Four Decades In. John Mercure on Risk and Resilience

In this episode of Verify In Field, host Jacob Edmond sits down with John Mercure, President of Raydeo Enterprises, to explore four decades of leadership in architectural metals, millwork, and signage. From humble beginnings in neon signs to delivering complex scopes on stadiums, high rises, and major commercial projects, John shares the lessons that shaped his company and his philosophy on building.

With nearly 40 years at the helm of Raydeo, John has navigated economic downturns, evolving general contractor dynamics, major technological shifts, and the increasing complexity of contract risk. Through it all, one principle has remained constant. Deliver the job.

As John puts it, “One of our things is we've never failed. I ain't gonna tell you, we made money on everything, but we've never failed.” 

About Our Guest

John Mercure is the President and founder of Raydeo Enterprises, a multidisciplinary fabrication company specializing in architectural metals, millwork, and signage for large scale commercial construction. What began as a neon sign operation in the early eighties evolved into a full scope fabrication firm serving stadiums, hotels, high rises, museums, and corporate environments across the United States 

Over the years, John expanded Raydeo through strategic reinvestment in technology, facilities, training, and people. Today, the company operates with approximately 85 to 100 employees in a 72,000 square foot facility, focused on complex projects that demand coordination, creativity, and precision 

Where To Learn More

Raydeo Enterprises: https://www.raydeo.com
John Mercure´s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-mercure-b081406/ 

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Transcript

John Mercure 0:00

One of our things is we've never failed. I ain't gonna tell you, we made money on everything, but we've never failed. And so we've always delivered and provided for our customers. won't tell you that we're perfect, but we've never been in a situation where we didn't come out and finish the job and reach satisfactory completion on this scenario.

Jacob Edmond 0:21

welcome back everybody to verify in field. Today I have with me the President of Raydeo Enterprises, John Mercure, who is joining us. So I'm excited to have him on and talk about Raydeo and his four decades of leadership in this industry. Thank you for joining me.

John Mercure 0:34

you so much for having me on here. I'm quite excited about it. We've been through a lot in the transition through the industry and we're seeing how a lot of these remote services are working out quite favorable for people, and I'm happy to see that there's folks like yourself getting involved, trying to share some common knowledge across the board to help that subcontracted base maneuver, the technicalities of big construction.

Jacob Edmond 0:57

Yeah. Awesome. Well, To get started, would you mind giving me a little bit of your background of how you got started and then how Raydeo Enterprises got started.

John Mercure 1:04

It's a very checkered past, we'll say, or interesting past. I actually was gonna be a wrestler, was gonna go in high school, got a scholarship to go wrestle and unfortunately broke my back in a car wreck.

Jacob Edmond 1:14

Oh.

John Mercure 1:14

I had to turn from brawn to brain and got invited by a brother of mine to participate in helping him with the Neon sign company that he did, we started there. In addition to it, we were putting on a double album set and video rock opera. At the time in attempts to try to go sell this across the country, so this was the early eighties. I had long, beautiful hair and went out in the clubs and nightclubs and discos and things were the things that were in, they all loved lighting and neon and technical effects, and we went to town. Unfortunately, the music industry, after about three or four years and chewed us up and spit us out like it does most people, and we're still going down this path and I decided that it was time to split off from that and kinda evolve Raydeo into something else. So I sat out, bought a millwork shop, small one, bought another sign shop, another small one, was a local competitor and bought a little metal shop. And we really started on our path of being able to do a little bit more than neon signs. So we started doing storefront work. At the time, this was again the late eighties and early nineties. There was a lot of millwork that was involved in that part of it. There was a lot of retail that existed out there. There were a lot of malls that happened, so this kind of caught on like wildfire to be able to do the full storefront with the signs well. kinda led to the next piece, which was the store fixtures that were inside of these places. So they said, Hey, can you do that? And being an entrepreneurial salesperson, I was, I said, yes, I can. we started along on our journey to achieve that and just kept growing us as a business. We also took a little departure down the museum industry for a while, and I started another company with a gentleman by the name of Lincoln Stone called Icon Industrial Imagery and had the honor of doing the Smithsonian. Institute's Postal museum as well as the Fernbank Museum of Natural History. And then that involved casework as well as artistic and special effects type applications, building cas, grassy knolls, water features, a lot of very technical items in that. as these things came out, we got wrote up in the papers from the creative aspects in Atlanta. Atlanta Papers, Cobb County, Marietta, and it caught on a little fire, that local athlete, John Macure does, now builds magical stuff. And organically the company kept growing until we got our first chance to work in something in Manhattan. A guy we had been doing signs for, saw what we did and invited me to the party and said, like you to do the whole store and help in our design team. We did, we revolutionized the way this was making at this time. It's not millwork, but it still what it was is we learned how to make the cabinets and casework outta tubular aluminum wrapped in metal. And they were all very creative and we put our first one in the World Trade Center the day that it opened, it became the world's highest bond coffee store. So we rode that fame and glory a lot throughout Manhattan until the last World Trade Center episode that kind of ended that. And we kind of backed out of that area. These things just kind of evolved and as we did, the company grew, we reinvested into technology, we reinvested into buildings, we reinvested into training and people processes. And now we're probably, I'm gonna say 85 to a hundred employees at this time, occupying about 72,000 square feet, primarily focused on architectural metals, millwork, and signs within what I call. Super construction. So it'd be stadiums, big hotels, high rises, things where things aren't quite the norm. They're not just conventional cabinets and casework. They're very creative challenging scenarios to work in.

Jacob Edmond 4:34

That was great. So it's quite the evolution over the many years. And you followed up with today where you guys are and you're still very much doing a great deal of metal and signs, but it's more, I would imagine, the cohesive packages of how those things merge on scopes, or is it separate entities altogether?

John Mercure 4:51

Well our best played for our customers is a mixed scope. They like that'cause you don't have to coordinate in the metal guy with the millwork guy, the millwork guy with the sign guy. So those are great fits and it's put us in the likes of, this and Krup. IBM Apple, like I said, Mercedes-Benz alleg Field. It's a hard way to make a living. I'm not gonna lie. It's very tough because it's very technical. It usually has a lot of long lead items that are attached to it, and a lot of coordinative details that are there. And we live now the industry has evolved from the general contracting side, from being a good general contractor that actually knows how to build something to a general contractor that now. Is a college trained professional in contract and risk management, and they don't really necessarily know the art of the build. You don't have a good trade partner relationships with them. You're. a tool that's put at risk to achieve a function at their will, and it creates a challenging environment. So we spend a lot of time and a lot of money on contract review, contract addendum, contract management, all the dotting your I's and crossing your t's to the equation. All those things. Plus a workplace, that's very challenging because if you're a finished trade contractor, you're the last guy to go in. any failures or slowdowns in schedules before you or leaves that they gave to anybody else, come to set on your plate and you have the most technical piece of the entire puzzle and you get condensed, stacked in your schedules and you still are required to form by contract. One of our things is we've never failed. I ain't gonna tell you, we made money on everything, but we've never failed. And so we've always delivered and provided for our customers. won't tell you that we're perfect, but we've never been in a situation where we didn't come out and finish the job and reach satisfactory completion on this scenario. We have had a lot of wonderful, great projects and we have an incredibly talented team. So I was particularly interested in your show because of this. I just recently enlisted a new ERP for Raydeo called Innergy, I-N-N-E-R-G-Y. Amazing tool, and I've gone to now multiples of their seminars or. Schools or whatever you'd wanna call'em, but they're, was really amazing and empowered by how many like-minded professionals there were, like myself that were, you know, we're folks that all started with pickup trucks and pliers, you know what I mean? And so one of the things that we saw being a good constant theme throughout these companies that were even bigger than we were, was they tried to achieve the 80% pre-build. Which was great, and I'm like, man, how you pulling that off, man? Everything's gotta be verified and filled by the contract. And I said we had to take another approach towards it. So number one, we had conversation and addend written into contracts saying we need to pre-build 80% of this. Okay. Number two is as we produce our shop drawings, we create the control points. And we, we create'em when we say hold two as opposed to verify in field now. It's becoming a success here and what it has to have is cooperation on the part of the millwork team or metalwork team to go out and support and help the general contractor and or its subsequent trades that it has to get these layouts right in the field to know we're not gonna bring a piece of plumbing up through a mid wall and a cabinet string get those items set up correctly and or at least know them in an advance based on us being an industry expert. In doing so if we can get them past their risk management and their contract management and get into the trade relationship again, of working cooperatively to get there and leverage this tool, we're being effective on delivering better quality products. On time with less strain to the human resources that we look to employ it with a greater satisfaction to our end customer. At the end of the day, it's not a lot of hacked up things in the field'cause we planned them out this way. So there's a price to pay in that and those are parts and pieces of it. But again, I was real excited when I saw what your show was about and hope that we'd be able to have these conversations.

Jacob Edmond 8:52

Yeah, absolutely. No, I think that's really great. And that's, you know, really what this is all about is bringing stories like yours of, there are so many other like-minded owners and professionals out there that you know, but don't get the opportunity to converse and hear from each other. And I think so often in this industry. Owners like yourself, a lot of times feel like they're living on an island like we're the only ones dealing with these problems, or we're only ones living this in this world where it's just us versus the gc, us versus the world at the tail end of the project. And Innergy is one that's done a great job of, bringing those people together and also educating on what's possible. And I think, you clearly articulated very well how. The game has changed part, particularly in the commercial construction world and the GCs have largely driven that change. They've evolved and I think you've probably seen this very much firsthand where when you first started doing business, I imagine it was a lot of a handshake and word of an agreement, Hey, yep, we'll do this job for you and you're gonna pay us. And that is a very heavily evolved into, hey, there's a lot of contract language and a contract negotiation, and the GC is really. They are trained to basically. Avoid all liability trained to execute the contract at the most efficient way possible. And a lot of times that means that us as the trades, if we don't get smart to that and understand what they're trying to get after, is we're just following orders or following along, as opposed to driving as the professionals they're hiring us to be of. Here's the best way to execute what you want, and that might look differently than the next guy down the road or how you did it last time. But our job. Is to inform them and come alongside, like you said, as a partner and say, Hey, here's the end result you're looking for. I'm gonna tell you the best way to get there, and if you work with us and accommodate that, you're gonna have a great result. But it might look a little differently and prebuilt and stored as part of that. Hey, let's hold two dimensions instead of, let's wait until everything's done and we can coordinate. But the job is gonna get drawn out much longer. And I think that the more the mill workers and us as the finishing trades learn that, hey, we are the expert. They're hiring us for our expertise, not just for our labor. And we need to come in and drive from the start of the project, what the path is to success and start dictating some of the terms of how we can do that. I think that's a really different dynamic probably than what our industry has been used to over the last 20 years. Wouldn't you say.

John Mercure 11:07

It is and it's a i, I believe it's a shame because what it's done is it's driven costs. So the end user. Be it that they're corporate billionaires or trillionaires themselves, no matter what I mean, a value's a value, right? And so they didn't get to be there by just frequently wasting money. believe that it is a, to their advantage, to leverage this direction going through these big GCs and then having them manage the contracts in these manner because it limits risk. But that's just a lawyer talking It's not a smart or wise businessman talking, and so what they've done is they've, they're sacrificing quality because of the situation. They're increasing cost and they're extending the durations required to get a project done based on everything that came from the top down that said. don't want this. And the lender said, we don't want that. And they told the lawyers, and the lawyers went to the contractor and said, this is what it is. And then we went to the architects and everybody was running around CYA and instead of just working together to get the job done, at the end of the day. Now us, we are changing means and measures. So we go through now extensive, we never even had a contract problem again. I'm on, I'm celebrating as Raydeo. What is today actually to no. Two days from now will be the completion of my 39th year, and it'll be the beginning of the 40th year as Raydeo Enterprises. And before that we were, custom neon and. So you can tell I'm old and bald from that stuff. Yeah, but we're now, we now have it all reviewed. We brought in somebody from the other side of the fence, so we hired a general contractor from Skaska and no longer wanted to participate in that industry because of what he found to be unethical practice on their part. And he wanted to. Work like he used to work as a contractor in tandem with the trades, and so he retired, we hired him up, does a great job. But we also found out now through ai, there's some great AI projects out there that are helping us get to that finished line faster because it's a lot. And a campaign that we're soon to launch is to actually go out even before the bid and say. Here's how we bid a project. Here's how we qualify the project. Here are the terms of the contract that we'll agree to. Let's get an MSA in place and then we'll agree to your projects.'cause we get invited of times per day to bid projects. And have to weed it down to five maybe. You know what I mean? we'd like to increase that. We'd like to do more work and we'd like to you know, myself personally as I look towards retirement, look to empower the next generation to carry Raydeos flag beyond this 40 years, and do so in a reasonable manner. Commodity resource such as a human being is a very expensive device. Very expensive today. So when you go do math, now I'm not a brilliant accountant or anything, but I know how to use a calculator pretty well. Now, you go and put all the people in place required. If you were to use humans, you're not gonna get there. You're just gonna be working to work. And so you have to employ modern tools of AI and outsourced resources like your own, just to get to the finish line and have a little piece of profit left for growth, installation, reward to the employees. you know, these are hardworking folks. And a hamburger for Coke and Fries at Five Guys is now$18 and 58 cents in their wage. We paid best rates in the industry. Their wage is 35 bucks an hour, but man, that's like half the day, half of an hour just to get your food for

Jacob Edmond 14:20

Yeah.

John Mercure 14:21

at a hamburger place. And so really trying to look to do more with less meaning, less people, but do more with them by employing our AI tools and employ our virtual resource tools. We work with my Outdesk as well. and we're seeing good results come up from, and I think it's gonna bore bear the new Raydeo. In the next few years will come out of this, so

Jacob Edmond 14:40

Awesome. Talking a little bit more about some of the changes you've seen through your time, 39 years is you've been through multiple major economic downturns, right? You've weathered, I'm sure many other storms in between there as a business, that owner and what are some of the things that you've learned that has allowed you to weather those multiple. Economic struggles and to keep going and to have the outlook where you have now of Hey, I'm trying to continue this and build beyond just my own legacy, my own career, and I'm gonna be retiring soon and the business can continue. And now we're continuing to evolve Looking at AI software, like how do, how does that, how has your history of weathering through what you have informed your mindset now looking forward?

John Mercure 15:23

Well, I'd say the first part of it would be is a conservative nature towards taking your profits. I mean, everybody gets into business and they see, a company that does 15,$20 million and oh, that guy's just killing it, but I believe the weather of the storm, you have to put yourself in a reserve capital position to be there when the bottom drops out, recent times will be COVID as that happened out and I was in the middle of doing the Allegiant field in Las Vegas in a Union iron worker territory. Word. It accelerated costs by millions. And so we really had to do that. You also get held in litigious situations with contractors that say, I'm not gonna pay you for that. I know I agreed to, but you didn't get it in paper, so I'm not gonna pay you. You know what I mean? There's some big nasty bears out there, like the scans that are problematic in that, and just known across the market you have to get it in writing or don't move forward. The so conservative expenditure of your profits is number one. Number two is don't be afraid to at your mistakes. What you've done a decision you've made, a process, you've implemented a tool, you've put on board a direction that you've had it, and go, Hey, let's do a postmortem on this project and find out what we went wrong. Let's do a postmortem on this. Evolution step that we took, and see what went wrong and what went right. We wanna look at what did right too. Number three is, the power of computing and the power of data is an amazing tool. It's an amazing, dangerous tool, so if you can use it, but use it wisely without going all in, as you're talking to chat GPT, you may get a wrong answer. You may get a right answer out of the thing. It's no different than going and doing a Google search in a lot of cases right there, so everyone you know is all hot to trot on it. But we're seeing an 80% failure rate in that industry. But data's still good and data still rules the day. You've gotta be able to do it, distinguish it and think about it. I thought I had a marketing problem as my sales started diminishing. I'm like, man, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do that. I've made what I call the business hunch call. Okay? As we started going backwards, I'm like, I put a lot of effort in that. And I started looking and thinking. I said, I gotta go a little bit, do more analysis that's on here. Where are my bottlenecks existing? Where does that exist? You know, I came through and, oh, it's in drafting. Oh, it's in here. Oh, it's in field services. The bottleneck is, I don't know if you've ever read gene, I think his name's Gene Gora,

Jacob Edmond 17:35

yeah.

John Mercure 17:35

Great book on constraints and processes, the foundational and Innergy's been built upon. But. It talks about that constraint and chasing Herbie. And Herbie is the bottleneck that stops you. I chased Herbie all over this damn place for about a year. We had a real smooth, low volume year in 24 that made good profit, good balance, sheet enhancement, and good cash flow management. And 25 came along and started wrecking us. Chased and chased. came all the way down to. We were, so the selection scenario of projects, so we're with every big GC in the United States. All right? And so out of those, let's say of the 20, we like better than the other 10. So then we like different people within those things. It's just this natural we, I call it the Fami familiarity index right here, so we're familiar with them. So we go exhaust tons of resources bid. This project that may come to fruition this year maybe pushed off two or three years and just, but it was hundreds and hundreds of hours where you didn't bid something. You should have been bidding to feed the troops. As you're gonna go along down the road. So I kept looking at this phenomenon, then started charting that data, then started looking at what was happening. And what we were doing was the same repetitive cycle over and over again, where we would back to the familiarity pool. Work through that thing. They didn't stack the projects. We'd have a three,$4 million a month on this one and a$500,000 month on the next one right there. It was this big waves and cycles of business that was going on. So I've been real focused on trying to get short and longs on projects. Be respectful and adult with those contractors that we do and just say, Hey, this probably isn't the best fit for us based on the time. I don't have a schedule, I won't allow it to be bid. Now. I had to say it for 10 years and it never happened, and now I just mandated it. It's so it's something that says if I don't have a schedule, you don't get looked at, because why would I want to bid something that I might not be able to do? I didn't do them a service and I don't do me as service, and because of this. Trend that big construction's on by bringing in great talent from college but doesn't know the flow of the business. It's just a point and shoot, Hey, I need to get all these things budgeted. They go budget it, but they have no idea what the end game is or the data is that's gonna do it'cause they have infinite resources. So would be the three areas that I would focus on is conservatism on expanding your profits. let's keep looking at the data sides of the things right there to get down the road.

Jacob Edmond 19:52

And, And then you mentioned, that you found that you didn't really have a marketing problem, you had plenty of leads. It was, which leads are you chasing, whether that was causing the downfall. Awesome. So you mentioned that you're already thinking about Hey, one day I'm gonna be retiring and I want this business to keep going.'cause I know there's so many in our industry that are in a similar boat of, and there's been so many that have had no succession planning. Shut down their business or, you know, usually it goes to an acquisition or just it's a last minute thought of oh man what happens after me as the owner, the founder? And I think so many in this industry are founder owners and are craftsmen first, businessmen second. And if there's not, an error heir, a parent or a child, that kind of naturally takes over. I think this, our industry struggles with mentorship and leadership as a conscious endeavor. How has that for you evolved? Or how are you thinking about preparing of'cause it seems like you, it's already something that's coming outta your mouth, so it's not something you're terrified of. How do you get to the point where it's like, yep, I know that one day I can let this go, I can retire and somebody else is gonna be able to run this. The business is gonna keep going.

John Mercure 20:59

I think it's a patient process and I'll tell you that in all reality, I plan to retire at the end of 30 years and that just didn't, we had too many transition points to work on and I, I felt. My wife felt, my team felt wasn't a good time. They were still receiving benefit from my position here and what I was able to bring to the table. So I'm a believer in trial and error and I probably make, I believe that you've got to fail better and I have failed in this attempts many times. Now. I believe now I'm to the magic. state. Yes, I have a daughter who's involved in it, but yet she's, young, she's 30 years old. She has all kinds of other life to participate besides running a giant millwork and metalwork company, I have a son that had been involved in it that's recently getting back involved in it, but he's not quite sure where that journey is. He is also a performer and songwriter and musician, so that's his passion. This is just the means and measures of income production. My partner and one of my best friends of all time is my vp and he's looking at it in 10 years. So I've been talking and I came upon a book called Exit Without Selling. I don't know if you've ever read that one or seen that

Jacob Edmond 22:04

No.

John Mercure 22:04

And it was like, I've been fascinated with Instagram and Facebook marketing and all the things that they do. I listened to a lot, especially on the AI sides of things, but I just fell across this thing called exit without selling. So I'm gonna say it was 50 bucks or something. It wasn't a big expense and so I got it. Well, I was fortunate enough it came with an audio book and I'm a very fitness oriented person, so I spent a lot of time doing elliptical, treadmill, and climber, and all this stuff is boring as hell inside of the gym, so you gotta listen to something, So I started listening to this thing, man, i'm like, man, this is it because. I'm a believer in the people. You know what I mean? I'm just as happy in a tent, in the dirt as I am in a five star hotel. So it's not about the riches in life, it's about the riches of what it is that I'm doing, the time that I'm spending, who I'm spending that time with. And I've really just come to love that at 62 years old. And so I see these growing people that I've been honored by them working for me, and now some of their children are coming to work for me. You know what I mean? And as I read this book over and over again. I just came to this conclusion that the it was really the exit without selling was only part of the meaning of the book. And what they were trying to say is, it's hard for business owners like us that founded companies to sell our companies to, especially in this industry, to m and a firms or venture equity firms right there. Those guys just wanna buy something that's a process that makes money and keep the people going in there. But we all didn't plan on leaving. We all thought we were great Vikings, that would live it out to the end. And you have to look at what that next Viking is and then the mentorship. And so with Preston, Preston came to me as a labor. And has worked his way up to being the vice president and will. Soon as we transition this incentive rounds, he'll bolster himself to the level of president. moves up into the ladder. The incentives come in place that we're going to employ as learned from this book allow them to participate in the ownership program that. Has kept me stimulated all these years because there's one thing to come to work every day and know that LinkedIn's got a new job for me every 15 minutes. Okay. But there's nothing to come in and go, man, we built this. And when I can show people that we're not done building yet, I know it's gotten bigger, but it could be so much more we can offer so much more to the employee if we work towards this alley. It's there. So I've recently made offer to a new business manager that is a firm believer in that direction that I hope to leverage to help me employ that process over the next, year, starting March 12th. Which is my, what I call my transition year. Again, that allows everybody to step up. We still provide more mentorship, we assign more responsibility off my plate onto others plates, and during that time, they become participants in the incentive round going forward that allows them to gradually take not only just the incentive application, but ownership in the application moving forward.

Jacob Edmond 24:49

It's very clearly a very intentional, conscious, long-term process that of getting to where, one, what you just laid out that you still have ahead of you, but also what it took to get to this point where you have a Preston who clearly went through a long arc of his own of development. And there were stages I would imagine, of his development and you guys' relationship of, Hey, I see something here. I see potential. I see I, earn trust. And I'm sure there were many others along the way that came and went through your company that maybe there were glimmers of hope and then they moved on somewhere else with their career as well. And so I think that's something that is always intriguing to me, because I think too often. People get to what you ideally would be where you're at now, and it's like they're just starting that process of thinking consciously about how do I get to where you're one day I could step away and it has to be intentional.

John Mercure 25:38

And for me, it's not necessarily to step away, but it's a means of measures of stepping out and becoming a consultant. For me, it was always the vision that I wanted. To help create something that could stand on its own without me. It didn't need to be John dependent. And as you go through banking and bonding and all these other relationships there, there was so much John dependent on there. It really. Became burdens, a burdensome responsibility to bear because you really wanted to just be, this is the company. You know what I mean? And because that's what you want it to be. You want it to be the team. And so yes, it is a long-term strategy, but it's not to say that it can't happen quickly with some good result. And my hope is that when I'm done. I am now a consultant for this company and other companies that I think would be a little bit more comfortable of a job role than being a CEO in that it'll allow me to kinda share that wisdom and those lessons with folks as I enjoy the next round of Disneyland. Man,

Jacob Edmond 26:37

Yeah.

John Mercure 26:38

you know.

Jacob Edmond 26:38

No, I think that's the key is that shift of mindset of like really what you need to do to be successful in making your business attractive to sell is really the same things you should be doing to keep the business and have the business be successful. And if you're able to do that, why sell? Unless you're really just looking to cash out and go do something else. But ultimately, if you're able to successfully, it sounds as the book says, exit without selling. You've really built a business that exists outside of just one person.

John Mercure 27:07

And then that was just like, like I said, that took me many listens of that to figure it out. And in all honesty, I never even went through any of their other marketing collateral. I just went through the book and then they call me up and they go, Hey, we do a consulting service. I'm like, what? uh, We'll probably be bringing them on board during the process as well. And it looks like when I read this morning once you get through this process as well, then you actually become a consultant. And it was what I was thinking before, I just didn't know that's what their game plan was, is get these people to successfully navigate this process, then become those consultants that can educate the next group of people along the way and do it like what? I would say that man was supposed to be doing and did for much time was shared knowledge base. The scientific community used to be a big shared knowledge base. It was, your honor, to publish and share so that others could build upon your research and your efforts for greater things in higher definition. Again, we got. Corporate law involved in it. And now we're gonna hide those things no one else can get it but

Jacob Edmond 28:07

Yeah.

John Mercure 28:08

And I disagree with it, I just disagree with it philosophically, so I agree with the shared resource scenario and I hope that I can continue to do so along we're out

Jacob Edmond 28:16

Awesome.

John Mercure 28:17

and I ain't no angel.

Jacob Edmond 28:20

If you had any advice for, the young people in our industry who are at that. Fork in the road of Hey, can I make, or should I make a career in this? How do I go about making a career in this? Versus maybe I just need to go find something else. Think about yourself when you were young and at some point Hey I'm not wrestling anymore. I'm not doing music. I'm full in on this sign business. Or even a Preston in who you've mentored and worked with at some point, he went from being a laborer to, Hey, I'm gonna lead others and develop my skill set outside of just. As an individual contributor, I think that's a transition that our industry struggles with so often. What advice would you give to somebody that's at that stage of their career?

John Mercure 28:58

I talked about patience and your profit Patience and growth in the workplace is something too, because. We live in a society where we learn much faster and much more than we did before. just because we've, what the perception is I've learned this, I'm now an expert. But it's not really the truth until you practice what you've learned. Because they talk about with musicians, they're, they don't get there till 10,000 times or some, I forgot what the name of the book was. It was 10,000 or 8,000 times. Some of the coaching that my son and my brothers have gone through on their music careers is that this is a game of consistency and to continue to do that makes you better and better. And any pool player will tell you that. game of consistency and repetition makes them brilliant pool players. And the same thing goes for becoming a great mill worker or becoming a great metal worker and being able to grow. It's the best ones we have are ones like Preston who learned, he had worked at a couple other shops. He was a very young man, like 20 years old, 19, 20 years old. he'd worked at some other shops around the country doing different things. He came to here he was not afraid to stick it out for the long haul learn and perfect each skill as he went along down the road, pass it on to the next person, have them perfect it, which then allowed him a good base to climb the ladder to the next part. So now he finds himself with a nice income ownership in the company. Like I said, still on a growth curve. He's 10 years younger than me. It gives me some appreciation. Like I said, my daughter's one of those ones that learn very quickly and very aggressive, but her taper and temperament now has been like, Hey man, need to kinda stew it a little bit at this one and grow, and perfect what it is that I'm doing so that I don't leave somebody with a mess as I move upward, and then I can be a great benefit. This is a long game, not a short game, and we gotta pay for groceries and house payments forever. So my belief would be patience because so often what we've seen when we look back at our attrition ratio and the reason for employees and the reasons why they left would be, is not rapid enough growth. Other guy had better benefits than I did that particular day. Made a dollar extra per hour, right then. I'd say that out of that attrition ratio, I don't know where the numbers are exactly, but about 30% of them usually will come back and try to get a job again. That's a pretty neat turn. Out of the ones of the state, we've really got a lot, we have a good handful of 20 plus year people. We got a whole bunch of 10 year people. We got even more five year people because they also are now believing in that philosophy. We're still trying to learn how to pay'em more and provide more benefits so that they don't have the reason to want to even look to leave. And then we got a great culture for it. So their part is patience. Patience in this, but not be afraid to fail, and then learn from your mistakes and make corrections in it so that you can continue to be better and grow from the experience and not expect something, earn something.

Jacob Edmond 31:47

I think that's great advice. So there's two questions I like to ask every guest as well. The first is, what do you see changing in our industry over the next five to 10 years?

John Mercure 31:57

So I had the blessing of working in Manhattan for about 10 years. Okay. And during that particular time, I was brought up there, I'm gonna use a of a ugly word on it, brought as a scab. the idea was, is they needed exceptional resource, creative resource to achieve the functions that they had. And they didn't have people there because of how they had oppressed and put their thumb down on that environment, through the litigious nature of contracting and management and the unions and all the things that they had going on there, of crushed the spirit of that. And so they brought us in there because of that reason. And when they did, it was crazy what the experience was. And so it had, of a 300 page contract, it was a three page contract. Instead of no deposit to get started so you can buy the materials that are for that project. They welcomed the idea of providing a deposit for you, right? was this amazing transition. I believe that when I see this southeastern market that's out here and the litigious, and it's just a ultra growth area.'cause the geographical boundaries, Aren. Trapped in it like it is in the Manhattan area. So you have that condensation wealth. You have the expansion of wealth right here. All these highfalutin lawyers, developers, all contractors and stuff are gonna have, the trades are getting smarter, they're getting harder. And they're getting armed up for the battle. I'm not the only one playing these cards that I'm talking about. When I was with 800 executives out in California a few weeks back, I was, I felt I was amongst a great tribe of Vikings ready to turn and transition the market to where the trades could then start having a better hand in the relationship instead of being those that were subject to some lawyer's magical philosophy of I'm responsible for something, even if I never touched it. so as we bond together as brothers in that trade, I believe we'll change that marketplace like, like the unions did up there in some ways. And then hopefully reach a better moderated solution because none of us want a bunch of lawyers working for us. None of us want, none of us want

Jacob Edmond 33:50

Yeah.

John Mercure 33:51

We, what we wanna do is have a, we're, God made us builders and what we wanna do is go build stuff and then make somebody happy and they go, this is beautiful. Thank you. And then they pay

Jacob Edmond 34:00

Yeah.

John Mercure 34:00

It's a real simple process. It's a real, heart carpenter type experience right there that we yearn for as people. And so I believe that. If we continue to band together and if we continue to do that. And I made jokes the whole time I was in California.'cause I said, man, this is like a coalition or a cult over here, guys. We're out racing. Um, The Boxwood Derby on one of the nights, everybody's like, whoa going crazy for this, this teamwork, this comradery. As we got into together as tables, we did really share what that resource was to try to benefit each other going forward. Dude, I've been doing this a long time. I never have been enlightened like that before and I did it the last two shows with them and it's not about, hell. I can barely remember what I was talking about in software, but I remember the relationships that I was building and what we talked about in driving business forward. since those shows that I've been involved in, or workshops or whatever you wanna call'em, man, I, I've probably reached out to 10 15 of these people to have conversations, create some collusion on some projects. We could build them together because they're too big in that timeframe, things like that. It's just been great and enlightening to see that type of experience of the trades getting back together instead of just being at each other's throats, wanting to take the other piece of cheese from the other rat in the cage. And so I think, and I hope to be a spark or a fire that helps that change in the next 10 years.

Jacob Edmond 35:20

A lot more collaboration in within the trades than what we've seen over the last recent decades, it sounds

John Mercure 35:26

it's always this, it's this. It's pointing this way.

Jacob Edmond 35:29

Yeah.

John Mercure 35:29

that way, and I'm trying to, I'm going out with some of my guys. I'm like, dude, let's just, Hey, I got a great idea. Why don't we work with the framer and electrician and the

Jacob Edmond 35:36

Yeah,

John Mercure 35:36

What do you mean? I'm like, we're gonna talk to him. We're gonna go help the dude. Lay it out, man. He gets it.

Jacob Edmond 35:41

yeah.

John Mercure 35:41

Okay. Because he's looking at a set of prints where the architect's fees have been cut. They're just, and it's not perfect. It's a design. It's not a build,

Jacob Edmond 35:48

Yeah. So on the flip side, you talked about what do you think is gonna change? What do you think is gonna stay the same in our industry in the coming the near future?

John Mercure 35:55

Man, that's a good question, brother. I'm watching technology change like crazy. Instead, I'm

Jacob Edmond 36:00

I.

John Mercure 36:00

this transition of teamwork change like crazy. my belief is the art of what we do will not change. In other words, what we love as builders is a great challenge, is one of the reasons why we do it, or a lot of us do. What we look to get from other people are these brilliant pieces of change how the art of millwork or metalworker signs has been displayed. So I believe the art of that will continue to go on as it is which is one of those things. When you say change, it's always changing, but the act of it is not. still people starting with a blank piece of paper and creating something from it that lead us on our journey, and I think that will stay the same.

Jacob Edmond 36:42

Awesome. Love that insight. John, I appreciate you coming on and sharing about your story and sharing about the story of Raydeo and all that you have for our industry. And I appreciate your insight and your fervor. If there's anybody that's interested in finding out more about Raydeo or the work you guys are doing what's the best way for them to reach out and find out more?

John Mercure 36:59

You can experience us at www.Raydeo.com. That's R-A-Y-D-E o.com. That will be our best portal to get you into like I said, a lot of traffic coming in here from email resources, phone resources, right there. That kind of gives you your maneuverability that gets out there. So if you're looking for employments we have a career and opportunities page. It's being enhanced right now because we've seen how some other people are doing it to make it more interactive and pleasurable to deal with. and the other parts will lead us to that resource or, I'm still old school guys, so you can always pick up the phone and go, can I speak to John

Jacob Edmond 37:30

Yeah.

John Mercure 37:31

And I'll still answer the phone.

Jacob Edmond 37:32

Awesome. Thank you. We will make sure to leak that in the show notes. If you're listening this, you'll be able to go down and hit the link right to their website. And definitely look forward to having you on again in the future. John,

John Mercure 37:40

Very good, sir. I appreciate what you're doing and I commend you on it and keep doing the job that you're doing. Thank so much and.

Jacob Edmond 37:46

you too.