Jesse Sampley (00:31)

Why don't you tell me, Levi, a little bit about the company. You know, what kind of drew you to the building world? I see your dad behind you. So, you know, maybe that's some of it, but give me a bit of background on you guys.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (00:44)

Yeah, so what initially drew me to the construction industry was my dad, actually, you he's been in the industry for 25 plus years. He's got an electrician background and he's owned a few different businesses, but notably, it was a

audio and video security company that, you know, he focused on high-end homes in Houston. Um, and then he would put in, you know, massive security systems, massive home automation systems. He was actually one of the pioneers in the smart home systems 15 years ago, uh, looking back, making you feel old now. But yeah, so I mean, he was putting iPads on the wall before it was the thing, you know? And so it's really cool to, um, one, you know, I'm surrounded by.

Jesse Sampley (01:15)

Nice.

hahaha

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (01:28)

incredible men, especially my father that has, you know, always encouraged the trades. ⁓ I feel blessed to have the opportunity that, know, lot of parents don't harp on the, ⁓ you know, how well somebody can do in the trades. If you kind of start early and commit early, I mean, the output on that is, is, you know, through the ceiling. Whenever I was dragging him to work at 14 years old to help run a pre-wire. Yeah.

Jesse Sampley (01:48)

yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (01:54)

Uh, crying then. Yeah. Not so, yeah. Cause you start making, you know, 10 to 12, you know, these days, $15 an hour is the bottom, bottom of the rung there. But, um, you know, it's not, it's not as fun. gotta have the vision. Like truly you gotta have the vision. I, I knew from a young age, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I watched my dad do it. I watched my mom do it. Um, I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And so I always wanted to be able to have someone basically that was, you know,

Jesse Sampley (01:56)

Hahaha

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (02:24)

I wanted to be able to do what I wanted to do. And the irony here is that, you you go into entrepreneurship to get your time back. But the stark reality is that you're putting in a hundred, you know, 150 hour work weeks sometimes. I mean, it seems impossible, but somehow we manage, you know, shout out Michael Scott on that one, right? But yeah, so my dad brought me into the industry and then I kind of just stuck around because

Jesse Sampley (02:46)

That's right. That's right.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (02:53)

I wanted to be an entrepreneur and then, know, year one and two are really hard for us. But, when you start seeing some, some legs start getting under the company and you start seeing, okay, I can, I can see some scalability here. can, you we started, I got to hire my, ⁓ my brother and obviously my dad's my business partner. And so I wouldn't be able to do any of this without my dad and without his experience, you know, overseeing things and, just having that wisdom of, Hey, I've seen this kind of business situation before.

And this is where it led me down this path. You know, it really helps us avoid situations we don't want to be in. And then furthermore, just my dad's ability to kind of put all the pieces together. I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to learn, you know, from him. So tell him about how seven C started seven C construction started, how we got into that.

Jesse Sampley (03:34)

Yeah.

Yeah,

that both of you guys, had it already existed or is 7C Construction, this is kind of the start of your entrepreneurial journey that...

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (03:47)

Yeah.

So, ⁓ how we started, my dad's been an entrepreneur. Like I said, my mom was an entrepreneur. She's got a personal training background. and so my dad with the construction background, essentially he was doing the audio video stuff. He was doing the security stuff. And, ⁓ basically this was a tragedy turned triumph story. my family got devastated with a hurricane, multiple hurricanes, but

Jesse Sampley (04:10)

Yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (04:13)

We've used contractors for these hurricanes rehabs in the past. then Harvey really is the one that, kind of put the line in the sand for us. we got taken advantage of by a contractor. so they ended up stealing $10,000 from my family and, know, talk about kicks, kick them while they're down. I mean, it was just one of those things where we couldn't believe what actually had happened. And so, ⁓ at that point, my dad said, you know what?

Jesse Sampley (04:36)

man

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (04:40)

Not just we want to, but I kind of have to now. And fortunately he had to know how to, how to do a rehab or remodel. And so, ⁓ my dad actually used that as a stepping stone to start seven seat construction. And it came out of fruition just from, from God, honestly, entirely. had neighbors down the street and we demoed our house. again, God, our church came out and they helped us demo our house within two to three hours. had the whole house gutted. And so.

Jesse Sampley (05:08)

Man.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (05:09)

Church community asked us. Hey, is there anything else we can do for you? And we said let's go to the neighbor's house Let's go to the neighbor's house and we knocked out half of our street within a day because we had 50 people I mean buses of people were coming in to help us and it was it's just outpour from our church in our community and Yeah, so that's kind of what started kickstarted 7c and then people I started asking my dad Hey, you know you'll help with the demo. Could you help me with the rebuild? Could you help me get back? You know and so

Jesse Sampley (05:22)

Wow.

Hey, you made a mess.

What are you going to do about this now?

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (05:40)

You know, we were just helping people at that point. We weren't charging for it. You know, at that point it was free. And so my dad at that point, you know, he was like, okay, I think we can kind of turn this into something, but he still had a full-time business. All, you know, the audio video business. so essentially it was a segue of, you know, people reaching out to my dad for different projects and the scale kind of just started getting a little bit bigger.

When I came on was about 2020, 2019 to 2020 during COVID. Yeah. I found out my girlfriend at the time got pregnant with my son now. And thank you very much. But if you've ever been in a situation like that, you understand a fire gets lit under your butt pretty quick to, uh, I need to earn. I need to bring home the bacon, you know, and, uh, me at 20 years olds, um,

Jesse Sampley (06:16)

⁓ congrats.

Yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (06:33)

You know, 21 years old, was a decision point and a kind of a culmination point for me. And so I came to my dad and I said, Hey, I want to be a part of this. see the, I see the growth here and the potential and the opportunity. so at this time, I think revenue was, you know, maybe 30 or $40,000 a year for the entire company. Cause it was, it was a side business, you know, he wasn't really focusing on it. And then, ⁓ so I started working for the company for about three to six months. I

Jesse Sampley (06:55)

Yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (07:02)

I have background in construction growing up working for my dad. so jumping into it was doing the work was actually a lot easier than selling the jobs, doing the, logistics behind the scenes, creating operating systems, you know, and, and creating accountability measures for your crews. Cause when you're having to subcontract something out, you know, I mean, you're not doing it with your hands. So you have to create these measures to ensure your success and ensure the projects. And so.

I joined about that time. Um, and then about six months later, I said, Hey, I want to be a partner. You know, I want to grow this thing. I want to commit. wanted my, um, my work to have direct output. And if I wasn't putting in the time and I wasn't putting in the energy, then I, I wanted it to reflect that I knew I was going to, I knew I was going to commit. And so, uh, that first year I joined, we did what maybe 150 K revenue, 200 K maybe revenue. And so the scale jumped pretty quickly.

And then ever since then, was 2020 to 2021 when I came on as a full-time partner. And then since then we've doubled revenue every single year.

Jesse Sampley (08:09)

Wow. So tell me, what were those projects that you guys focused on that helped in that growth?

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (08:14)

You want to that one? It wasn't really focused. We didn't really focus on any. We were just taking every job we could get. Changing out a customer's door all the way to, hey, we've got a sheetrock hole, our water heater busted. We had this happen and we were fortunate. We did connect with a client that had about 30 rent homes. And so we got to have a little dabble in every little aspect of everything.

From complete makeover, know turnarounds makeovers to ⁓ hey, let's go fix this toilet So in that we came up with a tagline that we call dirt to doorknob that will handle everything from the dirt work all the way to putting on that last doorknob and so it encompasses quite a bit and I think what happened is We show up give a price do the job get the job done

and communicate with the clients throughout the entire process. So what happened is everybody started telling everybody, hey, you need to talk to these guys over at 7C Construction. You know, it's a dad and three sons now, know, three of his sons are there. And so it took off from there organically. Yeah, we really haven't marketed it all until this year. This year we kind of started focusing a lot on social media, this website.

Jesse Sampley (09:14)

Yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (09:33)

So, if you ever want to.

Jesse Sampley (09:34)

That's the beauty of that organic

referral is just, man, when you're doing good work and you have a, know, not that it's a, you're intentionally trying to present your story. It's just your story. But you know, when you've got the family aspect of it, people love that. And I think there's an extra layer of trust that's there also. because it's, know, people love to help other people. And when you see people that starting to gain momentum, you know, there's something to it. Maybe it's a God thing, but I think there's just an extra energy that goes out.

towards people that are actually going and just doing. I think there's success that kind of follows all of that.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (10:09)

That's almost like a manifestation

too. know, we're like, I knew, from jump, you know, it's one of our biggest, guess debates always going back and forth was my dad would always say, stay as small as possible, as long as possible. And that's resonated with me for so long, but see, I was always the one that was, I was a hundred miles an hour. so, but it was a really, really good dynamic that worked together because his experience paired with my, you know,

hunger and the tenacity and desire to grow this business and scale it to, and really, you know, everybody talks about organic growth and slow, steady growth. That's just not how my brain works. I am a hundred miles an hour and I'm, I'm committed. And so when you pair those things together, it's, I want it to happen as fast as, efficiently possible. And so I've learned, thankfully, you know, with my dad.

having that experience over is that some things cannot be overlooked. Some things will just grow and grow and grow in that corner that you just leave it over there. And so you have to, you have to attack things head on. You have to attack problems head on. then, know, 2025 has been all about delegation for us. We've hired three people in the past 12 months, ⁓ looking to hire two more, know? And so most of our players are utility players right now and they kind of

go all over the place, they do all sorts of different things. This year we're gonna kind of focus on what do we need in office? We need an office manager, we need an assistant maybe, but we're also not at a point where we don't wanna throw any money away. So every dollar is spent with intent and purpose. And so that's something that I think has really been a big component in our success story, actually is that.

Jesse Sampley (11:47)

Yeah. ⁓

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (11:48)

We've just been staying as small as possible, as long as possible while also simultaneously just hitting the gas. Yeah. ⁓

Jesse Sampley (11:55)

That delegation game, that's no joke. know, that

takes, it's one thing to know how to do it. It's another thing to tell somebody else what you know, but it's not documented, it's not processed. It's a whole, like you said, the easy part is just doing the work. The hard part is kind of the structure around how are we actually able to build something that can be passed on to a project manager or someone like that.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (12:11)

Right, yeah, definitely.

or someone

that picks up the company handbook or the SOP policies and they're able to interpret that. Is it broken down to a level where every person on your team can pick that up and at a glance know what they're doing? Or hey, can they efficiently be trained within the 30 day period? So something different about us I think is that any field tech that we hire, and really it's a lot of foresight into the future about what we want, but we want all of our personal

Jesse Sampley (12:26)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (12:50)

guys on our team to be project managers down the line. So we hire them with the vision, with the intent of them becoming a project manager at a certain point. And so right now we're developing that training program of how do we convert you from a field tech or somebody who can operate well in the service field and then transition that over to a manager or you're having to oversee projects or multiple projects.

And so what we found is that having our guys in the field gives them a really good understanding of how things work and you get to work with other trades. You get to understand how the trades work. You know, you get, you get to put your hands on each different trade if you're doing service stuff. and so it crosses a lot of T's and gives our guys experience in the field. But then furthermore, we tell them, Hey, every project you go on, if it's our project.

Jesse Sampley (13:26)

Mm-hmm.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (13:44)

we are running this project, you're a representative of 7C Construction, so you're thinking about every trade at every stage too. How is, when you install this outlet here, this J-Box, how is that going to affect the drywaller? And we're not hiring drywallers that are going to mud up those J-Boxes because we don't want the electricians to be mad. So we've, over the six years we've been growing this business, we have developed a team and I'd say that's probably one of the biggest.

Jesse Sampley (13:57)

Mm-hmm.

You

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (14:12)

components of a successful construction company, especially one that's modeled like ours and started as us doing the work, but converting to a subcontractor more predominant structure, then I think that's a very important thing to recognize immediately is that, I'm only as good as my subcontractors.

Jesse Sampley (14:24)

Mm-hmm.

yeah, the trade partners

are everything. What are you guys doing to kind of prioritize those relationships, making sure that those guys are feeling heard, being appreciated, especially when you rely so heavily on those people. Are there anything that you're training your guys or that you're kind of baking in to make sure that if we're working with a good drywaller, we want to keep that drywaller for as long as possible. And even though we don't have the volume that we can promise, if we call him, he knows, hey, these guys are going to do right by me.

Is there anything strategically that you're doing to make these guys feel appreciated and valued?

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (15:06)

Yeah, I would say over five, six years, we have accumulated and not just become where they're just trades, but they, yeah, we are a family run business, but they become part of the family.

Like one of my sons went to our cabinet maker's daughter's quinceanera. We had them come out to our fall festival at our ranch. know, we've had our septic guy just come and hang out and think he was at your house and had dinner at your house last night. I cooked them burgers last night. So we implement that.

Jesse Sampley (15:33)

Nice, okay.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (15:38)

homeostasis of family. And when you come on and we do an interview process with somebody who's going to be a new sub, a new trade, we're going to tell them, hey, we're going to be a family and families fight, bicker, love each other, all those things all in one. And so if I'm talking loudly on a job site, a contractor, a subcontractor, he knows at the end of the day, Hey, I'm going to pop a beer with him. I'm going to have him over for dinner.

Jesse Sampley (15:40)

Mm-hmm.

Hahaha

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (16:06)

We're going to take care of this. it's really, really become a big family with everybody that we, we bring in house and we're very particular, you know, we're not looking for the cheapest guy. We're not looking for, you know, the, the one that's going to do this or that and make a name just for himself. No, we want you to be a part of the seven C construction crew. Yeah. On that note, mean, effective communication upfront, you know, um, my dad and I were very different in a lot of ways, but we're very similar in a lot of ways. And so.

Jesse Sampley (16:14)

Yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (16:35)

more often than not, you know, I'll come in and I'll lay the expectations out very blandly and say, you know, we're not going to put up with tardiness. We're not going to put up with poor communication. You know, we're not going to put up with this. and so our clients will, so we won't exactly. And so that's the reality is exactly what I said earlier is that your, subcontractors are a representation of you.

Jesse Sampley (16:49)

Yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (16:56)

And so a lot of the times, you know, we want our guys to be in our gear. You know, we want them to wear our seven seat hats. You know, I understand they have their own entities, but when you're on our job sites, you're representing us and it helps. It helps those, those subcontractors realize too, that they're wearing my logo. And if they mess up really bad, we make them wear the thing. Yeah. Uh huh. But yeah, just clear.

Jesse Sampley (17:06)

Mm-hmm.

I love it. No, that's really good. Well,

talk to me, you know, we've talked about the subcontractor side and you know, how that relationship of you guys are making this transition. It sounds like, you know, priorities are set extremely clear. Now tell me, you know, on a client side, on a communication side, on a just working with, what's that process look like?

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (17:43)

Working with 7C is hassle free. The floats are ready, ⁓ Communication is super important. without stealing too much of the Amazon and the Chick-fil-A philosophies, that's kind of what we want, man. We want the customer service to be the utmost top priority for anybody that's on our team. How is the client viewing this?

Jesse Sampley (17:46)

Hahaha!

I love it.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (18:09)

always view it through their lens and their point of view of... Because we've been customers ourselves. And we are customers. We've gotten taken advantage of and we've been on that raw end and we never ever want a client to feel that way. And I think that perpetuated the growth of the company is because that's why everybody was saying, oh, you've to call these guys over at 7C Construction.

Jesse Sampley (18:15)

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's

such a common sense thing to kind of view it that way is to say, okay, I don't need to, you know, engineer something specific to say, just think about this. If you were in their shoes, would you want to be communicated with? Would you like a couple check? Well, of course you would. Yeah, the golden rule stuff. think a lot of times, you know, people overthink and then they consume all this stuff on social media about what other people are doing. When at the end of the day,

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (18:33)

Right. Right.

We golden rule.

Jesse Sampley (18:57)

You could pretty much just put yourself in those people's shoes and think what would give me the best experience? And then what are some things that I can do? know, the eat an elephant one bite at a time. You don't have to take it on all at once, but just little bits at a time. What can I do that just improves that process a little bit at a time? But always, like you said, have that mentality of the golden rule of how would I want to be treated? And then how can I do that?

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (19:18)

Right.

Jesse Sampley (19:26)

systematically and that is a bit of the change of how can we engineer this now that we know what we're trying to accomplish how can we engineer this so that it's not just we did this on half the projects and not the other because I forgot or I was sick and then so-and-so forgot are there any softwares that you guys are using to kind of help

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (19:45)

100%. And that's something we implemented. went through a couple of different ones last year, just to see which fit best for us.

what we like and we landed on a software, I'll shout them out, JobTread. And it's a phenomenal software where all of our technicians, have a where they can log into and they can see what they're doing for the day. They can see what we're expecting. The end user, as far as the client facing portal, there's that where they can see the schedule of the week, the month, the three months, the project. There's a message board we can update them daily on. We can submit photos. It's really nice.

Jesse Sampley (19:58)

Okay.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (20:20)

It's a CRM included in there as well. It's a very good software for very versatile and dynamic. It kind of hits all the T's for us at a good price point too. It's not cheap by any means, but if you're growing a business and you're counting on these things and this particular software, those things aren't going to be cheap. But also save us as far as, hey, we can go back and look at pictures. We can say, okay, we have this and we can pull it up. here's the picture.

Jesse Sampley (20:38)

Yeah. Yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (20:48)

was already this way blah blah blah whatever it is and so

That was probably the biggest thing that we did in 2025 was to implement and not just purchase it and have it sitting on our computers and phones, but actually implementing it. Making sure, us even, him and I, making sure that we're actually doing it. Cause a lot of times as owners you're like, well, you know, I don't have to y'all, I want y'all to, but no, him and I, we're on it daily checking, you know, our nightly phone calls at nine 30 at night and seeing what we're doing tomorrow.

Jesse Sampley (21:01)

Yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (21:20)

what's going on, we're gonna be like, did you check job tread? Did you put it on job tread? And so it's been a lifesaver for us and just pushing that ball forward for our guys even has helped us tremendously and it's.

Jesse Sampley (21:32)

I bet.

Yeah. know a lot of builders, they're using builder trend and they're able to upload, you know, all of their finishes in there. ⁓ Razio is another one I've heard of. mean, it's all, there's, you know, multiple things that you could try out, but at the end of the day, it's like, what works best for us? And then what's on a price point, you know, what is, what's something that's working for us today that we also can grow into. And it's not just this works for today, but then in five years.

You know, we're going to either outgrow this or, you maybe it's just too many features that you will never do. Yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (22:02)

You got to try to future-prepare as many things as possible here, you know,

and you really have to have the vision because these things are getting, you know, I mean, this was just the beginning, you know, of expenses that are going in. mean, people don't consider the bookkeeping aspects, the CPA, the accountant that you have to have, the tax strategist you have to have. And like so many people want to tackle all these things by themselves, but going back to delegation, how you said, you know, I'm...

Six years owning a business in this industry, 15 years in construction. And there's still things that I run into in construction. And I'm like, man, I've never seen that one before. That's a unique situation. Now apply that to an industry that's not yours. You know, how can you, how can you say, I know how to be a tax strategist or plan my taxes. Okay. You might know a couple, right. You might watch a couple videos say, man, I'm going to do exactly what that guy did. Well, that was a 32nd clip and there's.

17 hours of work and 47 documents that you have to fill out and make sure all your ducks in a row. so, um, know, right. so, but at the beginning, you don't have the resources of the capital to be able to just hire somebody like that. So you have to do things at a bare, bare bones level and say, okay, you know what? I can do this, but I would recommend from the jump is that, you know, getting a bookkeeper or somebody that

Jesse Sampley (23:11)

Mm-hmm.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (23:24)

So a partner in the team, maybe that understands the books and can do the financial side of things. That's how we've kind of delegated things out ourselves. We're both 50-50 partners, but at end of the day, how we label it is more CEO and more CFO situation. And so even those tasks have to be delegated at the ownership level because there's so many big picture moving parts that it takes, hey, I need to be focused on this entirely and

You know, he needs to be focused on this entirely for us to, cause both of these things need to be done equivalent value of priority, you know, and they need to be done at the same time. And so how do you, how do you tangibly do those? it's, it's through delegation. so we burn out to get here.

Jesse Sampley (24:04)

Yeah, and like you

touched on it too, but also knowing the roles and not that recognizing what you are good at that you should do more of. Maybe some things that you are not good at that you still need to do, but things that I'm not the best at. So I'm going to get someone on the team that can do this just so that I'm also eliminating my burnout and I'm not just.

forcing myself to do things that is not sustainable and then other, it'll sacrifice other parts of the business. You either they come out on an attitude side, you know, other things will fall short. Are you guys following any kind of like the EOS system or anything like that to just kind of set those roles and responsibility and finding who needs to be added to the team?

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (24:50)

cool dynamic just because yes we are 50-50 owners but we're also father-son and obviously he's grown up with me his entire life so he knows things about me

I know things about him. I see, like you said, the strengths and weaknesses. He knows a lot of all my weaknesses. I know all of his strengths and vice versa. So what we do is we have a yearly and a quarterly meeting and we get on this whiteboard right over here and we start writing out different things and we write out, hey, this is where you need to grow. I think on this corner right here, there's a bunch of it actually says strengths and weaknesses. ⁓ We go through over that.

Jesse Sampley (25:28)

Yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (25:30)

This is Christian, oldest brother. just popped in. He's going to look at a house, but yeah, just one another one of the brothers.

Jesse Sampley (25:31)

Hey Christian!

Nice.

Nice.

We were just talking about you.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (25:40)

Yeah, we were talking about you. My truck is all bad things, right? No. My truck. But yeah, we make that a point to sit there and, you know, yearly quarterly goals. Where are we? Where are we not? Where are we falling off at? Where are we reaching at? What did we do good here? What are we good there? Because it's one thing to just only have a metric of, we doubled our output this year. You know, hey, we doubled again. We doubled again.

Jesse Sampley (25:43)

All bad things.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (26:05)

Those are great, but if you're not having satisfied clients, if you're not having a good working team, then it's not going to double next year. And it's certainly not going to be something that people want to come to work at. Go ahead.

Jesse Sampley (26:09)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I'm curious

on your mom's side, having that coaching side of her, does that kind of fall into a bit of the family culture and how you guys look at things? Does any of leak in?

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (26:30)

Yeah.

Well, I would say we raised athletes. My oldest son, who you just saw, he ended up, went and played college ball, football. The twins, Jacob, who does work here and is a tremendous asset for this company. He was a swimmer in high school. His twin brother was a collegiate athlete, a cheerleader, and has done amazing things still in the cheer world. Levi was a phenomenal athlete.

Jesse Sampley (26:33)

Yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (26:55)

recruited in high school to play football at another school. So with that work ethic and my wife's ability to say the hard stuff.

nicely sometimes and sometimes not nicely has been ingrained in them. And even my daughter was a phenomenal athlete as well. She played volleyball too. So all of the whole household was were athletes. And I think that has a lot to do with her mentality of, if we're going to overcome it, we're going to do it. We're going to push through the trials and things like that. So it's given them also that ability to be able to say, okay, there's some problems ahead.

But I'm going to look for that as a goal. It's adversity. You know, I think that that word's kind of ringing through in my head with the athlete analogy there is that, you know, it's just working through adversity and then expecting it. You know, if you expect it to be hard, you're not surprised. You know, it's like, did you expect it to be? It's crazy. We get this misconception of like, oh, I'm going to go be an entrepreneur. And that that'll lead to a more effortless life. And it's like so backwards because like, have to dive in. And so many people, think, just want to

Jesse Sampley (27:42)

Mm-hmm.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (28:00)

say they're an entrepreneur and maybe just struggle the same level that they already were and just not do it justice, you know? ⁓ But absolutely, yeah, my mom's personal training background, I actually got certified to be a personal trainer through her when I was 17 or 18 years old somewhere in there. And ⁓ I trained, you know, for a year to two years while I was just kind of figuring myself out and seeing which direction I wanted to go. But...

Jesse Sampley (28:07)

Yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (28:26)

Absolutely, I think the coaching aspect applies across the board because we're coaching our guys and our expectation is, and we put in our company handbook, is that we expect you to receive the coaching but also be able to understand how that person is talking to you in terms that you can understand. That's effective communicating when somebody, you're talking in their language. If this person likes analogies or metaphors, I'm gonna use those.

Jesse Sampley (28:47)

Mm-hmm.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (28:55)

If this person likes hard love, I'm going to use those. so it's like being able to decipher the uniqueness and the, things that you love about each of your employees that they, you they bring a special quality to the table. And so I love that about them. So I want to encourage that not, no beat you down and you need to conform to this one system that we have. No, let's break the system apart and let's make it more versatile and applicable to individuals.

As we're scaling, I can see the difficulty in that for sure. And I can appreciate HR departments now. Because when we're small, it's like, ⁓ that's unnecessary. I don't need all that. ⁓ they just do that just to get their tax liabilities down. They want to keep all the money in house. But as you grow, you realize and you see the necessities for these key players and key delegation tasks.

Where do I bring these people in and how do I, how do I structure things to where I can efficiently grow? Because when you're talking about salaries, mean, pressures of a business owner, that's where you feel it. I mean, you're paying, you know, every time you bring a new guy on, we start our guys base salary at $50,000, you know? And so it's, man, you're immediately starting at a $50,000 threshold to bring someone on your team and they go upwards of, you know, 75,000 for salaries and then commission starts, you know? And so

Jesse Sampley (30:00)

Mm-hmm.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (30:17)

There's these things that it's just a lot of pressure, I guess, as owners, but having that training background from my mom, especially has, you know, given us the ability to push through adversity, see the problems and, and, and attack them head on. What's that analogy with the, uh, the buffaloes, know, they run into the storm because that's quickest way to get through it is to go straight at it. Most animals are going to run away from the storm. Not us, not at seven C we're going to run straight into that storm and we're going to hit it head on.

Jesse Sampley (30:35)

Right.

Yeah.

There's also clarity in there too, because, you know, even going down to what you were saying on a new hire, you know, you're looking at what, kind of added value is this person bringing to the team to where ultimately we're able to grow the business. So it's not just trying to fill a seat because we need to, it is bringing a person on that can help us, ⁓ you know, build a business. And that comes down to, even keeping our A players that we already have, you know, and making sure you just that extra pressure, but

But having clarity in that is like we're doing everything very intentional for very specific reason, bringing these people on so that we can scale. Yeah, it's not going to be immediate, but we know that if we have this amount of people, they're able to handle this volume. Now we can double that volume. If you know the problem, then it's a lot easier to write out the solution, kind of one step at a time.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (31:35)

Yes, but you're

right. have to identify the problem first. Most people don't even know where to start there. Next time you go through that storm, thing, the storm's not going to look nearly as bad. Right. we've been through this before. This is how you navigate this storm. This is what we do. And then you do that again and again, and now it's not even a storm anymore. It's like, it's a bump in the road. Right. And so I think that's one thing I press with him. It's time. Yes. Time will come.

Jesse Sampley (31:40)

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (32:02)

All these things are going to come to fruition that you're seeing. Life is not a TikTok segment of 30 seconds. Boom, all of a sudden, oh, look what I got. Look at my bank account. Look at this. Look at that. this generation, not him per se, but this generation, just everything's instant gratification. We're going to have it now. And attention span is just out the window.

Jesse Sampley (32:14)

Yeah.

yeah.

I think that's why these conversations are important to kind of see the behind the scenes of people because it's really easy to see the highlight reel. you know, knowing the workings behind it, I think brings the gravity to what's actually being accomplished, but also showing the attitude because, you know, if you love, I think this is kind of the spirit of an entrepreneur, but we love to work.

You know, there's a lot of satisfaction into that. it's not. Yeah. If you don't, I think even Gary V said it's like, if you don't enjoy the journey, like you're not going to be successful because you're just trying to get the wrong things out of it. And usually it's at the end of the day, it's just money or status or something. But if you really enjoyed the, what's that?

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (32:51)

Yeah, you better fall in love with it for sure, yeah.

Right. You're probably in the wrong field. Go switch

it. I said, you're probably in the wrong field. know, people think that, you know, I want to go into this business because I've seen a metric that says, like, why is garage tailing so, so big, you know, cause you could buy a dollar item and then it might be some valuable thing. It's just like so many people lean into the effortless or the convenience quick flips. Yes. Those sort of ⁓ money schemes. When at the end of the day,

Jesse Sampley (33:12)

Exactly.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (33:35)

look at any billionaire in the world, they did not start like that. know, other than like nepotism situations, those people are self-made entirely. You look at the musks of the world, you look at the Bezos of the world, you know, those people went to work and they work their butts off.

Jesse Sampley (33:44)

Yeah.

Yeah, and always

looking down the road, always long-term thinking of like, I don't care about the short term because I know what is to come. And that's kind of where my head's at. You know, have to pace my money for that, but I'm always thinking years and years in advance.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (34:04)

Right.

Yeah. And we started talking about doing building barn dominions. know, when we were doing large scale kitchen and battery models, we started saying, Hey, you know, early 2021, 2023 or 2022, 23, we started talking about, Hey, we want to do barn does like in our neck of the woods out here in this area, barn dominions have become all the rage. So you know what? Me and my wife, fell in love with it, the idea. And so we started doing a lot of research on it and we built our barn dominium on that. The same thing with

Jesse Sampley (34:35)

nice.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (34:37)

that happened back in Harvey, the flood, people are calling us, Hey, y'all did a great barn dough. Can we come look at it? Yeah, come look at it. They come look at it. We want y'all to build our barn doughs. So now we've got a complete flip, I guess, on our website and media marketing, that we're going full fledged into doing barn doughs with the plans, the whole nine yards. And we've had an outpouring. We've already got two booked for this year. I think we have three, number three and number four.

in the works right now. So we'll probably, year end, have done, we'll build 10 barnaminiums this year.

Jesse Sampley (35:13)

Wow.

So let's switch gears a little bit and talk about that because whatever you put out there, you're going to get more of. I don't care if it's energy. I don't care if it's the work. Whatever you put out there, you are going to get back and that's super important. How you guys, like you said, on a website side, on a social media side, on the conversations that you're having.

you know, what are some of those things, barnaminium is one, but what are some other things that you're putting out there in hopes that you're getting a lot more attention and a lot more conversation started for, I want you guys to do this type of project.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (35:44)

So yeah, initially, like I said, it was all word of mouth referrals. It was all, good work. And people talking at their churches, at the baseball games, just any local situation. Sometimes we'd get a review. We weren't pushing for it though or anything like that. so- We even asking. We weren't even asking for them. Yeah. And so the social media side has definitely been, and the marketing side has definitely been something that's, we didn't-

We didn't really want to jump into that until it was a point of like, okay, we've kind of hit our cap in terms of word of mouth referrals and ⁓ the good work referrals and stuff like that. so like, you know, kind of what we were talking about earlier, we didn't start marketing and really pushing social media until 2025 actually really pushing into it, daily posting stuff like that, just to keep users engaged and stuff like that.

Jesse Sampley (36:19)

Mm-hmm.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (36:36)

But these days we've kind of switched our marketing to really, you know, at the beginning it was a, we're general contractors, you know, against the advice of many people that said we should niche into a specific trade, go be a drywall or go be a painter, go be a tile person, make a name for yourself that way. And traditionally that's all a lot of general contractors get there come about, you know, as they start in the specific trade. We did it the opposite way. We wanted to be general contractors so we could take any job and really

We didn't say no at all at the first three years. And even now we have a hard time telling anybody no because we started this with the mission statement of we're providing integrity-based and Christ-based contracting services, which in our county is a diamond in a rough. know, it's a needle in a haystack. You're looking for something very, very particular. And if you find it, these people are astronomically priced because they've killed their systems and they've got so much overhead that they have to consider.

prior to doing your job that they're just priced out immediately. And so when we came in, our price point was good because we had low overhead. And then we were basically having to sell to our clients. This is the best value you're ever going to get. How do you tell somebody, I'm a good person, I'm a good man, I believe in Christ, and I'm also going to do a great job within your budget, on your timeline? Those things are scary. They're huge investments for clients. And so

You know, it goes back to Christ. know, a lot of it's we're faith based and family based. so a lot of times people can interpret that through conversations and can feel that. And so it's a lot of it was feelings, but to go back to the marketing side, we started with everything, just taking everything we could small, small, small. And then now we're getting to a point where we're dedicating money, time, resources into our marketing and restructuring the website to cater more towards barn dominiums and commercial buildings.

Those are the things that we're pushing for right now. And those are the things that, it just gives us more volume and, and it helps us scale to a point where my dad and I are, you know, ideally we're running, you know, one or two barn to mediums at a time ourselves. then even going down to a further future, him and I really need to just be here thinking big picture. What's the next.

Jesse Sampley (38:33)

Mm-hmm.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (38:53)

big picture move with a company, how do we hire a new office manager? How do we hire a project manager? And what we're trying to do is bring culture to, you know, our community as well. We know that we have such an awesome company culture that anybody that's going to be part of our team, we know it's going to change your life, you know, and we're confident in that because of how we take care of our team and what we do for our team.

Jesse Sampley (39:12)

Yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (39:18)

you know, we kind of zeroed in on barnum iniums and things like this because we've been doing something, all these different things for five, six years, but we're narrowing in one because we love the process of barnum inium. We love the lifestyle that it brings, what people have, you know, the ranch life, the home life. It's just a really a mindset. And usually those type of people are on the same mindset that we are, family-based, Christ-based, values, traditional values. And then it also

brings us back to the dirt, to doorknob that we said way back when, early in the broadcast, and also years and years ago, now we're not just dabbling in one of those in between, we're doing the whole process now. We're literally doing the dirt work all the way to putting on that last doorknob on the house. That's like the vision culmination. Yeah, and so that's what we want to do because we can have our hands and we know that excellence is going in every step of that process. ⁓

Jesse Sampley (40:13)

Yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (40:14)

Now we can move step back, look and say, okay, yep, that's a seven C construction that we did that every. ⁓

Jesse Sampley (40:19)

Yeah. You guys have a

good metal manufacturing company you're working with?

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (40:24)

Yeah, we partnered with Iron Bros up here in Huntsville. ⁓ Great guys, pricing's phenomenal. Carson over there, shout out to Carson. He's our sales rep and we've been with him for three or four years now. so get all that done. We've got a couple of, depending on if it's a bolt up or a weld up, we like to do the weld up bar dominiums.

Jesse Sampley (40:29)

Okay.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (40:47)

Just because it gives a lot more flexibility as far as what we can do and customize the whole situation. And we build a hybrid barned out. A lot of wood, but there's also the main nuts and bolts of the structure are steel.

Jesse Sampley (41:01)

For those that

don't know, kind of go through a bit of a barn dough build as far as insulation structure. know, kind of give me the big main pieces of how you're building this out and what different trades you have that come in and complete it.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (41:15)

So the main differences is we'll go in and like we were doing a vet clinic down in Goliad and it's basically the same concept of what we're doing with that one. You're gonna go in, you're gonna do your dirt work, build your pad, get your pad checked, get the dirt checked, make sure you're on good stable ground. That's a whole process in itself. But once you get cleared to build on the dirt, then you're gonna do your forms. You're gonna have your plumber come in just like a normal house.

set all the plumbing, any underground electrical is gonna have to go in. You're gonna pour the slab, let the slab set. During one main process in the slab pour, the way that we build our barn does is we go in and we put weld plates in anywhere we're gonna have a column. And that weld plate actually sets down into the concrete. It's got J-bolts that go feed down into the beam of the concrete. And basically it's a six by six, quarter steel plate.

Jesse Sampley (42:10)

Wow.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (42:10)

that later we can come back and put our 4x4 or 6x6 steel column and it'll weld to that. And so then we'll do

Jesse Sampley (42:16)

And this is something you

guys are doing additional to what the code's requiring.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (42:21)

Yeah, I would say, I say it a lot of times when people will they'll put their columns and they'll set their columns on the concrete and then drill down and bolt, bolt it to, bolt the column to the concrete. We like this process a little bit better just because we know that anchor bolts are all the way down in before and the concrete is actually curing around those anchor bolts. And then also it gives us a

⁓ 30 spot for us to weld those plates onto. Well, and then the, the, know, erection process actually goes a lot quicker that way as well. You know, you're not having to spend an entire day getting your, you know, your foundation bolts in when you attach those I-beams. And so something different about us too, is we use four or six inch square tubing for certain, for certain builds, you know, just depending on what the plans call for, but that actually allows us to build walls within these posts.

A lot of times you'll see these metal buildings or these traditional barn dominions that have 18, 12 to 18 inch I beams inside the wall cavity. And then you're building a wall on the outside of that. Or sometimes people will build the walls inside of those cavities, but you can't, you'll either have a fur out around that I beam or you'll see the I beam. Some people like that, you know, it's preference for sure. But traditionally and

What we've seen across the board with our clients is that when we build our walls within their, you know, the four by four, the six by six metal posts, they love the fact that they're not losing any dead space. You know, I mean, so many clients hate the idea of losing any space because you're paying for it. You know, you're paying for that spot. Yeah. And so, ⁓ we build our walls within those beams or within those posts and columns. And so that's something again, that's newer about us and different about us is that we're

Jesse Sampley (43:52)

Mm-hmm.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (44:04)

every house granted being newer into the, you know, new, new kids on the block in the home building industry, we're looking for every point to have an edge or an advantage. so at every build, we're trying to maximize, how can we make this house more energy efficient? How can we, you know, make this house stand stronger, stand longer? You know, we quote 500 year houses right now, cause they're all metal frames. How can we go to a thousand year house? You know, what are, what are the new components and, and, ⁓

You know, a lot of that goes back to research. We're going to builder shows, you know, we, go to events and expos so we can go and educate ourselves and go back to company culture. That's a paid day for all of my guys to go to this event with us. pay for them to go because it's about education. Now, when we're there, we're having a little fun, but it's also about, guys, y'all are working right now. Enjoy yourself because company cultures. Hey, we want you to love where you're at, you know?

But work is work. got to take that meter some point. So. But back to the barn does. Yeah. It's exciting. It gets very animated. But back to the barn dough. Basically, everybody comes to us and they're like, well, what's big difference between a barn dominium and a stick frame build? And I would say time. Yeah. And that time goes back to time is money. So you're we're going to get this building up and dried in within 30 to 45 days.

Jesse Sampley (45:26)

Mm-hmm.

Wow.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (45:32)

And so it's up and then we're going in, everything's dried in, windows, doors. And then a big thing is creating an envelope. So we encapsulate that house and that home with spray foam. And by doing that, energy bills way down. I think mine biggest one this last summer was $160. And granted it's a 3,800 square foot house. And so $160 electric bill is crazy.

Jesse Sampley (46:00)

yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (46:00)

you know. So the biggest

time we get them up so quick.

Jesse Sampley (46:04)

And then what would you say

on, know, if you're in the hurricane path or, you know, you got high winds, you know, wood versus on a barndo side, like what's the, what's the comparison there?

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (46:15)

As far as like you did down in Florida being going very much with her and we get our own hurricanes as well But we're not probably because we are a little further inland. So we're not as bad as you guys are But yes, everything that we build is all set to those standards as well as far as strapping as far as bolting down But I've seen a lot of different buildings Where you've seen roofs torn off?

with your typical single style roof and it's just ripped off. You might have some panels ripped off here and there, but your whole structure is going to be sound. Right. mean, your entire frame is going to be steel. And so the sheer strength on steel, mean, I'm not an engineer, so I don't know the exact, you know, sheer strength resistance. It's more than wood. Yeah. But no, that's the next step for us is, you know, how do we, how do we get these things?

Jesse Sampley (46:58)

Yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (47:06)

How do we prove that this house is going to be this much better or, you know, a 500,000 year. And so we're looking into ⁓ those things as well and getting sheer strength, resistance, limit load capacities and stuff like that. But most of the time we let the engineers handle all that stuff. And we just, you know, we're very confident in our builds.

Jesse Sampley (47:25)

I love that. We do a lot of pole barns around here, but these things are basically tents. So they have to be built in a certain way so they don't just up and leave. ⁓

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (47:31)

Right.

typically those are all wood framed as well. ⁓

Jesse Sampley (47:37)

Yeah, which why we did

we did metal purlins. That's actually the one I'm underneath right now. I did something a little different on this one too, is I did a 612 pitch found that nobody has a 612 pitch on a pole barn around here.

ask you on a design side, who are they, your clients coming to you with, you know, how they want the inside to work or, or do you have recommendations for what they do on the inside? What's that look like?

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (48:02)

We point them to a direction or, you know, we listen to them, listen, listen, listen as much. And we even say, Hey, show us your Pinterest boards. You know, he and I both have Pinterest accounts, but it's so that we can listen to our clients and they'll show us. And then we'll point them in a direction. We've got a couple of designers that we actually work with. Um, that we say, Hey, why don't you go talk to this person or to this person, um, and let them, but a lot of times most people are saying, Hey, this is what I want. And we'll throw some pictures out.

And yep, that's what I want. You show me a picture, we can build it. That sort of thing. Now, sometimes the budget is in question. They want this and this and they're like, no. People are like, oh, somebody built this $100,000 barnum in him. No, that's a $600,000 barnum in him. That is $500,000. Well, it's a, mean, on that note, it's, it's, it's, know, relaying realistic expectations and educating the clients. At the end of the day, that's

Jesse Sampley (48:38)

Hahaha

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (48:59)

Kind of what him and I have said is that our job is to educate you at the end of the day. It's your job to make the decision. So if I can give you all of the information at your disposal, you know, why this system's better, why this one's more weather resistant, why the spray foams more, has better our value, you know, why it's more energy efficient. I can present all of these facts and then Mike, we give the client all of this information so they have the opportunity. Now.

More often than not, we're getting involved with people who prior know about us, have reached out to us directly. Like we're not having to cold call people and really pitch ourselves. So a lot of the times these clients that are coming to us are coming to us with the understanding that we are a better builder. You know, we are going to take care of them and think about them at every stage in the process. Okay. How can I make this home more energy efficient? Can I, you know, is there something I should be polysealing over there?

Jesse Sampley (49:41)

Mm-hmm.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (49:53)

I see a 16 inch hole in that metal right there where they pulled a screw out and they didn't replace it. That hole she needs to get replaced. So attention to detail is something super big about us and we market that on our social medias as well. We make funny little skits and stuff to kind of highlight the fact that, we're really, really prying into and diving into your project and giving it the time, energy, care that it deserves really. Because this is a huge investment for people.

Jesse Sampley (50:20)

yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (50:20)

being on the consumer side, know that. so, yeah. One thing we like, just, we just closed a client this Saturday morning. came in here and we, you know, went through the whole process. We just brought the third time that we had met with them. But we got it closed down and then they said, yes, we said, yes, you know, they got a hat. They're on the team. But as we were leaving, I told them, I said, and this is something that him and I have incorporated is that, this is going to be a six, nine month process.

and we're going to be family together for six, nine months. And I said, there's going to be some arguments. I said, there's going to be where you're frustrated with me, we're frustrated with you. said, but with our next meeting, with the next meeting we're going to have with these clients is we're going to sit down with them and we're going to outline, hey, conflict resolution, what to do, send a text. At what point do we need to have a sit down talk? And granted, that doesn't happen on every job, but it

Clients have the expectation that at least they're covering the grounds and they know that this is going to be something that's going to come up. It helps, hey, let's have a little meeting. And it's way easier than nobody talking. Everybody's mad at each other over something really stupid in the end.

Jesse Sampley (51:25)

Yeah.

Yeah. Again, setting that proper expectation from the very beginning makes

it so much easier when you're in that rather than like, you know, communication is everything. And everyone that we've talked to on a construction site all says the same thing is, yeah, maybe we could be, you know, we could always do a lot better, but nothing has been the single most important thing for us than communication. Communication basically solves, it either solves the problem or

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (51:53)

Yep.

Jesse Sampley (51:58)

It just makes the problem a whole lot less than what it is. Yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (52:01)

Yeah, we over communicate. That's what I, that's how we train our guys to

is over communicate. said, I'd rather, I'd rather be annoyed with you than not know about a single thing, you know? And, I mean, you know, if they, if they're small things that they can make decisions on that we've delegated to them, say, Hey, you don't need to call me about these decisions. But if it's anything to do with the clients or, Hey, you know, on, even on a $20,000 remod that we're doing for a client, those are small fish in the sense of we've grown, you know, to larger projects. But at end of the day.

Jesse Sampley (52:08)

Yes.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (52:31)

Those sustained us for our first two years. And so we always give back in those situations where we're not going to tell people no to a $20,000 remodel. Are my margins very, very tight on it usually? Yes. Is it maybe not the best business decision to go in and get involved in those? Probably. But that's where it's the give back side to our company that we've grown is that we offer integrity and Christ-based services. And these days, we really don't take

Jesse Sampley (52:49)

Mm.

I love that.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (52:59)

a lot of new clients at that threshold, but we will not tell referrals no, because they garnered trust into us. They've said, Hey, they took a leap of faith in our first two years and Hey, come do a small real remodel at my house. Now, five years later, they're in the same boat because I won't do that project anymore. I just, didn't sit well with me and my dad. And so we don't tell referrals and or, ⁓ past clients know at all, but it's just one of those things that, you know, we want to

ensure that we're doing our give back to a certain degree. mean, and this is, yeah.

Jesse Sampley (53:32)

Yeah, and it maintains your integrity too.

Yeah, well, let's as we're wrapping up, you know, I wanted to know, there anybody, is there anybody or other companies that you're looking to for inspiration? Other CEOs that you like their leadership style?

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (53:48)

There's this guy follow on Facebook Ian Mitchell fields. He's a good builder. I forget what state he's in but And then I like Aaron Aaron steps are here in Houston. Yeah. Yeah, she's a ten million dollar plus Custom boutique home builder in Houston. She does great work And then she really harps on systems delegation. We really like that side of it Yeah, now we're kind of more

going into our tax strategies and financial planning. the year. Yeah, that time of the year. But I like Victory Outdoor Services. You know, I like the John Siemens J &B property. Yeah, he's really good. Well, I ⁓ follow a bunch of guys on the Facebook. And so it's yeah, those are those are some notable names and local in our area. You know, we've got some great subcontractors.

Sierra Custom Cabinets is who we use down here. R &D Marble is a local vendor for us for all of our quartz and granite and stone fabrication. Who else can we shout out right now? Well, I would say just back to his question, you who we follow as far as or even ask for as mentors. Kurt Labarge from Brendan Custom Homes. Yes. He's been doing phenomenal multimillion dollar homes for the last 25 years.

So he's somebody that I can reach out to and say, Hey, you know, I got a question about this and he's long winded and he'll tell me, but I know that I'm going to hang up that phone call and I've learned something felt better even about the question that I asked. So shout out to Kurt and make sure and answer my call next time.

Jesse Sampley (55:21)

It's good to have those people. It's good

to even follow those people on social media. That's just you know constantly You know inspiring you you know you almost have your own the think tank you know if you are your think tank if you don't have You know a group of people that you meet with or anything you know you'll have you have to be surrounded by people that kind of allow you to push the envelope and You know just be a good resource, but if nothing else just to get your mind right as far as you know keep me

Yeah. Refocus and you you can always get caught in kind of the day to day, which is a drain, but it's like, what's, what's replenishing, you know, in renewing my mind. Um, yeah.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (55:57)

That's David Goggins for me.

Who's gonna carry the boat, son? Whoo! Wakes you up real quick, you know? Who's gonna carry the I'm gonna carry the boats. Yeah, in Christ, dude. I mean, we wouldn't be here without Christ. I wanna harp that and just, you know, really stress the importance of that. I'm a believer. That is our Father, and we wouldn't be here without Him 100%. He deserves, as Victoria all prays, so.

Jesse Sampley (56:04)

Yeah

I love it.

Absolutely. And like

you said, people see that. People see that in the integrity, how you treat people. You know, you don't even have to tell people, but people can just tell when something's different, you know? And that's kind of the whole point is like, you know,

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (56:34)

Right. Know them by their

fruits. Yes. Know them by their fruits.

Jesse Sampley (56:39)

Yes. This is a wrap up question, but I wanted to know what's on the horizon for you guys. You know, let's fast forward five, 10, 15 years down the road. What's the company look like?

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (56:51)

This is where we vary a little bit here. It changes. It changes because well, my dad, mean, he's, he's got in his vision, I would say 10 more years, you know, in this business. And then he's trying to see his exit strategy. I want to go and he wants to go fish. You know, he wants to be on his lake. He wants to be out at his 25 acres and, and, know, Livingston he wants that.

Jesse Sampley (56:53)

Maybe we should just dock this question.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (57:17)

I'm entering my thirties and I want, I'm, just, I know I'm going to be committed to this for the next 20 to 30 years of my life. So what does that vision look like for us? Um, I would say growth, we can agree on that. can agree. I want to be building 25 barn dominiums a year. And, know, we're focusing on just barn does commercial buildings, but I feel like we owe it to.

my family and we owe it to our community to create more jobs because our company culture is awesome that I want as many people part of this, this company culture as possible. because like I said, when we hire somebody, we have the intention of, man, this is a career change for you. So I want that's my, my served back as well as that I want to create and scale to a point where I can hire as many people as possible because you're blessing families, you're helping families.

We, we vary a little bit on the size and the end goal of, where do we want to end that? But means to an end for me means, Hey, I'm retired at 40. You know, I get in 10 years, I can kind of take a backseat here and really focus on bigger picture stuff, the philanthropy side of this company and how we can give back to our community going forward. You know, we've got a passion for, the elderly, we've got a passion for children. And so how do we.

serve our community better that way. And, we're already involved with new Danville community down here. It's a, it's a community with, for adults with special needs and they live on site and it's, it's super, super cool concept. Um, and they've got about 40 to 50 people living on site full time. Now they have golf cart licenses. Um, they teach these adults with disabilities how to budget properly and give them a shot at everyday life. And so I'm super passionate about that. And so how can I go there and

Jesse Sampley (59:01)

wow.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (59:07)

How can I go, I have to scale to a point where we can donate them 10 homes, you know, like that's, that's where I want to be, man. And like that's, and I know he sees, ⁓ he wants to be home. You know, he's, he's, he's a dog. He works man, but I know he's, his visions, got less time than mine. So.

Jesse Sampley (59:11)

Yeah. Yeah.

Once you've got that

fire lit inside you, it's hard to tame that flame sometimes. My dad's the same. My dad, think, has wanted to retire for, I don't know, 20 years. And it's just like one more spec home always seems to pull him in. you know, we've built some homes together and it's just like, I don't think he'll ever retire. I really don't.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (59:30)

100%. Yeah. I don't know if I'm ever gonna have one.

Right?

Well, that's the illusion of it. I'll retire at 40, but I'll just be working on bigger things in the sense of, how can I give back to the community? That's kind of what end all goal here is, I guess.

Jesse Sampley (59:50)

Yeah.

Well, I love it. Well guys, thank you for this conversation. You guys are doing great. I'm looking forward to following along on your guys's journey. Make sure you can continue to post to Instagram, because that's where I'm following you guys.

Levi Curnel - 7C Construction (1:00:12)

Yes sir, will do.