Lisa Buser
Chris Woods SOE
Chris Woods tried to say no. Twice. Turns out it was a good thing that he was overruled.
Today he owns his own successful construction company, but early in his life he was compelled to pivot a couple of times. Those redirections were providential.
The first time was when he was just out of college when his father was working to sell farmettes in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Woods says, “He told me, ‘You know, you need to come out and help me sell.’ And I said, ‘Dad, I don’t like dealing with the public.’ He said, ‘Well, you’re going to. I’m helping support you so you’re going to come out here and sell.’ I went out there and one weekend I made $800 and I told myself, boy, this is the life for me.”
That motivated Woods to get into the real estate program at the University of Memphis where he took some accounting classes. He started working as a bookkeeper for David Goodman, a homebuilder. Woods says, “David kept me in the office until one day he said, ‘You need to get out in the field and build houses.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to do that.’ And he said, ‘Well, you’re going to.’ So I started building houses.”
He did that for a while, hit and miss he says, subject to the whims of the economy. In 1980 he was approached by a friend to build a metal building for a plant in Nashville. “I liked it,” Woods says. “We started doing industrial work for several companies in Memphis and it started flourishing.” Many of those projects were out of town and he did a lot of traveling from Slidell, Louisiana, to St. Louis, to Nashville, and back to Memphis. “I was getting tired of all the running up and down the road,” he says, “and we started doing more commercial work in Memphis.” It was small buildings at first and eventually grew into more customers and larger structures. “We’re just been very blessed to be where we are,” he says. “My two sons got into business in 2000 and 2005 and we’ve got a great group of employees.”
Today, the company’s projects range from $5,000 to $45 million. “We do probably 20 projects a year and we’re proud of every project we do.”
It is Woods’ attention to the work and to his customers that has made the difference. “It doesn’t matter how large or small it is,” he says, “it’s always a sense of accomplishment, which is so important.”
The work has given Woods crucial knowledge on how to be successful. He says, “The best advice you can give to somebody is to be true to yourself, believe in yourself. Know that you really have to take care of your customers. You work for them, you don’t work for yourself. Make sure they’re always satisfied and then everything else will take care of itself.”
The other part of the equation is his team. “We keep our people mainly because we treat them right,” he says. “We let them participate. We have a good year, they have a good year. We take care of them — I mean, they’re family, 36 employees. I know every one of them.”
The core of Woods’ life is trust. “If you’re competitive, and if people trust you and people like you, then you’re going to get the job,” he says.
In fact, if he could do anything over again, it would be to have hired his team 20 years earlier. “You try to surround yourself with people that are smarter than you and know more than you,” Woods says. “I think I’ve done a pretty good job. And fortunately, I’ve got two sons that are both a lot smarter than me and they always tell me when I’m wrong,”
This comment brings easy laughter, and it’s clear that this touch of self-deprecating humor is part of what makes Chris Woods tick. He says his mother and grandmother taught him to be true to himself, and that’s in everything he does.
And it’s more than just submitting the lowest bid. The core of Woods’ life is trust. “If you’re competitive, and if people trust you and people like you, then you’re going to get the job,” he says.
A prime example of that is what happens when things go too well for him at the expense of the customer. “Sometimes we miss it on an estimate,” he says. “When we find out we’re making a lot more than we expected to on a job, we have a policy to refund part of that money to the customer. A friend of mine told me that you can shear sheep many times, but you can only butcher him once. We believe in that.”
Woods cites the Golden Rule and it’s evident how that applies in all aspects of his life. He values his integrity and his friendships. And he loves his community. “We believe in helping the less fortunate,” Woods says. “Every Christmas we dole out several thousand dollars to different churches that have programs for disadvantaged children. Meritan is another organization we support. Three years ago I lost my grandson and we formed the Chris Wood’s scholarship program — that’s named after him, not me. There’s St. Mary’s soup kitchen. And we maintain a learning center at St. Francis of Assisi school. We just believe in giving back to communities, supporting our community.”
