Taylor White, third-generation in the construction business reveals how Ken White Construction turned seemingly devastating staff departures into their biggest year yet. This episode explores the power of adapting to change, promoting from within, and taking calculated risks to achieve remarkable growth.
Worried about losing key employees and the impact on your business? This episode shares how to navigate unexpected departures and rebuild a stronger team, demonstrating that setbacks can be opportunities for positive transformation and growth. Tune in today for a masterclass on how to embrace change, learn from challenges, and conquer obstacles to overcome and achieve even greater success.
Topics:
- The importance of promoting from within
- Taking calculated risks for expanding the business
- Client relations: The key to positive word-of-mouth
- Executing large-scale projects
- The best marketing may not be digital
- Reflecting on 2024 growth and lessons learned
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Episode transcript:
Taylor White: Conquer and overcome. That is this year's motto. I, at the beginning of the year, was away at a sledding trip with some boys, guys that had been on the podcast here before. Luke Payne, Will Schuller. Never had him on yet and trying to. He's been ghosting me. Will, if you're listening to this. And then Dylan Mercier from D2 Contracting.
I was on this trip and I was texting my dad. He's back here. And we have a team in the office. I was in Montana, okay, set the scene. And I'm mountain sledding, right? I'm going up these mountains. And I'm texting dad back here in Ottawa, and he's acting hella weird. And I'm like, “What is going on here right now?” And I know when something's up. Me and my dad, we spend every day together at work, outside of work. We're together quite a bit. I know my dad, he knows me really well. I knew something was up and out of respect, I knew in the back of my mind, I'm like, “Something's going down at the office right now. And he's protecting me because he knows that I'm on a trip and he just wants me to enjoy and have a good time on the trip.” So I'm at the airport and I said, “All right. Cut the [expletive]. I know something's up, my trip's over. What's going on?” And obviously there's no point in dropping names. We're not a huge company, it's close or whatever. But I'm not here to bash anybody or anything like that. That podcast isn't about this. It's about learning about conquering and overcoming.
I had an operations manager, he was family as well. He was my cousin. And he goes “Listen, eff pulled me into his office and yeah, he's got some issues with you.” And I'm like, “Oh, geez.’ And this guy, operations, did a lot for us. We're not a massive company, right? Looked after invoicing, looked after project management, coordinating on a day to day basis, looked after how many people do we have working? How many people do we need? What machinery goes where? Making sure that what was estimated is what gets done and making sure that basically the business runs smoothly and even right down to the invoicing. So I'm like, “Oh, this isn't good. That sucks.” And basically my heart sank into my chest And I'm like, “We'll talk when we get home.” And a lot of the nitty gritty details obviously do not matter because, hey, that's stuff in the past. But essentially, immediately how I felt was like I let my father down because here I am. I brought him into the business. I was sitting in this exact chair. This is my old office.
I was sitting in this exact chair four years prior to this. And he walked in the door and he wanted a change. And I said, “I'll give you the opportunity. We need an estimator.” Because he started as an estimator. And I said, “I'm not an estimator. I can't price work. You can. Let's do it. You should come into the business.” He was doing something completely different, like in the trade for not even construction related. And then he stopped over at dad's office. He's like, “Is Taylor serious?” And it's like, ‘Yeah, let's do it.” So it was kind of crazy because he was so involved with the business and he knew everything. And I was like, here's somebody that's going to help us build the company. And then now here it is, this guy that helped us grow the business and was there for the growth, better way of putting it is was there for the growth, is now gone. And now I'm sitting here with my dad. And Dad's like, “Well, I guess, I got to get more involved.”
And talk about feeling inadequate when I'm supposed to be taking over the business over the past six years and getting it to the point where my dad could work two, three days a week, one day, five days, whatever he wants to do and kind of take more of a backseat. And now he's telling me, yeah, I guess I got to get more involved again. And it's like, whoa. Because that's a big role. So we're like, “Okay, this sucks.” And our estimator at the time, they’re best buds and we're like, “Okay. Are you good?” He's like, “Dude, I'm going nowhere. I'm solid.” And I'm like, “Okay, good. Still got the estimator.” Because then I'd have to learn all this estimating software and crap. So that's good. So I'm like, “All right. You know what, dad? Let's split. I'll take bigger commercial jobs. I'll look after those. I'll coordinate, manage. I'll look after the invoicing. I'll take care of all that. The quickbook stuff. You look after the small residential homeowner stuff and the older clients.” And that's essentially a conversation, and then we just went.”
So conquering to me means you're taking something and not improving on it. But conquering is getting on top of it. We got on top of it. We got on top of, okay, this position is now gone and he's doing his own thing. We have to get on top of it. And we got on top of it. Overcoming is the part where it's, okay, now let's split up these responsibilities, okay? Because I'm already doing my job. Dad was already doing what he needed to do, but now there's this whole extra job. So take that, split it into two and okay, great, you take 50% of the workload, I'll take 50%. Great. Sucks. I felt like an idiot. I felt like I let my dad down. But hey, you know what? That's fine. Dad actually ended up loving it. So we carry on and we do this. And about two months later, we're sitting in our office. And mind you, things are going really smooth. Things are going really well. I'm loving. I mean, it's almost embarrassing to say this, but I didn't do our invoicing for our business ever in my life. I didn't even know how to create an invoice, how to do percentages of invoices as far as deposits, and then 30. I didn't know any of that stuff. So it brought me into the business, which we're going to talk about later. I'm jumping ahead.
So two months go by, estimator that says he's rock solid. I'm not leaving anywhere. And I want to also prefix this that if these people hear this or people listening, zero bad blood with any of these guys. I'm telling the story on how it actually happened because that's all I can do. I hope that people learn from what I'm talking about. Zero bad blood with these guys. They're off doing their own things. They got awesome families. They're awesome guys. I wish nothing but the best for them. That's how you talk about that. Two months go by, rock solid estimator comes into the office and if he's listening, I'm laughing. You should laugh, too. And he comes into my office and it's 5:30, kind of lingering. Normally me and dad are here at 5:30. He was normally gone by 4:35 or something like out of the door. I'm like, okay, he's lingering. Dad's in my office, and you get the old wheelie chair rolls up from his office, and I'm like, “Oh.” And he closes the door behind him. He's like, “You guys got a second to talk?” Boom, right there. When an employee comes into your office and says, “Do you got a second to talk?” They're either asking for more money or they're leaving. That's what I've come to figure out, which is great. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm just saying it was like, “All right. Here we go.” He goes, “Listen, I got an opportunity to do my own thing. I'm going to do my own thing.” And mind you, my operations. He left to do his own thing, too. So I'm like, great. We created another entrepreneur. That's my positive spin on it. We create entrepreneurs here at Ken White Construction.
My supervisor, a year before that, started his own thing. So, yeah, it's a bunch of entrepreneurs here. So, okay, great. Now he gave us two weeks, and he worked it out. And this is where the conquer– This is where we're conquering still. This is where the overcoming comes in. Because overcoming is when you finally, to me, improve on something. You overcame the problem that happened, and now you're improving and succeeding at it. So right then, we're still in the middle of trying to solve and figure out what's going on with the role of no operations manager. And then actually, I should prefix this. We brought in Catherine. Catherine started with us as a dump truck driver, and when Brad left, we split up responsibilities, but she took a lot of the responsibilities, and we were still at this point where I'm talking two months later, my estimator quit. We're still figuring out her role and how she's fitting in. And she's doing the same thing. We're all trying to figure out and be okay. So she drove a dump truck. We brought her into the office, promoted her to an office position from the dump truck. Unbelievable. Great. Love that. That's great culture. Promoting within. Unbelievable.
So the estimator leaves the office. My dad and I stayed. We may have poured a bourbon or a scotch and said, “Okay, holy [expletive], I don't know how to use the takeoff software.” We are bidding so many projects at this point, and just not bidding projects is not an option. What do we do? And immediately I was like, we need to promote Alex, our foreman. Because in the wintertime, when we were slower, Alex is one of our foremans out on site. He took an interest in estimating and he's like, "Hey, I'd love to sit down with Kyle and learn some estimating.” And we're like, “Okay. Great, cool.” So he kind of already was in there for two weeks. And I remember my estimator, he came to me, he's like, “Dude, he's really good. He's picking it up.” So we're like, “Okay, maybe that's the move.” Dad actually was a little unsure of. And we talk about that in our podcast. He's like, “I don't know, I think we should maybe hire an estimate right with them because–” And it wasn't because he didn't think Alex could do it, it was because it was the onboarding. We didn't have time to onboard. But we're like, “You know what? Effective tomorrow, immediately, this is the decision that was made. Alex has to be in office with estimator that's leaving in two weeks learning how to estimate.” And that's what we did.
And when I tell you that promoting within created some of the best culture, but also created some of the best opportunities, the best estimator we've ever had is somebody who has been in the field. And again, I'm not knocking any of the guys that have worked with us before, but it's really difficult sometimes for them to price something accurately when they've never actually done the work. You've never actually installed a septic or laid pipe or graded out a parking lot or excavated a basement or demoed a house. You missed some steps. And that's not a nag on anybody. That's just reality. That's how it is. So having Alex, who actually did the work, come into the office in price, he's like, “Guys, this is easy. I got this.” And we're like, “You do got this. This is great.” Now here we are, a fully rebuilt office. Operations, estimating are gone. New project coordinator Catherine, she took over day to day operations, lining up septic inspections, dispatching the trucks. Even today, we're on this big job. She's managing more and more of the projects and what's going on, which is great. She's a project coordinator and she's doing fantastic at it. Alex landed the biggest job in Ken White Construction history in 58 years and at great margins. He's got us lots of great work at great margins because what the opportunity, and this is where the overcome starts, is what all this taught us. Okay, let's bring it in, Taylor. Someone left. Another guy left. Taylor Dave's thoughts. Dave being my dad. Holy [expletive]. How are we going to recover from this, our business, oh, my God, this is terrible. Flip it. Best thing that actually ever happened to our business.
Now, I went to lunch with my estimator two weeks ago, the one that left. Again, that's why I said, there's no bad blood. And I was like, dude, I don't want to sound like a [expletive], but this is the biggest win-win that we could have ever had. You got to leave and go do what you wanted to do, which was start your own business and be an entrepreneur and be a business owner, which is so fulfilling and amazing that you got to be able to do that. And in lieu of that, I got an estimator that knows the work better and is totally fresh brain and is trained by me and dad because Kyle was kind of trained by our old operations manager and how he priced. And what that did was we got to relook at our bids and our percentages. And I'm like, Oh, no, man. We got to raise that up. We're not making money at that. No, no, no. There's nothing at this percentage. Raise that. Raise this. Okay, yeah, no, you're too high there.” It created like he didn't have any old habits. You can't teach an old dog new tricks, but you can teach a new dog new tricks. And that was kind of Alex. He was the new dog. And I'm like, this is awesome. And all of a sudden, our profit margins start to grow. And I'm like, wow, this is really nice. And then I'm taking care of the hiring and firing and people. And we basically trimmed the fat and we got rid of some positions that we didn't need. And our business completely started about three months after everybody left. And looking at the books and we're like, Okay. Wow. We're actually starting to do well now. These look so much better from last year.”
We had our biggest revenue growth last year, but we effectively made no money. And I'm like, “What the heck is going on here?” This money, we surpassed the revenue that we did the other year before. And things look way, way more healthy, which alleviates a lot of stress in the office and alleviates decisions for next year looking at, okay, do we want to buy some new machinery? Can we buy some GPS? Can we upgrade some of the fleets? And that's so nice to be able to actually finally look at all that and be able to make those decisions and I guess financially be able to do those sorts of things. That's the overcoming part. Bad scenario. Conquered it. Great. Promoted within. Unbelievable for culture. Did it, was successful at it. That's the overcoming part. Conquer and overcoming. I can't explain to you how we turned at the time we thought was a negative, into a positive.
And now here are some lessons that I learned as well too that I want to talk to people about. If you started your business yourself with the one machine, then you already know all this. I'm talking to, and I talk to a lot of people that are generational businesses. I'm talking to generational businesses, I guess, or even if you are, whatever. This is good information to know. And this is all my fault. Let me prefix all this. Everything as a leader is my wrongdoing. I put somebody in charge of my business to do invoicing, run day to day and everything that essentially wasn't doing, I don't know how to word this, just wasn't doing a good job. I thought that it was. And it's not his or her fault for doing that. That's my fault. I just pushed somebody into a position and said, “Great, run this business.” Basically be operations and do this, do all my invoicing and all this. And I don't know how to do any of that or I don't know how to do any of that because I'm doing this and you're doing that. I was looking outward. He was more inward. And that was my bad and that is my fault. And what I learned was don't hire for a position in your company unless you know how it at least works. Like estimating I'm never going to be an amazing great estimator, but I know how it works now, so I can hire that position. I didn't know how our invoicing worked. It sounds stupid, but when you think about it, you can really make your money when your invoicing. I wasn't talking to the clients about overages or change orders or time and materials or hourly rates. I was so evolved in my business that I had no idea. And I put somebody in charge of that that also had no idea and was just pushed into this position. And I'm not saying they did a bad job. They did a great job. We're still here and we grew a lot, but it wasn't as good as it is today. And that's totally my bad. So listen to this. Don't hire people for a position that you know nothing about. You have to know something about it. You have to hire people that are smarter than you, or else you'll never grow. And trust me, there's guys out there that are smart. Alex is smarter than me at estimating. But don't hire in a position that you don't understand fully. And that's what I really took away from this year, as well as the conquering, overcoming, because it just completely transformed our business. Such a negative went into such a positive. That's basically what I wanted to people to understand about the conquer and overcoming.
And also trimming the fat was a really hard thing, especially when you're a smaller company And I mentioned trimming the fat. And a lot of business owners don't talk about this, but you build a bond and relationship with these people, your employees, they become friends, they become family. And then ultimately, at the end of the day, it's like, okay, but I'm running a business. I have to make this tough call to let these people go or let this person go. And that sucks as well too. And that was hard because there were a couple guys, awesome, awesome dudes. But just financially, what they would perform and what they would do and what the business needed were just two different things. So you got to have that tough call, tough decision with them. And that's when you just got to put your big girl or big boy pants on and say, "Listen, this is how it is, and I wish you nothing but the best. And in the future, if there is a position that opens up for you or here, I will reach out and I will ask you, or if you ever need help with anything, if you ever need a good reference, you let me know.” That's how the good conversations go with good employees, with bad employees that leave, with hiring and firing. Just a different conversation. See you later. Wish you all the best. Still say, wish you all the best. It's good to play cool. Playing it cool is a really important thing as well.
Another thing. Learn patience and learn keeping calm, keeping cool. Last week, if you have me on Instagram @kwc2000, you would have seen a video that I posted. And I only posted it because he came into the office and was aggressive towards just a girl that was in the office alone and whatever, it was just not a good scenario. This guy was drinking and he accused me of potentially booting his truck, which was weird. Like I don't have better things to do than kick someone's truck. I was just like this whole weird scenario. But the point of the story, my rant here is that by keeping calm I made that guy seem so stupid. And with employees, keep your calm with them and have patience. And we were talking about this with the group chat that I have with those guys I was with in Montana, because one of them had an employee that did a burnout in a shop. And we were talking, and I'm not going to go into specifics because it's not my story to tell, but ultimately he's like, “What would you guys do?” And it depends on the day, because I had a different kind of motive to it. I was saying, “Well, I'd get really mad, yell at them, scream at them, and fire them.” But then I'm like, wait, I had that happen to me and I wrote the guy up that did it. And that's all I did was write them up. It was an idiot move. It was a stupid thing. But sometimes we all do stupid things and you kind of just need to have that patience and be cool, calm and collected to really, I guess, effectively run a business. I don't know, I'd be curious for other people's feedback because I flip flop, right? And I'm having this conversation with myself right now. It's like, some days I'm cool, calm and collected. Then some other days you're just like, you know what? I'm out for me, myself and I. And screw this, because I'm going to go and do whatever I want right now. And other people aren't going to call me on how to act. But that's probably not a good mindset to have, but people get crazy around Christmas time, man. Christmas time right now. People get crazy. People are getting crazy. All right. Especially in our industry, there's the winter layoff. People are buying presents or buying stuff they can't afford. Or because everything is so expensive right now, people are freaking out because. And I say it as well, too. It's insane. You have family members and then you got to buy gifts. And it's Christmas shouldn't be about that, but sometimes it is, and it's just really stressful for people and just kicks the light. It's really stressful for a lot of people right now. That's what's really tough.
Oh, that's what I wanted to talk about as well too. So we bought a D5 Caterpillar. That was our single handed biggest purchase of a machine yet. I was over half a million dollars, that machine and that thing is a beast. And we had it painted black. That was part of the deal. There's a whole deal on this machine. We don't need to get into specifics on the dollar amount or how it worked, but painting it black was one of the things that we were super excited about. I'm actually going to get to see it tomorrow for the first time and we're going to get our branding and everything put on it. But by now it's definitely on at least Instagram. That is a really cool machine. And the decision behind buying that was essentially now that we have a pit, we need to get this year a bunch of aggregates out of that pit. And with the size sizing and machinery they have now, we wouldn't be able to do that. Also this year we spent probably close to $50,000 to $60,000 on renting a dozer this year, with the sign of next year still doing more larger work as well and needing to use a dozer. So we're like, hey, you know what? I think you build it and then come we have a use for this machine right away. But this machine will allow us to grow. And that's kind of what we did with the 325 as well too, because that was a big step for us. Now we have 336 and it makes 325 look small. But buying machinery, sometimes it's like–
Running a business is all how you dictate risk to me. I'm a big risk taker and I love risk. Obviously, I love debt. It's not like I'm saying we bought a half a million dollars paid for. I'll be paying for that for a while. That's a big purchase. And I mean, if you can leverage debt and make it work, then do it. I say go balls to the wall. A lot of people say debt's not good. Well, the podcast we just had on Julie Sanders, where grandparents or family members are like, “Hey debt's bad. If you don't have the money in your bank account to pay for it, then you can't afford it.” I just totally disagree. I obviously don't have that money in my bank account, but to buy a D5, I'll be able to pay for it in whatever, call it three, four years and then I have this asset, but the amount of work that that thing will be able to generate for us, and I guess that's where the risk comes in. Because it's not like we signed a deal on a job that's like, great, I need a D5 for the next two, three years. So it's guaranteed to be paid for. You take a risk going, hey, like we could use it here. But also hopefully it allows us to grow and we can take on bigger work. People know now that we have bigger machinery and we can take on larger, bigger scopes of projects. I mean that's a big production. For me, that's a big production dozer. But it's the smaller end of a production dozer when you talk to people like a D5 because it's just the old D6T or D6N. But man, taking risks, there's something about it that just gives me that adrenaline rush. As I was saying, when we bought the 325, that was such a huge step for us. We only had a 16, 17 ton excavator before that. And then we're like, “Hey, we're going to buy a 325. We're going to paint it black and we're going to put a rototilt on it.” Hindsight, that was the best decision we ever did because with social media it really helped us grow. We bought a bunch more machinery after that. And locally in the area, it really helped with hiring because that was during COVID times when hiring is really bad. And because we had such a high social media presence, people were like, “Dude, there's this construction company around me that paints some stuff black and they just look really awesome to work for. And they're growing. I want to be a part of that.” And that's what really helped us hire and force the team that we have now. But if you didn't take that risk, we wouldn't have what we have now. And I truly believe that if you can take risk and make it work and you can leverage the right amount of debt, I'm not saying go out and take on millions and millions of dollars of debt and go, “Well, Taylor said I could just make it work.” If you have in your mind, okay, here's something that is a crazy idea, but I have to work for it right now and I think that I can make it work in the future. Then I say go out and do it.
You know what? Because I always think about the worst case, what is the worst thing that's going to happen? Caterpillar comes, puts my D5 back on a float and brings it back to their yard because I can't pay for it. So you're not going to try to grow because you're worried that somebody's going to come and take your D5. The worst thing that's going to happen is you can't make a payment, you can't pay for it and it goes back. The only thing that gets hurt in that is your ego and your credit, your ego and your pride. So if you can put ego and pride behind you, which obviously, I'm making it sound easy, but excuse me, it's not. Then why not do it? And when I talk like this sometimes in the office, dad's always like, “Hey, this is not a situation you want to be in.” And obviously I'm not saying maybe I'm making it sound like we are buying this D5, we over leverage ourselves. No, it's a big purchase for us and we'll make it work. But I'm saying if you're listening to this and currently you have a Kubota little mini X and a dump trailer and you're like, “I really want a skid steer, but they're a lot of money. But I've been renting a skid steer a lot. I have the work for it.” I say go out and do it. I say, “Who cares? Go out, try to make it work.” And I think that stuff kind of just falls into line. You just need to go out. How do we get work? Meet the GCs, go out, meet clients. If you have a job, assign out front.
Another thing, assign out front. How do I get work now? Now that I bought this machinery that Taylor told me to go into debt for, how do I– By the way, this is not financial advice. I'm not a financial advisor. I'm a third generation business owner. Silver spoon fed kid. How do I get work now that I have this stuff? When I first started wanting to grow and get outside of life, we had one good GC we worked for whenever I was taking over. And then other than that, I was just a homeowner's word of mouth, our website was really nothing. We had no social media presence. I just got on social media, I started doing Facebook targeted ads and I didn't know what I was doing. There were people in Serbia getting my ads. They're like, “I don't think they should be reaching me, but nice septic system installations.” And I just tried and saw what worked. But you know what really worked is the thousand bucks that I spent on road signs. When we do a septic system installation in a neighborhood that all the houses are built in the ‘70s or ‘80s, because they're all going to probably start coming up for renewal. What we've done is we put one of the wire things that go into the ground and you slide your sign over top, you put it on. And they're very inexpensive. I think a thousand got me like 350 signs or 400 signs. And those signs get us so much work because other people in the cul-de-sac or the subdivision, they drive by, they take a picture and it'll be like a year or two years later. “Yeah, I saw that you guys did Joanne septic down the road. I took a picture of it and I remember you guys did a really nice clean job. And the road was always clean. And I actually spoke to Joanne and she said that you guys did a really good job and we're going to get you to do that job.” For the homeowner stuff, the signage out on roads is huge. And coming from a guy that’s totally digital, social media based, we do YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, that stuff is so invaluable and you need to be doing that. But something, getting back to the roots as easy as putting a road sign at the road is so important. And that would be one of my biggest tips for working in rural areas, getting work with other homeowners, word of mouth, road signs, do a good job, don't do job, do what you've quoted. Go above and beyond to make sure– I always tell my guys, keep the roads clean, use ground mats over the laneway. Nothing makes other people not want to hire you than if they drive by our job site, it looks like a bomb went off. For example, when we do septics, we even shape the material. The material that we pull out and throw off to the side that's going to be loaded out later. I'll tell my guys, take 15, 20 minutes at the end of the day, shape the piles and make them look nice all the same height around and shape them and make the tops of them flat so that when the homeowner looks out at the backyard or the neighbors drive by and they go, “Oh, my God, those guys have a really clean job site. They're excavating this home's front yard. But, man, they make it look really clean and neat. And look at the road, it's swept at the end of the day, their machinery's not falling apart. Their dump trucks are all nice and clean. Their machinery's nice and clean. Their guys look good.” That is the biggest thing.
And then another thing that we talk about on site as well that helps with word of mouth, is just making sure that whoever's in charge out on site, your foreman, but even down to your equipment operators and laborers, make sure they just know, “Hey, guys, listen. Read the room. If the homeowner is somebody that you'd picture going to Sunday church and buttoned up, collared shirt, maybe they don't like all the F bombs and talking about what you did on the weekend, drinking some pints and this and that, maybe change that and be a little more refined. Watch your language out on site. Read the room with your clients. And that's something that we always highlight with our guys. But if you go to a job site and there's another guy who actually works in a trade doing something else, okay, well, then shoot the [expletive] with them. Have a good time. Read the room. Having your guys understand that they are actually the keys to success with your clients is huge. And I can honestly say if any of our employees are working, thank you. Because more times than not, they were just on a job in a septic, and the homeowner came out and gave each guy a hundred dollars each cash as a tip. And they came back, they're like, ‘Dude, she gave us a tip of a hundred bucks cash each.” I'm like, “Holy smokes, that is crazy.” And her email back to us was like, “Hey, the whole septic portion, great, Went awesome. But I just want to highlight how awesome your employees were.” And that was awesome. And when I get an email from that, because trust me, I would say 90% of the other emails, if a homeowner takes their time to email me about something about the project, something like a septic or something, generally it's like your guys are on site and they did this or I really thought the bed was going to be this high, but it's this high. It's just kind of back, which is fine. I'm just saying it's never like when you get a good thing from a client. It's like, Oh, okay. That makes all of it worth it because you go back out and you're able to tell your guys, be like, “Guys, I got this awesome message from the client. Thank you so much.” And then generally, it helps with the whole money portion as well, too, because if your guys do a really good job, they're super friendly. It's normally followed up by, “Send me the final invoice, I'll get a check done up to you, and I'll drop it by at your office.” Boom. That is awesome.
So I can't stress enough if you have employees or just yourself, I tell my guys, even if you're having a bad day, just have a good day around the client. We just started a big commercial job up in a town, and I just texted my guys last night because this is a. We're in a new territory up here. We don't travel for work often, but this was a big enough job where we're like, “Okay, we will.” I said, “Guys, we're the new guys in town.” And it's a small town as well. I said, we're the new guys in town. I said, “Drive safe. No road rage stuff.” Not that they do, but just as a reminder, you're driving through neighborhoods. Drive 10 kilometers slower than the speed limit. Take your time. If the owners are out that we're doing the job for and you're going for a coffee run, ask them if they want a coffee, bring one back for you. I said, I'll reimburse you. Just take care of them. If there's an old lady at the lunch spot that you're at and she's having a hard time opening the door, open the door for her. You guys are driving company trucks, branded clothing, branded trucks, branded machinery. Take your time, enjoy it. But you're the new guys in town, and that goes a long distance, especially if you're traveling for work and going to a new town, because maybe this will open up a whole new opportunity for us where we get to work up there. Not even on just big jobs, but there's a lot of other smaller stuff or growth going on in the town as well. And they said, “You know what? Hey, Ken White they were good whenever they came into town, maybe we should give them a call and see if they could help us out with this project.” So it's a lot of that kind of future work as well, too. But that project's a lot of fun that's going on right now. That is the largest septic system I just posted about on Instagram, and I did it on LinkedIn as well too. It's a 11 or 12 tank Waterloo system. Massive, massive septic bed. Like 336 is digging it. And you could have two 336s there doing a wild job 4,500 tons of sand, 6,700 tons of just septic stone. Insane. Biggest septic ever, Ken White history. Biggest job ever, Ken White History. And that was Alex, our estimator.
Now, we did look at it a year and a half ago with my other estimator, but it was budgetary and then it went away and we're like, “Oh, this job's not going to go.” This whatever. It's a huge job but they're still working with the ministry environment or whatever. And then cut to this summer Alex is like, “Hey, we got this email from.” I'm like, “Okay, I think we've looked at this before.” And then we went up, we met with them and Alex repriced it, met with the clients. He went up multiple times. And I got to give him credit whenever we got the job because my foreman, Corey, who actually looks after all of our septics– This is an important thing that we did too when we were pricing the job because it's a big septic. Corey knows septics like the back of his hand. We actually pulled him into the pricing of it and said, how long to dig this, how long to install this, how long to put this many tanks in? And we got his input just because of the size of the job. And it was funny because he actually said quicker than what we were estimating for, which was pretty cool. But we were able to kind of pull him in. So he knew about the job and he was like, “Hey, did we get it?” So when we got it, I said, “You know what? You need to call Alex and congratulate him because he got the job. We got the email today that we won the project and that was a big win for Alex.”
So I'm really pumped about this year. I'm pumped about all the stuff that we learned. I'm pumped and proud of conquering and overcoming and I'm proud that we turned some of the biggest negatives into the biggest positives. And sometimes blessings come in really weird shapes and forms. But this year, our blessings came in the form of just revamping our entire office staff and our core management. And I could not be more proud and more happy with the team that we have currently right now carrying us into the winter with more winter work than we would have ever had in any other year. So I'm very, very fortunate. And I'm fortunate that I got to have a podcast solo with everybody here today. Thanks for listening to the CONEXPO/CON-AGG Podcast. I love the people over at CONEXPO. I love talking to you guys all the time. It's just nice to be a little solo sometimes, I guess, and go off the cuff and tell you what's on my brain and. But that's something that I've been wanting to talk about for a while. Thank you for tuning in today, guys. We shall catch you on the next one.