Tom Padgett
Padgett Construction, Inc., Lexington, Ky.
Type of business: design/build
Years in business: 13
Employees: 3
1996 volume: $2 million
1996 starts: 5 custom homes, 7 remodels
Tom Padgett is here to tell you that it’s never too late to change. In his first 10 years of building custom homes, his business ran him; now he is running it, and he has never been happier.
“I’d been paying salaries and expenses and just breaking even for years,” he says. However, after participating in a number of educational programs sponsored by the National Association of Home Builders, he resolved to do more than break even. “I had a change in attitude—I decided that I deserve to make a profit”
In his effort to please his clients, he began to realize, he’d shortchanged himself for years by low bidding to get jobs and by underpricing change orders, among other things. “I’d confused winning in the bidding process with business success,” he explains. Determined to turn things around, he took two of his key employees on a management retreat. They set goals and devised a plan of action to achieve them.
Back in the office, they launched weekly status meetings, something they’d done only sporadically in the past. They started keeping notebooks for each job, ending the paper chase. And, gritting his teeth, Padgett finally hired another staffer to install the dust-covered estimating software he had bought three years before. He offset the expense of this new person, who is also a construction manager, with more remodeling business.
The last component of his plan was among the most important. He added design/build to his list of services. By forging a relationship with clients at this crucial early stage, and by backing up the design with highly detailed, accurate estimates, he often wins the construction contract without bidding. It’s a great new beginning for a venerable old firm.
