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that's a tough act to follow because technology is very compelling but I have another compelling topic for you this morning and that's starting a business and experiencing revenue growth you know in revenue growth means growth for the ironworkers as mr. Hilton mentioned I'm Cindy Minchin I am the impact director of contractor training and development and today I'm going to be introducing a case study on superior steel erectors their company that was established just five years ago during the past five years superior steel erectors has experienced phenomenal growth and this can be attributed to the hard work of Jody and Monte Ellis and their partnership with impact and iron Workers Local Union 10 in Kansas City I think you'll find their story inspiring before I turned Jodi and Monte I want to first briefly talk about our contractor training program last year at the conference I presented impacts new iron worker contractor University iron worker contractor University offers courses in using four different delivery methods our first delivery method is we offer a lot of instructor led live training and this is our most popular model we also have self-paced elearning modules that we offer through our new e-learning or sorry our learning management system which was exhibited in the exhibit hall earlier this week we have short snippet one our virtual webcast that we keep in an archive there on simple business topics and we have a blended learning approach which combines any of these other three methods so members that participate in our training have programs that have in our programs have unique opportunities to acquire new knowledge and otherwise this knowledge might not be available to them at a no cost to them they can use this new knowledge to improve their success and gain an advantage over their non-union competitors and they can seek and receive individual assistance to help them implement what they've learned in their new courses so that they can implement it in their businesses Jodie and Monte Ellis have participated in impacts training program and they've also used a number of other impact resources and so today's presentation is going to be about their outcomes as a result of partnering with impact and iron Workers Local Union number ten a little background about superior steel erectors they are a relatively new trade contractor they specialize in the erection of structural steel facilities including commercial institutional and government facilities through throughout Kansas and Missouri the business was started in 2013 and during the past five years the company's experienced phenomenal growth with revenues that have increased a hundred and fifty percent nearly every year superior steel erectors attributes its success to the numerous impact resources available to it during its startup along with a close business relationship with local union 10 the president of superior steel erectors is Jody Ellis she's a lifelong learner and educator Jody manages all of the business operations the field operations managers Monte Ellis he's a 27-year career iron worker out of local union ten and money is responsible for all field operations their success is a direct result of their hard work dedication confidence and capacity and the partnerships they form with impact and local union 10 here's Jody and Monty now to tell their inspiring story [Applause] thank you I'm Monty Ellis I'm the field operations manager for superior steel as Cindy mentioned and I want to thank Kevin Hilton and Cindy for inviting us here today to speak it's been weekly we visit with these folks and they do anything and everything to help us to get where we're at today and there was no way we'd be standing here if it wasn't for them I don't think it was really fair for contractors that tried to start out 30 years ago they didn't have all this available to them and it makes it so a average iron worker can step into this and and get into the game there's a lot of risk and stress and starting and running a steel erection company but one reason we decided to go on our own was basically I was tired of feeling like a pawn in someone else's game always felt like my employment hinged on how someone else ran their company after 24 years of being an iron worker and working for some of the larger steel erection companies in my area I'd felt like I had done and seen almost everything in our trade and to see that decided I might have the skills to go out on my own I had a few pieces of equipment and 25,000 in cash but I knew if we want a project I would eventually need to get bank financing to make payroll and get some equipment also realized there was a lot I didn't know so to improve my business knowledge and grow in part participated in impacts first-ever contractor development program program consisted of 12 live online webinars conducted on important business talk picks such as writing a business plan cost estimating insurance and bonding this program was tremendously helpful after the program impact assigned me a mentor his name was Carl Johnson a Bethlehem Steel he was great he was on call 24/7 he provided important information and encouragement during the startup process I remember we're sitting in a grocery store parking lot on a Sunday talking to him for about an hour over how much money he thought I should have in the bank to get rolling and where I should set my man our race to be profitable armed with my new business knowledge I visited a bank that my family had a personal relationship to talk I'm about financing I spoke with the president the bank for over an hour and that's when he told me money it might be a pretty good ironworker but I could tell from talking to you you don't know anything about running a business and there's no way I'm gonna loan you any money ultimately we ended up starting our company with twenty five thousand dollars of personal money we had we had a truck with three hundred thousand miles to old welding machines a couple gang boxes and some grinders just enough to get one crew working and we thought we'd give it a shot the first job we won was a time and material job it was a glass and stainless rail at the UMKC campus it was a job another rector had already been awarded and started but they couldn't get back and finish so they give me a call and said can you mop this up for us it gave us gross revenues at $13,000 that year and that was only job we did in 2014 I was able to bid on 65 jobs and we won nine of them most of them were small jobs less than $25,000 includes stairs or railings and canopies over the last couple of years we've been able to take on more complex jobs that generated larger revenue including constructing a 40,000 square foot three-story structural steel building that we just finished in January good morning thank you when we started this company I was completely confident in Bonnie's ability in the field because he's damn good at what he does but um naively he was completely confident in my ability to run the business in the office however I had no business background and it turned out to be a little bit trickier than I anticipated a little harder to navigate and so I spent much of my first two years feeling pretty anxious and nervous about what I was doing and whether it was correct to say that I was barely keeping my head above water was probably pretty accurate has been countless hours on the Internet looking up terms and concepts going into our third year of business we had three goals the first goal is we needed to gain knowledge of what actions we needed to take in order to plan for our future success we needed to get much more efficient in the office I had another full-time job and we needed to develop a sophistication as a business so that we weren't just wing at Daley in 2015 we reached an important turning point in our history money and I along with other area contractors were invited to a luncheon by brian garrett president and director of training at local ten and at that luncheon brian spoke about what he was doing at a local level for training and for contractors and then he spoke about impact and he introduced Zach Gorman Midwest Regional Director and Zach got up and talked to us about all the resources available to contractors that would help ensure our success so he talked about training programs website design programs marketing and more and that was the first glimmer of hope that I had that I still wasn't quite sure what we needed to do for our business shortly after the luncheon much dhamanis than my surprise we received a phone call from the CEO of impact Kevin Hilton and he wanted to meet with us personally and so he did he came to our home office in Kansas and he wanted to know what impact could do to help us he suggested that I take the business fundamentals Academy course that was being offered in Ann Arbor that next month and I did and from taking the class I developed a confidence about being able to run this company before the class I felt like I was drowning and then after the class I felt like yeah I got this I can do this we also realized that we were implementing many processes correctly which significantly boosted our confidence another critical element to our success has been a relationship local TN president Brian Garrett business manager David Coleman and Business Agents Daniel roach and Shannon chambers have worked close closely with us to ensure that we've had skilled iron workers to our projects I remember one job in particular early on when I had myself and one man scheduled to unload a stair and fly it through a second-floor window in the West Bottoms of Kansas City like always I was running short-handed since payroll was tight that morning my only guy called in sick at 6:30 so there I was in front of a new customer crane on the street load of Steel waiting on me and I'm by myself I called Daniel Roche kind of in a panic and said I need someone right now and he said I'll see what I can do 20 minutes later I had a man standing in front of me ready to go and he was top-notch kept him for a couple months after that our participation with local 10:00 has been absolutely essential to our success David Coleman business management an has also worked with us in a strategic partnership so that we could successfully compete on smaller regional projects that he knew we would be bidding on these ironworker leaders communicate with us regularly to gauge our success and satisfaction to offer assistance and to notify us of upcoming projects in the area we simply wouldn't be successful without them they know exactly what it takes to groom a new contractor and give them everything they need to be successful since participating in impacts programs we've completed a number of important actions including obtaining a business license changing our insurance broker to a broker that specializes in construction and reducing our risk with the help of Devon Pipkin and Aaron Brown of true north impact consultants developing a collections policy to improve collection of money owed to us establishing a relationship with a construction focused attorney who assists with contract review and negotiations developing a quality assurance called a control manual and site-specific safety plan with help from impact consultant Ted Shepherd and guidance from president brian Garrett at local 10 we also implemented on centers on screen takeoff software and steel estimating solutions bid wizard software with help from impact consultant Vince Hughes to estimate more jobs and more jobs efficiently Vince has been available to me 24/7 since I started using his software on one occasion I even called him on New Year's Eve late at night with a question and he called me right back it's been like that with every impact consultant I had contact with I call them they call me right back Sunday it didn't matter what time and they would take care of any questions I had Jody and I are now able to take on more work by dividing responsibilities Jody developed the skills to take over the business operations which allowed me to focus on the field and estimating oh and by the way the banker that wouldn't entertain the idea of loaning us any money five years ago we went ahead and opened our business account there when we started Jody and I called him last fall when we knew we had a few larger jobs started and thought we might need to line a credit that same banker said no problem with the line of credit and don't worry about the paperwork we know you're good for it we just appreciate your business we completed almost $600,000 worth of work in that five month span and didn't need that line of credit after all so as a result of participating in impact programs we received both tangible and intangible benefits some of the intangible benefits is that increasing confidence being able to email impact staff members with questions that's been a great resource and then also to numerous mentors and consultants that they've set up for us who are in the industry who have been very generous with their time offering guidance and assistance some of the tangible benefits include we were able to bid more work thus acquiring more work and that was a direct result of that confidence and the implementation of our estimating software so our revenues increased our capacity would run more work increase our labor our steadily increased and our ability to perform tasks in-house was better because we developed skills so we didn't have to contract them out and we saved money helping the business to grow the numbers tell our story we started with one job our first year it had gross revenues at $13,000 and last year in our fourth year we had 17 jobs with revenues over five hundred sixty thousand dollars we expect our revenue this year to exceed $700,000 and next year in 2018 we hope to exceed 1 million our payroll has increased from less than 5,000 our first year to over 120 thousand last year and our labor hours having from 136 regular time hours our first year to over 3500 regular time hours last year and we expect this growth to continue so starting a business is much like putting together a puzzle and you need various pieces to that puzzle so that first piece is that knowledge in the ironworking field the next piece is you need a good working relationship with your local the third yes the third piece is having skilled iron workers who are craftsmen at what they do because without them you won't make money and then that last piece is the business knowledge and that's where impact has been invaluable to us superior steel erectors is just one example of what can happen when you put together the pieces of the puzzle thank you [Applause] you