Building
Business
by Bridget
McCrea
Breaking down stereotypes of the construction world, Rebecca
Smith was determined to succeed despite naysayers.
|
|
| When
Rebecca Smith, president of A.D. Morgan Corp. in Tampa,
chose woodshop over home economics in school, little
did she know that she¹d one day be leading a $50-million
construction company. photo by:Tom Berndt |
When
29-year-old Rebecca Smith started A.D. Morgan Corporation
from her home in 1989 she had a single goal in mind: get
contracts to build buildings. Armed with five years of experience
working for international construction firm Brown & Root
Companies and a youthful naiveté about business ownership
and entrepreneurship, Smith was determined to succeed on
her own despite the naysayers who told her that a "girl
couldn't run a construction company." But Smith, who
had earned her way into a management role for complex projects
with costs exceeding $30 million for a multimillion-dollar
conglomerate, was undaunted and remembers going after every
conceivable construction contract during the early years.
And she did it on her own, handling both the marketing and
the construction phases and wore hats that included the
titles of president, estimator, project manager, superintendent,
secretary and accountant. Like many other first-time business
owners who came before and after her, Smith attributes much
of that early success to a blissful ignorance about the
hazards of entrepreneurship. "When you're young, you're
naive," says Smith, now president of the Tampa-based
construction management and contracting firm. "I wasn't
willing to make real or give shape and form to the monsters
that lay in waiting – that really helped me."
Branching
Out
By 1990, an overworked Smith realized that the monster she'd
created in her home could no longer subsist as an "army
of one," so she began recruiting retired executives from
her old employer to join her. She picked only those who
shared her philosophy and goals, could make decisions and
wanted to be part of a growing firm. Some made financial
sacrifices to come onboard, says Smith, mainly because the
opportunity was attractive and the company's potential was
obvious. Populating the early A.D. Morgan team with experienced
professionals caught clients by surprise in a good way,
Smith recalls. "It was like going to a flea market and discovering
that J. Paul Getty's estate was there," she says. "The quality
of our employees was unreal. We had no bonding, little financing
and nothing on paper to justify our incredible success,
so we relied on our high energy and experience."
Smith's
first big break came in 1991, the year USAA Insurance took
a chance on her budding construction management firm to
handle several small construction projects. "That was our
first, exponentially fabulous project," says Morgan. "And
our first big commercial client."
Today,
A.D. Morgan, named after Smith's two Golden Retrievers,
Addie and Morgan (she gets regular phone calls asking for
Mr. MorganŠ), boasts a wide range of project expertise ranging
from health care facilities, educational facilities, corrections
facilities, offices, retail, food service, television and
radio stations and research and university projects statewide.
The company also has a division that serves the construction
needs of the wireless communication systems nationwide
With
offices in Tampa and Melbourne, A.D. Morgan has completed
projects for university campuses (including USF and UCF),
county school boards, the Department of Corrections and
the Department of Juvenile Justice. The company's average
project size is $8 million with the highest reaching $24
million. Thanks to those projects, A.D. Morgan has grown
at about 100 percent annually since inception and today
has 46 employees and revenue expectations of about $50 million
for 2002. Last year's revenues were $50 million and 2000
they were $29.5 million – a big jump from the roughly
$500,000 that the company posted in 1989. She expects to
reach the $75 million mark by 2006, and the $100 million
milestone by 2111. "Ten percent annual growth will
get us there," says Smith. "That's comfortable
growth."
Starting
Early
Smith was introduced to the building and construction industry
at a young age while helping her father on home projects
and watching him prepare engineering drawings in the evenings.
Her fascination for the technical world of architecture
and construction surfaced in ninth grade the year she
opted to take woodshop instead of home economics as her
elective class. A portion of the class was devoted to architecture,
and one of Smith's assignments was to design, draft and
construct a model home. There was a school competition between
the five shop classes, and the top three designs were selected
for a final competition against two other high schools.
The only girl in the competition, Smith not only won the
contest at her own school, but also took home the grand
prize among the three schools.
"I've
been training for this position all of my life," says Smith
of her current position as head of a $50-million construction
firm. "Everything I've done has been in preparation for
this."
And
she has the credentials and accolades to back it up. A class
"A" certified general contractor, Smith has a bachelor of
design architecture degree and a master's in building construction
from the University of Florida. Awards and trophies line
the wall of her office and include Florida Entrepreneur
of the Year, Working Woman magazine's Top 500 and Tampa
Bay Business Journal's 40 Under 40 Award.
Smith
attributes much of that recognition and her company's consistent
growth to its ability to finish projects on time and within
budget. "It's nothing more than old-fashioned service delivered
by a talented, energetic team that's supported by the latest
technology," says Smith.
A.D.
Morgan's corporate culture, which oozes with teamwork, creativity
and success, is another critical component in the company's
success. "The team we've created here and our culture are
both very renegade," says Smith. "When I'm asked about how
we blazed through our early years, I tell people that I
simply found people who are of like energy, then I let them
be themselves by setting clear boundaries that don't force
anyone to conform with some politically corporate protocol."
For
example, Smith says all employees are trained to be able
to perform the tasks of the positions both above and below
their own positions on an organization chart. A superintendent,
for instance, can do the work of both a project manager
and carpenter.
"This
achieves tremendous flexibility in both project delivery
and company growth," says Smith.
Clearing
Hurdles
Breaking through the perception that construction and contracting
are a man's job was no easy task for Smith, despite her
strong team, aggressive approach to business and years of
experience and knowledge of the trade. People still viewed
her as a 29-year-old woman who didn't belong at the helm
of a general contracting firm. Early on, in fact, she says
most potential clients looked at her as though she had two
heads, wondering what a woman was doing in the tough world
of commercial construction.
"Often,
one-hour lunch meetings were spent answering curious questions
with the footnote comprising the Œreal' business issues
at hand," says Smith. "I quickly understood that not answering
the curious questions would prevent the comfort level required
for potential clients to become actual clients." Smith,
who started her firm with a $10,000 loan from her father
(which she paid back with interest within two years), also
faced challenges when it came to obtaining financing and
bonding. To overcome the obstacles, Smith says she again
relied on that youthful naiveté to steer her through, obtain
small lines of credit and plough as much profit as she could
back into the company, which today is debt-free.
Bill
Flaig, formerly a Brown & Root executive and currently a
construction management consultant in Clearwater, says Smith's
ability to completely ignore non-acceptance and focus instead
on pushing to make her expertise be recognized over her
gender is one of her greatest strengths. "She's businesslike
and articulate her information will not be deterred,"
says Flaig. "Her demand of excellence has caused her to
surround herself with people of a like philosophy."
Despite
her ability to block out the white noise, Smith does recognize
the fact that her company's woman-owned status is both a
blessing and a curse. All things being equal, she says,
some potential clients will consider a minority-owned business
first in the bidding process. "In as many cases as it helps,
it also hurts," says Smith, who singles out one local municipal
user of construction as a potential customer who has refused
to recognize her company's abilities, mainly because it's
woman owned. "People think that because you're a woman you
just show up and they start putting money in your pockets,
but that's not the case."
Relying
on her "let it roll off my back" philosophy, Smith continues
to take such obstacles in stride and says she'd rather rely
on A.D. Morgan's track record than its status as a woman-owned
entity anyway. "We feel that we compete at all levels, with
or without that credential," she says.
On the
lighter side, Smith always gets a good chuckle when she
gets to tell new acquaintances that she runs a construction
firm. "The best part is watching their jaws drop –
it's very entertaining," says Smith. "But I walk
away knowing that it was just one more person who was expecting
me to be a lawyer or doctor, and who assumed construction
firms were only run by big guys with lumps of tobacco in
their lips."
