Tuesdays, the tanker truck would come to download the gas and oh boy, you could hardly stand the fumes in the building. But anyway, that's, that's where this enterprise, started. In starting it, I'll tell you, I had a sense of destiny. I did not know what would result from this. I didn't know what we would grow to be. But I wanted to keep alive the possibility that maybe this could become something. And indeed we have become a successful medium-sized firm. So I was careful not to do anything in the initial steps that I would later regret. I wanted to have a clean start. But that firm that I was with, that I left, I took no one with me. I beckoned no clients to come to me. I was just starting, me against the world, me against the market. I wanted to see what I could do. So I also wanted to have a firm that would grow. Growth was very important. However, it was difficult to grow the firm very much in the early years because of my youth. I was 30 years old when I started the firm. I wasn't that well-established in the industry, the profession, or the market. But I stayed at it. And 15 years in, we began to attract some good talent, some capable people, some other engineers, and not just drafter people. And I did my first ownership transition in 1995 so the firm was growing to 50 people or so. And I got advice. Hey, you know, if you were to, if something were to happen to you, there'd be a message. You need someone else designated to take it over. So I sold for $50. 00:05:00 John R. McAdams: 1% of the firm to another person in the firm. And lo and behold, the ownership transition was underway. But selling that 1% hurt. Wow, this isn't all my baby. But, as we went on in the 90s, we enjoyed other growth and attracted some good people. And I came to understand that some of these people are good. Project managers were conferring value on the firm. And so I sold some of them, some stock, some of my stock out of here. By the way, for 5,000 shares of stock, we did a 20-for-one split of stock. And I got another 20 times 5,000 is 100,000. I got another stock certificate number two for 95,000 shares. So as I was selling shares off I was selling out of the 95,000, shares, keeping the precious original stock certificate number one. But I sold some stock to others and they came by and put, put checks on my desk. And I came to understand that our growing success was the result of the efforts of many people. And that value is being created here, and not just by me, that it's appropriate that I share back that value. and that is appropriate because that is fairness. They are creating the value, not just me. So what has evolved from that has been a systematic program of inclusion in ownership at McAdams. Inclusion in the transitioning of that ownership enables a wealth accumulation vehicle for our top talent and also enables the ability to transition leadership. Therefore we can remain a legacy firm and not have to sell out at the founder's 100% owner's retirement. It is that program that I, am going to talk about here today. So, here we go. That's still me. Okay, a preamble to this. Our ownership transition program is a continuous cycling of ownership. It's a process. Retaining
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