Our Mission – Building an Amazing Company that Impacts People and Concrete.

Any time our business gets any press it seems that financial advisers and insurance folks seem to be interested in talking about our current coverage/investments – touting how a quick review can offer us the best prices. These meetings take precious time and although we want to get the best value for our dollars spent, I’m not about to switch carriers for a little bit here or there. I value longer-term relationships, and if I feel our current company has our best interest – well then we stick with them. This has been the case with our insurance carrier for the last six years. When I started our first business insurance policy, it was an essential plan covering the van, a few tools, and necessary business umbrella. I think combined it cost $60 per month. Well, a bit has changed since then. Now we have multiple crews, six vehicles on the road, three large enclosed trailers full of capital equipment and an insurance policy that protects us and our clients for some of the biggest construction projects in the region. I think you can do the math – we now have a pretty substantial premium difference.

With our current plan, we kept getting feedback that our provider would not insure drivers under the age of 25. With 28% of our workforce under 25, this is a bit of a hurdle. It also burdens anyone under the age of 25 to work in our business. We send people out in trucks every day. Driving is a significant part of the role in working with our team. This policy seemed silly to me, and after reaching out to some other providers, we found that this was a specific policy for our carrier but not an insurance standard. So I called a provider and let them know this was a big hurdle – a pain point for us – that we needed to find some way around this. We were met with passivity – mostly beating around the topic and why the policy has this standard. So we met with other providers. Yes, finally the people who have been knocking at our door, had the chance to take a look at our current coverage. We shared these pain point from the beginning, and they made sure we can insure any legal driver with limited infractions. “No problem,” they said. So we did our due diligence (Dennis dug in deep) meeting several times to go over our policy and to make sure we won’t have any lapses in coverage.

So I contacted our provider and let them know we were switching carriers. Now, things were different. Now they said they could make an exception to our policy – that they would make phone calls to the underwriters to make it happen. They had the same opportunity as before, but complacency had moved in. Instead of moving as they do for a new client, or when a client is pulling coverage, they were complacent. Before we heard “That’s how it is” – now we heard, “We can make it happen.” The thing is, they were too late. They had lost our business.

Unless acted upon as an organization grows, complacency will step in. Just look at your relationships – maybe with your kids, with your spouse, your physical fitness. Complacency creeps in and takes hold. As our organization grows and matures – as we move to building an amazing company that impacts people – it’s vital we recognize this – so we can fight against it. Yes – Fight. Because complacency is not some passive foe – it is attacking everything we stand for. A caring mindset is about caring about the things you do and the people around you. Complacency is a form of NOT caring.

In my life, it’s about loving my wife and pursuing her in a way to make her know I love her. Remembering that she is a beautiful, creative woman that I want to serve and blossom (let’s not get dirty here- blossom as in, I want her to grow her because she is with me). At work, it’s remembering that I would stay up late into the night to get a bid to a new client. Are my actions going to display how much I care about them? Will I still work to make it happen like I did in the pursuit? Yes…..Yes, I will. And I am surrounded by team members who do the same. Part of Being an Amazing Company is having a Caring Mindset.

Heard. Watched. Read.

• “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” –Andy Grove
• “The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves. The resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” — Thomas Merton
• “One of the roots of conflict between parents and their young children is a clash of time zones. Parents are oriented to the future, to getting wherever they imagine themselves to be going. Children, on the other hand, when left to themselves inhabit the present. Most of the disconnection comes down to a rupture between a life enjoyed moment by moment and a life that’s focused on moving ahead.” – Shefali Tsabary, The Awakened Family