Jay Cope

Owner

Semper Fi Custom Remodeling

Black Mountain, NC

Projected 2023 Revenue: $5.2 million

Plans for growth: We’d like to grow significantly in the next five to 10 years, whether that means expanding in our area, or opening new businesses in different parts of the state and potentially the region. To accomplish that, we’re working hard on systemization.

On creating business processes: We hired a business coach who’s helped us a ton. He’s given us just the right push to create strong processes. He has a saying that we’ve embraced that goes, “Systemize the routine and humanize the exception.” We have business development meetings with the team where we give homework to move us to that goal. For example, our sales guy may record how he does a qualification call, and then transcribe it to add to our training materials. What does a good call look like? How about a bad one? That kind of thing. So that’s just an example of one piece of homework we might give. And then we’ll reconvene in a month or two and say, “How did you do? Do we need to keep working on this, or can we move on to the next thing?”

Thoughts about punch lists: We plan for a punch list, and actually estimate for it, so there’s a number already worked into our fixed price. That being said, one easy way to finish a job more quickly is to take care of your punch list items as they come up, so that there’s a very small list at the end. We try to mitigate it in that way, but inevitably there’s always going be something. 

Unveiling the Forty Under 40 Class of 2023