.

Thanks for joining us. Well, thank you for having me.

I just wanted to start by saying how cool of an idea is that

camera gone? I don't think so.

OK, I watched it die and I was trying to figure out how to

there. It is all right back up.

And wrap well, thank you for having me.

I'm not sure my story's going to be very inspiring or

interesting, but I wanted to first say that I think this is a

cool idea. It's used to be the the theory

that you had to go to college to make a good living and that if

you didn't go to college, you wouldn't do well.

And I don't think that that necessarily runs true today.

And people need to know that they have options.

And, and I think the trades are are an upcoming thing.

They're not upcoming. They've been around a long time,

but this have been looked down on and I think that's going to

change. I think their demand is going to

be high. And, and I think this concept

of, of showing people how you can get by and make a good

living without the college degree, I think is a, is a great

idea. So we start off every show

diving in early childhood, your background.

Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like growing

up? Well, early childhood, yeah, I I

can. My father was in the Air Force

and so I was an Air Force brat. And that was during the Cold

War. And so that brought a whole

different level. We lived on Air Force bases and

we did bomb raids instead of fire drills and things like

that. And the the men and women that

were in the military back then and what they did, they were

good people to hang out with. They were just good caliber of

people and that's all there was for for us, you know, that's

where we lived and that's what we did.

The other thing it did for us was we moved a lot.

My dad's job bounced around the country quite a, quite a little.

And so as a younger child, you know, in school, I, I had very

bright red hair and I was left-handed and I was a new kid.

So you can imagine in a, in a classroom back in the 60s that

there was some difficulty with that.

So I, I learned a little bit, a little bit there.

And other than that, I spent almost all my time that I had

any control over outside. That's, that's where I wanted to

live. That's what I did.

The, the stories you hear about daylight, the dark is exactly

what I did. We we left in the morning, me

and my friends and we had to be back by dark.

Usually there was no St. lights where we were so we didn't have

the alarm, but we knew what dark was and that's when we had to be

home. I know you don't have a a formal

education, but can you tell us a little bit about your education?

How did you do in school and what did education look like?

Yeah, yeah, I can talk about that.

My mother always used to tell the story of my first day in

kindergarten. I went to school and came out

and she was there to to meet and greet me.

And she asked me how kindergarten was.

And I said, well, it was OK, but I don't need to go back.

And I don't think I ever changed that viewpoint through high

school. I didn't have a lot of use for

school and it was just something you had to do.

And, you know, I got in trouble once in a while and, and just

did not enjoy school. So I was glad to to graduate

when I did. And having that degree, I had a

decision like everybody does. And that's in part what this

show's about. I had three different

opportunities to go to college and we didn't have a lot of

money then at all. And college was expensive, but I

had some some scholarships that were available to me.

And so I was contemplating the college degree like everybody

does. But as I looked around, I looked

at people that I admired, that I looked up to, that I thought had

a good lifestyle, one that I would want to have.

And I could find quite a lot of those people.

And it occurred to me they were all self-employed.

And so instead of taking advantage of a scholarship, I

set a goal to become self-employed, and I set that

goal to to have my own business and livelihood by the time I was

25, which of course seemed like forever in the future.

Seven years is a long time when you're 18.

But that's that was what I strived for.

I know becoming self-employed, becoming your own boss didn't

happen immediately. You worked quite a few jobs

between, well, during high school and then between high

school and eventually starting the company that you ran for 30

years. Can you tell us a little bit

about some of those jobs and maybe some interesting stories

or experiences that you had? Yeah.

You know, as a as a kid, again, I'll mention that we didn't have

a lot of extra money. And of course kids want to have

extra things. My parents provided for me quite

well. We did not want for a lot of

things except extras. And if we wanted extras, we

needed to go earn the money for that.

So my first effort for learning money or earning money was to

run a trap line. We lived down in Loveland Co,

right by a big swamp and an irrigation ditch on some

railroad tracks and headed into town where the school was.

And my day consisted of getting up and going down to the swamp,

running my trap line that was about 3 miles.

And then I'd walk railroad tracks on into school.

And this process took hour and a half, two hours.

And I would do that every day before school.

And after school I would run the reverse and all of my trapping

stuff I would put under the trestle by the railroad track

and pick it back up and run it backwards.

And then when I got home, I had to skin all the muskrats and

whatever other kind of critters I may have caught.

And that provided pretty good income for 1011 year old.

I remember I would keep all my pelts until spring and when I

stawed, I would ride down to Denver with my dad.

He was teaching college down there and there was a fur buyer

down there. And I would take all my furs for

the winter down there. And on the years that I was

doing that, I would make around 800 to $1000.

And muskrats, you went for about $1.50 dollar, 80 apiece.

So that was a lot of muskrats. And so that was my first effort

of earning my own money and, and at the time I thought it was

quite successful and. I know you often ran that trap

line on ice skates. Was that a pretty common thing

back then? No, I don't think so.

The swamp and the muskrats were all on narrow tracks through the

through the cut tails and the irrigation ditch just went for

miles both directions as they do.

And so I would put my skates on and I could skate through all

the muskrat tracks and over to the ditch and up into the ditch

and then I'd go. It was a big irrigation ditch,

Colorado style. And that's where I would catch

other things beside muskrats. I just have leg hold sets up and

down that ditch and it was interesting.

Then I get back and hide my skates and go to school.

School getting out was a big thing every day, hard to wait

forward to and then I was off outdoors.

You know, I always carried a gun with me at that age, a small

shotgun or a 22 and and we haunted our way.

I had a good friend that would join me from time to time.

His dad was a veterinarian and together we spent a great deal

of time out in that neighborhood.

It was a thing, a thing to do. And then probably my next money

making concept was I met an old man down at a grocery store.

We would ride our bikes down the grocery store to buy candy bars

and pop or whatever. And he had sauce down there

several times. And he asked me one day if I

wanted to make some money. And I said, well, of course, you

know, what's a guy got to do? And he said that they were

tearing down a building downtown Loveland and he was going to

bring that the debris for that building and put it in a pasture

that he owned. And he was looking for some kids

to clean those bricks. And of course I didn't know what

that meant, but I I knew he was going to pay us.

So me and my friend that were drinking our pops and eating our

candy bars off we went to go see what he was doing.

And he showed us how to use a hatchet, clean the bricks.

And he gave us the hatchet, told us how to stock stack them on a

on a pallet. And we, we took on the project

and dump truck after dump truck after dump truck came in there

and dropped off these these bricks.

And we'd use sledgehammers to break up the big chunks.

And then we'd clean all the bricks and stack them.

A good thing that we did was of course being young competitive

boys, we would race and see who could fill a pellet first.

Well, we got to go on to where we were making about $10.00 an

hour and that's pretty good for 1112 year old back in in 7172.

And we made quite a bit of money doing that.

And I put a lot of that money aside and that's what I used to

buy my first motorcycle when we moved to Colorado or Wyoming.

When we moved to Buffalo from Colorado, I was just at the age

where you could get a learner's permit that included

motorcycles. So when I got here, I was mobile

was pretty happy about that. One other job I took on down

there was there was a bunch of cherry orchards.

And the way they got the cherries picked was they just

leave the gates open day and night, didn't matter.

And me and my friend, we'd drive our bikes over there and you'd

go in and they had three legged ladders and you would climb

those ladders up into the cherry trees and pick cherries.

And they would pay you $1.00 for every big box that you picked.

So we picked cherries and you would just pile a big pile in

the middle of the roadway. And pretty soon here come a

truck and, and a guy would load up all your boxes and he would

pay you cash. So, you know, looking back, I, I

think maybe those might have been the early stages of

self-employment. We were, we were on our own out

there doing all of those things and, and it was easy to get

sidetracked, but we stayed on task and, and making money just,

you know, it worked for us. It was just something we had to

do for any extras. We wanted extras.

So we went out and, and made the money.

And when I did move to Buffalo, I had two significant jobs or

real jobs I'd say. One was I ran the night shift at

the gas stations, the old red, white and blue gas station out

on 4th St. I would do the eleven to seven

shift and then go to school from 8:00 to 3:00.

And I did that all week. I ran a 40 hour schedule doing

that. So I was again able to make make

more money doing that. But the night shift was getting

old and my brother was working at the Crossroads Inn and that

was a going operation at the time, very prominent hotel

banquet room and such. And I took on the job as as the

maintenance helper. And that was my junior year in

high school. And I just worked after school

for a few hours and weekends and, and then summer I would

work full time and, and when I got out of school ready to make

that decision, that was kind of tough because by then they had

hired three men in front of me to be my supervisor.

And after three, Bob Kenslow, the manager, he decided he'd

give me a shot at running that department.

So I had a management position, which seems like a pretty

exciting thing at 18 years old. And he hired a spell by the name

of Orville Ennis to help me. Well, I was an 18 year old kid,

didn't know nothing. Orville Ennis was a retired

construction Superintendent. He built bridges.

And not only that, he was, he had owned his own motel and he

sold that motel. So he had that self-employment

concept that I was looking for too.

And I don't know why he took that job there at the

crossroads, but he did. And I worked with him for

probably three years and he taught me so much about how to

do things. You know, we replaced the carpet

in 60 rooms several times. We we would replace tiling in

the bathrooms and, and we just took care of everything and

painted everything And wow, we did a lot of work.

And supposedly I was the manager and he was my helper, but

everybody including me knew it was the other way around.

He was teacher, not not a helper.

Anyhow, an interesting thing about Orville, I'll talk to a

little bit about him later. But I worked with him for 2 1/2

three years before I came home one day for lunch and my mom

said, hey, did you know that Orville was a preacher?

And I said my Orville, Orville Ennis, my friend at work, and

she said yeah. And I said, no, he's not.

And she said yes, he, he is. He he came to the nursing home.

My mom also hard working just like my dad, she worked for the

midnights at the nursing home and he came in there to give a

sermon to the old folks one night.

And so this puzzled me because I had no idea that he was even

went to church, much less was, was a preacher.

So the next day, first thing I asked him was, Hey, my mom said

you were preaching A sermon to the old folks down at the

nursing home. And he said, yes, I did.

And so we talked about it. And that's the first time just

unbelievable to me that that this guy who I'm going to say

he's probably the most Christian individual I've ever met.

I worked with him for three years and didn't have any idea

that he went to church. His, his example was really a

good one. And you know, he didn't preach

to me. He did nothing.

I had no idea. So I, I appreciated what he did

there and I just learned so much.

And, and as I set that goal to be self-employed, my job was

pretty good by then. I was making a a living wage for

the time and life was good and I don't know that I had much of a

reason to make a change. But as time went on and and I

got close to that goal, I decided to make that change and

and take that leap. So that walks us through a lot

of early jobs, kind of learning some early work ethic.

What is the earliest experience you can remember that shaped

your work ethic and how did that set you up to be a leader?

Well, there's no doubt I had a lot of examples of good work

ethic. Everybody I was around was a

hard worker. My parents and all those people

I was just mentioning that I had met and that's just what you

did. My dad's job as in the Air

Force, you know, there was there was no not doing it.

There was no calling in sick. There was no getting off early.

There was no taking any days. You know, when we were in

Cheyenne where I got more memories than I did and and

earlier days was the middle of the Cold War and he ran a inter

ballistic, intercontinental ballistic missile site.

He was in charge of one of those and he would take them out there

and spend some days and come back.

And I learned that your job was paramount, and I still believe

that today. Of course, I have a family and I

have grandchildren, and I get the idea that family's

important. There's no doubt about that.

But in my mind, you got to take care of that family.

So you got to house them, you got to feed them, you got to

clothe them. And that takes money.

And you got to have a job for the money.

So, you know, I'm not saying we put jobs before family, but I

think they're like equal because how do you take care of your

family without your job? And all the people that I knew

that just didn't have an option but to do it.

They just did it rain or shine or Sundays or whatever it was.

If you had your job to do, you just did it.

And that's how you raised your family.

So you grew up running a trap line, cleaning bricks and

managing the maintenance crew at a motel.

How in the world did you get into roofing?

OK, well that's a funny enough story.

Norm Myers was a Air Force buddy of my dad, and he had a buddy in

Caldwell, ID, and that guy was a roofer.

Well, he was going bankrupt in the roofing business and Nora

Myers came to me and he thought that maybe Buffalo could use a

roofer. And he was in the Conklin

business at the time, which they sold roofing products.

And he thought that if he helped me get in the roofing business

that he could sell a lot of his roofing products.

Not a bad concept either. So he helped me out.

Of course, I had a good job, but I certainly didn't have enough

money to go buy another business or to start.

And so the big red flag of that guy going bankrupt is why he's

getting out of the roofing business.

I missed it. I never even thought about that.

And looking back, I realized the mid 80s was not a good time for

the construction industry and darn sure not a good time for

for roofers. And so I was headed into a a

rough spot before I even knew it.

Nor Myers, he Co signed a loan for me, a $10,000 loan to buy

that equipment. That was a big deal.

As everybody knows today, Co signing is not a a smart thing

to do. But he and I'll talk some more

about mentors later too. But he was one, and he was one

of those Air Force people that were high caliber men that got

it done when necessary and he thought it was a good idea.

I'm not sure my dad thought it was a good idea, but he did.

And it was time for my goal. I was 24 coming on 25 pretty

soon and I saw that as my chance to meet that goal, so I jumped

on it. So you're working a job making a

pretty good living. Have set a somewhat arbitrary

goal to become self-employed at 25 and get some help to buy a

business that is going bankrupt and going out of business.

As you indicated, that doesn't seem like a recipe for success.

What were those early years like?

How? How did it look getting started?

Well, I'd have to say two things about it.

First of all, for the early years, they were rough as far as

business goes. The construction industry was in

the tank really bad, but my needs were fairly low and I

didn't know that that was a problem.

I was ignorant to that and I was basically just living the dream.

I, I wanted to be self-employed and I was.

So the first ten years or so I I never looked back it.

It was like I never went to work.

Roofing's a hard job and I lived on the job site and I did it.

But I was doing what I wanted to do.

I had to do what was in front of me and whatever that was, I just

did that every day, you know, I would get up and do whatever

that business had in front of me for that day.

And, and I felt like I was doing good.

And during those years, I, I also were, was thinking about,

you know, success and success came slowly.

And I don't even know that I would call it success at that

time. But anyhow, I had decided, you

know, was IA contractor or was I not?

I didn't know what it meant to be a contractor.

And I thought, all right, I'm trying.

And I, and so I, the more I thought about it, I thought,

well, you know, if you're going to call yourself a contractor,

you have to have a degree of success and you have to be

making your living doing that. And so I decided that I was just

trying to be a roofing contractor and I decided that at

10 years, if I could make my living at 10 years, I would feel

free to call myself a roofing contractor.

So before that, I would always just joke and say I'm trying to

be 1. Although it was working, we were

getting getting along pretty good.

That was my view of those early years.

It was just wonderful. I didn't know they were

stressful. I know your first job as a

roofing contractor was actually not a roofing job.

What was that? Well, that's an interesting

point too. One of the things I didn't

realize, you know, as I bought that truckload of tools and

brought it back and became a roofing contractor.

I had never been on a roof for the purpose of repairing it

before, ever. So I knew nothing about roofing.

I just knew I was in the roofing business.

Well, everybody else knew that I didn't know how to roof either.

So nobody would hire me. Nobody wanted to be the first

person to hire me. So I started the business

supposedly January 1st. That's when I resigned from my

job. I felt I needed some time to

figure out what I was doing, where get some contracts lined

up for the summertime and as summer got close.

So I didn't have anything lined up, nobody would hire me for

anything. But I did notice in the

newspaper that they had a public bid opening for painting some

irrigation pipes South of town that went over the highway.

And I thought I know how to paint.

So I'd painted a lot of things at the crossroads.

And so I went to the pre bid meetings down in Cheyenne and

and looked into public bid work and I realized that they didn't

care whether you had painted before or not, it didn't matter

to them. The only thing it took to get

that job was to be the low bidder.

So I went to my insurance agent, got some SBA guarantees on my

bonding capabilities because I had no net worth.

And they had a nice program that would do that, although it was

expensive. And I went down for my first bid

opening and was successful. And not only was I successful, I

was successful by a lot. My total bid was $8885 and my

competitor? The only one bid was 23,000 and

change. So of course I sat there knowing

that he knew more than me. How in the heck was I going to

get this job done for $9000 when he needed 23,000?

So I kind of did some engineering on the way.

I was going to do the job and, and we left out some of the

expensive lifts and equipment, did it all with scaffold and I

completed that job with a $5000 profit margin.

Now that was a lot of money for me on the on that day.

It only took about two weeks and really opened my eyes to that.

But I still wasn't a roofer and I was in the roofing business.

That's what my tools were. They lended themselves to

painting because one of them was an airless sprayer.

So that's what got me started in the public, public arena instead

of the private arena. But shortly after, that local

fella, some of you guys may know him, Bob Zimmerscheid.

He owned the A&W at the time, and he hired me to put the roof

on that building. And I did.

And I very much appreciate him overlooking my ignorance.

And, you know, I had set a, a concept of in order to be

successful, I was going to do the projects, right?

I was going to do them correctly.

And if there's any money leftover for me at the end while

I celebrate that, But my first goal was to do it right.

And I believe that roof is still on that building.

It has had some recoatings and it's been worked on, but it is

still physically the roof that's on that building 40 years later.

And that was my first one. So that was kind of the start.

And I appreciate Bob Zimmerscheid for having the

faith in me to do that. It that is still the roof that's

on that building. We've looked at it a few times

and it served without any issues at all for well over 30 years.

And just in the last few years has had some repairs and and

some coding work, but it well outlasted its expected lifespan.

Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about

those early years of starting and building the business.

Are there any significant struggles or wins, highs or lows

that stand out in your memory? Maybe not particular ones, but

certainly highs and and lows. The successes were, were good.

The stress was not. And I didn't necessarily realize

my feelings about that until somebody asked me how I felt

about you taking over this business and I just blurted it

out. I said, well, first of all, I, I

wouldn't want to deny anybody the, the joy and happiness that

comes with the success, but I also would not wish the stresses

and pressures on my worst enemy. So it has both sides, you know,

it's not a piece of cake. There's some difficulties

involved, but yet the rewards were were good.

And that's what brought that concept to my attention was when

they asked me about you. And so you started the business

in 1985, you ran it through 2014 when I took over and we just

recently sold it a couple weeks ago.

Do you have any thoughts or feelings about the the process,

the eventual sale, your time running it, my time running it?

Do you have any reflections now that we're kind of bringing that

story close circle? I suppose I do have some

thoughts about that. I said that running the business

had the highs and lows, the the joy of the winds and the

pressures of the, the failures, the the stresses of the of the

failures. I did not realize how when you

took over those stresses were going to continue.

I, I have worried since that day about the stresses and, and of

course you ran the jobs differently than I did.

And so I would look at that and just worry.

I would just think, how does this work?

But of course you were making great strides in the business.

It was doing well and I had a lot of joy in watching that.

Again, the highs were great, but the stress wasn't.

And then when you sold that business, there went the stress

for me finally. So that was a good thing.

And and I'm just tickled that this idea of being self-employed

by 25 has helped me raise my family, helped you raise yours.

And now new chapters opening for you and and for me, you know, we

got we're going to be doing other different things also.

So life is good. Yeah, I think it was 25 or 26 is

when I took over for you. So I didn't maybe didn't quite

meet the same goal, but similar timeline.

And I had not heard the the remark about not considering

yourself a contractor until you had done it for 10 years before.

So I think I'm one month short of 12 years.

So I I made that cut off. I can officially call myself a

contractor. I think so, yes.

I I really thinking that you made it past the point of trying

and can, for good or bad, say that you're a successful roofing

contractor. Yes.

When were you most afraid in the process of building your

business or maybe as a leader, and what were the stakes that

caused that fear? Well, I, I don't know about

leadership, but just the employment.

You know, when, when I started, you know, when I first started,

I went from job to job to job to job.

I hired a lot of friends and we, I would bid a job, I would get

it. We would go do it.

And then I'd come back and then I'd look for another one.

And so we'd have a great a gap in between there.

Sales of roofs was hard then. And, and so that's the way I did

that. Well, as as time went on and,

and we became more full time, we started roofing more in the

winter. I had full time employees and

it, it was a little sobering to realized that not only is my

business supporting my family, but now I'm responsible for

other families. And you know, we had quite a few

employees from time to time and and that did supply some, some

stress on, on that. I was worried about that for a

little while. And and then one year, we were

short on help and hired some Romanians on H2B visas.

And these 10 people arrived at our doorstep from Romania and

they had nothing. And talk about relying on you.

You know, they were relying on a year's worth of good income to

make their living and survive while they're here and have

something to take back home when they went.

I guess maybe the joke was on me because not all of them went

back home, but the ones that did that was good.

One of them has gone on to become AUS citizen and, and

he's, I admire this guy a lot. His, his bravery for coming that

far and, and stepping in and doing that work and sticking out

the years that it took. And today he's happily married

in Florida. He lives in Florida, works on

the North Slope of Alaska and has two children.

He's he's quite a guy. And watching people do that as

your employee was very rewarding.

But then when things were slow and it was hard, it was pretty

stressful. So I think that there was some

fear involved with that responsibility.

What do you think is the most unique thing about our business

or your journey? You know, I don't know how

unique we are, with the exception of how young I was

when I started the business. Every place I went in the

roofing business to conventions and to meetings and to bid

openings and everything, I was just a kid.

And, you know, grown older men were my counterparts.

And I think it's, it was somewhat unusual.

They all looked at me like I was crazy and that I I couldn't

possibly survive in their world. And, you know, age just kind of

went away for me, you know, from that job at the crossroads where

I was the boss of Orville, that was 65.

Of course, that was just, you know, that we all knew what was

going on there. But here I was, young guy

working with the older guy, and then here I am, young guy

bidding jobs with all these older guys.

And I often times had people employed that were older, older

than I was. And I think that that was

somewhat unique. I know that a lot of those older

people didn't have a very good viewpoint of what I was doing.

And as yours went by might have gained some of their respect,

but certainly none was there to begin with.

I also think that the size of the town, you know, for somebody

to start a roofing business in Buffalo, WY, wow, there's not

all that many buildings and businesses.

The amount of business that gets done here won't support roofing

contractor. So, and of course I didn't know

that, you know, I often joked for quite a few years when

somebody would get a job in town or or somebody would ask if we

ever work in town. I would say, well, we had

Buffalo roofed a long time ago and that was pretty much the

case. You know, a fella, Allen Brooks,

I got along with him quite well. He was the guy at the school

that did all the purchasing and he recognized the value we

brought for a long term roofing and and he specified products

and I'm being local, I was lucky enough to get most of them.

So we ripped all the schools here and that was kind of an

early boon to the business and I appreciate his respect for for

me to be able to to do that to. So we did a lot of good business

together. I think that probably is

something that's unique, maybe not as much in our state or our

roofers throughout the country,

the this space that we cover and the size that the business has

become in the limited town that we're in.

About two years ago, when we first started considering

selling the business and had our first offer, I talked to a

friend of a friend getting some advice and talking through that

process. And I told him a little bit

about our business and what we were doing.

And he listened for a few minutes and he said, wait, where

are you from? Or, or from a small town in

North Central Wyoming. We have a population of about

5000 people, so you've probably never heard of it.

He said you can't, you just can't.

You can't have a business that size in that town.

It doesn't work. And for the last 41 years we've

been doing it so. Yeah, yeah.

I had similar experience when I was on the board of directors

for Western States, was sitting having dinner with some other

business owners and and they said, I said that I had a

meeting in Cheyenne next week for on the Capitol complexes.

And and he said in Cheyenne, he said, I thought you lived in

northern Wyoming. And I said, well, I do.

And he said, well, how do you work down there?

And I said, well, we have to work the entire state to get the

volume of work we need. You know, and I said, I also got

a job going on in Evanston. So, you know, both of those jobs

were 300 miles from our office. And he was just mind boggled.

His business was in LA and he said they have a, a map in their

office and they drew a 15 mile radius circle around their

office. And when somebody calls in, if

they're outside that circle, they say no thank you.

And so he travels the farthest 15 miles.

And here we had two jobs in progress, 300 miles in two

different directions. And he just didn't understand

how you could do that. But I've always said Wyoming is

a small community and, and it is people are very tight here.

And, and you'd be surprised as you travel and work statewide,

how many know you know you'll be talking to a new guy at a new

district you've never been to before while he's good friends

with the grocery store owner in another town.

You know, you after a few years went by, rarely went any place

that that people didn't know when I walked in, who I was and

where I was from. And it was just because of all

the travel and the small community.

It was an interesting tight knit thing, still is.

I think that's only grown as we've expanded the business.

I, I remember about a year ago, I came into the office and

somebody asked me where we were working today and we had a crew

in Upton, a guy in Powell, a crew down by Rock Springs and a

crew in Cheyenne. And so I answered, we're in

Wyoming. We have all four corners.

Yeah, yeah, I always joked we we had three Corners covered

because we never went into Yellowstone or Jackson.

So that's about the only neighborhood in Wyoming that I

haven't roofed in. So construction and especially

roofing is a pretty high pressure, high accountability

business. How did the that shape the way

that you lead people? I, I think mostly by example, I,

I know that if I would have said you got to go over to Cody for

two weeks and do this job, let me know how it is when you get

back. You know, I don't think that

would have worked. But I went to the job sites with

them in those early years. For a long time, I travelled to

the job site, lived in a camper, lived in a motel, lived in an

apartment, and I worked on the roof with the crew seven days a

week, and they staggered days off.

So nobody else was working 7 But I was there working shoulder to

shoulder with all of those guys. And I think that that led the

way for them to realize that, yeah, this is just what we do.

You know, I didn't sit back and send them.

And you know, later on, as I gathered some better managers,

you know, I tried to get off the roof more and more, but I still

spent a lot of time on those roofs just shoulder to shoulder

with those guys. And I think especially in the

earlier years, that was that was a very helpful thing.

I don't know that everybody would have done that lifestyle

if I hadn't been there doing it with them.

How do you think your unique personality has shaped the

business that you built and your leadership journey?

Well, I don't know that it's personality.

I think that the the can do spirit that my father instilled

into me. We did everything.

I mean, we didn't have the money to hire anybody to do anything.

So we had to do everything we had to do, you know, and, and as

I was a teenager and we moved up to Hemlock in Big Horn Estates,

we were moving a trailer house up there.

And he did hire a guy to pull it in, put it on the site, but we

were going to level it. Of course, we'd never set up a

trailer house before. And we started into it.

We had a couple of bottleneck hydraulic jacks and a bunch of

blocks of wood. And this was a big trailer, was

14 by 70. And it was dad and I and mom, we

were all out there leveling this trailer up.

Well, we didn't know what we're doing.

We were figuring out as we went. Like I say, the can do spirit.

And at one point in time, we must not have done it right.

And that trailer started to fall off of the blocks we had it on

and and it did it. Everything came right down and

the frame landed right on the ground.

Well, my dad was underneath that when it happened.

And so mom and I are standing out there just in total shock,

not knowing what happened or how or what kind of shape he was in.

Well, he just started talking from under there.

He did get in between the two frames.

So he had about a 2 foot space in there that he was laying in

and he was between the the Gerts between them.

So he he couldn't get out. He was just in that space and he

just started talking, telling us what we had to do.

You know, it never occurred to me to call for help, called 911,

do anything. I mean, it was somewhat of a

serious incident that just happened.

But he from underneath there directed me and me with mom's

help, you know, we dug holes in the ground, we put the the jacks

underneath it and brought it up a couple inches at a time.

And we were bringing up one end and, and I just did what he told

me and and we pretty soon had it high enough that and solid

enough that he was felt comfortable with crawling out

the other end of it. And so he he did.

And then we finished the day out by continuing to do it.

But I mean that, you know, he had that we're just going to do

this. We have to, you know, and, and

working right there again, shoulder to shoulder with him, I

kind of built that same spirit. And it's a nice thing to have to

be able to, you know, just figure out that you're going to

you're going to do it. We've heard that from a few

people that we've interviewed is often the people that become the

most successful are those that didn't have any choice but to

succeed there. There wasn't another option.

And it sounds like that's kind of the environment you grew up

in. Yes, I, it, it was, you know,

there just was no, no choices in the matter.

You just had to do what was in front of you.

And that's, that's what everybody did.

And I, I still feel I do that today.

You know, I get up and do whatever needs to be done,

whatever's in front of me at the time.

And and I don't spend a lot of slack days in in retirement yet.

Hopefully they those days are coming.

I'm I'm looking forward to doing a little bit more snowmobiling

this year. Hopefully I'll have a little

more time away from work as well.

I am looking forward to that too.

Last few years it's been a little slow with snow and you

being so busy and and other snowmobiling buddies being busy.

We need to pick it up and this is the year.

Sounds good to me. Was there something that

significantly delayed the growth in building your business and if

so, would you have handled it differently?

You know, I don't think there was.

I didn't have growth on mind. I didn't have a business

background. I didn't realize you needed to

have a plan to grow again. I just did what was in front of

me every day, took one job after another.

And, and it did grow, but not because that was my plan.

I just was, was working hard and getting it done.

And as we moved on and started doing more prominent jobs, when

I would get a prominent job, I'd think, well, this is going to

put us on the map. We're going to, you know, this

is, this is going to get us going big time.

And we did that prominent job after prominent job after

prominent job. And as I look back, they didn't

make any corners, they didn't put us on the map.

It didn't spur growth. We just got them jobs done and

moved on to the next one. I think that my view of, of just

working at it and enough, you know, as I started looking for

financial plans and what was happening and talking to other

business people, I think I, I took on a view of what is

enough. I, I didn't take on a view of

how big can we get. I didn't set any growth goals.

I just worked hard at it and, and as long as things were

working good, that was OK. One of the things that Orville

Ennis instilled into my brain was concept about how to live

your life. He, he talked about people he

knew that worked hard their entire life, never did anything

and, and soon as they retired, they died with a lot of money.

And he explained to me how that was probably a mistake.

And then he talked about other people that he knew that spent

every dime they had and when they retired, they had nothing

and live forever. So those were the 2 concepts.

And, and we talked about doing a, a happy medium, you know, so

I, I feel like took that to heart and, and we lived a good

life as we went. You know, we split things up, we

put money aside for retirement and we lived a good life.

And so we wouldn't be in either one of those positions, along

with a lot of the other things he taught me.

I greatly appreciated that. But you know, growth just

happened. It wasn't a plan.

I wasn't didn't have any big business ideas about anything.

It seems like that plan has worked fairly well.

I know you. You sold the business to me and

kind of went into semi retirement managing a rental

portfolio at 54 years old. Do you ever regret that

decision, or do you wish you would have found a different

balance than you did? No, no, I, I try not to have a

lot of regrets. I have a, a slightly different

word for it. Instead of regretting something,

I view it as you pay the consequence of a bad decision.

And that's a fine line. And it's a Gray area, but it

puts the burden more on your shoulders to, to do better.

And, and that's just been my, my viewpoint.

And so I don't have a lot of regrets along those lines.

Is there a lesson you've learned that you wish you would have

learned earlier? Yeah, I think so.

I think, you know, as I look back, hindsight, a lot of this

stuff is hindsight. I had no idea any of it was

going on at the time. I had a lot of good mentors that

that I didn't recognize were, were mentors and they were

friends and I paid attention to them.

A lot of them had that lifestyle I admired.

And so I was paying attention, but I I could have paid closer

attention. You know I'll back up and I got

to add a guy to this list when when we were cleaning those

bricks for this old man and his coveralls with his junky old

truck. We were almost done with that

building. I don't know how many semi loads

of bricks we cleaned but it was a lot.

And he was going to take us to his house for lunch.

And we got over there to his house and the first thing we

noticed was he had an alarm on his door.

Now, this was in the very early 70s, and he had to get a key

out, turn his alarm off. And both me and my friend are

looking at each other like, huh, what's going on here?

You know, we've never heard of anybody having a home alarm

before, you know, And we got a news kitchen and it was a, you

know, we were not old enough to appreciate the home itself.

But when he started to fix this lunch, he heated up some

sandwiches in a microwave. Well, that was the first

microwave we'd ever heard of or seen.

And so our eyes are opening up and we're looking around this

house. And after we eat, he wanted to

show us his wife's collection of China.

And so we went downstairs and she had a collection of more

China than I knew existed. And it was a lot of it was gold

plated and it was very valuable. And his alarm system was even

hooked up to the Police Department at the time.

And so this guy that we saw driving an old truck with his

old coveralls that he worked hard every day to, that was

probably the first example of somebody I saw doing that that

did well for themselves. And ever since then, we, you

know, we realized this was a wealthy man.

He might be in the salvage business, but that business

treated him quite well. So you know the what business

you're in or the the public's view of that business.

I lost all that baggage trying to think about those things at

that early age because I was so impressed with this guy in his

old coveralls. So I'll elaborate on that just a

little bit more. That was the first example.

But as, as I go on, you know, my dad, that guy, Norm Meyers,

Orville Annis, Bob Edwards, all of these people taught me a lot.

And I should have paid more attention.

But you know, this is supposed to be about inspiring other

young people. And so I feel like I should say

that, you know, you, you look around it, find some people that

have the life you want to have, hang out with them a little bit,

learn what they do, pay attention to them.

And and when those people tell you this is a good idea, well,

it probably is. So finding mentors, paying

attention to them and letting them lift you up is, is, I

think, a great piece of advice. And they're out there.

You just got to look for them, realize who they are.

That's great advice. That's, I think some of the best

advice you ever gave me. And something I've repeated a

lot is to define people that are in life where you want to be and

then watch what they do and emulate it.

And people could move themselves forward in life a lot if they

would do that more frequently. We we don't get the best advice

when we hang out with people that are at the same point in

life we're at. That's correct, yes.

You know who you hang out with. It's important hang out with

somebody that's going to lift you up.

Is there a particular viewpoint or something that you've

significantly changed your mind about throughout your time in

business, leadership and just life experience?

Is there maybe a viewpoint that you once held that you've now

changed your mind about? Yeah, I think there is, you

know, as a self-employed person with employees and you're

running the show and, and you're getting whatever level of

success you're having. I think we all tend to think

that we're doing it the right way and everybody else is,

isn't. You know, you can look at

another contractor and say, well, they're struggling because

of this, or you can say they're, they got quality issues because

of that. You know, you, you tend to think

that you're doing it the right way and, and you tend to

criticize opposing viewpoints. And as time went on, I realized,

you know, that's really not the case.

I had that problem pretty strong, pretty hard.

I was looking a lot of I spent a lot of time with other roofing

contractors that might be out-of-the-box too.

But on that board of directors, there's 32 of us.

And I spent six years there hanging out with those guys.

So, and you know what, a lot of those gave me some advice too,

but I was like, you know, wait a minute, I'm doing good enough.

I don't know that that is. And as I started trying to build

field management, I realized that so long as those people

were handling risk, you know, roofing is a high risk, high

profit business. So the way to make that work is

you have to minimize the high risk.

And so long as those field managers were minimizing that

risk and we're treating employees good and providing the

quality that you expected out of them, that you could go ahead

and let them do it their way. And so I tried to do that.

You know, Sean and Billy Delozier from here in town, they

ran my cruise for for quite a few years.

And I don't know that they would agree with this statement, but

it was them running the crew that opened my mind to that.

They were wholehearted in for the business.

You know, they, they weren't these people who didn't care.

You know, they did care. And and I needed to learn to

turn them loose. And, and although I, I learned

that from them, I might have been late in doing that.

But as I retired and look around at other businesses and other

people, I've lost that concept. You know, you, you have to look

and have respect for the, for the people that are doing other

things that might be different than you.

And I, I see that problem, especially in contractors.

You know, we were all taught to do it the way we do it or

learned, however we learn to do it.

And, and we seem to think that that's the best way.

And there's a whole lot of ways to do that.

And turning people loose to, to do it their way and they can

reap the benefits of that and be proud of what they're doing is

better than keeping your thumb on them.

I also feel that was true. I spent a little time in the

search and rescue world and I think that that happened there

also. But my viewpoint about that has

changed a lot. And not only has mine, I see

that as a fault I had in early years.

I see that a lot of people have it and and getting over that is

is a very helpful situation. That's something that Adam

Wetherbee had a lot to say about when I chatted with him

recently, is that it's easy to stand on the outside looking in

and judge other leaders or other businesses.

And the more you time, the more time you spend running a

business and acting as a leader, you realize that none of those

positions are easy. And anybody that is achieving

success in business or in leadership has worked hard for

it and has found something that works for them.

And so he he said something very similar, that the more time he

spends in leadership and the more time he spends building his

business, the LED less judgmental he becomes about

others doing similar. Yeah.

And I think that's in good words, less judgmental.

That's what it is. You know, you, you got to, you

got to lose that and let, let people give them respect for

what they're doing. So you talked a little bit about

building field managers. Can you help us understand the

the timeline a little bit better building your business?

It launched in 1985 and I know there you talked about a a time

where you would go get a job and then kind of put together the

team, the crew to go do it and do the work.

And then when it was done, everybody else went home and you

went about finding another job. I know eventually you kind of

built that into a a full time job and then eventually brought

in some field managers to help manage that business.

Can you help us understand the the timeline and the process of

growing from just you starting out to having a a a full

thriving business that worked year round with middle

management and full time staff? Well, I can tell you that it

just evolved. There was no plan looking

forward into that. Again, I had no business

background, no business concepts.

I just went to work and but we did, you know, we, we started

out, you know, we had not much for any trucking capability and

we had to go get all of our material.

We weren't a big enough contractor to have our stuff

delivered yet, so we had to go get it.

So we had those kind of challenges and then getting it

on the roof. We had no equipment at all to

get anything on a roof. And so we pulled it up with

ropes, carried it up ladders, very dangerous, but that's what

we did. Again, we had no option.

We had to do what we had to do. We had to get it up there.

So, and doing it right along with them.

Nobody, you know, we didn't view that as a problem.

We were just getting the roof done.

But as, as things moved on and we got into bigger jobs and, and

things were working differently, we got a lift one that came hung

off the roof and you had to pull it up with a rope.

And then we started renting some forklifts and, and then we

started owning forklifts and, and we went from doing

relatively small jobs to doing bigger jobs.

And it just happened, You know, we just kept growing and growing

and growing. And, and I kept looking at the,

the bigger prominent job thinking that that was going to

do something and it never did. I think I stated that a few

minutes ago. But you know, we, we did some

very large jobs. You know, we, we did the Casper

Events Center, which I think is now called the Ford Center, one

of the biggest buildings in Wyoming.

And we did the flat and the the shingle part of it.

And we did the Sheridan High School, which was the first job

we did over $1,000,000. So when I think about carrying

rolls of hypal on up a ladder in the back alley of Main Street

Buffalo to doing the Event Center and $1,000,000 project,

we just had a slow steady growth.

We did not you know set out to say well in the next three years

we're going to do this or we're going to buy one of those.

We just bought things as it was necessity.

And as time went on and and I think we did enjoy pretty good

steady growth from the first year right on through to my last

year. I don't know that there was many

dips if any in revenues, but we just let it happen.

Great. Was there a major mistake that

you wish you could have avoided? Yes, there is.

And I didn't want to do this interview without without

mentioning it early on. One of my other mentors was Jack

Miller. He was a very good, close

personal friend. I met him in the bar when I was

a bartender at the crossroads. I did a double duty there for a

little while, and he was an outdoorsman.

And we went on to hunt together. And then through his contacts, I

became a guide with him. And he was, at the time, the

best friend I'd ever had. And he was working for me

because, as I said, construction was low.

He was a general contractor. Construction was low at the

time. It was dead, not low.

It was dead. And I had a job out at the

uranium mine and he was running that job for me.

I wasn't out there and he fell off that roof and was injured

real bad. And he spent a couple weeks in

the hospital and he was having a lot of operations.

And it's right at the beginning, first week of hunting season, I

was guiding. And he was having his last

surgery done and he passed away of a heart attack during the

surgery. And boy, if I could have that.

Back Have you ever made a beneficial mistake?

A mistake that was a mistake at the time, but taught you a

lesson that surpassed the consequences of the mistake.

Well, I think I had a lot of those.

I kind of developed what I call a continuing improvement

situation where, you know, as things happen to us in business

or in life, it's pretty easy to blame somebody else for what

happened to you. And I don't see where that

benefits anybody, especially not yourself.

So I was, I tried to develop this concept to where you would,

you would take responsibility for everything that happened to

you. Not always was it your fault,

but what could you have done to prevented it?

You know, I, I suppose to kind of date myself a little bit.

You know, one of the examples was when fax machines became a

thing in the construction business.

You know, we would fax off orders to our supplier and we

would get there to where they're supposed to be and they wouldn't

be there. So you'd call them up and say,

well, I sent the fax and they would say, well, we didn't get

it. And, you know, that happened the

next time. And, and they would say, well,

we got a fax, but we couldn't read it.

And it would have been really easy to have blamed them, you

know, say, well, if you can't read the fax, call me and find

out, you know, and, and so I, I'm thinking, OK, this is a

mistake that happens to us right along.

We have to take responsibility for it somehow, come up with a

concept to stop it from happening.

So that's what we did whenever it was our company policy,

whenever you sent any fax to anybody for any reason, you

would then call them and say did you get it and can you read it?

And that eliminated that mistake.

So that worked really well. And we were able to stop all of

those mistakes even though they were somebody else's issue.

Most times we were able to stop those from happening by taking

ownership and figuring out a plan.

And I think we did the same thing with leaks.

You know, as a roofer, not every roof you put on is perfect.

Sometimes they leak. So pretty early on, I came up

with a plan to track leaks. And so whenever we went on a

leak call, when we got back, we would fill out a piece of paper,

you know, was it our roof? Was it under warranty?

What was leaking? How did you fix it?

And this didn't mean anything for quite a long while, but

after 10 years or so, there was a lot of information in there.

There was a lot of data. Of course, it wasn't on a

computer, it was on pieces of paper.

So I went through all of that and made note of what they all

were. I kind of took tallies and there

were several things that kept reoccurring.

And it wasn't that we had bad workmanship, it wasn't

necessarily that type of an issue, but we were able to

identify things that went wrong on roofs.

And so just as a, for instance, I'm the verbiage might not be

familiar to everybody, but AT lap and membrane that kept

reoccurring. And so we, I decided we would

take the step to put a patch on those T joints every time,

everywhere and we would already have them passed.

She would take very little extra effort while we were there, but

they quit leaking force. Those went away.

Transition pass just did the same thing.

And Stephen Rhodes, another good friend, long term friend of

business friend of mine out of Burke.

Burke, our supplier that we used, you know, quite a bit.

We were having dinner one night and I was telling him about this

and he was at a precipice with his warranty situation in the

roofing world. The one up and ship of the

warranties was a problem. You know, while we have 10 year,

OK, well, we're going to have 15, OK, we're going to have 20.

And this was going on at the time and he was contemplating

going from 20 to 30 years. And he listened intently to, he

asked me about all of our reoccurring issues and listened

intently. And as he developed his 30 year

warranty, he took my list of reoccurring issues and turned

those into the requirements to jump from a 20 to a 30 year

roof. And so that's, that's what

happened. You know, he, he did that and,

and I felt pretty good about that.

You know, our little pile of pieces of paper that everybody

wrote down every time they fixed a leak.

But again, we would take ownership of that problem.

You know, they were our leaks on our roofs and, and we would go

take care of them. But we kept track of them and

then tried to prevent them. Some of them once again, might

not have been our fault, might have been a service man that

dropped a screwdriver or dropped a razor blade and he got stepped

on while you would write that all down.

And pretty soon we would be coaching our our customers

about, you know, telling their servicemen that these are tough

roofs. Walk on them all you want, but

they're susceptible to sharps and you'd have to keep the

sharps off of there. And I think that that concept is

a good concept for anybody in their in their lives.

You can do, you can apply that to personal things jokingly for

a minute. You know what makes your wife

mad? You keep doing something that

makes her mad. Maybe, maybe you could take

responsibility and quit doing those things.

You know, you could blame her for being mad about it, but you

can also have some ownership and, and change some things and,

and, and resolve those issues. You know, just take ownership

and take action instead of blaming somebody.

Blaming somebody else doesn't help.

But trying to not repeat mistakes is a big thing in life,

I think, and in business. I think that's something huge

that you install instilled in our company very early on that

has carried over even to the the current day with yet the third

generation of owners is finding and fixing problems regardless

of whose fault it is. And if there's something you can

do to prevent a problem, even if it's not your fault, it's your

responsibility to get in front of it and take care of it.

And we can improve our lives, improve our efficiency, improve

our quality by fixing things even if it's not necessarily our

fault. So I think that's a legacy that

you have left in our company that has served as well long

after you resigned from a leadership position there.

That's that's good to know, yes. If you were 25 again and had the

goal of becoming self-employed, would you choose to go into the

roofing business again? Yeah, I I don't think I would

make any changes. How how could I?

I I couldn't ask for a better end of the story and I don't

think I would change anything. But I can tell you that over the

years, one of the struggles in the roofing business is that

nobody wants to buy a new roof, especially if you have a

commercial building. I go in there, you might spend

$100,000 to stop your leaks, but it'll look better.

You know, you don't have a new sign, you don't have a new paint

job, you don't have a better parking lot, you don't have more

square foot. You know, nobody can tell.

And so nobody wants to spend money on a roof.

I always thought, you know, being a boat salesman or a four

Wheeler salesman might be a really cool thing because

everybody wants to come in, they want to buy your products and

they're happy to give you their money.

Never the case in roofing, never the case.

So it was always a hard sell. And you're always dealing with

people, you know, with a decision in a time that you

know, they would just as soon not be in.

So there was a downside that, you know, the salesmanship

dealing with those people instead of happy people were was

somewhat of a challenge. No, I wouldn't change.

I wouldn't change anything. It's it's been a good ride.

Nothing has changed there. I've made a similar joke many

times and nobody ever calls me happy that they're never in a

good mood when they have to call their roofer.

You're always dealing with someone that has a problem and

they might pay you for your services, but they are never

excited about it. No, no, they never are.

What was your biggest win as a leader?

Well, I think my most rewarding concept as in leadership, I'm

going to have to step out of the, the business in the roofing

realm and step into the world of search and ask you.

I lived in that world for almost a parallel with my roofing

career for, for 30 years. And I, I was put into leadership

role. I wasn't necessarily my my

choice, but that's that's where my skill set worked pretty good.

And you know, in search and rescue, you help people lots of

times on their worst of days. And you were you help a a very

large cross segment of society. You know, people who get lost.

Sometimes they're kids of wealthy people.

Sometimes they're just hard working regular folks.

Sometimes they're from out of town, some you know that just a

great diversity cross section of society.

Those people that you get the opportunity to help are just all

so different from each other. And then yes, over the years,

we've saved a few lives. So when you can provide some

leadership to, to apply resources that give people the

the help they need on the worst day of their life, and two,

maybe even save their life, that's a pretty rewarding thing

to do. And I enjoyed that work.

I think most days I would have rather been out climbing one of

the hills rather than in the command post.

But I, I think that my, my, my skill set was, was better served

in that leadership role in directing all those resources

rather than being one of them. And that was very rewarding and

I'm happy to have done that. Since you brought up search and

rescue, I know that was a pretty significant portion of your

life. You spent a lot of time doing

that over more than a 30 year career.

Did you see a lot of crossover in the leadership skills between

search and rescue and the roofing business?

Yeah, I, I think so. You know, I, I don't know, I, I

don't, I don't know that, that I have a lot of advice in, in

leadership. I may have had some leadership

roles, but I didn't set out to, to do that.

And I don't know that my advice is good, but but yes, leadership

was leadership. The construction business and

the search and rescue world managing those resources were

very similar. You know, as I started going to

seminars, learning search and rescue, learning search and

rescue management, and, and I've been to a few construction

management seminars over the years too, Several things amazed

me at how parallel they were. And just as example, the span of

control, you know, any one person shouldn't be overseeing

any more than five. And I think that those parallels

are interesting and that people should take note of those.

You know, I know that, you know, Jack Miller, he was in the Union

world back East before he moved to Wyoming.

And they have strict rules about span of control for five people

and management companies in seminars for roofing.

You know, the the head of that company should only be

overseeing 5 people and those people oversee everybody else.

And it's the chain of command that doesn't ever get broke.

And search and rescue does the exact same thing.

Your leadership team has your incident commander and five

subordinates that that deploy everything under your direction.

And, and that's not the only similar thing.

I, I think that management of people and resources is

management of people and resources, whether you're in

construction, search and rescue, or, you know, probably even

retail or manufacturer, any kind of a business, being a leader

and, and being effective. I think you could step into

almost any environment and survive if you and do a good

job, if you get a good foundation.

With your 30 years and search and rescue, are there any

particular incidents or yeah, I guess incidents would be the

right word that stick out in your mind as a big win or

something particularly interesting to have experienced?

Well, there's quite a few and the one that gets the most

attention in Johnson County that that our members performed was

one for a black tooth. I don't know that this this

search gets a lot of attention and makes for good stories.

And so it's the one that always gets told.

But there's been a lot of kids saved and a lot of people found

that that might deserve that space better.

But I think that was the biggest search we've ever had.

A guy was going to take his girlfriend up to Black Tooth

Reservoir. Black Tooth.

Peak to ask her to get married. He was going to propose and they

got lost on the way up there and then she got hurt and he stayed

there for a couple days and we were called in and, and back in

those days, we called the surrounding counties quickly and

we had a lot of other volunteers.

And before we knew it, we had about 80 people in the field and

we had an Army Air helicopter running people back and forth

and doing some searches. And they were, you know, we had

a lot of assets going on and we were able to find her and we

pulled her off the top of that peak.

As you know, you were in the helicopter.

Eric was lucky enough to, he had, he had good timing that

day. Anyhow, he ended up in the

helicopter and, and on the scene with probably six other guys, I

think 6 or was it a total of 6? Yeah, 5 or 6 of them were up

there on that peak And, and the helicopter came in right after

dark and picked her off of that and left them all there.

And it, it made the the Good Morning America show a couple

mornings later and, and got a lot of attention because he was

proposing to his wife. But it was a very large search

and we used management team to, to keep good tracks of that.

And it just went well and, and nobody got hurt and we pulled it

off And and you know, the, the saving a life thing is kind of

tough to chalk one of those up. You don't do that.

I never did that easily. I always thought, all right,

well, if we weren't there, who would have, you know, I mean,

would they really have met their demise on in that situation or

did we truly save their life? And, you know, she was hurt and

she was in a a bad spot and it was a long ways from anywhere

and it was good cold nights. You know, I don't know if that's

one of those one of those searches or not.

It could very well have been. We don't have very good crystal

balls. But when I look back over the

years, some of the ones where the answer was yes, those

probably deserve better attention but don't make as good

as stories. It just went well.

Yeah, I had excellent timing on that search.

I think I was roofing, working out of town.

I'd recently taken over the business from you and when we

got the call to head out into the field, I was out of town and

unavailable and couldn't make it.

And so lots of people worked a lot harder than I did for many

days trying to locate her. And when we finally found out

where she was at and we're sending the helicopter in to go

get her, I got the call asking if I had made it into town and

if I was available. No one really expecting me to be

there. And I was just pulling into town

as that happened. So I was told that there's a

Black Hawk waiting and I had 15 minutes to get on it and I got

to be in on the exciting part of that search and I missed out on

the three or four days of hard work ahead of time.

Yeah, your timing was impeccable.

There was a lot of people put in a lot of hours before that

happened. But yeah, when when that we

needed a high angle person and you're a member of the high

angle team. And they were at the airport

dropping people off and still sitting there idling.

And they were needing one more high angle person.

And so I knew Eric was out of town, but I thought, well, I'll

ring his, ring his phone and see.

And he said he was at the shop. And so I said, well, the

helicopter's on the pad waiting for you.

Just get up there and go. And so he got a ride in, most of

the other people walked in and then a few got rides in the

helicopter, but not very many. And then of course, the the next

morning, the helicopter made an extra trip in and and brought

out the people that were sitting on top of that peak.

They had spent a long night there.

I could go on for hours talking about that search.

But one of the another one of the funny aspects was Lane Qualm

was in there also, Dennis Thorson and a few others.

And anyway, Becky Qualm was down at the command post.

And when we learned they were going to go up there and pick

her up and leave the guys there, she had the idea to send pizza

in with them. And we were dropping sleeping

bags and a bunch of other gear because although they were, you

know, pretty well prepared in the field and they could have

spent the night some more creature comforts was was a good

idea. So we ordered some pizza and we

sent it in and the helicopter came over and, and kicked out

all the gear before picking her up.

And so after they got her onto the helicopter and gone and then

they went down packaging all of their new gear that was kicked

out onto the floor, they found these pizzas that were stuffed

in the sleeping bags. So having having pizza delivered

to to the Black Tooth Peak was, was quite, a, quite a little

good idea that Becky had and and I know everybody appreciated

that. We should contact Pizza Hut, I'm

sure that set some sort of a record.

We had pizza delivered that was still warm at over 12,000 feet.

So that was a a welcome surprise that day.

And I think I was one of only two people that got a helicopter

ride both in and out. Everyone else, if they were

lucky enough to get a ride either direction, they got a

ride only One Direction. So.

Yeah, yeah. That everything just clicked on

that. It took a long time, a lot of

people, a lot of effort. It was a big search, but

everything clicked well overall. So over your 30 plus years

leading a business and as a leader in search and rescue, are

there any particular resources that have been important in your

development as a person and as a leader?

Yeah, I, I think so. And, and I, I think I kind of

answered this question earlier, but, but I'll, I'll touch base

on it again. Mentors, mentors, mentors and

mentors are the, are the thing to, to pay attention to.

When I look back at the wisdom of the people that taught me the

lessons they taught me that I had no idea I was learning at

the time. We really need to be mentors for

people. There's programs out there where

you can volunteer to be a mentor, you know, your nephews,

your nieces, you know, find a way to communicate things to

them. It's, it's the, the statement of

that. Only if we had an older, wiser

person to have told us those things.

Well, you do. You just got to listen.

So I know in 30 years in the construction industry, you

mentioned that you, yeah, you dove into roofing with no

knowledge of roofing, buying out a bankrupt business and started

in the construction industry in a time when construction was

pretty dead. Having lived through some of

them myself, I know there's been a few other hard years along the

way. What is it that kept you

motivated and kept you pushing through those hard years and

those hard times? Well, I think I have a backwards

answer to that. Instead of worrying about how

you push through the hard times, as I've already stated several

times, you just did what was in front of you for the day.

And that was a hard times. And so you just that's what you

did. And then you celebrated any easy

times. If you had a break and something

that would, that's where you would would take your time to

enjoy what you had and and what you had to do.

And the hardships just were there, you know, being

self-employed, running a business, running a crew, all of

these things are somewhat hard. If you don't have the

entrepreneur spirit, it's probably not for you.

Not everybody has that, You know, you, you have to have

drive. You have to not expect things to

go easy. And you know, life is hard.

So you just trench forward with that and enjoy it when it's not.

I think that's the three rules of business, right?

It it takes twice as long as you thought, it cost twice as much

as you thought, and you are not the exception.

There you go. Yeah, that's that's a good way

to say it. Was there a major turning point

for you building the business when you felt like I've finally

made it? Or maybe when the the business

took a a significant growth step that felt like it was really

turning a page to a new chapter. Well, again, with hindsight, I

might have a different view than I did as it was happening, as it

was happening. Some of the prominent projects,

like I stated before, were, were seemed to be good turning

points, seemed to be good things that were happening.

And and as I said, in hindsight, they weren't it.

It was no big deal. You know, we went down and and

did the one of the ones I'm most proud of us, we went and roofed

the Barrett Building. Now the Barrett Building is part

of the Capitol complex in Cheyenne and it houses the State

Museum and the State Archives Department.

And I guess it makes sense that the people who run the museum

and the archives, they're a little picky about what gets

wet. And so they did that under a

performance based bid. And we were lucky enough to get

it, but it left me with the design and installation of the

roof over those facilities. And that felt good, felt real

good at the time. But as years went by after that,

nobody else cared about that. You know, those big, what I

thought was turning points weren't they were just another

hard day's work. I think that the day you took

over the business was, or maybe the day you sold the business

was the turning point. You know, that coincided.

You took over at the same time Kara started her career.

And so as a dad, it appeared as if both of my children were

graduated from college and were gainfully employed and while on

their way. And I think that's the day that

I should feel that that I've made it.

OK. Is there anybody that you'd like

to see on the show? Somebody that has a really

interesting story, maybe a cool career track or works in a

really interesting industry that might be fun to learn about.

Well, you know, I had thought, tried to think of somebody that

would do that. And, and, you know, there's a

lot of lot of local people that have worked hard and gained a

level of success and have, have done well for themselves.

And, and they would probably all have good, interesting stories.

So I don't know that I have much of A specific example, but one

might be Bob Zimmershad. You know, he has owned several

businesses. He has lived in Buffalo for a

long time. He has had a lot of employees

and his businesses were sometimes diverse and, and

required a lot of changes. And I I think his story would

probably have a lot of interesting twists in it if he

were to sit down and tell it. That's a great idea.

I'm going to have to reach out to him, see if he might be

willing to join us. So my favorite question that I

ask every guest, are you a person of a particular faith

tradition? And if so, how did that shape

your leadership? Well, yes, yes I am first of

all, and I got to start that over again.

Are you a person? If so, how was that shaped your

leadership journey? Yes, I think faith has been a a

big piece of of my thought process.

I told you the story earlier about Orville Ennis, who who I

thought was the the best Christian I've ever met.

He influenced me in a way that I didn't know he was influencing

me. And when I look back on that it,

I'm very thankful for it. You know, he, his leadership and

him passing on a lot of things, faith-based concepts that went

right over my head. I got the concept.

I didn't realize how how faith-based it was.

You know, I grew up in the Catholic world.

I have awards for catechism. You know, we, we went to church

very regularly when, when we were close to a Catholic Church

anywhere near the, the Air Force Base.

And you know, that that was kind of a basis there for me.

But Orville is the one that has had kind of turned my, my

viewpoint once, I once my eyes were open to what he had done.

You know, one day we're walking down the road downtown Buffalo

and a guy coming at us, he looked up and saw us and, and he

quickly turned and went across the street.

And I knew who he was and I knew why he did that.

He had owed me some money and he wasn't paying it.

And but I didn't react to him or that at all.

And Orville asked me, he said, why did that guy just do that?

And I said, what do you mean? He said, why did he just walk

across the street? And I said, well, he, he owes me

some money and he he doesn't want to, doesn't want to see or

visit with me. So that would be why.

And he never missed a beat. He said Dave said you have to

live your life so that you never have to do that, Said don't go

there and that stuck. I still remember that and that's

probably 1 of 50 things he taught me that way.

And so I try to do that myself. You know, I'm not a very

outspoken evangelist type person and in the construction world

all of your people are not very open minded always.

They're kind of maybe some rough people.

In fact, I wasn't very long ago I was running a crew in Gillette

and the biggest part of that crew was people at the halfway

house. So they were all on their way

out of prison. I wouldn't call many of them

active Christians by any means. And I knew that they could use

some guidance and some help, but I also knew that if you ever

mentioned any words about faith or, or anything like that, that

it would turn them off big time. So I never did.

But as we ran into situations, one guy was not, you know,

treating the company or me very well.

And, and I handled it in a way that I, you know, I, I tried to

keep him going and treated him fairly and well.

And, and some of the guys came up to me afterwards after the,

everybody witnessed our discussion.

So why do you give him such a good break like that?

Why, why isn't he fired? We would expect to be fired if

we did that. And I said, well, we're supposed

to treat everybody as we want to be treated, aren't we?

I said that's the way I'd want to be treated.

And that's all I said. And so I think that in my mind,

I'm planting seeds by doing such things to a group that is not

necessarily very receptive. And do I know that any of those

seeds took took root? I don't, but I'd like to think

so. That's a great answer.

I know you've talked about a few interesting projects.

You mentioned the the Barrett building and the Event Center,

that's now the Ford Center. Are there other really

interesting projects that you could tell us a little bit about

and and why they were so significant or so interesting?

Well, I, I got a pretty good list of those, you know,

interesting ones. I went over and worked in Nevada

on a high security state prison over there.

And while that opened my eyes, we, we were going on all of the

roofs with inside these prison boundaries and, and 1/2 of it

was one type of offender and the other half was another.

And, and like I say, it was high security state prison.

It wasn't a county lock up. These guys were in there for a

long time, a lot of them dangerous.

And we had walked from building to building right in their yard

out there. Wow.

I saw things there that I had no idea how what happened in

prisons and, and we had a guy that was supposed to be helping

us that was a prisoner and I was a little concerned about that.

They, they said, well, this guy gets out in three weeks, he's

not going to do anything. I thought, well, OK, I, I can

live with that. But anyhow, he, he was afraid of

everything because he, he knew that if he goofed up at all in

those three weeks that he wouldn't be getting out.

But that was an interesting job for for sure.

And you know, we we did one up Montana in 1992 that you are

doing or you just completed again, that roof had never

leaked. They re roofed it because it had

last so long. They didn't think it could last

much longer. So the architect called Eric and

I and wanted my input from how we did it the first time and,

and we went up there and helped him design that route, re

redesign that roof. And Eric was lucky enough to get

that bid and he just re roofed it for the second time.

And it's a very unique building. Those of you from Wyoming going

up the Billings once in a while, it's the one with all the humps

that sits under the airport, a very challenging building.

Just getting from one hump to the other was very difficult.

You had to have ladders, ropes, you had to have something you

could just not walk across this roof and say, and we had to tear

it off of a built up roof. So we took tons and tons and

tons of stuff across those humps and it was challenging and it it

was an interesting project and it was one of those ones that

that put us on the map and provided the big corner for us

that that didn't really materialize.

But in my mind it did, you know, we went out of state and all of

the out of state projects, you know.

For things that provide memories, you know, you can, you

can, anybody can give a low bid on a project and get a project.

But when you, when you do private negotiated work and, and

for me, it was even travelling work when, when people would

contact me and want me to travel across the country to go do

their roof because of the quality they received on their

roofs here or that they had heard about, that was rewarding.

And we went to seven different states, including Florida and

California and several in between.

And we went to those projects because those people wanted our

level of service, our level of workmanship.

And that's a little different level of reward than getting a

low bid, even on a big, big wonderful job like the Sheridan

High School, my only $1,000,000 job, that was great, but we got

it by having the smallest number, you know, So those,

those negotiated jobs turned out to be more rewarding for me than

than the low bid ones. Awesome.

Well, thank you very much for joining us today.

This has been a special episode for me.

This is something I've been looking forward to and the idea

of interviewing you and getting to tell your story really was

the the birth of this show. I know we really focused on the

the construction side of things, but maybe on another day we'll

have to have you come back and chat a little bit more about

search and rescue and some of your experiences there as well.

So thanks for joining us. Oh, you're very welcome.

And I, I enjoy talking search and rescue.

So yes, I would. I would entertain that concept

for sure. Awesome, and thank you guys for

joining us here on From the Ground Up Show.

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