Good Neighbor Podcast: Tri-Cities
Bringing together local businesses and neighbor of the Tri-Cities region. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Skip Mauney helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around The Tri-Cities.
Is your business serving the residents of Tri-Cities? Then, we need to talk! Visit gnpTri-Cities.com to schedule your free interview.
Good Neighbor Podcast: Tri-Cities
EP# 138: Building Dreams: The Transition from Office to Craft with Overmountain Builders
What makes Mark Bailey with Overmountain Builders a good neighbor?
What happens when three professionals from the worlds of pharmaceuticals, nuclear fuels, and finance decide to trade their desks for tool belts? Meet Mark Bailey, Jeff, and Zach from Overmountain Builders, who made that leap to follow their true passion for carpentry and building. In an episode that promises to enrich your understanding of the construction industry, we explore how these craftsmen channel family traditions and diverse experiences into creating stunning custom decks, pergolas, and outdoor spaces. We also tackle misconceptions about composite decking materials, like Trex, revealing how they can be a cost-effective choice in the long run due to their durability and warranties.
Join us as we uncover the real-life challenges and triumphs of transitioning from traditional employment to successful entrepreneurship with Overmountain Builders. The founders share their insights on the powerful role of creativity, customer relationships, and professional integrity in sustaining a thriving business. Hear firsthand how direct customer interactions and positive feedback fuel their dedication to high-quality craftsmanship. If you're inspired by their journey or interested in their services, we guide you to visit their website for more info. Don't miss these nuggets of wisdom from local builders who turned their dreams into reality.
To learn more about Overmountain Builders go to:
Overmountain Builders
(423) 213-2214
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Skip Monning.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast in 2024, everybody, are you in need of someone to help you? Are you thinking about building a house or doing some construction of some type? Well, if you're looking for a local, reliable builder, one may be closer than you think. Today, I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, mr Mark Bailey, who is the owner-operator of Overmountain Builders, along with Jeff and Zach. Welcome to the show, guys.
Speaker 3:Good morning. Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2:Good morning. Hope you're having a good day.
Speaker 4:So far. I hope so for you.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's been a good day so far. It's Friday.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, like I said, I'm pretty excited to learn all about you and your business, and I know when people have a lot of issues with construction problems, with construction problems, and so finding a good, reliable, dependable builder is something not necessarily easy to do. So we're excited to hear all about you and your company. So, mark, if you don't mind, why don't you tell us about what you do?
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, we're glad to be here. Thanks for having us this morning. So we do a little bit of everything. As far as remodeling new construction additions, I would say we mostly specialize in carpentry. So I would say probably 80% of the work we do are custom decks and pergolas, outdoor spaces, things like that, spaces, things like that and, like I said, we do the you know remodeling, which is bathrooms, additions, whatever you know. Residential projects may come up, but we're all you know. We all come into this from a different background. Jeff worked in pharmaceuticals, zach worked with nuclear fuels, I worked in the finance field for a while. So we all sort of have a new, I guess, appreciation for our careers, although we've kind of all been experienced with this kind of work for a while now.
Speaker 2:Wow, so say that again. One of you guys was in pharmaceuticals.
Speaker 4:Yep, jeff, that's right.
Speaker 2:Jeff was in pharmaceuticals and Zach, what were you doing?
Speaker 3:I worked with nuclear fuel services and Erwin and Zach. What were you doing? I worked with Nuclear Fuel Services and Erwin.
Speaker 2:Wow. Nuclear Fuel Services. You don't hear that much. And, mark, what did you do?
Speaker 4:I worked in finance. I did banking and investments for about 15 years.
Speaker 2:Wow, so that's pretty diverse nuclear fuel, pharmacy and finance. How did you guys get into this business?
Speaker 4:Well, for me, I've kind of I know it sounds kind of cliche, but I've sort of always been around this.
Speaker 4:My grandfather was a builder, my dad's a builder, and years ago I kind of got my feet wet, actually, starting with my dad doing some remodeling and we flipped a couple of houses and just kind of got some exposure that way. And then over the last eight years or so just kind of picked up some steam and I was working with a couple of guys when I was still full time in finance who the guys were doing the work for me, kind of as subcontractors, and it got to the point to where the workload was such that it basically required me to go into it full-time and that was something I was really interested in doing and it's been probably the best career decision I've made so far. And these guys have kind of similar stories, but I'll let them share. You know their, their take.
Speaker 4:Yeah for me it's it's.
Speaker 5:My family was never doing this professionally, but I always. My dad was always tinkering in the garage and did a lot of carpentry and he learned from his dad and his uncle so it was something that I was always interested in and Mark and I did some projects before we ever thought of, you know, doing anything professionally and um and we realized that we enjoyed it, so it's a similar story, I guess for me too.
Speaker 3:Yep, and I can speak almost. You know the same kind of deal there. I've been brought up, you know, with uncles and you know my father always building. You know they built their own houses and garages and things like that. So it's always around that type of work. And after you know being out in kind of the corporate world for a while, I decided to try something else and go out and just work for myself and it's I really enjoy it so far and I think we're going to do pretty well with it.
Speaker 2:Hopefully there's less glowing going on when you're working with wood rather than nuclear fuel Wow. Wow. Well, what are? I'm sure there are some misconceptions or myths in the, in the construction business and or in what you guys do.
Speaker 4:What do any come to mind? Yeah, I mean we were talking about this just before we started the interview. I mean there's a lot. Honestly, I think the main one that comes to mind for us, just given that we primarily work with, you know, custom decks, is that composite decking, a pretty popular, well-known brand would be like. It's called Trex.
Speaker 4:A misconception, I think, is that people believe it's an expensive product and it's out of their budget. Oftentimes, just kind of being in this field and dealing with that type of work specifically, it's almost like that sound just reverberates through our client base without really any, I guess, investigation I would say. So specifically, we think that the pricing of the Trex product itself tends to be and I'm just using Trex as an example, but for composite decking in general it does have a higher sticker price. But the investment that longer term with a product that's got a 25, 30 year warranty in some cases, is probably going to be a much lower cost overall for the long term just because of the longevity, going to be a much lower cost overall for the long term just because of the longevity. And that's probably, to me, a big misconception that we deal with a lot just because of the specialty we we focus on, which is decks.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you guys have anything to add to that, but that would be the first thing that comes to mind for me well I can understand that I just rebuilt my myself which, by the way, is a misconception from the consumer side is like, oh, I can do this myself, it's no big deal, and I've been working on my deck every spare minute I've had for months until it got so cold. Then I went, you know, if it's below 40, I'm not, I'm not getting out there but yeah. It's taken me months to do what you guys would probably do in hours. I would think you probably.
Speaker 4:I don't think one of those things maybe if it, even if it's DIY or not that some, you know contractors don't have the ability to build deck. But we've we've seen kind of a pretty broad spectrum of results with decks and there there are better building practices, you know, than what some people employ, I would say. So I think it's a little more. I think sometimes people think with a deck it's kind of like well, you know, we're just going to have this on the back, you know, out on the back of the house, we'll grill on it.
Speaker 4:It's not as important as the structure of the house or the finish of the house, but it it's a pretty. Um, you know it's a pretty serious process, especially if you do a lot of entertaining or use that space a lot. You don't want to have failure, you know, especially for safety reasons, like the handrails and stairs and things like that. And sometimes we've seen that those things are not necessarily properly constructed and that could be a hazard or just cost more money to the homeowner in the long term because of failure and having to refinish it and things like that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well. Well noted.
Speaker 1:I know I won't be doing this again.
Speaker 2:I can tell you that I know marketing is really key to any business success. How do you market over Mountain Builders?
Speaker 4:We have a variety of, I guess, marketing efforts. We've done a couple billboards in the past that are usually like seasonal messaging. We just try to get some encouragement out to folks, especially with the deck project. If they want to have a project completed by summertime, it's best to probably call a contractor before summertime. We try to use the billboards for seasonal stuff. Zach helps with a Facebook page for some of our social media. We have a website and we recently started sending out a newsletter to anybody who we have an email address for that wants to subscribe to that. I mean, our best advertising is just word of mouth. We really don't. I don't think we push our marketing, you know, as aggressively as maybe people in other industries would, or even in this industry. It's just something that we're doing just for brand recognition really. But the best customers that we get are our friends of previous customers who you know just speak highly of of our work and of our professionalism and the experience they have when they work with us.
Speaker 2:Referrals. Yeah, it's your best marketing outside of work. What do you guys do for fun?
Speaker 4:You guys go ahead. I've been talking to this Well hang out with family.
Speaker 3:You know, do stuff like that. I've got a younger child she's about four and my wife. We just kind of take small trips, or you know as much as we can. And of course we all have our own little projects, like you were mentioning your deck project. You know I'll work on our house or sometimes we'll all just get together and, you know, eat dinner or just you know just kind of hang out.
Speaker 2:How about you guys?
Speaker 5:Free time has been consumed by now. Our own projects, in my experience at least. Now that I've been doing this for a little while, I look at my home and I think, well, actually, I think I can do that, that project that I was envisioning. I think I can do that now. So why don't I, you know, take every moment of my weekends and dedicate it to doing what I do during the week? Working with these guys and learning what I've been learning on the job is has given me the ability to, to enrich my, my own life, you know, with my, with my projects, which is a really cool added benefit of doing this line of work.
Speaker 2:That's a way to make that positive. Way to make that positive.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:Enrich your whole life.
Speaker 4:For me, skip.
Speaker 4:I've got boys, so I spend a lot of time with them in the evenings and weekends just trying to do fun stuff but also these guys have mentioned projects and just things have to be done fun stuff, but also, you know, chores, like these guys have mentioned, projects and just things have to be done. Um, just, you know, I I would say it's a busy season of life for all of us. We all have young children and you know we're kind of in the midst of our career and kind of getting things you know um, just moving along, so to speak. But yeah, we just, uh, all of us you know, kind of spend time with our families and we all have our own hobbies and nothing too extravagant or exciting I would say.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, you guys get gold stars for saying family, that's the that's the right answer, especially if any of your wives are going to watch this podcast. But you said it first, I didn't say it, so let's switch gears. Mark, I guess we'll direct this at you. Can you describe a hardship or a life challenge that you've overcome, either professionally or personally, and how it made you stronger in the end, coming out the other side?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I thought about that a little bit. I mean I don't want to necessarily call this in particular a hardship, but it was a challenge for me personally. I think the guys here could probably echo this to some extent. But, as I mentioned before, just my previous work and the previous phases of my career were in an industry that I went to school for and had some internships and kind of had myself set up to build a career of, but it just it wasn't necessarily fulfilling to me. It was, you know, it was a job that I enjoyed and I was, I had satisfaction with it, but oftentimes it kind of left me feeling as if there was just something missing.
Speaker 4:And I think just having a business that the three of us can be creative with not just the trade you know, building things and designing them and the craftsmanship, but also having some latitude to kind of run a business how we want to and be creative with our marketing and doing podcasts and just making relationships with customers that are genuine and not just part of a third party where the companies we worked for before really own the relationship, I think kind of that.
Speaker 4:That vacancy for me was, um, a challenge, uh, and then that was kind of part of your question. It it was just, you know I would get work and I would, you know, make progress with, with um, you know my, my responsibilities there and um, but it was just it felt like something in my life, you know was was kind of absent. And I think that the overcoming aspect of kind of the fear that a lot of people have of leaving a quote unquote safe job and becoming self-employed and kind of going out and doing things on your own, I think overcoming that that fear and kind of taking a leap has really been a huge reward for me personally.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Starting a business is not an easy thing to do. No, and it is not. It is stressful and, like you said, it takes away all your fun time. But I agree, this is my small business and even though it can be tough sometimes, it's very rewarding.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I had a friend of mine years ago I just remember this and he said everybody wants to own a business, but nobody wants to start one. So I think that's pretty accurate.
Speaker 2:That is very accurate Because you got to start from nothing, man. Very accurate Because you've got to start from nothing man. So if you guys could think of one thing and there's three of you, but between you, if you could think of one thing that you'd like our listeners to remember about Overmountain Builders, what would that be?
Speaker 4:Let's just go around the table.
Speaker 5:Give me a second, go ahead.
Speaker 3:Well, I would just like for them, to the listeners out there right now. Just I'm glad that they have this exposure to us. You know, get to meet us instead of just calling a number on a billboard or something like that. Actually get to see us, not necessarily in person, but get a good glimpse of how it would be. And you know, just I think that that is really good. And If they want to give us a call, that'd be great, because I know that they won't be let down with the professionalism and the quality of work. You know, if that's something that they a service that we can provide to them, you know, construction related, and you know, give us a call.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think the latter part of what Zach mentioned there is what comes to mind for me.
Speaker 4:Um it the probably the most rewarding thing day in and day out for me with this work is just the satisfaction that our customers willingly share with us, that they're experiencing, um, obviously, we do the best job that we can do with our skills and abilities and but I think people just in my experience have just been so pleased, almost like refreshed, to deal with you know three guys that come from a different background, that maybe have a different, um you know, professionalism than they're used to, because there's I I have noticed there's a lot of you know folks in our industry that are incredible craftsmen, but some of them struggle with running a business and some of their, you know, I don't want to say people skills, but just kind of dealing with customers, and I think that that's the one takeaway that I've really really noticed over the last year or two is that people seem to be very pleased to deal with us and, you know we're happy to give references to prospective customers, to talk to some of those folks and share some of their experiences very good I'll dovetail off that for just a second.
Speaker 5:Um, and I think it's there's no, if you I'll just pour a little praise on mark for a second because he'll be modest about it. But if you speak with mark and then you you see the results of a project that you work on him with, you'll realize why he's hit the ground running in with such strides. It's because of the things that that they were just speaking about with the, the, the professionalism, the. He follows through what he says he's going to do and um and uh, you know, you, the, the quality of the projects that are completed.
Speaker 5:And I think that kind of that combination can be really hard to find in a tradesman. When you're looking for someone to build you a deck, it can be a daunting, or anything you know. Build you a complete house, it can be a really daunting search and you're kind of you can be on your guard and you don't know where to start. But I think there's a my point being I think there's a reason why why it's been such a successful career leap for the three of us, and I think it's exactly what what these guys are just saying.
Speaker 2:Awesome, good thing to remember, very good. Well, if somebody like me any of our listeners are interested in giving you guys a call, they started a project and would like you to finish it hint hint, or they have a project that you guys want to get a quote for, how can they learn more about Overmountain Builders?
Speaker 4:I think the best spot is just our landing site, our website. It's omb, like Overmountain Builders tricitiescom. That's got email, phone number, links to social, it's got pictures of previous jobs. It's got more information about us personally. So omb tricitiescom would be the best place to start.
Speaker 2:Very good, very good. Well, I know you guys are busy. You got a business to run but I can't tell you how much I appreciate you being on the show and taking time out to be with. Tell our listeners a little bit about what you do and I wish moving forward. I wish Mark, you and Zach and Jeff your family and Overmountain Builders all the best moving forward. Thank you very much. Thank you Absolutely. Hope we can get you back on the show one day.
Speaker 4:Sure thing, yeah Sounds good.
Speaker 1:All right, all right. Thank you for listening to the good neighbor podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNP, try dash citiescom. That's GNP, try dash citiescom. Or call 4, 2, 3, 7, 1, 9, 5, 8, 7, 3. 877-585-5873.