Real Estate and Construction

Rocky Goldman

By John Nank

For more than a decade, Michael “Rocky” Goldman conducted business under the name Shakman Construction Co., providing general commercial contracting services to the saturated South Florida building market. Over the last few years, however, Goldman and his company have discovered and embraced their niche, focusing exclusively on the construction needs of the hospitality industry. The company is now known as Shakman Hospitality LLC, and Goldman and partners John Cahorshak and Mark Isabelle consistently post yearly revenue of $75 million. Smart Business spoke with Goldman about motivation and why financial results should never come at the expense of your company’s culture.

Motivate with competition. It’s important that your employees are aware of the market, market opportunities, the economy and the competition.

There are competitors of ours that I understand where they’re at and the issues that they have, and I share this with my employees and I show them how a few bad decisions from our competitors have cost them. And, in a sense, they see what the flipside is with some of our competition and they say, ‘Hmm, we don’t want to be there.’

I’ve had this said to me numerous times from more than several employees, where they say, ‘Gee, look what happened to such-and-such and so-and-so, and we don’t want that to happen to us.’ An awareness of our competition motivates our staff.

Always be aware of who’s behind you. We’re continually improving on the quality of employees who press others. I played football, and I liken this story to football.

Imagine I’m a running back and I’m just cruising down the field, and I’ve been there four years and I have no competition. All of a sudden, this young buck out of college is on the team, and he’s pressing me, and now I’m looking over my shoulder, and I’m not just cruising down the field any more.

That’s what we like to do here. By human nature, there’s a certain complacency that happens, and I motivate my employees by internal competition, which typically brings out the best in your people. We’re very fortunate here that we’ve had a lot of people who have been here eight or nine years, but from time to time, people fall off, and we like to replace those people with people who fit in to our culture, which is extremely important, and, in a sense, they press the other people here to keep them aware that, ‘Hey, there’s somebody on my tail.’

Know who you are, and stick to your guns. It all starts with we, as owners, having the belief and knowing who we are.

It’s very important when you’re a start-up company, however big or small, that you take into consideration the growth expectations of your company as a direct correlation to the quality of your staff. What I mean by that is I wouldn’t want to just fill positions.

If my business plan was to do $100 million by the second year, maybe I should rethink that and consider half the volume, being profitable but having the right employees as opposed to just filling positions. Right now, we are a $75 million a year company. Without question, we could easily be in excess of a $100 million to $150 million company.

The only reason we’re not is because I refuse to back off on the type of people that will maintain the environment and the culture that we’ve worked so hard to achieve here. There’s that direct correlation once again to hire the proper personnel with what I’ve established here to keep the company going in a profitable manner.

Unfortunately, our industry is the epitome of feast or famine, and that creates a situation where you’re hiring people that you normally wouldn’t hire. That is one reason we are a $75 million company and not a $150 million company.

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Young entrepreneurs should understand that you really don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Every single thing that you do and you go through and every issue you’re going to have has happened before.

There are answers and there is advice and there are ways of doing things. A lot of times when you’re younger, you feel like you can figure things out yourself. Quite frankly, you really don’t have to. Listen to your mentors. If I would have listened to some of my mentors many years ago, I wouldn’t have had some of the issues I’ve had.

Allow employees to take initiative. The way you dealt with employees 10 years ago is a little different than the way you would deal with employees these days.

Today, employees are looking for a leader to be nurturing to a point but hard-line when necessary, almost like you’re dealing with one of your children. It’s difficult to go ahead like the old days and fly off the handle with an employee.

As principals of Shakman, we all operate the same way and we are all what we call ‘in the trenches.’ All our employees know that there’s not a job out there that we wouldn’t jump into and do it ourselves if need be, and that’s a strong leadership skill as far as we’re concerned.

It is very important to us that when we’re interviewing, we look for self-motivated employees. We like to think a self-motivated employee almost acts like a leader in themselves, and it gives them the opportunity to feel like they’re part of the company and part of the success of the company.

All the employees here know that the principals are right there at their side in times of need. It allows them to think of themselves as owners and reap the benefits with the company both financially and mentally, and a very strong part of that is it makes the employees feel that they can make a difference if they take the initiative.

One thing that we like to impress upon our employees is that you have a lot of options, especially in our industry, and a lot of opportunities with other companies, and one of the things I stress here is you can come on board here and you can make a difference.

HOW TO REACH: Shakman Hospitality LLC, (561) 750-8288 or www.sccfl.com