Representing the third generation to oversee the family business, Mike Holwick proudly carries on the legacies of his father and grandfather before him. Since joining Holwick Constructors in 2002, Mike has overseen a multitude of construction projects covering over 1.5 million square feet of tenant space.
Mike joined the United States Marine Corps after high school and served in the reserves while attending San Diego State University, where he graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in accountancy. Prior to joining Holwick, Mike worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers in the Audit and Business Assurance division.
We sat down with Mike to learn more about his family’s legacy and the bright future ahead for Holwick Builders.
60 years is quite a legacy. The organization was started by your grandfather. What was the mission for him when he started the organization and how has that mission carried through to today?
His mission was to create a company where he could genuinely honor people’s skills and have them exhibit them to the best of their abilities. And he felt that if everybody could do that – not just his employees, but the subcontractors that he brought on board – as a team, he could create a successful company, a successful group of talented builders to surround him and carry that team spirit into the future.
Was that a mission that your father shared when he took over the business? Or when your dad took over, was there a shift in perspectives?
Was there an evolution in that mission in some way? Yes, I think so. My grandfather, when he first started, was in it for the long game. My grandfather started the company in December of 1962. Later, my dad joined as was working alongside him, but broke off from my grandfather in 1983. My father started his own company in December of ‘83, and then in 1987 my grandfather retired, and the two companies kind of merged. My dad’s vision was a little different. I think he was in it just more to hit some high points in the market, and really scale it up during those periods and then scale it down during the latter years. I don’t think he necessarily had an exit strategy. Being the oldest son of my dad, I had absolutely zero intention of going into the construction business, and he had asked me when I was in high school if I wanted to. I told him, “absolutely not” because when I was young I had worked summers sweeping up and cleaning and getting dirty and nasty.
My siblings were either too young or not interested in the industry at that point, so I think he figured that my grandfather was just going to shut the company down at a certain point, and to retire and move on. One big shift when my dad took over was the more humanistic component, and really digging into the employees lives and bring that compassion component. So, looking back, the company personality has long been a good balance between my grandfather, father and myself.
You’ve been running the show for about 20 years. When you took over it sounds almost like you were able to apply some of the most effective aspects of both your grandfather’s and your father’s approaches and blend them together to create something modern and current. Is that accurate?
Right out of high school I joined the Marine Corps and I was in the reserve program, so I was active duty for about a year and then I was in the reserves for five years, and during the time I was in the reserves I was stationed down in San Diego and I was going to San Diego State. I wanted to be an FBI agent, and so I got my military experience, and I was an accounting major and was lucky enough to have both my sets of grandparents live within an hour of me.
When I was going to San Diego State I made a conscious effort that one weekend each month I’d spend with my dad’s folks, and one weekend per month I’d spend with my mom’s folks. The weekends I’d spend with my with my dad’s folks, Marvin and Aubrey, Marvin (the founder of Holwick) and I would have some really in-depth conversations about business and about my sophomore year. Inspired, I changed my career trajectory and went the accounting route. I ended up getting an internship with PricewaterhouseCoopers. So once my grandfather knew that I had switched my focus more to business, he really started, you know, kind of hammering those things that he had learned into my mind, and I was able to glean so much from him in those four years.
After a while I was thinking about heading back up to Los Angeles and going to work for my dad, or even take the company over. So, towards the end of my time down in San Diego, my grandfather really started to impress upon me what I needed to know if I was going to do that. Having grown up with my dad, I also knew what the best parts of his work style were as well. So yes, I think I was able to meld the best parts of both of their personalities and perspectives into many of my approaches to leading what Holwick is today.
You were pretty young when you first took over.
It took some time to learn to be a good leader. I was young. I was a little younger than 26 years old. When I moved back up to LA to take the company over I made plenty of mistakes, but I learned from those as well.
How would you say that the company has evolved or changed since then since you took over in 2002?
Well, my dad, unfortunately, in his late 40s and early 50s was taken with an illness. And so, he and his partner (who was nine years older than him) were getting a little older, and didn’t want to work as much, so they had both kind of pulled back. And so, when I was looking at coming back to the company, the company had really slowed down – I think it only had four employees with a very low revenue of less than $2 million a year.
There wasn’t much for me to do when I first got there. I was cleaning the office and organizing, and then I finally just decided to put my nose to the grindstone and start learning a little bit about what everybody was doing. So much has changed since then because it was just a small little company.
Everybody could fit basically in one office. And we all shared a computer and shared a desk and everybody was estimating their own jobs and superintending their own jobs and project managing their own jobs. I was even doing my own demo personally. So yes, it was a different world. It was a really hands-on experience, so I’m glad I got to do that, because I got to spend time in the field with the subcontractors.
There was a lot of stuff that wasn’t working just because it was such a small company. I knew there was a lot of work to do, and I was eager to create growth. I had met a really good friend during my accounting internship at Pricewaterhouse Cooper, who was with the PwC office out of Chicago, and he was kind of getting tired of the daily grind. So I asked him if he wanted to make the big move to California. He joined me in 2003. I had kind of gotten the lay of the land before he came out, but as soon as he did we started literally walking around Century City, knocking on doors, passing our cards out and just getting our name out there, and he and I pretty much together took this four person company and within the first five years we increased our revenue by 800%.
It was exciting to work with such growth but we were still working those 80 to 90 hour weeks, and doing all our own work. By 2007 and 2008 we started to hire some good support staff in terms of office staff, additional project managers, and an abundance of superintendents. This took Holwick to the next level. Then, of course, we were hit by the great recession. We took a little bit of a dip in 2009, but in 2010 we surpassed our 2008 numbers and it’s been pretty vertical since then, except for the COVID years of 2020 and 2021 but we’re back up and running again.
How were you able to muscle through that pandemic period?
From an operations standpoint, our company has always been good at keeping a pretty low overhead. Because we did keep our overhead low and we were able to qualify for both of the PPP loans, we were able to use the loans for what they were intended for.
We kept our team intact and kept our people paid even when it meant putting two or three superintendents on the same job. We just wanted to keep our personnel on board and provide them with a paycheck during that difficult time. And we never had to pass that expense on to our clients, because we used the PPP funds for that. We just continued to keep our nose to the grindstone – also diversifying outside the realm of the types of projects we have typically worked on – and it got us through the pandemic. And then, more recently, the tenant work has started coming back in force. Lots of pent-up demand, and people not knowing what the future held – that in the last eight months or so has opened up new business as people feel more confident again. We’ve even started hiring new people again, do the future is bright.
Are there any trends that you’re noticing with your clients that have changed post pandemic?
The good news is that people in general still want an office to work out of, even if it’s part time.
Many of the clients that we’re working for have gone to a modified work schedule to where people can work a certain percentage in the office and a certain percentage at home, and I think that people like that. They still like to go to the office to have the camaraderie, teamwork and collaboration. Businesses and their employees have learned that there are benefits to working from home, with a more flexible schedule. The bottom line, however, is that people still need that office space, even with a modified schedule.
What we are seeing from clients is a growing desire for larger circulation areas, more public areas, and larger office spaces. Past standards of densification and people working on top of each other simply doesn’t work as well post pandemic. Clients want spaces that allow for freer movement and more space per employee. So even though there’s perhaps less employees in the office each day in terms of full-time working in the office, the actual square footage is increasing per employee. So, a lot of clients are keeping the same square footage and are just modifying it to adapt to new workplace trends.
How would you describe the culture of the Holwick organization today?
The main thing I want for our business is for my employees to look at me and say, “this guy’s working for me.” It’s my mission to work for my employees, and my subcontractors too. I want to make sure that they have a great environment to come to work. I care about their personal lives and I want their families to do well. I want their careers to skyrocket, and I want them to be able to work as long as they want or retire as early as they want – to do rewarding, serious work, but to also have a lot of fun doing it. My aim is to continue to create this environment where our people feel like I’m working for their success.
Historically we try to have four company events each year. During the pandemic, that kind of got squashed, but we’re reigniting that, and we started doing it this year again. We like to have one company meeting every quarter and make it a fun event, and then have a holiday party at the end of the year.
It’s a true family business – and family extends to our team members. But speaking of family my dad was somewhat bored in retirement and so he came back to the company to work for me as a superintendent. So he’s doing that now, and having a blast. There are other people at the company that have brought their kids on board as well. So, we have my dad and two other fathers who work in the same company that their sons work for. I love seeing that that family aspect of our business.
What’s next for the organization and for you personally?
I’ve been actively running work for 20 years at Holwick, so I like to think of myself as an active participant, not an armchair owner. For a number of years, I even ran the most revenue for the company, in that I ran the most jobs. About six years ago, I started to transition away from that a little more to really allow our employees to blossom and to challenge them, while putting more work on their plates. They’ve all taken these opportunities and have excelled.
I’m finishing a very large project in downtown Los Angeles right now for the California Community Foundation (great company and great people) and I’m not going to say this is the last project that I’m going to actively run, but it may be the last one for a while. Our incredible team will be running more and more projects and what I really want to dig into is getting out and being with our field personnel a lot more than I have been doing.
So instead of just seeing the field personnel and the actual people that are working on my jobs that I’m actively running, I’d like to be able to take that time that I’m not running those projects and going out there to all of our job sites and meeting with my superintendents, and meeting with my laborers, and meeting with the people that are not in the office with all the time. I’m so proud of what our team is able to accomplish.
Learn more about Holwick Constructors at holwick.biz.
