We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Matt Miller. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Matt below.

Matt, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

We try to be wide open, meaning we share to a fault. We try to explain as much about our process as we can with our clients. I tell all of our people to never feel like they can not be 100% honest with clients about how the process works, what to expect, and even how cost vs billing works.
It is about making strong, durable, beautiful art, and building relationships for the future. We are a business with zero profit or growth goals. We only focus on the quality of the work and growing the love an respect of our community.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

White Buffalo Restoration does not fit in a specific mold. We do home repairs, punch list work, HVAC, plumbing, flooring, flood damage and mold remediation. We also do kitchens and bathrooms, landscaping, full-gut home renovations, and additions, and we build new custom homes. If you need help with anything to do with your home or property, we can help. If for some reason we can not help you, we will get you to someone who can with no charge.

When I was about 14 I decided that I wanted to be a Chef. I remember even younger than 14 that I liked cooking shows. Justin Wilson, Julia Child, and later guys like Gordon Ramsay, Bobby Flay, and Emeril Lagasse, and the coolest one RIP Anthony Bourdain, were people that I looked up to. They were so cool, and confident. The art was also very appealing to me. It wasnt all about making things taste good. It was creating something that had to be all things, tasty, beautiful, aromatic, texturally perfect, prepared in a very specific order as to make everything hot and perfect at the same time, and all while being made of perishable materials. When I became an Executive Chef at 24. I would take a deep dive into every aspect of the process, from designing the dishes, and prep scheduled, how the dishes flowed through the kitchen. When our restaurant went through an expansion, I even designed the kitchen layout. All of the nerd stuff about cooking was very cool to me, but what i remember loving the most was the art of motion. The dance with pans, hot oil, tongs, and fire. The flow of it was amazing. I remember nights were the kitchen was alive, people everywhere, me yelling commands while cooking 6 dishes, with 10 more in my head. It was chaos and hot as hell, but i was dancing. Spinning, and tossing pans, opeining and closing ovens and refrigerators with my feet. It just felt so damn cool. Back then, 21 years ago, I had no idea how relevant all of these skills would be in what would become my real job, what I was meant to do.

My father was a construction manager for restaurants. He built fast food joints all over the country for most of his life. He was also a draftsman, a designer and artist. Both of my grandfathers were designers, engineers and builders of some type or another. I feel like there is some sort of innate influence, or genetic knowledge that you can feel when you do a job that is generational to your family, and I felt it when I started construction, something was that was pulling me to it.

Starting my construction journey was an accident. We were moving from CO where I want to college, back to my hometown, middle TN. My wife and I needed a place to stay with our 2 dogs while we waited to close on our house. A friend of mine had a rental that was empty and being renovated for sale. She said that if I did some painting, or whatever I could on the contractors estimate that we could stay for the 2 mos for free. Long story short. I finished the entire list, including a new kitchen, new doors, floors refinished, and I was hooked. I called the contractor that did the estimate and told him that I took the work from him, but he should take a look at the work and hire me. Almost a decade later, that contractor is one of my close friends and long time business partner. When I started the reno list I was just coasting through, but when I was done I knew it was what I should have always been doing. I had worked on projects with my Dad as a kid, but it had never hit me like this, this was different. I took it from start to finish myself and shockingly it looked good. My friend who owned the house was super impressed

What I hate about construction…… Lots of people don’t trust contractors because many cant be trusted.

As we grow as a business, I insist an atmosphere of care for the quality and honesty of what we do. I feel like these days there is a departure from hard honest skilled work. I don’t think this industry need a hook, or some unique spin. Just give a shit every day, and be honest about what you are doing and what you want.

It also helps that I hire people that are actually good at the work. We shouldn’t gloss over the actual ability part of it.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

I sold my car that was worth $5000 and bought a super rusty truck for $2500, and I sold an IRA had that was $6700. This was enough to buy a few tools and an enclosed trailer. After that It was all sweat. I didn’t have any backup for a while. I maxed the credit cards, and drank cheap beer, packed lunch, and worked 7 days a week.
In construction, I feel like it is easy compared to some other businesses to get started. In most cases, you get paid a deposit to start and you can ask for draw payments as you go. The problems come when you make mistakes, dont ask for enough money, don’t budget correctly.
If I had it to do over again, I would separate the project money from my regular business accounts. Your bank can help you do it. If I am giving advise, I would also say, try hard to turn down some work if you will be really busy, or try to schedule more time for each project. To this day, when I am overwhelmed, I make decisions that haunt me for months. Sometimes I can increase revenue by 30% and make the same profit, AKA do way more work for the same money because of mistakes when I made myself busier that I needed to be.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I had one nightmare job. I was in over my head, it was far away. The help I hired failed hard. I had to fire them and try to finish with just me and my two guys. It was one of the most stressful times of my entire life. That one job drained my accounts and almost ended the company. It was very uncomfortable because the clients were straight up mad at me about the timeline and cost, and i really take that stuff to heart. I had not experienced angry clients before. I always fixed any issues right away.
I just kept going back, doing all that I could. I gave them some money back when I knew it wasn’t fair to me. I got up in pain, drove forever, climbed a ladder and kept doing it until it was done.
Because of all of this pain, I learned how to find and hire good subcontractors and employees. I almost completely cleaned house and started over. I had to finish 3 jobs by myself with very little help, and my wife and I had just had a little girl.
Now I look back on that job knowing that it was the turning point that made WBR a real legitimate company with a future. Without all of that pain, I do not know if I would have had the drive to create the customer experience we have now, with an amazing team. I am very thankful for it.

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