It has been uncommonly busy here in my little corner of the construction market thus these Saturday catch up posts ahead of a day watching U12 soccer. Next up is an update on a case we covered gavel to gavel, the Beef Plant Saga which cost the Mississippi taxpayers at least 55 million dollars. I’ll start with this puff peice from June, 2007 on Robert Moultrie courtesy “Smart” Business magazine:
A few years ago, one of Robert L. Moultrie’s best construction project managers came to him with a request.
“I’d like to go into sales,” the employee said. “There’s no way,” Moultrie responded. “You’re too valuable to us in our construction division.”
“Well, if that’s the case, I’ll leave,” he said.
Moultrie and the employee went on, and after much deliberation, Moultrie decided to let him try sales.
“The mistake I made was I should have put him in sales 10 years earlier,” he says. “He was awesome, and he knew what he wanted to do … and today the volume of business he brings to the organization is unbelievable.”
While that employee has brought great business to The Facility Group, it may never have happened if Moultrie, chairman and founder, had a different attitude. If he told the guy not to let the door hit him on the way out, or if he acted like he had 1,000 other things to do, his business may not be as successful as it is today, something he attributes to his employees, who grew the company to nearly $300 million in revenue last year, up from $10 million in 1986.
“My problem was simple,” Moultrie says. “I had so many weaknesses, I had to hire so many great people to take care of all my weaknesses, that it’s caused me to end up with a great organization.”
Of course what the article leaves out is the behind the scenes assistance Mr Moultrie gave his “salesmen” in terms of political contributions and the like that always seemed to follow large contract awards to The Facility Group. Spreading the wealth worked well as Mr Moultrie grew the Facility Group to a 300 million dollar company. But his luck ran out Thursday along with the “year and a day” concept when Mr Moultrie was sentenced to 16 months in the pokey. Continue reading “Saturday Catch Up: Robert Moultrie Gets His Time, The Facility Group Implodes”