Great businesses don’t just happen—they’re built with vision, grit, and the right people. In this episode, Rodney sits down with his daughter Trinity to share the inspiring journey of Father Daughter Construction, from early days on landscaping crews to running a million-dollar remodeling company in just two years. Listeners will learn how to grow a business through reputation, word-of-mouth, and a strong team culture, plus why talent, trust, and leadership matter more than quick expansion. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at family business done right.

Key Highlights

• From Crew to CEO – Trinity’s journey from blowing leaves at 12 to running a thriving remodeling company
• Building Through Reputation – How client trust and word-of-mouth drive sustainable growth
• The Talent-First Approach – Why hiring the right people comes before chasing more work
• Leadership Under Pressure – How handling tough situations builds confidence and skills
• Family & Business Balance – The benefits and challenges of running a company with loved ones

Father Daughter Construction:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fatherdaughterconstruction/

Website: https://www.fatherdaughterconstruction.com/

Connect with Rodney and ZebraScapes at:

Website: https://www.zebrascapes.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zebrascapes 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zebrascapes/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@zebrascapes8116 

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Welcome back to landscaping and zebrascapes.

I have Trinity who's been here today on our podcast. Thanks for

coming. Thank you. So we have a long history. This is my

wonderful daughter, the oldest one she was at the very

beginning when we first company, was TK Lee, after our three

daughters, and we ended up adopting our youngest, and we

changed the name to zebra scapes. If you haven't had a

chance to check the story out, but she's been at the very

beginning. When did you start blowing leaves? I

think 12. Think the first time I was on a

maintenance group was 12 or 13. What

were you doing? From nine to 12?

Horseboarding? Oh, horse

boarding. Something so she didn't already

have pictures of her in a backpack, about too big to

handle, but she's been with us at the very beginning of

landscaping. She's riding the maintenance truck after school,

and then the summer and spring break, learning all that,

working at it and not really enjoying it so much,

not as much. But then I got moved up to the office,

where I started scheduling and answering phone calls. Didn't

really like that either. I liked working here. And then I did

marketing for a little bit too, and then we decided to start a

company by ourselves.

Yeah. So in the journey of learning business

and numbers and people. She enjoyed the hands on in the

field. So we had an opportunity to when I worked at Zebra,

scheduling a project. We had a client that really got taken

advantage of by a contractor, and they asked me to take it

over. And because of my we had a contractor's license. We say, we

take it over. I asked her, as she was working for a financial

advisor, and I said, Hey, pays, not great, but, you know,

interact with this older lady and work with her, and she was

kind of the go to person to put fires out and to communicate.

Liked it, though,

yeah, every day before and after my finance job, I

would go over to that house and check on it, and we got it done.

And that's where it started.

That company is now called father daughter

construction, where we have taken over. And prior to that,

we've done a little bit of flipping houses. We found some

houses, flipped them, and didn't do great at the first one, but

overall,

17.

We waited that long, yeah, so she was out

of school, flipping the House Remodeling, and did a lot of

redo stuff and not being fully focused just trying to juggle

other things. But that was our first house. Then several since

then, and through that, you got your realtor license, and trying

to continue to flip houses. And as we keep our crews busy, yeah,

so it's been a great journey, and now things are hopping at

father daughter. What do we have going over there?

We have a great crew. We have. We try to run between

eight and 10 projects at a time, and we're booked out about two

months. So we've definitely picked up and are staying busy.

The one thing is interesting of all my past

experience of landscaping is I was tackling everything on

bidding, jobs, managing, project managing, and Denise, my wife,

and she was doing all the book work. And now this the second go

around everything I have learned the hard way of finding great

people don't find Okay, mediocre. Let's go after and go

for the ones that got lots of experience to take it to the

next level, and we've done that right.

Even with that experience, we found people that

we knew really cared and really bought in, and so we were

willing to work with them until they got really experienced,

which has been great

that actually that's really good to see people

grow through that. We found some big hitters like Stacy sales and

sales manager, tons of experience that she brings to

the table. She'll be on, she's already has a podcast been on

the episode. Of just what it takes to stay, to be excellent,

to stay, to get to the top. Stay on top is a challenge every day.

So overall, what do you enjoy the most

about the business? Yeah, I say that I hate sales,

but I really enjoy meeting clients and coming up with

solutions for them with the issues that they have. And then

when the job is over and they're really appreciative. It's

rewarding.

Yeah, it is good. Sales is it takes attack,

and I know you wanted out of that pretty quick, which is

surprising, but we need to find a great sales guy.

I liked the project management better,

yeah, and doing the work. Yeah, I remember

you came home one day and you're like. Just give buy a flip. Let

me go tear it apart, instead of going in there and putting with

the TD stuff and dealing with some difficult situations. Yeah.

So what does your day to day look like right now?

Today, in the mornings, we line up the guys. I get here

at 630 should probably be here earlier, but we went out the

guys at seven, and then I usually go meet them at a job,

to meet with a client for first starting out, and try to get to

a few jobs in the morning, have at least one sales call, and

then try to meet with our existing clients and go over

what's next. And then I come back here, we type estimates. I

go over everything with Stacy, and then we go back out and make

sure that everything looks good at the end of the day.

So part of business and understanding,

like, Do you have a like, where do you want to get to in the

next two to three years? What's your goal? What's your vision?

Well, originally, I didn't even, I was worried about

making it through this year, but we are going to hit our goal for

this year. So our goal for the next two to three years is to

continue creating a great reputation and the most

rewarding thing is when clients call us back, because they

appreciate the work that we did in the beginning. So continue to

have a lot of return customers and gain all of our business

from word of mouth.

That's awesome. That's actually it's a

very great goal, and exciting goal, and how you do that your

reputation. I mean, you build that reputation word of mouth,

that's and what's awesome about it here, building a legacy in

your community. And then you, when you build that great

customer phase, not only do you build great customers, we end up

building great employees and buy in. And you will never have

great customers without great employees, and you'll never have

great employees without a good reputation. So it's very

important that we keep those values and thrive on that. And

17 years of zebra scapes, I learned the hard way with lots

of ups and downs, and how we can funnel that in. And that's a

blessing of growing a business from you know, start from you

know, you working with us to growing your company. Now, we

take the experience of zebras case. We bring in our general

manager, Paula, who comes in and helps. The most difficult part

is HR and working with all the legal stuff, and that's a huge

help, yeah, to thrive on that. So what's your goal? Personal

goal at father or daughter, like, where do you want to be?

You got the company, where the company wants to go, you know,

you want to grow, keep a reputation. You want to grow

word of mouth. You want to it's exciting that you're not wanting

to just be big or wanting to, you know, dominate the area, but

you want to have built a very core group with high quality in

it. That's the best. And when you do that, the rest will all

come into play afterward you file that. And that's most

important, just to keep on track of that and always finding great

guys before you find the work, because you can't do the work

without the great guys. So it's looking for and honestly, we're

very blessed for the people we have with the experience. We

have, high quality people, tremendous amount of years of

experience that came on at a very quickly in the game, early

stage. Yeah, early stage.

My personal goal for myself in the business is

proudly to help the people on our team achieve what they want

to achieve. One of the guys bought a house last year. The

next one once bought a house this year. So helping them reach

that goal, I guess, and doing more in real estate, finding

more flips, because that's what I like a lot about construction.

You think you'll, I mean, you're like, you

got a goal to get into construction, building houses,

or you think that you want to stay away from that, like

building a new house. We're doing garages right now. We're

doing several garages, big patios, great decks. What about

new construction? Is that in the forecast, I

think it's in the future. We talked about doing it

this year, but And next year, I feel like we'll be fully

equipped to do it. Yeah, no, it's just it's

good to keep your lane. And obviously it changes a good

leader changes with the market. The worst thing to do is get

tunnel vision. This is what I'm doing. So it's always be open

minded and see where are we off to, and see what the future

holds. One thing I do at theater escapes is I go where the talent

is. So if you have talent do remodels, you do it. If you get

talent to be like, Hey, you're full. Capable of taking on a new

build, and when I know it and proved it and seen it, then it's

like, okay, let's tackle a job. Let's take on a new build, and

then you watch it. We never want to take on a project that we

don't have the skill and talent to do. So like where we are. We

never wanted a tree division, but we had skill and arborist

come and say, I want to build a tree division under zebra

scapes, and I want to be the lead. I want to run it. And

that's where we got the tree division. So, you know, father

daughter, have we have the right guy comes in and said, I can

build a house. This is what it is. I can run it. And we're not

there today, but, you know, three years from now, we might

be, yeah, we're

definitely going where the talent is. We haven't done a

whole house remodel besides the one we got through zebra scapes,

and we're going to start one next month, because we have a

guy on our team that used to do a lot of flips as well. So it's

great that he's able to manage all of that with all the

experience that he has.

And if I remember right, that lead came

from your real estate lead, yes,

hopefully I will sell it as well. Yeah, we

haven't done yet, but bringing that all in,

it's very it is great where you are. I mean, I'm very impressed

Trinity, where you are today from you got into, you know, in

school, we flipped a house, you know, at 17. Then you went into

a job shadowing. And you did that, you know, for a year with

zero pay, as we flipping houses with the realtor. And then you

got your financial advisor license for financial advising,

which is great to understand numbers, understand all that

budgeting, that's exciting. And then, you know, I let's keep

getting educated. You got into your real estate license, and

you look at now how all that comes into play. You're

diversifying. You're going from understanding the blue collar

part of it in the dirt a very young age, and then you got into

financial advising, and then that got you into real estate.

And now it all circles back diversifying. And when, the more

you diversify, the more opportunity, the more, the more

you can grow. And like I always say, we don't put our skill in

one basket. You know, it's very important to to put to get

education is important, but also to diversify and see how we can

grow? Yeah,

definitely, a lot of the things that I've learned in

my years before starting this have helped with behind the

scenes in the company. A lot. They've also helped with meeting

new clients. It's very easy connect, to connect with people

when you know a little bit about a lot, because everyone has

something that they want to talk about, and if you know a good

amount about what they're talking about, then it's pretty

easy to get on the same page with them. So that has helped

tremendously in sales.

Yeah, for sure.

Did you ever think when I asked you to start a

remodeling company that this

is what would happen? That's a good question.

Wow, be honest. No, no, we we did that house. We remodeled it.

What happened was, remodeled that house, and then we started

getting word of mouth leads, right from referrals, and people

that work for us started bringing us work. And that's

when we're like, well, his name, in that name, we sat around, we

brainstormed, and I thought to get personal. You know, get

that's that people know we are personal. We are a family. We're

tight knit, and so, you know, father daughter was brought up,

and I was surprised. You took that name. And as you know, I

love I truly enjoy business. I enjoy development. I enjoy

putting process together a lot. I get very excited about it. And

I just thought, you know, like, you know, your other or your

sister, my other daughter, Kylie, we have Lighthouse coffee

and we put it together. She has a coffee truck and puts it out.

And I want to see where this goes. I thought it would be

father daughter construction with Zebra skates employees

doing kind of construction and doing an all 100% subs.

So you didn't see it growing this big.

No. I mean, this grew faster than zebra

skates did.

You gave us all the knowledge to start ahead.

Well, thank you. Yeah, I mean, I mean, we'll

do well over a million our second year, right? That's

pretty impressive to do a million dollars your second year

in home remodeling, and we're going to be significantly into

that. And honestly, it doesn't projection, if you ask me where,

I mean, it's way bigger than I thought. And actually, the

salesman, sales Stacy, told me, like projected where it's going.

And I told her, it makes me nervous to think that we could

be doing 3 million next year in home remodeling. Very possible

of happening that gives me anxiety to think. About just

everything to get in place to do it, especially in where it is. A

lot of people think that, what do they think annoys the crap

out of you?

I don't say it to anyone. I only say it to him.

That's why he's saying this. But a lot of people assume that I go

out on the sales calls just because my dad's too busy. A lot

of people think that we just, like, install doors together and

call it remodeling. They also think that he manages all the

projects. So our tile subcontractor last week was

like, it's only four times you need to ask your dad about this,

and I just kept walking away and being like, Okay, I'll get you

an answer. And then I would come back with whatever the answer

the customer was wanted and tell him. And eventually, at the end

of the job, he was like, Oh, so you're the one that, yeah. So

the

irritating part is, everybody thinks I'm

running the company, when actually I do very little, to be

honest with you, right? I mean, I we talk, you know, about

business, talk about employees, thought about strategies and

stuff, but overall, you're meeting the clients. One thing I

will say, I'm very impressed. We had a very disappointed

customer. I said, I'll take care of it. And you said, No, I got

it. I got to do this. I got to step up and take the

responsibility. You did that pretty much every time. Is

basically saying, I need to grow. And that's very, I'm very

proud of you to take those difficult conversations, the

stuff that fell apart, warranty work, you grabbed it and ran

with it and challenge it. That's That's where you grow. You know

you grow under pressure. You know gold and diamonds, fire and

pressure, that's how you purify, purify yourself to be great.

It's not easy. It's not easy at all. And you know why any you

know why? Very few people are doing it. Very few people are

stepping up out of their box and be where you are. I mean, you're

21 right? And you are, you know, million dollar company or two

years into it, and hats off. I mean, honestly, you earned it.

You've done it 100% I love watching people excel, and I'll

do everything I can to give you tools, but and push you as as

right to the breaking point to see how far we can get there.

I'm not a no, it was not given to you, like everybody thinks.

And no, as you no one in this household, nothing's given.

Yeah, it's earned.

But I will say that none of it would have been

possible without Paula. Yeah, for sure, my dad, now, Stacy,

really, everyone on our team, it wasn't. It's not just me running

it and like it works out. It's all of them helping.

Don't forget mom in the back end, doing all

the starting up the stuff that's that's

should help a lot with the books, because I don't like

numbers.

You know, like sitting front Peter

punching numbers, and how zebra skates, a lot of she's a lot

like me is crazy is the numbers are in our head, right? We know

what we did a job. We know what is going out. We know what the

material is, and we know it's gotta be done this day. We're in

the Red, yeah, it's very important, and that's the old

farmers, the old school way of running books, and then you put

it on paper. And if you're if you know you're in head, your

head, because you're always rounding up, you'll be good.

You'd be good where you are. And then in the back end, you have

Denise track and all that. Now we moved it over to zebra

scapes, accountant, who does father daughter and zebra

scapes. And that's the awesome part. When you have a company

and you're growing, you get amazing staff, and you get a

great system. With all the technology we have, you can take

on another company. When you have, for instance, we have our

bookkeeper, we're able to go from just a bookkeeper to a

senior bookkeeper, very knowledgeable. Stephanie's a

great and we get able to afford to pay someone with that

knowledge, because you're bringing two companies together

and more money. Instead of putting all that you can't

afford that wage of who we have now, someone that's really on

top of it, and she's doing amazing. So one company's

running great. You can add more and then you add a little less

experience. You know, be like a Girl Friday coming and taking

over Stephanie's role to grab the easier data entry stuff. And

once you see that happening, and then all sudden, things go well,

then you can go into Kylie Lighthouse coffee, and grow that

and bring that in, and then other add area, other areas with

low overhead. So great to have you exciting. It's a blast

working with you. I truly love it. Probably don't show it,

right?

It's weird that he's saying all of

this. I'll say I gotta be better at that as

being a day. Had. I know I'm hard to please. Someday you'll

appreciate it. It's a good thing anyway. Thanks for listening at

zebrascakes. Put the comments below on anything you have, and

we'll touch base. My oldest daughter, Trinity, love working

with her, as we see in this grow your sales manager or sales guy.

His goal is to pass zebrascapes Who can hit 10,000,001st and the

race is on. But most importantly, like we talked

about, it's all about quality. It's about building that legacy

here in this community and representing who we are. Thank

you.