I’ve never liked horror movies or scary movies of any kind. But like most everyone, I’ve had to face some pretty scary things in my own life. When someone once asked me about the scariest thing I’d ever experienced, I told him, “When you have a wife and three small kids and no job, let me tell you, it doesn’t get any scarier than that.”

Thirty years ago, before DeckTec, that was me. Broke and scared, I launched DeckTec on a prayer and a maxed-out credit card.

It all started back in the late 80s, during one of Denver’s infamous energy-related bust cycles. The economy was so bad at the time that when I cold called people as part of my job selling prefabricated cedar homes, my leads would call me back not because they wanted to buy a home, but because they wanted me to buy their land from them. I wasn’t getting any traction. And this was after having been laid off from a company selling prefabricated curved glass aluminum sunrooms. It wasn’t looking good at all.

My extended family was in Maryland. They knew I was struggling here while their economy was thriving and encouraged me to head back “home.” I took their advice and moved my family back to Maryland, where I once again I attempted to sell as prefabricated wood sunroom, and once again, I couldn’t get any traction.

One day, while trying to sell those sunrooms to a custom deck company, Deck Craft, they were so impressed with my sales ability that they hired me to work for them. I did very well. I found out that I had a real passion for design, because decks were part of everything I ever did, from landscaping work in high school, running my own landscape business and selling sunrooms and cedar homes.

While the Maryland countryside was idyllic and peaceful, my family felt distance from our close family in Colorado. When we went back to Colorado that summer, my wife informed me in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t returning with me to Maryland. I said, “OK, we can move back to Colorado, but the deal is that I’m going to start my own deck design company,” and she agreed.
We moved into my in-law’s place for a month, and I literally started cold calling on spa and landscape companies from the living room. The manager at a company called Cal Spa really liked my designs and as luck would have it, he needed a deck for his Louisville home. I sold my first deck and the rest, as they say, is history.

We built the deck in July 1990, and it turned out beautifully, if I say so myself. It was a bi-level deck with a spiral staircase, a hot tub with a spa gazebo, and a colored curved concrete patio. It held up for 28 years until it was pounded by hail this summer.

Life certainly has its ups and downs. Guess what? We’re rebuilding and upgrading that first deck in mahogany and metal pickets right now as I write this.

What a long, strange trip it’s been.