How A Northern Arizona Contractor Builds Confidence Through Details with Jamie Williams, Capstone Construction & Remodeling

0:00Welcome to Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business Growth Partners. Every week, we sit down with business owners, founders, and leaders to uncover the real stories behind building a successful business. The wins, the setbacks, the lessons learned, and the strategies that help them grow. No scripts, no fluff, just honest conversations with entrepreneurs who are in the trenches every single day. Whether you are a business owner yourself, thinking about starting a business, or simply enjoy hearing how successful people think and operate, you are in the right place. Let's jump into today's episode, shall we?

0:58Hi, 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. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Jamie Williams with Capstone Construction and Remodeling. Jamie, how are you doing today? I'm doing great, Cliff. How are you doing? I'm doing wonderful. Really, really excited to have you on. So if you don't mind, let's go ahead and jump right into it. Heck yeah. All right. So, you know, you know, kind of let's get into a capstone construction and remodeling.

1:31What are you providing for the community? So we're basically a local general contractor in northern Arizona. We specialize in residential remodels, new construction, additions, outdoor living spaces, decks, and basically stuff like that. Northern Arizona is known for its mountainous views and hills and whatnot. We love doing the homes that are on the sides of mountains and doing the big decks that allow you to have great parties with a great view. okay okay and who is jamie you know who are you as a person what do you have going on personally any hobbies or anything like that yeah so um i like to ride my motorcycle i've got one of those little mini jeeps it's kind of like like those those uh those little kid cars you know that uh have a little battery on it except mine's got a little 125 cc engine in it and you know kind of go play out kind of like a side-by-side um and i like to do woodworking i like to kind of renovate older furniture and just kind of create cool looking projects, things like that.

2:32Okay. Now, you know, Jamie, homeowners hear contractor horror stories all the time. Now, what do you think a contractor has to do before the first tool ever comes out to earn a customer's trust? You got to be able to relate to your client. When we go to the job site, I don't go there and just try to sell them, you know, a new deck or a kitchen remodel. I'm interviewing my clients. I want to know why they want a new deck, why they want to expand it, why they want a new kitchen or an additional bedroom. How's it going to benefit them? And how can we make it to where not only is it cost effective, is the construction streamless, but how can we make it so that it lasts for their grandkids, their great grandkids if this home becomes a legacy for them?

3:18What red flag should a homeowner never ignore? Honestly, when a When a contractor walks up and they start talking about all kinds of things and just spitting random gibberish of things that don't even make sense, jump from one subject to the next, it's likely they don't know what they're talking about or maybe they went to a contracting school and haven't had enough time in the field. You want to watch out for contractors who don't think about the details, you know, because I can give you a kitchen remodel and tell you, you know, it's going to be$25 ,000. But if I didn't remember to think about all of the different outlets and wiring and electrical, there could be another$4 ,000 in there and unexpected expenses.

4:00So we want to make sure we cover all of the details thoroughly. Okay. Now, how did you get into construction and remodeling and when did Capstone become something you wanted to build as a company? So for me, I've kind of always liked building. I've liked solving problems. I did oil field engineering. I did wildland firefighting. firefighting. I did blackjack card dealing. And I've done a lot of construction in between all of that. And I noticed construction definitely gives you plenty of opportunities for both building and solving problems. Over time, I did realize there was an opportunity to build a company in this area that wasn't just good at physical construction, but also treated the business side professionally, such as estimating, scheduling, communication, documentation, accountability, and actually taking care of the customer.

4:47And that's what Capstone's actually grown out of. We've learned that owning a construction company means we eventually become an expert in a lot of things that we never expected to know about. We know construction, but now I also know accounting, HR, sales, psychology, weather forecasting, and occasionally marriage counseling. Oh, wow. Interesting. How'd that come a part of it? Well, you know, when the wife wants something and the husband doesn't or vice versa, sometimes you've got to be able to get in between the two and make sure they still get along and they can come to an agreement and you all have a consensus that makes sense.

5:22Both parties get what they want and they don't break the bank. Okay. So what does Capstone specialize in today and what type of project is right in your wheelhouse, would you say? So we're mostly handling residential remodeling additions, again, outdoor living projects and new construction throughout a large portion of Northern Arizona in Yavapai County. We're especially interested in projects where we're helping somebody significantly improve their property, whether that would be opening up an area or even remodeling an existing home, adding square footage, or even building a large deck or outdoor space.

5:59We recently had the privilege to help a local veteran. His insurance was going to drop him due to some severe damage on the exterior of his home. We ended up doing kind of a charity thing. We got Home Depot to donate the materials and a couple other companies to help us out with it. And we were able to renovate the exterior of his home, replace all of his face, do stucco patching and whatnot, and allow it to where his insurance didn't drop him. He gets to keep his home and stay an active part of our community. And that's really what we specialize in. We like bringing the older construction around here back to life, and we like being a part of the community and being an active help to those who have already helped out communities, such as our veterans.

6:41Okay. Okay. You talked about northern Arizona a lot. Is there anywhere in northern Arizona that you do not serve? So we primarily stay in Yadapai County. We're not trying to get way out there to like Seligman, Kingman, Flagstaff, and whatnot. There's plenty of contractors who go out there. We like to stay local. It allows us to control our quality and be more clear-priced. Now, you know, public recommendations, you know, specifically mention your deck work. I've seen, kind of did a little bit of, you know, search online on some of your social media and everything. So what makes a great deck project harder than it looks from the outside?

7:17A lot of people don't realize how much really goes into the engineering of a deck. You know, it looks pretty straightforward. It's got some posts, you got some beams, you got some joists, and then boom, there's this beautiful deck. But if you don't understand the amount of weight that is going to be up there, and I You know, especially where we build with all of the hills that we build on, you got to account for the incline and things like that. You know, we have freezing temperatures that go so far into the ground. So our concrete footers have to be deep enough to combat that. A lot of things like that.

7:52Beyond that, really, it's the details of making sure the decking comes together at the angles properly. Your cuts are nice and smooth and clean and just everything looks tight and professional. Now, and this is we're going to get into kind of the hard hitting question, kind of what people really want to hear, because we have a we have a pretty large, small entrepreneurship, you know, audience that listens to the podcast with us every week. So, you know, what is the biggest challenge the business is facing right now? Would you say? I would have to say growth. Growing is probably the hardest challenge.

8:24Learning and developing systems, you know, there's a million products and teachers and mentors out there that can help with that. Tons of books you can read, creating, you know, there's a ton of apps for business software and accounting and things like that. But growth is definitely the hardest. Getting work done is one challenge. Building a company capable of consistently delivering work that is capable of consistently delivering that work is an entirely different challenge. We've noticed as we grow, we've realized pretty quickly that we can't personally make every decision. I pretty much wore all of the hats in the company for a good minute, but I can't answer every question.

9:07I can't solve every problem. If everything has to go through me, eventually I become the bottleneck. And so the hardest part of growth was realizing that I needed to find other people who could take little chunks of what I do and start handling it so that I could focus on creating my building systems and developing the people in the company, helping them all create accountability so that we can grow without sacrificing any kind of quality. Now, and kind of following up to that a little bit more, what do you believe is kind of preventing your business from reaching its next level and its ultimate potential?

9:41I would probably say finding quality employees to work with us that are willing to grow and understand it and then quality subcontractors. We have a very high standard in Capstone. We like to say that, you know, code is what everybody else builds to, but code is the very minimum of what we look at. We have a standard that we are going to build everything to. We believe in building foundations for generations. I have personally been in the Prescott area for almost 40 years. I have kids here and my kids will have kids here. They'll probably have kids here. That's a very good chance that my great grandkids will end up on a deck that I built.

10:21And I don't want to have to worry about that. So finding quality employees who are willing to grow with you and learn your ways and do things the right way without cutting corners, it's definitely a good part. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I want to kind of dig into that a little bit more because I hear this a lot from entrepreneurs out there, business owners. It's tough, tough market to find quality people, right? You can find people, you can find and insert somebody into a job, but it's tough to find quality people that are going to do a great job day in and day out, day in and day out. So, you know, as a business owner, what have you seen?

10:56What have you noticed out there in the job market? What have you noticed as far as the issues with finding quality employees? So I don't know if it's a generational thing or, you know, if COVID had something to do with it, because as you know, COVID did open up a lot of opportunities that weren't there for working from home and opened up eyes of people that didn't know the different opportunities there were to work from home and things like that. And I think a lot of people have kind of, they got paid during that time and just thought maybe they should get paid differently. Like I I said, maybe it's a generational thing.

11:29But really what we have noticed is anybody we hire right now over the age of 40 pretty much stays consistent with wanting to show up on time, work all day, grow with you, and can take some constructive criticism and learn how to do things the way we want to do them. Not to say there isn't people that are in their teens or early 20s and 30s that aren't the same way. They're just a lot harder to find. They're farther and fewer between. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Now, what do you think is currently your biggest bottleneck preventing you from getting the growth thing solved? What do you think is kind of preventing that ultimately?

12:13Right now, it's that we are a younger business. We're only about three years old. And again, since I wore most of the hats, the majority of how the business has been run is in my head. So I have been spending a lot of time probably over the last month or so developing these systems within our software and our invoicing and estimating software, our accounting software, and several other kinds of kind of creating a systematic way of doing everything to where my new foreman, who's been recently promoted, can walk into the office. He can grab a job folder. In that job folder will be all the information that he needs.

12:54He can organize the guys, reach out to clients, etc. Before that, I was literally doing everything from estimates, budgeting, scheduling, sending proposals, responding to emails, talking to all the clients, doing the accounting, the bookkeeping. And then I was also in the field pretty often, anywhere from six to eight hours a day most times. So it was definitely me that has been the biggest bottleneck and not creating the systems as we were going, just thinking I could run it all in my head. Having a business plan and then following that is a huge key to success in this industry. Yeah. So delegating kind of sorting, right?

13:39Yeah. Delegating things out. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Now, you know, it's a little bit more. How much, how many hours are you kind of dedicating to the business right in and out of the business right now a week? right now i would probably say i'm still putting in a good 65 to 80 hours a week because i am i've got my head dug in deep to creating these systems and and kind of automating some communications and things like that making it to where some of the scheduling can almost be automated through ai i've been in construction in and out again most of my life but I've also, like I said, done engineering, blackjack dealing, things like that.

14:20So I do know computers fairly well. I just, I kind of put it on the back end and didn't really think about it because I'm so good at working with my hands. Recently, I have started realizing how much AI really can do. And so I've been picking, for lack of a better term, AI's brain and figured out how to connect most of my different software apps that I use, some of our communication apps. I've got them all almost integrated with each other where when one thing is done in one app, it populates into the other apps without creating duplicates. And just doing that alone is already starting to save me a lot of time.

14:59I've got it to where it can automate and do responses to certain emails based on the information. It can automatically make my schedule for me, things like that. So that's starting to save me a lot of times. Before all of this, I was probably working well over 100 hours a week on this. Oh, okay. Okay. So, you know, and I really appreciate you being kind of transparent about this, but, you know, let's get into a little bit more. What would you say, let's say if we took one of your men, one of the guys that's worked with you, how many actually people do you have working for you right now? How many boys?

15:27We got six all together right now. Six all together. That includes you? Yes. That includes you. Okay. So let's say we take one of your people, right? We take them to the side privately. We say, hey, man, this is anonymous. We won't put your name out there. what would you say they would say is your greatest strength as a business owner right now what do you think they would say i care about my employees i look at every one of them like their family when things are starting to get slow i'm worried about their family eating when when we have weather issues or something you know it slows us down on hours again i'm worried about them making sure their bills are paid i i try to treat everybody again like family because I know that I can't do this by myself.

16:11And good, strong employees who are learning our ways, building our ways, keeping our standards, they are the most important cogs in this whole wheel frame. So I try to treat them very fairly. Monday mornings we have meetings where I serve the guys breakfast and coffee and all that stuff, and we kind of go over what happened last week. Were there any problems? How can we fix them? What didn't we get done? How can we knock it out? And then plan the coming up week. I would say they would probably say that, yeah, you know, I communicate well, I'm fair, and I just, I try to make sure my employees are happy above anything because happy employees are what help us create quality work.

16:47Now, let's go to the other end of that. You know, let's say if we pull them to the side and said, you know, ask them what's one leadership or business skill you know he still needs to improve on. What do you think they would tell us then? That would probably be my organization and my systems because sometimes they come in and I'm looking at the boards and I look like a deer in headlights. I'm just like, oh, shoot, what didn't we get done last week? I'm looking at 16 active projects on the board, and I'm just like, okay, I don't even know where to start right now. So that would be probably just a lack of organization and able to focus my thought.

17:21ADHD has its way of winning with me sometimes, but I've been working on that as well. Yeah, that's fair. Now, I know construction companies can lose money in the gap between a good estimate and a messy job site. So how do you keep scope, materials, labor and customer changes under control once a project starts? So that's just documentation. Documentation, documentation, documentation. You have to, anytime a client wants to talk about a change, create a change, subcontractor has an issue, first thing is it's written. Then you make sure you take pictures. Everybody's signing everything 100%. It's documentation, pictures, communication, and it all has to be in black and white.

18:05Okay. Now, where do most of your customers come from today? Referrals, actually. I have a Facebook page. We have a website. And then I've got my truck wrapped. But beyond that, I do not pay for any other type of marketing or advertising. We get a lot of referrals from our previous customers. And the community loves us enough on Facebook that I get a lot there as well. We recently won Best Contractor in Yavapai County. Okay. Wow. So most of your customers, I'm guessing, are coming from Prescott. Are they coming from Cottonwood or some of the other areas? Yeah, so it's pretty much Prescott and the surrounding areas, Prescott, Prescott Valley, Geno, Williamson, et cetera.

18:51We don't go over to Cottonwood, Canterbury too often, but sometimes they do need some of our specialties over there and they just can't find anybody else. So we sit here. Gotcha, gotcha. Now, Jamie, when a qualified lead comes in, you know, let's say somebody gets on the phone with you, they're checking all the boxes, sounds like it could be a potentially great client. How confident are you that it becomes an actual customer that you actually work with? So until I get to really talk to the customer in person and then start to feel out the job and the client themselves, it's always kind of 50-50.

19:25But I would say a lot of times I leave the job site feeling like they're a potential 75 to 80 percent. Yeah, I guess I have a way of genuinely listening to the client and trying to feel out their needs and try to sell them what they really need versus what they want to save them money. You know, some clients, they want what they want, and that's not a problem. We can do that as well. But I try to keep them realistic. Now, Jamie, let's say if I'm, you know, I'm looking at a couple of different companies, right? I'm talking with Chris over here at the XYZ company. I'm talking with James over at another company.

20:02Why do customers choose your company instead of the competition? Transparency. We're open about what we do, how we do it, what it's going to cost you and why. We're very clear and open on our communication. Sometimes we get accused of being over communicative, but we never get any flack for it. our clients always know exactly what's going on so that they don't have to question anything if we're right on schedule or ahead of schedule or far behind schedule or you know something got damaged the client knows about it right away and that's one of the big things i think makes a lot of clients choose us is we're very communicative and we will not sacrifice time to get a job done sooner or money on materials that will cause a reduction in the quality of wood we produce.

20:56Now, tell us a little bit about the team that's supporting you today. So right now, my new foreman is my brother-in-law, actually. And him and I have been, we've been doing construction on and off together for about 22 years. His name's Robert. We did a lot of framing together. We did a lot of roofing together. We've done flooring. And because of that, In between those times, both of us had gone off and done other things. Since starting the company, he started working for me about a year and a half after I started the company. He's been an integral part of keeping things running. He shows up. He has a good attitude.

21:35He helps energize the rest of the crew and make sure that they have a good attitude and stay on point. Beyond that, we've got another guy who's been in construction for probably about 25 years. His name's Billy, and he does a great job, too, with what he's done in framing. We're teaching him a lot about quality and finish work. And then we've got one semi-experienced laborer and one green laborer. They're both also an integral part of how we do things because they keep moving. They keep hustling. They try to look ahead of what their leads are doing and make sure that things are ready for them and just keep the job moving smoothly.

22:12Okay. Now, let's say, and this is kind of hypothetical, but let's say if the business just suddenly doubled overnight, right? Let's say if this podcast went live and all of a sudden you've got double the business. That's the goal. But let's say if the business doubled overnight, right? What is the very first thing that would break and need to be fixed, would you say? We would probably just make sure we found some people to help with managing some stuff like in the office, you know, that I'm taking care of. to allow me a little bit more time to help the guys in the field with integrating our quality and ensuring things are going.

22:49I think I'd give some of these guys some raises because I would love the opportunity to pay them some more right now. They've done such great jobs and just kept great attitudes about everything. Maybe pay off the cargo trailer. Other than that, we would try to keep it pretty simple. We don't want to raise our prices and we don't want to grow too fast. to get too many guys and buy another truck. And then all of a sudden it slows down in two months. And we're like, well, crap, now what? Yeah, no, I agree. Okay. All right, so I appreciate that. So now we're going to head into the this or that round.

23:22So how this works is I'm going to give you two things and I want you to choose one of them and then give me the reason why, if you had to. It's a nice way to kind of learn about your personality a little bit, kind of get away from kind of the business talk and let's kind of learn about your personal style a little bit. All right. All right, so beach or mountains? Mountains. Mountains all day. I grew up right here in Prescott, Arizona. I started camping by myself as young as 11 years old. I know a lot about the outdoors, how to survive and live in it. I'm honestly more comfortable outside than I am inside.

23:57I often tell people the only reason I have a house is because 90 % of my stuff isn't waterproof.

24:06That makes sense. Beach is beautiful, but I don't think I could live there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, sand and your crack and all that stuff. Yeah, no, I'm good. Yeah, it's everywhere. It's everywhere in every crack. Yep. Cook at home or go out to eat? Cook at home. I've got a big 36-inch griddle. I love to cook just about anything, everything I can on there. My wife is an absolutely amazing cook. I've never met a white girl who made better mixed people. I probably gained 50 pounds in the first year. I could even work there. Dream house or dream vacation?

24:58Vacations are always short and they're great for memories. The dream house, for us, would be mostly property. mostly acreage so that the animals could run. The nephews and nieces could have swing sets and trampolines. The grandkids could have grass to play on. We like to use family gatherings, barbecues, things like that. So, dream house. Okay. Have dinner with your younger self or your future self? Ooh. That's a good one. That is. I would have to say my younger self because as I grow older, I definitely pay more attention and I learn more and the wisdom is coming naturally. But I'd like to have dinner with my younger self and just let me know that everything's going to be okay.

25:49And if I stop looking at problems for what they aren't and for what they are, life will go a lot smoother.