Feeling burnt out by client emotions in custom home building or struggling to navigate seasonal lulls and unexpected crises? John Seaman of JC Property Professionals joins Taylor to share his incredible journey from funding dirt bike habits with side jobs, through the demanding world of custom home building, to ultimately dominating complex dirt work and site development in North Carolina. Discover how he pivoted his business, built resilience, and learned to thrive by tackling the jobs others couldn't.
Learn John's strategies for managing difficult projects on extreme terrain, diversifying revenue streams through strategic real estate development, and maintaining a strong company culture amidst high-stress situations. He offers a raw, firsthand account of leading his team through the chaos and devastation following Hurricane Helene – tackling logistical nightmares, unique billing challenges (insurance vs. private pay vs. FEMA), and the very human side of disaster recovery. Plus, gain crucial insights into the power of building your personal brand alongside your business brand in the trades.
Topics:
- Staying busy year-round: diversifying clientele
- Why dirt work & the appeal of tough jobs
- Business during crisis: managing crews & costs
- Personal brand vs. business brand in construction
Watch now:
Listen now:
Listen on your favorite app: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
Subscribe to the CONEXPO-CON/AGG YouTube channel to be notified of new episodes.
Join more than 54,700 industry peers who receive construction industry news and trends each week. Subscribe to CONEXPO-CON/AGG 365.
Episode transcript:
John Seaman: Everything you do is extremely dangerous. You're cutting up bound up trees, you know, that will send you 50ft in the air if you cut it the wrong way. You're dealing with driving through terrain that's unstable. You're trying to move terrain that's unstable. There's huge landslides with massive boulders that have now become loosened up, you know. So it's not safe for everybody.
Taylor White: Welcome back everybody to the CONEXPO-CON/AGG podcast. I am your host as always, Taylor White. One thing I need to let every single person know if you're listening to this podcast. I need you to stop, drop and roll and understand that we are less than one year away from the CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2026. Mark your calendars from March 3rd to the 7th for 2026 and the CONEXPO-CON/AGG show. Honestly, last year it's the largest North American construction show. It is far ahead of its time for trade shows. I need everybody to head over and make sure to mark your calendars for August when tickets go on sale. Be sure to sign up for the newsletter, be the first to know about any info or exciting stuff happening over at the show and get access to exclusive discounts. See the link in description. With me here today, I have the one and only John Seaman from JCP from North Carolina and he's sitting with me in person here today, which is actually super exciting and I'm very fortunate for that. So thank you for driving out, flying up.
John Seaman: Appreciate you.
Taylor White: Man. I have been seeing your stuff. I reached out to John originally. I'll put that out there. I reached out to him, he didn't reach out to me. And I was like, dude, I've been addicted to watching your stuff. Your stuff has been like all over my feed. We were out on our job site this morning and Corey was like, oh dude, retaining wall. I've seen this guy. And it was the classic one where your guys did the wall and then you had to like take it all down and that was insane. You also had another one where I think the wall fell.
John Seaman: Yeah, as insane.
Taylor White: And we were just talking about that at lunch. So like content does really well when like bad stuff happens. But to prefix all of that, give people a bit kind of rundown of who you are.
John Seaman: Yeah, so very similar to yourself. In the trades, we do total site development. That's our bread and butter, you know, coming in and preparing a site for a new build, commercial, residential or multi-development. Just someone that works in the trades. Moving dirt.
Taylor White: How did you kind of get your start in the industry? What did you start by doing? How did you get to where you are right now?
John Seaman: When I was pretty young, my dad's always worked building houses for somebody. And we grew up with expensive hobbies. I raced dirt bikes on the weekends, and that's very expensive, traveling all over, you know, the nation. So we would do side jobs to try to come up with extra money, you know, to go support the habit. That kind of turned into more and more and, you know, I left, went off college, traveled for a couple years, come home. At that point, I wanted to start my own gig. And I was living in Florida at the time because that's where I went to college and that's where the business I worked for while traveling was out of. So Florida was home then. And so I had to weigh my options. Do I go to Florida and start my own gig or do I go back home and start my own gig? And because we had done side jobs and people knew me back home because really when I was in Florida, I went to school and then I was gone all the time traveling. So I didn't really build like a rapport with folks down there. So I came home and me and my pops just started doing the side gig thing again. I was able to talk him into quitting, working where he was at, and just helping me do porches, additions, roofs, siding and stuff like that, handyman type stuff. And then I went and got my GC license and we started doing full builds, custom homes. We did that for several years and my dad and I worked together for about three of the seven or eight years of me doing custom homes. We butted heads a lot on jobs and with management and you know, he didn't want anything to do with the business side of things. And he's an amazing craftsman and amazing at what he does, but gets frustrated with trying to manage people as well. So he wasn't really a great manager. So it was really difficult for me to fit him in a role in the business other than like mentorship with the guys. It was more important to me to have a father than someone to help with the business, you know? And because we butted heads so often, we just decided it was best for us to part ways early on. I went and got my GC license. We started doing more and more builds, and the guy we were using for the site work side, the clearing and the dirt, he wasn't very reliable at that point. We were doing 10 home plus developments and he couldn't keep up with the workflow. So I hired some guys on and we started doing our own dirt. Right before COVID, things got really tricky with materials. And then through COVID, things got very, very tricky with materials. And I just got really burnt out with the emotion of construction, you know, with custom homes. But I really like the dirt. And dirt is easy, right? No one cares about dirt, right? So it was fun. It was lucrative. I liked running the equipment. At that point, I didn't know anything about any equipment other than just crawl on it and learn. I decided I'm just going to focus on the dirt stuff. You know, I don't want to build houses. I don't want to do the construction for people anymore. I had a really great system and really great guys at the time that I didn't want to let go. We worked together for years, and our businesses always run kind of separate. So when I hired the guys to do work that was JC Grading, all my custom home stuff was under JC Construction. So I just kind of moved the JC Construction guys doing specs and flips, and I've got some multi-family rentals that I use them to work on. And so that vertical of the business kind of just went a different direction, and then I focused on the dirt. We've built that up now over a couple of years.
Taylor White: Yeah, that's insane. I look at that, though. It's got to be like, I think you're insane for kind of like getting into the dirt because it's like a cutthroat business. I mean, especially where you are. And I see a lot of your stuff, like you're on a lot of the, you know, extreme terrain and stuff, and it's just, you got to spend so much to make so much. Like, what was the draw towards looking at? Like, did it look fun? Did it excite you?
John Seaman: I get very excited about the projects we do. They're very, very challenging. And we've built a reputation in our area that when something is very difficult or someone's royally screwed a project up, we get the call. And that makes it very hard for lots of reasons. And it's very frustrating a lot of time to go in behind somebody else who screwed the job up. But with that token that we're given, we can also kind of name our price on a lot of stuff. There's lots of things that we do on very steep terrain that it is impossible to find guys to sit in a seat to do. We've saved many, many homes from guys doing poor work or landslides or whatever. And it's very challenging to fix those problems. And I guess the challenge of it is what we enjoy. Aside from like saving someone's house, right? Because that's very emotional. But like when someone hires you to do a total site development, like you come in and you clear the land, you do their C cut for their basement or crawl space, or you put their driveway in. People aren't emotional at that point. Yeah. You know, you're the first guy in usually. So people have the money right then versus the other end of this where someone's finishing their house up and they're out of money or throughout that process of the house build where there's so many obstacles, there's just so much emotion involved. Job obstacles, I don't mind. People's emotions, I just don't have the patience for. So that was very attractive to me to like get away from that.
Taylor White: So how do you find it then managing a bunch of different people? Do you have more employees with the construction side now than you did with the building side?
John Seaman: No. Even with dirt a couple years ago, the most we ever got was we tried to stay right under 50 in-house employees because of HR reasons obviously. But with the custom home building, when we were doing multiple houses at a time, we'd have 20 to 30 guys in-house. But then I was also using 15 to 20 different subs who, now not only are you dealing with all those subs' emotions, but you're dealing with all their business problems too. You know, they promise you the world they can't get there. Then you have to bring that bad news from 20 different subcontractors to your homeowner.
Taylor White: You're kind of coming back into construction and almost it's like, well, this is easier, this is more manageable.
John Seaman: It's a breeze compared to...
Taylor White: That's crazy.
John Seaman: Having all the subs.
Taylor White: What kind of characteristics do you think like carried over that were good, like managing people or just like high stress or dealing with emotion that kind of transferred over well to what you're doing now?
John Seaman: I think a lot of those aspects. Obviously, I'm managing less people so that's easier. You know, you can manage better. You can manage more effectively when you have less again, not only employees, but subs. I almost felt like many days I had to go to my plumber's business and run his business to get my job. I had to go to the electrician's, you know, like I had to call him, like, oh, you, oh, you have this job. That's a priority. I understand. How many days do you think it's going to take for you to do that job before you can get to my job? Like, that's bullshit, man. I shouldn't have to deal with that. Now I'm having to try to help manage his schedule just to get my job done. And in reality, like, I've got eight builds right back to back. Like, you almost don't have time to handle everybody else's stuff. You need to just be focused on our stuff is kind of how we wanted it to work out. But you really can't tell another business owner, hey, you have to stay on my jobs back to back to back. When you're dealing with all of that on top of a homeowner's emotion, and at the end of the day, that's who's paying you and paying all these other people, like, they have to be your priority, and you have to keep them happy. Like, that's a real challenge, man. You know? And so that's very, very stressful. I sleep much better at night knowing that I only have to worry about my guys' emotions and one customer, not all that other stuff. You don't know who's going to get pissed off for whatever reason and not pay you with the home stuff. The dirt stuff is so much more predictable.
Taylor White: No, it is 100%. So you started your business, and then what's interesting to me, though, is, like, you mention a lot about how you're so, like, you're busy. I mean, if I was to give somebody an honest opinion that, like, would leave here today and be like, I'm starting a business tomorrow, I'd be like, oh, dude, like, get prepared. Right? Because, like, our season is like this.
John Seaman: Yeah, it fluctuates sometimes.
Taylor White: But, like, what are you doing differently to stay busy all the time? Or is your area just booming so much that there's so much demand? And then also you're dealing with, you just had Hurricane Helene...
John Seaman: Yeah, that's correct.
Taylor White: Roll through. And so maybe kind of touch on, like, demand for work, how you manage to stay busy and then managing all that.
John Seaman: Yeah. So there's a lot of businesses in the trades that are extremely seasonal. Right? Like, everything you think of. Right? Like painters, builders, dirt work...
Taylor White: Yep.
John Seaman: Grass, hardscaping. Everything you think of has a season. I wasn't used to seasons with building because people want houses built year-round. It doesn't matter. The only thing that you got to worry about with that is concrete. Get your concrete done before December to February, then you can keep building year-round. So you got one vertical you got to worry about. You know, sitting down and trying to plan and budget. The first two years was pretty difficult for us because with building, especially when you build multiple homes at a time, you, about every month, you get a big check coming in that's going to keep you going and paying the bills and stuff. Well, with the seasonal work that we're doing the first two years, I didn't really predict that. And so the winters, that slowed down and especially like right before tax time and Christmas and stuff, like people are saving their money and they don't have the influx of cash coming in and they're not, it's not nice outside. We got to the point where, like, cash was really tight for a couple years in the wintertime, you know, and I was, and I never want to let any of my guys go. You know, I don't want to let them sit at home for a couple months. And I know there's some guys that build their whole business around like, we're going to work these eight months of the year and then four months a year you guys can have off. And maybe some of the older guys are cool with that. But I think a lot of this, this new generation, they want to work and they need to work.
Taylor White: Yeah, I agree.
John Seaman: At that point, I was younger too. I'm only 33 now and I've, you know, been doing this for a couple years now. So, I was the same way. I want to work year-round. Well, we have built great relationships with contractors. We do residential work, we do commercial work. We work for a lot of contractors, we work for the municipality, the state government, city, county. We do all kinds of stuff. We didn't do that then. We only focused on residential stuff and some of the other contractors. And that's why things would slow down a little bit. But the city's demoing stuff year-round. City's putting in roads year-round. These contractors who are building custom homes have to continue building year-round. Again, the only thing they have to worry about is getting the concrete done. So if you're working for a bunch of contractors and they're building year-round, they're going to need you to clear, they're going to need you to backfill. And so I've kind of just structured the business. You know, it's just diversifying. Right? Like you don't put all your eggs in one basket, so. And we don't have like snow in the wintertime that a lot of guys will go, and a lot of our students in the north, they'll, you know, plow and stuff like that. And we don't have that. So we had to try to find things that we could do during the wintertime, you know, stay busy. And we do a lot of land clearing. If you're only moving dirt, there's a lot of larger companies where we're at that only do bulk dirt and they'll have to slow down in the wintertime, you know, with frost and stuff. But we just move to a different stream.
Taylor White: And then how did you manage? Okay, you have this, you know, super heavy workload. And then how do you manage something like Hurricane Helene coming in and throwing a kibosh in all your plans that you had? Because you were directly, like, you got right affected by this.
John Seaman: Yeah, we live in Marion.
Taylor White: How bad was it?
John Seaman: The Asheville area, dude, got smacked, man. And we're 20 minutes from there. So us just being right outside of it, we had some effects. And of course we immediately started getting calls for trees on houses and stuff like that. And we took care of everybody in Marion where we lived. We've done this for so long that we have, you know, a huge customer base in the Asheville area. And those folks started calling immediately and really good customers up there that we wanted to take care of. You literally couldn't drive. There weren't roads open from Marion to Asheville, which again is only 20 minutes away. But you got to go up and over a mountain to get to Asheville and the whole mountain was washed out. So we fought our way to get over there. State and highway patrol and stuff didn't even want us to try to travel that way because there was no roads. And we fought our way to get over there and, you know, worked for days. There was a long section of road that it took us almost 48 hours straight of just cutting with two skid steers and a grapple and eight guys with saws just cutting our way through the mountain to get to these people.
Taylor White: How were, like, you getting fuel and everything?
John Seaman: There was no fuel.
Taylor White: So whatever you had in reserves at the yard was what you had?
John Seaman: We, fortunately, we have thousand-gallon fuel tanks at the shop.
Taylor White: Yeah.
John Seaman: If you drove an hour the opposite direction towards Hickory, North Carolina, there's little areas that got almost no impact. It was very weird. Hickory got no impact. So they still had fuel. There was no power where we were in Marion and Asheville, no power, no cell service.
Taylor White: How long?
John Seaman: Weeks.
Taylor White: Didn't Starlink come in and give you guys service or no?
John Seaman: There were several folks like that. Verizon had like a mobile hub, but that didn't happen for, you know, a week or so. Like you couldn't get...
Taylor White: How were people talking?
John Seaman: They weren't. There was no communication, man. The military come in. They were flying Black Hawks in and stuff.
Taylor White: And were you guys like, what's going on?
John Seaman: We knew it was in devastation, but like, no one could communicate.
Taylor White: So how did you know how to get out there and where to go?
John Seaman: In the evenings, I would drive the hour opposite direction.
Taylor White: Get service.
John Seaman: Yeah. Like, you know, I got a wife and kids. Like, I've brought them to a hotel down that way, let them shower and stuff and go to a restaurant, eat, you know, and get cell phone service. And you would just be inundated with calls, man. Like, thousands of calls and texts and messages.
Taylor White: God, that would give you so much anxiety. Just... imitates phone notification sound
John Seaman: Oh, man. You couldn't keep up, man, with how much was coming in. And so I literally just went, like, back to old school. Like, I had a notepad. I'd go and I'd get all these messages, and I didn't even have time to follow up with everybody. I was just writing down names and addresses.
Taylor White: Crazy. And you just show up?
John Seaman: And we just go to that area and we'd work to get to people and...
Taylor White: And how would you, like, go about in this process? Like, giving somebody a price to do the work, getting paid for it?
John Seaman: We didn't price anything. We never talked about a price on...
Taylor White: You'd do it and then be like, it's this much?
John Seaman: Yeah. So there was two or three jobs which were like landslide stabilization jobs that we talked about a rough figure within a hundred thousand dollars usually. But that was weeks into it. Like, we weren't worried about...
Taylor White: It was the first initial?
John Seaman: The first initial was like, let's get access to these folks. I can't tell you how many elderly folks, we knocked on their door and they're in, and we had food and snacks because there was no, we were the first ones to get to them. And they, and they were like, oh, thank God, I thought I was... I knocked on a door on someone who had deceased. The lady was on oxygen. I didn't know who lived in the house. You know, these are huge houses, you know, and there's four different doors. I'm knocking on all the doors, and I know someone's at home because there's, there's cars in the driveway. There's no way for people to get in and out. And the lady takes, like, 15 minutes; she was almost out of oxygen is what took her so long. And we had cut her way in there and, you know, called the ambulance. They came, brought her more oxygen. And...
Taylor White: That's wild.
John Seaman: All these people were so appreciative, you know, like, oh, we haven't had food or water or nothing, you know, And we've got all these snacks and stuff for them and then. And so...
Taylor White: Did you film that?
John Seaman: Yeah, it's all...
Taylor White: It's on YouTube?
John Seaman: I don't know that we've put everything on there because some of it was a little raw, you know what I mean? But, yeah, most of it is. And a lot of it, you know, we have our...
Taylor White: Crazy stuff to live through, man.
John Seaman: Oh, man. I'm certain there's tons and tons and tons of people in the mountains that will have lifetime PTSD from this. The stories that we've heard are like, I don't ever...
Taylor White: What was the storm like where you were? In Marion? Like your actual house? Like were you with your family?
John Seaman: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor White: Like guys... like guys get to a basement or like...
John Seaman: Yeah.
Taylor White: How insane was it?
John Seaman: Where we were at in Marion was not extreme wind, but lots and lots of rain. And in areas of Marion, extreme flooding, like over rooftops. You know, a buddy of mine owns a marina, you couldn't even see; the entire building was underwater. One of the strip malls, like, it was up to their roofs and they've had a hydrovac. All those. Some of the buildings, some of those people just completely went out of business. But in the north part of the county, man, I don't even know if we should share some of this stuff, but like, people watched their family just get washed away, watched their house get washed away, and, you know, like, look at a man and hear that story. Like, it's, it's pretty rough, you know what I mean? And there's another area in the county where there was three houses and it like 30 something family members, the entire land is gone. They were at home, you know. So, yeah, I mean it's, it's way more than trees and buildings being flooded, you know? There's thousands and thousands of lives gone. Like, what's really weird about the whole thing is if you look at all the statistics and what the media has put out, they say like a couple hundred. But being there and seeing it, like, I've seen a couple hundred ourselves, you know, like, never mind the EMTs who have had to deal with like pulling people out of rivers, you know what I mean? There's thousands of people.
Taylor White: So the cleanup work, like when we, there was a tornado that ripped through town here, I mean, geez, six years ago, I think now. Actually, the town where our pit was that I took you to. And devastated the town, and we mobilized the next day, put our shovel on a float and drove right into town. And we're like, where do you need trees cleared off of? What do you need help with? And it was like the fire department set up at the local school. I remember walking into the lobby and them being like, unload here and start helping here. But then the communication from them wasn't them on site. We ended up spending the whole day just doing absolutely nothing because it was like, we gotta wait for Hydro to come in, turn off the power lines because there's bent power lines. Like, and it was not to the scale at all of what you're talking about. So that's why I can only imagine like owning a business where you want to help and do stuff. Not even thinking about the money at that point, like you just said. But like, what was the communication like from like, you know, homeowners need stuff done. But like, whoa, we can't actually go and do that yet because we're not allowed.
John Seaman: That's a great question. If you talk to lots and lots of contractors who traveled to North Carolina. And let me also preface this with, there's obviously there's all kinds of different people, right? But there's storm chasers who go to storm chase strictly financially.
Taylor White: Yeah.
John Seaman: There's storm folks who go 100% to help and volunteer their time and do what they can. Pull both of those folks who are all traveling now to North Carolina to do what they can to help or to go chase money or whatever. Well, there has to be some mitigation to that. Right? Because there are no resources. Right? There's no power, there's no water, there's no sewer, there's no gas, there's no food. And all these people are going to this area and they want to help. And everything you do is extremely dangerous. You're cutting up bound up trees, you know, that will send you 50ft in the air if you cut it the wrong way. You're dealing with driving through terrain that's unstable. You're trying to move terrain that's unstable. There's huge landslides with massive boulders that have now become loosened up, you know? So it's not safe for everybody. This is not my advice to anybody, but I knew on the other side of a lot of those roadblocks were good people who needed help. And if they didn't get help soon, like they might die, just like the elderly lady who was running out of oxygen. So I just went around. People will try to stop you and tell you you can't go here, you can't go there. But we were just going. And I think a lot of it was our presentation of having multiple trucks and all of our stuff professional and logoed and emergency hazard stuff and all the right stuff. People will kind of overlook versus the volunteer who may be in a car or, you know, someone who's coming to skid steer that maybe shouldn't be there. You know what I mean? Once we did get in and people seen what we were doing, like, we had police escorts.
Taylor White: Oh, wow.
John Seaman: The police were like, oh, we know about people over here who can't get out, you know? And so the police escorted us all night one night going to different areas of where they knew people were stranded.
Taylor White: I want to talk about the money side of something like this, which is insane. But at the end of the day, you have a business.
John Seaman: Yeah.
Taylor White: You have employees that need their families fed. You have kids, you have a wife. You're putting out all this cost, all this fuel, pay these people. How do you go about getting paid for your services to do all this? Because being a good human being obviously is one thing.
John Seaman: Yeah.
Taylor White: But there's a money side to it as well, too.
John Seaman: Yeah. You can only go so long with no matter how much money you have before you have to start bringing some back in. All of our cost was double. I put my guys on double time, you know, because they're doing very dangerous stuff. And, man, there was multiple days on end, we worked straight. Like we never even went to sleep, you know? And I mean, how do you ask a man to do that with you as an employee like, 'Hey, can you come and help me work 24, 48, 72 hours straight?' Like, and all you're offering them is double pay. So we're buying all their food. Fuel is double the cost because you can't get it. And if you do, you're sending someone an hour the opposite direction to fuel up, fill up, drag up tanks, come all the way back. It's extremely costly. So fortunately, I owned a tree business for multiple years and we got really good at billing insurance companies. So we know how the insurance game worked with the tree stuff, which, again, just like you said, like the gist of the insurance thing with the tree stuff is you go cut the tree, you bill the insurance company. You might get paid a couple days later, you might get paid 90 days later. It might go even longer than that if they try to argue your bill. Again, having no electronic records of anything. I'm just trying to write down everywhere we worked, and we photographed everything really, really well because that's something you have to document with insurance.
Taylor White: Documented.
John Seaman: Yeah. So there was some stuff like, I didn't even get a chance to write it down, but I did have the photograph, or vice versa. I didn't have a photograph, but I had wrote it down. When we did have time, we would try to put it on the computer. We have our software Jobber that we use that we put everything in. And I would try to keep up with that, and I'd try to communicate back with the office who at that point did have power. And I'd be like, we're working at this address, send them a text, send the information, put it in there as a job so that we remembered to go back to it at some point to bill. So our main focus was just go help as many people as we could, collect as much information for whose insurance we could possibly bill. And then there was also a ton of stuff where, like, insurance only pays for stuff that's on your home or driveway or car. If it's blocking the road or if it's in your yard or it's hung over your house but hasn't hit your house yet, they don't pay for that. So the individual would have to pay for that. And we tried to prioritize everything for those first several weeks of like, hey, if it's not, if you can get in and out of your house, awesome. If there's something on your house, that's the next level of stuff we're taking off and we'll tarp it. If there's stuff over your house that is going to fall on your house, that's going to have to stay there until we can get all this emergency stuff done first. And then it would go into the bigger site stuff, like retaining walls to protect homes. Like that, of course, we had to talk about money first because number one, we're talking about a couple hundred thousand dollars on some of these jobs. And number two, the resources, the waste block, the retaining wall block, the gravel, all that stuff is, number one, extremely difficult to get in regular times, never mind now that there's not even roads. One of the plants that made all the retaining wall blocks, the whole plant is gone. Like, all the blocks, all the whole plant...
Taylor White: Had to start making more.
John Seaman: Yeah, so they're... or you buy it from two hours away. So, we collect all the stuff we can for insurance. A lot of the customers we worked for were very, very wealthy and, you know, they don't care. It's blank checks. They want their properties back to normal as quickly as possible. They want to be the first ones. Yeah. It's keeping up with the Joneses in a lot of those areas. So I'd keep a couple guys working for folks like that who, you know, those guys had worked for me for a while and they knew the expectation of what these people wanted. Like a lot of these areas that we were working in are very high-end areas and in a normal time, you can't touch their grass. Like everything has to be craned out. And so, yeah, it's an emergency situation, but they still don't want their entire yard completely tore all the pieces. I mean, they got hundreds of thousands of dollars of landscaping, so you can't just go in here like a ding-dong and rip everything out. So what we were doing is some of those folks who we knew would pay us really well, I'd keep my guys working there so that we could pay for some of the stuff that we knew we weren't going to get paid for. And then we'd be billing insurance in the meantime, or I'd have another crew on, you know, a huge retaining wall job that was bringing money in, you know. So it was a mixture. It's just kind of like the diversification I said with the business earlier is there was stuff that we knew we were doing that we weren't going to get paid on. There was stuff that we knew we were doing that we don't know when we're going to get paid on. And there's stuff that anytime I ask the customer, they're going to write me a check.
Taylor White: What about FEMA?
John Seaman: So we didn't mess with any FEMA stuff.
Taylor White: Now FEMA, what would they look after? Like, okay, roads are blocked. We're going to hire people to go in, get the roads. We're going to hire people to bring in, bring mobile trailers to set up for the workers or this or that. Like, is that FEMA?
John Seaman: That's correct. So how the FEMA thing works is the state will hire you as a contractor. So your county is who you go to and say, hey, my name is John Smith with ABC Contracting. I'm looking to help with this storm cleanup. Well, they have their own vetting process. You meet all the criteria with all your insurances and stuff and they're going to hire you and they're going to tell you where to go and work. And then, you know, at whatever agreed upon terms, they're going to pay you. And then they wait to be reimbursed from FEMA. So FEMA's state, national government pays the local county stuff. So FEMA doesn't necessarily run... everyone, that's a huge misconception. You don't work for FEMA and FEMA doesn't tell you where to go. It's the county. The problem with that is there's not a person, there's not a door I can knock on and say, hey, we're done with this job, can we collect payments? The county is going to tell you, you're going to get paid when we get paid. And some of that goes really, really well, and some of that works really well. And some of it, you know, the storm happened in September. I know lots and lots and lots of guys who haven't been paid a dollar yet. That's not because anyone's trying to screw anybody, it's because there's a lot of red tape and a lot of things that get slowed down and held back with government stuff. And that's why we weren't interested in using our resources to go and do the stuff that FEMA would have essentially be paying for and not know if or when we're ever going to get paid back? I mean, this is... The profit margins working for FEMA would have been higher?
John Seaman: I don't... I've seen a lot of the contracts and what the numbers...
Taylor White: It's not worth, is it? No.
John Seaman: We're charging the same rates that those guys are getting. The only thing is it takes a lot, a lot of hustle. It's very, very, very chaotic what we were doing. I mean, it was me and Vince, really, two guys that were collecting all information and also while people are coming up, they're going to me or Vince and now we're having to write down their information to go look at their jobs. Well, someone who's maybe not as business savvy or wants as much hustle, you just go to the county every sing... you show up, it's like showing up at a job. You just show up where they ask you...
Taylor White: Where you want me.
John Seaman: Yeah. And you hope you get paid on Friday. Whereas we kind of took the reins and we're like, we're controlling this. So... risk and reward, right? No matter what you do.
Taylor White: And you're still doing cleanup?
John Seaman: Oh yeah. Another storm just come through on Sunday when we were flying out. You can't fly back into Charlotte right now. Vince...
Taylor White: Fires?
John Seaman: There's fires, there's flooding, there's wind. We cut trees Friday. Customer asked, how long do you think these other ones are going to last? Well, it might last a day, might last 10 years. They all look good right now. She texted me this morning and said two more trees blew over from Sunday storm. Fortunately, it didn't hit nothing. They fell across the road. They had...
Taylor White: Why are you guys getting all this crazy weather? Is that normal?
John Seaman: No, no, it's very unnormal. I'd say back in like 2018, we started getting a lot of flooding and culverts and stuff like that. Since 2018, we've been way over-engineering everything we do because we've had a lot of flooding.
Taylor White: And how did it handle on like some of these new bigger storms?
John Seaman: Knock on wood, bro. I haven't had one project that washed out even during all this flooding.
Taylor White: And so people like, we had a big flood here or a big rainstorm this summer that even like the one-in-100-year...
John Seaman: That's what this was? 100-year flood?
Taylor White: Yeah, they were being used. And it was like, wow, that's crazy. You know, people always laugh and like, yeah, right? Like that'll never happen. You'll never see water that high. We had all the roads going into our pit were washed out, flooded. Like people couldn't get home. Like, it was insane. So sometimes over-engineering the stuff, you don't realize it, but it's like, I mean, it will freaking happen.
John Seaman: Yeah, man. And these things are happening more and more regularly, you know? So, I mean, all you can...
Taylor White: Which is crazy, but it's good for business.
John Seaman: It is very good for business, yeah.
Taylor White: Which is, that's why I mean talking, the subject is so odd, right? Because like, talk to somebody that's maybe not in the industry or something. But again, like break it down to a human level. You're in business to support your family and your employees' families and the kids and stuff. So it's like business is good for everybody all around, but it just sucks that it's at the hands of like natural disasters that are affecting and killing people or people are losing their lives because of them. But like, I don't know, it's just kind of a weird concept, right? Like something like that rips through town and it's so bittersweet because it's like, holy shit, there's going to be a lot of work coming out of this. But holy shit, a lot of people lost a lot.
John Seaman: It's a very weird position for us in the trades to be in, especially folks that do like...
Taylor White: Showcasing that. Like I feel like you can't.
John Seaman: Yeah. And it also makes me feel weird when the weatherman's like, hey, we got a terrible storm coming up. And then there's all these guys that are like, hey, on their Facebook...
Taylor White: Get prepared for the storm.
John Seaman: We'll be here to cut your trees?' Like, 'Let's not like sell to these people who are in devastation, you know what I mean?
Taylor White: I have guys online that are like that when people got flooded out. I mean, hours later they're on Instagram like, dealing with flooding issues, we got you covered. And it's like, dude, people are still in the middle of trying to get to their house.
John Seaman: A financial burden is the last thing you want to put on someone's shoulders in a situation like that. I don't know if you've ever been in a situation like that, but I've had homes that have flooded and stuff before, you know, with stupid stuff. And dude, it's like, a dollar is the last thing you want to worry about.
Taylor White: Yeah.
John Seaman: From being in that position, nothing as relative as these folks, you know, I kind of knew. We don't make posts to advertise for like, hey, we got a storm coming up. I guess we over time we built a brand, you know, people know to call us.
Taylor White: So working at JCP, you have all these guys, they toughed you out through the storm. Like, did you find that stuff like that kind of maybe built some strong culture in the business?
John Seaman: Yeah, it really does. And the day-to-day, sometimes that gets lost, right? Like, if you go on so many of our reviews and our testimonials of both employees and customers, like the number one thing you see across the board is like, it's like very family felt. Everyone works as a family. Like I told you before, like we have a revolving door of a lot of guys that come and go, but we also have a really core group of guys of 10 to 15 guys that have always been...
Taylor White: Every business. Yeah. I think that that's perfect. Yeah. The guys that come and go are going to come and go at every other business.
John Seaman: Yeah.
Taylor White: Your core guys are your core guys.
John Seaman: Yeah.
Taylor White: Like you said, like those are the guys that you keep on in the wintertime. You make sure that they're getting their hours or that they're whatever, you know, you're meeting their demands or you got some new gear, you're giving them gear. Like you treat them kind of differently than revolving door employees almost.
John Seaman: Yeah. And with the day-to-day, sometimes a little bit of that gets lost, you know, because it will go back to the feeling of you're the boss and I'm the employee or vice versa. But stuff like this and Christmas dinners and stuff like that, like it's a reminder of like, hey man, we're here. There's camaraderie, right? Like we're all working these straight days. You know what I mean? Like we're doing all this together. Like I'm looking out for y'all, y'all are looking out for me. And it sucks that things like this have to happen to like remind us of that. But it's just like a friend passes away and it reminds you how sweet life is, you know? Like you don't think about it until something bad happens, you know.
Taylor White: And so true, man. Like day-to-day stuff. Yeah, especially now. Like I was telling you this morning, like when we built this office first, like I didn't put an office in here for myself because I was out on site all the time. I was out on site. I was gone doing stuff. I'd be making topsoil. Like I just had more of a site position and that was what I did. And now I'm in the office more. I don't get out to the site as often. So I feel like, you know, sometimes it's more of that. But like I think back on what you just said too about like, I remember when we lost my brother-in-law two years ago, three years ago, and like me and Dad, we had to take a couple weeks off just to deal with this scenario because it was sudden. And the whole business came together. It ran smooth. And, you know, I just remember coming back maybe feeling so thankful. And it was almost like it put like a human level on everything. You're dead on with like, yes, at the end of the day, I'm your boss and you're working for me, but we're all here doing it together and we're under one team. And our end goal is all the exact same. We all want to make more money at the end of the day so that we can support what we want to do in our lives or our families. So it's important to have in your business. And it looks like you're doing a really good job of that.
John Seaman: I don't do as good of a job as I should.
Taylor White: You can always do better.
John Seaman: Yeah.
Taylor White: Even the same with us. You can always do better. Like there's so many different incentives. Like we were talking about this morning. Like I have a gym here. My favorite thing is seeing when guys work out here, whether it's Alex or Kat or Steve or all these guys. I want to implement an incentive where it's like, I'll give everybody $150 more a month or $200 more a month if you work out three times a week for 40 minutes.
John Seaman: Yeah. Because you want more for them. You want better for them.
Taylor White: And the return on it for me is you're going to be healthier, you're going to get sick less...
John Seaman: Yeah.
Taylor White: I'm going to get more work out of you because you're physically fit. Like there's more stuff to it than just like, and it's really good for you. I don't know, stuff like that where it's like you say, you know, we can always do better. Like I totally agree. You can always do better.
John Seaman: I feel like some of the best companies are able to somehow without disaster, bring that feeling back more regularly than stuff like that that has to happen for us to feel, you know, like...
Taylor White: It all starts at the top though.
John Seaman: Yeah, for sure.
Taylor White: It all starts at the top and like how you talk to your guys. Being as a business owner, I sit at many different tables. You sit at many different tables. How I would sit at a table talking about building an $8 million building with somebody with those guys versus how I'm going to talk with my guys when they come back in the shop this afternoon...
John Seaman: Yeah.
Taylor White: ...are two different ways. And I find that it's the business owners that aren't self-aware enough to be like, I mean, I would prefer to actually sit and talk to my guys because that's exactly who I am. I was born and raised blue-collar and I can relate to them. But it's like the bosses that I find like that come into the CEO positions of large corporate companies that I think are losing a lot of the touch of like culture because the people in charge, you know, they went to some prestigious crazy school, they grew up kind of white-collar and now they're in a white-collar position and the guys in the field don't really respect that because it's like, 'You couldn't run a dozer for 12 hours a day, so why are you trying to tell me what I'm supposed to do?'
John Seaman: For sure. Yeah.
Taylor White: And that's just how the world works. Somebody has to tell you what to do. I get told what to do by my clients. Like everybody's working for somebody, there's always somebody bigger and badder. But like, I feel like if you can relate to them a little bit more, that definitely helps with the culture and it helps with what you're trying to build.
John Seaman: Yeah. And it is a challenge as a business owner because number one, if you start to have a little bit of success, sometimes that will very quickly go to your head. But at the same time, you also need to kind of carry yourself and look a certain way to reach different levels of success, to attract different people who are going to help you to get different levels of success. But at the same time, like, you can't forget number one, who you are and number two, who's helping you to do all that. You have to wear multiple hats, but you can't have such a big head that your head won't fit back in the other hat. And like you said, I'm the same exact way, bro. Like I grew up working right beside my dad doing whatever we could do. That's who I am, man. And sometimes that's a challenge for me because there's many days, bro, that I'd like to just put my headphones on and go work on a machine all day long. Like I don't want to deal with all the bullshit sometimes. I don't want to get up and go to a networking event and shake hands to try to meet people to help me get to the next level, you know what I mean? Some days I just want to be in the ditch, you know? And it's vice versa. Like, you know, it's cold outside. Your guys are out working in the freezing cold right now. Like I don't want to do that today. I'd rather go to a networking event today. Yeah. You got to live in both lanes. Just never let your head get too big to get in trouble, you know.
Taylor White: Talk a bit briefly about, and you mentioned it at lunch and I didn't poke and prod at it too much because I wanted to hear about it, but like your real estate side. What are you doing there?
John Seaman: When we kind of made a shift with the construction and the dirt, I didn't want to just let the whole construction thing go, right? And there's a huge, huge, huge opportunity really all over the states. I don't know how much so here, but I assume just as much here because just driving around here today, there's... I see so much development going on. But in the States, there's a huge need for housing.
Taylor White: Oh yeah, insane.
John Seaman: So number one, not only is there a need, I had a group that could do all the construction because I had been doing it for years. And most blue-collar folks don't have retirement plans, right? Some people will pay into a 401k, some people are waiting for some kind of handout or whatever, you know. And I had nothing. I never paid into a 401k. I don't believe in that, to be honest with you. So my retirement plan was get as many rental properties as I could until I have enough cash flow that I don't have to work. I'll probably work literally until the day I die, but I don't want to have to. So kind of when we made that shift, I started, you know, focused on ramping up the grading side. And then my construction side, we just started building out spec homes. And every other spec I'd keep as a rental. And I'd sell one, put some cash in my pocket, pay the guys. Then I'd have them build another one. Maybe I'd sell that one. It just depended on where we were working or what the site was or what area we were in. Maybe I'd sell it, maybe I'd keep it as a rental. And so we've done that now for a couple years. And JC Properties, the grading side, we built out storage facilities, we've built out campgrounds, we've built out trailer parks, we've built out apartment complexes for the county. And so I had this experience and I gained all this knowledge on how to do this development. And I thought this is stupid for me to keep putting all this money in everybody else's pocket. I'm just going to do this for myself. So last couple years, that's what we've been doing. Like I just secured over 100 acres; it's a 32-home development. So where I get to use the dirt guys to go in and develop that site and then I get to use my construction guys to come in and build...
Taylor White: That's sick. That's cool.
John Seaman: And it's extremely lucrative. It's way more lucrative than custom home building or doing the dirt. And I get to use both of those to kind of do that together. The development group pays the other two businesses. And that's another thing that we've got going to keep us through the winter on some of the stuff too, you know, is we do our own development where someone else may not be calling in December because they're, for whatever reason, they're not, they're trying to keep Christmas money if it's, you know, residential or the contractor didn't get his concrete done. Well, I'll send my guys to one of my sites and we'll go push roads in or we'll clear lots or we'll put septics in for new houses. Maybe we don't have time to get to the house build right then, but we can go in and we can clear the land, we can put a driveway in, we can put septic and well in. So now it's a build-ready site, which is way more profitable than just selling raw land. And it sells way easier because a lot of folks don't have the vision on a lot of like, hey, where would my house go? Where would my well go? And they don't know the whole process. So for them to be able to come in and start digging footings is... it sells like hotcakes versus selling raw land.
Taylor White: That's really cool. Like it's interesting. And I guess like, like I was saying, that's kind of what we've started doing on the civil side or commercial side. Sorry, building projects and building, you know, commercial buildings. And right now, like we're doing a four-story downtown. It is really cool. I'm seeing the same thing where the two businesses definitely complement each other and it works out really well and it keeps people busy. Like this winter we were able to keep one of our laborers going down there helping out on site, just doing stuff. Yeah, it's really cool. We have a lot of really cool things going on now. I think that that's like super exciting.
John Seaman: I've never been diagnosed, but I might be OCD and ADHD and all the acronyms, man. And I just like to do a lot of things and keep a lot of stuff rolling. And it's a lot for, I think a lot of people, but I don't sleep a whole lot either. So my brain doesn't stop and it's always coming up with new ideas. And a lot of this stuff, man, because I started so early on, I think just comes second nature to me. It's just how my brain works. I have experience really from buying the property to turnkey home. So there's a lot of opportunities that I see that a lot of people I don't think would without the experience, you know? So it's hard for me to pass up on opportunities.
Taylor White: And people want to watch and see what you have going on and everything. I mean, that's how we found out about you. And I think that's so cool is TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, John Seaman, right? Or is it JCP?
John Seaman: No, it's Official John Seaman is what we put on everything now. So JC Property Professionals has its own pages for all of that.
Taylor White: Why separate it? Because that's been something that I've wanted to do for a while because I find it sometimes it's like I'm kind of just showing myself and what I have going on. I don't really want to speak for the whole company of what we're doing right now. So why did you separate it?
John Seaman: For a lot of folks that are watching, they may not understand there is a difference between building a business brand and building a personal brand.
Taylor White: Yep.
John Seaman: There's lots of things that can happen good and or bad to a business brand, but you pretty well control the narrative of your personal brand, right? And no matter what you do and decide to do in business, the personal brand follows you everywhere. I believe that people buy from people, not a business. So I just thought it was best to build my personal brand, which shows everything we do, right? I mean...
Taylor White: Oh yeah. It's the same thing we're doing. But if I were to restart all over again, I would tell myself, if I could go back in time, I don't regret anything. Like I'm so privileged of where we've gotten online. But I would say, change your channel name to just Taylor White.
John Seaman: Yeah.
Taylor White: Just do Taylor White. Don't do Ken White Construction. Because I've had it in the past with previous employees that have been here in management being like, I went out for dinner on the weekend and I saw a guy and he was like, why is your boss jumping off an excavator on YouTube? And like it's your company. And like I put them in a weird spot because they're like, that's your business's YouTube and your boss is putting that out there where I don't personally give a shit.
John Seaman: Right, right.
Taylor White: They did. But I struggle with that still to this day. Like what I post on my Instagram even is so different than what I posted four years ago on my...
John Seaman: Yeah, for sure.
Taylor White: Like I used to post me saying like, fucking this, fucking that, fucking... And then I'd get out of my truck and film a fucking dance I'd be doing to some fucking song in the middle of a storm. But now I think about, Instagram has changed also too.
John Seaman: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor White: I think about all of my clients that I have that are in some really high-up places that give us some really high-end work. And I'm like, what the fuck, if they saw this? What would they think?
John Seaman: Yeah.
Taylor White: You know? And that's what I struggle with because I want to show what I'm like...
John Seaman: Right.
Taylor White: ...because my personality is what makes me, I find, interesting online.
John Seaman: Yeah.
Taylor White: I mean, I've made myself the protagonist of social media.
John Seaman: Yeah.
Taylor White: But I also want to showcase the awesome, professional work that Ken White Construction does. So that's why I find it interesting on why you did that. And that's why I would tell anybody listening, really think about it from the start.
John Seaman: I guess I'm a little more fortunate because I did think about it starting out and our businesses all have their own... but the businesses don't ever do as well, right? Because again, people buy from people and I'm the same as you, like...
Taylor White: Look, and because they're just, they're not doing what I was talking about. Like...
John Seaman: Yeah, exactly. That's what... Yeah. People like your content because you fuck around and you're goofy and, you know, you just show who you are, which is why you're also relatable to your guys, you know, you can have that relationship with your guys. Also, people who are watching the content are the same motherfuckers who are on the machine just like your guys and they know that you're the same dude. Like the... like it's just like, you know, us sitting here bullshitting and hanging out. It's just who you are. And that's what you want to show. There's a place on social media for your business and it to, like you said, appear, like you need it to appear for the right clients and for them to show people, hey, this is who's doing our work. And there's a place for you to be you, man, you know what I mean? And build your brand and show who you are. It's never too late.
Taylor White: No, I know. Got the point. Never too late, man. They say the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is today, so...
John Seaman: Awesome quote.
Taylor White: I totally believe that as well too. I mean, it's, it's tough. I might actually do it. Like I, I have no idea. I'm still, I'm in this weird confusing spot. And I was telling you about it even this morning too, where it's like, I got to stop with the, you know, I have to do every two weeks because this, and I have a brand deal on this and...
John Seaman: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor White: ...go to that. Like, social media is a weird thing and like...
John Seaman: Again, it's just like we talked about earlier, like don't forget, you know, what made you, you know what I mean? Like...
Taylor White: Started with a GoPro in my...
John Seaman: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, so stick to who you are, man, and do you. And people buy into that or they don't buy into that. That's our big thing, you know, I brought Riley with me, my videographer, my content specialist. I tell her all the time, like, I don't give a shit, Riley, don't edit anything I said out. Just post it. It's reality. That's what people want to see and that's why people relate to us is because they go through the same thing every day. You don't know how many people, hundreds of people have stopped me and said, dude, I really appreciate your content. Like we deal with the same shit every day and I thought I was the only one.
Taylor White: Oh yeah.
John Seaman: You know, I thought I was the only one who dealt with this or that or all this bullshit that happens, you know? And I was about to quit because I thought I was the only one dealing with this, but I see you're dealing with it every day and I see all the people commenting like, oh, this happened to me too, you know? And it just makes humans humans, you know.
Taylor White: Yeah, you show it really well. You make it sound easier than it is because like, you're smarter than what you're leading on, like on how you're showing it and how she creates the content. She does an awesome job. I had the privilege of meeting her today too. She's awesome what she does. She knows like I can see like the red thing like when she's filming when she's not. I'm like, yeah, you get it. Like this... Yeah, we've been rambling and you'll notice like the camera kind of goes away because it's like, well yeah, like you're just going to take this out anyways. Yeah. Yeah. So you show it really well and I think that that's a really crucial part of, you know what to show and how much to show of it, I guess. Yeah, social media has been huge and I would encourage anybody to go watch your stuff, the Official John Seaman on anything because I know you also, you offer courses as well on there. Dirt For Dollar. Not even like you have free courses as well too. It's not like there it's all paid stuff, which I think is really cool too because you're doing that for a lot of people. But we have a full afternoon, you and I, so it's not like I made him fly here just for this little...
John Seaman: Can fly.
Taylor White: He choked the fly. But, uh...
John Seaman: We like to show up in person, man.
Taylor White: Yeah, I love it, dude. Thank you so much for coming.
John Seaman: Appreciate it. Appreciate you having me.
Taylor White: And, uh, thank you guys for listening and watching. We will see you guys on the next podcast and at CONEXPO-CON/AGG March 3rd to the 7th. August get your tickets. Very important to do that. Sign up for the newsletter for all the upcoming discounts because there will be discounts and whenever tickets are available. We'll see you guys on the next one. Take care.
