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

Monte, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Your ability to build a team is often a key determinant of your success as a business owner and so we’d love to get a conversation going with successful entrepreneurs like yourself around what your recruiting process was like -especially early on. How did you build your team?

I was a carpenter and decided to start working for my self as a contractor. I hired one person by putting an add in a newspaper. to be a carpenter helper.. I had to train him to do certain task and he ended up working for me for over 6 months.. What I learned in hiring someone is its going to take an effort and patience in order for me to have dependable help.

Monte, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I got into the Construction business by just looking for a job. My first Job was a summer job helping to roof houses, carrying shingles up a latter from the ground to the roof. Out of high school my next job was for an A/C contractor working in attics installing Duct lines etc. After a few months I had a neighbor who was a Framing Carpenter that ask me if I wanted to work for him and so I jumped at the chance to learn to be a Carpenter.
I went from being a Carpenter Helper to owning and managing a Major Framing Contracting company. building Custom Homes. At one time I had 17 Framing crews building homes.
As I was framing Houses people would ask me to build a few houses a year and this is how I got into being a Custom Home Builder. I started building in 1980 and am still building custom homes in 2022.
As I was Framing houses A lot of the House Plans had major flaws and or roof lines would mot work. I would start drafting corrections on these plans and giving them to my crews so the jobs would go quicker and smoother.
When I started building Homes I would do the Architect work for my clients and with my creative ability I was able to start developing my style of homes that became popular to the Real Estate agents. Once my name became established I had to quilt framing houses and put all my efforts and time into my Custom Homebuilding business.

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

As I was building homes using House Plans I designed I decided to start an architectural house plan design business providing this service to other builders and the general public who just wanted house plans. This was very successful and provided another income stream. When I first started there was no interned just plan books. At first I was only doing Custom new House Plan designs.
After Monte Smith Designs developed many plans some builders would want to reuse an existing plan So I sold the the right to reuse the plans.
My resilience is when the internet first came out I started a Website both for providing a service for developing new custom designs and also reselling stock plans. The hard part was developing a website that thru trial and error has now became a major source of income that provides a great service.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

No

Contact Info:

• Website: www.montesmith-Custombuilder.com
• Instagram: monty4aloha
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/montesmithdesigns
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monte-smith96738/?msgControlName=reply_to_sender&msgConversationId=2-NzIzMWY1NjItMGY1NS00YTI5LTgzMmItMjIxNWE5YWQ0MGE0XzAxMA%3D%3D&msgOverlay=true
• Twitter: monty4aloha