Beyond the Fence Line: Contractor Marketing Strategies from Tacoma’s Nathan Hagberg

Audio Transcription

Mark Lamberth:
Hello, welcome to another episode of the Contractor Grow Show. My name is Mark, I’m your host, and today I’m talking with Nathan Hagberg at Tacoma Fence in Tacoma, Washington. Nathan, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Nathan Hagberg:
Thank you for having me. I am in Tacoma, Washington, but it is C Coma Fence. I don’t know if I heard correctly. So

Mark Lamberth:
Se coma Fence. Okay. Right. S-E-C-O-M-A

Nathan Hagberg:
Fence.

Mark Lamberth:
Yeah. Okay, great. Great. And yeah, Nathan, I’ve taken a look at the business, what you guys are up to, looks like all kinds of interesting stuff. You guys got some great fencing solutions, they’re in Tacoma. Maybe you could tell us just about the history of the business and where you guys are at today.

Nathan Hagberg:
So back in 1978, sorry, that was the second order back in 68. The company was founded, I think it was owned by two gentlemen for about a year and a half. And then they sold out to a man named Ross Jennings. Ross Jennings was a pretty big founder in the fencing industry for, he was really known to be involved with the different fencing, industry associations. I did the National Associations and I think he even did an international association’s offense, so not really certain what that was. I don’t have a lot of understanding of the international offense industry if it’s even existence today, but he was kind of a pioneer in the idea that he wanted to be a part of that and it put our name on the map. It also created a lot of windows and opportunities as you go and you present your company to the different industries that need our services. I think he was good at using and leveraging his associations as why we should be preferred as a contractor. And then we moved on about 20 years after him owning the business. He sold to a gentleman and his wife there, Arlan and George Scarce. Arlan
Is still with us and George is not unfortunately, but they owned the company for about 25 years, I believe. I started working with George and Ireland when I was about 21. I was just a guy that moved out of California and migrated north up to here at Washington State and found an opportunity to work for them.

Mark Lamberth:
Wow. And how long ago was that, Nathan?

Nathan Hagberg:
21. Yeah, I’m 21, 23. I was either 22 or 23 when I probably started working for them and I’m 48 now, so that was a while ago. I worked as a laborer. I learned the industry, grew up in construction with my father who built homes, custom homes, and did remodel, just kind of a one man show and he had five sons and a daughter. And we all kind of learned how to just be able to put our hands into construction and learn the basics. But some of us, my siblings have gone on to have other occupations. I’m probably, me and one other brother who’s a commercial plumber is stuck in state into the construction industries. But that being said, was able to come and work as just a laborer, just doing the hard stuff and physical work. And I liked it and I enjoyed it. And prior to that I worked in the restaurant business and I had opportunities to manage people and to just be that you use that skill that you learn to communicate and to be able to be a good communicator and director at a restaurant and you translate that over to sales or possibly how you could utilize it just to engage customers and people.
So I took those skills and they saw that I had a little bit of understanding of the market, so they offered me a sales position. I was able to work directly with them in sales and kind of help grow the company and was able to find a little niche that worked for me, left for about five years in the middle, maintained a great relationship with that family, just kind of stayed tight and close and when they had an unfortunate circumstance where their son had a life basically, he had cancer and it was a short term thing and I just offered to help and do some moonlighting if they needed me to. And they actually just asked if I could come and talk to ’em about potentially buying the business. So my success and my story really is unique in this fact that these great people offered me an opportunity to take over a very well-known industry leading company and just kind of step in their shoes they almost had done for their own son and then gave me that opportunity and they not only gave me an opportunity, but gave a lot of support and a lot of guidance in helping me in getting ready to take this company to where it is today.
So

Mark Lamberth:
God, that’s amazing, man. What an amazing story. And I appreciate the heart connection, man. I feel from afar I can feel some of the different elements and how this came together and I just really appreciate kind of your I sentiment around it all and your connection with the families or the family that owned this business. Amazing. Where are you guys at today in terms of people on the team?

Nathan Hagberg:
So the company that when I started at 21, ran about three crews and they would sometimes get subs to help on some projects and they used that platform a little bit and it worked. So they would probably go from three to five crews being two main crews. And depending on the workflow and the projects they had, we definitely like to touch the industrial commercial work as much as possible. We love to do residential work, but anything residential jobs are good projects and we love to do ’em, but usually the bigger projects are the commercial and industrial work. So we definitely try to keep our name in the hat and get as many of those opportunities as we can get ourselves involved with.
We are currently staffed at about 50 employees, and I try to do almost everything where we self perform. We do act as a GC on some projects, and that really just means that we have the ability to hire subs to do work, and that includes automation, that includes some electrical, some access control, and sometimes concrete work if we are trying to help them finish a project. And it’s such if we can do the fence work, we’ll add elements as a contractor, meaning we’ll just manage these other needs that the customer has. As long as we are doing fence work as our first and our most, the reason why we’re on that site is to help ’em figure out their fencing needs.

Mark Lamberth:
Wow. Wow. I study business a lot and I’m just fascinated about how businesses grow. We have our agency here, we help contractors grow, and I’m always talking with really smart business owners, contractors that have grown their business in different ways many times just by referrals very slowly, sometimes by heavy marketing efforts and sometimes by acquisitions. And acquisitions is fascinating to me because it’s often, I mean some of the, I don’t know, great wealth in the world, if you will, has been created by acquisitions, right? Companies, they acquire other companies, individuals acquire companies, and I’m always interested, we’ve talked to people here on the show that have grown their contracting business massively by having a relationship with another maybe competitor, and they ended up buying that company and they triple the size of their business. You ultimately acquired Tacoma at some point along the way here, and inevitably that was an involved process. Would you be willing to just kind of break down a little bit about what some of the kind of due diligence was? It sounds like maybe you had never bought a business before and you came in, you had a relationship with the family that owned the business before, but what goes into buying a construction business? I mean, this’s is serious, man. There’s finance and there’s relationships and contracts and buyouts and all kinds of things. What are a few kind of highlights of the process of doing that kind of thing?

Nathan Hagberg:
So I was in a little bit of a unique situation when I came and actually was able to purchase Tacoma Fence. I was about 33 years old and the opportunity was a lot more structured based on the opportunity they created. So I didn’t have to do the heavy banking or the heavy figure out where these finances come from. It was kind of more like take on the value that they assessed it at and just make a payment. That was the beauty of that and how epic of a position I was in to just say, Hey, just show up to work hard, make your payments. We’re going to put this over a timeline that is sustainable and built for your success. Great. But along the way, you’re right, I have grown this company by having acquisitions buying other entities. Powder coating is one of those entities that was a fabrication powder coating shop that started about 20, 30 years ago, I think it was originally standard.
And the name on the front door was the Iron Gate shop. And then later it transferred hands and then another owner had it and they called it Perfection powder coating. And now we have that facility and same location and some of the same employees, but it now is seek home a powder coating. Now there’s always a good reason to either brand and keep the existing brand or to take your branding and move forward. And sometimes you’ll see transitions where you have maybe merged, like you said, these great Warren Buffet type stories where you’re buying and you’re just taking on other competitors and now you’re making them alliances and you merge the two companies. I think there’s always a reason to kind of keep those names and entities separate for a small while, but eventually I think it’s always best to fill what brand you are and who you are is probably the most important thing to be presenting to your customers.
So most of the time I would assume that you would probably eventually find a way to just keep and maintain all those relationships and then eventually put your name on the front door unless it’s just a whole nother market that really just knows that name in that market locally. I think when you’re doing this that your name’s probably the most important name on the name plate. Powder coating is one of those industries that has helped me be a little bit more set myself apart to be able to have that control to be able to utilize that service. The fabrication of our own product, meaning people ask me, well, how’s powder coating and fabrication really a part of fencing? The small and simple fact is that most fencing, it requires fabrication. One of the most important functions of a fence is the access the way to get into and through. And that often has to do with gates. And so us being able to produce those gates custom for every job, not just taking out of a stockpile or ordering it from a manufacturer and then having to make their sizes fit our projects, we just customize everything for the customer.

Mark Lamberth:
Wow, fascinating man. So for this powder code acquisition, were those guys for sale or is this something that you, I mean, you just kind of know these guys, you have a relationship with them even and you just go and say, Hey, listen, let’s kind of talk about this.

Nathan Hagberg:
So I think in my personal experiences, opportunities come to business owners just through networking, through talking and through relationships. This one came to me because the gentleman was retiring. I knew it had been for sale for a few years, and you just wear people out. If you want to get a good deal, you just become friends with them. You lightly talk about this being an option that you’d be interested in, and eventually you’re hoping that your value and your perspective of value is aligned with theirs. And there’s always a little negotiating along the way that works. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. You don’t worry about it as much as you got to want that industry, you got to want to work and make that work for you. So there’s compromises always involved in any kind of negotiation, but I do find that these opportunities come to small business owners often, and I do recommend that everybody be a little cautious on how fast they want to jump into a great deal.
Slow is better and growth is the same way for us. The 12 years that I’ve owned this company that I, or 13, 14, whatever it’s been now, it seems like time is flying by. Sustainable growth has been our, it almost just happens naturally and it just happened that we find good employees and then we’re able to find more customers and we find more customers and we find good employees. And in some years it is one more than the other, but it’s sustainable, manageable, growth. And then along the way you learn how to function at these different elevations and there’s always going to be some turbulence of growth. And then so you got to get sustainability to match up with that turbulence to smooth out the amount of people, including your HR needs, including your how many people in your office versus how many people in the field.
And those ratios need to always align. You can’t just overstack one or the other and to think that things are going to not have problems. So just be aware that there’s simple math and simple reads that you can get into that help you get perspective in all industries. So I would say use the people say maybe what is it? Nowadays we could social media or just good books, but YouTube University is often quoted, I use YouTube for the right nows. But when it comes to longer sustainable transactions, you probably just want to use good references and find good people that have experience, but know that everybody’s experiences are different. So you don’t ever want to hold somebody accountable for advice they give you. That’s really your choice as an owner. You need to own it as soon as you choose a direction. Another thing that I feel like has always worked well for me is being able to make decisions and just know that once you make a decision, you just got to go forward and find the solutions.

Mark Lamberth:
Fascinating, I love it. Regarding your guys kind of outreach efforts or just kind of ways of growing the business, it sounds like a ton of, or maybe all or most of the business has grown by referral. You guys kind had a client base to start with. I assume that people are getting kind of repeat fences built at their place, maybe 10 years apart or something somehow. But I mean, outside of referrals, are there any other ways that you’ve grown the business? You guys do any marketing, social media, paid outreach at all?

Nathan Hagberg:
So for years to people try to solicit me for work, I’d say, Hey, I love the idea that you guys have something great to offer, but at the moment, sometimes I have to tell people I’m too busy to even take on more work, so I’m not going to spend money on marketing. And a good economy can say that, and I always thought it was just us, we’re just unique. And then I find the last three years have been a little more of a struggle and it’s like, oh, I guess I’m not recession proof. So then we get into trying to leverage the history of the company and do some marketing. We do have somebody on our staff now that works on our social media and tries to keep ourselves elevated, at least actively posting and making updates to those platforms so that people could see us and see the projects we’re currently working on. It’s fencing that super exciting. Well, it is to the customer you’re working for and then once you

Mark Lamberth:
Events it is, yeah,

Nathan Hagberg:
And once you join their teams and as you stay on their thread. So it is kind of nice to grow your connections and know that you’re having opportunities to continue to grow your social platform through every customer. And then also you try to get those referrals along the way. I think if anybody in that world of trying to update your profile is going to tell you referrals are going to be huge for that growth. And so that online presence and the way that I know our Google or different engineering platforms that push these algorithms out are watching for those updates. And if you’re actively updating, you’ll be found even on Google searches better.

Mark Lamberth:
Yeah, absolutely. No doubt about that. Fantastic. And I mean you guys, we talked with some companies that I’d say most of the companies we talked to, they’re kind of big growth mode. Some companies we talked to, they’re really kind of like, look, we’re set right where we’re at, we’re maybe a multi-generational business that is kind of plateaued and we’re happy exactly where we’re at or we’re growing very slowly. I mean, are you guys thinking about growing some in the next few years or are you guys kind of in that really sustainable place of just keeping things even?

Nathan Hagberg:
So SK is probably per owner over the years have had different levels of work and the amount of work they wanted achieve. I know the previous owner was happy with the status they were at for the years they were the 25 years. They’re like, you know what? We just got these people and these are our customers. We just want to maintain those relationships and we’ll take on these residential jobs and we know that that volume equals this each year. I, on the other hand, am very actively always looking to grow. And I do it just because I feel like it helps me achieve some personal goals of just if we can be an industry leader, we should try to reach those goals. And whatever that brings, it brings. And honestly, along the way, as we do good work and as we try to be an industry leader, the growth happens and it’s just more just naturally coming.
With the growth of the company and just awareness of the company, the opportunities come. I do know that sometimes when you grow and people, you get these solicitations, most business owners would agree that banks are going to call you, that these finance companies want to give you and lend you money. I have a banking institution that we use, and I find that whatever banking institution you’re using is usually the best place to get these resources and these needs. All these other platforms, I’m not trying to not create opportunity for them, but the big success is develop a relationship with your personal banker. Because if they’re the ones that are always going to be able to answer questions and help navigate you through tough, they’ll help you grow. And whether you’re doing an SDA loan, which I’ve done once before, or you’re able to just use a different type of a loan if you need it, just know the bankers that you’ve already associated with, that you’ve already started with at a small level of just a checking account, business checking account. They will help you grow. You leverage any relationship that you have if you engage your network of people, most of the time people want to see people succeed. I find that if you just let people know what you’re trying to accomplish, all kinds of people are willing to help.

Mark Lamberth:
Amazing, man, that is amazing advice. It is awesome, Nathan. I dunno, I’m just really feeling it and I just get really the wisdom here. I mean, you’ve been around doing this for a long, long time. You’ve been in this industry it very, very well. You developed a great relationship with a family that you had worked with for a long time and they approached you and said, Hey, we really trust you. This is what’s going on for us. We want some new ownership here in the company. And that has worked out great for them and for you. And you’ve gone on and acquired some other companies. Man, it’s awesome. I personally have the experience of being able to talk with just a lot of really smart business owners that have created just a great brand for themselves in the marketplace and just employing people and just helping their community. And I can tell that that’s what’s going on with you too. So Amanda, it’s an honor to talk with you today. Great stuff, Nathan. Thank you. If folks are in the Tacoma area and are looking for a fencing solution, whether it be an industrial or commercial application that a company or a school perhaps is looking for, or if it’s a residential homeowner that’s looking to get some fencing done at their place or just learn more about what you guys offer, what are a couple of great ways to get in touch with you guys?

Nathan Hagberg:
So definitely tacoma fence.com is going to give you our website and then all of the channels, all the different services should be listed right there. We have
A lot of information on our website. We also, you can just reach us out. Our phone number has been the same for about 50 years at (253) 926-8600. We answer our phones every day. We don’t even use the computer system, the fake. We’re answering our calls. We’re open Monday through Friday. And whether you need just a small fitting or advice, our doors are open. We’re willing to work through your problems and your projects, whether it’s just a material cash sale, we are open to the consumer every day and we can sell you parts for you to do it yourself. And we just take pride in the $1 sale as much as we do the $100,000 sale because we just feel like we offer that service that our name will continue to be passed around. And I think that’s probably in the fencing industry, that name tag, that’s on every corner of every fence we install, or just the idea of sharing through an over the counter, the name gets passed along and the more natural it is through referrals and through recommendations, the more likely you’re going to get that first opportunity to give a price to produce the project.

Mark Lamberth:
That’s fantastic. So that’s tacoma fin.com. It’s with S-E-C-O-M-A, Tacoma fin.com. And you may get an opportunity to talk with Nathan Hagberg, probably talk with a couple of folks on his team first, but one way or the other. Great company doing great work in Tacoma and this has been a great interview, lot of really just great pieces of wisdom in here. So Nathan, thank you so much for being on the show today. And folks, if you’re looking for a fencing solution, take a look@tacomafence.com.

Another great interview you can check out is Arizona’s Finest Roofing & Contractor Marketing Insights with Danny Clark. 

Nathan Hagberg:
Hey, thanks for having me, mark. I really did enjoy this conversation.

Mark Lamberth:
Okay, great. Have a great rest of your day, man.

Nathan Hagberg:
Thank you. Bye.