Bonus Episode - TZL - ElevateAEC - John McAdams

John R. McAdams: Of this, holder. Well, yeah, yeah. The company has redeemed that stock and bought it for half a year. For half a year there is concentration. But come January, the very next year, that goes right back into circulation. Randy Wilburn: So it seems like you've got a model that works really well for you if you don't mind the context of how big is your firm. John R. McAdams: I don't mind at all. We have a headcount of 460 people in the firm. We were, 70 or 80 people when we really got this program underway. And that was at a point in time, maybe it was 80 people. That was at a point in time in ‘02 or so ‘03. And along came the great recession. And boy, did that hurt us. We were 100% in land development design work. And it's no fun to be running a land development design firm when there isn't any of it to do. And so our firm lost all kinds of value in two-thirds of our people, and not voluntarily. So anyway, we have grown from about 55 people in 2009 to 460 people in 2024. Randy Wilburn: Would you say that it has scaled well across that growth, your program? John R. McAdams: Oh, yeah, I think so. Well, the great recession had an effect. we have 171,000 shares, outstanding now. And that is because I redistributed ownership. In the great recession, I owned too much of the firm. I had sold down to others who were putting checks on my desk. I had sold down to where I owned 82%. But some of the people that we [inaudible} were shareholders. We promised them that if we survive we'll pay you for these shares after the great recession, but we can't spare any money now, so. Those shareholders leaving the firm resulted in my degree of ownership going from 82% to 89% or so. 00:45:00 John R. McAdams: But I went to some other critical leaders inside the firm who are very capable, well thought of, and probably marketable, and even in those conditions, could have left our firm and gone to others. And they did not do that. They stayed at their 60% salary rate. I was working for free. I was guaranteeing all the debt in this ham and eggs thing. I was the pig, they were the chicken. Anyway, they, okay, they, they loyally stayed through there and pulled us through that. Our strategic plan was down to one word, survive. And so I, I just took some more treasury stock and I said, you get this much stock and you get this, this, this. And so for five other people, six of us in that group, I diluted myself down to about 45% ownership. And so really, I have been. Once we got this program revved back up. And it was at that juncture, though, that we also came up with the idea of why don't we just bonus the stock out, don't make people pay

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