Trevor Readdick, 34
CEO, Camden County commissioner
Business: Readdick Construction
Lives in: St. Marys
Professional responsibilities: Direct management of the three core areas of business (Sales and Marketing, Operations, and Accounting) at Readdick Construction. Establishing policy and adopting an annual budget at the Camden County Board of Commissioners. Being the chief officer and presiding at membership, Board of Director, and Executive Committee meetings for the Home Builders Association of Georgia.
Accomplishments/Honors: Readdick Construction recently celebrated 10 years in business. I consider this to be a huge accomplishment that would not have been achieved without the will of God, support from my family, and a tremendous team with the drive to succeed.
Community Involvement: I’m a charter member of the Home Builders Association of Camden County, a professional trade association which is part of a three-tier federation of associations, including HBAG and NAHB. I’ve also been a member of the Rotary Club of Camden County since 2012. Rotary is a civic organization that performs community service while learning about local issues and opportunities to serve.
Why did you go into your particular field? I started my company in 2012 by flipping foreclosed homes in established neighborhoods. After completing several extensive home renovations, I gained a great appreciation for new construction, so I decided to shift our emphasis by building our first spec home in 2013. Today, I would consider our company niche to be classified as small volume production while occasionally building a custom home.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? I feel as if the construction industry chose me. I began following my dad, grandfather and uncles to work around 5 years old. They introduced me to heavy equipment operation, subdivision development, home building, and running the infamous sawmill. I spent many afternoons and weekends over the next decade playing in what seemed to be a life-sized sandbox. It was honestly a dream come true!
What was your first job? My first official job outside of the family was being a lifeguard during my high school years. To be completely honest, it made me a better swimmer, but not necessarily a harder worker.
What is the best advice you’ve ever received? It would have to be a quote from Marion Morrison, better known as John Wayne. “Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives, and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.”
What’s your favorite thing about your job? Home building is a very dynamic industry, meaning that it’s constantly changing. There are many variables which are market dependent that it really becomes somewhat of an exact science. While this can lead to instability, it forces one to constantly adapt to become or even remain successful.
What do you know now that you wish you knew when you first started your career? I wish that I could see the value of delegating and streamlining activities at an early age. This took me many years in business to learn the “old fashioned” way through experience.
Who do you consider to be your greatest mentor and why? My grandfather would be one of my greatest mentors as the patriarch of our immediate Readdick family. He came from what I consider to be the greatest generation and accomplished so many things with only a ninth grade education. To this day, I come across very few people who encounter a problem and could envision a workable solution the way he did.
When you’re not at work, what do you do to relax? While not working, I enjoy boating and hunting with my wife (Nicole), son (Frazier), and bird dog (Lucy).
What is something about you that most people don’t know? My wife and I were selected to film a sizzle reel (trailer) in Cuba for a large Hollywood television production company. The trip was great, but apparently, we weren’t cut out to be TV stars as the show never got picked up by a network.
How do you hope to grow in your career? I plan to continue implementing systems and procedures so that our company runs among the top-tier home builders of our size in terms of efficiency. I don’t value “busy” as a term of success because it’s possible to be “busy and broke.” What I value is efficiency, and the ability to build a company that is self-sufficient. I also enjoy seeing people empowered with responsibility, and the achievement of their individual successes.
If you couldn’t do what you’re doing now, what would you be doing? I would probably end up living in a van down by the river as predicted by the SNL motivational speaker, Matt Foley. As a matter of fact, these camper vans today are rather expensive, so I’ll have to save up for another few years in order to afford one.