American DBE Magazine - Fall 2019

Ebony Construction – Still Going and Still Growing

By Jordan Taylor

Amy Hall, president of Ebony Construction, attributes her early success with the company to three things: 1) Trusting her gut instincts; 2) Commitment to the company from its longtime employees; and 3) Wanting no regrets – because sometimes you don’t get do-overs. “I didn’t want to live with the woulda, coulda, shoulda,” she said.

Sixteen years ago, Hall was living in Atlanta, Georgia, (newly married, with two children and a third child on the way) when her father, president of Ebony Construction at the time, unexpectedly passed away at the age of 58. Her parents were divorced at the time of his death, and she had no siblings, leaving her as sole heir to the family business. Hall said her father died on a Sunday, was buried on the following Thursday; and she was named president of the company the next Monday.

Amy Hall, president of Ebony Construction Company, Inc.

Prior to her father’s death, Hall’s job was selling pathology services to dermatologists and plastic surgeons. Immediately afterwards, she commuted back and forth between Atlanta and Toledo, Ohio, for a short time before her job in Atlanta was phased out and she made the decision to move to Ohio. Faced with the decision of whether to keep the company going or close it, Hall said she knew the right decision was to make the move. Hall said: “My gut said I had to come home. If these doors aren’t open, then my family’s not eating; and other people’s families aren’t eating. That was the year our company only made money because of my dad’s life insurance policy.”

Looking back on that tumultuous time, Hall said the best thing about the situation was that she didn’t really know what she was getting into; indeed, ignorance is bliss, she said. “I didn’t have time to think about it, I just did it.” Hall said, in retrospect, she was completely blessed not to know any different or how overwhelming the task before her could potentially be. Because things happened so quickly, she didn’t have time to think through the situation, but rather functioned on autopilot and simply moved forward.

Ebony Construction is now in its third generation of family operations as a heavy highway construction company. It was founded in 1986 as a Minority Business Enterprise (MBE federal set-aside program) by Hall’s mother with a primary focus of building catch basins, curbs and gutters. Her mom chose the name Ebony Construction because of the color of asphalt. “She wanted a name that would let everybody know what we did and who we were,” Hall said. A few years after it started, Ebony Construction shifted its focus to asphalt and paving. In the early years, her father took over leadership of the company to leverage his minority status – subsequently when the MBE program was dismantled, and women were no longer considered a minority group in business. Ebony Construction became a certified Disadvantaged Business Enterprise in 1999, and Hall assumed leadership of the company in 2003. Hall has three sons, one of whom works in the business with her.

Ebony Construction has a core team of 50 employees, which scales up to 100 during the company’s peak season. “The year I took over, we had a bad year,” Hall said. “But we’ve never lost money since then.” Hall said that under her father’s leadership, the focus at Ebony Construction was all about maintenance, and not necessarily about growth. Hall said that after she took over running the company, there was a different energy. She said the company changed its internal processes to become less siloed, more integrated and to increase communication between team members. Hall said that coming in fresh, she was able to do a lot of listening and a lot of learning.

Hall said that she feels each prior job and opportunity in her career taught her different skills and prepared her for the myriad challenges of business ownership. For example, she learned customer service as a flight attendant. She said: “With each job, life prepares you. When I was a flight attendant, I learned how to deal with people. You can do a lot with a smile.” Various other positions in sales and marketing taught her how to sell; how to build a business; how to plan your work and work your territory. Along the way, she also learned administrative and backoffice skills and how to start and build something.

Over the last 10 years, Ebony Construction has expanded both its geography and its construction portfolio to include milling, trucking and material supply. In both 2002 and 2008, Ebony Construction was the recipient of Flexible Pavement of Ohio’s Smooth Pavement Award. Many of the company’s other recognitions derive from work on Interstate 75, with the Ohio Department of Transportation, and the Dayton International Airport, focusing on taxiways, runways and aprons. Hall said: “We work all through Ohio. We can mobilize anywhere. We are certified to work in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Georgia. We have a bonding capacity, so we’re able to take on bigger projects, [and] we’re able to offer a larger package for the people whom we work for.”

Hall said that she built her leadership style around caring about people – not just as employees – but as individuals who are vested in the success of the company. She said she has an open door policy, but is also comfortable having tough conversations when necessary. “Our company is wholeheartedly our employees,” she said. “Our employees make this company what it is. Our company has developed a culture of family, and I think that’s what makes us a little bit different. We invest in people.”

Ebony Construction paving crews work on a project in Toledo, Ohio.

Hall said looking back, she wouldn’t do anything differently. However, she’s learned some important lessons along the way: “As a DBE, we not only represent all DBEs in our industry, each one of us represents the group collectively. But I think there’s a different standard out there that we’re judged by. It’s unwritten and unspoken, but it’s very palatable. When we go to a job, we can’t just be OK. We have to be better than OK. There’s a different standard out there that we’re judged by.”She also said that it takes time and it takes perseverance to build a successful company, and that there’s a delicate balance of planning for growth and for the future of the company. Hall said the DBE Program can sometimes feel like golden handcuffs, in that it’s difficult to be sustainable outside of the program. “You don’t want to grow out of the program too fast,” she said. “It’s that delicate balance of planning and growth; yet maintaining your current revenue base.”

Hall highly recommends that DBEs join professional organizations where prime contractors are also members, to network and build relationships with individuals doing the hiring. She said that DBEs often join women-focused and minority-focused groups. “But you really have to join the organizations where people who own the work you’re going after belong to,” Hall said. She said it’s important to spend time getting to know contractors and building professional relationships so that when it’s time to bid on projects, you’re not just some random company sending in a quote. “You overcome a lot of the unspoken barriers because now you’ve developed a relationship,” she said. “People do business with people they know.”

As part of her professional development, Hall currently serves as chairman of the board for Ohio Contractors, the state’s highway division within Associated General Contractors of America (AGC). She is also active with the national AGC office in Washington, D.C., serving on the Diversity & Inclusion committee and the DBE Task Force. In 2020, she will serve on the AGC executive board, the highest governing board within the organization.

Hall said: “Our industry is extremely capital-intensive. These organizations are having the conversation about programs that affect us as DBE contractors. It’s our job as DBE contractors to be advocates for ourselves to the degree that we can be a part of the conversation. This industry is all about relationships.”