From Chemistry to Construction: Jim Box on Building JWB Remodeling

0:02Jim Box:Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs Podcast, where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. as we go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it. All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business Growth Partners, where we work with local business owners to turn big ideas into real scalable growth.

0:47Jim Box:Today, I'm excited to be joined by Jim Box of JWB Building and Remodeling. Jim, thanks for being here. How are you doing today, sir?

0:53Bill:I'm doing great, Cliff. stuff i really am it's been a challenging day today i was doing tiling and that's always rough

1:01Jim Box:on an older man's knees yeah yeah yeah so i'll try to make this as easy as possible for you so let's go ahead and jump right into things so for those of you who may not know it yet who are you jim box you know who is jim box and what is jwb building and remodeling uh oh gosh loaded questions

1:21Bill:Well, let's see. I guess you're asking for my personal story. I'll try and make it as quick as I can. I went through school, got a graduate degree in chemistry, went around the world working for hazardous waste disposal, decided that I didn't want to stay in that industry anymore, came back to the United States, and one way or another gravitated to something that I always liked doing, which was construction. I've been in the industry now for about 25 years. I lived out in California for 18 of those and been out here for the last eight. I met my wife on a lifestyle website and we hit it off and I moved out here from California.

2:10Bill:I've been living in the triad now for about the last eight years.

2:16Jim Box:Nice, nice, nice. Go ahead.

2:18Bill:Let's see. Business-wise, I've been in construction contracting for, like I said, about 25 years. I was a licensed contractor out in California for the better part of 10, and then came out here, and the laws are different. They're written differently, so they don't really need to be licensed out here. What do we do? Pretty much anything and everything except for those trades that I don't like. And I cannot stand doing carpeting. I don't like working with brick or cement block and I don't do roofing. Pretty much everything else, that's under my repertoire.

3:00Jim Box:Okay. Okay. Yeah. Nice intro. So take us back to the very beginning. What made you say, yep, I'm doing this. I'm starting that business.

3:09Bill:Oh, goodness gracious. I was selling chemicals out in California for research chemicals for the medicinal industry. And I just got tired of doing that. And I have always been doing things around my house. I helped my dad build his house when I was 16. I've been around construction my entire life. And I just decided at that point, didn't like what I was doing. Damn it. I'm going to do something that I want to do as opposed to doing something that somebody else wants me to do. So moved into construction. Now I'm doing what everybody wants me to do.

3:58Jim Box:Got to love it. Got to love it. But yeah, so let's, you know, and this is hypothetical, right? But if you had to start again from absolute scratch, let's just say you had no brand, no clients, no safety net, what would you do differently the second time around in starting your business? Or would you do anything differently?

4:16Bill:Probably wouldn't get into construction. There's lots of ups and downs. Now, I kind of figured out how to, I figured out how to survive in the industry. And like I said, It's a lot of ups and downs, so you've got to take that into consideration whenever you're making any decisions. I've got to tell you that probably the biggest thing that has really changed is the advent or the decline of print marketing and the upswing in digital marketing. I'm not an expert, obviously, in digital marketing. I mean, what got me going and really I survived for the first couple of years because I got into construction back in 2007, 2006.

5:09Bill:And if you remember, that's right when the construction industry really crashed. I did some print advertising for the first three years of my business. And it basically helped me build from zero to survivability. Whether that can be done easily now, I don't know. What has predominantly worked best for me over the years has been word-of-mouth advertising. That's always made it easy for me once you got a foot in the door to really provide your services to your customers. So I guess that's where things would have to be done differently. I'm just not sure exactly what the best strategy would be in today's market.

6:00Bill:I mean, I don't have to start from scratch, so I'm not really thinking in those terms right now.

6:08Jim Box:Yeah, I think now it's more so social media. You got to have a social media presence like in 2026. It's like pivotal, right? If you're going to start a new brand new business, nobody knows about it. I think you had to have TikTok and Facebook and Instagram and all those things. I think that's the easiest way to get out nowadays. So were you confident or betting on yourself when you first started your business?

6:30Bill:I was confident. I had, like I said, I've always done projects around my house. And people really liked it whenever they saw what I had done. So I had confidence and skills in my abilities. And then you're a member of BNI, I believe. They have core values that encompass so many things that are really helpful to your general business. Accountability. You've got to be accountable to yourself, your customers, your family, everybody else. You've got to constantly improve your skills. You always have to constantly learn new things. I think that probably kind of describes it. Okay.

7:16Jim Box:Now, what were you risking?

7:18Bill:What was I risking? Well, my income was completely based on whatever jobs I could get. My first year, I did$43 ,000 in gross business. About 25 % of that was materials. So my first year's income was not all that great. but you know all i can say is i never made that little again yeah yeah see that's always the good

7:53Jim Box:thing at least you've gone up you know since then and kept going up so what would you say is something people don't understand about a business until they're in it oh there are a lot of things

8:04Bill:that uh about a business until you're in it i had no idea what a marketing plan was until i started trying to sell my services to other people. I never ran across them when I was in chemistry, hazardous waste, or construction, and then I suddenly realized, well, gee, people got to know who I am if I'm going to expect them to hire me to build things around their house. So, let's see. It was, I don't know. So what was the question again? State the question again.

8:45Jim Box:Yeah, what's something people don't understand about business until they're in it? Right.

8:50Bill:You've got your technical components that you really need to be good at. Like, okay, if you're going to sell carpentry services, you've got to be a darn good carpenter. Otherwise, you're not going to work too long. You got to have all of the trade secrets, all the little shortcuts that you need to know to make your life easier. You also got to know a host of other aspects that you don't normally have to deal with in your day-to-day work. So like when I'm swinging a hammer, I'm not thinking about my checkbook or my bank balance or what I need to do from a banking standpoint. And I certainly don't think about it when I've got to get insurance, property insurance, emissions, and what is it?

9:43Bill:E &O, errors in emissions insurance. There's a lot of stuff on the business side that I've had to learn and pick up over time just to make sure that I'm not putting too much at risk. I mean, I wouldn't want to build something wrong and have somebody take my house because I don't have the right insurance. I didn't check the right insurance box. Does that cut the things for you?

10:11Jim Box:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that. So what almost broke you? Has anything almost broken you and made you say, you know what, I think I'm quitting this or I'm thinking I'm regretting opening my business?

10:21Bill:Yeah, I'm going to answer that question this way. My last year when I was selling services for the man, let's just call it the man, for somebody else. I was working for somebody else for a paycheck. I bought two bottles of aspirin that year, 250 tablets each. I was constantly having headaches. I was constantly under the gun, constantly having to stay directed and focused on my job and really, really working it. It affected my health. Since I left that industry and got into construction and being my own boss, I think I bought two little bitty bottles of aspirin of 25 pills each over the last 20 years.

11:17Bill:So I don't regret any of my decisions to go off on my own and it's helped my health. I'm a lot better off now than I was then.

11:29Jim Box:Yeah, no, totally agree. Agree with that. So how do you personally handle stepping away from the business, you know, like taking vacations or unplugging in the evening?

11:41Bill:I'm a sole proprietor. There is no such thing. You don't get that option. If you're not doing it, it don't get done. Occasionally, my wife does force me to take weekends off, and we do go out on occasion. In fact, we've got a really big vacation planned coming up this May. Nice.

12:05Jim Box:Where are you guys going? My wife had a childhood dream of going to Alaska.

12:13Bill:So we've got a National Geographic cruise, the expeditionary cruise, the ones where they actually put you in zodiacs and on kayaks and things like that. We're going to do a lot of whale watching and a lot of animal watching and looking at glaciers and things like that.

12:33Jim Box:Yeah, that'll be nice in May, especially in Alaska. It should be beautiful.

12:38Bill:Late May, early June, we're expecting overcast. that the area we're going, it's actually overcast most of the time. And in fact, they said you've got to make sure that you've got lots of wet weather gear because you're going to need it. They said don't bring cotton pants. They'll get soaked. So it's supposed to be, we're going late May, early June, and it's actually like February weather here. you know some days it might be in the 50s but it'll probably get down into the 30s at night

13:19Jim Box:so we're looking forward to it though yeah yeah man wow and that's crazy that late may early june that's the kind of weather you're getting but you know it's alaska it's all the way up there think about me up there by the yeah yeah so looking back you know what do you attribute to most of your growth of your business so far?

13:44Bill:It's a little bit difficult to answer that, but if you want to pick one particular aspect, it's quality of work. If you know your business, if you're really good at your job and you've got at least a reasonably good outgoing personality so you can talk to people and not stumble over too many words, you'll make it in this industry. If you do a quality service, people will wait for you. When I was out in California, I had a six-man crew and I was telling people that they would need to wait for me to get there as much as four months in advance, you know, and when you've got really good work, people are willing to wait and it will always keep you busy.

14:41Jim Box:Nice. I love it. Love it. So you did say you're a sole proprietor. So have you ever had to hire anybody ever in the history of your business or?

14:51Bill:Well, when I was out in California, I I got to be careful because I don't want to run afoul of any state tax laws. But when I was out in California, I had six independent contractors that were working for me at the time. So I never had any quote unquote direct hires, but I had people that were working for me and interacting with me on a daily basis. kind of got to dance around that subject to avoid any IRS entanglement, so to speak.

15:25Jim Box:Yeah, yeah, no, I totally get it. So, you know, I guess then this is more of a hypothetical question, but, you know, let's say you're building a team. Let's say you're getting ready to hire somebody to come work with you. Do you have any, you know, personality traits or anything like that that would matter more to you than what's on the person's resume?

15:46Bill:uh well let's see if i were running a crew again you got to remember this is a bunch of guys who are all pretty stout and uh when you get a bunch of guys that are all pretty stout the testosterone does kind of hose down the decks so i would say if you're going to work on a crew you're going to have to have some pretty thick skin uh you're going to have to be able to throw down some really good sarcasm and dish it out because you're going to get it. I had a pretty low-key attitude and all of my guys, they always referred to me as the old man.

16:33Bill:Most of them were in their 20s or early 30s. Good work. And again, And attention, let's see, what are qualities that I'm looking for would be attention to detail. They got to be able to do the job that I hired them for. If I, you know, if I'm looking for a drywaller, better be able to do your drywall because all it takes is about 30 minutes of me watching and I can tell whether you snowed me or not. And that happened a couple of times. but you know and the rough and tumble of construction if you're not up front and you try and snow people you get you get sussed out pretty quick i guess you could say also gotta be honest and that's a tough one in construction because a lot of times you're working in somebody's home they're not around and if you're not trustworthy as far as i'm concerned, I'm going to kick you to the curb as quick as I can.

17:33Jim Box:Oh, yeah. Yeah. You can't you can't send somebody in a job and worry if they're going to steal somebody's jewelry or, you know, something of that nature. Right. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Perfect. So I appreciate that. So we're going to head into what's called the quickfire round. So how this works is I'm going to give you one word and I want you to tell me the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear each word in regards to running your business and then expand upon why you chose that first idea that came to your mind when you heard that word. Does that make sense?