Owlnotes.com

I am the owner of a privately held concrete business.

My job is to do whatever is necessary to run the company. So basically, I have to make sure the employees are reliable and on time. I have to make sure we get the jobs done on time, no matter what. Also, I am in charge of ordering concrete, booking new clients, and things like that.

We don't do regular homes. We work in the custom home market, which means most of the houses we work on have high ceilings, round or angled walls, and other custom things. For example, our next job will be building a pool house for a custom home we built in the past. This pool house will probably cost about $200,000, and it will have a kitchen, two bathrooms, and a movie room.

I spend most of my time either supervising or working on the job site. I like to get my time working on site whenever I can, because I am the owner so I am the number one employee. When I am not there, I am usually just making sure everything is getting done right, dealing with bills and invoices, and making sure everyone is getting paid.

Sometimes, the architects who draw up the plans don't double-check their numbers. When that happens, I have to play the mathematician and fix their work. Then I check back with the office, have them review the changes I made for accuracy, and then we go forward from there. It's a pain, but the numbers have to be right before we start work. You have to get the radius points right, but it is satisfying when I look back and see that the house fit perfectly on top of my foundation.

We just finished a beautiful house in a western suburb of Chicago. They had concrete window wells covered with brick, meaning, when you look out the windows you see pretty bricks instead of bland concrete. The walls were all 12 feet tall and rounded; they intersected with the fireplace. It was complicated, but it turned out really nice.

Relationships with employees are hard. When you have a relationship with your employees, it sometimes jeopardizes the dollar wage they earn. You can't really have a relationship with your employees because they are working for you by the hour. How do you draw the line between work and play? It's happened to me numerous times, but it is still hard.

I just started letting the employees have the radio on at the job site. I think that is nice because it breaks up the monotony of the day. We all have to work for a living, but if there are little things that make it more enjoyable I think it is worth it. Plus, it makes it a lot easier when everybody works together.

It is definitely a full-time job, but I try to do most of the paperwork in the morning so it won't interfere with working on the site. In the afternoon, I either work on the job site or spend time checking out new jobs, picking up blue prints, and making sure my guys are working.

It goes back to when I was living with my parents. My dad was pouring some concrete at home, and he told me to finish a little square of concrete. I think as a kid, that's really what started me. My dad taught me a lot of things about carpentry and electricity, and everything else I learned was just trial and error.

I have no idea. My dad did not want to pay anyone to do anything if he could do it himself. I feel the same way. He taught me the basics, and he instilled in me that even if it takes you ten times to do a job right, you still have the satisfaction of doing it right.

I think so. When it came to building my first project, my father and I drew up all the plans. We sat down, and he showed me some ideas and then I put them on paper. He took them down to his office, and the guys down there did not believe that a guy with no college education could listen to my father and put it all on paper. It showed my father what I could do, and we went and got a building permit, and it was off and running.

My business used to be bigger. I ran about 20 guys, but I didn't like it. It was too competitive, and people start complaining about the way we ran the operation. I feel that employing eight guys and doing 30 jobs a year is more satisfying than doing 100 homes. For the last couple of years, I've been getting a lot of compliments. When people compliment you, you know you are doing something right. People want you back to do more work, or they tell their friends. It's how I've stayed in business for all these years.

Patience is a virtue. It's not one that I have completely grasped yet, but I am trying.

I start about 5:00 a.m.

Whatever I do, it is a give and take. You have to do blueprints and invoices. You have to do invoices to get paid, and you have to do blueprints to get more jobs to get paid. It's a trade off between these things, and also working and ordering supplies. My days are never the same.

Promptness is key. Scheduling revolves around the employees, so if I don't have reliable employees then we don't get jobs done on time and we get fewer jobs. My routine depends on my employees, so I demand that they be on time.

My guys joke around that I am like night and day. When I am in a good mood, I joke, smile and laugh. But when I am not in a good mood, they know not to cross any lines. I get very irritable when things aren't going my way, especially when people start showing up late. That's where the screaming and yelling comes in. When everything is going right, then I am happy, and everyone can do their own thing.

I seldom take breaks unless I am working with the guys onsite. We sit down and take a coffee break, a lunch break, and sometimes one more break. If I am not working onsite, then I usually eat and drink water when I am on the road. I don't like to take too many breaks because I like to get things done. After they are done, then I take breaks.

There is little variety in the building trade because the market that I am in stays the same. It's the custom market, and you try to stay in that market. There are different jobs, but basically it is all the same work, whether it be footings, walls, basement floors, garage floors, front stoops, sidewalks, driveways, curbs, or gutters.

I like doing the layout of the new homes—putting all the angles together and making them work—that's my favorite part.

We don't work closely with them unless there is a problem. Usually, they will give me a print and I will spend a half a day looking over it and making sure the numbers are right, and then we start the job. We don't want to work with the architects if we don't have to.

It is hard to judge salary because I am the owner. If I do take a check, it would be about $1,000 a week, but my salary is the profit.

Yeah, there is a reward sometimes. We have a big job coming up that will be the biggest job that I have ever done. I have a schedule of what needs to get done on time, and if we get it done early, then I have it broken down in bonuses. So rewards are possible - we just have to work really hard for them.

It's a $375,000 concrete job. It has basketball courts and an underground attached garage, to name a few things. Their walls are 18 to 21 feet, whereas the walls I normally construct are 10 and 12 feet tall. It will probably take 3 months to finish, but if everyone works together and overtime, there is a possibility of getting it done in half the time.

In the Western suburbs of Chicago. That’s where the money is, and that's where I'd like to stay.

I don't think you can base what we do in hours by the week. I try to keep my employees at 40, but if I can take that and raise it, we can get jobs done earlier. The employees will always have that weekly check. We are busy March through December, but the other months I am pretty slow. It's a give and take. I determine the jobs to take on based on how many hours the employees want to work to get the job done.

I stay local, so all of our jobs are within 30 minutes driving time. I may drive up to 200 miles a day, but that is just driving around sites making sure things are going smoothly.

At the age I'm at now, I've slowed down a lot. When I was a young stud, I felt I had to prove things. I don't have to do that anymore; the only person I have to prove something to is myself.

Over Thanksgiving, we went to Florida for a week. We put a down payment on a townhome in Florida, and we are in negotiations for the loan. I'm very anxious to get this place, because we like Florida. I want to have everyone down there because it is just so beautiful.

No, when I am ready to retire I want to get an RV and drive around the United States, seeing the country.

Because we want to buy this house, I see 20 more years before retirement. You take money from one thing to buy something else to enjoy now, because when you get older, you won't be able to do these things. We want to do things now with our family while we are still able to enjoy them.

My wife works for the phone company, and we use her 401(k). That is our retirement, plus the house we are living in right now. My house is my 401(k) because I built this from the ground up, and when we sell it, I get that all of that money as well.

I find satisfaction in seeing the work done. Also, I find satisfaction in being able to come home to my family every day. The most frustrating aspect is not getting the job done on time, or when customers don’t pay. You have to get the money to do the job, but some people want to negotiate you down so much that it is not possible.

Not very well. I have a guy that I am dealing with now who owes me $12,000. He wants to negotiate it down to $8,000. $8,000 is not what we agreed on, and if I let him negotiate me down it would cut into my profit. I can't do that, because my company will not succeed if we don't make at least a little bit of a profit.

I definitely sacrificed time with my family. I wasn't there for my kids when they were young. I think that I understand that better now than I did before. Instead of working all this overtime and trying to start a business, I probably would have stayed with the same company.

The technology in my field is changing and evolving, but sometimes it's easier to just use what you know rather than spending a lot of money on something too technical. Sure, it makes things go faster, but you have to question whether or not it is worth it.

Don't run away from things because they will still be there when you get back. Don't use alcohol as an escape because it doesn't work. I missed so much over the years by drinking, and I wish I would have known it's not worth it. Now, I can enjoy life and it's worth all the headaches and frustration to be where I am today.

Any person can do concrete work if they put their mind to it. They just have to decide that it is really what they want.

Strong back, weak mind. (laughs) No, I'm only kidding, but it does help to be strong and be able to deal with extreme conditions. One day it could be over 100 degrees, and the next it could be 50 degrees. You just have to be very adaptable, because there are so many factors out of your control.

My wife and kids. That fact that I have a family kept me going, because I knew that I had to help support them. Raising my family was always a joint effort between my wife and I.

Having a college education would be good for the math skills. I didn't have one; I graduated high school and worked my way up the totem poll. Still, being on the job site, people learn more from both ends. They learn the fancy mathematical terms by going to school, but they learn the rough real world terms on the jobsite. Reality is the job site.

My old boss told me to stop and think before you say anything. That was the best advice I've ever gotten, because oftentimes I get hot headed and say things I regret. Don't be afraid of me though, because my bark is worse than my bite. I have always tried to follow that advice in all aspects of my life.It's important to think, because you can't take back things you say. You can't change the past or what you have said, but you can work for a better future.