Today we’d like to introduce you to Paul Courtwright.
Hi Paul, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida and worked part time in construction from the age of about 18 to 22. 4-6 years of college and then a 9-5 office job where I had to go to the same place every single day and be inside a building never suited my idea of what I wanted to do for work. I understood at an early age that I was never going to be a brilliant scientist or an IT guy who came up with a digital idea and sold it for millions. I knew the only way I would be successful and make a decent living would be if I worked hard and learned a specific trade involving physical labor. I always enjoyed working with my hands, but I wasn’t 100% sure what trade I wanted to specialize in. I knew plumbing was out because I didn’t want to deal with what goes into toilets. Electrical scared me and I didn’t want to accidently kill myself on the job. Roofing and foundation work was brutally tough especially in the Florida sun. All the roofers and concrete workers I knew had bad backs and knees at 40. I was about 22 years old and just finished up taking classes to get my AA. While mulling over ideas for our futures, with my roommate at the time I stumbled upon the connection of a lifetime. My roommate, Elliot, mentioned he had a friend named Tadpole who was a superintendent at a local homebuilding company called LAB Homes. They would go to crappy areas of Jacksonville FL and buy cheap empty lots or lots with old trailers on them, mainly in a place called Sin City, and tear the trailers down. They would then build a house on the property and sell it for a very heavy profit. Tadpole had about 15-25 projects going on and was looking to hire an assistant to train and help him manage all the jobs. This sounded awesome to me because it would put me in a position to learn everything in the trades and not have to focus on just one. So, we ended up linking up and he thought I would be a good fit to work with him. The company he worked for was definitely not on the up and up and part of their bussiness strategy was to have no field employees on paper and sub out all the “project management and superintendent work”. This saved them from worker comp costs and other legal issues that could have arisen if something went south with the employment. I had to start my own S corp and was paid through that. It was kinda cool telling people you had your own bussiness at that age and buying all your friends drinks at the bar as a “client meeting”. Years later I would find out that it was more of a headache than it was really worth. Especially when it came to S corps and taxes! Tadpole trained me for a year or so and I was really loving the freedom of driving around to different jobs all day long and being outside. Chopping it up with the different trades and crews was also fun as you got to learn the personalities of the varies trade people. To make extra money on the side and help Tad out when we were slow, I would work with different subs. This was extremely helpful in having a healthy respect of how things were done. Being that young and running crews, it was mandatory that you knew how to do the work yourself and have ideas on how to fix things when they go wrong. Nobody is going to listen to you tell them what to do if you don’t know what you’re talking about. Around 2008-2009 the housing market crashed and the company we worked with went out of bussiness within in a few weeks. It’s crazy looking back at it and knowing that you were a small part of that disaster that happened to the country. I would do a final walkthrough on every house we sold with the new homeowners. Chatting with them, you would find out what they did for a living and some would brag about how they got such a cheap rate for the first year on their mortgage. I never said anything but in my head, I was thinking there’s no way you can afford this house doing what you do and, in a year, it’s going to be a big problem for you to pay your mortgage. Long story short LAB Homes went out of bussiness, and I was starting to think I made a huge mistake getting fully into the construction industry. I mean how can an entire industry just collapse, and you lose your job virtually within a few weeks. It was tough watching grown men beg for work and cry about losing everything they had because they blew all their money when times were rolling. I had purchased my first home, that the company had built about a year before the collapse, and was now 68k upside down in the value of it. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot for people in California but it’s about the equivalent of 500k given the year and house. At that time, I was pretty good with self-performing the various trades and had a solid understanding of how things were built. Tad and I split ways, and I started doing handyman work around town. I probably called and applied to 30-40 different construction companies with not even a call back. About 6 months later I received a return call from a company looking to hire a superintendent to build a Dollar General. Even with no knowledge of commercial construction, I talked my way into getting hired to a company called The Hatch Group. Mainly because I told them I would work for dirt cheap. The Hatch Group had recently started an east coast office (their main office was in Brea CA) down by Orlando Fl and hired a man name Randy Primmer to run the new division. Randy was an expert at building Dollar Generals and had over 125 under his belt. It was a good time for Randy because commercial construction was really the only thing still somewhat happening in our neck of the woods. Randy was the toughest, hardest, meanest, SOB I ever worked for. I could not stand him and almost every day I gave it serious thought about quitting. The guy was just a Nazi, and you could never do anything right even when you did it his way. Years later I would come to realize the reason he had trained me the way he did was to make me a better superintendent. The lessons were priceless. Teaching me about being thorough even when you already thought you were, constant communication to the point of annoyance, and always preparing for the worst-case scenario were just some of the huge things that helped shape my career. These lessons helped me time and time again in so many future situations. Most importantly, having plan A, B, C, D, and E on how to fix an issue before it came up. That’s the trick, don’t react, think ahead and plan how to fix it. Honestly the way he was so hard on me was a huge factor in my future success. After building 3-4 ground up Dollar Generals around Jacksonville and thriving as a commercial superintendent I was asked If I wanted to go to San Diego to work on a small project in Encinitas. They were converting an old Radio Shack into a Big Lots. Growing up surfing in Florida and knowing how amazing SD was for waves (compared to Florida) I jumped at the opportunity. It was only supposed to be a 5-6 week job. During a framing inspection the city of Encinitas inspector noticed that we had a trash can catching a drip from a sprinkler line above the expose ceiling grid. The leak was in the middle of the line (started the night before the inspection) which was unusual for a leak to start there. So, she asked us to save that section of pipe after we cut it out and repaired it. We did which ended up being a huge mistake as the city then claimed the entire sprinkler system could be compromised by what’s called MIC. It’s when a micro bacteria eats the interior liner of the pipe, thus compromising it. That opened up a huge can of warms which turned the 5-6 week job into a 5-6 month job. Thus allowing me to stay in San Diego longer and make a great group of friends which eventually lead me to meet my future wife. After the job was completed, I headed back to Florida, rented my house out, and moved back to San Diego. My boss in Florida was thoroughly pissed that I left the east coast division and moved west. Randy said he knew the minute he asked me if I wanted to go there to work it was a mistake! Anyways I worked with The Hatch Group on a few more jobs and ended up getting laid off. This was still a really bad time to be in construction and jobs were far and few in between. They did offer for me to go back to Florida to work, but that was never going to happen. One of my friends brothers worked for a large commercial contractor in Escondido and gave me the name of the vice president of the company. I drove to their office and asked to speak with Dave Mason their VP. Dave was a little surprised that I just showed up to see if they needed another superintendent to join their team. After a brief meeting I was hired on the spot and started working for a Eleven Western Builders and ran commercial jobs as a super all over the West Coast. We mainly remolded CVS, Best Buys, Wal-Marts, Albertsons, Vons, ect. It taught me a great deal but the work involved working mainly nights and being gone 8-9 months out of the year. At this point I was engaged and for there to be any future I needed to be home and not on the road most of the year. Plus working nights is brutal and really no way to live your life. So, I quit and found a local company called Mission Restoration to work for in San Diego. They were a restoration company, and I was able to use my years of knowledge in construction and apply them to the insurnace world of claims and insurance repairs. The company and I never really saw eye to eye on long term goals, and I didn’t agree with a lot of their operational procedures. Again, construction was not booming and I was just happy to be working local even if it was at a huge pay cut. I knew there was a strong possibility to learn everything I could from this place and start my own bussiness one day. Restoration seemed like such a recession proof construction field which I loved given what happened to me several years before. I worked there for about 16 months, learned everything I needed to know about restoration and the insurnace claims process and randomly found a construction company on Craigslist called MMD Construction. The owner Milan was a super cool guy and we hit it off right at the start. Him and his buddy had just purchased a franchise called Rytech and they were starting to do water mitigation work for flood damages. They wanted to utilize the flood damage repairs into construction repairs to keep MMD busy in-between custom home builds. Milan didn’t know anything about restoration, so he hired me to build his restoration reconstruction division. I worked with Milan for about 2-3 years and after seeing the success I had built for him I decided it was time to build my own. We left on great terms and Element Construction and Restoration was born! The thought process behind it was that I don’t have to rely 100% on the economy or the decisions of others that can negatively affect my bussiness. Being in restoration you are almost always guaranteed work because people always have floods and fires and they usually have insurnace cover the repairs. So we could do 60-70% restoration work and also rely on regular customer for normal construction and remodel work. The restoration work is also a great way to meet future customers and show them what you’re capable of. We’ve had many projects that started out as a flood repair and turned into remodel work outside of the insurance claim. It’s also a great way to give back to community to help people when their homes are damaged and they have no idea how to navigate the claims process. There’s nothing more rewarding than helping a homeowner stand up to their insurnace company who is trying to cheat the owner out of restoring their home to the way it was.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Creating and running the bussiness itself has been a pretty smooth road. I’ve defiantly found that when you run a bussiness in an ethical way and work hard you have very little problems. Working for other people over the years it is just amazing the mistakes and situations you see people get into by doing unethical and shady things. You definitely get tired of dealing with insurnace adjusters who’s only goal is to pay out as little as possible.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
So basically whenever somebody has a flood or fire at their property they hire a mitigation company to come do the demo, cleanup, and dry everything out. After that the owner needs somebody to do the construction repairs to restore the property. That’s where my company steps in. I’m most proud of helping people restore their home in timely manners and giving them assurance that no matter how bad their house looks right now it won’t be like that forever. Some people we work for have poured their hearts and souls into their houses and are devastated when it’s half destroyed. On are non insurnace jobs I’m proud to help people bring their remodel to life. People have dreamed and saved money for years to create something unique and special to them. It’s very rewarding knowing you’re part of that process and contributed in a small way.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Hands down, hard work and doing the right thing even when it’s tough. For any young person reading this and wanting to get into the industry you have to start at the bottom. I know it sucks and the work is hard, but you are setting yourself up for failure if you try to skip to the top. There’s honor in a hard days work which I think a lot of younger people don’t realize. These two quotes are probably my favorite of all time when it comes to work. “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out” – Robert Collier “Work hard in silence, let success be your noise” – Frank Ocean Hope this story inspires somebody out there to setup and create their own dream company in whatever field it may be.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.elmtcr.com
- Other: Paul@elmtcr.com (email)
