Ted Herz

Owner, Bayberry Building

Now when you hire someone, what do you look for?

In this industry, it’s really reliability and then skills. We work in some pretty high end homes so we want my employees to be fairly well polished as far as their interaction w/ customers because they are going to have that on a daily basis. We also need people to be multi-skilled. I’m a small company so I can’t have people too highly specialized in one aspect of carpenter or another so I look for people who can frame as well as do trim carpentry and other various skills so they really need to be able to handle multiple type tasks.

Talk to me about your career path…?

Well I started off in sales in the chemical industry and went through various jobs in the chemical industry. And slowly got into more business director, marketing directory type roles within those larger chemical companies. And I also dealt with a lot of smaller businesses that were customers of our chemical company that I worked for and got to know how their business were ran.

Now what is it like to work for a big corporation versus running your own company?

Well, working for a big corporation there are various departments and different people who have different pieces of the pie whether it’s HR for hiring, accounting, legal, etc. Whereas a small business, at least in the beginning, you’re doing all these functions which actually helps streamline things a little bit. At least initially it’s a really flexible work environment because you have to balance all those things yourself.

Were you worried as far as whatever you do goes to your bottom line…

Well, I have this conversation with myself at all times. No there is some of that that goes on. There’s less red tape, there’s no politics, no hidden agendas which all corporations you run into no matter what the size. It definitely is a lot more rewarding as far as figuring what project to do…planning it, executing it and seeing the results…basically knowing that you worked that project from beginning to end.

How did you decide to get into the whole remodeling, building things?

No, actually it became sort of a hobby of mine through my corporate work I moved around a lot. One of the outcomes of that is we typically would find a house that needed some work and it became sort of a hobby. And I began to enjoy it very much; it was like a second business for me in a way. It really came out of that. It was taking something I was passionate about and really like to do and turning it into a profession and it’s worked out really well.

Now, what were the unpleasant surprises when you started your business?

The reliability and the – at least in this area of the country and this time period is to get a reliable work force that’s extremely difficult to do. There’s a very high demand for the industry these days so it’s very hard to find skilled labor that’s reliable. So that was a shock to me. I thought I would go out offer a decent wage and hire who I wanted to hire. But there’s a very high demand for skilled carpentry labor in this area right now.

What are the skills that are sort of demanded for someone in you role?

Well I think the most important skills are managing schedules and understanding how to do that is really important whether it’s a small project or a large project because there are so many different inputs to a building project. And then managing customer expectations probably is a pretty close second. Unfortunately there are too many half hour 30 minute TV shows showing houses being built in 30 min and those are the kind of expectations people have when they get into a building project of their own that its gonna all of sudden instantly appear.

Now when you started, were you worried about making it?

Yea, definitely. I mean it was touch and go at the beginning. I really didn’t know when I was working on one job where the next job would be coming from – or when. So it was a little scary…sure. Some months it would go well…for 3 or 4 months the first year and then all of a sudden you wouldn’t have any work for a couple of weeks and you’d be like...oh boy is this the end? And then things would just explode again.

What do you say the joys are of this profession?

Obviously working independently and running your own business is a very satisfying thing. If carpentry and building is something you enjoy to do what I would recommend someone to do is go out and actually physically practice the trade, work for somebody else, know how the whole process works, know how to build a bldg from start to finish so you know how its done and the best practices of how its done. Because without that knowledge and you trying to manage other people who are working for you in the future its very hard to tell them what to do or how to know whether its being done right or wrong. So that’s very important.