Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/217452
contractor of the year finalist | by Tom Jackson | TJackson@randallreilly.com Knocked down – but not out – by the recession, this contractor came up with a plan to win M ike Thibault has a favorite quote: "The harder I work, the luckier I get," he says with a big Colorado grin. But when the recession hit it brought problems that neither luck nor hard work seemed capable of solving. "It was terrible," he says. For two decades Thibault (pronounced Tee-bow) had flourished as the head of his growing company, T-Bone Construction. But the recession hit with a double whammy. Jobs disappeared, and the banks quit lending money. He owed money and people owed him money, but nobody could get money. Credit had frozen across the board. Thibault laid off dozens of employees. By July 2009 he was down to 13 people, and for a while he thought he'd have to close up shop. But he had started his business on a shoestring right out of high school and wasn't about to give up his company without a fight. Expand your range There wasn't anything Thibault could do about the economy or the banks, but he reasoned the one thing he could control, or at least change, is the way he marketed his company. In the past, T-Bone Construction had all the work it could handle in the Colorado Springs area. Thibault decided the only way to survive was to look for work out of state, so he got in his truck and started visiting potential customers, eventually securing jobs as far away as California and Missouri. And with limited time and resources, Thibault concentrated his efforts on clients that had the potential for repeat business – retail franchises, in particular. Many auto and truck dealers, gas stations and convenience stores contract their building programs from one regional office. An hour spent with one of these building program managers can, if they like your work, lead to multiple jobs, Thibault says. One such client, Bob Ferguson, general manager for Transwest Trucks, a Freightliner dealership, tells what it's like to have Thibault as a preferred contractor: Michael Thibault Colorado Springs, Colorado T-Bone Construction Year started: 1987 Number of employees: 64 Annual revenues: $8 to $10 million Markets served: Commercial and industrial buildings, parking lot expansions, truck maintenance facilities EquipmentWorld.com | December 2013 47