Ep. 132: Setting Your Construction Business Apart from the Rest with Jimmy Starbuck

CONEXPO – CON/AGG Podcast: Construction Business Insights For Contractors

Setting Your Construction Business Apart from the Rest with Jimmy Starbuck

Taylor’s guest today is Jimmy Starbuck, owner of Starbuck Excavation and a familiar face on social media. Jimmy dives right into his work with mass grading and trucking, talking through the services his company offers and the details of running his business. He then shares how he got where he is today, from learning to drive machines in the family company, to going into business for himself at nineteen, to carving out his place as a leader and organizer. He and Taylor also discuss why smart guys don’t always come out on top, the importance of being a hard worker, and why neither of them is an “office guy.”

Next, Jimmy discusses the chaos that comes with his job, from waiting for 50,000 meters of mud to dry out, to pre-Christmas emergency calls, and the Boxing Day job he’s got lined up this year. Taylor then asks Jimmy about his experiences at CONEXPO, and Jimmy highlights its importance for keeping up to date with new products and building relationships with brands and colleagues. He then switches gears to discuss the current challenges in doing business and reminds us that people have gone through such crises before and survived and that by doing a good job, spending money wisely, and employing good people, your business can be fairly recession-proof. And finally, he and Taylor discuss the impact of fuel shortages, and Jimmy gives his opinion on why DEF isn’t fit for purpose.

The Finer Details of This Episode:

• Mass grading and trucking
• Working harder, not smarter
• Why Jimmy’s not an office guy
• Relationship-building at CONEXPO
• Fuel shortages and why DEF isn’t fit for purpose

Quotes:

“It’s the same worldwide, there’s no availability of parts, there’s no availability of drivers, fuel’s expensive, AdBlue’s ridiculous, and then you just run through all of these issues. But it’s the same everywhere—you pay the boys well, you pay on time, you give consistent and constant work… slowly, but surely, they come.”

“At the end of the day, if you’re not working hard, and you’re still lying in bed and watching cartoons on a Saturday morning, the person who might not be as intelligent or might not understand as much or might not have the training or the whatever you might say, they’re gonna overtake you and leave you for dead.”

“Inflation, recession, price-changing, material shortages, you name it, people have dealt with it in one way or another for the entire time that businesses have been around. There was a banker with his head in his hands a thousand years ago, saying the Crusades are screwing up my accounting, you know?”

“I do not want AdBlue. “Don’t isolate it when it’s purging. Make sure the tank’s full. Don’t use the old drum, only buy new drums. Make sure you clean the dirt out. And again, make sure the wind’s blowing from the west, and there’s a rainbow, and then a unicorn runs past, and then you can shill it.” It’s too much of a sensitive product to be used in the environment that we have. It’s not fit for purpose.”

Links:

Taylor White on LinkedIn

To learn more about the 2023 CONEXPO-CON/AGG Show and to register, go to: https://www.conexpoconagg.com/show-experience

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