EW 042 – How A Resilient Entrepreneur Built A Multi-Million Dollar Construction Business After Surviving Bankruptcy – Winning with Joe Johnston, CEO at JPS Construction Group

Gordon Sheppard (00:00.805)
Joe, welcome to the show.

Joe Johnston (00:03.63)
Thanks! Thanks, Gord. Thanks for having me.

Gordon Sheppard (00:06.019)
Well, it's just so great to have you here, because we're going to hear today a story of someone who may be one of the most resilient entrepreneurs I've ever met. Because you've been through ups and downs, peaks and valleys through your career, but there's something entrepreneurial about what you do that allows that through line to continue through those different moments when you go through all the different events that you've gone through in your life. So I can't wait for people to hear kind of that sort of piece of the story evolve.

in what we're going to talk about, but before we get going here, know a lot of people don't know who you are. So if you had to introduce yourself, what would you say?

Joe Johnston (00:39.852)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you bet. Joe Johnston. I am the founder and CEO of JPS Construction Group, JPS Facility Maintenance. I'm the COO and founder of a company called the BetterCo. Call me a serial entrepreneur. I'm involved in about five businesses right now. JPS being the main business that I focus on.

I'm 38 years old, started my first business when I was 22, failed miserably in the middle, restarted, which I think we'll get into a bit. And yeah, mean, continue to face adversity, you know, whether it's COVID, tariffs, we had a big fire last year this time, burnt down our shop and office, complete restart again for us, not as an organization, but kind of an operational reset.

and financial reset as well. But yeah, keep pushing forward and the business is going to be really strong in 2026 here.

Gordon Sheppard (01:45.83)
Well, I can tell you, I tell your story out there in the world. I'm just one of those ones where I'm like, wow, I know a guy who just won't, you know, won't take no for an answer through all these different things. And I love this 22 year old piece. And I remember when we met at a networking event, you told a story about a bold moment where you walked into a boardroom. And can you just help set the stage for that story and then tell that story? Cause I think it really says a lot about you. Go ahead.

Joe Johnston (01:54.104)
Hmm.

Joe Johnston (02:10.892)
Yeah, yeah, you bet. So I mean, I was 22, like I say, when I started my first business. I was very aggressive going after snow removal and different types of facility maintenance is kind of where I started as well as landscaping. mean, whether it was backyards or like got a little piece of a Walmart or something, I was kind of doing little odds and ends. Friends of mine had become very successful on the internet right after high school.

And so they helped me build my first website for cheap. Taught me how to do advertising online, that type of thing. And I landed Costco Wholesale, my second year in business at St. Albert Costco. And much like the story I'm about to tell with QIT, they had signed the agreement, never meeting me. So it was my proposal, presentation, phone calls.

that sort of thing, the way I presented our estimate that landed the work. And Costco was a big store. mean, at the time I only had two Bobcats and it was me and two other guys. And that first winter we pretty much lived at that store, cleared it all ourself and did really good. And let me fast forward 15 years later and we're actually a national vendor for Costco. So we, yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (03:33.089)
I love it. And there's, what's that moment in the, there's a moment in the boardroom. They, so they, they, they signed the agreement and then you showed up in person. Tell me who was in the boardroom and tell me what was that, what was that like?

Joe Johnston (03:36.76)
Yeah.

Joe Johnston (03:40.77)
Yeah.

Joe Johnston (03:44.246)
Yeah, so once we got the Costco, I kind of leveraged that to go to market to all the big guys and say, hey, we're good enough. We can, we can service Costco. They're resigning for three years. Here's a Costco testimonial. They gave me a testimonial first year, because the service was so good. And so we signed the curl Lake mod yard for Q it, which is a huge mod yard, zero tolerance. You got to be there within two hours of trace snowfall.

And then you go round and round until it stopped snowing as well as all the yard re-graveling. And it was a big six-figure contract and close to seven-figure contract in the end. And so I landed it. I was kind of surprised myself I landed it. They took my scope of work and said, yeah, you clearly know what you're doing and awesome. You've clearly been doing this for a long time is the assumption. And they brought me into

give a presentation to everyone. I queued on how I was going to do it. I sat in the waiting room and honestly at the time I was like skateboard t-shirt and skateboard shoes and I had a big red Afro. I kind of looked like Annie the orphan actually when I grow my hair out. Jeans and I didn't have any dress clothes back then. I didn't have any formal meeting attire at all. I was the guy that ran the bobcat some of the time. So I went in there and

An old fella is not there anymore by the name of Charles. He came out and grabbed me and took me into a boardroom. thought we were just going into his office to discuss it. And I walked into a full boardroom table of 10 people. And it was, you know, VP of operations. It was all the project managers for the Curl Lake project, the Modyard project. There was people from Curl Lake there. It was a full room and they all just, their jaws hit the floor when I walked in and they all just went, so you're Joe? Yeah.

I'm Joe. And I said, okay, well, we've already signed the contract with you, Joe. So why don't you go ahead and tell us how you're going to do it? Because you're a lot younger than we would have ever thought. And I was, mean, and I looked young too, just the way I was dressed and my hair and everything else. And so yeah, I gave the presentation.

Gordon Sheppard (05:56.48)
And this is a big story about who Joe is. Like there's sort of a, you know, shoot for the stars, make it happen. You had those leveling up moments there early on in kind of what you were doing. I love that story. Thanks for the Annie kind of reference. That's hilarious in terms of growing out your hair. And I think that really speaks to your character about the ability to jump and do that. But then also you've been through some times when things weren't going so well. But I'm just gonna jump in here and say.

Joe Johnston (06:03.543)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Joe Johnston (06:11.851)
Yeah. Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (06:22.265)
than to get things kicked off for this podcast and say, if you had to describe your biggest win in your business, what would that win be and how would you describe it?

Joe Johnston (06:30.911)
Yeah, I mean, it would be for certain coming back from a catastrophic bankruptcy. And so when I was 24, so a couple of years after I got the Costco contract and I was working with Kiewit and Keiwit had passed me along to the Flatiron people who were building the East leg of the Anthony Henday freeway around Edmonton. And we had got the top soil contract and

We went from, you know, four skid steers to eight and three gravel trucks and we just blew up. You know, we grew 400 % in that one year. And to buy that equipment and do those things, you know, my parents had co-signed a lot of my loans, things of that nature. I had great credit and I had, you know, a good track record of income as I worked the drilling rigs in Texas from 18 to 22. So, you know, and banks were handing out money.

back then. It was a really good time to do that, to scale like that. And so I did. And, you know, one year later when I was 26, a friend of the family, you know, and I don't like to have any negativity anymore in my life. So I'll just call him BM. And so BM came in, he used to own a pipeline company. He was the uncle when I grew up that had a helicopter, you know.

And he wasn't my uncle, he was just a family friend that you kind of was close enough you'd call uncle. And what I didn't know is what to look into. And all the equipment he had was leaned against. He had debt collectors after him everywhere. He did have millions of dollars worth of work. But as it turned out, he was actually partially the client on a lot of those projects. He was very intelligent.

The head accountant we had as our office manager had actually been with him for several years and bankrupt a few companies along the way. And so the books were cooked. I was running operations. The company did about a million and a half a month out of the gate. You know, we had close to a hundred guys in the summertime. We were doing water and sewer, that type of thing. And I was running around running operations and unfortunately he was stealing money on the backend.

Joe Johnston (08:51.327)
and the books were cooked to such a degree. I came in one Sunday and I was doing some work getting ready for the next week and there was a data entry student in there that helped us on weekends and I was looking for printer paper and I said, you know where it is? No. So I look, I opened a cupboard. This cupboard was floor to ceiling with receipts, like invoices and receipts. And I said, what are these? She said, BM.

BM told us not to enter those. said, what do mean he told you not to enter these? None of these are in QuickBooks? No, none of them are in QuickBooks. So I paid her cash to stay that day and enter everything with me on a separate table to see how much it would offset the books. And it was seven figures. And I mean, big maintenance bills for...

D6 cats and 350 excavators and 20, 30, $40,000 maintenance bills that were never entered and things of that nature. At the end of the day, I got a forensics accountant to come in. I looked over his shoulder and got his passwords and the forensics accountant came in every night on night shift and ripped apart the books and found all the money. By that point, it had all left the organization.

The other thing that happened is he was able to resign himself as director several months earlier. Again, I didn't know the power of a signature. I didn't know what I was looking at for the unanimous shareholders agreement. I didn't have proper counsel. There's a lot of big learnings there, which I value now today. I'm able to run my business a lot more efficiently now today. Bottom line is he embezzled over a million dollars and

used that money to fight me in court. So even though I was right, it didn't matter. The one big client, we'll call them, that he wasn't paying was the CRA payroll remittance that my name was attached to. And that was a high seven figure number. And I was able to reduce it. And I tried to claw my way back and I tried to save everything, but...

Joe Johnston (11:07.309)
At the end of the day, when I started fighting him in court, I was running out of money very quickly and I was selling this piece of equipment and that piece of equipment. know, being 26 years old, I was, you know, coming into 27, they kind of said, my lawyer one day said, listen, if you were 55, we keep fighting this thing. But what you've done in the short amount of time you've done it in five years, I suggest you hit the reset button and do it again.

and you're gonna be barred from owning a company for X amount of years and all these things. My previous employment was the drilling rigs. As all this is going on, I go skiing to clear my head and blow out my knee. I ski race for 15 years. So I ski rather aggressively. And I did ACL, MCL, meniscus.

completely severed MCL ACL meniscus is removed So that was sort of The little I guess loophole to say that I could be allowed to own a business within X amount of months because I couldn't go back to my previous employment So I lucked out on a few things there. But nevertheless, I when you go bankrupt They're gonna help me pay CRA. They're gonna help me pay off certain debtors, but this is a small city

you need to pay back your debt. So it actually took me five years after bankruptcy to fully pay off everyone because I paid everyone to the dollar. I didn't pay them five cents on the dollar like my trustee wanted. I need to do business in the city again. So that's kind of what we did. you know, when all that happened, it wasn't the greatest time between me and my folks. What had happened is the receiver general basically came in and took money from everywhere that they could.

Since my parents were co-signed on a lot of things, cleaned up their retirement in its entirety. They had been retired for four months, lost their whole retirement, lost every asset that we have basically besides the houses we lived in, but other than that, everything else was gone. Collectively, as a family, we had one 2011 RAV4, I recall, as that became our work truck. And I went back to Costco wholesale and I said,

Joe Johnston (13:29.578)
This is what's happened. I clearly can't do your snow anymore, but can I do anything for you guys? And they said, well, no, you're too high liability. I don't think we can. Then they called me back a short while later and said, actually, we do have something for you. And it was the garbage pick. It's what I mean by that is actually physically picking the garbage in the parking lots of Costco's. This is done at night. If the lights are working in the parking lot, great. If they turn off automatically, it's headlamps and garbage picking.

Ultimately, we agreed to the contract. I gave my parents shares in this current JPS entity and off to work we went picking garbage. Me, my mom and my dad, they came out of retirement. For an entire year, we picked the garbages at all the Costcos in Edmonton. That year we did low six figures enough to keep us all going and...

We ran that 2011 RAV4 as a family. They would pick me up at 12.30, shortly after midnight. We'd go out until 11 a.m. would take us about a 12-hour shift of just picking garbage with your parents that are in their late 50s, early 60s. And that allowed us to stay alive.

Gordon Sheppard (14:47.758)
That is absolutely stunning. there you are, 26ish, 27, riding high. You wouldn't have even suspected what was going on, but you didn't have sort of the, necessarily the full business chops to know everything to cross off that you needed to do. You get into a bad partner scenario. That goes sideways for the reasons that you've described. And then you're bankrupt.

Joe Johnston (14:54.444)
Mm-hmm, 27 at this point,

Joe Johnston (15:09.59)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Johnston (15:13.428)
Yeah. Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (15:14.606)
And then you actually did the payoff over that time and you did this thing to survive over that time. And what you said your win was, was being proud of, if I'm right, recovering from that bankruptcy. Is that what I heard you say?

Joe Johnston (15:20.449)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Johnston (15:24.172)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Johnston (15:27.666)
Yeah, it's resilience for sure. I mean, fast forward today and we're on track to do 15 million this year in that organization. you know, we got a wonderful staff, 60 people right now, we'll crew up to 100 in the summer. You know, we're a very well-oiled machine now. But from picking the garbage that next year, a friend of mine worked for a land company and

A pipeline company had come in and crushed a bunch of the culvert accesses, farm accesses to come in and put this pipeline in. And from going from, you know, the picking garbage, the next step was we got back into snow removal. got back into landscaping and I sort of followed those same steps I had the first time around. This time I had Costco backing me. So it was, it was a, it was an easier climb, I'll say that way. But I still wasn't getting the civil construction work I was looking for.

I really wanted to do more road work, dirt work. When we got the Anthony Henday contract to help Flatiron, was really when JPS catapulted. So that's ultimately what I'm looking for. And so I bid one culvert to replace for a farmer through the land agency company. It was me and two other guys. I was running the mini excavator and another guy was running the skid steer, working together, putting this culvert in. And I'm a perfectionist, sometimes to a fault, I'll admit.

this $7,000 culvert is what I bidded at. I'm into it for like nine, you know, and that's me running the mini excavator. But it looked like it was out of a magazine. I I ran a string line to separate the gravel from the top soil to make it look really nice. I hand placed all the riprap around the culvert ends. It really was a nice showpiece and it was a farm out and on away. I mean,

Nobody's going to see it, but that's just me. can't leave anything unless it's a certain way. And a permanent pipeline truck drove by and I mean, I didn't think anything of it. They stopped, backed up. Who are you? Joe, what's his company? JPS. Does all your work look like this? And I said, yeah, it does. And he said, do you want to work on the pipeline? I said, yeah, I mean, I certainly do.

Joe Johnston (17:52.246)
He ended up being the chief of construction for that project. And through the land consulting company and sort of my friend backing us there, as well as the chief of construction backing us, we signed an MSA with them, which we still have an MSA with them today and do a lot of work with them today. And, you know, we went from, I'll say low six figures to mid seven figures very quickly.

working on the pipeline and we were primarily a pipeline services company from 2017 to 2022. And that really brought us back alive. And yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (18:29.607)
Incredible. we're so, really hearing a lot about, heard resilience in there. I hear not perfectionism, do you know what mean? But it's something about high standards that have been there the whole time. There's something about boldness or creating, I'm going to say fear of missing out. There was a guy named Petros Kuzma who was on the show and he raised capital before he had a company because he went to the market and he said, I'm a good operator, back me. And there's a lot of

Joe Johnston (18:39.733)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Joe Johnston (18:47.893)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Johnston (18:53.034)
Right.

Gordon Sheppard (18:58.939)
people backing you, there's something about your character, but also you're showing up and you're proving yourself at these different times, even with your parents to a certain degree of like, you weren't down and out, you didn't sort of fall down, you sort of got in there, because there's a lot of really hard sleepless nights in between there that aren't described. I know you're getting me the highlight stories, but there's a lot of tough conversations, a lot of moments along there, your parents' lives are on the line in a sense, and you know that you've got an obligation in a sense. You've also got the value set where you didn't mean to do this, like you would've,

Joe Johnston (19:13.631)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Joe Johnston (19:20.355)
heck yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (19:28.839)
If you didn't have a bad partner, you would have been in a different place now, but you had the resilience to get through there too. That's remarkable. So we know what the win is, which is, you know, being proud of and having the resilience to recover from a bankruptcy situation. We've gotten to this present day where you've actually thrived from that point in time. And that's pretty remarkable. I always like to jump into what I call the anatomy of a win to sort of take a look at this. If we look at the strategy, work plan, people, operations and results behind a win, strategically, when we talk about...

Joe Johnston (19:45.6)
Yeah.

Joe Johnston (19:50.677)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (19:56.7)
vision, mission, values, goals. There's a moment where you're declaring bankruptcy. And then there's a strategic element. There's something there where you didn't just sort of fall down and go get a job and sort of live out the rest of your life. There's something strategically, if you had to describe the strategic highlight that made this win occur, what would you say that was?

Joe Johnston (20:02.239)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Johnston (20:19.357)
I mean, trust yourself more than others, I guess, is one of the big ones for me. I mean, I was, as an owner, I'm still on site quite often for project kickoffs and things of that nature. have, you know, now high level oversight, but direct oversight of all of my projects. I think that just because I have a high standard of doing things doesn't mean that everyone that's going to follow me will. And really keeping your finger on the pulse of that.

I think is a really big part of it. You know, I went from doing it directly myself in the field to overseeing everything that went on the field. And now I have direct involvement with my superintendents and I do site visits regularly, which is good for the workers too. You know, we've got a hundred guys and they see the owner out there on site in the middle of a big concrete pour or middle of a big dirt work job. And it instills confidence throughout.

the group I think. If you have the confidence in yourself it gets passed on, it gets trickled down. So that'd be one of the biggest ones I think.

Gordon Sheppard (21:23.943)
Yeah, trust yourself. And funny, there's been all these moments where you've had a chance to trust yourself and you can now demonstrate trusting yourself in a boardroom with the contract and your, know, any hair. You can trust yourself when you're down and out, but you can still go back and have, I'm going to say the humility in a sense to go back to Costco, admit.

Joe Johnston (21:32.351)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Joe Johnston (21:40.576)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (21:42.684)
That's trusting yourself to certain degree and then deliver on that again. And you've always been delivering. That's interesting. There's a through line there of you've always been delivering all the way through all of these things as you've gone along. That's remarkable. That's a really interesting piece of that sort of, if we say strategy, anytime we have a strategy, we need a work plan. There's sort of a big, you know, like a timeline to that. There's sort of a moment when you're getting into the bankruptcy.

Joe Johnston (22:00.747)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (22:04.731)
How long did it take from that moment to start that bankruptcy process? it the five years that you said to take fully payback everybody? Would you say it took five years to get the win?

Joe Johnston (22:12.011)
Yeah, I mean, yes, it takes five years to pay it back, but that sort of blip in your credit follows you much, much longer. I mean, people that tell you bankruptcy is only seven years and then you're back. No, no, that's not true. Your credit doesn't start building again for seven years. It's not technically on your credit history. But any bank is going to look

Gordon Sheppard (22:33.241)
wow.

Joe Johnston (22:41.067)
through it won't say bankruptcy it won't say trustee after seven years but you're going to see that credit reset from an 850 to a 350 and any banker is going to know exactly what happened. So there is you know it's been a lot of strategy you know financial strategy and operational strategy to really get back and really it's taught me how to run a business without

the extensive funding, you know, and I mean, in 2024, we did almost double in size. And then as I mentioned earlier, we had a catastrophic fire this time last year. So it's sort of further compounded how strategic I need to be with the operations and the finances. But really, I mean, in life, as long as I'm learning, I'm happy.

And I'm continuing to learn, that's for certain. I mean, even after being in business for 15 years, it's still learning.

Gordon Sheppard (23:45.289)
So you're working outside of the traditional financing system because of whatever circumstance that you didn't cause and you've worked your way out of that. You've managed to do that catastrophic fire, which I just don't haven't heard a ton about other than to know that it was such a would have been a major setback for what you're doing. And yet here still you are saying, nice to be learning. And that's a remarkable thing. And thank you for being, I mean, quickly eloquent again on the podcast, but there's more sleepless nights in there. There are people involved with this. There's all kinds of

Joe Johnston (23:49.873)
Right. Yeah.

Joe Johnston (23:57.535)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Johnston (24:13.94)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (24:14.418)
things there and I don't mean to dig into that other part right now because we're talking about this one win where you're talking about getting out of the bankruptcy but again we hear remarkable resilience on the way through all these different moments. Strategically we heard trust yourself. Timeline we hear it's actually not quite over when we're getting through a bankruptcy it actually takes more than seven years takes longer but it sounds like you're also determined to be on the pathway to make it right in a sense for the timeline aspect of what we're talking about. There's always people involved in a win. We've heard a lot about you and your attitude.

Joe Johnston (24:31.73)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Joe Johnston (24:44.532)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (24:44.548)
Maybe never being down and out. mean, there's something, I don't mean to say that simplistically. I'm just saying there's something about you that keeps, you get knocked down on that if you're in a boxing match or wherever you stand up, you keep standing up. What is it about you and your attitude through the moments that you've described? How would you describe your attitude in the peaks and valleys of what it is to go through this?

Joe Johnston (24:47.786)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Johnston (25:03.658)
Um, I think what's really helped me is honestly global perspective. Um, so I've been to 60 countries. Um, I did a lot of traveling, uh, between 18 and 25. And I've still done some recent trips. did a month in, in South America here in 2020 would have been my last kind of big one and came home, uh, when COVID started. I mean, I've been to like, you know, Cambodia, Vietnam, Lao.

Algeria, Morocco, Bosnia, Serbia. I've just been to a lot of places that has a lot less opportunity than we do. So the big thing to remember if you're down is you still have more opportunity than the vast majority of the world. And when we're down and out, is, I'll use the cliche expression, it's still first world problems. I was able to hit the bankruptcy button.

you know, and restart. That's a first world thing that we have, you know, and lucky enough to live in Canada, lucky enough to live in Edmonton and a booming city, a booming province, you know, there's really no better place to start a business in my eyes is Alberta, right? So that global perspective has really helped me. I've seen a lot of hardship around the world, I'll say, in various different circumstances.

And so I think that's kind of helped shape my sort of opinion on everything.

Gordon Sheppard (26:39.014)
I love it. Thank you for expressing that. And isn't that interesting? You've invested the time to travel and then you learn from traveling. You're not sort of out there on cruises kind of floating through with the buffet. You've actually been on the ground meeting the people and then allowing your worldview to evolve, which gets back to what you mentioned before, which is constant learning, putting yourself in environments to do these things. Wow, you're racking up a lot of...

Joe Johnston (26:44.648)
Mm-hmm. Big time.

Joe Johnston (26:50.27)
No.

Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (27:03.432)
pluses on the plus column through all this different perspective. There's also, I just need to find out if there's maybe a few more people involved in this win in a sense. Would you talk about your parents perhaps or perhaps maybe, I don't know there's any other mentors or other people, but one or two other key people and what were their attitudes through beginning a bankruptcy and getting you through it in a sense?

Joe Johnston (27:10.506)
I mean for sure.

Joe Johnston (27:24.234)
Yeah, a percent. A few key people. I I was, as a prime example, I guess would be my parents. mean, my parents from having a little bit of a sourness after losing their entire retirement, after being retired for four months and saving their entire life for it. I mean, that in itself to band together as a family and come back.

You know, over the last eight years, I have paid them back what I lost and, and there's, but they also have a substantial stake in my business right now. So as I go to buy them out, it'll, it'll be a win for them in the end. they are retired now. they're, doing a trip here coming up very soon to go traveling and they've done a couple, little ones and they've got a big one planned here for a couple months. so that's, mean, that's their.

been my solid throughout. I mean, beyond the picking garbage piece, I mean, my dad was also a laborer, late 50s, coming into 60, at JPS, and he's just incredible shape. And back then he was like on a landscape crew, my mom became office manager, and she was the office manager right up till 2021. Really coming into 2022 until she fully stepped back. So I mean, from

you know, 2017 to 2022, they actually had an active role in the business as well.

Gordon Sheppard (29:00.828)
That is a, that's a real sort of family love story, really. I mean, we're like, cause that's, that's, that's doing all things together with a lot on the line. It's not like, they loaned me 10 grand and I couldn't pay them back. Right?

Joe Johnston (29:04.467)
Yeah, yeah.

Joe Johnston (29:10.666)
Big time.

No, I mean to restart JPS everybody had to put their houses up, right? I mean, it wasn't like, you're like you have no retirement, but we also need you to leverage your only asset you have left. So it's not a small ask by any means.

Gordon Sheppard (29:27.682)
I, I, what, that, well this is an amazing, there's something then in the gene pool, we'd to have to go back through that family tree to find this level of resiliency and then appreciation of, isn't it great to be in Canada? It's so great to be in Canada. So, you know what mean? Like just, love the way you said it. It makes me proud to say, for the things that people do worry about on a day-to-day basis, I hope many people hear your story, cause...

Joe Johnston (29:42.078)
It is.

Gordon Sheppard (29:50.759)
You know you're not down and out and there is opportunity and you can see someone here who's demonstrated that. Wow, we could talk all day long. How neat to hear about your parents. We'd love to hear more about them at some point in the future. We've got strategy, work plan people we've talked through. Operationally, if we're gonna recover from bankruptcy, there are operational things to kind of go through. There would be a banking procedure. There would be regulations in place that sort of are there. There would be...

Joe Johnston (30:13.641)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (30:14.92)
getting the business back up and running and buying some equipment and this kind of thing. So there are many operational things that could be there. Any highlights that kind of made the win occur operationally that we can describe?

Joe Johnston (30:26.085)
I mean, I still have the 20 foot sea can that was our shop. So our shop was a 20 foot sea can on a friend's farm. And that's how we restarted. And again, it was working out of the RAV4 and then eventually like an old GM truck. And, you know, it sort of came again from humble beginnings. There's just...

there's what you want to do operationally and then there's financially real like financial realism of actually what's going to be able to take place. And I think that's a big thing is you got to really have your finger on the pulse of the books and know exactly where you're

Gordon Sheppard (31:09.448)
And sort of stay within, stay in your lane for, I just got off a call recently with someone who's like got stars in their eyes and they're already talking about the 10 million they're gonna earn. They have zero revenue right now and they all wanna rock it in 18 months. And what I'm hearing on this podcast over and over again is 10 years, 20 years from the people that are truly building. You said, you know, if you're at 15, I got someone else on the podcast 21, but that's a 20 year overnight success story they talk about. And they got all the ways you fall down in those early 10 years.

Joe Johnston (31:12.456)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (31:38.343)
let alone, know, so the rocket ships are, I mean, there's some of them, but I think they're probably rare in terms of the way that those things occur. Love that CCAN kind of story, operationally and again, we know you went through the bankruptcy and court reality of what that looks like, and we could talk at length about that. Finally, strategy, work plan, people, operations, there's results. We have quantitative and qualitative results. Quantitatively, I've heard you say, we built back a business that this year could do $15 million in revenue. Congratulations, that's a remarkable thing.

Joe Johnston (31:38.739)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (32:05.672)
Quantitatively, I heard you say I made my parents whole. I also paid back all the creditors or those things from those are actual dollar transactional quantitative things any other sort of quantitative and then we'll talk about qualitative highlights as well for results. What do think?

Joe Johnston (32:17.385)
Yep.

Joe Johnston (32:23.557)
Yeah, I mean, I kind of have to go back to people as well. You know, those results are driven by having the right people in the right place. And I mean, for me, trust was a big problem. I didn't have a lot of trust. Again, I learned a lot of lessons the hard way. So I came into the second round with a lot higher business acumen than I did previous. You know, I learned a lot that way.

But for me, it's when the sort of data is when you are able to walk away from a job for the first time after being the guy in the excavator, the guy in the skid steer, the guy on the plate tamper, the guy selling the job, the guy quoting the job, that sort of success of where you can actually walk away from a job because you found that person that you trust wholeheartedly to give you the results. That was a huge sort of

moment in time to mark for me that way. And then, of course, getting to the point where you're not only profitable, but consistently profitable. And you know, the pipeline really did do that for us. We were intermittent between jobs, we do a landscape job, then it would rain for five days that you know, so the the billing consistency was crucial to us coming back.

Gordon Sheppard (33:50.314)
So you found those sort of steady clients and the pipeline was in there. So you've got certain clients in there and then you've got people, it sounds like multiple people now. And you were also able to come from a place of broken trust, given to you or not, and getting into working through that internal dialogue around can I trust you to get it to, and then you've also got this level and standard that you've got in there too. That's remarkable. again, even if we just said sort of number of people that you trust, we could put up a list and we would hear that there are a bunch.

Joe Johnston (34:06.718)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (34:19.409)
Now, especially because you're mentioning the scale that you're headed towards and you know how to onboard somebody to trust them. Like that's pretty cool too. Like you've gone through that experience, you know what to look for, you're building out this company. my goodness, this is a very rich story. love it. Qualitatively, how did it feel to get to this moment in time?

Joe Johnston (34:20.114)
Yes.

Joe Johnston (34:37.123)
I mean, great. mean, like this time last year would have been two weeks before our fire. and we had just finished growing, you know, 90 % in a year, as well as increasing our profit margin. and so was a, it was a huge moment in time for me this time last year. I I retained earnings and things of that nature had never looked better.

And of course we did have a major multi-million dollar setback not two weeks later. But I mean, it's still there. We're still on the right track. We were just set back a year, unfortunately. And sometimes that's business. Like I say, I learn a lot of my lessons the hard way. Insurance coverage and how that all plays out is my latest lesson.

I'm going to chalk it up to that and we're not going to make the same mistakes. I'm probably overinsured now, but I'd rather be overinsured than underinsured.

Gordon Sheppard (35:40.618)
Well, isn't that, again, amazing to hear that that setback was there, but the sort of the sense is you've gotten now to this point. And again, it's funny about, if we put this on a chart, we would see these peaks and major valleys and you're back into peaking. Do you know what I mean? Like, let's say last year was a down point and now you're back in this way, but this sort of through line of what it is. And then you're bolting on superpowers in learning your business lessons the hard way, but you are learning them.

Joe Johnston (36:07.631)
Yeah. Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (36:08.981)
over time and again your resiliency allows you to have that multi-decade long haul along with those right reasons to do it including I'm going to pay out my parents because that's an important value set that you share. I'm going to appreciate what I have because of my global perspective that I've earned through the work that I've done and then there's just something about you that's making this all come together. We could talk for hours. I thank you so much for sharing openly your story that I think a lot of people will learn from.

Joe Johnston (36:32.03)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (36:36.545)
There's another 27 year old I had on the podcast. He was 27 when I interviewed him this year. Chris Vasiliou, who again, it's so funny about the arc of that story. went working for his dad. He's 22. They put wiring and smart wiring into homes and businesses. They got a good business going. Dad gets Parkinson's. Dad takes on a bad partner, bad partner, cooks things, goes sideways. Chris has to come into CEO too soon. A partner sues them for $6 million. They fight off a $6 million lawsuit while this guy's in his mid twenties.

Joe Johnston (36:40.605)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Johnston (36:50.537)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Johnston (37:00.829)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (37:06.353)
and they've still thrived through that. And he said, I said, how'd you do it, Chris? Because he sounds like a 60 year old man. I said, how'd you do it? He goes, I built an unbreakable mindset.

Joe Johnston (37:06.748)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Johnston (37:15.879)
Yeah. Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (37:16.871)
I mean, so what strikes me about it is good on you for getting as far as you have. I hope you're able to keep doing what you're doing, because there's something about that that we learn from him, we learn from you. I always like to get out of these interviews with just sort of maybe last moments. you, there's leaders that listen to this show. If you had to sort of give a couple sentences of advice for a leader, what would those, what would that advice be in in just sort of a short burst?

Joe Johnston (37:43.697)
Well, there's always a win around the corner that will be bigger than your loss. Right. And it takes one contract. You probably heard people say that, but it does. And I'm proof of it. You know, it's no different than the fire. To be honest, we landed a huge contract three months later. We're out at all the path to zero projects for Dow.

Lindy Air Products, working for all the big GCs out there. We've poured 24,000 cubes of concrete this year, which is about 2,300 trucks. And I mean, those things are right around the corner for everybody. You just can't give up because if you give up, the big win around the corner is never gonna happen. So resilience to get through to the next big win, because it's there, it's coming. You just can't give up.

Gordon Sheppard (38:41.065)
That is a gift for anybody in the entrepreneur seat. Joe, thank you so much for this fantastic interview. I really appreciate that you're on the show.

Joe Johnston (38:50.375)
You bet. Thanks for having me, Gord. I appreciate it.