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How did you get started in the log home business?
We actually bought and built a log home for ourselves years ago. We really enjoyed the experience which prompted us to start the business. We began construction and building for a log home company for some years before starting Colonial Concepts Log Homes. After several years we gravitated to manufacturing the buildings ourselves. The idea was to improve on the quality of the buildings and set forth our own ideas to facilitate that idea.
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What year did you start manufacturing?
We started manufacturing about 17 years ago.
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Tell us a little about your role? How has your role evolved from when you first started to what your role and responsibilities are now?
Basically my responsibility at the time as the CEO was virtually to design and build the machinery to do the operations required to create the log buildings. Then we planned to market that product. I was originally a jack of all trades. It was an overseeing position more than anything. Wherever something was a little weak, I would step in and try to improve that situation.
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Give us a little bit of background on your wife Ute's responsibilities? How have you found working with Ute over the years? Some people say they could never work with their spouses and others, like yourself have been successful at it. Are you able to separate work and personal life?
My wife, Ute is the anchor. She works strongly on the marketing and financial aspects of everyday operations.
When it comes to separating personal life from work life, I am able to separate the two. I come from a military background, so I understand order and progression. My wife takes care of bits and pieces of everybody else's operations. We are working on getting better at that separation but it's a work in progress. I understand that we need separation but we need to be responsible for certain aspects of the business and Ute understands that too. So, we have half of it worked out.
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What do you love about what you do? What inspires you, and when do you get most excited?
I think what inspires me most is to see people recognize what we have created. Our idea was to build the most energy efficient log home in the marketplace today. When I see people who understand what we have done and I can see the appreciation on their face, it's a great feeling. That is what seems to drive me. I like to initially see the bell go off in their head, especially engineers, or people who have that mechanical background. When they look at our designs and understand what we did and why we did it, it is very inspiring.
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How has being an entrepreneur affected your family life?
There is obviously a lot of sacrifice when you start any sort of business. The end result of that is that you end up missing out on some of your personal life, not to mention holiday time. There are certain regrets on the family side but we all agree that it was something that needed to happen in order to move forward with the business. Our sons understood that and now Shawn, our older son, is a major factor in the business and our younger son, Michael, contracts to produce our website, photography (www.michaelmoore.ca) and promotional and media material.
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Now that you know everything you do, what would you have done differently?
Well after reading the book Tim gave me (The Ultimate Gift), I probably would have given my son Shawn, who works in the business, a little more leeway to make his own mistakes and to grow from them. Sometimes it's hard to let go of the reigns but it is worth it in the end.
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What are your hobbies? What do you do in your non-work time?
I like to golf as Tim knows. I like working out in the gym facilities as well. I also enjoy good wine and good food.
Our home in Florida was something we purchased to plan for the future. We wanted to have a southern home to be able to do the things we wanted to do year round. We had the opportunity to secure a building, obviously with the market the way it is. We have done some upgrades to it including a pool. I see that as a very valuable piece of property even though the U.S. economy is suffering to a certain extent. To give you an example, the community that we have our home in is thriving. The amount of people that are building in the neighborhood now is quite inspiring to see. Once the economy builds back up, it will be a very valuable piece of property.
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What has been the best career decision you have made?
We wanted to create the most advanced log home on the market today. The best career decision was to start from scratch and make something that was going to be eco-friendly and energy efficient. Our trademark design is definitely something that we are most proud of.
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How do you handle tough business decisions? How have you dealt with them?
Over the years we have learned to make decisions as a team. Before, I was trying to make all the decisions on my own. Most times you either sink or swim. Now I’m starting to realize it's a whole lot easier to sit and discuss and give people the ability to take some risks within the company. We make team decisions now which I believe is the best way to do it.
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How many employees do you have there?
We have about 12 employees.
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What is your greatest fear when it comes to your business?
My biggest fear is when you get to a certain point of success and you're trying to grow the company even more, all of a sudden everything could become unwound. This has always been a worry that goes on in back of my mind. It is a fear that I have. We have built this business up to a certain point and it took a long time to get there and to become successful and if that ever started to unravel, it would be detrimental. The way the economy is right now, it's been a great test to that fear but we seem to be doing all the right things since we're still going strong.
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Do you think based on the longevity of the business that your fear would ever come to fruition?
That's a good question. You always have a tendency to worry about the unknown, at least I always do. That is one of my biggest downfalls. We started in a recessionary time. Everyone all around us told us we were crazy and that we didn't know what we were getting into. I guess at some point in time, you realize nobody really has it all figured out, so you just move forward one step at a time. Once you get to a certain position, you can start to release the reigns a little bit - giving more run to the people around you. I pulled back a little bit at first, but it's something that I have learnt to do. Sometimes we wonder, is our business going to sustain? Is it going to grow? It's always been an issue that has concerned us but we have been doing well so far. That's all we can hope for.
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Are you an/or Ute a worrier?
For the most part we are not worriers. If we see something that concerns us, then I would become worried but we try to stay on top of things before they get out of control.
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How are you at delegating work?
I would say it's still a work in progress. I still have a hard time delegating. I know I have to do it, so I do but at the same time I’m trying not to bother people too much. I try to stay on top of things as best I can. What I've been doing this year primarily with the sales team is riding shot gun (so to speak), to make sure everything is getting done to the best of their abilities. It's been a team effort to try to facilitate business as best we can.
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How do you go about marketing your business? What has been your most successful form of marketing?
Our trade shows combined with our website have proven to be the strongest marketing tactics we use. We have two tradeshows coming up: The Home & Design Show & Fall Cottage Life Show.
We have been offering informational seminars for about 5 or 6 years. The main reason we chose to host these seminars is to provide information about building log homes. There is a critical uneasiness for people when they come to an area where they are unfamiliar with the people & businesses. They don't know where to start and who to get to build a new home. They don't know what they are really looking to buy and how they're going to get the project up and running and get it to their ideal end result. So what we do is educate them on what the process is from start to finish, from choosing a log home design, obtaining permits and all the way through to completion. We take a lot of the fear factor out of it and that way they are educated on their decisions and not as intimated.
Secondly our model office off of Hwy 400 in Innisfil, was a key factor during a depressed economy. We advertise using the media from trades shows and television shows, to radio and newspaper articles.
Something that is significant in mentioning is our database. For many years we have built up a strong database. People that we’ve talked to 5 - 6 years ago coming back to the table now finally getting ready to build. They obviously thought very highly of us to come back and talk about doing some business.
A lot of referrals come from our clients. We find many people calling in saying that their friends had a log home built by us, and they were very happy so we receive a lot of business that way as well.
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Once someone has come to the decision to build a log home, do you find that they are going to you and your competitors and comparing? Do you win most of them over?
Yes, we do find that we win most of the clientele over. It's basically an education process. That's what we practice in our seminars. It's not sales based at all. We try to educate the client as to what we are doing and why we are doing it without criticizing the competition. We show the differential and basically let them make their own decision. We do our best to make them feel comfortable.
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How do you find people to bring into your organization that truly care about the business the way you do? How important are hard working employees to your success?
It's always an ongoing process. Most of our employees on the sales side have purchased one of our homes to begin with so they have lived the experience. Between that and having some building expertise, those are the two most important qualities that we try to strive for with our staff.
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Where do you see yourself and your business in the next 5, 10 or 20 years?
Hopefully 20 or even 10 years from now I'll be on the golf course! As well, I always see the company growing. It's grown from day one and I would only like to see us grow more. We've got a good reputation in the industry, so I think that if we keep plugging away and making the product more efficient and treat our customers with respect, we will always do well.
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What do you do to contribute to a "greener" environment?
We are in the process now of building a new model building for ourselves that is going to be state of the art. It's not so much solar, because solar is not perfected yet but certainly geo thermal and it will have in-floor heating throughout and smart systems with respect to security and controlling of certain mechanical aspects of the home. We are doing that as a model to show people where the future is going to be, so they can actually see it and feel it themselves. What we will be doing is running our seminars from the office and then we will shuttle them up to the building which is only ten minutes away so they can actually experience it personally.
We expect it to be ready at the end of December at the latest. It's starting to come together. We are working on the wall systems, which is going well. We are obtaining a vertical and horizontal thermal brick and the building should heat itself. It's going to be a very efficient home.
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What would you say are the most important skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur?
I think it comes down to being able to earn respect. You can't do it all yourself. You have to find ways and means of inspiring people to do it on their own within your nucleus. It's something I've seen over the years, people trying to demand respect and it never seems to work. If you really go out and work hard to earn respect, it ends up being the most successful part of being an entrepreneur.
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What makes you happy?
I'm very hard on myself that way. It takes a lot to make me happy unfortunately but I just thrive on success and I’m starting to feel really comfortable where I'm happy to worry about anything. I look back and say it's great I’ve done it now but I wish I had spent more personal time along with the ride. Tim does that very well. It's something we've talked about doing, but it never seems to happen, but it's getting better. Last year we took a little more time off. I seem to draw back to what I know and get back in that rut and start working hard again. To some degree I think that's necessary. Again, the more you take that personal time, the more refreshed you are and probably do a better job working less anyways.
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How do you define success?
It's a personal self worth to me. Money was a necessity at one time. That's why I let my wife talk me into selling my Viper! There were always certain things that I would like to have, but I'm smart enough with my money now to know that I don't really have to have all the material things on my wish list. Success is knowing you've done your best, worked through all the hiccups along the way and achieved satisfaction in both your work and family.
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Can you characterize your life as an entrepreneur in one word?
I've always had a desire to do my own thing. I've done that for the better part of my life. In one word: freedom.
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How does your business "give back" to the community or to the society?
We're very dedicated to a green environment and as such contribute to the Nature Conservancy of Canada to protect our forests and natural lands. We contribute to many community charitable organizations as well as national ones. We donate our log ends for community firewood, support our local hospital, Ross Memorial, and are part of many local organizations including our Chamber of Commerce.
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Why have you chosen to work with The Haunn Group?
The most important part is, Tim like myself, is very tenacious and keeps working with us. The Haunn Group provides excellent services and original, thought-producing ideas. The Haunn Group gives us the ability to feel comfortable with an organization that has our best interests at heart. Good work Tim.
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