The Blueprint to Growth with Sonny Bonacio

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Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.

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Speaker 1
Welcome, everyone, to Blue Color Startup, the podcast where hard work meets big ideas.

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Speaker 1
This is your home for real talk, real stories and real strategies from the frontlines of life and the business of the trades. I’m one of your hosts, Mike Nelson.

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Speaker 3
That’ll be our other host, Derek Foster. Yeah.

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Speaker 1
You don’t? Yeah. You’re Derek yeah, yeah, I’m doing good, man. Good. I, I don’t know, this is a wild time. Time of year for me. Because we’re with winter coming up, trying to, get the farm ready, and I’ve got, like, 70 different outdoor projects. I’m still splitting wood, which for anyone that burns wood right now, they’re laughing at me.

00:00:47:05 – 00:00:58:10
Speaker 1
That I’m still splitting wood because it should have happened back in April. But here we are. I do it every year, and then I’m burning wet wood all went along, which is a lot of fun. So yeah. But yeah, I’ve been there. Busy. Good. You know.

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Speaker 3
Get your snow plowing figured out. Oh.

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Speaker 1
Let’s move on there. Okay. So it’s not, it’s an open air. No, it’s just a big long story. I don’t know if you ever heard the saga of when, I don’t know. I was like, I think it was 2020 or 2021. So for those who don’t know my background, I used to push snow, right? Years in the York professionally.

00:01:22:08 – 00:01:36:14
Speaker 1
Yes. So, so I was out of it for a number of years, and I got this wild hair up my ass that I was going to get. I was going to push snow again. Why not? Right. So we had this big farm. Big, huge driveway. I need to get a plow on the truck and so might as well make some money with it too.

00:01:36:16 – 00:01:54:09
Speaker 1
So I went out for the big old Chevy 2500. I put a steel plow on it like beautiful set up for storm. If you guys remember, it was either 2020 or 2021, but we didn’t get a storm until late December, and then we got like two feet of snow for the first storm, right? No one was ready for it.

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Speaker 1
I’m. I’m happy and a pig and shit. I’ve got my new truck, my new plow. I go out to hit the first a cow, drop the plow, push it about 100ft. Pick it up, back up. Do my second push. Go to the power plant. Won’t come off the ground. So then I had to do. I had to basically jacket chain it.

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Speaker 1
It was inoperable. The module, something was broken on it, so I’d had to sit the whole storm out. It was just a big mess. And then, long story short, since then I’ve been using my, my little side by side with a little straight blade, plow on it, push and push in our driveway, which it takes like five hours for me to do it, for the record.

00:02:30:05 – 00:02:40:05
Speaker 1
So it’s. But I, this is the last year I’m doing. I’m not. I’m gonna buy another plow truck, but but I will not be getting professionally back in and telling my.

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Speaker 2
Brother and I did that to pay for all the truck payments for a year. We would go in the winter. In 2002, I think we had like eight trucks out on the road.

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Speaker 1
Yeah.

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Speaker 2
And it was that crazy storm. I can’t believe we got like 36in. You know what I had done? I had told everybody they could take Christmas. So who’s in new Jersey? Who is in Long Island? So out of the charts that want to be in, four of us were out for like, 42 hours.

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Speaker 1
Oh, God.

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Speaker 2
And I said, Tony, we gotta figure out better ways to make car payments.

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Speaker 1
That’s that’s the whole no sleep thing is the hardest part about that, because you’re working all day and then.

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Speaker 2
You got to go.

00:03:15:22 – 00:03:37:08
Speaker 1
Molly. Yeah, it is wild. So we’re going to introduce our guest. But before I do, of course, we gotta just give a quick shout out to our sponsors. These are folks that helped make the show possible and also help the, donations that we are able to make is essentially because all the folks that are sponsoring our show and, you know, we give money for tools and tuition to bosses, to Hvac.

00:03:37:11 – 00:03:57:19
Speaker 1
And we’re very, excited to be able to do that. But it all comes because of people like People’s Martin Electric, MLB construction, Pinocchio Construction, Michaels Group, Catamount Construction. I for some reason on my list, it says Catamount Construction. I don’t know why that is, but it’s Catamount Consulting Scott and Stacy over there. Amazing humans. Appreciate all the help, people.

00:03:57:22 – 00:04:13:08
Speaker 1
Great, right. Of course, Derek’s team over at Diego Cleaning Services and my team over at Five Towers Media. So without further ado, by the way, hundredth episode. 100th episode. We got there. We made it. We’ve been talking about the hundredth episode, I think from.

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Speaker 3
Not hitting record to, double checking,

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Speaker 1
For a show, all the things along the way. So very excited to have sunny been on the show from Pinocchio Construction on our 100th episode Sunday. Thanks so much.

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Speaker 3
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, I, I know locally we we you don’t need an introduction. You’re basically, like, kind of like a local celebrity in the contracting world that I don’t know if you know this or not, but I hope that I really.

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Speaker 2
You.

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Speaker 1
Well, maybe to the celebrity.

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Speaker 2
All this to me. As soon as I walk in the door, my wife humbles me.

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Speaker 1
And she just takes it right. Well, I obviously, Pinocchio Construction is a very well-known name in the construction industry in this region, and it’s grown, from what I understand to, But it was interesting when I was looking up, to get ready for the show, a little bit about your background and your history. And a couple of articles.

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Speaker 1
Did call you kind of a local celebrity. I was like, wow, all right, sunny, but not yet. Was local celebrity. Perfect. So welcome.

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Speaker 2
And you were talking about splitting. What? I was splitting what, this? Yeah.

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Speaker 1
Hey, you know, we all put our pants on the same way, right?

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Speaker 2
Yeah.

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Speaker 1
So, sunny, if you don’t mind, for those of, our listeners, because, you know, some people are all across the country. So for people that haven’t heard of Sunny Bonacci or Bellagio Construction, would you mind just giving us a quick rundown about, who you are and, like. Sure.

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Speaker 2
Back in 1988, I went to, canton ATC for two years. Not because I wanted to, but my parents said, you got to go get something. So I got an ass degree after high school and, came back and started financial construction. So 1988 started the company. We were doing decks, we were doing roofs, we were doing anything that I could make payroll by doing.

00:05:49:29 – 00:06:06:22
Speaker 2
Yeah. So, had like 4 or 5 guys. So I got a couple of them guys with us still. Still to this day, my brother and I, my brother’s been kind of off and on working for me when he was in his early teens and then, full time ever since he got out of out of, to your school.

00:06:06:24 – 00:06:28:20
Speaker 2
So starting in 88, like I said, really ground up, rusted trucks, hand paint and trucks with rollers and naps and, and then slowly we just started, following what the market needed. So, you know, we were just persistent. If somebody asked me to do something, we would just work seven days a week, 24 hours a day until we got it pulled off.

00:06:28:20 – 00:06:47:22
Speaker 2
And then just word of mouth, I was left at our website was under construction for seven years. And it was just a lot of word of mouth. And every time we’d start another job, we’d look at it and say, we have no right and even trying to tackle this. But if you got the right mindset and everybody’s willing to put the effort and the work into it, you’ve made.

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Speaker 1
Every.

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Speaker 2
Mistake that, you’re not supposed to make. You make them four times if you do it that way. But, never say die and just keep posturing. And we wound up coming up with, really interesting clientele over the years, you know, and being able to financially tackle different kinds of product that nobody else, tackles to. So, you know, condos in Saratoga Springs, we don’t like following, you know, because then you’re always kind of you’re in the pack with everybody else.

00:07:14:15 – 00:07:32:17
Speaker 2
So we like to lead. And we got into some markets that were, very lucrative. And then slowly people get into them and then you move on to something else. But we were blessed, that we were part of the growth of our hometown, Saratoga Springs. My wife and I, hand-in-hand. 35 years we’ve been doing this together. And, it’s been cool.

00:07:32:17 – 00:07:42:11
Speaker 2
It’s been really cool. It’s been great that the level of clients that we get in the phone calls, you kind of pinch yourself and be like, no way, this is where this is from, you know? So thank you.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. And so you’re doing residential and construction still, right?

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Speaker 2
We are doing, around the state. We’re out in Rome right now.

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Speaker 1
Yeah.

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Speaker 2
A very good friend of your guys podcast, Paul Lambert is out there, helping us for, Griffis Air Force. We’ve got a couple of, office building defense contractor buildings. We’re burying ground. Another 50,000 square foot or out there in another 6 or 7 months. A bunch of apartments out there. That was an interesting part of the state where, you know, they had a lot of economic development that they were looking to do, and we jumped on early.

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Speaker 2
Nobody else saw that as an opportunity. And now literally across the street from a bunch of our property companies building that new $1.4 billion plant. So another, you know, 1500 2000 employees. So Ron’s been good. We have a ribbon cutting tomorrow up in Glens Falls for an affordable, affordable housing project, right. Where Sandy’s Clam bar used to be on, South Street.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. So, so that was great because we were able to transform a section of the town that really hadn’t had a lot of activity going on in it. On some buildings down in, Troy. And, the rest of the stuff has been Saratoga Springs, so. Yeah. No, it’s been, it’s been tough economy with the interest rates and the construction costs and the tariffs and the lack of commitment that people wanted to do to, invest in real estate after Covid because there was a little bit of an adjust.

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Speaker 2
But, you know, it’s it’s all starting to get get going again.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. How many people do you guys have here now? 250. 250.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. And then we decided to get involved. And resorts, so that was, you know, I think we got 50 up and screwing Lake and we’ve got another 50 out at the Brook mayor. So it’s probably more like 350, you know, all all in, all combined. Wow. Yeah.

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Speaker 3
What were some of the early challenges that you faced when you and your brother were first starting out?

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Speaker 2
All of them. Yeah, I usually all of them. It was it was, not knowing how to price things, not knowing how to, you know, really OSHA standards of building. You know, we were out there just kind of just trying to make payroll and be able to make car payments and, you know, have enough money to pay Curtis Lumber.

00:10:02:24 – 00:10:24:01
Speaker 2
And, so, you know, that was probably between 88 and 96 was it was seven days a week. You know, it was I was doing payroll on Thursday nights and doing all the paperwork and paying the bills on Sundays and out there estimating and meeting clients on Saturday. So it was you just when you start, you just never looked at a watch.

00:10:24:07 – 00:10:47:23
Speaker 2
And I was blessed to have a wife that understood that and was kind of like, yep, get out there and get that done. So, but slowly every year it was like we were, I mean, but we were growing pretty good. We’re at right now, right around $100 million a year. You know, maybe one 105 108, you know, the first year, I saw the paychecks, the stubs of the guys.

00:10:47:23 – 00:11:08:20
Speaker 2
It was my own personal account. No withholdings, statute limitations. Yeah, I mean, I’m not anymore. Yeah, but, Yeah, I mean, that first year, I think we’re a half $1 million in sales. And then it was, you know, a million and then 1.5 and but growing a company in upstate New York is not the easiest thing in the world to do.

00:11:08:26 – 00:11:22:27
Speaker 2
Yeah, it’s a lot of money, I would agree. It’s a lot of risk. You know, it’s a lot of things that I can’t tell you how many times, you know, mentors, which are really important. You know, when my mentors are looking at me and saying, what are you doing? I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t do that. And then I go do it anyways.

00:11:22:27 – 00:11:25:28
Speaker 2
And they were right. 75%.

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Speaker 1
Hopefully that 25% was big enough to.

00:11:28:15 – 00:11:44:24
Speaker 2
Win every now and again. It was just all the returns that we thought. But, you know, knock on wood, you know, we have great relationships with all the banks and couple of, you know, really big downturns were a lot of developers and builders, got over the dips and couldn’t make the payments and handed the keys back.

00:11:44:24 – 00:11:59:04
Speaker 2
And we never so much just missed a payment. So, you know, and I kept looking like this was the end of my life. This was the end of it all. And a couple of the bankers came in with us, said, you have no idea what you’ve been able to accomplish, and this will be with you for the rest of your life, for your reputation.

00:11:59:04 – 00:12:06:10
Speaker 2
And you can basically write your ticket, which has been kind of cool that we get financing as things that, you know, a lot of people they won’t even entertain.

00:12:06:13 – 00:12:07:13
Speaker 1
Yeah. What is it like.

00:12:07:13 – 00:12:11:11
Speaker 3
Carrying all that pressure? I mean, how do you handle that and how do you deal with that?

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Speaker 2
It’s a thing. I mean, it really is. And I gotta tell you, you can. It’s almost like it’s the best thing that can happen to you is when you find yourself in a spot that you know you’re never going to get out of, and then you get.

00:12:25:10 – 00:12:26:05
Speaker 3
Out of there, figure it out.

00:12:26:12 – 00:12:46:21
Speaker 2
You know, you figure it out. So 2008, you know, when the when the real estate world just collapsed, we had, two buildings that we had up to spec buildings, which is what you want to have when you’re in your late 30s, a $40 million spec building and a $38 million spec building, and they just weren’t moving. So I just kept making the payments on it.

00:12:46:21 – 00:13:04:19
Speaker 2
And then, you know, eventually time catches up and the market starts to go back the other way. And, they want to been to one of the buildings you’re sitting in right now. That’s where our office building is. And, but it was it was one of those things that you learned an awful lot about yourself. And the one thing that I learned is that

00:13:04:19 – 00:13:18:15
Speaker 2
the calmer you keep yourself, the more creative you are, the better you look coming to, you know, people that you’re sitting down with, even though you don’t have it all figured out yet, you appear to have it all figured out and it allows you to figure it out.

00:13:18:17 – 00:13:24:08
Speaker 2
I see a lot of people just start scrambling, like scrambling, and it’s the worst thing you could do.

00:13:24:15 – 00:13:49:08
Speaker 1
Thinking about your story. 1988 for you and four guys. Rusty pickup trucks, 20, 25, $100 million in Ram. Roughly speaking, it’s what we would call the case study for guys that are and girls that are listening to the show. Right. Because one of our objectives is to help young people understand that there’s a lot of opportunity in the trades, whether it’s construction or electrical and plumbing.

00:13:49:11 – 00:13:50:03
Speaker 2
Unbelievable.

00:13:50:03 – 00:14:14:15
Speaker 1
And and when we talk to some of those people, you know, the idea of building a $100 million company, it’s like, oh, you can’t do that in construction. You can’t do that in the trades that it on. And it happens all the time. People just don’t know about it. Right. And so when we look at what you’ve been able to do in that short amount of time, like was it ten years, 15 years in where you were really starting to hit big numbers?

00:14:14:15 – 00:14:18:09
Speaker 1
Like, when do you get to a scale of like $100 million? Is it? It was.

00:14:18:12 – 00:14:38:17
Speaker 2
I had two things on that. Number one, most of the large companies in the capital District. I’m Carpenter. Yes. Framer. You ask anybody, they’ll tell you. I still think I’m a framer. I’m still frame. I’m comfortable hanging out with the tattoos and the flam. Old is what I mean. But most of the companies that have grown, it’s either it was a framer.

00:14:38:20 – 00:15:00:27
Speaker 2
Danny Ledoux, PBL was a mason. Yeah. You know, a lot of those companies started out with that person that just wanted to be a subcontractor. Yeah. And then eventually they just outworked, you know, and really started to build. And then you got a little bit of a revenue stream beyond how quickly you wanted to build. And you start looking at investing in different things or diversifying into, into other areas.

00:15:00:29 – 00:15:20:12
Speaker 2
And I got to tell you, the, you know, to start a company, the amount of work that it takes just to get started, is the most amount of work that you’ll put into it, as long as you love it, the rest of it’s fun. And you will get. I mean, you guys have had great days, and you guys have had terrible days, right?

00:15:20:12 – 00:15:23:06
Speaker 1
Yeah. This week. Yeah.

00:15:23:09 – 00:15:43:16
Speaker 2
But, no, the, it wasn’t like a well laid out plan. Yeah. We really just started to do, things that I could make money out. Things that were. The market was demanding, and I kept trying to get myself in front of more and more interesting clients that could get my name out to more and more interesting clients.

00:15:43:18 – 00:16:10:01
Speaker 2
And it just kind of grew and we never said no. So it started out as a framing contractor, and after that, you know, it was full GC. And then after that we started to develop, so we do, probably three quarters multifamily, which I consider condominiums and, apartment buildings. We’re doing defense contractor stuff, but we’re still doing really interesting, cool residential projects as well.

00:16:10:04 – 00:16:26:05
Speaker 2
You know, we recently in the last two years, we did a project for Bobby Flay. We just got done building a house for 8.9. So, you know, we’ve been blessed with. But those are the clients that they they know what they want. They know when they want it done by, and they don’t want any crap.

00:16:26:07 – 00:16:48:12
Speaker 2
Yeah. So they’re not you know, I always say price, quality schedule pick too. We’re not going to be the price contractor. We’re going to be the guys that get it done that will come back in service to you. I mean, we go back 15, 18 years on the same products and projects. So we have a habit of luring in some of those more interesting projects, and that works for us.

00:16:48:15 – 00:17:04:02
Speaker 1
You mentioned getting in front of interesting clients so that you get in front of other interesting clients. I don’t know if that’s a secret recipe or if you can share with us, like what kinds of things that you do to get in front of the kind of clientele that you want to work with.

00:17:04:05 – 00:17:23:28
Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean, in, in Saratoga, where I started, there was a gentleman by the name of John ruined. Yeah. Tom ruins that great man. Tom room. Great man. And the families have known had known each other for a while, and I was just this framing contractor. And John Brewin called me up one day and said, hey, I’ve got a problem.

00:17:23:28 – 00:17:41:12
Speaker 2
I got a house that’s closing, and I completely forgot to put the that kind of the guy doesn’t want to close, and we need to get the closing. And he called me on Thursday morning. So I wound up going in on Saturday and Sunday, and we cranked out this treated deck on the side of it. And then that led to a, hey, would you like to do a kitchen for somebody on North Broadway?

00:17:41:14 – 00:18:00:26
Speaker 2
And then that person introduced me to the neighbor, and then the neighbor introduced me to the neighbor. And, then we got into some projects for some tougher clientele. When you’re working for the, CFO of General Electric, I mean, that’s no joke. Yeah. And, a lot of people were kind of rooting against us as no way those young guys are going to be able to pull that off.

00:18:00:26 – 00:18:23:13
Speaker 2
And then we pulled it off and then, oh my God. And another couple phone calls. So we’ve, we’ve we’ve steadily grown, you know, houses that were originally we thought a $250,000 house was, you know, unbelievable. And, you know, and they sold it became 1.5, 2.5, 3.5. You know, we’re working on a $33 million house now. That’s while another couple.

00:18:23:13 – 00:18:45:00
Speaker 2
Yeah. So, yeah, but it’s, it was word of mouth and it was very organic. You know, I, I have seen people that get opportunity, price it wrong, grow too fast, and they’re out quick. So you got to really, you know, I mean we’ve had a really, you know, meteoric 35 year rate rise. Yeah I wasn’t like we did it overnight.

00:18:45:00 – 00:19:06:05
Speaker 2
Yeah. So I mean it’s taken us 35 years to get here. And we’re working really hard right now in the next generation. I’ve been working on, succession plans. The three children are in, the company at this point. And, the group of people that we’re setting up to train to work with them, you know, these are people in their mid 20s and early 30s.

00:19:06:08 – 00:19:22:22
Speaker 2
We’re spending a fortunate time training them that they’re going to be the next generation around the company. We decided we wanted us to continue going because we like to be an employer and we like to create things. So it wasn’t just it’s the furthest thing it was. It was about the money. It was the furthest thing. It was about.

00:19:22:24 – 00:19:30:05
Speaker 1
So the first we’ll say 15 years your business, the internet really wasn’t a thing.

00:19:30:08 – 00:19:38:21
Speaker 2
I’m serious. It said the nature of construction was under construction for eight years. Well, and and it was a pathetic website for eight years.

00:19:38:21 – 00:19:59:26
Speaker 1
Yeah. For that it’s pretty good. Now. I checked it anyway. But you know what I’m wondering is your, the philosophy of of not saying no. Right. So you’re being asked to do things possibly you’d never done before. You had to figure it out. The internet really wasn’t as prevalent as it is now. I mean, we get asked to do things all the time now, and I just Google how to do it and you can figure it out, right?

00:19:59:29 – 00:20:18:01
Speaker 1
You didn’t have that back in the late 80s and throughout the 90s and even some of the early 2000. So how do you, someone asks you to do a job that you haven’t really done all that stuff yet, like how did you handle that? Do you like where you hit in the library and reading up on that, you know, like, what does that look like without the internet?

00:20:18:03 – 00:20:37:08
Speaker 2
You know what? There’s a, I remember the first steel building we put up, which is where platinum markets were. That was the ruined building. And, my brother went to school for landscaping. It was, you know. Oh, he’s a landscaper. And, all of a sudden, this opportunity came, but, didn’t call anybody else. He said, can you build this?

00:20:37:09 – 00:20:40:27
Speaker 2
I’m like, absolutely. That’s not working out. Like, where’s a two by ten, Joyce?

00:20:40:28 – 00:20:41:20
Speaker 1
Right, right.

00:20:41:25 – 00:21:03:24
Speaker 2
What do we what. It’s just w eight by 40. What? What’s that? But we were able to actually, line ourselves up with subcontractors that were older and larger, but we had good relationships, and, you know, bring in that Mason, you know, and say, hey, look at this is what you idiots got to do. Yeah. And the first is you’re still building.

00:21:03:24 – 00:21:27:13
Speaker 2
It was right on Broadway. I mean, talk about the first time you’re going to put up a structural steel building. We were literally blasting six inches away from an 1840s brick wall oven. Existing building actually had brick buildings on either side. And we had to blast all that out and then start swinging steel in there. So, but every day you just come into work and say, I gotta, I gotta have 3 or 4 different solutions.

00:21:27:13 – 00:21:41:29
Speaker 2
So we had, Stonebridge Steel did the steel for us. Yeah, they were a big help. So, I mean, when when we didn’t know, we we weren’t afraid or shy to pick up the phone and say, hey, look at I’ve got this thing. Do you want to help me build it? And the mason was all on board.

00:21:41:29 – 00:21:57:04
Speaker 2
The excavator bill and Morris was all on board. Stonebridge was all on board. And that was, you know, 50 buildings ago or 60 buildings ago that we’ve done in town and, you know, with red iron, but, yeah. No, there was no way in and that there was no right. The,

00:21:57:07 – 00:21:59:21
Speaker 3
It was actually had to talk to people. You had to to.

00:21:59:21 – 00:22:13:08
Speaker 2
Yeah. Oh my gosh, that that was a whole thing you just had. And you know, we would have weekly meetings and you had to be thinking up front. And I always told my team, you got to ask two or 3 or 4 more questions. You think you’re done? You’re not done. Keep asking questions. You know, it takes a while to train somebody, but would it work?

00:22:13:11 – 00:22:26:26
Speaker 2
Well, what kind of question? I’m like, I don’t know, what are you doing tomorrow? How are you going to bring the steel in off of Broadway? What are you gonna do with that power line that’s right there? You know, those kind of questions. And after 10 or 15 years, you start getting those questions out there, and you start.

00:22:27:01 – 00:22:29:23
Speaker 2
It’s not as drama ridden as it needed to be.

00:22:29:23 – 00:22:32:11
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, it comes down after a loss. Yeah, it.

00:22:32:11 – 00:22:33:20
Speaker 2
Does. Muscle memory.

00:22:33:27 – 00:22:44:22
Speaker 1
I have to imagine too. I mean, the first time you’re doing a lot of this work and you’re doing it front and center on Broadway for the whole world to see, right? So if you screw it up, man, everyone’s going to know, like.

00:22:44:24 – 00:22:47:07
Speaker 2
Oh, and so many were rooting against us.

00:22:47:14 – 00:22:48:24
Speaker 1
I bet there always is.

00:22:48:24 – 00:23:12:26
Speaker 2
Oh, man, they were rooting against us. Yeah. No, we had, and sold it. We had a really tight team. I’ll never forget. We were putting a water line into, where, Killian’s and the bookstore was for 22 Broadway, and, I mean, we had to redirect all the traffic on Broadway to all the cones we were digging down ten feet right at the yellow line, going to the building.

00:23:12:28 – 00:23:34:07
Speaker 2
And, my brother had a lot of the stuff all set up. My, my, my, I recently deceased best friend, Billy Benton, PNB Plumbing and Heating. He was there that night, so we had a lot of guys on site, and they were digging the hole and we were getting all the pipe laid down to about 11:00 at night and, got pulled in, and he looked at my brother, he goes, dude, I looked in the log.

00:23:34:09 – 00:23:48:03
Speaker 2
I don’t have anything down that you got a permit for tonight? My brother deadpanned him right in the eyes and said, you really think I would do all this without a building, without your permit? I’m serious. Really determined, I walked away.

00:23:48:03 – 00:23:49:07
Speaker 1
Oh my God, talk to him.

00:23:49:07 – 00:23:52:22
Speaker 2
Like five minutes later, I look to her and he goes, that’s it.

00:23:52:22 – 00:23:55:24
Speaker 1
That’s the power of a good bluff.

00:23:55:26 – 00:24:11:12
Speaker 2
And we got caught. And like, I made fun of us and we had the hydroxy, the one at the PBA range or something for penance for free. But we did it right. And but, you know, the front and center is a it’s a thing, you know, but that’s I think you gotta always be front and center. Yeah.

00:24:11:12 – 00:24:32:22
Speaker 2
I mean, we always tried to lead. We always try to do things that, you know, when we were doing even the bank was like, you sure, you know, figure it out when it’s all done. Now, you know, because at that point you’re not low, low, low. But. And that’s the biggest thing to kill any new business or any business, you know, when you’re dumpster diving for, for projects just to keep, you know, you have to do it every now and again and keep the lights on.

00:24:32:22 – 00:24:34:25
Speaker 2
But you don’t want to do it on every single job.

00:24:34:27 – 00:24:47:20
Speaker 1
Yeah. You mentioned that a couple of times of kind of like being in the front of things and leading the market as opposed to chasing the market. Can you expand on that a little bit to help the listeners understand what you mean by that?

00:24:47:22 – 00:25:13:15
Speaker 2
Sure. Like multifamily here in Saratoga Springs. David Brown’s built some apartments across from the, across from Congress Park, which is now like the gap. And, and then nobody and no one had built new apartments in downtown Saratoga for 20 years before him. And then nobody had done anything about 15 years after that, which is the reason that you see Saratoga Market Center.

00:25:13:17 – 00:25:34:17
Speaker 2
You know, that was where the old Price Chopper was. And we realized early on that that’s a harder project to pull off than some wood frame buildings out in the middle of a cornfield in, you know, Wilton or Milton. That’s, that’s, a more difficult building to build. It’s more difficult building to finance. But once it’s up, people like to be downtown.

00:25:34:19 – 00:26:02:16
Speaker 2
Yeah. You know, so when we whenever we put up a building like that, we seemed to drain the outer ring of apartments because people would prefer there’s just no product, but it’s harder to do it. So, we find that, you know, same thing with condominiums. You know, those were extremely difficult to finance. And now after we’ve done 16 or 17 of them, we have a nice little rhythm and pace of how many you can do in a year, you know, and how many will sell in a year.

00:26:02:19 – 00:26:26:20
Speaker 2
So we enjoy that. But, you know, when you see, you know, subdivisions going in, there’s a lot of great builders that do that. They like to go in, do the subdivisions. They’ve got good selection people, they build houses. We try to do that. There were too many other people doing it, you know, they had a different infrastructure cost, a different overhead, different, you know, human resources requirements.

00:26:26:22 – 00:26:46:25
Speaker 2
You need less for that. So we found ourselves we priced ourselves out of being able to do a subdivision of real estate, for houses. But you offer up a 60,000 or 70,000 square foot house. Those guys should try to tackle that stuff, either because you’re dealing with forensic accountants and, you know, the people that can build that stuff are no joke.

00:26:47:00 – 00:27:09:03
Speaker 2
Yeah, they know. You know, they know how to then how to manage their money and make sure that they’re getting what they’re supposed to get. That’s where we do a good job at. So there’s not a lot of people. There’s a couple architect builder combinations that are also building, you know, good sized projects. But I would say that, you know, some of the biggest ones we’ve done in the past and quietly continue to do in the future.

00:27:09:06 – 00:27:17:27
Speaker 1
Is it wild looking around Saratoga Springs and looking at the vast impact that you’ve had on the landscape?

00:27:17:29 – 00:27:19:04
Speaker 2
Right. This is going to freak you out.

00:27:19:08 – 00:27:19:19
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:27:19:23 – 00:27:29:19
Speaker 2
I’m never looking up on the why? Why? Because I’m picking cigaret butts off the sidewalks. That’s good. Honest to God, my wife hates doing laundry because my back pockets just full of garbage.

00:27:29:19 – 00:27:34:06
Speaker 1
Because you just pick it up. Stuff. Yup. That’s funny. Yep.

00:27:34:08 – 00:27:50:06
Speaker 2
Yep. No, my brother and I, my dad was a window washer, so we would carry the buckets and, you know, every other. And that’s a lot of people don’t know about Saratoga. Tell a story all the time. Every other storefront was empty and there was nothing upstairs. There was all these second and third floors were empty buildings.

00:27:50:09 – 00:28:11:14
Speaker 2
So we would, you know, pick up the buckets into every other storefront. That was what Saratoga was. There was no cars parked on Broadway. If you look in the 50s, 60s, and I was doing that in mid 70s, you know, doing that with that when I was ten, ten years old. And you look at pictures back down and there’s no cars on Broadway, there’s lights with no cars waiting at them in Saratoga Springs.

00:28:11:15 – 00:28:12:12
Speaker 2
Look at it now.

00:28:12:15 – 00:28:27:16
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, I came down here in the mid 90s. I can remember I had some buddies that lived on like a second floor apartment on, on Broadway, and it was a dump, you know, and it was like it was cheap and it was a dump. And now it’s like, yeah, good luck getting that apartment in today’s market.

00:28:27:18 – 00:28:44:02
Speaker 1
Completely different place. That’s what I mean. And again, it’s not to, blow smoke up your ass, but it’s just, you know, it’s wild to me to look around. And your name, so to speak, is involved with a lot of these buildings. And it’s a completely like the the marketplace used to be the ghetto chopper. That’s what we call them.

00:28:44:03 – 00:28:44:20
Speaker 1
Right?

00:28:44:23 – 00:29:05:03
Speaker 2
That was the place my father used to throw beatings on me. If I let go of the. You know, that’s where we shop. Just get. Yeah. And, No, that was that block was probably one of the most aggressive. Yeah. You know, follow. I didn’t follow anybody on that one. Gotta thank debut Cohn Gillespie. You know they came in on on the finance side and our my partners.

00:29:05:03 – 00:29:11:12
Speaker 2
But, yeah. No, we, when, when we looked at that piece re-envision what’s there now.

00:29:11:15 – 00:29:11:27
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:29:11:27 – 00:29:17:07
Speaker 2
And, I mean, it’s still a labor love the market that’s over there. Now, you know, one Price Chopper.

00:29:17:08 – 00:29:17:24
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:29:17:26 – 00:29:34:09
Speaker 2
And they had, you know, they had a location out of exit 15 and the other 150. So, I mean, that was like a little limited store for them. Yeah. But then to bring in, Chris Martel and, Mark and Julie Dow ups, as partners to come up with that market. I mean, the food’s insane.

00:29:34:09 – 00:29:53:21
Speaker 2
You know, we were always thinking, like, a little bit of an Eataly. We want it to be a neighborhood thing. And the first group that we had tried to do that didn’t work. And once you see something that doesn’t work, you gotta unfortunately fire some people, get rid of some people, bring in some new people, and, and now they’re exceeding expectations or they’re doing.

00:29:53:21 – 00:30:13:12
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we, we also tend to do things because you got to build a community like this organically. So a lot of people don’t know like I’m the facilities chair at Spac. So for the last ten years I’ve been over at Spac as a board member building, you know, the pines and the ramps. And we’re now doing a little theater.

00:30:13:15 – 00:30:30:18
Speaker 2
I was also the chair raising the money for you proctors, showing you and, you know, the movie theater over there. We were involved in the children’s museum, involved in, Cafe Lena. You know, we you need to have a good balance to bring people into downtown, cause. And make them want to have an 18 hour downtown. Yeah.

00:30:30:18 – 00:30:42:17
Speaker 2
And you look at downtown Albany where, you know, 501. It’s empty. Yeah. No, there’s nobody there’s not a lot of people I have met down there in a long time. But, you know, when you come up here, you drive through at 10:00 at night on a Wednesday night, there’s still all kinds of.

00:30:42:17 – 00:30:47:10
Speaker 3
People I gotta. I can attest it’s a little bit different up here. That’s where we are. Yeah. The Albany area. Yeah.

00:30:47:12 – 00:31:00:09
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, I mean, we were just hitting all the, the farmer’s markets over the weekend and doing some different stuff and the number of people that are still in town. It’s not like Saratoga even ten years ago where track season was over and the place emptied out. I mean, it’s it’s hopping around.

00:31:00:09 – 00:31:01:26
Speaker 3
People are people are buying here.

00:31:01:28 – 00:31:02:22
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:31:02:25 – 00:31:18:20
Speaker 2
The, that there used to be, there was four restaurants in Saratoga and three of them closed down in October. And they didn’t open up until March. Yeah. Now there’s 70 places. I think we counted up that there were 70 places that you could walk in with a credit card, get a cocktail, something to eat and pay somebody.

00:31:18:20 – 00:31:36:11
Speaker 2
Yeah. And I gotta tell you, a Tuesdays and Wednesday nights and Thursday nights. You’re still calling for reservations? Oh, yeah. January and February. Where before it was, you know, they couldn’t even keep the doors open, so. No, it’s been, it’s been 40 years of of, you know, a lot of different families working really hard on this.

00:31:36:15 – 00:31:55:20
Speaker 1
Yeah, a lot of good decisions, obviously. Right. And I just want to put things in the scale to, for listeners because we’re talking about the ghetto chopper and the project that’s there now. And, and so if you don’t understand this, the ghetto chopper, what legitimately like that whole block was a parking lot. And in the middle of it was this tiny little Price Chopper that like.

00:31:55:20 – 00:32:26:00
Speaker 2
15,000 square foot in the middle of four acres, just a sea of bad blacktop and potholes. And it wasn’t a long term plan for them to keep that open. And we were able to get the contract. And now what sits there is 123 apartments, 30,000ft² of, commercial retail, which is books, grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops and an 11 screen movie theater with 40,000 square foot of office above it.

00:32:26:00 – 00:32:29:11
Speaker 2
So it’s like an $80 million, project in the city.

00:32:29:13 – 00:32:48:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s the the contrast between those two things is wild, right? Like, I just don’t know any way to describe it to give people scale on it, but it’s it’s it’s crazy. I, you know, and to be involved in projects like that or to be at the front of those projects and coming up with that idea, I like, where does that come from?

00:32:48:25 – 00:33:05:00
Speaker 1
You know, because I just I’m trying to help people like, understand about, you know, for our listeners is is to be a visionary and to be charging forward because it sounds like even with you looking at putting together a legacy plan, you’re still moving forward, like you’re still charging up the hill looking for the next.

00:33:05:07 – 00:33:26:04
Speaker 2
We we as a company. I always say when you got 60% of the information, you got enough information to go. If you wait to 80, then your cost, your your competitors are got it and they’re already ahead of you. So we’ve have really worked hard to make decisions at 60, but then support those bad decisions when you only had 60% to figure it out.

00:33:26:04 – 00:33:58:11
Speaker 2
So, you know, a lot of times we’ll you know, Julie, look at me and she’s like, how do you think this is going to work out on the ground? I’ll let you know in 36 months. And then just stay diligent about what your mission was. And, the one thing that has been pretty consistent in downtown Saratoga because of the quality of life is that you can always count on another 30 or 40 people or 50 people a year that want to be part of that quality of life, which is interesting, because then you wind up having people that are usually with dispensable income now moving into your downtown core, that can

00:33:58:11 – 00:34:16:22
Speaker 2
support all the cool stuff that makes it a quality of life. So it’s very organic. Yeah, but it takes a long time. You know, whenever you see those, you know, those fake places that it’s just it doesn’t feel like a neighborhood. Saratoga has work, you know, for 50 years, 55 years on. And yet that that feel, that vibe.

00:34:16:24 – 00:34:47:25
Speaker 1
Yeah. So I know we’re getting close. We gotta jump over to our Patreon part of the podcast. So and for our listeners that are not aware yet, which would mean you didn’t listen to our last two shows, which is very sad, but, we now have a membership portion on Patreon. We’ll put the link in the bio and, you know, what we’re doing is switching over to a members only portion of the podcast where we’re going to ask Sonny five specific questions about growing a business and, hopefully that’ll be impactful for our listeners.

00:34:47:25 – 00:35:00:26
Speaker 1
But in the meantime, before we do that, Sonny, if you are going to tell our audience one thing and one thing only about, the potential or about growing, a business in the trades, what would it be?

00:35:00:28 – 00:35:05:12
Speaker 2
Oh, persistence. And make sure that you love it. I mean, as

00:35:05:12 – 00:35:19:02
Speaker 2
a carpenter, I, I couldn’t get to the job site early enough, and I remember at the end of every day for me, which is weird, that now I’m a developer. I love turning around, looking and seeing what I accomplish for the day. And as a framer, you can get a lot of stuff done in a day.

00:35:19:05 – 00:35:30:05
Speaker 2
You know, you could stand back and see it. It’s it’s you’ve got to have the passion for it. If you have the passion for it and the persistence, you need a little bit of help on the business side,

00:35:30:05 – 00:35:41:02
Speaker 2
I think that was always the thing that I was a little behind on. I would get myself into trouble and then have to work my way out of it, instead of just going into it a little bit more conservative and with a plan and well thought out.

00:35:41:04 – 00:35:49:08
Speaker 2
But now I would say that, you know, I is and coming after isn’t coming after steel tractors and carpenters and and plumbers.

00:35:49:08 – 00:35:51:02
Speaker 1
There’s no time soon, that’s for sure.

00:35:51:02 – 00:36:08:17
Speaker 2
And, my two boys, my two boys are, you know, in the company they didn’t go through, you know, the standard four years of debt and, you know, my I was very proud of my son. Well, he was, he was in college for about eight weeks, and he called me up. He goes, dad, let’s be honest.

00:36:08:17 – 00:36:25:04
Speaker 2
This ends with me working in the family business anyway. So how about I skip this for years? Sticky floors and drinking beers and trying to do this? And how about we just. I’ll learn a lot more from you, you know? And my other son, Luke is doing the same thing. Gianna, went through and, she’s in marketing, but she works for the company.

00:36:25:04 – 00:36:44:23
Speaker 2
But yeah, the boys were, the boys were very much, into that. And I have to tell you, it’s the most rewarding thing in the world, because you’ll always have a tool that you can use with your hands. And, and I think that it’s, I would never be where I am today if I went to a four year school period.

00:36:44:23 – 00:36:49:02
Speaker 1
Derek Dawson and the follow up questions before we jump over to the membership only. What was it.

00:36:49:02 – 00:36:52:15
Speaker 3
Like working with your brother?

00:36:52:17 – 00:37:11:16
Speaker 2
I don’t like him now. I didn’t like him then. No, my dad used to it. It’s funny now. My dad used to, my dad used to throw us in the car on Sunday mornings, and we go mop floors out of General Foods, you know? And, it was, it was an it was a funny existence.

00:37:11:16 – 00:37:32:19
Speaker 2
And then when I started the company, I looked at him and he was, going for, landscape, like design at global scale. And I said, why don’t you just come over and we’ll just kind of keep doing what we’re doing? We’re kids. So, he is, he’s kind of he’s my vice president and runs around and solves problems for me all over the place.

00:37:32:21 – 00:37:52:18
Speaker 2
So he’s not necessarily involved in construction, so he’s, you know, like a resort up in Scranton. He’s up there getting some desk permits for me. Municipalities love them. So we divide and conquer. Nice. Like, we really stay out of each other’s lanes. He always threatens that, you know. Well, if you don’t deal with me, then you know, the jerks come in, and that.

00:37:52:18 – 00:37:53:03
Speaker 1
Seems to.

00:37:53:03 – 00:37:57:20
Speaker 2
Work for him. And it’s very efficient. But, No, it’s been it’s been good.

00:37:57:22 – 00:37:59:16
Speaker 1
Are you the bad cop?

00:37:59:19 – 00:38:03:23
Speaker 2
Unfortunately, always the bad cop. But I’m charming and I’m wonderful. I know.

00:38:03:23 – 00:38:05:12
Speaker 1
You seem like a really nice guy.

00:38:05:12 – 00:38:08:11
Speaker 2
Out to be the bad cop. Really bad.

00:38:08:13 – 00:38:22:14
Speaker 1
Idea. Now, that’s what. All right, well, thanks, everybody, for listening. Of course. That’s the end of the show. Jump on over to Patreon links in the show notes. And, check out the rest of the interview with Sonny. And if you do that, you’ll hear from us in a moment.

00:38:22:14 – 00:38:50:17
Speaker 1
And that wraps up another episode of Blue Collar Startup. A big thank you to our sponsors, Five Towers Media, Daigle Cleaning Systems, Daigle Fire Solutions, The Michaels Group, Martin Electric, MLB construction, Pinocchio Construction People, and Catamount Consulting for making this podcast possible. And thank you for tuning in. If you learned something or felt inspired. Connect with us on our website at Blue Collar Startup Bio or email us at hardhat Dot CSU at gmail.com.

00:38:50:17 – 00:39:02:28
Speaker 1
We’d love to hear your questions and topic ideas. Help us spread the word by sharing the show and following us on social media for updates. Until next time, keep on building. Keep on dreaming and keep hustling like your future depends on it.

00:39:02:28 – 00:39:18:08
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.

00:44:32:14 – 00:44:47:24
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.

00:44:47:27 – 00:44:53:18
Speaker 3
How’s it been? Having the kids in the business? It’s got to be extremely rewarding working with them.

00:44:53:22 – 00:45:18:19
Speaker 2
Well, I got to tell you, the boys, they were working with us when they were ten years old. Yeah, I think the first time I dropped them off, I dropped them off on a frame crew. And I know you guys know, like Mike Stevens, Mike Polk hair. Billy Morehouse. But we were doing armed services on Wilton, and they were they were eight and ten, and I pulled up and they were just working frame crew, I mean, carrying shit and just nails and whatnot.

00:45:18:22 – 00:45:38:21
Speaker 2
But the second day, I dropped them off, I wanted to pull, and the two turned to me. They’re like, dad, you’re embarrassing us. Can you please not come in the trailer today and talk to those guys? I went, sure, so I backed all the way up to route 50 and made them get up and walked a little bit all the way to the trailer.

00:45:38:23 – 00:45:56:18
Speaker 2
And then after that, I wouldn’t pick them up. The guys would give them rides home, you know? Julie would be furious. What do you mean you abandoned them? I’m like, I abandoned them with our workers that have been with us for 15, 20 years. Don’t get them home. And those kids have now bonded relationships with those guys, which is great.

00:45:56:18 – 00:46:12:23
Speaker 2
But yeah, they started when they were nine and ten was, I came around the corner once, I think they were 12 and 13, and they were carrying doors up stairwells, over high quality hardware. And I was going to them for a hot dog next door. And, when I pulled in, Steve Hopkins was literally that back to me.

00:46:12:23 – 00:46:29:01
Speaker 2
And he was whistling, give me a boy, c’mere, boy. And there’s point in the doors, come fetch, fetch. And the two kids are coming out of that building. And they looked up. They saw me standing behind the thought I was going to be matter now how they were. The kids really treated them like, there you go. And I whispered in, Steve’s here I go.

00:46:29:01 – 00:46:50:27
Speaker 2
You know, one day they’re gonna make you pay. Check out right. And they’re friends that are saying that those guys played golf on Sundays. So, yeah. No, it’s, it’s great. And, and, I’ll be working for my daughter before, you know, I’m done. I can already tell. Yeah, she’s just one of those people. So, you know, she’s going to pick my funeral home.

00:46:50:27 – 00:46:55:12
Speaker 2
She’s going to pick my nose and issue remote. My final paychecks.

00:46:55:12 – 00:46:57:03
Speaker 3
Daughters are supposed to take care of me as you go.

00:46:57:03 – 00:46:59:00
Speaker 2
Exactly, exactly.

00:46:59:00 – 00:47:00:08
Speaker 3
Yeah, I got two of them, so.

00:47:00:11 – 00:47:12:24
Speaker 1
I know that same thing. So I know you kind of touched on in the in the main episode, but you know, if you were going to say what the keys to your success were, well, what do you think that would be?

00:47:12:26 – 00:47:32:21
Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean, everybody’s different. I would say my wife tells me that I’m the most persistent person that you’ll ever meet. You know, I, I just, I grind and I grind and I grind, so I don’t know, that’s a reason that it’s good or a reason that it’s bad. But I can tell you that that grinding and just not accepting something other than what it needs to be.

00:47:32:24 – 00:47:52:22
Speaker 2
I know it’s got me through some pretty, pretty bad dark times. So and setting expectations you know when you’re grinding you’re like hey look this is where we need to be. And they’re just not getting there and you’re still fighting, but you can’t just look away and be like, God, I can’t, you know? No, we’re not leaving this room until we figure this out kind of mentality.

00:47:52:24 – 00:48:07:13
Speaker 2
I mean, because when you own the new things, it’s not all going to work out. I mean, it rarely works out. It never works out exactly how you put it on a sheet of paper. And I’m sure you guys know that, too. Yeah. Yep. So it’s like, hey, here’s my good idea. Here’s kind of what I think the goals and guidelines are.

00:48:07:13 – 00:48:23:15
Speaker 2
And then over the next 24 months, you know, it’s a friggin free for all. But then never just walking away going, I’d I’m afraid of that. Or now I don’t know what to do. I mean, I’ll always come up with the path. The worst thing you can. Was it? What in hell? Don’t stop. Keep going.

00:48:23:18 – 00:48:24:26
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00:48:24:28 – 00:48:25:22
Speaker 2
A little bit like that.

00:48:25:23 – 00:48:26:17
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:48:26:19 – 00:48:28:18
Speaker 2
What is the other one? Burn the boats.

00:48:28:21 – 00:48:50:17
Speaker 1
Burn the boats. I love that one. I love that one. Burn the boats. I actually my first job, as in a management position when that I was way too frickin young for this position, too. I think I was 23 years old, and I gotten put in charge of, at a mortgage brokerage. I got put in. It was like a frickin boiler room, and I got put in charge of, like, 40 kids, and, I used that.

00:48:50:17 – 00:48:59:00
Speaker 1
I did the speech, the Cortez burning the boats, the whole thing about commitment. And it was like they’ve got done, gosh, like the best meeting we’ve had yet. So I was like.

00:48:59:04 – 00:48:59:16
Speaker 2
Because I could.

00:48:59:16 – 00:49:17:28
Speaker 1
Relate. Like, I guess, you know, the way, like, I got no idea what I’m frickin doing, but yeah, sounds good. So on that on in that vein, what do you think, especially for the young businesses, right. Because that, you know, we’re really trying to help either people that are thinking about starting their own business in the trades or they have a small business in the trades.

00:49:17:28 – 00:49:25:24
Speaker 1
We’re trying to give them information to be successful. What do you think the top things for them to avoid is?

00:49:25:27 – 00:49:44:27
Speaker 2
Trying to do it alone. They should not try to do it alone. There are a lot of people, you know. My kids laughed at me. They said that you’re just such an a mentor saved your life. You know, they’ve got friends that are in the financial departments and they’re like, hey, can we go see your dad? It’s amazing when you literally have someone that you can bounce something off of.

00:49:44:27 – 00:50:04:17
Speaker 2
I probably didn’t do enough of that. But, I mean, if you’re thinking of starting, it’s look at all the pitfalls you’re going to run into and you don’t know, and, you know, there’s not a lot of great books on how to start a plumbing company. Right? But there are a lot of people that have been doing plumbing for a long time that you can gather information from.

00:50:04:17 – 00:50:27:27
Speaker 2
So I would say, you know, resources like really having good resources and working on the business, not in the business. That’s another thing that you get caught up really quick, you know, next thing you know that you’re, you know, you’re really working inside of it all and you’re not working on it. And then you blink your eyes and you’re in some other problem that you didn’t even see coming.

00:50:27:29 – 00:50:32:25
Speaker 2
So eyes open mentors, resources and work on it. No no no.

00:50:32:27 – 00:50:34:16
Speaker 1
Yeah that’s interesting. Oh go.

00:50:34:16 – 00:50:50:22
Speaker 3
Ahead. Yeah. No I was going to say sort of kind of follow that up. What do you look for in people that are either working in your organization for you or somebody who is looking to be mentored? What would you say, to somebody who is looking for that support from somebody? How do you approach that?

00:50:50:25 – 00:50:52:10
Speaker 2
How how would they approach it?

00:50:52:10 – 00:50:56:03
Speaker 3
How would they approach it? And then what do you look for in your team members?

00:50:56:03 – 00:51:12:12
Speaker 2
I am absolutely looking for attitude. I mean, everything with us is attitude. I’ll walk in and say, hey, we got a guy. We just don’t think he’s a fit here. I’m like I said, I’m in my office. Five minutes later, they walk out. What happened? I’m like, I hired that guy. What are you gonna do? I’m like, I don’t know, but I want that kind of drive, you know?

00:51:12:12 – 00:51:36:08
Speaker 2
And that guy is no joke. And and at that point, you have a habit of putting a shark, sometimes in a mental bucket. And. And it’s amazing what that shark can do sometimes to get some people that have lost some, some drive, you know, back up on the horse, fighting again. So I would say that, you know, any time a mentor wants to talk to somebody, they don’t want to talk to somebody because they’re just half assed into it or, you know, blah, blah, blah.

00:51:36:08 – 00:51:50:17
Speaker 2
They want someone that’s like, hey, man, can I come see you? Or, after you give somebody some advice that they actually follow back up, which a lot of people don’t say, hey, I tried for the things you told me to do. And two of them were great. And one of them sucked and the other one’s out for jury.

00:51:50:24 – 00:52:08:25
Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s just a good conversation. That’s a part of the resource, you know? Hey, what can I do to. I’ve had, you know, Charles Weight, the Adirondack Trust Bank. I don’t think he realizes, you know, the few times we talk a year, how impactful my questions are that are going to him and how important his responses are coming back.

00:52:08:27 – 00:52:24:17
Speaker 2
You know, I have with a couple other financial planning guys, some clients. Yeah. You know, I mean, the people that we do these really big projects for, I mean, we’re still out to dinner once a month, 22 years later now. So, you know, that’s I hope I answered your question. Yeah. Okay.

00:52:24:22 – 00:52:25:23
Speaker 3
Yep.

00:52:25:25 – 00:52:44:18
Speaker 1
I so throughout the first part of the show, you mentioned questions quite a few times. And about the power of questions and asking good questions. What what advice would you give on someone that what sort of questions should they be asking?

00:52:44:20 – 00:53:09:29
Speaker 2
It all depends on where they are in the path. You know, it can be as simple as how do I get an account and start, you know, just start. I mean that’s getting over. The biggest fear is to just say I’m going to walk away from an annual or a monthly or a weekly paycheck. I’m going to walk away from that security and just throw all the dice out and just go.

00:53:10:02 – 00:53:28:24
Speaker 2
That’s one of the hardest things to do. After that, it’s a series of little adjustments. So I would say that that’s probably the thing that, that’s going to be the hardest thing to do. But then once you make that commitment, it’s really just the persistence to see it all through persistence.

00:53:28:26 – 00:53:36:23
Speaker 1
I you’ve been pretty persistent with that persistence, coming through there, sunny. Well, what was your first hire?

00:53:36:25 – 00:53:39:22
Speaker 2
Oh, my first. Oh, my oh, my first hire was my brother.

00:53:39:29 – 00:53:40:10
Speaker 1
Okay.

00:53:40:17 – 00:53:56:06
Speaker 2
My second hire was, man by the name of Paul Young. I mean, I still know him, Brian yeager, Ray Yeager, I can go down. I can probably get to the first 60 or 70 guys because we stuck together for a pretty long time. And then some of them, it was just time for them to go off and do their own thing.

00:53:56:08 – 00:54:14:08
Speaker 2
I mean, you can only be a carpenter for somebody else for so long. And and then I always say, well, what are you doing different? Because if you haven’t taken on any more responsibility, you’re just still a carpenter, you know? And if you want to grow, you got to decide, am I going to go down the road of, you know, want to be a foreman or a super superintendent or project manager?

00:54:14:10 – 00:54:33:02
Speaker 2
Or not. So, but yeah, know those those, those guys we stuck together for probably the first 15 years, we didn’t really have a lot of turnover. And it was just constantly, you know, slowly adding and slowly adding. I remember the first guy in 1998, I hired, that didn’t have a truck and a tool pouch. He had a laptop.

00:54:33:05 – 00:54:35:12
Speaker 1
And a laptop, you know, a laptop.

00:54:35:14 – 00:54:54:18
Speaker 2
That he dug. I took a lot of abuse. Boy, that’s that guy over there with the laptop. His name is Larry Novack. So with me today, you know, he helps me do, a lot of the performance and, projects and finance, and. But, you know, when I brought him on, everybody thought he was a complete waste time because you couldn’t cut a rafter.

00:54:54:21 – 00:55:09:08
Speaker 2
You know, it was just funny because I had to make a decision, you know? Where did I want to go? Did I want to have 300 men framing, or did I want to start to diversify and get into general contracting and things of that nature? So, yeah, I had the first guy with a laptop 1998.

00:55:09:15 – 00:55:14:09
Speaker 1
So and so, so ten years in business and you’re hiring your first non-performing employees.

00:55:14:09 – 00:55:17:00
Speaker 2
Exactly. Correct. Ten years.

00:55:17:00 – 00:55:22:06
Speaker 1
That’s a long time to not have office staff or administrative help or any of those things.

00:55:22:06 – 00:55:26:08
Speaker 2
I won’t blow your mind. Right? Yeah. I don’t have a computer in my house. I don’t have a computer at my desk.

00:55:26:08 – 00:55:29:06
Speaker 1
I’m envious of you because that’s one of my life goals right now.

00:55:29:06 – 00:55:34:22
Speaker 2
I do not have a computer at my house, and I have one on my desk, not on my credenza. Nothing. I have a phone.

00:55:34:25 – 00:55:36:01
Speaker 1
Do you. Have you check email?

00:55:36:07 – 00:55:36:28
Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean.

00:55:37:04 – 00:55:43:12
Speaker 1
You do have email. Yeah, but my dream is to be like Tucker Carlson and not have a laptop and not have an email telling.

00:55:43:12 – 00:55:47:03
Speaker 2
Him you got to get an old truck to also ride around on my 72.

00:55:47:04 – 00:55:48:15
Speaker 1
Oh, my first truck.

00:55:48:15 – 00:55:54:28
Speaker 2
I had 500 bucks for the company. So right around my wife, like, what do you do that far? I go because it doesn’t link up with anything. Yeah.

00:55:55:02 – 00:56:04:05
Speaker 1
If you see my Facebook profile about once a week, I share an old truck someone’s got selling on marketplace. I’m like, oh, this might be the one I want because it’s I’m with you.

00:56:04:07 – 00:56:07:09
Speaker 2
It’s 72 shoebox, four wheel drive.

00:56:07:10 – 00:56:08:26
Speaker 3
It’s awesome. How many miles are on it?

00:56:09:00 – 00:56:10:16
Speaker 2
I it doesn’t matter at this point.

00:56:10:19 – 00:56:11:27
Speaker 1
I will keep working on it.

00:56:11:27 – 00:56:29:26
Speaker 2
$500 when I bought it in 1983. Yeah. And then, and then I sold it for the engine. My brother wound up when I was 49. They passed the hat and the company and I sold to Amazon. He went and got the original truck, dragged it out of the woods, and they gave it to me as like a rolling paddle.

00:56:29:28 – 00:56:40:21
Speaker 2
It was running, but it really wasn’t. And I, I went through it and it’s kind of like the day I came out of the showroom. It’s cool mechanically, body wise primer, because I’m in the woods with a chainsaw, chopping wood and all that in there.

00:56:40:21 – 00:56:53:29
Speaker 1
I love it. All right, last question for you. And you kind of you might have covered this in the, in the first part of the show, but what is the best strategy employed or still employed to get new clients and customers?

00:56:54:01 – 00:57:17:03
Speaker 2
Communication. You just I mean, when we when we set our mind on doing a project, I mean, we’re exhausting. We want you to literally say you’re not the right person. Get out of my house or get out of my office. But we don’t do that to everybody. You know, we’re very selective that when we feel we’re the right, we’re the right match for that project.

00:57:17:06 – 00:57:34:06
Speaker 2
It’s my job to then prove to them, you know, which is why we wind up doing, you know, projects like for Bobby and for Dave. And, you know, once they got in, he was he cutting through this project, David, at the end. And he’s like, I can’t believe the attention to detail. Why don’t I can’t do that for $41.5 million houses.

00:57:34:07 – 00:57:56:06
Speaker 2
You know I can do that for 4 or 5 projects. So, that’s that’s what we do when we say we’re going to go after you know, kill ratio in our industry is, you know, ten, 15%. I’m kind of upset if we go below 65, but we don’t. Yeah, exactly. But then when you don’t get that one that you put that much time and energy until you’re like, this is a dumb business plan.

00:57:56:09 – 00:57:58:09
Speaker 2
I just blew two years.

00:57:58:09 – 00:57:59:10
Speaker 1
You know, trying to get.

00:57:59:10 – 00:58:10:18
Speaker 2
Action. I got got out of it. That’s that’s a that’s a tough haircut day. But for the most part, you know, that’s that’s kind of how we do our approach. We don’t skim across a lot. We try to really focus.

00:58:10:21 – 00:58:18:26
Speaker 1
Often it’s on yeah. That’s it that we got for you man. Yeah. Thank you. I keep you here all day asking more questions, but I know you got a want to do it again.

00:58:18:26 – 00:58:20:10
Speaker 2
Have you it again for sure.

00:58:20:12 – 00:58:21:16
Speaker 1
For sure. Really appreciate it.

00:58:21:16 – 00:58:24:27
Speaker 3
And they will bring in the next generation on next time I have it.

00:58:25:00 – 00:58:26:04
Speaker 1
Oh, that’d be fun.

00:58:26:04 – 00:58:26:17
Speaker 2
Debbie got a.

00:58:26:17 – 00:58:26:29
Speaker 3
Sequel?

00:58:27:06 – 00:58:31:19
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, that’d be good. Bring a couple, the original guys, a couple of new jeans and.

00:58:31:19 – 00:58:32:18
Speaker 3
Guys only on here.

00:58:32:18 – 00:58:35:00
Speaker 2
Just throw some moonshine on the table. We got.

00:58:35:06 – 00:58:41:18
Speaker 1
You know, some of that apple stuff, and I can’t even. It doesn’t even taste like moonshine. Gets in trouble real quick, though.

00:58:41:18 – 00:58:42:02
Speaker 2
This was fun.

00:58:42:05 – 00:58:44:00
Speaker 1
So yeah, thanks a lot. Really appreciate.

00:58:44:07 – 00:58:45:09
Speaker 2
Everyone. The time.

00:58:45:12 – 00:59:01:05
Speaker 1
We. Well, we’ll take you up on it, believe me. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the stuff. I mean, what do we call that stuff that we’re putting in the Patreon membership portal? Extra sauce. Extra sauce? Yeah. Check out the exercise in the portal, guys. I appreciate everybody listening. Thank you.

00:59:01:05 – 00:59:29:08
Speaker 1
And that wraps up another episode of Blue Collar Startup. A big thank you to our sponsors, Five Towers Media, Daigle Cleaning Systems, Daigle Fire Solutions, The Michaels Group, Martin Electric, MLB construction, Pinocchio Construction People, and Catamount Consulting for making this podcast possible. And thank you for tuning in. If you learned something or felt inspired. Connect with us on our website at Blue Collar Startup Bio or email us at hardhat Dot CSU at gmail.com.

00:59:29:08 – 00:59:41:19
Speaker 1
We’d love to hear your questions and topic ideas. Help us spread the word by sharing the show and following us on social media for updates. Until next time, keep on building. Keep on dreaming and keep hustling like your future depends on it.

00:59:41:19 – 00:59:56:29
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.