From Foundations to Culture: How Caleb Tucker Builds High-Performing Teams

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Joshua Kornitsky: Welcome back to High Velocity Radio. I’m your host, professional EOS implementer Joshua Kornitsky, and I’ve got a really exciting guest to share with everybody today. My guest today is Caleb Tucker. Caleb is an entrepreneur and an operator focused on building and growing businesses for the long term. He currently leads and operates multiple concrete companies, including Stamped Concrete and Element Seven concrete, where he’s actively involved in driving growth, supporting team development and delivering high quality work for customers. What I really love is that his approach centers on people with a strong belief that placing the right individuals in the right roles is the foundation for a consistent, high quality execution. Welcome, Caleb. I’m really happy to have you here.

Caleb Tucker: Yeah. Thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s it’s there’s a lot to talk about, so I’m gonna just jump right in and ask you, uh, concrete is something all of us have absolutely no appreciation for.

Caleb Tucker: Right?

Joshua Kornitsky: Tell us where concrete is a good fit in in society. And are we talking about concrete residentially? Are we talking about it commercially or both?

Caleb Tucker: Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, that’s a great place to start. And we are talking about both. So there’s of course, there’s all kinds of applications for concrete. It’s it’s everywhere. It’s more places than most people would even realize. It’s more places than I realized before I owned a couple of concrete businesses. Right. So I’m certainly more aware than I ever was, uh, being in the business that I’m in right now. But we do a lot of work for residential homeowners and working directly with homeowners on things around their house, whether that’s pool decks, patios, walkways, driveways, interior applications too. If you’ve got stained or polished concrete floors. But then there’s all kinds of commercial applications as well. So think about most fire stations have a polished concrete floor that’s that’s typical in a fire station. Um, a lot more auto body shops now that, that have, we have specialized floor coatings that we do in those applications too.

Joshua Kornitsky: So I’m going to stop and ask. That’s not just a decorative choice.

Caleb Tucker: Um, there’s, there’s certainly a decorative element to it. Right. But there is also some functionality impacts that can be delivered with certain concrete finishes. Again, Polish is one that I mentioned where you do get a more dense, durable surface that’s expected to last much, much longer.

Joshua Kornitsky: Than just raw.

Caleb Tucker: And just raw concrete. Okay. Exactly. Yeah.

Joshua Kornitsky: Um, so when you talk about the types of coatings that you put down, are they chemical protectant or are they? I mean, I imagine like a fire department that or I grew up in the car business. Those floors get abused.

Caleb Tucker: Yes. Yeah. And that’s, that’s a big part of what the process is. Understanding what what’s going to be done on the floor, because that can shape how you approach it. And there are certainly coatings and finishes that we wouldn’t recommend in some industrial settings that might have a lot of chemicals spilling on them. For an example of that would be an auto body shop where you’re going to have oil, different vehicle fluids all over the place, all the time. That may not always be great for a polished concrete floor, but a, a floor with a more durable coating layer on top of it. We do a lot of flake epoxy type of floor finishes in those settings that are more durable. The top coat on there is much more resistant to chemicals and different kind of things that may spill on it in that setting. So that is a big part of the process is understanding what what the application no longer term is going to be.

Joshua Kornitsky: So let’s back up a step. How do you how do you get to the place of knowing what the needs are or your folks trained to, to analyze it beyond just making dimensional measures?

Caleb Tucker: Yeah, absolutely. So that’s a part of pretty much every process. And occasionally we might have a builder architect that has very specific specs already that they can send. And that’s usually helpful for delivering a price or an estimate on what it may cost. But at the end of the day, we like to have eyes on every project we do before it’s even a booked project. And then a lot of times closer up to actually executing on it, just to make sure there’s nothing that’s been missed or changed. So yes, part of that process, that on site visit is going to be a pretty is developing a much more clear understanding of exactly what will happen. Sometimes you have a space that’s got it’s multi use, right? You’ve got.

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure, particularly commercially, I think that’s got to be all the.

Caleb Tucker: Time, right? You’ve got an office space over here, then you’ve got the workspace here. Um, maybe an outdoor application going on as well. And so the on site visits really to get us some more clear understanding of exactly what’s going to happen everywhere to make sure that we’re making the best recommendation to the end customer and end user on what they should have.

Joshua Kornitsky: And when you go back to them, is it pretty much one size fits all, or do you have variations that you’re able to offer them? You know, how do you present to to your customers?

Caleb Tucker: Yeah. So a lot of times there’s, we do like to offer options. We want people to feel like they can choose what they want.

Joshua Kornitsky: And people like that too, right?

Caleb Tucker: Like being able to pick what they want, uh, kind of fits their, their needs or the look that they want. Um, and so sometimes that is going to be driven by some finishes may maybe not being good for technical reasons, like the chemicals that we mentioned already. But a lot of times there’s people have budgets in mind that they’re trying to hit too. And we really try to do our best. If we’ve got an array of options there, maybe there is a good, better, best option.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. So you’re able to give them that choice.

Caleb Tucker: We and we can then offer the good, better, best solution to them and whatever their budget allows. And, you know, quite frankly, sometimes, uh, those good, better and best options are different looks. And people may actually say, you know what? I actually like the way the, the middle of the road option looks in this space more than the most expensive option. I’m going to go with that. But what we like being able to offer those.

Joshua Kornitsky: So, so, so what happens if I go with better and you get started and I decide I really want best. Yeah. Is there any flexibility? I mean, obviously there’s limitations, but are you able to adapt in real time?

Caleb Tucker: Sometimes it’ll it’ll depend on what those options are for, you know, uh, the hardest case is going to be if, if we’re working on a stamped concrete project, for example, where we’re putting down new concrete in a either a place where we removed old concrete or it’s just a fresh slab in a new location. If that concrete’s getting stamped, it’s getting stamped the day it gets poured. And so in that situation.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s not unstoppable.

Caleb Tucker: Yeah. You’re not gonna. And sure, uh, we, we’ve talked about this before, uh, kind of within our, our circle of leadership at the company that, you know, there, there are some things that you can fix, but you can fix a lot of things if you’re willing to pay for it. But that, that stamped concrete. Sure you can, you can wiggle around and maybe try to change it later, but it’s going to be costly to do it. So to answer your question, sometimes you’re you’re committed when that concrete hits the ground and it’s being stamped, you’re, you’re fully committed at that point. But there are other situations where you know, that that stamped concrete process, maybe it’s not a one day thing, you know, there’s a prep day, right? And then the day that the stamping happens and then the follow up days to fully finish and seal that concrete. And we do have people sometimes that will, in the process of our preparation for that project, maybe they notice the way things are formed and laid out and they come back and say, you know what, actually, maybe I would rather have the walkway bend out this way, or I would rather have it have a slightly bigger pad here or something like that. That does come up and it does give us an opportunity to work with people.

Joshua Kornitsky: Oh, good. So so you can adapt. And I understand I painted you into a corner without meaning to. Um, but it’s good to know that there’s flexibility that if they’ve agreed on this and then they change their mind before we’ve gotten to a point of no return. Exactly. Uh, of, of stamping having been done. Um, do, do your folks work with them? So just, I’ll give you an example. Out of my own life that I mentioned earlier, we put in a pool a few years ago, and it occurred to my wife for a number of reasons that having a sidewalk to the pool would probably be beneficial. Um, in that instance, they were able to accommodate us and we were able to do that. But that’s something that my brilliant wife thought of on her own. Do you help your customers see beyond their immediate request? Because I know nothing about concrete. So knowing what is and isn’t possible may not immediately jump out to me. Right?

Caleb Tucker: Yeah. And I’d say that’s important too. One of the things that comes up a lot for us is thinking through access points to the home. So if you think about a, you’re putting a, a concrete slab, maybe a new patio on the back side of a sure, you know, a house. Um, and that may be great. And because maybe there’s a door right there. There probably is. And people want to, you know, they want a patio there, but, uh, there’s plenty of opportunities or situations like that where then you look and realize, well, if you wanted to get back here without walking through the house. It’s.

Joshua Kornitsky: There’s no.

Caleb Tucker: Way. Woods. It’s mud over, you know, on this side of the house. Um, do you really want your only access point to be that one door? So that, that kind of situation. I mean, that’s a pretty it’s a simple example, but it does come up.

Joshua Kornitsky: Oh, well, like I said, it’s just something. If you aren’t used to thinking in this area, it you’re not, you’re not guilty of anything other than lack of information. So having the expertise that your teams provide is really, I have to think, something that is invaluable to your customers, because I suspect it’s a lot more expensive to come back and add something compared to doing it at the time, where all the concrete’s already there. Right.

Caleb Tucker: And we’ve had that. A recent example I can think of is, uh, a customer who decided they, they didn’t, we hadn’t originally planned on replacing the, uh, the front, uh, Pad in front of her front door. A concrete slab that was there. She didn’t want to touch it, didn’t think it needed it. But when we were working on the walkway, she kind of revisited that question and thought, well, so this walkway concrete’s going to look nice and new and fresh. Um, and it’s, there’s going to be a step up to the front door stoop there too. If we did just demo that, that area and put new concrete there. You know, we could kind of level it all out. It could all be one continuous piece of concrete. What would it cost to do that? Beyond what we were already doing. And the answer was, I mean, there was certainly a cost to it, but it was not significant because we’re talking a small thing. But to your point of if we had been asked to come back and do that as a standalone.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s a whole different thing.

Caleb Tucker: I mean, it would have cost three times as much.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, so so I’m going to go there. How do you how do you approach budgets with, with both commercial and residential because everybody’s got a limit, right?

Caleb Tucker: Yeah. And that’s, I think, you know, part of that, that answer is tied to just giving people options because most of the time we can, you know, the goal for a lot of pool decks, for example, is I want, I want some traction because I don’t want people slipping and falling. Right? I want it to look good. Um, and, and I wanted to kind of fit the rest of my backyard look and feel. And, you know, a great option for that might be a stamped concrete pattern that that could be a great solution. They might love some of the patterns we have, but another solution that’s going to have a lot of the same impact, but just be less costly and take less time is, uh, we’d call our cool deck textured.

Joshua Kornitsky: Uh, okay. So it’s got something mixed in its texture.

Caleb Tucker: It, it also does help reduce the, the surface temperature of that concrete on those hot summer days.

Joshua Kornitsky: Trust me, I know that.

Caleb Tucker: Yeah. Right. And it gives you some gives you some traction. And there’s a range of color options there too. And so, you know, for that customer and that specific situation there, there’s a couple of options. One is more cost effective than the other. And it, it really just depends on how much they care about maybe a certain stamped concrete look. They want it to look like wood plank or stone or tile.

Joshua Kornitsky: Really, you can do that.

Caleb Tucker: You can do that.

Joshua Kornitsky: Who knew? Well, I guess you knew. I didn’t know I told you I don’t know anything about so.

Caleb Tucker: So you can do a lot of things with it. You know, we have customers that are married to that and we can we can present both options. And it’s not even a consideration. I know I want this flagstone pattern on my pool deck. That’s and that’s great, but there’s usually a way to make it fit a budget. Um, and we really do try our best to work, work around those constraints when, you know, when we’re there.

Joshua Kornitsky: At the end of the day, your goal is to satisfy your customers. So, so what are some things that people. What are some assumptions, misconceptions people make or have about the universe of concrete? Right. Because like you just said about the example you gave where the woman suddenly realized her walkway is going to look a lot better than her pad. You know, how does aging factor in? Is cracking normal? What are some of the things that that you get asked a lot that maybe are just, uh, bad information?

Caleb Tucker: Well, we, we always say there’s two guarantees about concrete. It will get hard and it will crack.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Caleb Tucker: So we know, we know both of those things are going to happen. Um, and the cracking question is something that it comes up a lot. And, you know, I understand it from a customer’s perspective. If you’ve got new concrete and a year later you see a crack in it.

Joshua Kornitsky: I might have had a selfish reason for asking.

Caleb Tucker: Yeah. Right. You know, and I understand from that same you’re like, well, this is brand new stuff, you know? Right. Why? Why is there this crack there? And there are certainly things you can do to mitigate the potential for cracks. And everybody should be. We certainly do do our best to, to do those things. But it’s going to happen. You’re you’re working on a ground that shifts and moves and, um, you can do your best to compact it and get a good base layer in there, but cracking is still bound to happen at some point. Um, and that’s actually an interesting thing that sometimes comes up with customers is as we think about the, the esthetic, the looks of things longer term, if, for example, if you’re going with a stamped concrete pattern, some of those are easier to hide cracks than others. Uh, for example, okay, a flagstone pattern, um, where.

Joshua Kornitsky: There’s some break in at.

Caleb Tucker: Different sizes, stones, you know, those kind of things. You can, you know, if you have cracking over a few years and you wanted us to come back out and address some of the cracks, fill them in or do some things like that. You can do a much better job of hiding those than a tile pattern where everything is a perfect square, right?

Joshua Kornitsky: Because then you, then you get a much more visible break.

Caleb Tucker: And but sometimes people, you know, that’s okay, you know, and, and, uh, but that’s, that also becomes part of the, the consultative process in deciding what to do is making, making sure people are aware. Um, and I think that is one of the things that we always harp on with customers is we want our customers to have an appreciation for the handmade, sometimes unpredictable nature of concrete, you know, different, different batches of concrete from the plant will look different, right? You know, if you pour concrete two different days and you don’t do anything to it, to, you know, stain it or any kind of coating on it, you might be able to tell a difference. That that was what I got on day one. This is what I got on day two. So concrete, even from the plant, it can be a little bit unpredictable on exactly what it’ll look like.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, it’s a semi organic product. So you’ve got weather, you’ve got humidity. You’ve got a gazillion factors that I don’t know about that that undoubtedly can influence it. Or it’s Tuesday versus Wednesday. Exactly. I mean, the, the thing you touched on very briefly, and I know this from my own experience and, and, uh, kind of was surprised by it. Um, there is a level of artistry involved to, to, to properly put concrete down. Um, I watched a, I was transfixed watching the crew that did the work and for full transparency, it was neither, uh, it was no one related to Caleb. It was before I knew Caleb. So I’m not, I’m not getting free concrete out of talking to him. Um, but the reality I was really kind of shocked at the level of skill and artistry. It is not just dumping and smoothing. That’s right. Um, and the folks who did the work for us, I was very, very impressed by, um, how do people find out about you as far as not how to contact you, but, but is how, how do you find your clients?

Caleb Tucker: Yeah. So a couple of different ways. We certainly have a lot of customers that, that are coming to us just because they, they googled, I need a new driveway, I need a new pool deck. And we come up, um, but we also, it’s one of the most fun things about these businesses is they’ve both been around for over 20 years. Wow. And, um, we, we get calls back from customers that were customers 20 years ago. They still live in the same house. Maybe we did a pool deck for them 20 years ago when they got their pool put in. And you know what? Now it’s time to do something to it. You know, maybe it’s, it might not need to be torn out and replaced, but we’re coming back to refresh it. Yes. It’s a reseal on it to to kind of bring back some of the color and, and, um, the pop to the concrete, make it look like new. If we can. So that’s been a lot, that’s always fun for me is to hear that, hey, this person, we did business with them in 2010 and they’re calling us back to come do something else. So that’s, that’s always feels good. Um, and then we also have a lot of, uh, business relationships, whether it’s pool builders that we work with consistently to, uh, pour the pool decks for them, do that kind of work. Architects, builders, general contractors, uh, a lot of relationships.

Joshua Kornitsky: And the fact that you explained that these businesses were existing businesses with their own reputations, obviously, they must have had very good reputations, otherwise you wouldn’t have been interested in them. Exactly. And as an EOS implementer, I want to ask, um, you know, do you have for your company a set of formal core values? And, and the reason that I ask that is. Well, let me ask, do you have a formal set of core values?

Caleb Tucker: I would I’d point to, I guess, two statements that are more. I consider them more North stars. Okay. If we’re making a decision, what’s the guiding principle for us? And I’d say the, the biggest one for us as a. And this is really as it relates to our employees, is, uh, are, are we taking ownership of the business? I want an owner’s mindset. Okay. Everybody across the business. So and, and then that, you know, that has tentacles that extend into.

Joshua Kornitsky: Pretty much everywhere.

Caleb Tucker: Everywhere. Right. You know, are the people in the field at somebody’s home or at a project? Do they care enough to communicate well with the customer and make sure they know what’s going on? You know, things like that, that for our our best employees, they do have more of an owner’s mindset. I want to own this work. I own this project. And, and that’s.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, so, so two offshoots from that right away. First question is, is can you think of an example where that happened? Where, where that owner’s mindset showed through and it made its way to your attention?

Caleb Tucker: Yeah, absolutely. So one of our, our top, top leaders out, uh, with element seven, um, consistently does great work. But what we’ve also, uh, we’ve gotten this feedback multiple times, but, um, there was a situation where it was a, it was a tricky type of concrete surface. And we had already set the expectation with the customer that, hey, if a new build, fresh concrete, a bunch of stains and just blemishes on this concrete that was left when the, the house was being built, right? You know, so you’ve got workers going everywhere when you’re building a home, right? And you’re bound to have some imperfections and things that show up and damage the concrete that’s there. And so we had already set the expectation with them that, hey, we’ll do what we can. But I think I don’t remember the exact numbers here, but these five spots over here, you’re gonna have to accept that there’s nothing we can do about it. And our team leader that was on that project that day, he’s out there with the team there working and and everything’s going well. And he he still gives those five areas a shot, even though we’d even we’d already even told him, listen, sure, we deal with this a lot. I don’t know that you’ll be able to do anything. You don’t have to stay there all night to get these done. Well, he has a little bit of success with it. He realizes maybe I can actually get these stains out, do the work to cover these up and help them blend into the rest of the surface. And and he did. He once he realized he might be able to.

Joshua Kornitsky: He found a path.

Caleb Tucker: Found a way to do it and got it. And it took him more time. But we were happy to have them out there for more time because we. What we delivered on was, hey, we already told you this would be a problem and you accepted it. But guess what? We fixed that problem too.

Joshua Kornitsky: All five spots.

Caleb Tucker: All five spots.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s awesome.

Caleb Tucker: You know. And it just they were a good customer anyway. They they knew that concrete would be imperfect. But because of his ownership of that, hey, because he could have just said, yeah, I know that those are tough. I’m not going to worry about it. Get back to the shop at a reasonable time and get home. Sure. But that kind of owner’s mentality of, I know if I can do this, it’ll deliver an exceptional experience for them and not just a good one. And that’s what he was able to do.

Joshua Kornitsky: So when you think about your people, who it sounds like you’re, you’re pretty fond of, which is fantastic. Um, beyond their own experience, what makes somebody a standout employee to you?

Caleb Tucker: So I mean, the easy thing to.

Joshua Kornitsky: Say, I mean, the resume is a resume, but I don’t know if you know this. Sometimes people aren’t always direct on a resume. I like to tell people I was a regional vice president for both service merchandise and Circuit City. Mhm. Good luck finding that to verify. Never mind when I was with RadioShack or Enron. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It was a regional director.

Caleb Tucker: So. Yeah. Great question. I mean, and it does depend on where people are are coming in. If they’re a new hire joining the company. But I can give give two examples. The first one, easy segue since we were talking about ownership, we recently did bring on somebody who had owned their own decorative.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s always.

Caleb Tucker: Hard.

Joshua Kornitsky: Uh, coming from the IT space, the last guy I wanted to hire was a guy that used to own an IT shop, but go on.

Caleb Tucker: So yeah. And, and we spent a lot of time getting to know each other. It was not a couple interviews and you’re hired process. And, uh, we, we had a months long courting phase of spending time together, working together on a couple of projects even and kind of feeling that out and, and everything went great. You know, we, we were both kind of bought in on that process, built some good relationships and, and bringing him on with this background in owning his own business and his situation in particular. He had sold that business ten years ago, had been doing something else for the last decade.

Joshua Kornitsky: But he got the.

Caleb Tucker: Space back and he understood. And he he knew what it was like to have happy customers and unhappy customers. And that that kind of mindset coming into the company from day one is, is helpful. The other side of that, though, is we it’s one of the things I get the most satisfaction out of is bringing somebody in that’s brand new, hasn’t ever touched concrete before, and usually a younger person super early in their career, just trying to find some direction maybe.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right.

Caleb Tucker: And if that person comes in and they’re willing to learn and be humble and just absorb things and spend time absorbing what they’re being taught in the field and kind of buying into what we’re trying to do as a company, which is delivering the best work I can for customers, but really caring about each other, working as a team.

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure.

Caleb Tucker: If you’re if you’re willing to buy in on that and again, spend that time learning and just absorbing knowledge and working to get better. That’s all we need. So and even if again, you’ve never touched concrete before, but we’ve had some people come in like that and a year later they’re in a totally different spot career wise. And also life wise too. They’re on a different trajectory.

Joshua Kornitsky: You must have a very strong culture because that only comes that can only foster and grow in an organization that believes in that at its core. And I’m going to get on a very small soapbox for just one moment. I have two daughters, 23 and 18. Um, all of the assumptions people make about the current generation and their work ethic. Please don’t judge people based on their generation or a large group. Meet them and know them individually. Because some of the hardest working folks I know right now are the youngest. Yeah. Um, and you can’t shut them out because their generation fill in the blank, right? Let them come in. You got to foster. I don’t care who they are. You have to give them an environment they can grow in. And if you’re able to provide that, you’ll be shocked by what you get. Yeah. Uh, and, and they have a different take on innovation than the preceding generations. And it doesn’t mean they’re going to find a new way to make concrete work, but they may suggest things because they’ve got a very different eye, right? They’ve grown up in a different universe than we did. And, uh, I’m always, for me, it’s a source of joy, not just with my own daughters, but as an implementer working with organizations. When I see a younger person who just gets the right type of watering and feeding to grow in an organization, and every time you get a spectacular result.

Caleb Tucker: Yep, absolutely.

Joshua Kornitsky: So it sounds like it’s pretty strong organizations. Um, I’m going to, I’m going to give you the EOS litmus test. Have you ever fired a customer?

Caleb Tucker: We have.

Joshua Kornitsky: Why?

Caleb Tucker: So. It’s not something we we enjoy doing. Sure. But we’ve, um. There’s a couple reasons it’s happened. The one one obvious one is if there’s an issue with, uh, them paying. Right. And, uh.

Joshua Kornitsky: That that is important.

Caleb Tucker: And sadly, I, I think one of the things that, that maybe customers can miss sometimes is our willingness to, to make sure that we’ve stood by our work and we’ll, we will follow up and correct things if it seems like it needs correcting and, and we, we want people to be very happy. And sadly, we’ve, we’ve had 1 or 2 customers where for whatever reason, they felt like the price that was agreed to is not the price they wanted to pay. And they made that decision. But it does mean that there won’t be any future work. And there’s a there is an X in our CRM next to their name that says, hey, if they call back, we’re.

Joshua Kornitsky: Not able to.

Caleb Tucker: Help. Yeah, we can’t help. Um, but another issue that’s less obvious than, than that one has been if, if we’ve got a customer that. There are certain customers that can kind of. And these are these ongoing relationships, maybe with business customers, whether it’s a builder, general contractor that you can tell the way they do business is maybe a little bit more helter skelter.

Joshua Kornitsky: And I understand entirely what you mean. It’s ready. Fire! Aim.

Caleb Tucker: Exactly. And and you get stuck in a spot where, you know, we we plan a lot of things months out. You know, we we can kind of.

Joshua Kornitsky: I think you kind of have to. And you do you are subject to weather too.

Caleb Tucker: Exactly right. So there’s there’s always weather can throw you a curveball. It can adjust. It adjusts your schedule, pushes things out. Um, but we, we maybe budget for, hey, this, this project is getting done in three months. And sometimes you get there and we understand that that project is delayed further, and that’s okay. But the flip side of that gets tough. If we have people that all of a sudden we need you next week, we have to do this next week. If it doesn’t happen next week, you know we’re in a bad spot and sometimes we can’t accommodate that. But that kind of ongoing.

Joshua Kornitsky: Unpredictable, it always happens.

Caleb Tucker: It happens a lot, right? It can be tough for us to handle. And so then we know going into those if if there was more business from that customer, we’re more hesitant to accept it because we don’t want to put our people in those situations.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, sure. It’s a, it’s a cascading effect where if you get bumped a week because of whatever, everything else likely gets bumped a week. So and I know the the answer to this is likely. It depends. Caleb. But you know, where does in a commercial or residential build usually those are pretty tightly scheduled. Are you usually towards the tail end of those? I mean, I guess it depends because sometimes you’re building, you’re putting the foundation or I guess maybe you’re not, I don’t know.

Caleb Tucker: Yeah. Well, so to answer the foundation question, we don’t normally we don’t do foundation pours and that type of work. But, um, it really does depend. So some, some projects we have the pleasure of coming in after a lot of the work, uh, has been done. And maybe like the example I gave before, there’s some blemishes in the concrete and we were able to come in and be the good guys and say, let’s, let’s fix that. This, this doesn’t look good. We’re going to show up and make it look better. Uh, so a lot of times that is maybe towards the end of the process. Um, other pieces though, you know, uh, if it’s a new pool build at a new home build and we’re doing a pool deck, we’re going to come in. I mean, the, a lot of the home build may be completed at that point, but we’re still coming in before that process is really at its finish because it can be a messy process. There can be.

Joshua Kornitsky: Oh, sure.

Caleb Tucker: You know, there’s dirt and debris moving around. Uh, and it’s good for us to come in and do things like that before landscaping is done, before a fence is up, before you know, all of those things. So. Right. So it’ll depend on the nature of the project interior or exterior and kind of the and sometimes even the finish too. So some things, um, for example, if we’re doing polished concrete inside a home, we are going to do the polishing process. But the very last step of that is a final polish. So once, so we’re going to polish the concrete, cover it so that while the other trades are in there, they do their work and don’t damage it. And then even after the covering comes up, then we’re going to come back and do a final polish on it so that when that homeowner, if it’s a home, is moving into this house. Excuse me. They’re showing up and seeing great looking, clean, polished concrete.

Joshua Kornitsky: You just explained something from my past that I never understood where we had. It was a dealership we built. I had polished floors. They put them down, and then they immediately covered them. And none of us could quite understand why. But now, obviously, they waited until all the heavy boots were done. And then they came in because the day we kicked open, it sure was pretty.

Caleb Tucker: Yeah, exactly. So you probably got that. You got that polish it, cover it, final polish it treatment. And after that final polish it. When you move in and you’re you’re up and running, it looks looks great.

Joshua Kornitsky: And where’s like concrete. I mean, how else can you say it. Yeah. It’s um, I know it sounds maybe a little silly to somebody on the outside, but the reality is this is an essential part of almost every building is an essential part, certainly of almost every workspace you’ve ever been a party to. So it needs to be done in not just capable hands, uh, competent and intelligent hands. And it sure sounds like that’s what your folks are doing. Yeah. Um, any final thoughts before I ask how people get in touch with you?

Caleb Tucker: I don’t think so. I think we hit on the biggies there. Yeah.

Joshua Kornitsky: When it’s done right, it looks exceptional. I was not even aware of some of the variations that you talked about. Uh, I’m going to do my best to make sure that, uh, the next time we have to entertain something like this. I’ll get more information. Yeah. Um, but it’s fascinating, and it’s good to know. And how do folks get Ahold of you?

Caleb Tucker: I would say the best thing to do is to find our website, find us online.

Joshua Kornitsky: We’ll publish those links for for Elm and seven and for stampede Crete. Yep. Uh, and I urge you to take a look at them and see if they’re the right solution to what you’re trying to do. Perfect. Um, my guest today. Thank you. Caleb is has been Caleb Tucker. He’s an entrepreneur and operator focused on business on excuse me, on building and growing businesses for the long term. He currently leads and operates multiple concrete companies, including stampede, Crete and Element seven concrete, where he is actively involved in driving growth, supporting team development and delivering high quality work for customers. Again, his approach really does center on people first and a strong belief that putting the right individuals in the right roles is the foundation for consistent, high quality execution. And he made that clear today. It’s been a pleasure to have you here. My name is Joshua Kornitsky. I am an EOS implementer, and that is one who teaches, coaches and facilitates the entrepreneurial operating system. You’ve just listened to another great episode of High Velocity Radio. Thanks so much. We’ll see you next time.