FROM APPRENTICE TO PRESIDENT

By Mak Millard

There is a lot of advice floating around – solicited or not – about how to pick a worthwhile career and excel at it. Aptitude tests and internships abound, and for many, it takes a slog through all the wrong jobs to finally settle on the right one. Fortunately for Keith Weeks, there was no such handwringing over his future.

“I think [the aha moment] is the story everybody wants,” Weeks said. “But really, it started out as just looking for a job, and that job turned into a career.”

Gary Houston founded his namesake electrical contracting business in Little Rock in 1978, and in 1989, a 22-year-old Weeks joined the company. It wasn’t his first job, but as far as Weeks is concerned, it was his first real one. And it’s the job that stuck: after four years as an apprentice, Weeks earned his journeyman’s license and then his master electrician’s license. Eventually, he moved into the office as an estimator before working his way up to vice president. Now, 34 years later, Weeks is president and owner of the company, alongside vice president and business partner Mitchell Shelby.

“I’ve worked with him for close to 20 years, and he’s truly the driving force behind our company,” Weeks said. “I’ve always said if he leaves, then I’ll leave too. He’s a wonderful person.”

When Weeks started out, Gary Houston Electric Company had around nine employees. Today, he oversees more than 50 people. Despite that growth, and the change in scenery from apprenticeship to the president’s chair, Weeks’ day-to-day has remained the same in one essential way.

“My daily job is whatever the daily job needs to be,” Weeks said. “It’s always changing, and there’s always something new to be done. We do anything from a one-hour service call to a million-dollar office building.”

Gary Houston Electric Company performs residential and commercial electrical services spanning from the design phase to the remodel, from regular maintenance to emergency repairs and everything in between. Once, during his time as an apprentice, Weeks even worked on philanthropist Jennings Osborne’s largerthan-life Christmas lights display. While the company does plenty of new construction, it’s the repeat customers that form the base of the company’s clientele; any growth depends on the quality of the relationships Weeks and his team have been able to build over the years. The way he describes his people, it’s clear that Weeks isn’t worried about their abilities, whether technical or personal.

“It’s not about me. It’s about the team I have in my office,” Weeks said. “We all work well with each other – not every day, but most days. I could not do it without them, but they could all do it without me.”

Ages around the office run the gamut, from 18 to nearly 80. Despite – or maybe because of – that range, the company atmosphere stays “light,” as Weeks put it.

“We’re always joking and trying to make it fun,” he said. “There’s plenty of stress without going and looking for it. We’ll bring lunch in, and cheesecake is our big splurge on birthdays. It’s more about the visit than the lunch, in my opinion.”

Weeks has learned a lot from people on either side of his own age, and he sees all those different perspectives as assets rather than impediments.

“Either you change with them, or you get stuck,” Weeks said. “Our newest thing has been social media and figuring out what that looks like for our company. We’re just learning new things. If you don’t learn, you get left behind.”

Weeks’ style of leadership – more of a non-style, as he sees it – is built on that kind of adaptability. He’s always ready to shake things up; the fact that things have been done a certain way for four decades isn’t an excuse to shy away from novelty.

“We’ll try it for a week, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll try something else,” Weeks said. “For a lot of people my age, that can be a thing: they’re stuck in a certain way. The great thing about having young people around me is having fresh thoughts all the time.”

Weeks had his own set of generational differences to navigate as he was coming up through the ranks under the guidance of Houston. The way Weeks and the company interact with customers may have changed through the years, but Houston also taught Weeks a number of timeless lessons that he carries into the present.

“If I needed to, I could call him today and he would give me some wonderful advice. I would not be anywhere without him,” Weeks said.

Many of the largest lessons Houston taught Weeks had to do with communication. One thing Weeks learned, at times without even realizing it, was the importance of body language and gestures. A heightened awareness for nonverbal cues has helped him notice when others are getting upset and diffuse tense situations before they can escalate. On the other end of the spectrum, Houston also expressed his business savvy in more pointed ways.

“There was another time where we had a project that was getting out of budget and the contractor had many questions as to why,” Weeks said. “I spent hours preparing for our meeting with the client. When we finally sat down with them and showed them that we had pages and pages of materials explaining what was going on, they decided they didn’t want to spend the hours it would take to go through it. As a result, the project moved ahead. Gary taught me to over prepare, and I have used that several times since.

It always seems to work out.”

During his tenure as president, Weeks has been able to pass those skills on to others, even if he’s hesitant to describe himself as a mentor.

“I think everyone tries to be a mentor, but I don’t know that I could fill those shoes,” he said. “He did a wonderful job, and he was very, very patient with me. It means more than he will ever realize. He’s given myself, Mitchell and many others the opportunities that we have today; owning this company is one of those huge things. I have such an appreciation and an admiration for him.”

Weeks sums up his career so far, and the countless things he’s learned along the way, with a mantra that’s hard to argue with. “Hard work and a great attitude take care of so many things,” he said. “Everyone loves to be around happy, friendly people. That will get you anywhere, in anything you do.”

When it comes to the future of Gary Houston Electric Company, Weeks once again defers to the people that have helped make the business into what it is today. He’s not necessarily looking to get any bigger, he said, but it’s ultimately up to the team.

“The more leaders that we have come out of our group, that’s really what dictates if we grow,” he said. “If you have people who can lead others, then it will happen naturally. It’s been the same thing with our clients; we don’t do a lot of marketing, because we have a lot of great relationships. We have a great client base and great team members. That’s really the growth, in my mind.” has gained experience in education, retail, medical, municipal, hospitality, multifamily, corporate, industrial, government and entertainment sectors. He understands the importance of balancing design performance with ease of maintenance. He is also a veteran of the United States Air Force.

Jerry Holder

Senior Vice President, Director of Enterprise Solutions Garver