Integrity, Humility, Technology: Secrets To Success

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

look at one company’s success, businesses of all kinds can look to Holwick Constructors. A few years ago, Mike Holwick probably wouldn’t have believed you if you had told him that he could expand his Los Angeles—based construction business by $2 million a year by simply adopting new tech- nology. Then again,if you’d told him he was going to be the third-generation ownerof the family business, he probably wouldn't have believed that, either. Holwick, who back then was a CPA for PricewaterhouseCoopers, was not interested in joining the family-owned construction business. Then, two things happened. First, he saw some of his buddies laid off from another accounting firm, which reminded him that the job security he thought he had wasn't necessarily that secure. Then, health issues forced his father to think about closing the family firm. So he changed his plans. Holwick took over the business and has since overseen construction projects covering more than 1.5 million square feet of tenant space, increased top-line growth by more than 1,000 percent in six years, and saw the firm through five consecutive years of doubledigit growth during and after the recession. Four Secrets To Success So how does he do it? He says it’s consistency, humility, a “dig deep” mentality, and technology. “Solidifying our top client relationships has been crucial to our success—solidifying them, maintaining them and improving them,” says Holwick. “Key to doing that is being consistent in everything we do and how wedoit. For the client, there are no unpleasant surprises.” To Holwick, “approaching everything with a level of humility” is the flip side of another imperative: treating clients with dignity and respect. The “dig deep” mentality means “when things get tough, you have to just dig in your heels so deep that you don’t get pushed over by Oe Companies can save time, money and trouble by moving IT infrastructure to the cloud. your challenges,” says Holwick. “You do what you have to do—like working late to turn around a 24hour estimate for a client that needs it to make a multimilliondollar decision.” As Holwick’s business grew, he found himself spending about 20 percent of his time managing the office IT systems. Any way he looked at it—from the perspective of his business, his family or himself—it was a poor use ofhis time. That’s when he turned his IT over to Scott Spiro of Computer Solutions Group (CSG). Moving To The Cloud With the help of Microsoft partner CSG, Holwick moved mostof his company’s infrastructure to the cloud. E-mail and document management, for example, are handled via Microsoft Office 365. As a result, contractors, architects, site man- agers and other employees cancollaborate in real time without having to be on the corporate network. The payoff: Holwick recoups a full 12 hours a week that he formerly spent on IT management, and devotes half of that time now to running and growing his business. In just over a year, hefigures that extra time has generated $2 million in additional business. And the other half of the time? He spends that with his wife and kids. The $2 million is great but “the family time is invaluable—there’s no way to put a price on that,” says Holwick. Learn More For further facts on how technology can help your business, go to www.microsoft.com/business. ween eee eee eee eee eeeORE oe eee eee Editors’ Note: While the first week in May is Small Business Week, this article can be useful to your readers at any time.

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