Building an Experience

Handshakes and eye contact, please and thank you, honesty and respect, quality and passion. These elements were the building blocks of a company my parents started 27 years ago and they still serve as the foundation for each of us today.

Throughout the span of my life, my parents have been building our family businesses. I remember spending hours on evenings or weekends in my dad’s office coloring on the white board or flipping through real estate magazines planning my dream home as he worked through blueprints and organized files. On ‘take your daughter to work day’ in elementary school my mom brought me to their office where I was charged with the ultra-important task of helping to punch and staple files [with the supervision of the secretary, who happened to be my aunt]. As we grew up our chore list extended beyond our own household to the houses being built through Krueger Construction, Inc. My siblings and I took our turn at picking up jobsites, cleaning the houses, mowing the lawns, shoveling the sidewalks, sandbagging during the floods, even helping with computer input. As a teenager I believed these sorts of chores were less important than volleyball practice, homework and going to the movies with my friends, but in retrospect I realize that our parents were teaching us the importance of hard work and instilling in us an appreciation for the business that supported our family.

Growing up, there were more obvious lessons we learned as well. Our mom and dad taught us to respect all people, equally. We could never tell if my mom was speaking to a subcontractor, a tenant or someone who was building a $500,000 home when she was on the phone, because she spoke to each individual the same. My dad showed us the significance of being passionate about what you do. His school of thought has always been to work hard and play hard, but work hard first. Fortunately for him he loves his job, so working hard came naturally. To this day, my dad literally lights up when he speaks about building homes in North Dakota and Minnesota and the incredible families we’ve met along the way. It was clear to us, from early on, that when our parents were spending all of those extra hours at work it was because they truly enjoyed meeting with new people, designing homes and doing an excellent job for our customers.

Today, as Marketing & Business Development Director, my ‘chore list’ has changed to ‘job responsibilities’, one of which is our website updates. In my eyes, all websites are a constant work in progress, http://www.kruegerbuilt.com/ is no different. As a member of a generation that grew up using the internet, I understand that it’s an important tool in gathering information. What I feel websites lack is a forum to ask and answer questions and an opportunity to learn more about the people behind the business website that make it function. For that reason, we’ve decided to launch this blog. We want to give our prospective clients and customers, friends, colleagues and other industry leaders insight into what we do and why we love it.

This blog, like our website, will be a work in progress. Please feel free to comment or e-mail me if you have topic suggestions or questions that you are looking for an area Builder, Broker or Realtor to answer.

Cheers!
Kim Krueger
Kimberly@KruegerBuilt.com