Jeremy
Alright. Thanks again for joining in The Zone. And today we have a special guest and I want to introduce him. He has completed over 400 projects in the commercial, retail restaurant and office scope. Sunny owns and operates all aspects of award winning Pinhero Construction Inc. Tapping into decades of experience and partnerships on his passions for building has connected him with the biggest names in construction, and he has led his team to 117% growth and ranking him number 145 on the INC 5000 list. Congratulations on that.
Sunny
A Jack of all trades.
Jeremy
He regularly extends his knowledge to consulting, management, business coaching and networking. And honestly, my favorite part about Sunny is his willingness to help a fellow contractor. Please help me. Welcome. Sunny Pinhero.
Sunny
Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Thanks for helping me today. I’m excited.
Jeremy
Thanks for being on here. I know this isn’t your first podcast Rodeo, so we appreciate you. You know, your time is valuable. I know. So every 30 minutes is important, so we appreciate you being here.
Sunny
Yeah, anything that I can do to help. Cool.
Jeremy
Thanks. So I kind of want to start. We chatted a little bit a few weeks ago about your start construction. I’m the third generation in remodeling, and it sounds like you’re second generation. So tell me a little bit about your start in construction.
Sunny
Yeah. So I’m not technically second generation. From the standpoint of it’s, the same company that rolled over. My dad was a dry wall framing contractor in Southern California, here in San Diego for a long time. You know, when I was twelve years old, I was out there hanging rock with him, doing lids, holding up the other side of the sheet or scrapping houses. You know, I still have memories of, like throwing scraps of drywall out the window of a second story building out here in Escondido or Temecula out into the dumpster.
Sunny
And I thought that was really cool, you know, but that’s kind of like where it started. And then when we moved up to Seattle to the Pacific Northwest, my dad had an opportunity to become a Superintendent for a general contractor. He eventually went out on his own and kind of had his own little construction business where he ran the field. My mom ran in the office, and that’s kind of how I got into it. So yeah, just nice.
Jeremy
So did your dad. I mean, it sounds like he had some work ethic because you’ve always had that all the way along. Did he kind of teach you that as well?
Sunny
Yeah, I think it’s ingrained in us, though. Like, my level of work ethic is not necessarily the same as his his he hustled on job sites. I don’t think I’ve ever worked with another actual person on a job site when I used to do it. More hustle more just get down to business. But I definitely think that there’s some of that rubs off on you. If you see your dad waking up doing anything and everything going to work and then coming home and working on a truck or working on the house or something, like, at some point time, you know, that that’s just sort of expectations, right?
Jeremy
Yeah.
Valerie
Was there any other industry that you’re ever pulled towards, or were you always focused on more construction?
Sunny
Well, so I got my start in general job, like when I first got going in the grocery industry. So I was a helper clerk, promoted to produce and then over to checker. And then I actually started doing management through a grocery store, you know, through College that actually paid my way to buy my first house by my first truck. So I had sort of going that route. But, you know, it was just something that, like I needed more. I wanted to do something myself. And so I called my dad up one day and said, hey, can I just come to work for you?
Nice.
Jeremy
Nice. It’s so funny. We have so many similarities. I did the same thing. I worked at a grocery store in College, and it just kind of supported me. I didn’t have any debt in College. But after that, I got a couple of jobs. And then I was like, hey, what am I doing? And I just went right back to the family thing.
Valerie
It’s funny.
Jeremy
We have a lot of similarities.
Sunny
The grocery store is pretty cool because you get a feel the work ethic. You get a hustle a little bit, especially if the quality food centers I worked at. We faced everything all the time. We didn’t put any produce out that had bruises on it. Things like that. So there was a certain level that that helped me with my customer service that I got from that industry. Just like, just like people might get customer service from being like a server at a restaurant. Those are really good people to bring into the industry.
Sunny
If you want to bring someone that has good customer service that has good work ethic, because they’re always walking fast back and forth to the kitchen, it seems kind of tie into, you know, as contractors, we’re going to be looking for people outside the industry to bring in eventually. Yeah.
Jeremy
Funny, I had grocery store. She had restaurants, but I agree.
Valerie
I think that there’s so much value in going outside of what you eventually end up in. It because it does it. We try to tell our kids, at least with College as well. Learn everything. Learn a broad range because you never know what it is that’s going to eventually – stick. I knowing that every single place you end up with along the path is going to teach you something about business.
Jeremy
Absolutely.
Sunny
I had a conversation with my daughter yesterday. She wants to do art. And so we agreed that she would get a degree in business at least and still get, like, an art minor or something to start out with so she can do that. So she has something to fall back on, I guess.
Valerie
Right.
Jeremy
What about, like, graphic design or, like, artsy techy? You know, because one of our daughters is the same way. She’s like an artist, and she’s trying to figure out what she wants to do. And we’re like, well, what about the tech side of art, like, just trying to kind of keep some option, a little bit more options available to her.
Sunny
It’s interesting. I have two daughters and trying to get them interested in construction was hard. So, I was trying to push the architecture side of it, but that hasn’t stuck completely. But she’s a freshman in high school. So we’ll give it some years and see, I didn’t know what I wanted to do until really know what I want to do until after I was in College. Yeah.
Valerie
So going from your childhood into the grocery store industry and learning the customer service, you’ve now grown to where your companies are being ranked in the INC 5000. And very well, what do you attribute to that success or to that that rapid growth.
Sunny
I think it’s just approaching business with ethics and standards and doing it like, more as a partner with your clients. And so, you know, I was pretty lucky to have built a couple of different companies, had some failures, for sure. But the Pinhero construction, we started 2015. You know, I hooked up with some clients. We treated it really, like open book with our clients. They really just we told them, hey, you focus on operations, marketing, getting things going, and we’re just going to hand you the keys when we’re done.
Sunny
And we really try to provide a really simplified service for them. And they’re not just kind of snowball because they love working with us. We took care of what they needed. And at the end of the day, a lot of these entrepreneurs in the commercial space, which is essentially who we’re doing work for. We’re doing work for other business owners, not like a homeowner. It’s a little bit different than residential side, but. But I mean, I think the same thing applies is is if you just take care of things for people, then they’re going to want to keep hiring you.
Sunny
And if you’re good to work with which I find that we’ve kind of taken a more progressive approach to things with, like, software and customer service and versus some of my mentors outside of either in my dad, their old school, little grumpier, gruff type of guys don’t want to do a project or they want to do something specific or always worried about getting paid or something like that. That wasn’t the way we approach everything. So we got lucky with a couple of clients that had multiple stores that they were doing.
Sunny
We provided – we earned the service every single time. So if we did one project, we earned the next one through that process. If that make sense?
Yes. Yes.
Sunny
Yeah. And then everything I did was I would hire a person when I could, because the only thing in business that matters is your employees getting customers, finding customers actually easy side of things. It’s being able to have the capacity to do it. And the capacity is either in equipment, tools or employees. And so I’ve always been of the mindset to build a team. And as we built a team, our capacity has grown. And surprisingly so did the revenue. And so the people that wanted to have us do stuff kind of grew within that as well.
Sunny
Yeah.
Jeremy
It’s funny. It seems so simple. Do the right thing and then expect good results. But it’s really true. You could again, talking about any sector of life, do the right thing for other people, for your boss, for your company, and good things will come back to you. I mean, it seems simple, but so many contractors, like you said, they struggle with I think the pride aspect of the industry where you take a lot of pride in what you do. But then if someone has a problem with it, you immediately get upset instead of like, hey, sell through it.
Jeremy
Let’s just figure it out.
Sunny
Let’s fix it.
Jeremy
You know. But I think that’s the part that I see most contractors fail at is like getting upset real early in the process instead of just selling through it. But, well, sorry, this podcast life, like you mentioned a couple of failures along the way. What did you learn for those first couple of businesses? Is this your third go round or second go around or where are you at in the process?
Sunny
Well, this is the second of, like, an official business, right. So I’ve always loved business. So I’ve always done a couple other things outside of just construction. But my first construction company, I started on 25. My parents ended up getting a divorce at the time. And since my dad ran the field, my mom ran the office and neither of them can do, you know, the other person’s role? They couldn’t really succeed in a business. And it’s definitely difficult. I just kind of took I took what I learned from both of them, and that’s what I went out on my own with.
Sunny
Right. So I went out of my own, started my first company. This is like 2008 2009. And when we didn’t get paid for a couple of projects that we had now under construction, it was brutal. And I didn’t anticipate it, didn’t know it was coming down the pike. But you know what I learned through that is that there’s an amazing amount of grit and fortitude that you can overcome a lot of things. And so that was part of it. But the other part was getting things actually in order, like trying to be a real business person before I owned a company.
Sunny
And I was a contractor. But I wasn’t a real business person. So getting a lawyer with your contracts, learning lien laws, understanding mechanic liens . And here in California, luckily, those sort of things do support you as a contractor where I was at previously didn’t as well, you know, CPA knowing your numbers, knowing information, you know, saving money or hiring employees versus going out and buying brand new truck and lifted with 35’s. If you’re a new contractor, right, you’re honestly making you’re making money pretty quickly when you go from being electrician to owning your electrical business.
Sunny
But if you save up, you have your six months in savings, whatever your risk parameters are. That’s what you have to decide. But those are all the things that I learned how to strategically do. So when I started this company, it’s like, okay, I didn’t do that the first time. I’m going to do that. I’m going to do this this next time.
Jeremy
Right. Right. Such a learning experience. We talked about it before that that a lot of contractors don’t have the business sense just because you kind of fall into the business as opposed to other industries, where you really have to have the business sense. But a lot of us just like you fall into, I’m an owner now because I didn’t want to work for somebody else. And then ten years go by, and you’ve made every single mistake in the book. And sometimes it takes a failure in order for you to learn it.
Jeremy
Sometimes it’s a mentor that says, hey, know your numbers or what that thing maybe. But you hear it a lot with contractors that, hey, I’m just now learning to be a businessman. And I’m ten years in that’s pretty common. I.
Sunny
Just got back from Denver, where that was a Rivers mile high profit summit. Was that. And the whole point of that was for contractors go. And these are contractors that are still trying to make just 100 grand a year by themselves. And so there are places out there you’re putting together a program to attract people to start working on their businesses, your third generation. So you’ve seen what it’s like working in the business and then struggling on the business. And now you’re taking all that with what you’ve learned from previous putting that together.
Sunny
So I think guys like you and me have a little bit of a leg up because we have a little bit of history that we watched, but it’s definitely challenging because there’s two different things you have to do work on the business and then operate the business, actually, go do the construction work while you’re still trying to figure out how to make it all work on the back end.
Yeah.
Jeremy
I was telling Valerie that I’m Super jealous of you because you have a lot more systems in place in your business where you’ve delegated. Well, and I have not. I’m terrible at it. So I still have my hands in too many aspects. So it’s difficult for me because it’s hard for me to go to the conferences when I’m away on vacation. I’m still kind of plugged in. And so I’m getting there. But that’s some of the advice I need from others is like, how have you gone about creating those systems to replace you?
Jeremy
Like, I need to replace myself. And I’m not close. And it’s kind of a scary feeling because I got a ways to go to get to kind of where you’re at, where you’re feeling a little bit more comfortable with your team that they can support you.
Sunny
Yeah. I think I ended up getting one call last week when I was out of town, and that was just basically because we’re negotiating contracts on a very large project, you know, but what it took to do that was it took me to sacrifice the first few years to hire the right people, and then you also have to trust in them, right. I had two calls earlier this week with contractors that were calling me and saying, hey, I can’t find anyone. There’s no one to hire. And I asked them a couple of questions, like, you know, if there’s another company in town compared to you, like, let’s call it Best plumbing versus your plumbing company.
Sunny
You know, where would employees want to go to work at? You know, one of the guys actually said that they’d rather go work at Best plumbing. That’s not the mindset to have if you’re trying to track employees, right? Like, you got to be the best place to work for, you know, and the other thing is that there’s there’s 25 other plumbing companies in your area that all have employees. Like, there’s someone you can hire to do the work, right. So you have to have, like, it starts with the mind shift, you know, the mindset like, shifting.
Sunny
That where it’s like, okay, well, I can build a place that people want to come. I am going to be the boss and leader that people want to work with.
Right.
Sunny
But, you know, for me, don’t get me wrong. Through my 1st 10-15 years in business, I tried to do everything. I was trying to be in complete control, but that’s called a bottleneck. That is you getting in your way. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with Jocko, but he’s not a book will need ethics and strategies that I’m reading right now, and he outlines it really well. The whole philosophy that I basically took from that book, the main one is that your team can come to you with a 70% solution, and they’re going to outperform with that solution, then if you gave them an 80% and made them do it because it was their idea and they’re going to do a better job at that.
Sunny
So I really depend on the team to come up with solutions when we need them. I let them figure it out. And I know that there’s going to be times where they fail, you know, but I try to sort of guide them into, okay, just think of this or tweak it just a little bit, but I know that they can have a little bit more success, but you have to be able to give up that control. But to give up the control, you have to have leverage.
Sunny
And leverage means you have to have money in the bank so that you can make a mistake. You have to have plenty of people applying at your business so that you can feel comfortable either letting someone go. That’s not the right fit.
Or.
Sunny
Maybe turning down some work that’s going to be potentially bad work for you that’s going to cause you problems. But you have to have enough work advertised to come in to be able to turn that down. So those are all things that are leverage, and that’s my thing is like I didn’t need to take a lot of money from the company so I could go hire people I could put on the bank. And that kind of gives me leverage versus the first go around. In my twenties, I had to lift a truck.
Sunny
I had the nice house. I had all the toys, but I had to make a certain amount a nut or to cover that. And I di not have the leverage to go do what I needed to do. Does that make sense, right?
Jeremy
Yeah. Totally. Yeah. I never thought of it like that as leverage. But all of those aspects, I mean, we’re learning about turning down work. What that looks like is huge because you get stuck in a project where maybe you’re losing money, or maybe you’re breaking even, but you’re not replacing it with all those valuable jobs that you could be profitable in. And so we’re learning that I think a lot of people because of how busy contractors are, are now have that leverage to say. You know, we’re not a good fit.
Jeremy
That’s what we’re seeing a lot. But I had a question because I think it might have been on your Instagram where you said this. You said the difference between good and great is in the effort of execution. But I wanted to curious what you meant by that, because it’s kind of kind of what we were talking about just now, but it’s pretty profound. Yeah.
Sunny
I don’t know if I necessarily try to be too profound on that. It’s just pointing out that it only takes a takes a little bit of effort to do something to get you into that great or to be that amazing company or to be better. Right. And let’s simplify it. Let’s say that you hire an electrician to come in and put an outlet in your house. They show up on time, they communicate with you, they’re nice. They give you a decent price. They do the work, you pay them, they take off.
Sunny
Well, the next day, you’re doing some stuff, and then you go check on the outlet. And there’s a pile of drywall dust going down the base in the floor and the screw a little bit crooked. And the outlets just a little bit off. You know what I mean? Like, it’s like you 90% there. All it took was 5% extra to be, like, the best literally would have been my favorite electrician. But I won’t call them back again because he just didn’t do the three or four % or 5% extra effort to get to make that look good.
Sunny
And I know it’s a really simple solution, but that’s the same way it is in all of business taking your proposals and making them look good. It’s just a little bit extra work to make sure your logo is clean. Make sure you have enough information on there for a client. Just little things like that can go a long way, having your voicemail set up. Or those are just all the little things that we’ve done as a company that I think make us stand out. Actually, a matter of fact, we just won a $5 million project because I had employees on our qualification call that actually provided input.
Sunny
I let them talk about different things that they’d be doing, and we’re all branded with our Pinhero shirts on. I am wearing my Arete today, but but all of them looked the part, and we were competing with another company who wasn’t. They didn’t look those parts. And those are just little things that I think makes a difference from going from good to great. Does that make sense?
Valerie
Absolutely.
Jeremy
Totally makes sense. And it’s not a lot of time. I mean, think about the electrician example. What are we talking? Five more minutes. But it shows you a lot about that individual that didn’t want to see it through. Yeah, that’s great.
Valerie
Yeah. The details. I think details are so important, and you never know who you’re selling to, either. You want to make sure that you’re touching on every single different type person.
Sunny
In 2012, I went to work with a friend of mine. He wanted to become a general contractor, but he had an electrical and HVAC company, and he was getting to this thing called Solar, and I thought it was super cool. So I was like, listen, let me just take over your solar division. I’ll run it, check it out. But what’s really cool is the details and sort of long. What we’re talking about is his HVAC side business, like a $95 call one day just to come out and look at a mobile home heater.
Sunny
So the service tech went out and there was a problem with it. So Anthony had to go out himself just to look at it, to make sure it was done right. It was like just some weird heater. I don’t know. Maybe the part was hard to figure out, but it was a mobile home in a 55 and older community. Anthony goes out, he repairs it. It was 85, $95 and then it was a little old lady who was there. And about a week later, he gets this call.
Sunny
This lady calls him up and says, hey, I’m the GM of Lexus. Yeah. You worked on my parents mobile home to help their heater. And they said, you did an awesome job. Can you come to the dealership and do some work for me? So that $95 call turned into a million dollar solar project that we did in Riverside? I don’t know. It’s about six years ago now, but my point was, is that little call, you don’t know who you’re selling to, right? Little call can turn into a big project.
Sunny
And that’s just something that we talked about a lot. Is that a service call turned into a really big solar project, and it could have easily went the other way. I figure this out. We’re going to leave it. Yeah.
Valerie
It’s not worth our time or yeah, you never know who you’re selling to. I know there’s a thing about how every day is an interview or something to that effect, you walk through your days as if it’s an interview. And it’s true if you’re putting your best foot forward and showing, showing everybody what you’re capable of and never know what it’s going to turn into.
Jeremy
Everything that we talked about is like the little things. Every single time we’re talking about little things.
Sunny
We were thinking that’s what most people aren’t doing. They’re not doing the little things. So if you start doing the little things right, booty’s walking into a house, not wearing sunglasses. When you’re talking to the customer, you just those are all things that someone else is not going to do because they’re lazy or not disciplined. And and that’s that’s the 5% difference, I think.
Valerie
And it’s also to what you were talking about with your company, how you were on the call and you had everybody there and they were offering their input. It shows the advantage of having a team and working as a team. Because when Jeremy and I have people come into our house to do repairs or whatever it may be, I’m always looking at some of course, I look at things very differently than Jeremy does. And so I think to being able to offer your customers the ability to have multiple eyes and different perspectives.
Valerie
Looking at a project is so important that old school was very individualized. I feel like a lot of our parents companies, and that’s why they lasted for as long as our parents did. And then it ended when they retired. But the beauty of I think what you guys are building and what I hope this generation creates is that the legacy comes from laying the foundation. And then from there, you have these brilliant minds that can add to it because we’re all giving different gifts. I’m detailed you’re not that’s true.
Valerie
So one of the things that I think is really cool about your company is one of the I was going through all the pictures, and I saw the Rodeo 39 food hall and just this incredible, beautiful building. You have so many, many different styles out there. Where does that come from? Do you have, like, a a team that is just a fun team. Tell me more about that. Well, kind of work excite you.
Sunny
Yeah. So I put out there on my Instagram a while ago that says that I want to do cool projects with awesome people. And what’s interesting about putting things out in the world is that they actually come back and you get kind of what you focus on. So we’ve been lucky enough to work on some cool projects like Rodeo 39. Unfortunately, I can’t say that the design or the artistic side is from us. We certainly can build it. But that’s the architects and designers that we develop relationships with.
Sunny
So sometimes sometimes they contract through us sometimes that we’re working with them. Rodeo 39 was with a partner, an architect partner at Collaborative out of Orange County. And they’ve been doing projects for a long time, and we just developed nice relationships. So we just take those visions and we build it and then the commercial industry, there’s not as much opportunity for us to do design like you can in residential. So I appreciate the sentiment. It does look awesome. We’re proud of it. But we definitely were not the ones who came up with the design, you know, for that.
Sunny
And then when it comes to the team, I think the team really matches the leaders. And so however you are and how you show up every day is kind of how your team is going to be. So surprisingly, most of the people here probably, you know, more on the level headed professional side, you know, just not necessarily easy going. But there’s definitely a theme and a culture that we’ve built here through our core values.
Jeremy
So you’re not going to start screaming right now is someone comes in the door.
Sunny
And that’s what contractors are doing if they’re the ones who are always, like, yelling at their employees and their employees are going to yell at someone else or it’s going to happen the job site when they’re not around. And it’s just like and that’s the same thing with our family or kids or whatever. You have to do that. And trust me, I’ve had to work on it a little bit as I developed my leadership.
Jeremy
So yeah, me as well as well. Speaking of leadership, my next question was about you’ve been a part of a lot of leadership groups. I mean, you’re wearing an Arete shirt right there. Networking groups. You know, leadership groups, teams where does that come from? And I guess what you may be seeing you as construction zone is something to look at as well. Is that where did that come from? And why do you think it’s important for you?
Sunny
You can’t go to school for this stuff. You don’t learn this unless maybe your parents were business owner. But even my parents are the business owner growing up in the 80’s they were just business owners. They didn’t think of it as like entrepreneurship, like they can change the world. It’s a lot more important to be a business owner. Then maybe it has been in the past, I believe. Or at least we’re looking at in a way that we can be more important right by doing these things because it impacts a lot of people.
Sunny
I mean, you can have you can have employees own houses and build their dream within your dream. And so one of my visions is to create a place where my visions is big enough to where other people’s visions fit into. And that’s the only way to keep people long term in your company, who believe in where we’re going and what we’re working towards. Right. But to be able to do that, you have to be good at leadership. And I haven’t been good at leadership for most of my life.
Sunny
I don’t know where to get that. I don’t know where to find that necessarily. I mean, you can read books, right? But being an entrepreneur or a contractor, it’s kind of lonely at the top, like you got some contractor buddies you hang out with. But do you really want to talk business while you’re out 4x’ing or going out on your boat or or something? You know, it’s a structured place where I can go and find peers, because when I failed my first business, it sucked.
Sunny
It sucked. Like it took a lot out of me for a couple of years, and I didn’t want that to happen. So I want to learn what other people do and how they navigate these things. And the only place to find that is getting yourself in front of someone, right. And so you do that through US Construction Zone, or, you know, just other groups, like the meeting I just went to over last week in Denver. You know, it’s a structured way to get peers and mentorship.
Sunny
Yeah.
Jeremy
Totally agree. You’re speaking my language, man.
Valerie
When you having now created a successful business, what do you think of when you think of what legacy that you’ll be leaving with it?
Jeremy
Sunny
I Don’T know. I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ve created enough to make a legacy yet. And so that’s why I keep working, right? And that’s why I’m going to keep building it. So one of my goals is to get to $100 million in revenue, and that should be fairly. We should be able to do it on the commercial side pretty easily, much easier than maybe, like a residential contractor could just because of the size of projects we work on. But I’ve been talking with a CEO of a company of Chicago that actually was bought out by an employee owned company.
Sunny
And so part of what I’m trying to make my legacy is converting Pinhero construction to an employee on company at a certain point in time, when we get to the size we can. And I think that’s kind of where where I can build a legacy is where I actually have, like other people on my team who benefit from stock options or retirement or can go buy houses or their kids like we can create generational changes through that process. And that’s a lot to think on. Or it’s a lot to take on, you know, from that standpoint.
Sunny
But that’s essentially what I’m trying to do is my ultimate goal, you know, do my girls, will they ever take over a company? Probably not. No, they’re going to do their own things, but I definitely want to set them up to give them the best option they can get in life. So we’ve invested in charter schools and things like that. But from a legacy standpoint, hopefully Pinhero rolls on as an employee on company and due to that or becomes part of a bigger conglomerate where as many people as it can impact can.
Valerie
I love what you’re saying about that, because I think it’s true. A lot of people when they’re building a business, they’re not necessarily thinking, you know, really long term. What is this going to eventually become? But I just wanted to remind you both, you are talking earlier about your daughters and how ours is very artistic as well, and it doesn’t always mean that we want to take their passions away. Well, that passion and kind of turn it into something where there’s a monetary gain, right? We want to do that as parents because we want to make sure that they’re successful in their future.
Valerie
But it just reminds me of what you both were saying earlier on in that you watched your dad’s. You know, you’ve talked about that several times and you said that today you were on the throwing drywall off of the roof and that type of thing. The experiences that we have with people like you as fathers is more lasting and impressionable, I think, than we necessarily give ourselves yourself credit for in that your legacy is being built as you move through your business because the next generation is watching.
Valerie
And whether that’s our children or whether it’s your younger employees, I think you’re building something really incredible even as we speak.
Jeremy
I’m not crying.
Valerie
I just, you know, I’m just really impressed with your perspective. I think it’s been fantastic to hear about Sunny.
Sunny
Well, I think if we go into business just to try to make money, you’re going to just be chasing that and that’s something you’ll never get. But if you start making change and impact and serving, then you will definitely succeed and you’ll succeed much greater than you ever thought you could. That’s basically the whole different thought process from where I was 28 versus 42 and the different companies, right? Not that is not challenging or hard or sometimes I want to throw up the flag, but certainly gives me more purpose to wake up in the day and know that I have 26 people and their families depend on me, not only my own.
Sunny
So try to design that and think about how to make it sustainable and scalable is definitely challenging, but it’s doable.
Valerie
Yes, I agree.
Jeremy
It gets me out of the bed every morning.
Valerie
Alright. We want to jump into.
Jeremy
Yeah. Thanks a lot for being here. So we want to kind of end it with our last three questions. We call our zone out questions. So the first question is, as a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Valerie
Sunny
I Don’T know. I mean, it could have been like a firefighter or President or something like that. I remember doing that drawing and I really like designing cars as a kid. And I actually took AutoCAD in high school. And there’s two things I designed. I designed wheels in Auto CAD 3D, which was pretty cool. And then I designed a 10,000 square foot house. So it was either I was going to go in automotive or construction, right. You know, I think when I got serious about it, I really wanted to be an architect, but I did really terrible in math in College, and that’s when I gave up and became a contractor.
Sunny
So I.
Valerie
Pretend you have your own late night talk show. Who would you want to be your first guest alive or passed on?
Sunny
Oh, just a talk show, like for construction or just like in general.
Jeremy
Picture you are Conan.
Sunny
Yes. What’s that?
Jeremy
Picture your Conan O’Brien. And you’re bringing somebody on his guest.
Sunny
Someone like Carnegie or Ford. You know, people who are like developing businesses at that point time. I mean, over the course of history, there’s always been there’s always been merchants, right. That’s always been trade. There’s always been something, some level of capitalism in some sort of sense. Right. Like trading you goats for corn or whatever. Right. But once it kind of became production based and these people came out of nowhere with nothing and developed these things in a new industry. And that would be really cool to talk about.
Sunny
So I don’t know if that’s a boring answer. An exciting one, but someone like that would be really cool, you know, right.
Jeremy
On the last one is who is the most influential person in your life?
Sunny
Well, I mean, at the end of the day, you know, it’s probably a split between my dad and mom, to be honest with you, because my dad had the work ethic and taught me everything about construction. And when I started, that’s what I did. And my mom taught me how to do some business stuff, you know, with the books and the accounting side of things, we haven’t necessarily have the greatest relationship. But I don’t know if anyone else had any bigger of an impact on what I did outside of just being part of what they did.
Sunny
Like, my mom was running permits for one of the pool companies down here when she was in her thirties. And I remember as a kid running around the building department. So if I can’t say that it affect me running around the building departments. Now, I don’t know what would, you know? But if there’s anything that helped with mindset to kind of take it from their level and move it on, it would be reading the book. Rich dad, poor dad.
Jeremy
So we know it.
Sunny
Well, I had a client give that to me when I was, like, 24 25, and that whole thought process just completely changed in my mind is like, okay, what can I accomplish by doing this? And although that book in general, sort of, you know, elementary a little bit, it’s kind of like an entry level book for, like, entrepreneurs or investing and things like that just the thought process of, you know, thinking about getting a job or owning a business and what you can accomplish with both, you know?
Jeremy
Yeah, it’s so true. I mean, we read that book, too when we were younger, and it made me think, like, I don’t think I could ever go back and work for somebody because once you get started, you’re like, you know, even if I blow this thing up, I’m going to go start something else. Like, it’s just a mentality that you’re like, I’ll just keep going, you know, it’s like a grind mentality.
Sunny
Mentality – sickness.I don’t know what it is, but yes, exactly.
Jeremy
Well, Sunny, I appreciate your time. This has been great. We got a lot of insight from you. Any last words or insights for us? No.
Sunny
I mean, I’m looking forward to seeing what you guys do with US construction Zone love being part of it. Anything I can do to help out with. If there’s anything I can do to help mentor with people looking at process and procedures and trying to build their company, I’m going to go meet with Ben Newman. He’s a high performance coach for Alabama, a couple really big companies. And he talks about this thing called The Burn. And I really am kind of excited about that in my future.
Sunny
What I’m looking at is is finding what drives me every single day to really get out of bed, really just put in as much effort as I can. So hopefully I can share some of that information once I’m done with that. But awesome.
Jeremy
Thank you. We appreciate it. Well, we’ll definitely see you in US Construction Zone, and I can’t thank you enough for being willing to mentor, because that’s the kind of people I’ve been trying to get is just those people who are willing to reach your hand out and say, hey, how can I help? And just like, we’ve been talking about this whole podcast. You get what you give in life. And I just would love to have this business surrounded with people like you and us just saying, hey, how can we get to the next level?
Jeremy
How can I help you with? I have this skill. I know that I don’t have the rest of them. So let me try to grab those Dang it. Why don’t we just do that?
Sunny
There’s a lot of power in, you know, collective wisdom and that collective wisdom. Really. If you can share that, I think there’s a lot of value there for everyone and everyone at different stages can provide value just because you didn’t accomplish one thing. You have a certain expertise because the experience you went through. So I think it’s huge. But thank you, guys. I appreciate it. It’s been awesome looking forward to talking to you again.
Jeremy
Thank you. Alright. Thanks a lot. Bye bye.
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