The Win is in the Workers
Tipping Development, Inc. subcontracts for the long game
For Richard Tipping, the word “good” means something specific. As Founder and President of the 8-year-old Tipping Development, Inc. (doing business as Tipping Custom Homes), the Monrovia, California, businessman passionately assures the good work by which his development and general contracting firm excels. Tipping Development specializes in building single-family homes and condominium-style communities in the San Gabriel Valley region of Southern California.
Tipping, who quotes investor Warren Buffett on playing the long game and legendary former UCLA Coach John Wooden on success, defines good in his world as craftmanship. Whether the project is expensive or moderate, the walls are straight. The joints are true. Windows are waterproofed and properly installed. “Craftsmanship is no one thing,” Tipping says. “It’s everything done well, no matter the materials, no matter the size of the project.”
But when every building is a mountain of small details, how does a contractor guarantee craftsmanship? “With the people you bring on,” Tipping says, matter-of-factly. “You hire the subcontractors you know do good work. You hire the people who say, ‘I know how you like your work, and that’s the way I do it.’ Those are the right subs.”
The value of an effective general contractor, Richard says, is in his ability to find, use and keep top workers. “If you’re a developer, you don’t want or need a lot of employees. You hire me, and I hire everyone else: builders, subcontractors, specialists in specific trades. And insurance and liability fall to me because I build it.”
Cowboy to Contractor
Richard was 22 years old in 1988 when he started working for Bowden Development, Inc., a real- estate firm in Monrovia. Only five years before, he’d left the 150-acre thoroughbred horse farm he’d grown up on in Spokane, Washington, to study technology at DeVry University in California. He was a satellite technician at Rockwall International in 1986 when the space shuttle exploded. When Rockwell subsequently announced a round of layoffs, Richard left technology for a short stint in a friend’s mortgage-lending business.
The stint was short because his time in mortgage lending took him to Fred Bowden—“A top real estate developer in the San Gabriel Valley,” Tipping says. “I wanted to be like him.”
Joining Bowden Development at $10 an hour, Richard proceeded to cut his teeth on estimating and to cement his friendship with Bowden. “They just gave me a Blue Book and told me to start calling,” Richard remembers, and from there his real estate education rocketed. A to Z, from buying raw land to selling the finished product, he learned on the job, on his own, from colleagues and “on the street.” By 1991, when the savings and loan crisis hit, Bowden trimmed his large staff to three people; Richard was still there. Bowden’s son, Todd, then came on board and the two of them essentially ran the construction operations for the company. In 2012, grateful for all he’d learned at Bowden, Richard founded Tipping Development and, seeing the need for competent contracting, mastered that, too.
The Tipping Team
General contracting is a low-cost entry point for a lot of people with a passion for construction, Richard observes; but as the jobs and the stakes rise, the talent pool shrinks. Enter the Tipping team, emphasis on team. In the way John Wooden said that a coach’s job is to prepare players to play and then let them do it, Richard secures good subcontractors and sets the stage for them to succeed and even shine.
And in the way Warren Buffet says to only do business with people you trust, Richard creates the trust his workers want. “If I’m a subcontractor, I’m looking for experienced superintendents who know how to run the jobs with precision,” he says. “Our jobs are organized, planned out, on a timetable. We believe if we set up properly, the subs can come in and knock out their work efficiently and fast. They make more money and we do too. Win-win.”
And When It’s Not Win-Win?
The job setup matters because a job site poorly planned is a chain of work disruptions. “When a subcontractor can do only part of his work that day and has to leave,” Richard says, “he has to unload and unpack all his tools and pack back up. He’s making a lot of trips, using time poorly and losing money.”
When it works, subcontractors can bid jobs to be competitive, the jobs run well, and they make their money. The win is a three-way of efficiency, quality and profit.
For a worker or a company to get on his subcontractor list, what does Richard look for? He thinks for a moment and then checks through a mental list: “Competitive price. The ability to man a job, to meet the schedule. A quality product.” Yes, there are cheaper subs out there, and cheaper builders, he says, but he won’t work with them.
Richard wants a working relationship with his subs that is built on mutual understanding. “We each know the other’s expectations. It gets to the point you don’t have to get a bid, but you need one to line it out,” he says, “to work with in the field.” As Buffet would say: The trust is there.
With each multi-home project, each home, each customer, each relationship with his builders, Tipping wants craftsmanship and trust for the long game. He does business to keep doing it, and when a project is complete, he aims to feel satisfaction—perhaps the way Wooden felt about his games.
“I’m not a basketball fan, but I read his books because they’re about life,” Richard says. “If you follow his coaching steps with your employees, it’s really about building a company. Because a good company really is a team.”