Today's Guest

Thornton Fence Consulting Group was established in 2022 by founder and visionary Tony Thornton, a 45+ year veteran of the fencing industry with vast experience as a contractor, supplier/distributor, and manufacturer. While working with others and owning his own companies, he gained experience in sales, operations, installation, and project management and began developing efficiency methods that streamlined the processes that highlighted the importance of profitability. Tony shares how he grew his company and pivoted into teaching other small business leaders how to create a pathway to success.

Resources Shared

• Thornton Fence Consulting Group
• American Fence Association
• Thryv

Episode Transcript

(Please excuse grammatical errors due to transcription)

Gordon Henry:             Hey, hey, this is Gordon Henry, of Winning on Main Street, and this week we're fortunate to meet Tony Thornton. Welcome to the show, Tony.

Tony Thornton:            Hello, sir. How are you?

Gordon Henry:             I'm doing great, and it's great to have you on the show. For our audience, Tony is a legend really in the fencing industry, putting on lectures and seminars, but his content is really applicable for all small businesses, certainly in the service sector. He's a speaker, mentor, support, and coach for many companies that need help to take the next step towards being more efficient and profitable. Tony is one of the most trusted names in the fencing industry. He served as the executive director for the American Fence Association, and he's an industry veteran for over 45 years. He receives positive feedback in sales operations, project management. His passion is to teach, educate, provide training to industry professionals, and enhance their opportunities for training, retraining, and growing their companies.

                                   What should listeners get out of this episode? This is really an opportunity to listen to a true expert in a field who can give you strategies about launching and growing your business, whether you're in the fence industry, some other service business, or just thinking about starting your business. I think this is well worth your time, so let's get rolling. Tony, we were just starting to chat before the tape started rolling. Tell me the great story of how you got started in the fence industry.

Tony Thornton:            I don't know that anybody just jumps in the fencing industry, but at age 15, I was cutting grass in my home in Pearl, Mississippi. That's our home state, and two houses down, we had a family friend that owned a fence company. He pulls up in his truck one day, and he says, "Hey, I talked to your dad. Get in the truck. We're going to go build a fence today." So as I tell everybody, anything at age 15 to get out of cutting grass, I pushed the lawnmower up on the carport, got in the truck, and that day started a career. So here I am, 61 years old, 45+ years later, and I got stuck in that hole I dug that day, I guess.

Gordon Henry:             That's funny. Now, as I understand the legend, Tony, so you ended up working for that neighbor, Mr. Jeffcoat, I think it was, not just that one day, but for years, right?

Tony Thornton:            Yes, sir. Every summer during junior high, high school, and even college, working full-time, even going to college. I worked with him full-time after college all the way up until age 29, and that entrepreneur spirit says, "You know what? If you're going to do it, you better do it now." And he gave me the blessing, and we started our own companies doing some different things in the gate and the fence industry, so still in the fencing industry, a little bit different.

Gordon Henry:             So in those years after that first day cutting grass and hopping in his truck to all those years working for him, what would you say were some of the key lessons you learned working from Mr. Jeffcoat and his business?

Tony Thornton:            Well, first of all, he was a great mentor, a great coach, and that's what I strive to be in everything that I do now as a veteran in the industry, but the work ethic that sometimes lacks these days, I think it was much more adamant back then, the willingness for people to be trained properly. We can hire a resource or hire a person, but unless we train them properly and then set the expectations to hold that accountability, we just not doing a good enough job, in my opinion. And he did that really, really well, trained us, set expectations, and held us accountable. I think that's the biggest things that I learned from him.

Gordon Henry:             So when you decided I guess age 29 to strike out and build your own company, what was on your mind? I guess you wanted to be your own boss. That's usually part of it, but tell us what you were thinking and how you put in place what became such a successful company?

Tony Thornton:            Well, I was very fortunate, like I said, to have a great mentor. Mr. Jeffcoat gave me a lot of guidelines, and a lot of information, and knowledge. Along with that, my father, who was a very successful business person as well, doing engineering work throughout the country. So between those two, they really gave me a good foundation, but that entrepreneur spirit, this guy is owning a company. He's making all the money. Like most people think, until you go out and do it yourself, you really realize, man, I should have stayed working for this guy, but I had that spirit. I had that opportunity and started a company that actually was installing and servicing gate operator equipment over about a five or six state area there surrounding Mississippi and had a niche in the market, very unique.

                                   I love that area of the industry as well, and it just grew exponentially. It was just unbelievable how fast it grew. I grew that company into distribution and wholesale as well, so we had two companies there, a retail installs type company, and then we also had the wholesale distribution type company and was very fortunate later in life to be able to sell both of those companies, but we positioned those things quite well simply because we had the right procedures and everything in place.

Gordon Henry:             So what were some of the challenges you faced? I mean, listening to this, it sounds like it all went... You had this sort of storybook, meet Mr. Jeffcoat, work for him. It all went so well. You launched your company, and now you're kind of a rockstar in the industry. I mean, I assume there were some challenges along the way, right?

Tony Thornton:            Oh, there's a challenge every day. I mean, any person that owns a business, no matter a trade's business or whatever, we have those daily challenges. Typically, it deals with resources, people, and then the other things with the economy and different things like COVID. COVID really put a damper in a lot of areas of the marketplace these last few years. That was an era of time that none of us had ever dealt with, right? So we had to learn through that process, but I remember days where I was wondering if I had enough money to make payroll as a young 30-year-old business owner, almost having breakdowns because I wasn't taking paychecks home, but yet I was taking care of my team.

                                   And running a business, knowing how to properly handle the taxes, and deal with the CPA, and the banker wants one thing, CPA wants something different, I mean, everybody that's a business owner understands what I'm saying. And that's the challenges that a business owner, especially a small business owner has on a daily basis.

Gordon Henry:             Yeah. Yeah. How big did the company eventually become? You said 5, 6 state region. Can you tell me in terms of number of customers or employees? How big a company was this?

Tony Thornton:            Well, we grew the company through the retail portion of it very large there in the state of Mississippi and a little surrounding area. We were moving enough automation product that a lot of those manufacturers reached out to us and says, "Wow, you're doing such a good job there. Why don't you become a distributor?" And so we signed up with distribution agreements with a lot of the manufacturers, and then before I knew it, we had grown that distribution company to the third largest distribution of gate operator and access control equipment in the nation, and we were fortunate to sell that company. Well, we grew that company from zero to about 5.5 million in about six years, and then at the time I sold it, we'd grown that company up to 7.5.

Gordon Henry:             7.5 million just dollars of revenue just on the distribution piece?

Tony Thornton:            That is correct. That is correct.

Gordon Henry:             So just so we got this, so you got two businesses you're running. One is the distribution, became $7.5 million, which you sold, and the other was an installation company where you're actually installing them, and was that of a similar size?

Tony Thornton:            No, it was much smaller, about a 2.5 million, and what we really tried to focus on was the larger projects. Sometimes you get to be picky, and we were very picky and choosy about the work we did, and that turned into service [inaudible 00:08:46] from gated communities, apartment complexes, which blew up exponentially there in the Mississippi market of all places, but we did a lot of work when the requirements for security at airports came around, and we did six or 10... I think it was about 10 different airports, Mobile, Birmingham, Jackson, Memphis, different areas where the security was at a heightened level, and we were fortunate to be able to provide our services as a subcontractor [inaudible 00:09:18] being able to do that security work, including camera work on those large airport facilities.

Gordon Henry:             Wow. So you were running, I mean, together about a $10 million business at one point, and this was the guy I think, I mean, you didn't talk much about college, but I think I read in your bio you went to college for a little while, kind of went into fencing. College sort of... You didn't love it. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like-

Tony Thornton:            No, you hit that nail on the head. I think I had the fastest [inaudible 00:09:47] for accounting that anybody ever had. He handed it to me. I put my name on. I handed it back, and that's the day I walked out. I had enough that day.

Gordon Henry:             So how does a guy with obviously a lot of natural smarts, and a tremendous work ethic, and an ability to learn aptitude, but not formal education in terms of running a business, how do you step into being able to run a $10 million business?

Tony Thornton:            Well, the key to it is having the right mentors and the right coaches, and I positioned myself quite well with the right people that I could learn from. I could ask those questions that I may have not known, and they were willing to share, and that's the key to, I think, a lot of our success in companies these days is the networking, and the networking of maybe it's a group [inaudible 00:10:43] group, your local community, or whatever, but that outreach network, they may be in a whole different industry than you are, maybe not even the trade industry, but they have experience in areas that you may need to use their knowledge with. And I think that was what probably provided me more success than anything else was my network of good people that was willing to share.

Gordon Henry:             Yeah. I'm curious about the sales process as well as the installation. You obviously became an expert in fencing, and installing fences, and things like that, but you also had to sell the job, right? You had to get the customers. Was that a piece that you did as well?

Tony Thornton:            Yeah, I'm pretty outgoing. I like to talk and carry on with people, and I try to sell the company and the value of the company, the integrity and credibility of the company, and I think that that kind of in itself spoke 1,000 words, but we did it very professionally. We never did any type of high pressure sales. We always did a tremendous amount of follow up, follow up, and follow up, which I think our business could do a better job of these days, which converted into sales. All the things that I learned over all those years I am now consulting on, coaching, and mentoring, and say, "Guys, I was doing this 30 years ago. If you kind of old school, sometimes, it works." And that's what we're doing.

Gordon Henry:             Right. So I'm interested in talking about your consulting business, but maybe we should start with just the fencing industry. If I'm you, basically, 30, 40 years ago, a young guy looking to make a mark, is fencing a good business to go into today?

Tony Thornton:            Absolutely. Through COVID, I'll be honest with you, like a lot of other trades we had people that were at home, and they had disposable income. They weren't worried about COVID or whether they were going to go back to work a week or a month later. At the end of the day, they were out in the yard. They needed things. They got that pool done. They got that new landscaping. They got that fence work done. We had a lot of influx of new businesses in the industry throughout the country, and the fencing industry is what I would consider a low entry level type company.

                                   As long as you can get your building license or whatever licensing is required in your particular state or municipality, then as long as you got a truck, and you got a little bit of mechanical knowledge, you can go put up a fence, but we see a lot of young entry level people getting into the company, and then a lot of them leave within the first two years, like most businesses, because they just didn't have the business knowledge. And that's where the ones that have succeeded have really focused on running the business instead of letting the business run them.

Gordon Henry:             Right. Right. So let's turn there a little bit to your consulting. I think I read maybe on your site that you typically talk about four areas, leadership and management, sales, operations and workflow, and then finally installation and production. Could you sort of touch on those? What are the key elements you hit in those four when you talk to your audience?

Tony Thornton:            Sure. Oh, absolutely. And you were spot on. So the leadership and management piece is we want a leader that's motivated, that's got a vision, has got a written statement that says that this is what my core values are. We want that leadership to build a good culture, which I think is probably more important today than it even was back when I owned my companies years ago, but having a good strong vision, having a good strong culture, training the resources to do the job. Again, we mentioned already set expectations to hold accountability. That's where the management and the leadership piece comes in, and not everybody ISS a leader. They may be do a good doer, but they're not a good leader, and when I go in and do these consults, I try to determine whether or not these people are a good fit for that particular position. So that's what management and leadership focuses on.

                                   Now, from a sales and marketing standpoint, a lot of these young companies have not done what I call market segmentation. They really haven't defined their core customer. What does that customer look like? No matter if I'm putting up a fence, or I'm putting a new roof on, or putting a pool in the backyard, or if I'm going to go sell a car, I got to know what my market looks like. So we really deep dive into what products they want to sell, and who they want to sell to, and we define their best customer, and then we do the market segmentation to find out, okay, we may not want to sell anything on the south side of town, because all of the people that we're looking for is on the north side of town, and that's just 1 1 evaluations on what's going to be best from a marketing standpoint, and then we got to put our promotions, advertising, and sales pieces together.

                                   And then we do a lot with the consultative sales approach. We don't teach our companies how to sell fence. We tell them we're going to try to teach you how to sell ice to an Eskimo. We want you to understand what those individuals are needing, and what you've got to do to support their needs to get past that barrier. So that's kind of where the sales and marketing piece comes in. Like most companies, Gordon, the workflow and the operations piece I believe is the biggest challenge. If you don't have the right procedures in place, you can have the best widget in the world, you can have the best marketing in the world, but unless I can get that installed properly, and have happy customers, and get me paid, my workflow and my operations piece is just my biggest challenge.

                                   So we really put blinders on that area of the business, and we talk about every step from the time the phone rings all the way to how that is given to the sales personnel, from the sales personnel, how they go out and do an estimate, how the estimate is done, what the communications are, how it comes back into operations, and what are the steps of the operation. I call that the quarterback position, and then handed it to the installation crew, and setting expectations on that quality to be done, and then having a satisfied customer, but that workflow and operations piece is where all the procedures, the checklists, and really the nuts and bolts of the company really happens in my opinion, and then, of course, the installation. There's a lot of efficiency techniques in our industry that I've learned as well as many others have shared and willing to share on how to do it more efficiently.

                                   We don't just go out there and try to bang it up and sacrifice our quality. We got to make sure we meet quality, but at the same time, we're getting efficiency done, because if we can get efficient in every piece that we just said, we're going to have profitability. And that's my tagline, efficiency equal profitability, and that's where my consult is totally focused.

Gordon Henry:             Right. Now, Tony, although those are the four areas you sort of hit on with the consulting. I did hear you talk on one of the interviews about what you consider to be, I guess, the area where most companies fail, and I think that was on something you haven't said yet, which was budgeting and forecasting, budgeting and forecasting, and talk to us about why that's so important.

Tony Thornton:            Yeah, budgeting. I always did a budget for all of my companies, and part of my consult is to try to get every one of our clients to do a budget. Some of them have. The successful companies have. When we're doing our training summits throughout the country, we'll do seven this year, one of the biggest pieces of that puzzle is training them on how to do a budget. And I do a very simple budget, and I want them to break down their revenue by categories, and I mentioned those disciplines earlier, wood, chain link, ornamental, PVC, and those type things. I want to know what revenue is coming in under every revenue box or bucket, and I want to know where those costs of goods are going out at every one of those buckets as well.

                                   A lot of people just lump the revenue together, lump the cost of goods together. They get a margin, and they're tickled to death, but if we've got something kind of going crazy with chain link, maybe we're not getting enough margin out of it, and we're doing our financials to where we can see what margin we're bringing in on each of these, we're going to be better positioned, and if a company says, "You know what? I feel like I'm ready to grow 12% in 2023," well, how are you going to do that without going back to a budget, putting a forecast together to determine, "Okay, I'm going to grow, and this is how I'm going to do that,"? Is it adding a new product line? What's it going to take to add that product line? Is it going to take resources, new trucks, tools, and equipment?

                                   Those type things have to be budgeted properly, and I'm a firm believer that if you can do it on paper, and it seems like it's going to work okay, you should be able to implement that as long as you got the right resource and team members in place, but I'm a huge advocate for budgeting and forecasting. I don't think a lot of our business owners use it to their advantage as they should.

Gordon Henry:             We just have a few minutes left. I'm curious, if you think back to yourself at 15 as you were beginning your career, what was going through your head, what would be your message to young people starting out in their careers today, that 15, 17, 20 year old who might be thinking, "What do I do next,"? Would you recommend to them, "Hey, think about fencing,"?

Tony Thornton:            Oh, absolutely. The fencing industry is very unique, Gordon, in the fact that you've kind of got to be a jack of all trades. Now, that's an old Mississippi term, but at the end of the day, you've got to know a little bit about everything. We've got to dig. We've got to mix cement. We've got to do all kind of different things well. We've got the whole gamut of the trades industry in the fencing sector of our world, so these individuals has got good hard work ethics, got a good mechanical knowledge, and willing to learn, and open up, and ask questions, but the first thing that I'm going to coach them on is maybe you're going to be a good fence guy, but I want you to focus on running your business, knowing your numbers, knowing whatever dollar is doing for you.

                                   Start out early, because as you start growing that company like I grew my company so fast I liked to put it out of business, because I wasn't staying on top of the numbers, and I had to really refocus my attention after a couple of weeks of not having payroll, and that's when I pretty much determined, "Okay, I got to run this thing. It can't run me anymore." So that's the recommendation I would make. Yeah, the fencing industry is a great opportunity for people. There's a lot of people making a lot of money at it.

Gordon Henry:             Terrific. Well, I just want to turn for a second before we go a little bit to the personal side. I understand you've been married for four decades, a couple kids, and a bunch of grandkids. Tell us about your personal life.

Tony Thornton:            Oh, you know what? My goals in life is my faith, my family, my friends, my fitness, and fence. That's my five, okay? And I put it out there on social media quite often, but I got a wonderful family. My wife and I been married for 41 years, got two wonderful children, their spouses, both of them are in Texas. We've got six grandkids that we chase all over the country. I became a private pilot four years ago, so we get to fly around a little bit in a little Cessna that I have. I live in McKinney, Texas, and we get to travel quite often.

                                   I spend a good bit of time in Colorado. I love the outdoors. We're doing a lot of hiking, and hunting, and those type of things. Actually, my son and I are actually going to do a winter summit on Mount Albert next week, which is a fourteener, the highest fourteener in the state of Colorado next week, so we're excited about that. So we make sure we have a quality of life, and one part of my coaching is find that work-life balance. You have to. We can't work every day. So that's a little bit about me.

Gordon Henry:             Terrific. Well, I appreciate you sharing that. Sounds like you have a lot of happiness with that. Where can people learn more about what you're doing if they're interested in talking to you or potentially hiring you?

Tony Thornton:            Sure. It's wwwfenceconsultinggroup.com. They can send me an email at info@fenceconsultinggroup.com, and on every social media post I do, I put my cell number out there. I'm probably the crazy one. It's 972-533-3658, and I'd love to talk to anybody if I could be of any help, mentor, coach. I do a good bit of keynote speaking. I'm traveling up to Canada in a couple of weeks to do a keynote for the Canadian Fence Industry Association, so if anybody would need any type of thing like that, we'd love to help out any way we could.

Gordon Henry:             Fantastic. Well, Tony, really a treat to have you on the show. Thanks for stopping by and great to have you here.

Tony Thornton:            Thank you for the opportunity, appreciate it.

Gordon Henry:             And I want to thank our producer, Tim Alleman, and our coordinators, Diette Barnett and Daniel Huddleston. They do a great job, and if you enjoyed this podcast, please tell your colleagues, friends, family to subscribe, and please leave us a five star review. We'd really appreciate it. Helps us in the rankings. Until next time, make it a great week.

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