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School of Hard Knocks Podcast
Ben Pogue | He Took Over His Dad’s Company at 29… Now He Owns a $20M Private Jet
00:52:32
Ben Pogue is the CEO of one of America’s fastest growing construction companies, generating over $1.5 billion in annual revenue. After unexpectedly taking over the business at age 29, he navigated personal hardship, public industry controversy, and ma...
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- [00:00]
A
This is our first private jet interview with the man that owns the jet himself, Ben Pogue. It's great to be here with you today, my man.
- [00:06]
B
Thanks for having me.
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A
How much did the jet in total cost?
- [00:08]
B
In total, about 20 mil.
- [00:09]
A
Safe to say again, you can maybe fake a supercar, but you can't fake one of these.
- [00:12]
B
You can't fake a global or you can't fake a gulf stream. That's right.
- [00:15]
C
If you take care of good people, they'll take care of you. But how do you get them to
- [00:19]
B
stay in our industry? There's probably about a 15% turnover. We're at 3%. And the reason being is because we actively each and every person in the industry.
- [00:28]
D
For high performers that are watching this podcast, how did you learn to run a construction empire?
- [00:34]
B
Well, I could tell you a lot of what not to do. Typically, if you know that you've got a culture killer or sometimes a cancer in your office, sometimes when you let someone go as hard as it is, it's actually a great thing for them because they can go thrive.
- [00:45]
A
Ben, if me and you died tomorrow and you had one more message to leave the younger generation, what would that be?
- [00:53]
B
And I would say,
- [00:57]
A
what's going on, everyone? And welcome back to the school of Hard Knocks podcast. I'm James, and I'm here with Jack and Josh, and we have an incredible guest for you all today. First of all, this is our first private jet interview with the man that owns the jet himself, Ben Po. It's great to be here with you today.
- [01:12]
B
Hey, thanks for having me. Great to to have you guys on the plane and excited to chat with y'.
- [01:16]
D
All.
- [01:16]
A
Well, Mr. Ben, and we were talking about this earlier. You're. This is not a jet that we're renting right now. This is one that you own?
- [01:21]
B
That's correct.
- [01:21]
A
How much did the jet in total cost?
- [01:24]
B
In total, about 20 mil.
- [01:25]
A
And safe to say again, you can maybe fake a supercar, but you can't fake one of these.
- [01:29]
B
Can't fake a global, or he can't fake a gulf stream. That's right.
- [01:32]
A
For the people that don't know, Ben, you know you built one of the largest construction companies in America, right? You guys are doing how much money. How much money did your business do?
- [01:40]
B
This last year we did a billion. Five.
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A
This last year, 1.5 billion. Did younger. You think that that was going to ever happen, that you were going to do that growing up?
- [01:46]
B
We didn't, as a matter of fact. It's kind of an interesting situation. It's like what happens when you achieve goals you didn't set right. So it kind of blew us away. But we really, we just, we did the basics and did the basics really well. We focus on people and we focus on culture. And we realized, you know, our most important client all day long was our people. And if we took great care of them and were great stewards and had, you know, high accountability and certainly put the bar real high, that these are for high achievers, that we would do great things well.
- [02:15]
A
We want today's episode to serve as a masterclass to everybody watching right now what it takes to build a billion dollar company in the trades industry.
- [02:20]
D
I love it.
- [02:21]
A
We make that happen.
- [02:21]
B
Yeah, let's do it.
- [02:22]
A
Where I want to get started is I want to take us back to a time, one of the lowest points in your life. In 2012, you had an unexpected divorce that happened. You were a father to two kids and this is something that had kind of caught you off guard. There's a lot of successful entrepreneurs that we interview. They touch on the most important decision that a man will make is the woman that he decides to marry.
- [02:42]
B
That's right.
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A
And we see it time and time again. It destroys people's lives. Even though this is something that may have set you back, you didn't let it destroy your life and instead you built a billion dollar company out of it. Take me back to that moment in the mindset shift that you had when you realized that I was not going to let this define me.
- [02:55]
B
Yeah. What a question, man. Talk about the grace of God. Yeah. 2012, spring of 12, my wife of six years filed for divorce. We had a two year old and a four year old boy, girl. And completely unexpected. Blew my mind and was devastating. I mean, for anybody who's ever gone through divorce, you can realize this, especially with kids. Devastating. Lowest I've ever been in my entire life. And you know, and thank God there's a, there's a miracle along the way where we're good friends and we have great kids together. But at that time and place, man, you hit rock bottom and you learn about who you are and you learn about what you really believe. And for me, it took that rock bottom to find out that for me from a faith component that God was my God. It wasn't just my parents, God that I grew up with and that throughout life, all the things that I thought I needed, including my wife, including time with my kids every day that I didn't even have to have that because I didn't have It. But I did have him, and he was going to be there no matter what. And all I needed at the end of the day was him in that faith component of my life. And so it was huge. What's interesting, though, is two years later, I ended up going through the hardest professional situation of my life. There was a project called Allen Stadium, one of the biggest high school stadiums built in the nation. It was in Texas. That was us.
- [04:20]
A
For people that don't realize, we're going to put a graphic up here on the screen, but this is literally. It looks like an NFL stadium.
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B
That's right. Yeah.
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A
Yeah.
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C
Not your typical high school stadium.
- [04:28]
D
Literally.
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A
Literally.
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D
Our college roommates went to Allen High School, and. And we're from D.C. so every time we talked about their hometown, they would always say, well, Kyler Murray was like our high school quarterback, and that's the stadium that he played. Ben is. Is who you can thank for that. So.
- [04:42]
B
Yeah, and you can also thank us because Kyler Murray played on the road his senior year while it was being reconstructed. He didn't even play at home one year on his senior year. So they were. They were winning on the road. But long story short, that stadium had some issues. It had some concrete cracks and things like that. There was a lot of. There were some political things going on at the time, too, but basically they shut down the stadium and said, hey, you got to come in and fix it, and you have to go and work with the architect, work within engineers, and make sure that you guys get this thing done. And what was interesting about it is there was a lot of fingers pointed and a lot of challenges. There was a ton of press. I did all kinds of press conferences and met with every news team. And I didn't want to, but we knew it was the right thing to do. And one of our core values was communication. So we weren't going to run from it. We were going to hit it head on, be in front of them and have the conversations. Man, that ended up playing really well for us. Two years, about $20 million later, a couple years of us not making profit. We got everything done and to satisfactory. And then when it reopened, we had people starting to call us and saying, hey, you know, we were kind of untouchable for two years. Like, hey, too hot to touch. Not sure about you guys. You're dealing with that little stadium thing. And they're like, hey, we. We kind of want to work with you because of how you handled this. And so we started getting more and more work. All that to say Grace of God. Since that moment in time, since we finished it in 16. I bought the company in the fall of 1660 days after bought the company, we got. Our largest Single project was $100 million high school, and we got a $300 million bond right on the tail end of that. Now, back then, that was huge for us. And even today, that's still good standards. But since then, we've grown 800%. We were doing a few hundred million a year, now we're doing a billion five. And 93% of our work is repeat business. And so a lot of that goes back to, like, I feel like it was such a horrible, hard time professionally, but it also gave us the opportunity on a grand stage to show who we were. And so that was a real opportunity to show kind of the world who we were in a lot of ways and how we would stand behind our product.
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C
There's a saying that I love from Bill Gates. He says that your greatest setbacks and your greatest issues are actually your greatest sources of learning. What did you learn about being an entrepreneur and about how to run a company better from the Allen Stadium?
- [07:07]
B
Yeah, boy, that's a great question. God, it's the golden rule. I mean, treat people how you want to be treated. Stand by what you're going to do, stand by your values. I mean, for us, it was communication service. And from the service side, it was like, hey, this is our client. At the time, it was like 34 year client. It's like, we don't know what all has happened, but we're going to stand with them regardless, no matter what this cost us, because it's the right thing. And ultimately, if you do the right thing, no matter what happens, I think McConaughey says this, win, lose or draw, you're going to know that you did the right thing. If I'm not supposed to be in construction, I know I'm supposed to be in something else, then great. And by the way, I didn't know if I was going to be in construction after that project. There was a couple of years we didn't know what we were going to do, but we knew that we could sleep at night because we did the right thing. And for me, at the end of the day, what do they say? You know, integrity is what you're. What you're doing when no one else is watching. Right. And so it's easy to do the right thing when people are watching and when it's convenient. But it was really just a moral compass for us to say, hey, this is what we're going to do.
- [08:06]
A
You said something in that previous answer. 95% repeat business in the trades, in construction, real estate. That is damn near impossible. You don't ever hear that.
- [08:17]
B
That's right.
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A
Because a business like that, it's so hard to install some aspect of recurring revenue. But you made that happen. What was the secret to that retention? To where you constantly had your clients coming back and back for more business. So that way you're not like the 95% of people in the business. They're having to go chase the next year over and over and over again.
- [08:35]
B
Well, great question. I think there's, there's a couple things that are key. We have incredible clients, but we also have incredible teammates that take care of those clients. We also don't look at any single project as one job. We look at this as a long term relationship. We're having to do 10 jobs with that person. So whatever's going on in that job, I mean, you guys know this. I mean, service is a lost art. When was the last time you had good service? Maybe Chick Fil A? I don't know, maybe a nice luxury hotel.
- [09:00]
A
Can I interject you for a second? I don't want you to lose your train of thought. This is so important because I'll tell you what, there's nothing worse than I was. I was bowling last night. I went to a bowling alley and the two guys at the counter treated me. And you know the folks, I was like absolute, terribly. And there's nothing worse than that. And I literally said, I said, you know what? I'm not going to come back to this bowling alley just because of that. The lanes were fine, the bowling balls were fine, I'm sure the food was good. But that's the one thing that would deter me forever from going back. It's crazy.
- [09:29]
B
Yeah, it's interesting. You know, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll talk occasionally about good service, but you'll always talk about bad service because it leaves a mark.
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D
Right?
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B
And so also I love this. When there is a lack of service anywhere you go, this is good. There's probably a lack of humility. Okay? So if I look at our team, if we're lacking in service, we're probably lacking in humility because we're making it about us instead of the other person.
- [09:56]
D
It's like when Jeff Bezos said, he said, hey, if somebody has a great experience buying on Amazon, they'll probably tell five people, but if they have a bad one, they're going to tell 5,000.
- [10:05]
B
That's right. Exactly right. Bad news travels fast.
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C
One of the things I think is most interesting is I feel like a lot of new entrepreneurs, they try to compete on price and try to charge as little as they can. But really, really, as you grow and learn as an entrepreneur, you realize that the reason that the best companies often charge the most is because they can hire the best talent, they can give you the best materials, and they can give you the best outcome. And it's one of those things where if you actually want to provide a great service, it comes with costs. And I just think that's something that a lot of new entrepreneurs actually get wrong is the fact of, like, hey, in order for me to actually provide a great service and do deliver a great product, I actually have to charge what I'm worth as well.
- [10:46]
B
Yeah, I think that's a great point. And I think, you know, you see a lot of your luxury spaces, they'll do that, but they're also not gouging. Right. You want someone to be efficient with your dollars. Like, I'm okay paying a premium as long as I'm getting great service. Like, I'll, I will pay a premium for great service all day long. I don't know many people, especially in our, you know, situation or dynamic, that wouldn't. But at the same time, I think they want to know that you're being efficient with it. Right. And then you're just throwing it out there. But like for us, if you look at construction, low margins, construction, we have probably a third less people than a lot of people do. Doing our volume well, you know why? We got high performers, man. This is a high performance culture. And if you're not a high performer, that's okay. But there's another garden for you to grow in. This isn't it? And you also have to be in the people business. You gotta like people. If you don't like people, this is not your space. Like, we, you can go somewhere else also and we'll, we'll bless you on the way out. But for us, it's, it's, it goes back to what we talked about earlier is I think every single person, every single company is in the people business and the service business. It's just whether do they know it or not. So Bezos said this too. He said, my customers will always want lower cost and they're always going to want it faster. That will never change. Right? So what's never going to change in our business? Service and culture, it's never Going to change. And by the way, if we have an incredible culture with high impact people, we're going to recruit and retain the best ever.
- [12:11]
D
I, I gotta ask, you know, running a construction company that, that probably just didn't come out of thin air as far as like how to do that. So how did you learn to run a construction empire?
- [12:24]
B
Well, I could tell you a lot of what not to do, right? Because I did. I learned tribe by fire. Took over as I was 29 years old and we're talking earlier. I, I, I think one of the real gifts that I was given was because there's people that are a lot better at a lot of things that I am was that I knew that I didn't know. And so I knew to partner with people better than me. I learned to listen. You know, there's a great proverb, it says, you know, love wisdom, be teachable. And I think for me, like I still to this day, like I love what y' all do because I get to see wisdom from a lot of other guys, been really successful and gals and take that wisdom and those little nuggets that apply. And I would also argue too though, the majority of people you meet with, whether they know it or not, there's a biblical foundation to everything they're doing, right? It just works. That path works every time. And so that plan works, that recipe works every time. It's saying what you're going to do, do what you're going to say, taking great care of people, golden rule, giving back, like all those apply. And if you look at probably everyone you've ever met with, they're doing those things like the math works, that recipe works.
- [13:31]
A
You took this company over in 2009, I believe, correct? 2009. Could you tell us the story about how you came about to take this company over?
- [13:39]
B
Yeah, great story. So in 2009, I was 29. I was working in ops at the time. I'd done some assistant project management, project management and then some pre con estimating throughout the years. And of course When I was 15, I was doing a lot of stuff out in the field and really just got appreciation for what those guys did. But at 29, my dad calls me the summer of 29 and says, hey Ben, I've got a personal thing I gotta handle and I gotta step away from the company. I need you to take it over. 29 years old, 29 blew my mind and said, okay, I got this. I remember being emotional. I remember sitting down with the team. I think we had maybe 90 team members at the time. And we were probably doing about 180 million in volume. You know, fast forward today. 350 people, 1.5 billion in annual volume. And guys, we, we had to learn a lot of what not to do, man. One thing that was really apparent is that there were some people there previously that would follow my dad, but they wouldn't follow me. And so we, we had to, we had to clear that out. It took some time and we tried to do it with grace. But I'll say this is like, typically, if you know that you've got a culture killer or sometimes a cancer in your office, everyone else already knows it. Like, you may be six months too late. But what happens is when you deal with that individual. This is just my personal belief. Like, you know, people say business, just business. You've heard that, right? I totally disagree. Because if I let someone go, that's the most personal thing I can ever do to them, they just lost their job, right? But also, look at it this way. If they're not performing or if they're not happy and we've given them the tools and we've communicated with them, they also know they're not doing a good job. They're not thriving. Sometimes when you let someone go, as hard as it is, it's actually a great thing for them because they can go thrive, they can go learn from that situation, they can grow from that situation. And then when you do that, everybody who already knows that person should be here. Trust goes through the roof for leadership. They're like, okay, they see it, we got them.
- [15:47]
A
I got to ask you this. So you took the company over when it was doing $180 million, scaled it out to now doing 1.5 billion. One of the most common problems that happens when a business scales that big is the company grows, but the leader doesn't necessarily grow out as fast as big as the company's going. I recently interviewed a gentleman named Adam Weitzman who built a, an empire from shredding metal jug cars, right? It like the most unsexy business that you can possibly think of. And I think that this is valuable for us as well because we went from a $1 million business to now a 10 plus million dollar business in about a year and a half. What are some things that you would instill in us to ensure that as the company is continuing to grow, we're bringing in talent that we grow as leaders as well to be able to handle that growth of the company?
- [16:31]
B
Man, that's a great question. I think some of it is we have to be teachable. We go back to, we got to grow, we got to learn. We have to know that we don't know it all. And oftentimes the things that made you successful last year will not make you successful this year. You have to adapt and change. Now, your fundamentals and values, absolutely, those are, those are, those are static. Right? Those are going to stay no matter what. But the things that got you to 10 million will not get you to 100. Like it's a totally different, you know, avenue, totally different plateau. And matter of fact, even just over time, like if I look at what made us successful in the first 30 years when my dad ran it, and then the next 30 years, you can't argue that his stuff didn't work because it worked. For the next 30 years, everything changed. The clients changed, the demographic changed, technology, technology, matter of fact, the culture of people you're hiring, the wants of people, like it's just everything changes. So we have to adapt. And people hate. Typically the word change thing is a four letter word. So I always say we modify, we're modifying, continue to improve. And I think continuous improvement is a big, big part of it. But that also goes with humility because it's so easy to say, oh, we've been successful and we've arrived versus no man, we're still learning. So I think you always have to have a coach. Like I have a coach still to this day. My team all has coaches. You have to have a mentor. And I think you should be mentoring and menteeing someone.
- [17:50]
A
Jack, Josh, can you tell him the golden, the golden rule. What does Jim Keys say CEO stands for?
- [17:56]
D
Change equals opportunity.
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B
Change equals opportunity. Amen to that. Spot on.
- [18:02]
D
James and I, we've learned so much from our dad. Even he was a, he was a colonel in the army, so not really a business guy, but we learned a ton from him.
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B
Yeah.
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D
When you got that phone call and just looking back on that relationship, what's the number one thing that you learned from your dad?
- [18:18]
B
Man, it'd be hard to say one because there's so many. But I think about these quotes, Paul Pogue quotes, you know, one of them was Ben. Never sweat the small things and everything is small. You guys ever heard this? This kind of tags into it is when you're healthy, you've got a thousand problems. When you're unhealthy, you got one right? So today was a gift. Another situation, let's say, hey, I'll give you, I'll give you A billion dollars. Billion dollars. But today's your last day. You die tonight. Would you take it? No. Okay, well, why wouldn't you take it?
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C
Because time's more valuable than money.
- [18:58]
B
So how much was today worth?
- [19:01]
C
It's priceless.
- [19:02]
B
Priceless, right. So we're chasing all these things and all these money and all these commas, but we were given the gift of today. Like, it's beautiful, right? There's not a price on that. And you just said it's not worth a billion.
- [19:14]
A
Right?
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B
So I think that's an incredible concept too.
- [19:16]
A
Give him the one about explanation, Ben, come on.
- [19:19]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's another great one. Yeah. So my, my dad had a lot of great quotes and this is another good one. He said, he said, ben, never explain. Your friends don't need it and your enemies won't listen. Man, that's good stuff. And how often I don't know about you, like let's say even, and you're sitting down in a situation with a friend or a coworker or whatever, and you start explaining stuff, right? Well, you don't really need to explain. I don't explain why I did this or why I did that. They don't care. It's not going to change the outcome. And then we got to go back to like protecting our energy. Like, if we're, if we're protecting our energy, we're not worried about what people are thinking. Right? And that's hard as people who love people. Right? But you start understanding that there's only going to be certain people rooting for you, and that's okay. There's also another great concept too, is I read this the other day, I thought it was so good. It said reasonable people don't live unreasonable lives. All right, so check this. Most entrepreneurs you'll meet, they have this over optimistic approach to life. Like, things are going to work.
- [20:35]
A
It has to work or it has to work.
- [20:36]
B
Has to work or has to work.
- [20:38]
D
Right.
- [20:38]
B
We're going to figure this out. No plan B. And by the way, like, what if you woke up today and said, whatever I'm going to do, I'm going to be successful at. Like, if you really had that mentality, what other things would you have tried? Like, for me, like we talked about this, it's like, I would. One of my worst things, worst fears in life would be to wake up 10 years from now and say, man, what if I would have. Like, I'm not going to do that. Like, I'm all in. Like, let's go and now, hey, we're going to take educated risk and we're going to look at the different challenges, but I don't think anything can stop us. And I think so this over optimistic, not arrogant, but over optimistic, zeal for life and success or whatever that means for you, says you can have an unreasonable life because we're not going to do reasonable things.
- [21:24]
C
One of the things I love that you said is, is the don't explain. And I remember back in like 2019, I had dropped out of college and I was dead broke and I signed up for like a business mastermind. And I was so broke, I. I managed to buy the plane ticket out to Las Vegas and they had all decided to go out to Ruth Chris that night. And I'm over here looking at my bank account. I got like 14 in there. So I'm looking to hear like the soups or like the salads. Like, man, I don't even know if I can. I can get the salad over here. And I ended up just saying, hey, like, I'm really tired, I'm gonna leave. And I remember, you know, explaining to the waiter all like, I gotta go, I have to leave. Like, And I told him this whole story and my mentors, this kind of brash guy from, from New Jersey, and he said, josh, what are you doing? He's like, he's. He grabbed me by the shoulder and he said, you don't have to explain yourself. And he said, they don't deserve it and they don't care.
- [22:19]
B
So good.
- [22:20]
C
Very similar to what you said.
- [22:22]
B
So good, Josh. And they don't care.
- [22:24]
C
And they don't care. And I remember I went back to my room and I was pretty upset with myself, honest. I was like, man, I'm just over here dead, bro. Can't even afford to eat with the rest of the group.
- [22:35]
A
Explain yourself.
- [22:37]
C
Yeah, and. But one of the questions I have for you is as you're continuing to grow, you have to set yourself up with a, with a board of advisors. And not all those board of advisors, oftentimes just business people as well. I'm kind of curious for someone who's growing in their business and life, like, how do you. How would you recommend setting themselves up with like a board of advisors and people that they trust?
- [23:00]
B
But it's so good. I feel like great relationships are pursued, not found. Right.
- [23:07]
A
We got Josh, Chris 2.0 right here. He's dropping all your.
- [23:10]
D
We have a friend who, who just drops sound bite after.
- [23:13]
B
I got. I got a few more for you, but I'll tell you, like, you have to pursue these relationships. You know why? Because these people that you can learn from, who are going to root for you, who are successful, by the way, because otherwise you couldn't really be around them because they couldn't relate. They're busy, they're being pursued by others. Like, some of my best friends have been very successful, but I have to pursue them. And I think for us, we have to realize that this isn't just a found game. We're not just going to say, like, hey, we're just going to stumble onto relationships, but we have to also invest in those. One of my really good friends is an incredible guy, and he's a great networker, but he puts the time in. Like, you have to put the time in. And with, you know, family, with a wife with four kids, like that, that takes time, right? So you have to really dedicate that time to those relationships, but also feel like the older you get, the smaller your group gets. I'm sure you've heard that right, because not a lot of people are rooting for you and not a lot of people you can really relate to, and that's okay. But again, I want to work with some unreasonable people. Like, let's go do some unreasonable things.
- [24:16]
C
I think the most important characteristic that isn't talked about enough is the people that are going to tell you how it is and tell you what you need to hear, not always what you want to hear as well.
- [24:26]
B
This is a great segue. I'm glad you brought it up. Ephesians 4 talks about truth and love. Okay, we do this in our business, but I certainly do it in my personal life. A few years back, I had a challenging conversation coming up with a friend of mine. And so I asked another friend who I trusted until this day, is super close with and say, man, how do I approach this? He gave me some great wisdom. He said, listen, here's. Here's how what it looks like. He goes, when you sit down with this friend, it's, hey, listen, because we're friends, I'm going to love you no matter what. But because we're friends, I'm going to tell you no matter what. Truth and love, they go hand in hand. You can't have truth without love. You can't have love without truth. Now you have to have an equity position with that person able to give them truth. But truth. Real love, though, is like, if I care enough about you, I'm gonna tell you because I'm not worried about how it's gonna affect Me, I worry how it's gonna affect you.
- [25:23]
A
Ben. I wanted to go back to the prior answer that we were, you know, talking about. And in particular, you know, you talked about the, the most successful people, they're being pursued. And you know, one of my favorite conversations that I love to reference is when we, I was talking to Robert Herjavec from Shark Tank and I asked him, you know, what is more important in the business world, what you know or who you know. And the average person, you know, the average successful entrepreneur is going to say who you know is more important. But his thing was, is that that's the most bullshit advice because those heavy hitters are not just going to give you the time of day unless you're somebody that is worthy of them kind of pursuing, right? So his thing is you build the brand, you become the person that makes them want to come after you, but you have to build something on your own before you can even think about who you know and all that.
- [26:08]
B
Yeah, that's, that's really interesting perspective, right? It's, it's interesting just like this, okay, With a lot of your viewers and a lot of the guys you've interviewed, they've got credibility because they've done something, they have stuff, they've been successful, which is interesting because we get credibility based on what we have, what we've accomplished, which is fantastic. But I just want to go on record real quick. A guy with stuff, and I got no problem having stuff with me. I like stuff. No, no problem with that. Man. I wonder how many crazy successful people are out there that are so miserable because real talk here, okay? It's like, man, if I just get this extra comma, if I just get this extra thing, then I'll be happy. Now. Hey, the beautiful thing about having stuff is you can influence and impact people. And that's what y' all are doing. And I think that's what we're wired to do. And we can go into some unique contribution conversations here in a second, which are really cool. But I just want to say like to, to your audience is like, the stuff is fun, it's great. I think it's incredible to pursue and I think it'd be a waste to put your talents on the sidelines. So you need to go do something with your talents, your God given talents. But the stuff doesn't make you happy. It's the journey, it's the people and it's really what's your, what's your purpose and what's your assignment in life.
- [27:25]
A
So you're saying that putting the money in the materialism first, that's kind of a dying dead road.
- [27:29]
B
I mean it's, it's always a dead road. And it's like, what's the next thing? It's, it's never satisfying.
- [27:34]
D
Why do, why do you think wealthy people keep chasing it?
- [27:37]
B
I don't think it's necessarily wealthy people. I think it's people in general thinks how we're wired. Right. I mean, heck, we're the Amazon generation. Like I'm going to be pissed off it didn't come today. Like what? Like this thing's going to show up my door today. I'm mad, you know, so we're this instant gratification which I think makes us good from a standpoint of being able to work fast and move fast. I love our, our young generation who is equipped with all these tools. I was with Dave Ramsey recently and he said, he goes, the young generation is multi talented more than any generation before because they can multitask. They got the supercomputer that they grew up with in their hands and they're incredible people and they get frustrated when things don't go fast because that's how their minds are wired. But he ended up saying, but I've got their back. Like he was all in. You know, any of the negative things you're going to hear about generations, there's always some positive things happening. And so anyway, where were we going with that?
- [28:31]
A
I mean, I wanted to touch on that right there. You brought up how Dave Ramsey, he is somebody that has a lot of respect for the younger generation. You mentioned that when you took the company over at 29 years old, there were a lot of kind of peers that were the company. You had to kind of earn their respect. Yeah, in a sense. And why do you think that was? Like, do you think that that's just kind of a stigma that kind of older people have that, oh, this younger person, he doesn't have gray in the hair at the time.
- [28:54]
B
Absolutely.
- [28:55]
A
You know, how did you overcome that and build the respect of those that were older than you?
- [28:58]
B
Well, I had a double whammy for those that are watching. You know, I was a second gen, so I took over my father's company. And so I was. And you know, in their opinion, I was kind of the lucky child. Right. Who really didn't want the responsibilities but got them. And so I had that plus the youth. And you got to remember that, I
- [29:13]
A
mean, because they thought, because they thought that way was that, did that create a little Bit of a chip on your shoulder to prove to them that you really did want to be there and grow the company.
- [29:20]
B
You know what? Not really. That's just not how I'm wired. I think for me, not a chip, but more of a learning opportunity to see who's going to root for you, how you're going to, how you're going to. It was like, for me, I did need to prove myself, but I needed to prove it to myself. Like, I need to grow. And I'll tell you what's really interesting about, like, my primary business has been commercial construction. Okay, I know a lot about construction, but there's people that know a lot more about construction. My business is people. I know people. I know how to get people to work together. I know how to encourage people and to lead people that will go well in any vertical. By the way. You're not limited to just whatever, you know, virtue of industry you're going to be in or whatever vertical. And I think that's the thing that is really the secret sauce for us is we never looked to ourselves as we were in construction, right? There's better people, especially in our company, that knows a lot more about construction per se, but we really cultivated a culture. And so I never had a chip. What I had to learn, though, is the most important thing we would ever do is hire, retain, and develop the right people. Because we were in the people business, and no matter how good people were, we were going to always continue to promote character over competency because we knew what it was like to not have high character, and we wanted to make sure we never had that again.
- [30:38]
C
If you, if you take care of good people, they'll take care of you all day. But one of the hardest parts about being a business owner is, like you said, it's hard enough to find and retain good talent, but how do you get them to stay for extended periods of time? You know, because someone who's great is going to get. You know, there's other companies who are like, hey, I want that talent. You know, I would love for them to work for me. Maybe they're sending them offers as a growing company, especially like, even us, like, how would you recommend or to business owners out there that they actually retain good talent?
- [31:08]
B
Great question. So in our industry, we're. There's probably about a 15% turnover. We're at 3%. And the reason being is because we actively coach and mentor each and every person in the industry. So a lot of times what happens in big businesses is like the executive team and maybe the second tier, get all the coaching and you hope it goes down well. We actively go all the way down to the receptionists. Like, we want to make sure every single person is getting developed and grown and mentored. And then we have monthly touch bases where they're the truth and love conversations. Because the worst thing you ever want to do is like wait and zap mentality. Like at the end of the year, here's your review. You screwed up this, you screwed up that and you're gone or whatever the case. Instead of like, no, no, no, hey, what are we doing for you? So one of our core values is communication. And so what that means is like we're going to openly communicate about everything, but it's on us to create a safe place and a healthy place for people to communicate. Because if they're not communicating with us, that's on us. If we didn't create that now, if we did and they're not now it's on them. But we have to have this dialogue.
- [32:13]
C
It's like a relationship.
- [32:14]
B
It is a relationship. And you call. Call business, personal, whatever. It's all personal at the end of the day.
- [32:20]
A
You mentioned that you're in the people business. And in particular, one of the things that you've utilized to get the right people together to collaborate and help build the company is you've talked about them throughout. This is these core values. I feel like that's often very overlooked in a lot of companies that are growing or even bigger companies. They don't have necessarily an emphasis on them. How did you come about establishing these core principles and if you can, what are the core principles and values that
- [32:45]
B
you love to tell your company? Yeah, love to tell you. Thanks for asking. So God first is our first core value, which is really a stewardship mentality. So if we believe in a God first organization, we're stewarding people. Well, how are we stewarding people? I think we're going to get created on that one day.
- [33:00]
A
Right.
- [33:01]
B
Our next one is family. Because if family's not good, work doesn't matter. So how do we partner with families? So one of the ways we do it is we have free counseling services for anybody, whoever needs it. We have five to six families in counseling at any given time. We don't know who they are, but all they have to do is present a business card to our counselors and they take care of it. We also have on site chaplains. We also have several events every year that include spouses and then the kids. So we want to continue to encourage family. Also in construction, construction is a burnout industry. A lot of people work seven day weeks. We don't allow it. We'll do six days a week. But we also cycle off our teams. We try to staff all of our jobs where people can get home and get to work. And we also don't have any major metropolitan hubs. So here's what I mean by that. All of our offices are in suburbs. This was key strategically is because now people can go to work and we're going to try to put their jobs near their homes and they can make it home to soccer practice. How often are they on road for an hour, two hours, three hours or they're living away in construction. People can't believe we do that, but they don't. Most people travel all the time and that's not conducive for family. So we can't have a core value family and not back that up. Then our third one's absolute integrity. And that's basically what integrity is. It's just absolute or nothing. So this first three are like the non negotiables rite of passage. Then the next two are daily achievables. Our next one, service. Service is what I really believe is our secret sauce. It's a mentality of how do we serve each other internally first and if we serve each other internally first, then that's just who we are. That will manifest externally. But we have to have a servant minded humility internally first. That's just who we are. DNA. And then last one's communication, Open, honest, early and often if we don't know about it, we can't fix it. So again if we create the safe place, then it's up to them to communicate and it's up to us to create that safe place.
- [34:56]
D
So one, one thing that I've noticed not only just about yourself, but a lot of the people that we've interviewed is that they're, you know, they have the humility and willing to take advice on things that they don't know about from people that are way smarter than them in those particular areas. Like for example a chef who can cook for them or a personal trainer that can help them work out. And so for high performers that are watching this podcast, who would you say are like the non negotiable people, like once you get to a certain point with your income that like hey, you could start bringing in some of these advisors whether you can afford it or not, like, but at least bringing these people in your life to start listening to them that maybe not even from a business perspective that you would say, these are the types of people that you need to have in your circle and you should take advice from them on these specific things.
- [35:39]
B
Great question. You know, obviously a faith component. You need someone that's challenging you from your faith component and accountability. There's some great apps. You can do this together through Bible studies or, you know, type events like that, which is just fantastic. Just iron sharpens iron. The other two, though, this is a great question, because I. I thought it was, like, kind of weird to have a personal chef, if I'm being honest. It's like, you know, this seems a little bougie.
- [36:03]
A
And no, no, this podcast isn't half it.
- [36:06]
B
If it's not for that, hey, I don't mind being a little bougie, but I had two sets of friends that had a chef. I was like, man, tell me about this. Going back to, you know, the most valuable thing we have is tomorrow, right? So what emphasis are we putting on our health and, like, this day and age? There's so many things out there. I mean, so many incredible things. Hyperbaric, red light, you know, peptides, whatever. And so I would totally engage with. This is my personal. I'd take a private chef before the trainer because 80% of how you look and how your body feels is how you eat. 20% is how you work out. That's what you do in the gym. So my opinion, I guess, I mean, especially the people are watching that can afford it. And this is an outrageous. But could you imagine someone chasing your macros all day? Think about what it does for our family. This is huge. My sweet wife, four kids. Think about the time. And she used to love to cook, by the way, so this is a knock on her. She's a great cook. Think about the time that she cooked and cleaned and would serve and help, that now she has to be with the family. Now we can have a functioning incredible dinner where someone's not, you know, moving all around and going to, you know, tracking down whatever we're supposed to eat. So that is phenomenal. And just now we know what's going in our bodies. Like, our incredible team, they'll source wherever we're at in whatever homes we're at, they know where to go to to get the best produce, the best meats or fish. And so that would be my number one. And then two, I've got an incredible friend, a friend I'm going to plug in Clint Phillips Medici. He has an incredible health and wellness system that is okay. Holistically, doctors are incentivized on how much they prescribe. It's just how the business works. Right. Not knocking anybody. And so because that it's a, you know, giant industry, I don't know if it's a trillion dollar industry, but something huge. Well, his team of doctors are motivated and incentivized for how healthy the patient is. What a great thing. So tell me to get off some antibiotics. Right. And become healthier. So fantastic. So I'm partnered with him. He does a wellness check every year, and then he also does all of our executives as well. From a wellness standpoint, he does big wellness all over, but incredible guy. And I love just changing that format. Right. Because we want to live longer and healthier lives and more quality lives. So Chef would be mine if you have the means. I know it sounds crazy. And then personal trainer.
- [38:37]
A
The next one I wanted to ask about was you keep bringing up this component about faith and God, having that at the center of your life.
- [38:44]
C
How.
- [38:44]
A
How did you kind of come about? Were you raised in the church?
- [38:47]
B
Were you running in the church?
- [38:48]
A
Or when did it really become such a significant part of.
- [38:50]
B
Great question, man. So I'll tell you this. So I grew up in a. In a great Christian family, right, that love the Lord. And so I knew God. I knew of God, right? And so I went out. I went out college and my younger life and kind of went crazy and did everything the world had to, you know, offer. And what I learned during that time is how empty it all was. I mean, what. Whatever, you know, situation, and. And again, like, hey, to this day, like, we still. We'll go to Ibiza and go to, you know, incredible concerts, some fun stuff, but it's all healthy with great people. There's no drama. But I look back at my past and. And the things, you know, waking up in a different place or whatever scenario, regret and shame, and it's like, man, that place was so empty. And I look back, I'm just so thankful that, like, I experienced that stuff. You know, they say experience is an effective teacher. It's also a harsh teacher. You get scars with that. And I look back at the scars that I have, but I'm so thankful that I had those opportunities before I had the means to go really do things that could have really hurt me long term, if that makes sense. So I got to learn at early age how empty that was. Okay. And I think for me, what happened is I had a real challenge in my marriage 2008, and so I'll never forget. I mean, October 12, 2008, I got on my knees, I was like, okay, gun, let's. Enough of this playing around. I need to know if you're real and if you are, I want a personal relationship. When I was 28, I didn't know eight months later I was going to be tapped to run the business. Had no idea. But God was getting a hold of my heart. And it was so cool to look back and just see his plan. And, you know, his plan is so perfect. How often are we, like, committing our, you know, our plans? Proverbs 16 is like, you know, commit to the Lord in all your ways and he'll establish your plans. And I'm like, how often am I like, here's my plans. Go make it happen. Genie in a bottle versus God's like, that's cute. I got a whole nother plan for you that you can't even dream of, right?
- [41:05]
A
But.
- [41:06]
B
But God, this is the way I look at it, is he is. He's not about perfection. He doesn't care about us doing things perfect at all, man. He just wants our obedience. His love language is obedience. And it doesn't matter what happened yesterday, it matters what's happened today. In this moment, this is all we can control. Where they say that the past is regret and shame, the future is anxiousness and worry, we weren't built for either one of those. We're built for the moment. And I'll go further with this is if we live in the moment. Think about a grain of sand, like an hourglass, right? Every grain of sand is a day. We have that day and that day only, good or bad. But if we can live in that moment, not only can we stretch it out and make it a long moment, and life doesn't fly because when you were a kid, life took forever. If you remember, it took forever to go by, right? It took forever to finally drive a car. The days never ended well. Why? We weren't worried about stuff. We weren't worried about the mortgage or college or whatever. We weren't worried about those things. And so if we could take that as an adult and say, I'm going to take that same application, that childlike faith, and I'm going to apply it to today, and then tomorrow. I'm going to apply it tomorrow, and I'm going to enjoy every single moment, good and bad, I'm going to appreciate the moments.
- [42:21]
D
You brought up Ibiza. And so we're doing this podcast. We're doing this podcast on a jet right now. And So I got to ask, you know, through you and the experiences that you've been blessed to have for everybody out there, where are like top three travel destinations that they got to go to?
- [42:38]
B
Man, that's a hard one. I love travel. I'm thinking special places. You know, I love Italy. We've been all over, we spent a lot of time south of France, but, you know, the world's changing a little bit. I don't know if you've watched, but there's some different things happening, especially in Europe. And so I think it's good that our country's kind of holding their ground in some ways. But Italy has been special to me because the Italian people are so sweet and kind of reminds me of the South. Like, they're all open and, and matter of fact, we got, we had some time this year and really got to know the Bocelli's, Andrea and Veronica and got to spend time with them at their place. And they're just incredibly sweet. People just welcome you in. And so all throughout Italy, I love one kind of magical place for me is Capri. It's kind of like St. Bart's meets Disneyland in a way, and just a really special, unique place. There's a, there's a hotel in the center of this and I forget the name of it, but there's a little nightclub at the bottom in a basement right below, which is like this little hidden gem. And they come and do, you know, pure Italian, you know, nights there, which is super fun. But I love to travel. I love experiences. Been all over, but Italy is probably one of my favorite.
- [43:48]
A
Ben, we talked a lot throughout this podcast about, you know, how to create wealth, how to build, scale a business, find the right people, retain all that stuff, scaling. I want to talk a little bit now about wealth preservation in particular. You know, you have a little bit, I think of a contrarian opinion about what a lot of wealthy people actually do with their money. Because consolidation is close. Everybody's telling you to go do this, two, three, four, you know, all these different things. What's your perspective on how to build long term wealth and make your money work for you?
- [44:15]
B
Well, this is a great question. I would tell you this goes back to my faith component. It also goes back to that reasonable versus unreasonable. I think if we're, if we're playing the game, not to lose, it's easy to just do the box. Let's do this diversified portfolio. And again, I'm not saying that's unhealthy. I'm not saying it's bad. But I do think there's an element of that that could be playing not to lose versus playing to win. You look at the wealthiest people in the world, they have a very consolidated business, right? And they, they've crushed it. But that's been like a one trick pony in a lot of ways. And so for me, you know, I've got four kiddos, something about legacy. Of course, I've got, you know, so bitcoin, I've got other investments and you know, a lot of, you know, fun things. But what I hope for my kids, like for thinking legacy, this is going to be up to them, right? It's going to be up to be what they want to do and what their unique contribution is going to be. And we should talk about that. But what I'd love to do is my passion is teach them how to be great owners. Great owners create great places to work, man, recruit the best, take care of the best and find people that are smarter than you in a lot of ways. Now they can be operators if they want to, but I'd much rather teach them how to be great owners.
- [45:33]
C
That was one of the things I was curious about. As someone who has a company that's doing, that's doing over a billion dollars a year in revenue, what are those principles that you instill in your kids to live, you know, a profitable and just, you know, a life that, you know, is, you know, a happy life?
- [45:52]
B
Yeah, well, it's a great question I think too. It's how do you keep kids grounded when they're flying around on jets and stuff? I think that's certainly.
- [45:59]
A
He's great right there. I want to hear this.
- [46:01]
B
Yes. Well, buddy, I don't know if we've mastered it, but we're working on it. I think for us, as, you know, part of it is first off, none of this is theirs, right? None of this is entitled to them. They get to enjoy the experience as long as they're, you know, hanging with us and doing things. Otherwise you're going to go commercial somewhere.
- [46:18]
A
They're going to work jobs.
- [46:19]
B
They're definitely going to work 100%. I'll give you something maybe a little taboo here. I'm not sure if college is the wrap for all of them either. I think it's interesting to see that today. I don't know if you saw this, but recently Elon Musk said that he thinks the his Tesla robots will outwork any doctor in the next three to four years. Three or four years better surgeries. So think about this think if you were signing up for med school today, you got eight years, right? There should be robots doing your job in eight years in theory. So I think it's kind of phenomenal.
- [46:54]
C
We were literally talking about this on the way here. Some of the biggest industries that people were talking about to get into, especially when we were in high school, like, hey, get into it, become a, you know, know graphic designer. Graphic designer. Learn coding code. It's all, it's just getting knocked out, right?
- [47:09]
B
Your engineering, all those professional trades. But real quick, back to your thing. Because I think it's so important from a family standpoint is how do you train your kids, right? I think a lot of it is giving them reps. So I'll take my kids, especially my little ones, even today, and I'll let them help lead the meeting. So we do Monday morning meetings and we do a devotion, we do updates, we do a 15 minute meeting. It's incredible. It zooms to every job trailer throughout the state. And so people get to see key updates, they get to see a devo. And I'll let sometimes my little kids help run this. And so I want to get them reps. If, you know, you know the number one fear, right? What's the number one fear?
- [47:45]
C
Public speaking.
- [47:46]
B
Public speaking. Right. Over death. People are scared to death of public speaking, which is crazy, right? And so clip it, clip it. And so, so, you know, from that standpoint, let's get them some reps. You know, let me, let me tell you about this. My business coach went through this exercise real quick. He said, okay, you've got core competencies, right? You've got the things that you are excellent at that no one else or that naturally you're just gifted at. Okay? Then you have the things that you've learned. Those learned competencies you've gotten better at. For me, that'd be like P and L, you know, accounting, you know, things like that. I had to learn. I was always, I was always good at like networking of encouraging people, winning people over. That came naturally, right? But I had to learn about the accounting side the back house, right? Then you have the things that are not your competencies you're incompetent at. Okay, let me just, I'll tell you mine. One of mine is, is planning. I hate planning. It just drives me nuts. Like somebody else do that, please. And let's, let's go figure it out. But my coaches encouraged us to do is take those three and then your last one, which is the most important is what is your unique Contribution, Okay. It's not often where you're excellent or where your competencies are. Sometimes it's where you're incompetent. But let me give you an example. What do you do in a room of 500 people that no one else can do? So what's interesting is when you ask that sometimes in the States, people are like, man, how long you got? I can tell you all about how great I am. Right? You ask that in Europe, they're like, man, it's not. There's nothing special about me. I don't know, because these are different cultures. But if you think about that, what do you do better than anybody, right? So if I know what mine is, mine typically is networking, encouraging people, really strategic relationships. And whether it's a CEO or a janitor, man, I just love people. Let's go. Let's have a conversation. I love that in a room of 500, I could probably do some good public speaking. I'm good at that. I've learned to do that. But ultimately, what I think my unique contribution is, or at least one of them, is to build great places for people to work. I love that. That now starts firing also, which is my heart. It's so much bigger. That's more purpose and assignment than making money or achieving a certain goal. And so I would challenge you viewers out there, and you guys as well, to help find out what your unique contribution is. And one way to do it is ask the people around you what you do better than anybody else in a room of 500 people.
- [50:30]
A
I love that. Ben, we like to end these podcasts off with two questions for our guests that we have. My first question for you, and then Jack will end it for us. So, Ben, if me and you died tomorrow and you had one more message to leave with the younger generation, what would that be?
- [50:46]
B
Man, I would say have no regrets. Have no regrets at all. Love, love. Everybody, no matter where they're at, know if they're a safe place. But make that phone call to that person you love. Encourage that person, be happy with others. Winning that would be a big part, I think. Encouraging people and loving them where they're at.
- [51:09]
A
Love that.
- [51:10]
D
Yes, sir. And, Ben, how old are you now?
- [51:12]
B
45.
- [51:13]
D
45. And so if it was all done tomorrow, how would you want to be remembered?
- [51:18]
B
Oh, it's a great question. I'd want to be remembered that I love Jesus, I love my family, and I loved people. And I'll tell you a little side note with that. Had a guy ask me this once. He goes, who's the most important person in your life? A lot of people will say, family, loved one, spouse. He said, no, I'd argue it's the one right in front of you. Because they were put there for a reason for 10 minutes, for 10 years. How did you impact their life?
- [51:48]
A
That's amazing right there.
- [51:49]
D
That's fantastic.
- [51:49]
B
Let's go, baby.
- [51:51]
A
This was a beautiful podcast episode, my man. Thank you so much, man. For everybody watching right now. Guys, be sure to like and subscribe for amazing content every week. We're bringing you guys the most incredible business owners in the world, just like Ben Pogue right here on the private jets, you guys. So subscribe to the channel for new podcasts every week and do yourself an even bigger favor. Look, I'm giving you guys direct access to my billionaire network. Guys, if you go down to the link in the description of this video, you can join the number one most powerful entrepreneur, community and network in the world, where you get access to live calls that we host every week at the School of Hard Knocks, inside of the School of Mentors, and you ask your questions directly to the eight, nine, and ten figure entrepreneurs that we interview on this channel. So we can't wait to see you on the inside. With that being said, we'll see you in the next episode.