How an Entrepreneur Created a unique Pre-Cast Wall-Building System in a Commoditized industry

Audio Transcript

Mark Lamberth
Okay, and thank you and welcome to another episode of the Contractor Grow Show. My name is Mark Lamberth. I’m your host, and today we’ve got a great guest on, his name is Mike Sharp. He is from Verte, Crete and Verte Block. He’s based out of Utah, and he’s got an interesting story. We’ve done a lot of research. Welcome Mike to the podcast. Thank you for being here.

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Mike Sharp
Thank you, mark. I really appreciate you having me.

Mark Lamberth
Fantastic. So Mike, maybe you could just tell us, I’ve got, like I say, I’ve been all over your website and all over your social stuff. Maybe you could just tell us a little bit about the business and what you guys are up to.

Mike Sharp
Well, we’ve been doing this for, I guess we started about 20 years ago actually. We began in the precast business actually making window wells out of concrete here in Salt Lake City, but then quickly branched out into trying to provide a concrete panel for a sound wall, sound abatement, something that was really, really durable. And we thought we were pretty cute because we could put a form liner down in a steel bed and make it really, really decorative on one side. But that’s the problem. Most of these concrete panels are poured in a steel bed and you can acquire a form liner to make it look like just about anything, stone, wood or brick. But the trick is what do you do with the other side? Because when you tilt that panel up and you got to decide, well, which neighbor gets the good looking side, right?

Mike Sharp
So we felt like we needed to do something else to be able to make that a little more versatile. So we decided to develop a vertical form and discovered that we could actually pour that panel in a vertical position and get a molded texture on both sides of that panel. And while we were at it, the form work that would be required to hold that pressure so that you didn’t have to have any tie rods or anything like that, we could actually put panels side by side like stacked up or a stacker or it’s actually called a battery mold. So the same amount of form work that you would need to hold one panel, you could do four or five or six or eight. We actually do eight to 10 at a time, and the pressures cancel out against each other. So you get a solid monolithic six foot or eight foot tall by 12 foot long panel, no tie rods, nothing interfering with that texture, and it just looks beautiful.

Mike Sharp
So anyway, that’s kind of how we got started. We actually developed this for our own use here in Utah, and it really took off and we started getting attention from people other precasters around the country saying, Hey, I’m way over here. I’m not your competitor. Why don’t you consider maybe making me a set of those forms and I could do the same thing over here. And we thought, man, that is a great idea. What we ought to do is move that intellectual property in the technology. We had a few patents on how we did it, move that over into a separate company called it Rete, which stands for vertical concrete because we poured these panels in a vertical position and went from there. So then we started making these forms and licensing their use all over the country and now all over the world.

Mark Lamberth
Interesting. I love it. And I love it. Fantastic. Okay. And then reading off your site, I saw Verre is the leading producer of vertically poured precast concrete wall and form systems. We’re pleased to offer and help our licensed providers create beautifully patterned decorative concrete walls for both commercial and residential applications. So there’s beautiful photos on your site of the work that you guys do. So basically, if a builder wants to build retaining walls, I mean, you’ve got a few different products and we’ll kind of unpack this, but it’s a way for folks to have a beautiful sort of stone wall around their property and other applications that’s got the stamped beautiful pattern on both sides. It can be stained to then look like just stone work. Exactly.

Mike Sharp
It’s

Mark Lamberth
Hard to tell that it’s not stone work.

Mike Sharp
It really is

Mark Lamberth
Hard tell that.

Mike Sharp
Favorite thing is

Mark Lamberth
When people, it’s very high quality,

Mike Sharp
They come and take a look at it and put their hands on it. And again, this thing is these walls are designed to look just like natural stone. In fact, we manufacture all of our own form liner and we take impressions from real rock and then lay those impressions out on a master mold and create the illusion of grout in between them. So when you actually cast the form liner on it, it picks up every detail. And then in the vertical form, the rete form system, you pour concrete in there and when you demold it, it picks up all the detail of that natural rock and the grout joint in between. It’s incredible. I mean, people will put their hands on it and swear that it is real hand-laid masonry, but it is a fraction of the cost. I mean, it’s got to be maybe a third or a fourth, the cost of a real masonry wall. And it’s so much faster. I mean, a crew of three guys can typically install about 500 lineal feet in a day. It’s very, very efficient. And we see this mostly around subdivisions, something where you want to create that look of a gated community, some individual high-end homes, certainly between a lot of homes along the busier streets like the arterial streets into new subdivisions where you need a little sound barrier between that busy street and the back of those homes. That’s probably the most popular application, I think, for these walls.

Mark Lamberth
Okay, interesting. And it seems like they’ve done a better job like sound walls on the interstate. They’re no longer just straight concrete. Now they’ve got some stamped stonework in there, but you can always tell that it’s a mold that is replicated over and over again. And I took a look at your photos of the work that you guys do. I mean, I suppose it’s because you take a mold of a real concrete wall to start out with. I mean, there’s no sort of repetition in the walls.

Mike Sharp
Yeah, thank you. That is something we take a lot of pride in because you’re right. What you don’t want to see is you’re going down the road because you’re doing the same panel over and over again. You don’t want to see a repetition. And so part of that is because we do use natural stone, we don’t a lot of form liner companies carve their rock or their stone out of clay because it’s faster, it’s easier.

Mike Sharp
We take a little bit a harder road, which takes a little longer to do once to get the mold. But once you get it, it is so much more realistic. But the other thing that you, you’re pointing out is that you don’t want to see a repeat pattern. We actually call whenever there’s something that really sticks out at you. We call that a monkey face. And that actually comes from a cobblestone mold that we did many, many years ago where literally one of the stones looked like the face of a monkey, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it. So you just see that thing over and over. Every time we make a new mold, everybody lines up and inspects it and say, we all look for the monkey face. What is going to stick out at you if you see this thing over and over and over again?

Mike Sharp
Where’s the monkey face? We got to get rid of it right now. And we do a really good job of that. I think I’m really proud of ’em. They do a good job making sure that nothing stands out like that. We know this is going to be used down, repeated over and over again, especially in a boundary wall or a fence where you’ve got hundreds of probably even thousands of lineal feet. Things are going to a sore thumb or a monkey face will stick out. But the other thing that you brought up earlier was that we do stain it. We use a concrete stain that you apply to the wall after it’s installed, and that will help you even randomize it even a little more. So if there was something that may catch your attention, well, you’ll see it slightly differently on each panel and it completely blends. Looks so natural.

Mark Lamberth
Wow, beautiful. Yeah, it’s almost as if I was really looking at that and wondering if the same stone would be the same color after the standing and whatnot. But no, I can see that it’s really, I mean, it’s patterned beautifully and it’s remarkable. I mean, I love stone stone walls. I’ve done a lot of stonework myself way back in the day, and dry grout, grout, different types of stone retaining walls, and I just love that stuff. So the concrete panels, I mean these are not load bearing, these are for landscaping and or retaining walls. Is that correct? Or can you also build houses out of them?

Mike Sharp
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, they’re intended to be freestanding boundary walls. So I guess you could say they would just be described as non-structural in that they’re just holding themselves up,

Mike Sharp
But they’re pretty heavy. I mean, each one of these panels is about 4,000 pounds, and the posts are, they’re 20 inches by 20 inches, so they’re very stout. They’ve got a really good stable base to them, and they’re installed on top of a peer footing. But the columns, they’re 1600 pounds each, so it’s got a lot of weight to it. But the nice thing about it is that they can be reinforced so they can handle wind loads. I mean, actually they can handle wind loads up to 180 miles an hour. I mean, we’ve got engineering and applications in the Caribbean and in Dade County, Florida down in Miami where they’ve got hurricane wind loads, they’ve got a design for, and it’s very easy to design this to be able to withstand that level of wind load, which is extraordinary. I mean, there’s nowhere else in the country you have to design for that kind of pressure or that kind of wind load. So it can comfortably handle any of those things. So here in the west where you might see a lot of wood or vinyl PVC fencing, that tends to warp and the sun does a number on those things. They don’t last forever.

Mike Sharp
So you get a big windstorm here in the west and you’ll see a few of those things knocked over. They just can’t handle that. You’ll not see a rete wall knocked over.

Mark Lamberth
Right. I believe that. Okay, interesting. And so I took a look at your backgrounds and I think it’s a curious part of the story. I mean, you came from a background in investment banking. I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. Yeah, I’m happy to. But tell me a little bit about how the business works. So I mean, you’ve got a few different offerings. It looks like you guys do kind of fulfillment work, build walls. You’ve got a team in Salt Lake, but then you’ve got really a couple of product lines, verti, Crete and Verti Block, and you actually franchise those out to builders in different areas. How does that all

Mike Sharp
Work? Yeah, so we do have our own precast plant here in Salt Lake City where we’re pouring about a thousand lineal feet a day of precast rete fence and supplying Northern Utah primarily. Then we also make our block product as well. So how it works is that, again, we have our own precast plant here, but then Rete really is a manufacturer of the mold and form system. So we supply our own precast plant here in Salt Lake, Olympus, precast, and then we have licensed manufacturers. So it’s like a franchise except most of our customers, most of our producers are people that are already in the building, contracting or in the precast business, and they’re looking for something else. To add to that. A lot of our customers, I’d say certainly the majority of them are already precasting something. So they already know how to pour things out of concrete.

Mike Sharp
They understand they’ve got the yard, the facility, they’ve got the forklifts, they’ve got the overhead lifting capacity so they can handle heavy things. They know how to pour concrete. But I’ll tell you, these guys don’t know how to market. They just don’t. Their idea of sales and marketing is answering a phone call saying, would you like to price on this? You like to bid this project. They just don’t know how to get out there and promote a new proprietary product. So what we offer them is a unique proprietary, decorative aesthetic product that is an architectural precast product that is very, very unique. And we provide them the marketing materials and support, engineering support promotional items. So we give them kind of a turnkey product, but most of these people are already in business, so they don’t want a franchise business. They want a licensed product that they can add to what they’re already making.

Mark Lamberth
Okay, interesting. And I like the way that you kind of frame that. So here from the marketing world, we talk with remodelers and contractors all day about remarketing and marketing growing their business. And one thing that we talk about is that better isn’t better, different is better. And so everybody’s out saying, we’re the best, we’re the best. However, what we find is that most consumers or most buyers, they’re really curious about what’s different, what’s new in the marketplace that they haven’t seen before. So especially with the pouring on both sides and the way that you guys have set this up, sounds like you’re really offering your partners sort of a different product that’s not really available in the marketplace. Is that right?

Mike Sharp
You’re right. So that is a good point to bring up is that you, everybody is going to argue that their product’s better, their product’s better, but the customer doesn’t believe you. They just don’t. They’re not dumb. They know that everybody’s going to say that. So it is important to show them why they’re getting more for their money. So we like to explain to people when we’re showing them the offering of what we can provide in the way of a precast fence, we like to show them how we make it, explain that traditionally these things are poured in a horizontal bed, and most people get that. Most people understand that they’ve seen concrete panels post and panel for many, many years, but when you get the decorative molded texture on both sides, they know that’s different. And it’s important to explain to them, we have built a better mousetrap.

Mike Sharp
There’s a reason you’re getting more for your money because not only do you get that molded texture on both sides, but what we’ve discovered is that when we’re using it on a daily basis as a precaster, when you’re casting this thing day in, day out, well what you used to need a football field full of steel beds to be able to cast you now do in the space of one of those beds. I mean, one of our stacker systems only takes the space of about, it’s like 10 feet, 14 feet, and you can do a hundred lineal feet in this very small space, and then the labor goes down because again, you’re not t trailing off the back sc screening it off, trailing it off, making sure that you get a nice finish. Well, now you’re pouring it in a vertical battery mold. All you do is just use a little margin trial, scrape off the top, give it a quick broom finish, and it’s done. So the labor, the total production cost is cut by about 60 to 65%. So it’s a huge savings in production cost, and you get a better looking product. So there’s a reason the customer’s getting something better looking and more durable at really the same or even a lower cost than the alternative.

Mark Lamberth
Amazing. And the reason why you’re able to save so much footprint of the project is because you’re pouring vertically, not laying these panels out horizontally and pouring them.

Mike Sharp
That’s the trick, because pouring it in a vertical position, the reason why other people don’t do it is it’s hard to figure out. We’ve put a lot of energy into figuring out how to make a form that handles the hydrostatic pressure of that concrete. Any concrete contractor at their nose that your enemy is that thing blowing out your forms want to blow out.

Mark Lamberth
Oh man, I’ve had my share of those too. That is the worst nightmare.

Mike Sharp
Every time you think of a blowout, you think, oh, I’ve been there. I’ve lost the form. Because of that, it’s rough. So they know that, and that’s why these things are generally designed with tie rods to be able to hold the form together. Well, we’ve figured out a way to be able to handle all that pressure and designed a better form so that it can handle that without any tie rod. And it’s the same every time. It is a beautiful finish, just incredible. So it’s really a more space efficient and labor efficient system that just gives you the same quality every single time. So it is a little bit more expensive upfront because the forming system is a meaningful investment, but over time, you make that up many times over.

Mark Lamberth
Wow, amazing. I mean, obviously the columns have to be poured like to spec. I mean, there’s a write on measurement or set write on measurement so that after the panels are poured, there’s just slide right down in between the columns.

Mike Sharp
Let me tell you about that because that’s one of the things that’s really cool about the installation method is that the columns are hollow. They’re poured with a hollow tapered center. So what you do is on site, you drill with an auger, like on a mini excavator every 13 feet, two inches. You do a two foot wide hole, and depending on the soil condition and the height of the wall, it could be three to four feet deep. So you’re digging that in undisturbed soil and then just squaring off the top. So what’s poured in place is simply a pure footing, and then you embed one or two pieces of rebar right in the middle, come back the next day, and you set your column over that rebar, but your hole, you’ve got about a six inch diameter hole in the bottom of that column. So that rebars just got to be somewhere in there.

Mike Sharp
So you’ve got a lot of latitude. So if you’re off just a little bit one way or the other, it’s okay. You can make adjustments as you’re doing it. And the other thing that’s unique is that for our system, you’re not setting all of your columns and then coming back and placing your panels for us, you set a column, try to get it exactly where you want it to be, and then you come in and bring in a panel and then a column, and then a panel, and then a column, and then a panel. So you’re doing it time and as you go, if you need to make adjustments one way or the other, you just shim it up or do whatever. And then after your entire line is installed, you fill each column with concrete to grout it down, and that’s what secures it to the footing. So it’s a very forgiving installation method. The traditional method is you set all your columns and man, I hope I got ’em right. I hope they’re all straight.

Mark Lamberth
Right,

Mike Sharp
Exactly where they’re supposed to be because the next day when you come back and set your panels, those guys are not going to be happy if you’re off a half an inch one way or the other. So with ours, you don’t have to worry about that. You literally set it and square it up as you go, which makes it much more efficient, faster, more forgiving. And the thing is to fill each column with concrete, it’s only about one cubic foot of concrete. The grout, it’s a very small amount, so you just got to fill it up to above the level of rebar, which is about three feet high, and you’re done. I mean, it’s just really quick and very forgiving.

Mark Lamberth
Amazing, amazing. Interesting. So Mike, how many folks do you have on your team approximately? Maybe it fluctuates Up and down

Mike Sharp
Here in our manufacturing plant, we’ve got about 22 people, but we do all of our fabrication here. We do all our steel fabrication, we do our laser cutting, press break bending, all of our forms. We have a robotic welding cell that does most of our welding now to make sure that we’re consistent. When I say most of our welding, that’s not true because we have a full row. We got a lot of fabricators here in our steel fab shop, but a lot of the heavy lifting is now done with the robot, which gives you a very, very consistent bead. So the quality of the form is just amazing. We’ve come a long way in the last 20 years, but like I said, we also pour all of our own polyurethane. So we marry these things together into a system that you just can’t get it anywhere else.

Mike Sharp
But I’ll tell you one thing you brought up a few minutes ago. Many of our producers have been using our precast fencing. Of course, it’s primarily designed for a boundary wall or a sound attenuation, but on occasion you’ve got changes in elevation on the grade and you need to use some earth retaining. And many of our producers are starting to use our post and panel ti crate system for earth retaining, and it can be done, but it’s not ideal. Each one has designed and engineered from scratch, and again, it can be done, but there’s modifications that have got to be made. Sometimes the panel’s got to be thicker, the footing’s got to be different, so it’s a little bit challenging, and that’s what prompted us to develop a different system. We’ve discovered that the big block segmental retaining system is just a much more efficient way to go. It’s easier to do, it’s more flexible. It’s just a lot easier to hold that earth back because in anything in earth retaining, you’re fighting mother nature, you’re fighting that soil and it’s got a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure. So that’s why we develop.

Mark Lamberth
Interesting. So now we’re talking about your other product that you offer. So you have Rete, which is kind of vertical poured walls. These are kind of large panels, and you also have Verta block, which is a poured, I think two by three more or less foot block that is meant for stacking, and this is more for landscaping purposes.

Mike Sharp
It’s all for earth retaining. Exactly. You’re not going to use this for a boundary wall. This is all for holding the soil back. So we use ’em a lot here in the mountain west for walkout basements. So you’ve got a walkout basement and you’ve got to do something to retain the soil. And so we use a lot of Verta block for that application for earth retaining. Then there’s a lot of commercial applications. Again, it’s where you need to have flat ground usable space. Maybe it’s a backyard, maybe it’s a parking lot, or maybe you want to build something up so you’ve got more yard, more backyard. So they build up the backyard, but it’s all for earth retaining. You’re right. It is a two foot tall block, four foot wide, and the standard block is three feet deep. But the trick or the key that we wanted to come up with was something that would have a mechanical connection.

Mike Sharp
It’s got a male female connection, so they interlock kind of like Lego blocks. But the problem with retaining walls is that in order to do a gravity wall, you need a big heavy block. The heavier the better, right? Well, when you’re making a big heavy block, they’re harder to handle. It’s a lot of concrete, which is a lot of material cost, and they’re very heavy, so it makes it very expensive to ship. So what we developed was a hollow block system. Now that was not that easy, but there’s some significant advantages to it. What we’re able to do is make a block that is three feet deep, but yet it’s only about 1700 pounds. It would be if you were to compare one of our vertebra block systems because it’s hollow, and yet it’s still pretty deep, but fairly light. If you were to compare this to any other solid big block system, any block that’s solid, if you were to add ’em all up and say we’re doing an eight or 10 foot tall gravity wall.

Mike Sharp
So if you design that with our Verta block system, with the engineering that supports that with any kind of a solid block, Verta block would be 52% of the concrete that is half the material cost and half the transportation cost, and yet still light enough to handle with a mini excavator. So your installation cost is faster. Here’s the thing where you get to have your cake and eat it too, is that the block? Because it’s hollow, you would think, well, okay, if it’s lighter, that means it’s not going to work as well. It means it’s not going to hold back as much of the hill, but our block is filled with gravel. So once you have it installed, or once you place your course, you fill that with gravel, and this is the same gravel that you have to have on site anyway for drainage. So any other kind of retaining wall, any kind of retaining wall, you have got to have gravel behind that wall so that water drains away from the wall. The hydro,

Mark Lamberth
That hydrostatic pressure is just going to just warp the wall right out

Mike Sharp
Every time. That is the achilles heel of any retaining wall you think of any wall that you’ve ever seen that is blown out. It was because the hydrostatic pressure behind it build up too much and they didn’t design properly for it. So for ours, we put that gravel in the block. So the drainage happens in the block, so you’re not using any additional stone. You’re using the same stone you have to have on site anyway, so you really do get to have your cake and eat it too. I get a lighter weight block that’s easier to ship, easier to handle, and less money to produce, but yet it weighs basically the same as a solid block, and I’m only using the material that I had to have there. Anyway.

Mark Lamberth
Amazing. And the Verta block as well has got the textured still textured on both sides, so it’s got the same really authentic look.

Mike Sharp
That’s what we worked on for so long before we introduced this product is that we wanted to have a block that was poured face down. That way when you’re pouring it, you vibrate the form and all those air bubbles come away from the face of the block. So we’ve got a five inch deep relief on the face of our block, and we have several different textures, but there’s a one called Canyon Ledge, which is a very rustic deep stone texture, which is really, really attractive. But again, it’s poured face down. So as you vibrate, you get a beautiful finish every time. It looks incredible, amazing getting a hollow core that comes in the side. That’s the challenge. That’s the proprietary nature of our form, is that we developed a system where we’re able to make a taper core that would slightly collapse as you removed it, and that enables you to precast it, but yet demold it the next day. So having that hollow core come in from the side enabled us to have a hollow block, but it had a really deep, beautiful texture that’s poured on the bottom as you pull it out of the form and rotate it, then you’ve got it the right way. You’ve got a hollow core block and a beautiful texture.

Mark Lamberth
Amazing. And so the Rete as well as the Verta block, your licensee’s, your licensed users, say somebody’s in Atlanta, they’re going to pour Rete or Verta block. They’re in Atlanta. They’re not going to get the Verta block sent to them from Utah. No,

Mike Sharp
No. That’s the thing is that concrete is so heavy to ship that our business model is based on we’ll make the mold, we’ll make the difficult thing, the thing that it’s taken a lot of energy to design and to mold, and a lot of artistic talent goes into it. We’ll create that here and then we ship that out to a producer in Atlanta or in North Carolina or in New York or Dallas or wherever. So then you have the forms there and you make your own concrete. You can buy it from a local ready mix company or you can batch it yourself. That’s the heavy part. So that’s what you’re going to make there locally, so that your transportation costs are minimal. You don’t want to ship that all the way from Utah.

Mark Lamberth
I love it. Right, of course. Amazing. So one thing I saw, Mike, is your background in investment banking, and that’s always really intriguing to me because I mean, I used to be a mortgage banker way back in the day. I did a lot of hard money lending for real estate back in Oregon way back when, but the different businesses that we’ve owned over the years, we’ve approached, tried to approach at that kind of higher level that I think I get the sense that maybe you’re doing as well, at least at some extent, and that is, I mean, there’s the product that the business sells, but the business itself is also a product, right? Well, kind of you’re right. Such that it’s designed to be What happened was, oh no, go ahead, Mike.

Mike Sharp
Well, what I was going to say is that, again, my background is in investment banking. I actually have my undergraduate degree from BYU in economics, and then I got an MBA at Utah State. I worked for a few years for a heavy highway contractor as a assistant controller. So I worked in accounting for a few years. Not my favorite place to be. It was a little rough environment, but man, I learned a lot about accounting. I’ll tell you that. I learned a lot, but I felt like I needed to do something else, and I was looking and looking, and then I stumbled upon this opportunity to get involved in investment banking. There was a gentleman up in Washington that was opening up a new location in Salt Lake City. So I joined the company and yeah, that’s what we did. It was mergers and acquisitions.

Mike Sharp
I worked my way quickly up to managing director, and what we did was bought and sold private companies, and it’s an exciting business. It’s fun. You get to learn a ton about these companies, but effectively what you’re doing is selling a stream of cash flows, not selling assets really or equipment. I’m selling a business, which is a going concern that has an enterprise value based on the discounted cash flow of its future earnings. So you’re really selling a stream of cash flows in this business. It’s not just a business opportunity. It’s a going concern right now. From there, if you can extend that a little bit forward, what Rete was designed to do was to sell kind of a business model. So that’s why it was a natural extension. I had already, I’d been doing that for many, many years and then had began branching out into private equity.

Mike Sharp
And around that time, a buddy of mine that I knew from many, many years prior who I knew was in the sand and gravel and ReadyMix business and precast business, they had developed this vertical battery mold, and he approached me and said, man, I know you’re itching to do more things, and I just wanted to maybe have you come talk to me about what we’re doing down here. We just started this new company, and it had been like a year or so, and they just started this new thing, and it’s a different ballgame. What these guys were used to doing was selling to local contractors, selling Santa gravel, selling ready mix, selling precast to local contractors. But they had formed this new company, and it’s different. You’re selling a business model, you’re selling a licensed product, which is a stream of cash flows, what can be.

Mike Sharp
So it was a bit out of their scope, and he really wanted some help to figure out how to position it or where to take it or how they might be able to make this model work. So I came down and met with him, and at first I thought, well, let me give you some counsel as like as a consultant, let me give you some direction. We kept talking and kept talking, and it just kind of hit me. We’ve got a proprietary product here, patented, and we’re selling a stream of cashflow effectively to business owners. I thought this is a good investment. So we worked out a way for me to buy into company, and now I’m responsible for it. So I’m the president of the company now, and what we started with, I think before I joined them, they had four or five licensees, and we’ve got over a hundred now all over the world, all across North America, into Australia, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Ireland. We’ve got ’em just in Abu Dhabi, Algeria. It’s really, really grown, and it’s been a really fun business to leverage and take off. I mean, already they’d already developed this vertical battery molt for Rete when I got involved, but we’ve rebranded things and really, really expanded it. And then after a few years, we developed this retaining block system, which is now, it’s now more than half of our business. I mean, the Verta block has become the dominant product. It has just really, really taken off.

Mark Lamberth
Wow, amazing. And then regarding your background in buying and selling businesses and understanding things at a higher level, I mean, that’s really what I’m getting at here, and I appreciate that because a lot of business owners are in the trenches. They just see the product they sell and they’re just thinking about it at that level, whereas someone coming from an investment banking background understands the idea of cash flows and even your licensees, the people that are licensed with you guys to sell these products. I imagine that, and I think you’ve touched on this a little bit already, but that the way that you’re approaching business and the understanding that you have, you’ve actually kind of extended to them some of the benefit of having of a business that’s just well run, kind a productized that it’s kind of a unique offer. You actually offer the marketing materials to them. I mean, how do your licensees benefit from your approach and this kind of private equity approach view of business?

Mike Sharp
Well, we certainly try to do that, right? I think these guys, again, the people we’re generally selling to, these are hardworking, smart people. They’re really no concrete, and man, they’re problem solvers. Yeah, they tend to be more reactive. Again, they’re smart, hardworking people, but they tend to react to the market, and that will only take you so far, and it also keeps you in an arena of products that are just, they’re commodities. People are calling you to see if they can get a price on the same thing they can get down the road. How high can your margins be if you’re really selling the exact same thing they can get down the road. So what we offer them is something a little bit different that’ll give them higher margins and enable them to have something that really takes them much further down the road. It’s much more sustainable.

Mike Sharp
There’s a barrier to entry there. Our Verta block system is a very unique design, and it enables them to provide a product where their customer gets more for their money, and so they can’t go down the street and find something that’s comparable for the same price because it’s very, very unique. So that enables ’em to get better margin. So we’re teaching them to you core competency, which is in precasting, pouring concrete and being able to understand how to make that and maybe even including the installation. So those are the things they do well. They know how to do it. They can do it day in and day out. They understand their costs. They know how to get a good quality product every time, and we’re giving them some tools to enable them to do something that they weren’t otherwise equipped to do, which is build out their product offering with something that is unique and proprietary that is defendable. There’s a real barrier to entry there that enables ’em to be able to charge a more appropriate price. Again, you always want to charge a fair price, but it’s nice to have a little healthier margin there. And the best part about it is that they’re able to give the customer a product that is better than anything they can get, and they’re paying less for it, and the producer is making more on it, so they’re making higher margin and the customer is paying less. I mean, everybody wins in that application.

Mark Lamberth
That is amazing, man. I love you. You’re talking my language. I love everything you’re saying to your bike. It’s awesome.

Mike Sharp
Oh, thank you.

Mark Lamberth
So you guys have been around for, I think 22 years now. You’ve got a great website. I mean, you’ve got a good team, 22 plus folks on your team. A few different things. I mean, regarding growing the business and our listeners, remodelers contractors, they want to know how to grow their business, and we work kind of in the online space. So I imagine a lot of your business has grown by referral. How else has your business grown? I mean, what is working for you to grow rete?

Mike Sharp
Well, I’ll tell you what is really helping us is the fact that our product works well where labor is expensive, okay? Like I said, we’ve grown internationally, but the markets where we’ve really, really thrive are places where labor is difficult to get, or it’s expensive or it’s hard to train or it’s hard to retain people. So here in North America, we hear this over and over again, that contractors, especially in the retaining block situation, there’s so many really good talented landscape contractors or retaining wall or geotechnical contractors that there’s only so much capacity that they have because it’s hard to find labor. They’ve got a good crew, but they wouldn’t be able to double their revenue because they couldn’t double their staff. They can’t find that many talented people that are willing to do this work. So when we introduce them, this product, they see, wait a second, I can install this so much faster with less labor because these blocks are not hand laid.

Mike Sharp
You lay ’em with machinery with a bobcat, a skid-steer or mini excavator, and a crew of two to three guys can install on average, I’d say about a hundred blocks or close to a thousand square feet a day. So they’re typically doing on average. There was a project I was using as an example recently. It’s a fairly sizable project. It was a really nice straight wall, big project. So it’s kind of an ideal scenario where everything’s lined up, this thing is humming, but these guys were installing about 135 blocks a day, and at eight square feet, you’re a little over a thousand square feet a day. Now, that’s kind of an ideal scenario, but if you think about the traditional way to do a retaining wall where you’re hand laying these dry cast blocks, I mean, how much labor would you need to able to do a thousand feet, a thousand square feet in a day? So the people that we’re promoting this product to these contractors, they can just do a lot more with less labor. And so again, they win as well. They’re able to expand, increase their revenue without having to increase their headcount because it’s hard to do.

Mark Lamberth
Okay, great. And I mean that sounds like it’s got a lot of word of mouth just by the business model itself. People love it and telling other contractors about it. Do you guys do any type of outreach trade shows?

Mike Sharp
Well, there’s a few things like that. So we do trade shows. There’s several in the trade, the pre-cast show, world of Concrete Bama for the international shows Inter Mat, and then the Expo, which is in Vegas. So we do quite a few trade shows, which are always good. It seems like you always meet people that you otherwise wouldn’t have found. So it’s a really good place to gather people together. Those are all good shows. We’ve also done quite a few editorial pieces in trade publications, which are much better than the traditional paid advertising. Whatever you see a half page ad or a full page ad or one of these trade pubs, you look at it and go, okay, that gives me a brand identity. It gives you a little bit of exposure, but when you can use a case study as an interesting example of a problem that was solved, these guys are all looking for content.

Mike Sharp
They’re looking for interesting stories that educate their reader base. People want to learn from these examples. So if you can provide the content and really, really high quality writing these guys, they’ll use your editorial pieces and you’ll be able to educate people better and it’s better recognition for your product out there. So that’s been really good for us. And then on the internet, people find us a lot and we promote quite a bit through social media. So all those sources have been very good for us to get the word out. YouTube has been amazing. I have got to tell you a quick story. So I was looking, I’m amazed at how many things people share with me about a project I had no idea about. Just amazing the different Verte block projects that are out there. And so I thought I need to spend a little more time just searching the term, the search term, just to see maybe there’s other projects out there that I’d love to hear about.

Mike Sharp
So I stumbled upon this project. It was something in Kentucky, this contractor who I’d never met, but he must’ve got some new video equipment because my goodness, the imagery was gorgeous. I mean, it was beautiful. It was just artwork. This guy should be a cinematographer. I mean, he was amazing. He could use some help with his editing, but the beauty of how the angles and how he was capturing everything and he was giving step by step about how he was building this retaining wall. It was just beautiful. Anyway, I fast forward to the end and I fast forward to the end. I thought, man, he’s like a 45 minute video. I go through and I’m trying to capture these things and I notice at the end he’s standing by his truck and he’s got a Bible open and I go, oh my what? I back up a little bit, put the audio. What are we talking about now? Where are we taking this? Anyway, he finishes his video with a devotional using the foundation of this retaining wall as a metaphor for his Christian faith, and I thought, this is amazing. I just blown away. I thought, man, the scope of people that are using Verta Block is just heartwarming, and then that he’s using this as a metaphor for something good to increase people’s faith. I thought that was wonderful. I loved it,

Mark Lamberth
Man. That’s touching. That is beautiful. I love it. Well, fantastic. So if a builder is looking for a unique solution for mean all the different unique aspects, we’ve talked about a beautiful sort of landscaping wall that would be poured or a retaining wall, also landscaping, which like VER block, if they’re looking for Verde cre Verde block, and they have heard what you’ve talked about here. I mean, it’s fascinating. I want to go do more research on, I’m definitely going to be referring you guys, some folks that we talked to. It’s I love unique solutions to kind of commoditized problems. It gets out of that commodity box and adds value, and it’s kind of a win-win for everybody. If someone is looking for that solution or just want to get in touch with you to learn more about what you guys are doing. If someone’s in Salt Lake City, they’re looking for some local work to be done, what’s the best way to get in touch with you?

Mike Sharp
Well, first of all, easily through our website or just give us a call, man, we’d love to show you what we do here. Anybody who’s interested in getting involved, we would love to have them come by and have a tour. There is a lot of information on our websites both for Verti, Crete and Verta Block about how to become a manufacturer. So take a look there, send us a note or just, man, give me a call. Give us a visit. We’d love to show you what we’re doing it. It’s a really exciting business and it’s been fun to be involved in. I tell you the best thing about it is that I feel like we’re helping people produce a better product at a lower price. We’re just through better engineering and better design, we’re providing solutions that just make things better and more attractive and more durable. It feels good to do that.

Mark Lamberth
It does. It feels great, and I love that, and I really get that. I’ve spent a lot of time on your site. It’s a beautiful site. So that’s verti crete.com, so it’s V-E-R-T-I dash crete CRET e.com.

Mike Sharp
Exactly, exactly. And then Verti Block is the same, V-E-R-T-I dash BLOC k.com, and they refer back to each other. So go to either one and the other one will take you back to the first. So either one would be a great place to start.

Mark Lamberth
Fantastic. Well, Mike, you talked to Haley before you talked to me. She said you’re going to love talking with Mike. He’s a great guy. That’s what I’ve found as well. So I think we’re here at the end of the podcast. Thank you so much for sharing everything, and folks get in touch with Mike. He’s got an incredible product.

Mike Sharp
Mark, thank you so much. It’s been a real pleasure talking to you. I hope it’s helpful. We look forward to talking to you soon.

Mark Lamberth
Okay, sounds great, Mike. Thank you for being on the show.

Mike Sharp
Thanks. Bye-Bye.