In 1998, I made a decision that changed the course of my life.
At the time, I was working for another construction company and had two young daughters at home. I coached their soccer teams. Practices were a couple evenings each week, and it was something I cared about being present for.
One afternoon, the company president called me into his office.
He asked why I had been leaving early two days a week.
I told him I coached my daughters’ soccer teams.
He didn’t hesitate.
“I don’t care. You need to stay until five every day.”
I remember explaining that I got to the office at six every morning and had my work done on the days I left early.
It didn’t matter.
That moment stayed with me longer than I expected. Not because of the schedule, but because of what it said.
I walked out of that office realizing that if I wanted control over my time, my work, and the kind of life I wanted to build, I was going to have to do it myself.
Not long after that, I started my own construction company.
At the time, construction felt pretty straightforward. Build the project. Manage the trades. Deliver the job. I enjoyed the work and believed that if I worked hard enough, the rest would take care of itself.
I didn’t understand then how much more there was to it.
Owning a construction company isn’t just about building. It’s about carrying responsibility that doesn’t shut off at the end of the day. People depend on you – employees, clients, trade partners, and most of that responsibility shows up long before a project ever starts.
I learned that part over time.
When the recession hit in 2008 and 2009, it nearly wiped us out.
Projects disappeared. Work slowed down. Cash flow tightened. Like a lot of companies in construction, we got caught in it.
I lost everything. A house. An office building. At one point, I was nearly $600,000 in debt.
I sold off what I could just to stay afloat. I even looked into filing for bankruptcy.
I still remember what the attorney told me. He looked at me and said,
“You’re so broke you can’t even afford to file for bankruptcy.”
That’s how far things had fallen.
The recovery didn’t happen quickly. It took more than ten years to climb back.
There were setbacks along the way. Years where things didn’t go the way I thought they would.
Times where the goal wasn’t growth,it was just holding steady and doing right by the people counting on us.
If there was one constant through that entire period, it was my wife. Without her, I don’t think the business makes it.
Looking back, that stretch changed how I see construction.
Before, I thought it was about building.
After, I understood it’s everything that has to happen before a project ever starts, and everything it takes to get it across the finish line.
Financing
Risk
People
Trade partners
Expectations
Coordination
That’s the work. The building is just the visible part.
Somewhere in those years, I also started reading more – leadership, business, decision-making.
I realized if I wanted to run a good construction company, I needed to understand more than just how to build.
That hasn’t stopped.
I don’t regret any of it.
Not the difficult years. Not the mistakes. Not even how close we came to losing it.
That’s where most of the understanding came from.
Construction is a time- and experience-based business.
You don’t learn it all at once. You earn it – over years, through projects that go right and projects that don’t, through pressure, through responsibility, through showing up again the next day.
That’s what shapes how you build now.
That’s why the way we work, and who we work with, still matters.
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