Raleigh, a project manager for a large general contractor in southern Oregon, told Session 3B of the Leadership Development LAB:

“In 1984 I was working for Wildish Willamette Crushing Company out of Eugene, Oregon. In the early 1980’s the workload in the Oregon market was slowing down. Wildish was considering moving into a new marketplace. They were looking all over the western part of the United States for a market that would fit their type of work. Wildish began looking hard at the Arizona market. Arizona had just passed a gas tax bond for building 200 miles of concrete freeways. This was very interesting to Wildish because they were doing concrete paving at this time.

Wildish sent some management people over to Phoenix to scope out the market. Based on their report, the company decided to give it a go. Wildish was looking for people who might be interested in working in Arizona. I knew the management people who had gone to Arizona and I thought this might be interesting, so I talked to my wife about this possible move. She thought it sounded interesting and said I should go over and check it out to see what I thought before we made our decision.

I left for Arizona in the fall; the weather was great. I started out working as an estimator and Walt Donovan was our foreman/superintendent. I lived in a two bedroom apartment, worked one month at a time and then home for a week. I did this all through the

winter, then I told my wife that she should come down and check it out for herself. It was a tough life in Arizona during the winter, 70–75 degrees and sunshine. I spent most of my evenings in the hot tub looking up at the stars. Becky finally decided to come down after the holidays to check things out. She loved the weather and the lifestyle, so we decided to accept the job and moved to Arizona. We looked around and found a rental house.

We moved to Arizona in the spring and it was a little tough at first with a new house, new schools for the kids and my wife about due with our third child. Moving to Arizona in the spring was nice so we could get acclimated before the summer heat set in. When summer hit everyone says it is a dry heat. I don’t care what they say, it is still darn hot!

In Arizona, until you pay taxes for two years, you are at a 5% bidding disadvantage. Wildish did a lot of subcontract work during the first two years. After the first two years we bid most of our work as a general/prime contractor. The work and life was good. We learned a lot and met many nice people. We had many new experiences that expanded our comfort zone.

The lesson I learned from this experience is that change can be good. The action I call you to take is take a chance on a change, check it out for yourself. The benefit you will gain is learning new things and having the confidence that an expanded comfort zone brings. You will live a richer, fuller, more productive life.”