Well, this is my first day becoming a new blogger and i thought i would start this blog for all you new business owners out there. I own an excavation company Gillam Construction. New last summer (2006). We are a family owned and operated excavation company. My grandfather was in the excavation business in the 70's and 80's and did very well. He was pushed out of business because he is dug the local reservoir and was never paid by our town. He ruined a great deal of his equipment and could not recover.
I initially started the business with my cousin. He is a smart person and has great knowledge of the engineering aspect of in this line of work. He knew first hand the money that was there for the taking in the sewer and water end of excavation (municipal). I am a school teacher and definitely do not make enough money to raise a family and provide all the things one wants to provide for their children and family. So the stage was set. My cousin and i were going to start Gillam Construction (mothers maiden name) and we were going to go big. In the weeks an months to follow we created a business plan and had it approved by the local business development center. Then my cousins boss (engineering firm) wanted in on the deal. This was great. Now we had a person that had loads of money and tons of connections. All he had to do is break it to the other owners of his engineering firm. This did not go well. He received a good tongue lashing and that was the end of that. He could not be part of Gillam Construction because the other owners thought his first responsibility is their firm. Now after my cousins boss was out as fast as he was in he was going to make life hard for my cousin. He turned around and made him sign a non compete agreement. This would not let us bid anything out of his office and this was a devastating blow. Their engineering firm had almost our entire county rapped up (municipalities). My cousin was out and that left me. I had to do something. I have spent so much time preparing for this to have it slip away because of someone elses misfortune or other commitments was not going to hold me down. I have a son and another child on the way i had to make this work. I approached my father and asked him if he was willing to become a partner with me in this venture. He was thrilled. (he initially was going to work for us) He hates his job and loves excavation. My brother is our other employee.
We scraped together 50,000 (line of credit) and went looking for some newer equipment. My family had old stuff but needed updated badly. We purchased backhoe and a truck in Ohio. This was a state away from us (Pennsylvania) but the deal was to good to pass up. Now we were ready to take on the world. My younger brother had gone to school for heavy equipment operation and he is good. He has had problems getting a job out of college because he is a diabetic and know one wants to hire him. They claim this is not suppose to be a factor but it clearly is.
So now it is time to let people know we are out there and can complete work for them. With money not being something that we had much of it was not going to be easy advertising our services. I ran a few ads in the local papers and in some bargain sheets. I then took it upon myself to contact other companies and business that were in the home building and excavation business that could give us work. So i started. I sent out letters after letters to these companies asking them to try our services. I received some positive feedback and wish full responses from some of the companies and builders saying they would give us a shot. I have yet to receive a call form any of these companies . I am talking hundreds of letters. I guaranteed our work along with beating everyone elses price. Still no response.
I said i was a teacher so i had some access to printers and copiers. So after hours i would take our business card and go tot he copy machine and blow it up and ran thousands of copies. I would place a flier in everyones mailbox i could find. Well i find out quickly that you are not allowed to open up peoples mailboxes. So now i would place a flier in everyones paper box i could find. My father and i took a day and drove all around our area and every newspaper box we found i placed a flyer in it. It worked! we received our first job this way. A guy called and said he wanted to put up a garage but had a lot of dirt that needed moved first. i looked at the job and came back with a price of 3,600 dollars. This was for the stone and pipe that was required to get him off the road. We made our first deal. We started digging and everything went pretty smooth. We completed the job in the allotted time that thought and finally had some money in the bank to start to pay the bills. After this job there was nothing. We did a few things around the neighborhood (moving sheds and hauling a few loads of stone but nothing major) Things were not looking good. I had a brother that was relying on me to put work in front of him and it was not happening. I was lucky enough to have a father in law that was in the construction business that struck a great deal in State College for an apartment management company and completed all their maintenance work. My brother was able to work with him when we did not have anything going.
At the end of the year we struck our first big deal. We landed a house. We had to complete all the excavation for the house. It was not going to be easy. The property owner needed a sand mound which we never completed before (not telling him this) and he was starting the house after Thanksgiving. This was not good because we were in a race with the weather. i am now back in school teaching and my father is still holding onto his full time job because we were not that busy so that left my brother. We managed to have everything ready for them by the time snow was flying and we would have to come back in the spring to finish it. This was a 22,000 dollar job and it was going to help out. He had a great deal rapped up in materials but we were going to make a little bit with this. Now we had two jobs all summer and i was wondering if this was going to be worth all the time and headache i had into this whole operation. I have all these bills and did not have that many jobs. We were sweating it.
That brings us to this year. We finished up that job that was started last winter and we managed to do everything correctly (sand mound) and were paid for all our services.
That brings us up to date on our first year (not a good one)
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1 comment:
Well said.
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