Life & Work with Wade Faircloth of Callahan Florida

Today we’d like to introduce you to Wade Faircloth.

Hi Wade, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Myself and Mark Horton (Elite Electric business partners and life long friends) worked at a much larger “corporate” electrical contractor for a combined 30 years. Wade actually worked for Mark for many years as an apprentice while he trained and learned the “craft” of becoming a Journeyman Wireman. The two of us would often talk out our entire plan to start our own gig one day and become our own Boss. Little did we know that the “One day”, would become our reality, in October of 2019 Elite Electric Company was established. we have now grown to a company of 15-20 guys in the field and have recently hired our first full time PM/Estimator.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Anything but smooth, we really had no idea what owning a business would really intel. I would compare owning a business to having your first kid, while you think you have things figured out in all actuality your just hanging on for the ride hoping to raise a successful human being one day. We have learned more than we care to admit the hard way. When you own a business there is not any one person to call for advice, no one is waiting with open arms to catch you when you fall. And I promise, you will fall at some point when growing a business. There are risk you take every day, you just might not realize the amount of risk until you look back down the road in hindsight. We now know there are several decisions made each year that can drastically change the landscape of our business. You are always one bad decision away from having to close the doors.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
We are an unlimited licensed Electrical contractor who’s main focus is in commercial type projects. Our passion is in design build type projects, we like these design build jobs because of the challenge it presents to find cost saving for our customers and honestly there are not a lot of Electrical contractors out there that can do the design build jobs. We have found that saving a customer money is the best way to build a lasting business relationship. When Mark and myself finally decided to give this ownership thing a try we both agreed on one key piece to the puzzle….. “Don’t get greedy”, greed will ruin a good thing and we both believe that you don’t always have to make that extra buck we want to build a relationship that helps us get through the next 20-30 years.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
This is a tough one and could end up down a rabbit hole, but I’ll try.

First and foremost, God is the only reason we have been successful.

A good second would have to be personally for myself. Growing up in split home was my curse and blessing. Because of my situation there were several men in our community that stepped up and invested in me. Not that my parents did nothing it’s just that these men went above and beyond when they did not have to. My late Uncle Wilson Faircloth, Joe Hudson, Dennis Morris and Mark Rose were all men who helped shape me in my early years. They all held me to a standard and instilled hard work and dedication into any and everything that I did with them. Even Mark gets credit for helping “grow” me, the first few years i worked for him he tolerated my being young and wild I’d like to think because of the potential he saw in me. but who knows I’ve never really asked him why.

Marks late Farther Terry Horton Sr, was a driving force that established being Elite at whatever you’re going to do, this is the only way to ever move forward.

Pricing:

• Each job is different, even the same job on paper. This does not correlate to being able to install each project the same exact way.
• Service work is priced differently than a quoted “job” project.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Eliteelco.com