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On Cornerstone Conversations, we explore the unique dynamic of fathers and sons who work together, whether they built something from scratch or carried something forward.
Our mission is to create a space for intentional conversation and storytelling around family business transitions and legacy by enabling more dads to see working with their kids as a discipleship opportunity and more sons to see working with dad as an honor, not a handout.
Learn more about Cornerstone Coaching at www.cornerstoneco.com
Kile Graves: [00:00:00] Welcome to Cornerstone Conversations where we discuss timely topics impacting communities, cultures, and economies. First topic we're gonna dive into in this series is family business. Currently, there are 32 million family businesses in the US generating over half of our GDP as a country. They also employ 83 million people.
What's interesting is only 30% of family businesses make it to the second generation, and only 12% make it to the third. You've probably heard of the great wealth transfer that is taking place across the globe in the next five to seven years. 40% of all the small businesses in the US are owned by a baby boomer.
Who is reaching retirement age pretty soon As coaches, we're really interested in what those impacts do to communities and cultures at large. We've had the privilege of walking alongside a lot of family business leaders over the past few years, and we believe this major intersection is something that can really, uh, impact communities as well.
We're gonna talk to six, uh, dads and sons that are working together and are trying to navigate what it means as a [00:01:00] son to carry forward, what their dad started, and as dads trying to let go of something that they've held onto for so long.
Thanks again for doing this, guys. Um, excited to talk with Brad and Marshall Smith, who I've really enjoyed getting to know you guys over the last year or so. Uh, I know you two, I've known each other longer and we can get into that, but it's been fun to get to know you guys and kind of your heart for what you're doing.
Um. So when we as Cornerstone talk about family ventures, uh, or, or family businesses in general, uh, it's kinda two categories. We, we either work with or talk about. Uh, those are legacy businesses. So these are four or five, six generation businesses that have been around and your great-grandfather started it and now Marshall's turn, uh, which is not you guys.
The other category is something we, we slash I just call Joint Family Venture. So this is a dad and son saying, let's do something new together. Let's go put our fingerprints on something together, [00:02:00] um, and start something or buy something in your case, um, which is a cool category. Honestly, you were kind of the inspiration for this podcast too, Brad.
We were, uh, I don't if you remember this, but we were at coffee early on last spring and, uh, we were talking about Pender Craft and what you guys were facing and all the, you know, challenges and stuff. Um, but he said, ultimately the reason I decided to do this was for a chance to work with Marshall and disciple him in the workplace.
Uh. I just, I walked away from that coffee and I texted him immediately and I texted Esther immediately and was just like, this is such a cool thing that's happening. I never really heard anyone talk about, you know, business that way, or frame it up in that way. And we were working together. So I understood a little bit of kinda what that meant, but, so thanks for that.
And honestly, you're the inspiration for a lot of just this topic and us wanting to dive into this topic. So, um, before we get into your background, uh, where you were and what you were doing before and kind of the, the formation of your business, [00:03:00] was that concept of, of working with Marshall in your head and heart for a while and you were just looking for the opportunity, or did it just present itself and here you went?
Brad Smith: Well, I think, um, you know, Marshall and I talked about that a lot when he was, he was young, you know, I can remember, um, him growing up, we had a farm, so he worked on the farm all the time. And he, um, we would talk about the potential maybe. And then the company that I used to work for, uh, we had a big warehouse and he swept the floors and put stuff away and, you know, just all kinds of things like that.
And, you know, he had a, he's an engineer, so you know, this engineering mindset and, you know, we, we talked about it like, hey, what it'll be like maybe if we work together. And I, I was open to it for sure, but I had told him, you know, I think it'd be better for you to go somewhere else at first. And then when, uh, you've worked somewhere else four or five, six years and [00:04:00] sort of got your feet on the ground, then we could potentially, you know, do something.
And in the meantime, uh, I, I had an exit from the business that I was in and, you know, we, I just sort of felt like maybe that door was closed.
Kile Graves: Mm-hmm.
Brad Smith: You know, I had sort of semi-retired and. Uh, was just trying not to be a deadbeat and, uh, you know, this opportunity sort of came back around. So That's great.
Steve Graves: That's a huge, I I remember when Kyle called me after he had had the, the coffee with you, and I remember he framed it up, but then he added something else, which was, you had made the statement, and I don't wanna, this is for me, this is the big, huge insight, but, you know, you made the statement of, you know, why would you just go invest into another, you know, set of apartments or another bunch of warehouses when you had a chance to invest into yourself in your son's relationship in a business or a work setting environment?
Like, like what better thing could that be? And I just [00:05:00] remember when he said that to me. The light bulbs just, just started exploding in me because the traditional conventional thinking of, you know, the, the sun needs to go work somewhere else for a while, it still has some value, but with people making so much money faster in today's world, um, and with so much venture and entrepreneurial activity going on, I just think that I, this idea for me is a really interesting, timely one for, for this generation of, of G ones and G twos.
So I, I really, really like the idea for you guys.
Kile Graves: Yeah. That's, that's a cool part of the story.
Brad Smith: Yeah, it's interesting. Um, I, I sort of had this view. It was never something I verbalized, but I had this view in the back of my mind that, well, once I retire, I'm just gonna take it easy. You know, I'm life. You sort of got life in a good place and manageable place, and you're just gonna relax.
And when this opportunity came about, we started [00:06:00] praying about it. I just really felt like this is what God wanted me to do. And it was sorta honestly sort of counter to a lot of the wisdom that that's out there now. It's like, Hey, I, I'm in this, you know, I'm not, I'm 54. I'm not like, I'm real, real old, but like I'm sort of entering this last sprint and, you know, you don't wanna, you don't wanna risk or upset the apple cart, you know what I mean?
You don't wanna risk too much. And, you know, it was like, I just, I feel like God is maybe teaching me a brand new lesson about, you know, just trusting him and following his lead in, in it.
Steve Graves: Yeah. I'm on the board of an organization called Praxis, and about three years ago, the chairman, CEO and um, leader of the organization delivered a, an annual keynote talk and he talked about the idea of instead of de-risking.
Um, he felt like that we, we ought to be re risking, not de-risking when we move into these inflection times in life. And his big idea was, [00:07:00] you know, people of faith ought to be painting and pursuing. A new quest, a big redemptive quest in life. And it could be working with your son or it could be doing something.
And so, but he really put, he put in, in intention against each other. This idea of de-risking, which is your point most of the time as you age. It's like, why would I,
Brad Smith: yeah.
Steve Graves: Why would I take more risk? I need to be de-risking. Yeah. And the whole, the, the whole point of his deal is, no, no, you gotta be taking more risk with a robust faith that's fueling it like, like you just talked about.
Which for me is a, a wonderful way of thinking about it.
Brad Smith: I, I'm reading this book right now. It's by this guy who, it's called Radical Stewardship. I don't know if you're familiar with it. I, you know the author. Yeah. I've heard sketchy things about the author, but the book's pretty good.
Steve Graves: Believe those please.
Brad Smith: Uh, but you know, it's interesting the timing of reading that book, Steve, because I just feel like so much of it, it's like right where I'm at, you know, it's like I'm right in the thick of re risking.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Brad Smith: And you know, going through that book and the [00:08:00] workbook. It's just like so many times it's like, God just sort of putting his finger on my chest and saying, okay, this is where you are, are you ready?
And, uh, you know, it's just been really meaningful to, you know, go through that
Kile Graves: fun. Yeah. So I wanna talk about the formation and what the business is a little bit, and you touched on your background a little bit, Brad, but how did this opportunity come about you? Were you looking to buy a business or were you doing some real estate stuff?
What was, what were you doing before this? How'd you get into
Brad Smith: it? Well, I, I'd worked at Kimmel Mechanical Systems for over 20 years and, um, was able to, to sell my stock and, and do something different for a while. And after that, um, you know, I never really sought this out, but I found myself, uh, just frequently being asked to evaluate, uh, businesses or to help with some acute problem.
So, um, ironically, I had two different friends at the same time [00:09:00] ask me to look at two different businesses that a local business broker had.
Kile Graves: Not for you. For them.
Brad Smith: Not for me.
Kile Graves: Okay.
Brad Smith: Just to evaluate the opportunity.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Brad Smith: So, um, I, I went and, and I'd known the business broker, uh, for, for a long, long time, and went and sat down with him.
We went through all the stuff in it, and then, uh, uh, when we got done with that, the business broker said, Hey, I've got something that you need to look at. And I, I, I remember just sort of chuckling and I was like, I, I, you know, I'm not interested. I, I don't wanna, you know, I don't wanna buy another business right now.
And he said, well, let me tell you about it. So he started telling me about it, and it was just right. It was like the 23rd of December. So Marshall and his wife were coming over to, to our house that night. And so he told me about this cabinet business, and then that night. I shared with Marshall and his wife and, uh, they, and they were gonna stay, they just had a baby.
They were gonna stay with us from the 23rd all the way [00:10:00] through till New Year. So they're gonna stay a week with us at our house. And we, um, we started talking about it that night at dinner and just sort of kicking the idea around. And, um, all of a sudden it started to grow legs. You know, it was like, well, you know, maybe we should go look at it.
So between, uh, Christmas and New Year's, we went to look at the business and we, uh, we just started praying about it. You know, we just was like, okay, God, could this be what you have for us? And I think for, for all four of us, marshal and I, and uh, our wives, uh, we, we just really felt like this could potentially be something God was calling us to.
So we, uh, made an offer on the business and they accepted it. And we, um, you know, started about a, uh, I think it was a 45 day period of due diligence. And the whole time I was praying like, okay, God, this is crazy. Uh, where's the off
Kile Graves: ramp?
Brad Smith: Yeah, yeah. Just if this is not what you got for us, please just, uh, [00:11:00] show us.
And, you know, just sort of take this, uh, this opportunity off the table if, if this isn't it. And it just seemed like the deeper we got into it, the more he just continually affirmed that this is what he wanted us to do. And, uh, you know, so we ended up closing on it. You know, you know, then the real work starts, right?
Yeah.
Kile Graves: Then you start
Brad Smith: really sweating.
Kile Graves: That's good. So, Marshall, uh, where were you before this? Give us a, a quick background on,
Marshall Smith: um,
Kile Graves: your career pre, uh, buying a business with your dad.
Marshall Smith: Right. So kind of like where my dad had talked about it before was I had gone off, away from, uh, the business that he was at, at Kimball and was trying to just kinda figure out what, what do I wanna do?
How do I wanna work? What are the things that I'm interested in?
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Marshall Smith: Um, I ended up getting a, a degree, like an industrial engineering, ended up using it into a mechanical engineering job, uh, for a company that's here local, uh, making, uh, it's for like a metal shop. So, uh,
Kile Graves: [00:12:00] space systems, right?
Marshall Smith: Yes. Uh, they
Kile Graves: have a different name.
Marshall Smith: They have, they have a different name. Okay. Uh, so it, uh, the, I I learned a lot there about manufacturing and about how do you, how do you. Create the systems and the processes that go around it. And, uh, I ended up moving into like a project management position about trying to help, uh, with all these parts, moving through all these different processes, trying to help make sure the important ones were being streamlined and getting to their delivery dates.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Marshall Smith: Uh, but during that time I ended up having a lot of different, like, frustrations and just about like, well, I really want to be able to make these types of different changes to like the process to the culture. And then kind of realized, uh, that no matter how hard I worked in that context, trying to make it better and more efficient, I, it would never really kind of come back to me as a direct benefit.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Marshall Smith: It's just like I would [00:13:00] probably just be making the same amount of money as I was at that point, five years from now. Even if I had done all this stuff to help the company. So I was like, well, at that point I was kind of trying to have like a heads up mentality of like, well, what, what are the different options that might be available for me, uh, coming up?
And that was, that was around Christmas time. I'd been kind of doing some research just looking around for about like maybe a month-ish.
Kile Graves: Was there anything with him on your radar at that
Marshall Smith: point? No, not at all. It was just a kind of personal, what do I want to do? What do I wanna think through? And like Yeah.
What's
Kile Graves: next for me?
Marshall Smith: Exactly. Like as I was working there during that whole time, we, me and my dad talked a lot about like, what does it look like to have, like what, what's the best version of a company? Like what is it, what is that supposed to look like? What, what's the best culture to try and cultivate to be able to create the best success?
So we were having all of these different type of like, really deep conversations about business and business management way before we ever got to the [00:14:00] opportunity of like, Hey, do we wanna buy a business together?
Brad Smith: Yeah.
Marshall Smith: Uh. Which I remember when he said that, I was like, that sounds kind of crazy, but I mean, I have this manufacturing experience, you have this construction experience.
Yeah. That's pretty much what commercial cabinetry is, is this mirror of both.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Marshall Smith: So that was a, it was really exciting. Really nerve wracking. 'cause I was, to me, I'm like, well, I thought you would be just wanting to kind of lay low. If you're wanting to do this, by all means, let's look and see what's gonna happen.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Marshall Smith: But, uh, so that's kind of, that's where we started.
Kile Graves: That's great. At
Marshall Smith: that point.
Kile Graves: Yeah. Um, so explain what Pinder Craft is, what you're trying to do. Uh, just explain, explain the business model briefly for us. Pick
Steve Graves: up, hang on. Before we do that, go back one time, uh, Brad, with, with us. If, if you're thinking about dads izing a business, trying to pick a business to buy or to start with a son or a [00:15:00] daughter.
Brad Smith: Yeah.
Steve Graves: Can you remember like. Did, like what would, what factors or filters were you checking out to say this is a good one? Or was it primarily just a spiritual experience? And this is not a right or wrong question, this is just trying to give maybe some insight for another person that's thinking about doing this.
Mm-hmm. Like what kinda things were you looking at to say, this is a good idea, this is worth taking the risk with
Brad Smith: that. That's a great question, Steve. And, yeah, I wish I had this, this, uh, matrix that I would say we passed all these opportunities through and, you know, we evaluated it. Um, it really didn't start out that way.
It was more organic. But when Marshall and I went to look at the business together, we, I think we naturally found some alignment of things that were core strengths, like what Marshall was saying a minute ago. Um, what we, what we found was when we went to this business, a lot of the equipment and a lot of the, um, the means and methods they [00:16:00] used.
Were right in Marshall's wheelhouse.
Steve Graves: Okay.
Brad Smith: Like, for example, the CNC machine and a lot of the things that they were using, Marshall had been writing code for that. He actually started out at his jo, his old job, uh, literally writing code for the exact CNC machine that they had in this business.
Steve Graves: Wow.
Brad Smith: You know, so the, the previous owner, uh, who's a wonderful person, um, he and Marshall just started talking about the little quirky idiosyncrasies of being able to work with this particular machine and immediately just found a lot of common ground.
And then, um, you know, I didn't know any, I still don't know much about at all about that. Uh, but for Marshall, it was like, I could see he was operating in an area of his strengths.
Steve Graves: Yeah. Yeah.
Brad Smith: And then when we went over and we started looking at their customer list, well I knew probably 60 or 70% of the customer list on a first name basis.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Brad Smith: You know, if I didn't know him, I knew who they were, or I'd had some previous contact with him. So in a way it was like this area of [00:17:00] Marshall's expertise and this area of my previous life experience that just sort of came together. And, you know, I think if, um, if I was gonna do it all over again and we actually wrote out some sort of matrix that we were gonna pass things through a decision matrix, I really can't imagine there being a better fit
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Brad Smith: Than what we found.
Steve Graves: That's great. That just, that's, that helps me in my head, uh, uh, know how, how you guys got to a yes.
Brad Smith: Mm-hmm.
Steve Graves: Because I can imagine a lot of people would be trying to figure out, I mean, the economics had to fit, obviously, but besides that, what else was really helpful for you guys getting to Yes.
So, slide on in and give us a snapshot of the business.
Well.
Brad Smith: I, I think that's great. Dovetailing to to, to the why, part of the why, um, this business, I felt like I had some competencies to bring to the table and I felt like Marshall had some competencies to bring to the table.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Brad Smith: And we both agreed that this business was a family business.
They had sort of capped out at a couple million dollars a year revenue by choice. It wasn't because they, they couldn't, they [00:18:00] just, I think they made a decision, this is sort of, you know, where we want to take it to. And there was, there were so many things in the business that we felt like were just home run type things.
Like their quality, their reputation. Uh, we had a great team of employees and we felt like the business had a lot of opportunity to scale, you know? So we felt like if we would jump in and bring some energy and some new vision or different vision, we felt like it was something that had a lot of upward potential.
So when we went home that night after, after doing the walkthrough and talking. That's what we found ourselves disgusting is like we, we really, truly could meet in the middle with our, our skillset. We both brought something to the table and it just seemed like it had a tremendous amount of upside.
Steve Graves: That's great. That's great.
Kile Graves: Not to keep delaying us getting to that business model, but we talked about this with, with someone else. Um, how did, and you were talking about risk a second ago. How did the element of risk come into play when you considered this? Now that [00:19:00] Marshall was involved, we were talking to another, uh, dad and son and you know, the son is saying, I don't want a handout.
Like, give me, I'm not speaking for you, but like, I know we've talked about it.
Marshall Smith: Oh yeah.
Kile Graves: You know, like, I want, don't de-risk my exposure. I want in. But then the da the dad is like, okay, well I'm also still your dad. So like there's part of me that kind of wants to protect still. Well, did that show up at all?
That element of here's a big risk, do I hedge it, do I not? Does that make sense?
Brad Smith: Yeah, yeah it does. Um. You know, um, I could probably answer to that on a couple of different levels.
Kile Graves: That's okay.
Brad Smith: Um, construction is a brutal environment. Sometimes it's just intense and, you know, early on as, as a dad, you wanna sort of create a, a situation, you know, for your, your kids to, to succeed or to thrive.
And I remember early on, you know, Marshall, while he was very adept at engineering and a lot of the manufacturing part, he didn't know anything about construction, [00:20:00] you know, so I would think, I think it's be fair to say it was a little bit of a culture shock for him to go out into a job site. And he got some, some grou old superintendent oh, was chewing on him on day one and I mean, he doesn't know where he is at or what's going on, you know what I mean?
It's just like, it's just total chaos and uh, you know, so Marshall, I can remember, you know, especially those first few months, just him learning a lot of really painful lessons and. He had never owned a business before. And I mean, really one of the first major points of conflict that he and I had in the business, um, we had some employees that had done some knuckleheaded stuff.
I mean, just typical, typical stuff. Nothing bad. But the, the general contractor got mad at him and he is like, I don't think that's fair that he got mad at me. And I remember us having this long discussion. I was like, dude, it's totally your fault. And he said, I didn't do it. And I said, but it's still totally your fault.
And, uh, I I, what I was sort of [00:21:00] driving at was, we own the business. That's always gonna be our fault. You know, there's a different level, level of, uh, of, uh, culpability. You know, we've got more skin in the game. We're always gonna be responsible for it because we're owners. And I, I feel like probably I threw him into the fire a little bit quick on some of that just because I wanted him to, to learn.
And I knew I wouldn't, my viewpoint was the quicker he can learn this stuff, the better. You know, and, um, I was sort of lurking in the background listening and talking to him and, you know, when necessary. There's been a few times I had to go, you know, sort of put my thumb on the scale or get involved or help or, you know, go out and install cabinets or just do whatever it took to, you know, for us to get over the hump.
But I really wanted him to be able to fight his own battles pretty early.
Kile Graves: Yeah, that's good.
Marshall Smith: I think, I think for me, it's like him talking about having this goal of like, he has all like, I'm gonna be reentering and re-upping this risk. And I think from my viewpoint I was like, man, I wanna try and make this as risky as, uh, un [00:22:00] risky as possible because I was like, man, I, I need to be able to help.
He's, he's taking the plunge on this. Yeah. I wanna help be able to work as hard as I can, have as much ownership as I can to make this really work.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Marshall Smith: So that way I wanted to try and be able to have. I mean, take care of my, my scope of work. I wanna also be able to kind of just have like eyes and ears, just making sure it's like, hey, is there anything else that's like, that we need to be paying attention to?
Just trying to have a heads up mentality.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Marshall Smith: But I mean, I think definitely you had those, those first couple months that was, that was hard because it's like, okay, I just need to figure out, go back to square one. I mean, one of the funny things is we talk, every time we talk, it's like, oh man, it made sense.
'cause I have all this manufacturing experience. My immediate deployment was construction. Uh, and just learning all of, yeah. Construction as much as I can for at least my context. So, uh, I, I'm very thankful for having that. I'm not no hard feelings at all, just 'cause if that's the business, I need to know it [00:23:00] and.
I need to, one, also be able to show all the other people that I'm working with, our, our customers, our, our employees. I have just as much willingness to be able to work as hard as the people around me. And I don't want them, I don't want them to think it's a handout. I don't view it as a handout. I don't, it's important for me to know, for them to know
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Marshall Smith: That it's not a handout and that's not how I'm treating it. Yeah. I, I have a high level of seriousness and intentionality in what I'm doing, and I, I'm, I'm here just to do it. Like, to do it just as hard.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Marshall Smith: And play as hard as the rest of the people around me.
Kile Graves: That's great.
Brad Smith: And I think for me too, it was one of those things, like I knew Marshall, we had worked together enough over the years.
I sort of, I knew that what he would bring to the table, I knew he would work hard and take it serious, and he would be a great steward of the opportunity. You know, so I didn't worry about any of those things. Those things, you know, were, those boxes were already checked in my mind that he would be a great partner.
It was more like I. Honestly just come to the point I was comfortable. You know, it's, and I'm, there's still [00:24:00] some things I'm still wrestling with, to be honest with you. And some of that about, um, you know, him growing to a point to be, you know, an owner and a leader. And, uh, I don't know, like I'm, I'm, I'm struggling here to even verbalize some of it, but, um, you know, I am comfortable with the risk.
I'm comfortable with putting capital out because I know Marshall, you know? Yeah. And I know that there's gonna be, there's just risk and there's risk inherent in any business, I don't think. I think actually it's less risk because I know him.
Steve Graves: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Kile Graves: That's cool.
Steve Graves: That makes a lot of sense. So, and you had
Kile Graves: worked together.
Yeah.
Steve Graves: Oh yeah, you guys. So, so give us just a snapshot of the business. So you bought a family, a, a, a family owned, a cabinet business, and you guys bought it.
Brad Smith: We bought it 27 years old.
Steve Graves: 27 years old. Just give us a, a, just a fly by of the footprint of the business.
Brad Smith: So the business primarily works, uh, in [00:25:00] northwest Arkansas, sort of southwest Missouri, Eastern Oklahoma, probably, uh, about an hour and a half to two hour radius around Fayetteville, Arkansas, uh, 27-year-old business.
Uh, we primarily produce commercial cabinets, so the, like, we don't do homes or residential stuff very often at all. Um, things like institutional cabinetry, schools, government buildings, um, medical cabinets like hospitals, ICUs, clinics, orthodontics, uh, orthodontist office, uh, dentist office, things like that.
Uh, optometrists, uh, you know, uh, pharmacies, labs, commercial labs. Um, and then we do a lot of retail, um, you know, things like that, you know, um, grocery stores or high-end office accent walls. A lot of customized, you know, very, sometimes very niche type things where it requires eng a lot of engineering or, um, sort of expertise to produce [00:26:00] not your high volume.
Steve Graves: Yeah. So help you, so you guys are involved on the design side, the, the, the build out manufacturing side, and then the installation side all the way to the, like start to finish. Here we go. Alright.
Brad Smith: Yeah. And, and that's the varying degrees too. You know, sometimes we actually get to design it from scratch and just sort of take it all the way through to the end.
Frequently we get an architect or an interior designer's drawings. Gotcha. And then we have to figure out how to actually build it. You know, we're, we're taking a concept and actually having to produce it.
Steve Graves: The piece I think that I remember Kyle telling me about the, uh, technology is a really important piece. Was the technology in place when you bought it or did you have the vision to add technology? I know there was some equipment there, but like, was it, did you guys have, was the technology vision part of the reason that made the whole thing make sense?
You know, 'cause you guys have made some pretty big swings with technology, [00:27:00] have you not?
Marshall Smith: Yes. Uh, a lot of the equipment that, that we started off with is. It would be the equivalent of like a, somebody that's doing like a small, like the level that we bought the, the company at. It was good for that amount of volume, but a lot of the, the equipment that we've been starting to invest in is really for, for growth.
It's for that next tier of manufacturing of volume and intentionality. So you can probably weigh in more on that.
Brad Smith: Yeah. And like when we bought the business, we didn't buy the real estate. So we knew on day one we were gonna have to move and you know, you sort of have to go through the exercise and say, okay, if we, if we're gonna build a building, couldn't, I couldn't find anything to rent and, and, and didn't really wanna rent, you know?
Uh, but building a new building for something like this, you sort of have to go through the exercise of saying, okay, how much is it gonna cost to build a new building? What does our revenue need to be to support that type of building? Then we started asking the question, well, the equipment that we bought with the business, will that [00:28:00] equipment do that kind of revenue?
You know, so we're sort of backwards calculating.
Steve Graves: Yep.
Brad Smith: Then we decided not only did we need a new building, we needed all new equipment. So, um, you know, when we went out to look at equipment, uh, we, the equipment, a lot of the equipment that we had was 5, 10, 15 years old. Um, so we looked at buying all new equipment.
So I actually hired an industrial engineer out of Dallas who specialized in the woodworking industry and he helped me, uh, pick all the equipment out. So there's a lot of robotics and a lot of things that are sort of next level type applications. Yeah. Uh, that makes the work, uh, place safer and it makes it a lot more, uh, friendly for the people that are actually working, you know, in the business, uh, day to day.
So we, we've bought all new equipment, um, you know, it's taken over. We're still waiting on a handful of pieces. Uh, you know, um, some of that stuff actually next week is hopefully I was gonna ask be delivered
Kile Graves: when you were in moving in fully?
Brad Smith: Yeah, we, we've moved into our new facility [00:29:00] this past week and are up and running in it.
Kile Graves: I see.
Brad Smith: Uh, but we're, we're probably probably 20% capacity, uh, in it because, you know, obviously, uh, just when you're first moving in, it's sort of a challenge to get everything up and fine tuned, but
Kile Graves: Right.
Brad Smith: You know, it's gonna take us probably another 60 to 90 days to really be fully operational there.
Kile Graves: Wow.
So, um, tell us how you divided up roles early on, specifically amongst you two, you know, it's co-owners, father, son, how are you dividing up ownership, you know, owner responsibility, operator responsibility. Who's who's, who has what title, what does that look like and kind of where you are now. You probably evolved a little bit since then.
Marshall Smith: Uh, I would say probably. A lot of it had to do with who was already there and who was coming with the business that we already, so I mean, main categories of the business is there's the, the bidding and the drafting because the front end of the business, and then there's the manufacturing of all the pieces, and then there's the backend, which is doing all the [00:30:00] installation and getting it where needs to go.
So we already had two people, uh, that filled a lot of those front end roles. We had, like, one person already had all the, the bidding and the, the drafting taken care of. We had another person that was already doing the manufacturing, which left the, the installation role needing to be filled, which is, that's how I kind of navigated over to, it's like, well, this is, this is the hole that needs to be filled.
Brad Smith: Yeah.
Marshall Smith: I need to learn this. Anyways.
Brad Smith: Yeah,
Marshall Smith: let's go ahead and I'm gonna start rolling with, with that role and just we'll figure it out.
Brad Smith: Yeah. Part of that was a little bit intentional too. Um, I wanted, I felt like it would be real critical for Marshall to learn the customer facing part of it first. You know, and so the installation and going out and working on, on Site, I felt like that would be his greatest need long term.
So we just wanted to make sure, just right from day one, he was out there in the field putting it in, talking to customers. That's
Steve Graves: awesome.
Brad Smith: Learning the culture of a job site, what it means to be in construction, what the threats are. Um, [00:31:00] you know, I, I just from, he, he understood a lot of the other parts, but that was the part he didn't have.
Mm-hmm. So I just felt like it was really critical for him to be immersed in that from, from the get go.
Kile Graves: That's good.
Steve Graves: So, so guys, are y'all, you know, years ago I wrote a book called The Five Task. The, the job of the senior leaders to set direction, set speed, set risk, set resources, set culture. Um, are you guys joining?
Like are y'all, are y'all just doing the, the, the top level things together? Or like, is it a little bit more, Brad, because of your experience in your age, it's easier for you this first go around and you're thinking maybe a couple years from now then you'll transition that. So how much of that's like together?
And I'm not saying it's like, you know, I know there's, I know there's overlap, but when it comes to actually, you know, like really driving some direction for the business, all, is it a collaborative, like we're just gonna, we're gonna do rock, paper, scissors till we both get the same one [00:32:00] and, and we're like, okay, we got, we know what we're doing here.
Or even the speed of growth and the, and the scale speed and all that stuff, we're. How are y'all doing
Kile Graves: that tight Building the building?
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Kile Graves: Big decisions.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Marshall Smith: Uh, I think for, for me, because I was in a situation where I was needing to learn a lot about construction very quickly and because. My dad already had a ton of experience in being able to like do a lot of these calculations.
He already had experience as an executive where, where I didn't, he, he took a lot of the lead on that and I, I'll say one of the things that I've admired about what my, how my dad's gone about this is he's been very diligent and always coming to me and say, Hey. Here's this decision. I wanna talk it through with you and get your opinion.
Even though I have no real experience to come to this decision, it's really helpful for me to learn.
Brad Smith: Sure.
Marshall Smith: From in talking through, it's like, okay, yeah, that's something that I have to think about. So I think in that case, he's really like that discipleship, that mentorship that [00:33:00] he's bringing by coming and saying, Hey, here's these issues about how, like, this is the size building that we need to do.
This is how I'm projecting all this revenue. This is where we need to be going. He's walked me through each step to help me understand how to think through it, how he calculated it, and then I mean, really trying to equip me to be able to do that in the future.
Steve Graves: That's awesome.
Kile Graves: That's really
Steve Graves: cool. That's awesome.
And that's on top of running the business every day, right? Yeah. Like just like we gotta, we gotta get all the cabinets to the X company that bought 'em. And oh, by the way, on top of that, we're gonna do this, you know, this discipleship growth development plan for the duo, which is awesome. That's great.
Brad Smith: I've, I've tried to be pretty collaborative in everything that we've done.
Like bring Marshall in and, uh, you know, we have a partner now in the business and, and bring him in and sit down with him. And, you know, I, I don't, some of this stuff I probably could have just pragmatically just said, okay, let's just go do this, you know, but I felt like just talking some of that, uh, [00:34:00] through with Marshall and including him in the decision making process.
One, he had information from some of those customers or jobs that I, I, I wasn't first person to, I needed that information. That's to really make a, a holistic decision, you know? And that just sort of started out like, we have a leadership team. I tried to include them on all the decisions we're making. I, you know, not that I'm scared to make a unilateral decision, but I try not to unless I have to.
Steve Graves: Yeah. I mean, the, the beauty of that Brad is, is exactly what you said. You get. You get a better decision probably because you've got a collection of, of experience and a collection of subject matter experts on it. But then you also are able to compress the discipleship learning curve for Marshall because you're able to by, by flowing him through the, you know, the, the decision gates and all of that.
Brad Smith: Yeah.
Steve Graves: His learning is just, he's just a lot faster in her ability to understand the why and the what and the, all the decision stuff. So That's great. [00:35:00]
Brad Smith: Even part of it too, like when Marshall was at the company he was previously at, and they're, they're great guys. They're a good company. I think some of the things like Marshall would at night when he would come over from D for dinner, you know, when he was working there, he would say, dad, like, I've gotta go talk to this employee.
You know, or like, I've gotta, I've gotta, um, yeah, I think you had to fire one.
Marshall Smith: Yeah.
Brad Smith: That, uh, he's like, here's what's going on. You know, and it's like all these things sort of, sort of backend into the culture of the company that he worked with. And, you know, we just started talking about what we felt like was a healthy culture, you know, and a lot of those conversations over a year or more about it was aspirational.
It's like, what could we be like, or what should this be like? And you know, I felt like some of the conversations we're having now, even though they may be very tactical decisions, you know, we wanna make 'em through our values or we wanna make 'em using, um, you know, being intentional with them, you know, and, uh, you know, so just including him I [00:36:00] felt like was just a, a way to, to build on that, in order to answer some of those questions about our culture where we were hoping to go.
Marshall Smith: Yeah. I mean, honestly it just feels like a really long ongoing conversation
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Marshall Smith: That we've been having for a long time. Even like
Steve Graves: since two days before Christmas.
Marshall Smith: Well, I mean, I, two
Brad Smith: years ago.
Marshall Smith: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even be, even before that, I feel like, oh yeah. Because even when we were at that, when I was working at that old company and trying to like, just process through a lot of that, and I would even, I would even say is like growing up, we'd have a conversation about like, okay, how do we do this the most efficiently?
So that way we can, we can be, make a new record of it. Yeah. Or just like having that mentality where he's just teaching me to work. Yeah. It's like, it's, I think that's really fun. Yeah.
Brad Smith: Marshall and I, we, we have rental property and Marshall and I used to go mow the grass on the rental property, so, and we, you know, we paid him for it and we saved all that money up and that's how he bought his first car.
Well, we would, we would pull up to the site and we would never talk to each other the whole time we were working. And so our record [00:37:00] was to mow, weeded, and blow off the driveway 22 minutes, you know? But it's like we would talk about like, Hey, how do we do this faster? What could we do? Yeah. So we would roll up and we knew what each other's jobs were and we would just, I mean, we would just go at it.
That's awesome. And there was all kinds of, you know, collective experiences over the year. Like that, the years like that, that, you know, sort of pour into us making a decision to work together.
Kile Graves: Yeah. Yeah. It's cool to see it culminate in this.
Steve Graves: Absolutely. And you know, and there's been so many models of discipleship that have been cranked out over the years, but none of them.
All the ones that are effective usually include some element of life on life like you guys are talking about. Mm-hmm. I mean, that doesn't, it's not the only thing, but usually every model I've ever seen that's really effective is it's two people, kinda just Jo journeying together. Life on life. Having Legend Marshall, you said, just this long ongoing conversation that's been going on now for like four years or five years or six years or something.
So that's a fun way to think about it. Right.
Kile Graves: [00:38:00] Uh, I say this a lot working with families, uniquely rewarding, but uniquely challenging as well. What's been, what's been uniquely rewarding for you so far and what's been uniquely challenging, uh, in this journey?
Marshall Smith: I think probably talking about uniquely rewarding is, uh, I mean actually getting to see the fulfillment of that ongoing conversation and actually like, really get to practice that.
And I think it's been really fun because I remember within a lot of like. I mean, I would say it is still like this, but especially like in those first couple of months, we'd have a conversation and we both kind of already knew the, the rationale, the, the, uh, the philosophy or the, of like, okay, this is why we're wanting to try and make that decision.
So we kind of went through that part really quickly. And then we just get to the tactical part. We're like, yeah, we, we agree with the principles. Let's, let's practice it. So I think actually getting to the action [00:39:00] of all these theoretical things is probably the most fulfilling on, I mean, just on a business education level.
Kile Graves: Any example come to your mind? It's okay if not.
Marshall Smith: Oh, man. I, I don't have a specific one probably off the top of my head.
Yeah.
Marshall Smith: Um, that's good.
Brad Smith: Yeah. I think, you know, when, when you start something, you dream a lot together, Hey, what could this be? Or, you know, where do we want to go? Or what's the future gonna look like in this?
And Marshall and I, early on, we started dreaming some things together. That's right.
Marshall Smith: That's
Brad Smith: fun. One of the, one of the most, I think, tangible things is our new building. And wouldn't it be great to have like a new building that had, that had more than one bathroom, you know, or that had a break room or had a refrigerator, you know, or we actually had a dock that we could unload stuff and it, and not get wet
Marshall Smith: or have a have a, a office where we can close the door and have a private conversation.
Brad Smith: Yeah. So our, our old building, when we bought it, it had no office really. It had had one, it was like a closet almost that we worked out of. Yes. There's no meeting space. There [00:40:00] was no, no private offices at all. So I bought a camper and so we've got a camper, uh, a 30 foot camper that, uh, has a couple of slide outs that we converted to an office space.
So we've got four guys. That office there. And, you know, so it's like now, like we just moved into this building and we, we have this wonderful magical thing called a conference room.
Kile Graves: Whatcha gonna do in there?
Brad Smith: It's like the, it's amazing. Yeah. And like we have a TV in there, this big TV we can actually put a spreadsheet up on.
Yes. Or put our calendar up on, or put, you know, our, our ERP software up on.
Steve Graves: So, so whatcha gonna do with a camper?
Brad Smith: I know
Steve Graves: for sale.
Kile Graves: I feel like it might find some use
Brad Smith: somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but you know, so that's one thing that's been super rewarding is to dream about having a new building. You know, something else for me is, as a dad, we recently, uh, there's a big school job going on that we're, that we're doing, and it's, you know, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cabinetry.
And Marshalls run the point on that as, as, [00:41:00] uh, doing the project management on it. So, um, I didn't feel like I had to go to this meeting. It was one of the kickoff meetings where we were meeting one-on-one with the general contractor and. You know, whether, you know, at, at that meeting you're gonna sort of lay the, lay the, set the stage, you know, lay everything out and talk about, okay, this is the sequence of what's gonna happen.
We like to create sort of a, a order of priority for the job. Uh, we're gonna produce what they need first. You know, we wanna make sure we align on that. You know, you're not gonna do everything at once. And so we do some groupings and stuff like that, you know, sort of some stages or phases. So I, this was all coming together.
Marshall's been telling me what's going on, and I was like, Hey, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna go to that meeting with you guys and it's a large national contractor. So we went in and I sat down and met the, you know, the general contractor's project manager and their staff, their superintendent, and then Marshall just, he just led the meeting, [00:42:00] led the whole thing.
And, you know, um, had to, that's
Steve Graves: rewarding. That's a rewarding experience.
Brad Smith: Yeah. Yeah. Just had a command of the whole thing. Had a great, you could definitely tell he'd put a lot of thought and done all his homework broke out. Everything went through the whole meeting, you know, and like as a dad, I was more of a dad in that meeting than I was a, a cabinet maker.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Brad Smith: You know, and just to sort of see him own that, that space, you know, and, and do well, and they responded to him in a, you know, a very, uh, favorable way. They're like, yeah, those are great points. We should, you know, we should do that. And, you know, I, I sort of walked out, I was thinking, you know, that's pretty awesome.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Brad Smith: You know, I'll sign up for that again.
Steve Graves: Yeah. Well, that's why you bought the business. I mean, in some ways that, that was a, that was just a snapshot fulfillment of the why, um, that you guys bought the business and the, and the build out and the live out of the, the, you know, a discipleship setup. For us to, you know, journey together.
Brad Smith: Yeah. Those are some rewarding things, but there's also been [00:43:00] some challenging things, just like the ask too, and
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Brad Smith: You know, um, we are a deadline driven business and, you know, construction, if our customers say, Hey, you need to be here and get this done on this date, we've gotta, we gotta figure out how to do that.
Yeah. Uh, and or work with them to, you know, to remediate that if we can't do it by that day, like we can have 90% of it by that day, but we're, you know, some this area's, you know, not ready or, or whatever. So there's been some challenges in that, you know, and, um, there's been, there's been some, some pain points in it.
Um, yeah. I remember, uh, last year, uh, we were going to Florida. We were just gonna take off a week and my wife and I, we drove, uh, all the way down to Destin and we, uh, got out that night and we had had a really great plan. We were finishing up this job and. Somehow or another, just like the flu
Kile Graves: Oh no,
Brad Smith: was going around and like three or four [00:44:00] guys called in sick and we weren't gonna be able to keep the deadline, you know?
So I called Marshall, he's in the bathroom throwing up and sick and, you know, it is just, he's, he had it too. And so we got to death. It's a 12 hour drive. We got to Destin at like six o'clock that night, ate dinner, got up the next morning. I found out everybody had called in sick. So I told, told my wife, I was like, Hey, I, I can't leave him there in that situation.
So by seven 30 we were packed. We're driving back to, you know, 12 hours again, drove down for dinner, was drove down for a beach
Kile Graves: dinner.
Brad Smith: We ate dinner at the harbor in Destin that night. Then he drove all the way back the next morning and,
Kile Graves: oh man.
Brad Smith: Yeah, and there was, but there was a lot of tension. You know, it's like Marshall's sick and he is like, dad, I, I don't think I can go.
And I was like, Marshall, like I, I hate this, but like. You gotta go, you know? Yeah. You gotta be there. You're the owner. And uh, so he went that morning and we [00:45:00] sort of tied a knot in what we were doing. I got there the next morning and we put together sort of this plan of bringing in some help and all this other stuff and, you know, we were able to finish the job, um, on time and in a way that I think even though it was a little bit strained in that situation, I think the general contractor was probably pretty happy with us.
And, but I mean, that's the kind of thing, like when you're in a deadline driven job, like construction, you just gotta get the job done. And there's, I could tell you 20 other stories too, of how we've had, you know, maybe not bad conflict, but like, you know, it's just like we're just sort of buttoning up against each other, like how we gotta go get this done.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Brad Smith: And we gotta figure out how to go do it.
Steve Graves: Yep. Yep.
Brad Smith: And
Kile Graves: yeah. That's good. Where'd you eat?
Brad Smith: I'm sorry?
Kile Graves: Where'd you eat down there? It's probably De Dewey Destin.
Brad Smith: Yeah. No,
Kile Graves: the old one.
Brad Smith: I think that night we went to AJ's. Yeah.
Kile Graves: That's a good call.
Brad Smith: Yeah. Yeah.
Kile Graves: Um, so last, last section here to kind of, to kind of, uh, close it out for us.
I wanna talk about the future and what it looks like, uh, for you to, to maybe step out or slow down and marshal to, [00:46:00] to speed up with some responsibility, um, or leadership. You know, uh, in the business, broadly speaking, we see kind of three seasons, family businesses go through season One is older generations leading, younger is learning.
Sometimes that's a week, sometimes that's a couple years. Uh, y'all is probably quick ish. Second season is where you're both leading in some capacity, whether that's title, role, responsibility, uh, whatever. And then the third season is the final, where the older generation's like, Hey, I'm, I'm gonna step outta some type of Shepherd Advisor, beach sitter in Florida, whatever you wanna do.
And the younger generation is, is leading in some capacity. Where are you guys in that journey? And then what does, if you were to fast forward to the end, what does the end look like?
Brad Smith: I think the story's still being written. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the fairest way to probably answer that question. Um, you know, if the [00:47:00] first stage, what'd you say? What the first stage was? Like? Basically the older generation,
Kile Graves: you're leading,
Brad Smith: leading and March fallen generation.
Kile Graves: Is Marshall sort of falling generations learning, getting their feet
Brad Smith: wet?
Yeah, well I think, I think Marshall, we, we might have, um, probably started with Marshall in a leadership position. While he wouldn't have been responsible for the whole organization, you know, I would've done that. You know, I think we're, I think we're probably fastly approaching a, a spot where I think he's already co-leading the organization.
I mean, he's already making decisions that have a lot of gravity, a lot of weight. He's very instrumental in what we're doing day to day. He, I mean, he sort of gets it.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Brad Smith: You know, uh, he does, he's not responsible necessarily for all of the ins and outs of. Um, you know, the CEO role, but he is making a lot of, of very weighty decisions that impact our business.
Um, you know, I think we're still trying to figure out that last part. Honestly, I wouldn't mind going to to be the beach sitter tomorrow. I'm open to that. Uh, [00:48:00] but I feel like, I feel like we've got two or three years of hard work ahead of us just to really put the foundation in place that we need. Um, and it's not that I necessarily have to do that.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Brad Smith: But I just feel like I want to help and make sure that, I feel like it's probably the most efficient way for us to get to where we need to go. You know? Um, we, we still have a, moving into the new facility for us. Being in manufacturing is different than a lot of other things. It's so facility driven, you know, so we have to get that up and streamlined and working well.
'cause it impacts every other area of our business. Right. You know, so I feel like I have to, to hang around to make sure that's gonna work out. And, um, you know, we have recently transitioned. I'm, I'm still the CEO, but, um, I'm taking on a lot more of a sales responsibility and Marshall and one of the other gentlemen are taking over all the operations.
So that's really, I think that's a big step towards that.
Steve Graves: Yeah. So Brad, does the, does the next [00:49:00] season, or both, either one of you, the next season of growth, um, are you guys gonna try to grow outside of the geographical footprint you're already in? Or is there just so much business to be had in the existing geographical footprint that if you can just improve your wallet share to speak of
Brad Smith: Yeah.
Steve Graves: Um, you'll, you'll be fine. Or like, what's, what's scale look like for you guys? How are you thinking about scale?
Brad Smith: Yeah. That's a good question. I, I think we're sort of, it's an all of the above approach.
Steve Graves: Okay.
Brad Smith: You know, we are looking to grow our market share here in northwest Arkansas. Uh, also we are doing some stuff out of the, you know, in a larger footprint, you know, instead of being one or two hours, you know, it's more frequently we're doing stuff, you know, outside of that, you know, three or four hours away.
I think there's a tremendous amount of opportunity to continue to grow our business that way. But then we're also taking on some different competencies, just some different type of work.
Steve Graves: Okay.
Brad Smith: Uh, one of the reasons we bought the equipment that we, that we did is it's gonna allow us to do more true manufacturing.
You know, [00:50:00] so instead of doing it for construction, we'll be doing a lot of things for, um, you know, like big box stores or other things like that. We'll be actually, um, point of sale, uh, displays, things like that. Um, you know, furniture, uh, more, you know, more. Um, true manufacturing rather than just everything being in construction.
Steve Graves: Okay. So we, we, we could see a, uh, a new furniture brand, a new,
Brad Smith: we might see, you might see your brand everywhere, your name, anywhere. Uh, you know, I don't know about that, but we, for us, really we'll be working for, for the brand. They would contract us to actually make it for 'em, you know, so they would do the sell.
So we would just, we would build the product hopefully.
Steve Graves: So, yeah, it was really fun. When we first sat down, we're in a venue, a really fun place called Stone Breaker that's here in Fayetteville. And, um, it, a buddy of ours is behind the whole project. Um, but we did not know you guys actually did the cabinetry or this place, which was a really fun data piece to, to, to pop [00:51:00] out.
Brad Smith: Oh, that's a beautiful building, really. We're honored to get through it.
Kile Graves: Marshall, what about you? When you think about, when you think about the future and, you know, however many years down the road, do you, do you feel yourself progressing and knowledge, skill, experience, leadership capabilities? Do you feel that, you know, bell curve happening and then you think about the future?
How do you know when you're ready? What does that, what does that look like?
Marshall Smith: Um, yes. I'm still in like a, a season where I'm, I'm learning a lot, taking on a lot more like those, trying to gain a lot of those proficiencies as a part of an executive leadership team member. Yeah. And, uh, so there's definitely a lot of growth that I, I still need to have.
But, um, I mean that's like one of my number one priorities is like, and one of my hopes in getting to really be involved with, with Pender Craft is I wanna be able to know and learn everything I need to, to be able to be a very competent, I mean leader, a business leader. So [00:52:00] my, I'm right, but beyond that, I'm kind of like, well, I'm, I'm kind of happy to just see what, what's the adventure that God has for me?
Is it, is it gonna be here? Love to be able to do it here, be able to continue to grow. Uh, but I'm, I'm just really excited to see wherever it is God takes me in that, so,
Kile Graves: yeah.
Marshall Smith: Yeah.
Kile Graves: Cool. Great. Um, well, maybe to land the plane, I think we're gonna ask, uh, most people on the podcast this question, but if you were talking to a dad, uh, you know, your stage of life, similar career path, didn't have to jump back in at the ground floor of a small business, and they're thinking about, you know, working with their son, what would you tell 'em?
And maybe same thing, Marshall, if you're talking to one of your buddies and they're like, my dad wants to go into business together. What, what do you say? What advice do you give? What kind of words of wisdom do you give them?
Brad Smith: That's a great question. Um, you know, I think you, you know, your kids when they're small, when they're children and you get to know 'em a little [00:53:00] more as they're teenagers, you know, but when they're adults, they're, they're their own person.
You know, they become different people. And the, the opportunity to work with Marshall and get to know 'em as an adult. To interact with him at a high level, you know, like what we're doing. There's, there's real complexity to it.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Brad Smith: Um, I wouldn't trade that for anything. You know, it's like we, we get to be on the same team.
We as a family, part of the culture of our family is we play a lot of board games frequently. There's a lot of trash talk that's probably UNC Christlike that goes along with those board games. You know, so like all those board games and all those experiences, really, you're not risking much, you know? But when we're in business together and we're really risking some, I mean, we're risking our livelihood to some degree, and we're risking our reputations by delivering good quality product, and we're risking, uh, our relationship on a regular basis.
You know, and, you know, I wouldn't trade that for anything. You know, the, the opportunity to [00:54:00] work with him and to, um, to be in his life and to see him grow and to flourish and to, um. To really become a godly man and to see how he interacts with other people. You know, that how do you trade? What do you, I mean, where else do you get that?
You know? And you know, and also just to be, you know, one of the big things that, that I've really encouraged Marshall to do is he's a different person than I am. And it's like, how does he find his own voice? You know, how does he grow to a place? He's not, he didn't have to be me. He could never be me and I could never be him, but how do I play a role in seeing him find his own voice in his own leadership model that works good for him?
You know? And I think, I think that's probably how it was, you know, 20th centuries ago, you know, families worked together and, and trades or businesses, and they saw their kids grow up and mature.
Kile Graves: Mm-hmm.
Brad Smith: Uh, you know, and, uh, and [00:55:00] lead, you know, and it's like, I have, I have this front row seat to see this amazing thing happen.
I would never have otherwise. So that would be the greatest encouragement I could give to any dad.
Marshall Smith: That's great. That's
great.
Marshall Smith: I think for, for me, is like, one of the things I've, I've admired about my relationship, led by my dad is that he's always, like, growing up always told me is like, man, I, I'm really, I really love this season of being your dad now, but I look forward to the season where we get to be friends and where we're peers and we get to work together.
And I've always admired that he had that, that foresight. Like he was always looking forward to that and knew that where we was at was at the season. And I think that's as a guess is probably the hardest transition for, uh, for, for any parent going into [00:56:00] this, looking at this opportunity. It's like, okay, here I gonna wanna enter into business with my son.
How do I. Take that view and really lean into it. And I would say any advice for somebody that's a son going into that is saying, Hey, uh, you have to be very gentle about how you remind, Hey, I, I wanna be your peer in this. I, I want to be your, your friend in this, that, uh, has equal share that I'm taking this seriously.
And you, you can't, you can't flinch away from and trying to pull the card of like, Hey, I'm your son. I'm trying to be like, I'm trying to take a more subservient position in this. Or just say is like, Hey, I, uh, I need you to like, just bail me out. Like I've, at least for me, I've tried to have like a very serious, it's like, no, I'm, I have an ownership in this and this is, I need to step up to bat to really do this and earn it.[00:57:00]
Not, not this is a handout, so
Steve Graves: that's great.
Kile Graves: The, uh, kind of our vision for just these conversations is for more dads to see working with their son as a chance to amplify legacy, disciple them in the workplace, get to know them even in a, a deeper level and for more sons to see working with their dad as an honor and not a handout.
So that's kind of like our, our vision statement for this, and it was really inspired by you guys. So
Brad Smith: I'm curious the dynamics between the two of you guys, do you, how, how does that play out?
Kile Graves: We're asking the questions here.
Steve Graves: That's why that, that's why we're doing the podcast. So we can get some, we can get some insights and some learning.
I'm like that. Like what, what'd you think while y'all were here? You're schooling us learning. This is actually the learning's moving from that couch over to here.
Kile Graves: Yeah. This is an mba. No, I remember, uh, the, um, we can keep this on here. I think this is good, but, uh, I remember early on you said something like.
Hey, we've, [00:58:00] we've never worked together, so you're gonna have to gimme some grace on, on something. I forget what was going on. Um, you know, 'cause you're like, I'm trying to figure this out and, and I was thinking the same thing. Um, so I think grace is, grace is needed for sure. Honesty is needed as well.
There's also similarities that come up. Like, I remember early on also you said something like, Hey, if you send me something, I got it. Like, you don't have to, you don't have to follow up with me. It's in my inbox or in my text. Like, I, I got it and it's hilarious because I said the exact same words. I'm like, if, if someone emails me something, like, don't worry, it's, it's not gonna go unnoticed.
Like, I, I got it. And so just learning like the small, you know, things that are similar or different, uh, is fun because you don't, you don't get to experience that unless you are working in a professional setting, you know? Yeah. Uh, so that's just a, I think fun. I
Steve Graves: mean the ch the, the chance, I mean, Brad, exactly what you said, the chance of being.
You know, in the battlefield of a work [00:59:00] setting, I don't mean to make that so, you know, dramatic, but like it's one thing just to simply be talking about, you know, I'm a doctor, I come home and I talk about my surgeries or my, my visits with my patients that day, or. Or I'm, or I'm, I'm an executive in a construction company and I come home and I talk about it.
I mean, it's great for people to hear about it and it's not like there's nothing else you can do because you're the only guy going to work that day. You're the only guy putting it on the hat and coming back in. But when you have a family member involved in it day to day, it's just, it's just a different dynamic because you really are splitting the burden and the vision, you know, and the dream.
And you're, both two people are carrying it's kind of right outta Ecclesiastes and it's awesome. A lot of fun. Yeah, but we're, but we're learning. We're learning 'cause we're early into it and, you know, it's not like something that we grew up and we're, this is the fourth generation of working in the family business and all those dynamics.
And I'd never worked with a family member [01:00:00] before Kyle. So I'm learning, I'm learning how to do it.
Brad Smith: Does it, does it carry more emotion with it? You know, it's, there's, there's more of a weight of emotion
Steve Graves: in it. Yeah, yeah. No question. It is for me. I don't know if it's, I dunno if it's with everybody or if it's supposed to be, but it definitely is for me.
And, um, but I'm learning exactly what both of you guys talked about. You know, you learn how to shift out of the role of I'm the dad. To the, I'm the coworker or I'm the co-owner, or I'm the owner, or whatever. You know, just, there's another seat you can go to. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Not just the dad's seat.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Steve Graves: That allows the emotions to kinda spread around a little bit and or have different emotions there.
So the dad's seat by itself, can, can, can carry by itself a lot of emotions.
Brad Smith: It's almost like it adds another position for you to view your relationship. Yep. Yeah. Like, I've been a dad now I'm, I'm still a dad, but now I'm, I'm a coworker. Yep. We didn't have that coworker seat before. Exactly. That vantage point to be able to That's great.
To view life from.
Steve Graves: That's great. That's fun. You guys ought start a podcast.
Brad Smith: You [01:01:00] ask
Steve Graves: a great
Brad Smith: questions. You should.
Marshall Smith: I remember what the funny thing is, it's like a lot of times when we go into conversations, we'll, we'll preface it like, Hey, this is, this is an owner's conversation. Yeah. Not, not a father's son.
Steve Graves: Yeah. That's
Brad Smith: great. That's
Steve Graves: great. That's great. Marshall's.
Brad Smith: We talk about what hat we have on before we start the conversation.
Marshall Smith: That's awesome. That's
Steve Graves: good. Really good insight.
Marshall Smith: Really, really good
Steve Graves: insight for anybody working in a, with a, a dead son or dead daughter, for sure.
Brad Smith: Mm-hmm. Steve, do you think there's any inherent pitfalls.
That what, so like if we're just gonna survey like what we're going out into this battlefield, are there any inherent pitfalls that maybe working with a family member might have that you wouldn't otherwise have? Like are there any unique dangers?
Steve Graves: Yeah. Yeah. I don't, Brad, I don't know that answer off the top of my head.
I'm gonna ask you back, uh, because I want you to answer the same question. I would, I would say anecdotally though, I would say, um, uh, I think, I think working with a family member can [01:02:00] put a spotlight on some of your blind spots and or some of your unhealthy. Um, work habits, you know, like if you're just used to being the bully mm-hmm.
And everybody's letting you be the bully because you own the company and nobody wants to cross the boss that owns everything, that's fine. Well, if you're the bully to your son, it's gonna eventually bubble back around. 'cause he's gonna tell his wife if he's married and she's gonna tell your wife, and all of a sudden you got a situation.
So I think, I think it might drive a little, you know, if you, if you're actively involved in a bunch of unhealthy dynamics
Marshall Smith: Yeah.
Steve Graves: In leadership, unhealthy dynamics, that that could come back and, and, and bite you a little bit. Mm-hmm. But, uh, I don't know. But it's, it's a really good question. What do you think?
Any pitfalls that just pop out immediately?
Marshall Smith: I'd throw it
Steve Graves: out. Marshall, there You got one joke? Go.
Marshall Smith: Uh,
Brad Smith: can we edit this out? Yes.
Steve Graves: Oh
Marshall Smith: yeah. Yes we can. This
Brad Smith: is the, this is the trailer right here.
Marshall Smith: No. Well, one thing that's really interesting is [01:03:00] for, for me and my dad, we have pretty distinct different personalities.
So I would say. I think that in itself is kind of, it's a, it's a challenge area because if you're, if you're both the same personality, you're gonna have the same weaknesses. Yeah. Right. Blind spots. If you have two different personalities, I mean, at least for me, in my situation, I'm like, well, how the heck am I supposed to do all this, this task?
But I can't necessarily in these areas. I, I can't model it exactly after him because I'm just totally different.
Steve Graves: Right. Right.
Marshall Smith: Uh, to me is like my dad is the epitome of the saying, if you're gonna be a bear, be grizzly. Yeah. And I'm not, that, I'm not that epitome of that saying, it's like I'm kind of like the teddy bear going around.
So I have to be able to have different, like tools in my pocket to be able to figure out how do I have a hard conversation, how do I have a meaningful conversation?
Steve Graves: Wh which, Marshall, which is a really, uh, an interesting, uh, a good insight, uh, is the best way to say it, because a lot of times we match ourselves with [01:04:00] people that are just like us.
Like a lot of father sons or father daughters are gonna be, I mean, they're gonna be just alike. Mm-hmm. Other ones are gonna be the ying and the yang. They're gonna be like, you know, I'm the hand, you're the glove. I'm the, I'm the out, out facing, public facing, you know, a lot of energy extrovert, you're the introvert, you're the detail person, whatever.
And so probably both of those carry pitfalls. If we both, if we both are alike, there's some issues to cover if we're different, there's some pitfalls to cover. Right. You know, Brad, what you got?
Brad Smith: Yeah. I think I, I'm an Enneagram eight, which just means I'm a jerk a lot of times. Or
Steve Graves: Really? You're an eight too.
I'm
Brad Smith: an eight. Marshall's a six.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Brad Smith: You know, so being an eight, um, we actually hired an Enneagram coach to come and work with our family to, through some of the family dynamics that we have. I think that was really valuable because I, I learned that Marshall, like he's just not ever gonna be me. He's never gonna be an eight.
No matter I could project that on him and want him [01:05:00] to be an eight and it's just not gonna happen. And, but I'm never gonna be a six.
Steve Graves: Right?
Brad Smith: Um, but I think one of the things that's been challenging for me is like Marshall really knows me. Like he knows all of the weaknesses of my temperament and you know, I think sometimes that may be a strength 'cause he's like, okay, dad just needs a minute to sort of, uh, bring the eight in the intensity level of an eight down to more normal level.
Just chill out for a minute and then we'll reapproach it. But, you know, at the same time too, I think the danger of that is I might unintentionally wound him in a way. Now it's just not at work that I wounded somebody and I'm gonna bring that home and it's gonna impact our family dynamic to some degree, maybe.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Brad Smith: But
Steve Graves: yeah. Well, bravo, let's close it on this one. Uh, bravo for you guys. Taking the chance and having the faith to re risk, not de-risk at this stage in life and even in your stage in life, you know, it could be a lot easier perhaps to go [01:06:00] get a, a different job than all the family dynamics. And so, uh, congrats guys.
Well done. And what a great testimony. Um, you're to a lot of other guys.
Brad Smith: Thanks. Thanks for your guys help and yeah, pulling it all together.