Struggling to scale your excavation business? Trey Bohannan, President of Design One Contracting the most-viewed construction podcast guest of 2024, returns to reveal the exact steps he took to go from small residential jobs to landing major commercial projects – and how you can do it too. Trey shares his unfiltered, no-BS approach to growth, including the crucial "lucky phone call" that changed everything, how to navigate the pitfalls of commercial work, and why maintaining your core values is the ultimate key to success.
Topics:
- Turning loss into leadership
- Breaking into commercial construction
- Handling financial struggles
- Mentorship and giving back: supporting the next generation
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Episode transcript:
Taylor White: Welcome back, everybody, to the CONEXPO/CON-AGG Podcast. I am your host, Taylor White. With me here today, I have Mr. Number One, the most viewed podcast, listened to podcast in all of 2024, the King of the South, Mr. Trey Bohannan. Welcome back.
Trey Bohannan: Hey, guys. Hope you all are doing well.
Taylor White: How you doing coming off that big win of being number one?
Trey Bohannan: Well, I didn't know nothing about it because I don't keep up with a lot of social media stuff.
Taylor White: Which is interesting for you. You know what's interesting? So the first time, this is the second time, this is your first time seeing Trey. You know he's down in Arkansas, right? Pine Bluff.
Trey Bohannan: Yep. Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
Taylor White: You know, I remember I was scrolling TikTok one night and I saw him and I was like, this is wild. I think you had, like 2,000, 3,000 followers. And I was like, wow, this guy's really interesting. And now here you are. I just saw you were just at World of Concrete representing. You were there with BusyBusy, and you were doing all this stuff and it's crazy to see how far you've come.
Trey Bohannan: Yeah. It's been a pretty wild ride. Yeah, I enjoy it. Don't get me wrong, we still have to run a business and do everything we do, but I enjoy being able to help people. That's my number one goal. You know, I lost my mentor three years ago on January 25th. We just had the third year anniversary, and right after he had passed away, that's when I started doing this. And it's been a good deal, and I'm glad a lot of people enjoy it. And we have some good people that watch the channels.
Taylor White: And that's actually interesting to know. So you losing your mentor made you realize maybe I should put myself out there. Maybe I could mentor thousands of other people.
Trey Bohannan: He took me. I went to work for him when I was 13, 14 years old, and he didn't have to spend the time or share the knowledge or teach me the things he did, but he did. And we were best friends up to the day he died. He was 83 years old, but he was just such a remarkable guy and such a gentleman, but at the same time he could be standing next to angels and sit on the devil's shoulder. He had two sides of him. He could be the meanest dude you ever met or the nicest person you want to know.
Taylor White: I got to say Big Trey, he's on your social media, he's reading the DMs, he's looking at the comments on TikTok, whatever emails, mails, whatever's coming in. You guys do such a good job, and you do a good job of finding the questions that people have and you answer them. And I think that's why you found so much success, is because you're not lying to anybody. You've actually done it. And the way that you answer is just so transparent and honest. What would you say is the most asked question that people reach out to? And what type of people are reaching out to you?
Trey Bohannan: So I got a couple emails behind me on the desk there. They print them out. And so I have to give 99% of the credit to our channel to Big Trey. If it weren't for him, we would never have this. You know, I've never sent an email. Never plan on sending a damn email. You know, he knows all this technology stuff. And so where we come from, two totally different backgrounds and it works. Now, he also is in charge of a lot of dump trucks here, running sub trucks, our trucks, keeping materials on jobs and stuff like that. It's a great deal because I could be in the field and make sure things happen. He's logistically making sure things happen. So just because I grew up this way and he grew up this way, doesn't mean you don't have a great fit. You know, we just make it work and, but I cannot take all the credit. He is 99% of the reason where we're at with the social media stuff.
Taylor White: Now, what would you say when you do have those emails printed behind you? What is the most asked question?
Trey Bohannan: Okay, Taylor, here's one. “Hey, I want to start my own excavation company, but I don't know how to bid for excavation or backfill.” Okay, this guy, I'm not going to mention his name. All right. Here's another one, which that's not a common question. This is one that says, “Hey, man. I'm from West Tennessee. I just recently started following you on TikTok. Been doing smaller jobs, house pads, driveways, land clearing, etc. Looking forward to expanding to another piece of equipment this coming year. What's your thoughts on the next piece of equipment?” So a lot of them are either, “Hey, Trey, I want to get into commercial work. I do residential,” or “Trey, what's the next piece of equipment I should buy?”
Taylor White: And how would you answer that last question that you read?
Trey Bohannan: It's kind of hard to say, Taylor, without knowing exactly what this guy's got going on. But I would say skid steer, mini X, small dump truck, something that could pull both of them. You could utilize the dump truck. You're just working by yourself, make that work.
Taylor White: So for somebody that's already in construction, they're doing residential. And I guess maybe a lot of guys just want to know how do they get to that next step? Right?
Trey Bohannan: Yep. The next step is generally a lucky phone call. That's just being straight up honest. A lucky phone call. A contractor calls you that you met at a parts store. Just whatever. You might not even know the guy, and he says, “Hey, I need some grading for these or these sidewalks on this job. The dirt contractor's busy. Can't get them over here. They're not answering your phone.” You get your [EXPLETIVE] in the skid steer and get over there and start grading out for sidewalks. And if you don't know how to shoot grades, ask them. They'll teach you. They're in a bind, so just make it happen.
Taylor White: So would you say making relationships, though, is key, and then taking care of those contractors at Christmas time, getting them a little gift or taking them out to a breakfast or lunch or something like that?
Trey Bohannan: They're your lifeline. They are. And you know that, Taylor. You're in the business. Those contractors are our lifeline. And without them, we're nothing. If I'm not out selling out front, none of this [EXPLETIVE] matters.
Taylor White: So if you're residential, you want to get into construction you finally get the call, what, I guess, things would you tell somebody to look out for? Because a couple things come to my mind. It would be, it's not residential world. So you're not getting paid within 30 days. Sometimes it's 60, 90, and you got your 10% retainage holdbacks. What kind of advice would you tell somebody or what tips would be like, hey, look out for this, look out for that?
Trey Bohannan: Yeah. So they need to have a little bit of capital built up, whether that being your grandma has $10,000 in the bank and can help you out . Whatever it takes to get there. And I tell folks all the time, I started with nothing. You know, I've always been like a pit bull. I'm going to fight till my ears are ate off. You know, if you got any quit in you, you might as well go to Dollar General and just Stockbridge, because that's where you are going to be for the rest of your life.
Taylor White: So do you remember your kind of big break? I guess your phone call, your lucky phone call?
Trey Bohannan: Damn sure do. They had a big project, the city did downtown, and it was a big landscape job. It was probably right at $100,000. And the contractor said it was a sprinkler system, finish grade, dirt subs, the top four inches, and trees. And I think when it was said and done, I was around $75,000, $80,000. So I walked in it and I knocked it out for like two weeks. I never had that kind of money. I went and bought an S150 Bobcat, paid cash for it, bought another work truck. So that one little job got me up to this next step. And after that, everything is just a step, you know? And at some point in your life, I don't care how good you are at doing [EXPLETIVE], you're going to lose 50% of all your [EXPLETIVE] at some point in life. Whether it be a divorce, an inheritance gone wrong. You know, you got siblings, you might have a farm or a construction company, and you got to split it all up. At some point in life, any successful man is going to lose 50% of all his [EXPLETIVE], and you got to be prepared for it.
Taylor White: And it's interesting too, that you mentioned that your first commercial job went really well. Because a lot of the time with commercial, at least for us, like residential, the profit margins are a little bit higher. And then the commercial world, they're normally a little bit lower, but the rep, like the overall gross is a lot more.
Trey Bohannan: Commercial can eat you a lot. I mean, I have been on jobs where we got our [EXPLETIVE] handed to us. You learn from those mistakes. Everything I teach on any of this is from my mistakes because I've made them for the last 30 years. And I'm going to probably make them for the next 10 or 15, whatever God lets me stick around for. And I'm going to screw up on the daily and pop a wheelie every time I can.
Taylor White: Yeah. We were talking about that this morning, and we're pricing a commercial job and we have a sub working under us for asphalt and concrete. And a buddy of mine that works out right now, he just got hit with a change order from the sub working under him saying that he was 3 inches low on the whole parking lot. They hit him with like a $70,000 hit and the GC approved it. So now he has got to give this money back. And it's actually insane. I mean, and he's just a couple years in business and although he'll recover from it, that's the sort of stuff that we were talking about this morning. I'm like, guys, we have to document everything. When we're done with our excavation and they're coming in behind us to asphalt or concrete, I'm walking around with the GPS, stick with them and we're going to confirm all the grades together. Then after that we're all going to sign a document saying we walked around together and all the grades were good. And it's crazy because that's the world of commercials. The next guy, he doesn't care who you are about your family or your kids, they're going to screw you if they can to get some more money out of the GC and get a change order.
Trey Bohannan: I ran into the exact same thing about five years ago on a big project. We were doing all the blue rock. And asphalt contractor came in three months, he was busy. Three months later, bunch of big rains come in, railed it all out. We were about 77 loads that wasn't there no more. Well, we were trucking it, I want to say around 70 something, 75 miles somewhere in that area one way, was buying the material. And so I did it and I figured it out later. And I got with the contractor, I said, “This dog won't hunt. You're going to pay me for this.” And we sat down and they did. They paid me for that rock. It was all degraded and they let off. It was all on heels so it railed it out bad. All of it was in the ditches and culverts and everything else.
Taylor White: What would you say is a good trait to have in that scenario? Because in that scenario, I think as a business owner, much like maybe your mentor, it's good to be a lover, but you also need to be a fighter. You need to be able to stick somebody when they're trying to stick it to you.
Trey Bohannan: Well, the best thing in that type of situation is to have a wall to your back where you can't back up, you can only go forward. And if you are 3 inches low, 4 inches low, or whatever, it happens, go in there and fill it in. Say, “No, we ain't going to do [EXPLETIVE]. We're going to have my trucks come in and bring it in. We're going to set that base and then you all can start.” Instead of somebody changing on $70,000 and letting a GC approve, because me and that GC is going to have a long call.
Taylor White: Was there anything whenever you started going from residential, commercial– Well, how much of your business now is commercial? Are you like 50-50 commercial, residential?
Trey Bohannan: 100. It's always been 100 for a long time. My guys are paid very well, and I cannot send somebody being paid that much money to go over and do a driveway. I just can't make any money and fall through a culvert or septic tank. And that's the hardest thing to do, Taylor, say no. But damn, I say no all the time. They'll come in here, “Hey, this culvert down the road needs three acres cleared.” No. “Hey, this guy needs a driveway put in.” No. “Hey, there's a pool that needs to be pulled in, filled in in town.” No. But what I do do, Taylor, is I have a bunch of subs under me. We call them, say, “Hey, Jimmy Bob. This guy needs a pool put in. I'm going to sell you the material. I can help with the truck and whatever. How much are you going to charge me?” “I'll charge you $3,500.” Okay. “Hey, Mr. Dude that needs your pool filled in, we can do it for $6,500.” Boom, done. We got it.
Taylor White: And that's smart to do it that way.
Trey Bohannan: That's just the way we do it. We just cannot afford to. I can sit here and crush rock. If my guys had nothing to do, we would sit back here and crush concrete or we be working in the shop.
Taylor White: That's interesting. So if you're on a commercial job removing concrete, you bring it back to your yard, crush it, and then sell it back on other jobs.
Trey Bohannan: Yeah. We bring it all back here and then we stockpile it and then we run it through the crusher in the spring plant. And a lot of people bring me concrete. They all know I take concrete, so I charge them $60 a tilt fee. So I'll get $60 off that truck load right off the get go. And then I'm going to turn it back and crush it up and retail it back out for $300.
Taylor White: That's awesome. That's really cool. I like that idea. What kind of setup do you have for crushing and screening?
Trey Bohannan: So we got a Sandvik crusher. I don't know the numbers on. It's a big one on tracks, 130,000 lbs. And then I got Aztec spring plant that puts out three different materials, an inch and a half and fine, six to eight inch and then a three to four inch point.
Taylor White: Oh, nice. That's really neat. Does that make you more competitive in your commercial jobs?
Trey Bohannan: I don't know if it makes me more competitive, but it sure is a good downtime operation. When we have nothing else to do, let's go crush rock. And if we got track of those available here in the lot, we'll put them on that or whatever. We just fired back up on it yesterday. We hadn't crushed any in six months, but we just haven't had time.
Taylor White: So you're pretty busy right now.
Trey Bohannan: Yeah. We got three big ones going right now and a fourth one in the pipeline and we'll know here in a couple of weeks. We got it. So we're going to have to get after. But we're failing moisture. We failed moisture this morning, 1% on a job. So I moved them over to another job. So every day I have a plan A, a B and a C and plan D's go home. Done.
Taylor White: Yeah, that is key though. I mean, that's smart. Like you have to be able to move the guys around, have something else in case something doesn't go.
Trey Bohannan: Oh yeah. Before you get to work, you need to have your plan laid out. You don't need to get in front of all your guys and say, “Well, I don't know what we're going to do today, because if you do that, it's not going to last long.
Taylor White: So do you do a lot of the operations yourself then? Like as far as dispatch, who's going where the next day? As far as cruise?
Trey Bohannan: No, I do more of the just hands on but I have a say so in a lot of it, you know what's going on.
Taylor White: How big's your office staff?
Trey Bohannan: Well, we got Big Trey and Rick in the office. And so Rick is pretty much overall financials and everything. Big Trey is doing the logistics on the truck. And then Brooksy, one of our main guys, he kind of runs all the smaller crews on the landscape mowing side, which he had a massive heart attack on us. So he is going to be pretty much an office personnel full time now, which is going to be great.
Taylor White: And who does the estimating?
Trey Bohannan: Big Trey, me and Tyler. We got another boy named Tyler. Tyler does all our GPS stuff. He's real smart and he goes out of the job and checks grades, shoots grade, and we bid stuff two different ways. We'll do it on the computer and then we do it on the notepad and then sometimes I'll let them do it on the notepad. I'll do it on a notepad, Big Trey do it on the computer and then we all compare notes and see who missed a culvert or a storm drain box or a tie and it's the best system in the world.
Taylor White: So you get a big commercial job, it comes to you. A lot of your commercial projects, do you have a good enough relationship with the GC to know okay, I'm going to get this job no matter what? Or are you like, okay, I got to be tight on my numbers because competition's stiff right now?
Trey Bohannan: A lot of them are different. It depends on the relationship, who I'm dealing with. But a lot of our jobs seem like the last five years are negotiated.
Taylor White: That's really good.
Trey Bohannan: Yeah. We negotiate. And they'll say, “Hey, we got a budget.” I'll say, “Hey, I want to get every bit of that.” And they say, “We don't want no change orders.” And I'll say, “Okay. We'll try to stick to this budget.” Generally, if a GC, let's say he's got 600 in for civil and he can know that number's good all the way through, it’s going.
Taylor White: Now, somebody that's just getting commercial and they're just learning the world of change orders and stuff, talk a little bit about change orders, how they work, and any tips for change orders that you would have..
Trey Bohannan: So a lot of people say on the job, get something signed and all that. Nowadays we have emails. So if somebody on the job says, hey, they want to– Let's say we got a 24-inch cut. We're going to have to cut 48 out. That project manager will email us or we'll email them and then we'll have whoever the geotech is doing the quantities, then we'll cross section the quantities also.
Taylor White: And then billing for it though, like the money part, how does that work for change orders? Do you go like, okay, I price this job and I'm really only doing 8%, 9%, 10% overall. But when it's a change order, heck, I'm getting 20% to 25% profit margins on this?
Trey Bohannan: Yeah, I don't look at the profit margin. It just really doesn't bother me. But generally when we do our pay app at the end of the month, on the 20th or the 25th, we'll see if we could throw those change orders in. But a lot of times they have to be billed out the following month because they have to go in front of a board.
Taylor White: So that's interesting though. So like you guys pricing internally, like you're not looking at, okay, what's our cost now and add our profit on top of it?
Trey Bohannan: We'll have a shotgun pattern on it. We just, hey, we're running $23 on fill and $10 on cut. Let's just go with it. We don't sit there and run margin numbers. My margin is I want to make sure I got a half million dollars always sitting in one account, you know?
Taylor White: That's a luxury to really have. And whenever you decide to grow, like us over the last couple of years, there's not half a million sitting in the account but one stuff get paid out for.
Trey Bohannan: It'll get down so low sometimes. Well, I'll be sitting there at night, wake up and go, “I need to call this guy tomorrow. He owes us this.” Or, “I need to call this guy.” So I'm constantly running these numbers through my head all the time. Jimmy Bob owes me this. Jimmy Hickey ain't paid. You know, I'm constantly, and anybody in the office can tell you I can tell you what's out and what's in. I'll say what's in the account, what's in the bag and that's what I do.
Taylor White: When you decided to grow and start doing more commercial and stuff, obviously, you got to put out more capital for that stuff. Was it kind of like friends and family like, “Hey, I need a little bit of slush fund here to help my business grow” or would you ever work with the bank on an operating line of credit or something like that?
Trey Bohannan: No, just did it out of pocket. But I never got into my savings. I've done this my whole life and I've never touched my savings.
Taylor White: That's wild. But what's your mythology like? Why do you think that is? Because we were the opposite. I mean like we took on loads of amount of debt four years ago to get to where we are now. Thankfully, we're in a great position. Stuff being paid for. But what would you say? Is it slow growth technique?
Trey Bohannan: Slow growth technique. Don't your [EXPLETIVE] overload. Don't overload your [EXPLETIVE]. But as far as buying equipment, I never been scared of it. No, never, you know. And my great uncle Willis, he's a logger, he always told me while I was kid, he said, “Don't go buy something till you pay something off,” you know. Now, let's say you got 10 notes I'm saying, and you say I'm not going to have no more than 10 notes. Don't ever have more than 10 notes, you know. But as you're growing, your notes are going to get bigger and bigger. You know, you go buy one piece of equipment, that's $300,000 or $400,000 worth your whole operation, your life wasn't worth that 10 years ago, you know.
Taylor White: So you don't see anything wrong with somebody maybe going and financing something versus you know, saying hey, if you don't have the cash in the bank to buy it, don't buy it?
Trey Bohannan: That's kind of a double edged sword because I do go out to pay cash for some stuff but at the same time, if it's something we need, I'm going to go buy it. You know, we needed a couple rollers a couple years ago we bought two damn near brand new rollers. I needed two more rollers and I make my money back with it.
Taylor White: Yeah. Because I see online you talk a lot about the older stuff and I've seen older stuff but obviously an operation that you have like you have to have some newer stuff. They cost. Like you said $300,000 or $400,000, but sometimes even more. You get into big excavators or dozers. I mean, there's $600,000, $700,000 machines.
Trey Bohannan: Yeah. I don't know how many dozers we got. We got, I don't know, 13 or 14 dozers. We owe on one dozer and then track hoes, I don't even know how many trackers we've got, but we owe on two trackers, you know.
Taylor White: Awesome. So keeping overhead low.
Trey Bohannan: I try to. My payroll. My payroll's my biggest, you know.
Taylor White: Payroll and fuel.
Trey Bohannan: Yeah. And like I said last time, if my fuel bill's high, we are making money, baby. I see that tanker truck rolling through. Hey, we don't hit him a lick that month before.
Taylor White: Now, when you go to commercial, okay, a crew should have four or five guys on it. But maybe we should try running a little bit more lean to expect more out of my guys. Like, how do you run your employees? Does this person just run an excavator? Does this person just run a dozer or are your guys versatile?
Trey Bohannan: Our guys are versatile. They will jump out of a dump truck and be on a roller if somebody's needing it. We run lean crews. A dirt crew can consist of about three people running a big job. I mean, I look at some jobs up north. They have 10 scrapers, five. We don't run jobs like that. You know, we'll be on a school job or a new McDonald's or like a gymnasium or something. Yeah, you don't need all those folks. Now if we do get on a job where we're having to run water trucks and all this other stuff, we'll put five, ten folks, you know. But anybody that works here can run a roller. Anybody can run a water truck. Not everybody can run dump truck. Dump truck drivers are a totally different breed. But all my drivers are good guys and they will jump out and go help the crew if they need some, whether it be jumping on a jumping jack they'll go do it.
Taylor White: And then you have somebody in the shop constantly that's working on stuff.
Trey Bohannan: Oh, yeah. We got two motors in there. We're trying to finish out a motor in a Volvo off road truck. Right now, we're waiting on a thrush washer to come in today. And then hopefully we'll have it back up and running. And you know me, I like running some old stuff. And a lot of people say, “Oh, I wouldn't run no old stuff.” That's just me. We can work on it. We do. And I think anybody that's smart in business and they're in the dirt business, you don't go buy a new dozer to keep in a pit, just push off with. You go buy 20 or 30-year-old dozer, it'll push off, you know.
Taylor White: Yeah, exactly. You got to have the workload for it and put it somewhere where yeah, it’s going to just sit.
Trey Bohannan: Oh, yeah. And a lot of these young guys that I talk to all the time and you know, we do the Turbo Expo every year here at my shop, we do it for free. It don't cost anything to come to it. But you got guys like Diggas Storms, Trent Harris, Brandon Biggs, Seth Clawson, Reed. I mean, all these kids, they're young dirt contractors. And I've got to watch these guys grow so much in the last three years, it's unbelievable.
Taylor White: I mean, Trent, really. I actually have to get him on the podcast. I love him. He just got that black Devlon.
Trey Bohannan: That’s one of his stickers right here. It says burn the boats up here on my deal.
Taylor White: Oh, yeah?
Trey Bohannan: Yeah. Trent, he came to my office and shot a video last year. He had my glasses on and sitting in my chair. I don't know. It's on one of his deals. But Trent Harris is just an outset. Trent Harris is a bulldog. I mean he's going to make it. I told him that the other day on the phone. He's fixing to build him a big shop and he was worried about the money. I said, “Hell, don't worry about the money. Just build the damn thing, then worry about the money.”
Taylor White: It's really cool though that like a lot of these guys, they really look up to you and you obviously understand that and know that. Do you think that's kind of cool, like bringing it around from where you were your mentor to now where these guys are looking at you? That's really fulfilling as a man.
Trey Bohannan: Oh, yeah. Well, and George was good to me. His name was George Finley. And when he died, I told myself, he'll always live. I told him that on his deathbed. He died, I drove 110 miles an hour. There's 60 miles and third lane. A bunch of folks tried to get to the hospital before he died. And third lanes, when two people are, one's in the fast lane, one's in the slow lane, you take the exit ramp. That's what I call the third lane. But I got up there and said goodbye and he died just like that.
Taylor White: Do you think that it's crucial to have a mentor like these guys, to look up and find a mentor?
Trey Bohannan: Yes. But being a mentor is not just being on screen. It's answering phone calls. A lot of people don't see the phone calls that I take daily and call people and the stuff that trade us for folks. We talk people off the ledge, they're at the end of their rope. They just cannot make it anymore. And they'll send an email. “Hey, I need help. I'm lost in life.” I sit on the phone one day for two and a half hours with a guy down South Texas.
Taylor White: That's wild. I mean, that's really neat that you do that. I think that that's really cool. Especially guys that want to grow their business and are kind of lost. What advice would you give somebody that does call you and says, “Listen I owe people a bunch of money, I don't know where I'm going right now,” what would you say? What assets do you have to sell off? Or what would your advice be if somebody said, “Listen, I'm in a bad spot”?
Trey Bohannan: Well, they tell me they owe a bunch of people money. I pretty much tell them that's them other folks' problem it ain't theirs. Go talk to them. Let them know you can't pay them. They'll get it figured out. A real man's going to go, say, “I'll pay you $100 a week till I get it paid off.” Boom, that's settled. It's when you don't answer the phone, you don't call the banker back. You don't call the fuel company back, you don't call the equipment company back. That's when you got a problem. And it's easy, Taylor, for these guys, we're in a world now where equipment's three times higher than what it was 10 years ago. They're putting their whole life on the line trying to make this living. And they go, “Can I do this? Can I go out and have a skid steer and a mulcher and make a living for my family?” I can't tell them yes or no. It's whether they got the dog in them or not. The fellow with the dog in him is going to go out there and work daylight to dark and sacrifice. He's not going to go on hunting trips and do cool with his buddies. He's going to make sure his children are taken care of, his wife's taken care of and their family affairs are taken care of.
Taylor White: I really love that because it's spot on. I say the same thing. We recently acquired a building company and just with all the other stuff going on and often than not right now, people are like, man, like how do you do that? Or how do you do this? And I'm sure people say the same thing to you and I say the same thing. There's people that are cut out for it and people that aren't. You know, the amount of stress, the amount of BS that comes your way, like more money, more problems is 100% the thing. I mean, when you're not making as much, you go, “Man, imagine what it's like when I'm doing $5 million, $10 million, $20 million. I'm going to be–” No, no, no. Your problems just get bigger and they get more frequent.
Trey Bohannan: That's exactly right. And I used to tell when I was young, I'd get mad, you know what I'm saying? When I get on a job and things aren't going right, if I'd have had some little round deals, you track stuff. If I had them on my tools, I'd be able to find them today. Because I'd chunk a crescent wrench across the field. I'd get pissed. The guys that's been here forever, they'll tell you, when I was young, I was hot headed and I wasn't mean, but we went hard. But we had to, we didn't have anything and I knew where I wanted to be. But you know, a lot of these young guys will look and say, “Oh, Trey's got it made.” I had the same problems you do.
Taylor White: Yeah. 100%. And not to say that now you still don't have problems. There's always, you're running big, you're running a big job site, you running a big company. There is always stuff going on in the background. It's just maybe now because you've been doing this for so long and even myself, I could walk down the shop right now and all the guys would be like, “Taylor's having a great day. Nothing's going bad in his life.” But the whole world could be crashing out in my office because this happened, this broke, this is going on. This GC is not paying. We lost this job by $10,000 on $3 million. Everything.
Trey Bohannan: Oh, [EXPLETIVE]. And then a sensor went out on the track code when you got 10 trucks load.
Taylor White: Exactly. And that's just it. And that's why I loved your point that they just don't have the dog in them. It's true. Because you have to be cut out for this [EXPLETIVE]. You have to be. And if you have to get good at dealing with it, and that's what you were saying is used to throw stuff in this and that. For me, I got to go and run. I'll go for a run or I'll go punch a punching bag or do something. Because I was the same as well, too. I remember sitting in a bulldozer and my dad having to come to site to site to talk me off a ledge. I was running a little 450, and they were bringing me blasted rock the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. And I was banging my head off the side of that dozer cab all day. And I said to Dad, “I can't do it anymore. I'm not doing this.” I jumped out of the machine. I throw all my stuff everywhere. And he's like, “Calm down. Relax. It's going to be fine.” And just dealing with that stuff, you can't act like that as you get bigger and larger and stuff like that.
Trey Bohannan: That’s right. And you know, Taylor, if you're running your own business and anybody's done it successfully or not successfully, I know this. When you wake up in the morning, you got to know damn well you're going to work to get your teeth kicked in. It's just how many kicks can you handle before you say stop. Now, that's every day. No matter how good it's starting off, it can go to shit in the hand basket quickly.
Taylor White: So what would you say helps with being able to take those more kicks? Because for me, it's definitely time. And that's something that I've learned. And even this year, my motto was patience. Because something would go wrong, I'd get a text, my heart would start going, and I'd be looking at it going, you know what? Boom. I'd start firing off, or I'd call the guy and say, “Are you [EXPLETIVE] kidding me?” You'd freak out. You react, you react right away. What I've learned this year is there's actually more power. You control more power. And things go better if I wait and say, “You know what? I'm going to wait till tomorrow morning at 7:00 or 8:00. I'm going to have the night. I'm going to think about it and then I'm going to carry forward from that.
Trey Bohannan: Yeah. I used to be really hot headed and now I don't get as upset as what I used to. And you know where I catch myself getting more pissed off now in life when I'm hunting or fishing and something goes wrong and I get so pissed off because I'm like, this is my time this shouldn't happen. And I kind of had to catch myself. I'm like, man, you're– I overreact sometimes. Like Hill last year went fishing and the guy threw the damn dead battery in my Ranger instead of putting the one I charged all night. And we got out there, I said, “You didn't put the hot battery in there.” “That's what that one was.” I said, “Well, you thought wrong.” And hell, I had to drive 20 miles to go get a damn hot battery.
Taylor White: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think it's definitely time that makes it so that you learn how to control whatever acting out or getting mad or angry or screaming or yelling. But I will say a lot of the times we make ourselves sound like, oh, they got it figured out. I still will get mad, I'll lose my cool, I will yell. It doesn't happen as often or more often. I'd say maybe two or three times a year at work do I get so mad at the point where I'm yelling. And it happens, I'd be a liar if I said that that doesn't happen.
Trey Bohannan: And it's generally, if you stop to think, why do I get so pissed off? It's generally a deadline because some project manager just chewed your [EXPLETIVE] the morning before and said, “We got to have this done.” Then you get to the job and everybody's on vacation acting like they're at Disneyland or some [EXPLETIVE]. And in your mind you're going, hey, we got to get this done. This has got to be ready for the concrete guys. So the pressure is there.
Taylor White: Yeah, it's just a bunch of other stuff. Like you said, that kind of compiles behind it and then just that person gets the short end of it because it hits your fuse.
Trey Bohannan: Yeah. And then if you make a bad decision at work and go home, whether it be your wife or girlfriend or girlfriends, somebody is going to chew your [EXPLETIVE ]out when you get home. But then you'll get to a point in life where you don't let that happen either, you know.
Taylor White: Yeah, 100%. I totally agree there. I really like your input of residential to commercial and understanding guys on how to get into commercial and how to start pricing it right. And I think the biggest thing for me at least would just be telling people like the margins, you're going to have losers, you're going to have winners.
Trey Bohannan: Yep. And I know this sounds bad, Taylor, but I never put a whole bunch of damn thought into something before I do it. I just get it done. And if we didn't make money, hell, we didn't make money. But as far as percentages, I don't never break a job down. Well, if everything goes right, we're going to make 30% or 10% or whatever. I just say get the damn job done. Let's go to the next one. And you know what? I have a simple mentality. I ain't got no education, but what I do is just what I do. And I have my own financial system in my head on how to do things. And you know, it's very simple and it's almost like I still feel like I'm 13 years old and a 13-year-old's running this whole damn thing because I still want to get on a bicycle and pop down wheelie and [EXPLETIVE] but I know I can't. My legs don't work like they used to and you know, I still want to do all that fun stuff, but I can't. But I'm stuck here. And so, yeah, I'll go out there, throw fireworks at people in the shop and just do funny, stupid [EXPLETIVE]. But that's what makes life good, is to still be able to be the kid you were growing up. And don't change. I'm going to tell you something and you young guys listen to this [EXPLETIVE]. If you start a business and you run it for 10 years, 15 years, and it changes you from who you were 15 years before. You still ain't one. I've watched a lot of damn folk. Well, they got them big houses and new cars and bass boats and lake houses, and they started acting better than somebody, I won't even talk to them no more. You know what? Because they act like they're better than everybody else. And if you ever act like you're better than somebody, you have totally lost.
Taylor White: I totally agree with that. It's what you said. If you change as a person. I think that's part of even me with my young kids raising them. I remember my dad always made a point of that. You know, there we'd see the garbage man picking our garbage up, and I'd be like as a young kid like five or six, and be like, “Oh, that'd be a stinky job.” And my dad goes, “Yeah, you know what, Tay? It would be a really stinky job. You're right. But you know what? Those guys in that truck, they're making this much money, and they're working really fricking hard, and if it weren't for them, guess what? Our garbage would be sitting at the end of the laneway. It'd be stinking even more. And we smell it.” He goes, “So you got to thank those guys because they're doing an awesome job. They work hard.”
Trey Bohannan: And you never look down on nobody, no matter what you got. I mean, I can't get into all the stories and stuff, but I help a lot of people. Not just on this, in different areas. And I'll never stop doing that because I'm still the same person I was 30 years ago. And I believe in helping people. When I die, I don't want people to say, “Hey, he was a hard worker,” none of that shit. I want to just say, “He was a good man.” That's it.
Taylor White: Yeah. And it's important, too. What you said is you still like to have fun. That's the same with us, too at the shop. My guys know I will be the first one to do the stupidest thing in the shop. And they know that. It'd be like if there's something, if the golf cart's still hanging around, well, Taylor's probably going to go do a donut in the golf cart. He's going to be the first one to go do that. And I think that that's a lot of fun. But that's what also makes it fun here is when it's work and it's a serious crunch time, we're doing it. We're still having fun, but we're doing it. And when it's time to slack off and we have a barbecue or a cookout or something like that, we have a lot of fun. And the guys know we can lay back and have a pop and it's all good.
Trey Bohannan: It's the same way here. We have a lot of fun. We enjoy everybody. And the guys that work with you doing the stuff you do, make it more humanizes you to them and so I did the same thing. And I love the guys that work here and you know, they feel the same way about me. And I know their families, I know all their children and their aunts and uncles and grandparents and it's a big family here. But we do some cool [EXPLETIVE] around here. Not as wild as what it used to be.
Taylor White: Yeah, that changes. That changes. We kind of went through that change, I would say this year because I'm 29 years old and a lot of the guys that work for us are 21, 22 and we're young. And yeah, a couple of obviously not Internet approved stories, but it takes one or two of those nights that ruin it and it's like, okay, I guess we got to tighten up a little.
Trey Bohannan: Hey. When we were your age, we drank all night, go right at it the next morning and work all day and do the same damn thing. I don't know how we did it, but I'm going to tell you what, we did it and we was wild as a ball, man. God, we wild and fancy. But we would just go at it, have fun, tear stuff up, get our truck stuck, new truck, go tear it all pieces, cutting donuts.
Taylor White: And it's still fun. I see the younger guys that work for us now too, and they do the same thing. They'll come in, in the morning and they'll look a little rough and you know they'll be like, “Oh, we were at the Crazy Horse last night until 3:00 in the morning,” or something like that. Earlymornings and it kind of just reminds me of when I was at age too. Because like you said, I used to do that all the time. You'd be up late, but you still got up and you went to work. It's when they don't show up to work because they were doing that stuff that then I pull out the stories and say, “Listen. I used to do that crap too. But I got my [EXPLETIVE] out of bed and I still showed up in the morning, no matter what.”
Trey Bohannan: I had one night show up. He still works here. He'd been here almost 20 years. One of our main guys. I called him, I said, “Hey, where you at?” He'd had a late night. He was in a band or whatever. He didn't show up for another hour. So I drove to his house, and he wasn't married at the time. And I went in there and he was passed out on the toilet. He wasn't using the bathroom for some reason. He sit there and had his guitar. And I think he took my phone call. That's where he was. He just fell asleep sitting. Sitting there playing his guitar. And I got him out. I said, “Come on, we got to go to work.” And he went to work. But golly, you know that. I don't see how they could do it. I couldn't do that no more.
Taylor White: Yeah. Even just being 29 now, I don't recover the same as I used to. I am turning 30.
Trey Bohannan: When I was 29, I was wide open, Taylor.
Taylor White: You do?
Trey Bohannan: Oh, at 29, I was wide open.
Taylor White: I'm wide open with work, but the drinking part, oh, man, I can't do it like I used to.
Trey Bohannan: Hell, I was wide open with both of them. My biggest contracts came when I was drinking, sitting on a tailgate.
Taylor White: You know what? I always say that to somebody because I'll go through spurts of, well, I'm on the wagon, I'm off the wagon. And it's really hard in this industry. And my wife is always like, “Oh, yeah. Sure, it's really hard.” And I'm like, I'm telling you, you go to a lunch with another contractor.
Trey Bohannan: You're going to drink a beer.
Taylor White: You're drinking beer. It's a nice summer night. And guess what? Everyone knows stopping in at our shop. It's just the way it is, you know? And it's hard because you that's the industry. And like you said, some of the best jobs, partnerships or something have come from having a beer or drinking a beer. Because a lot of these big contractors, they have it in their head where it's like, I can't sit down and have a beer with this guy. Do I really want to do millions of dollars with him?
Trey Bohannan: Oh, yeah. And you know that I've fought that my whole life. The drink and not drinking. I would drink too much and pop a wheelie and the next day feel like hammered hell but I'd still work all day. But most people you ever find that drink too much are overachievers. That's the way I look at it. If they're going to go dig a hole, they're going to dig a hole. If they're going to drink beer, they're going to drink beer till it's gone. They're going to work till they're out of fuel. That's just part of it. Some of the most successful people I ever met in my life drank too much.
Taylor White: Oh, I would agree to that.
Trey Bohannan: And I don't advise these young guys to by, no means follow my path on doing all that drinking and stuff, but, boy, damn sure was.
Taylor White: Yeah. Don't live with regret, right?
Trey Bohannan: I don't regret [EXPLETIVE].
Taylor White: No, no, me neither. I mean, even now, I still have a lot to go ahead of me, but I'm the same. I don't live with regret. I've made mistakes, but I mean, I wouldn't be where I am without making those mistakes.
Trey Bohannan: Hey, what about CONEXPO? Tell me about the CONEXPO coming up.
Taylor White: CONEXPO is coming up next March. It's going to be a blast. Hopefully, you're there.
Trey Bohannan: Oh, I'll be there.
Taylor White: I know last year we had a blast hanging out with Trent and those guys. And I'm excited to see the parts of the show that I didn't get to see. Like, bring your running shoes because you’re walking.
Trey Bohannan: No, no, no. We're renting scooters. I’m going to rent you one. How about that?
Taylor White: There we go. I like that idea.
Trey Bohannan: I mean, I'm going to rent you a scooter. You got to run through and we'll probably swing by the beer booth and load our– I got a little rack on the front. We probably just get a bag and put some ice in it, just stick them down in there.
Taylor White: That'll work out perfect.
Trey Bohannan: I don't think you can get a DWI riding scooter in the hallway. Can you?
Taylor White: I don't know, I guess I'll find out.
Trey Bohannan: Yeah, I'll bring some extra money.
Taylor White: Yeah, that's next year coming up and I'm really excited. And listen, I know you're a busy guy, I'm a busy guy as well too. But I really appreciate you coming on the show today, talking to us. And again you couldn't have said a prayer for when is CONEXPO. It's next March and we look forward to seeing you there. And hopefully you still are the reigning champion of most listened to podcasts.
Trey Bohannan: Well, guys, I appreciate y'all listening to this, but you know, like I said, we talked about old Trent Harris a while ago. If you guys don't follow this young man, you are talking about a pit bull. This boy works for the fire department. He pressure washes equipment at landfills at night, he works non stop. I'll be very interested, Taylor, to see where he's at next March.
Taylor White: Me too. I saw his equipment the other day and the job that he was on, the scope of the job and I'm like, man, when I first started following you two years ago, you would not have even thought about doing a job this big or have that much machinery.
Trey Bohannan: Yes, blue collar contractors. I love watching Trent because I've watched it from day 1 till now. He shows up at all my expos, my tractor shows and if we're going to show, Trent's there. He had a booth in Oklahoma. The deal, we've shown up out there. He's my number one protege, I guess you'd say.
Taylor White: Yeah, he's a really good dude.
Trey Bohannan: He is.
Taylor White: I appreciate it. Thank you for coming on today,Trey.
Trey Bohannan: Hey, it's great to see you guys. Come on.
Taylor White: Take care.
Trey Bohannan: See you, bud.
