Ep. 103: This wall is only in your mind…

Jeff:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles podcast. My name is Jeff Randolph. This small business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing. We’re here to talk about marketing. We’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs. This is no exception.

Theo, we’ve got a guest in studio again.

Jeff:
And I’m going to bring you into the show real quick. Reda Ibrahim, who is the founder and CEO of RK Contractors. Welcome to the show.

Reda:
Hey, thank you so much, Jeff. I’m glad to be here with you guys.

Jeff:
Yeah, this is and let me start out by saying congratulations on being named a top 10 small business in Kansas City. Congratulations.

Reda:
Hey, thank you so much. And congratulations to for you.

Jeff:
That’s right. And I don’t say this just so that you can give me a return. This is really focused on mutual. It is a mutual kind of thing. You did a great job on the top 10 panel discussion of all the CEOs who are there. And we’ve said we have to have you on the show.

For those people who don’t know what RK Contractors is, what is it you say you do? How do you define RK Contractors? Identify RK Contractors.

Reda:
I’m a general contractor here in Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas. And we are a general contractor. We hire refugees, immigrants, and minority. When I started, I started as a commercial roofing company to do commercial repairs for roofs.

Then I started adding more stuff in the wintertime when the stuff started slowing down. We started doing demo residential stuff. Then we started getting licensed, getting stuff so we can build a house from the foundation up to the roof right now.

And we’re a general contractor, so we hire subcontractors for all of the mechanical elements, electric, HVAC, plumbing. So we are a one-stop shop.

Jeff:
Yeah. You come to us, you want to build a house? We give it to you turnkey.

Reda:
Give it to you turnkey.

Jeff:
But I picked up on something in there that is a really important differentiator, and that’s who you hire. Your business status is officially ESE. It’s Employment Social Enterprise. Can you like get into more about what that is? Because, you know, most of us are looking at LLCs and B Corps and this is different and not everyone knows that. So describe that for us.

Reda:
I don’t know. This is what the cold like till a year ago or two. We got accepted with a program called Red F. And this is what teaching us how we as a business can be having a social element in our. Our team and how we fix problems.

I’m immigrants from Egypt. Came here 11 years ago. And I started working for other companies. But I find there’s a gap. There’s no one kind of like in that area of helping immigrants or refugees to fit in the construction element.

And because I faced so much barriers in the beginning, like language. My English isn’t the best at this time. It’s still not the best, but it’s good enough for this.

Then transportation, the knowledge of construction itself, the kindness, all of these I carry just in my DNA as an Egyptian person and immigrants here. Then I left the other companies and I started RK Contractors to build that bridge, how I can overcome these barriers.

But not everyone able to overcome this bridge. So we try to build that bridge of helping you how to adjust to the new society, how to understand what this construction is about, how to help you with other stuff. Like most of our guys don’t speak English, so we teach them how to learn English.

We send a teacher. It’s my wife, Kalina. She will go to the job site and teach English to the guys, and there’s a lot of improvement to them.

The other thing is not only we teach the language, when they come to the United States, they don’t have credit to get a loan to buy a car. So we drop them to the job site and home every day until we give them a loan from the company and they buy a car. So we kind of like fix the problem.

And the first thing we do when we have someone say like, instead of how much you’re looking for, it’s like, what is your need? What are you struggling with? How many members in your family? We are a family-oriented business, and I’m praying and I’m working very hard to keep it this way as we grow because we’re growing about 40% each year.

This is scary. It’s challenging, but it’s good at the same time.

Jeff:
I’ve heard so many amazing things in there. One, the altruism of going this direction and being organized this way and focusing on that population is incredible.

At the same time, if you can’t afford transportation because you can’t get a loan for a car and you’re picking them up every day, that also builds in a reliable workforce for you, which is something that a lot of companies struggle with today. Because they can’t get a reliable workforce and you’re helping get them there.

Reda:
That’s why we’re growing without fear. I’ll say most of other companies are like, hey, you have no problem with workforce. I said, no, I don’t have it because I have a lot of people asking to work for us every day. Because we find out how we can help you to success. How we can take this barrier down so you’ll be able to do your job and provide for your family.

So I don’t have a problem with the workforce. This is what pushed me to keep bidding more jobs. I’m growing, and this is why we’re growing, because I’m not worrying about this. I’m going to be able to do the job because I have enough people.

But I’m growing because I want to keep providing for the people and for the future people who are going to come to our doors.

Jeff:
You’re doing so many amazing things for that audience of immigrants and refugees. I don’t think we can shy away from that elephant in the room of the national tone for the United States toward the immigrant and refugee communities is not good right now. It is really not good. It is not friendly.

But I know that, you know, there’s a difference between national politics and the way people show up locally for you and how people react to you at a local level, at a person-to-person level. Do you see a difference there or is it just as bad nationally as it is locally?

Reda:
I would say it’s this way. We get affected by our council men and women and our mayor more than we get affected with our president. But again, the entire nation will follow certain stuff and hate will transfer so easy, but love, it takes time.

So it is very challenging right now. But I feel like we need to focus in our local areas. If we ever one of us focus to put love and care before greed, better than have been greed or hate. I feel like we’ll be able to fix small, if we can fix one block at a time, I think we’ll be nationwide to fix that problem.

But most of the time, that saver mentality is a problem for both sides, for the oppressors or the people themselves. All the time, we don’t need a saver. We can save ourselves.

And this is what I’m very big fan of decenterizing. Decenterizing our economy. Decenterizing our society. By not relying on what the other government offices will do to us, but what we as a community do.

And this was a huge shift for me when I moved from Egypt to here. In Egypt, we don’t call it, I don’t call it my house, my property, my this, my that. Call it ours, our community, our church, our mosque, our temple, our society, our mayor, our school.

And that mindset of individuality is a tribal mindset as a family. And this is what actually we do better as a community instead of being isolated. And when I moved in here in America, the first six months, I don’t know what’s the name of my neighbors. And this was really bothering me until I cooked them some food, and I went toward them and said, hey, my name is Reda. I looked into this myself.

And this was shocking because you were shocked too. This is I’m doing that. And actually, we became friends, and we continue that. Then I understand that this society is not healthy. And like all days before the TV invention and before the cooling and heating systems, people would sit in the front porch and have tea together. We don’t have this anymore.

Jeff:
Yeah.

Reda:
And this is what we try to change. You will find, you will be a client to us or a customer. I will invite you over for Turkish coffee in my house. And we just sit and drink coffee and talk as an invitation for them.

And we do the same with our people. I don’t want to build another co-op. I don’t want to build another big company. It’s going to be big, but it’s going to be with the family orientation.

Jeff:
With the family orientation. Community. Yeah. I love everything about that. And I think the ideal that we have in our hearts is that we know our neighbors and we talk to our neighbors and we’re there for our neighbors. But until somebody makes that first move, then I don’t trust you. I don’t know you. There’s no lead there.

Reda:
And let me press a little bit about your question when you talked about how you feel locally and nationwide. I feel like they’re the same. Like this has happened to me 11 years ago and I feel very segregated against and from a lot of community because I don’t fit. I’m a Middle Eastern. If I say hola, you think I’m from Mexico. When I tell you I’m from Egypt, I’m African 100%. My African friends in the room will tell me, no, you’re not African because you’re Caucasian. So me not fitting.

And I feel like both of you guys here will hear me because I’m coming from a different perspective. I’m a full African, and at the same time, I look North African. It’s just that element of love fixes everything. Love and exception. And people need to accept who we are and what we’re doing and what our purpose is.

And don’t, like my grandpa taught me this, he said, do not worry to break down evil, but build good. And the evil will collapse by itself because it cannot stand to the good.

So if the entire country now from the top is hate and are not accepted, the history tells us who wins all the time. People win. The existing country here is built upon immigrants. And we’re here to exist, and we’re not going anywhere.

Jeff:
Right. Systems will come and go, but people will stay. And I would be better me spending my life loving people instead of hating people. And I feel as though the love wins. You build good, it wins. Education. The more we learn, the more we experience, the more we get out.

If you have a passport and you use that passport, you now understand more about other people. And they’re not as scary anymore. That ability to not be afraid of everyone else is really kind of important these days.

Reda:
I agree, and I advise a lot of American young guys or audience, go to other countries. Go visit. Go see America, not the world. It’s a small part of the world.

Jeff:
Agreed. I’ll keep moving us along. Great, great conversation. Let me keep moving us along, too. You were accepted to the 2026 cohort of a three-month accelerator by Keystone CoLab. And I know that’s an important thing. Tell us what that means.

Reda:
So this is a social venture. I hope you… It is a very good program to get in. I’m very excited that they accepted us. I applied for it for two times. And finally, they saw the metrics. We needed to build the metrics for it.

And the program will help you to how not to only do good social work like how we’re doing. And not every social… When people hear the word social, they think like socialism.

Jeff:
Sure.

Reda:
But you know, this is social. All of us socialists, we have to be social with each other. We have to communicate. This is how our functionality as human beings.

So they will help you through six… I think that there are three months, not six months.

Jeff:
Oh, three months, yeah.

Reda:
I think they updated it before it used to be six months. But they kind of like courses and they give you a full day and you just bring you people from all over to teach you about business and about struggle. And it’s like accelerators just help you to understand your business and how you can be profitable in the same time kind to the community.

Jeff:
And this is what the key. It’s what it’s all about right there, yeah.

Reda:
And they give, I think, some grand money toward that effort. to teach you and to accommodate you for the time you spent for the three months.

Jeff:
That is very exciting. It is very exciting. That is a great program. It’s very exciting. What’s next for RK Contractors? Where do you go from here? You said grow but never so big that it becomes not a family anymore, which I think is perfect as a growth goal. Where else do you go from here? What else is on your horizon?

Reda:
Or you can grow but at the same time keep the family element.

Jeff:
Yeah.

Reda:
But make it a broader, big family. So let me circle to this and say the way to grow, I love to grow, but the way to fix any problem we have in our society or we face in our community is to grow it out with work, good work.

If I have more projects, I can hire more people. When I have more people, I fix the workforce shortage and I help people to be financially sustainable. So they can purchase their home.

You see, I cannot jump to fixing your problem by providing you a house without providing you a job and job stability. So gross. We’re growing. We’re merging or acquiring an architect firm.

Jeff:
Oh, okay.

Reda:
So we’re going to be a design-build company, not only building company. So I’m very excited about this, and we’re bidding more jobs.

My dream right now is to build a training facility in the Northeast. This is what I’m going to try to plan for the next two years, try to find out the way, the resources, the fund, the capital to do that, to kind of have a hub for how we hire people, train them, equip them.

Then in the second floor will be mixed use with some apartments for the people to rent to.

Jeff:
Outstanding.

Reda:
And kind of like have a small convenience store, grocery store. Decentizing the community again by you just walk downstairs instead of driving to get your grocery to buy your grocery from the convenience store. Or go to your office downstairs instead of driving.

Just like building an ecosystem for a small group of people. It’s a dream. I hope we’ll come to it.

Jeff:
I know you have the ability to design and build that, so surely that will come to pass. There’s so many hoops. That looks like a great pathway for you guys.

If it’s all right with you, I’ll take you into the lightning round. Are you ready for the lightning round?

Reda:
It’s all right.

Jeff:
We’re going to learn more about you here. You relocated to the U.S. from Egypt, and you became a roofer as part of your first gig here in the United States. But like me, I learned you were also afraid of heights, and you had a roofing job. How in the world do you overcome that?

Reda:
Oh, man. Yeah, I’m afraid of height. And I remember, but I have to provide for my family. So I have to face that.

I remember going off the ladder and the ladder was like about 50 feet high.

Jeff:
No, no.

Reda:
And as I go in the middle of the ladder, the ladder would just start swinging in the middle. And I remember that I have two ways. My heartbeat went fast. And I was like going to retreat and go down and say like I’m not going to do the job. Or look up.

And I looked up. I’m a man of faith. So I am great. God, you know, I’m here to provide for my family. Help me. So then I just looked up and I just keep climbing.

Since then, I’m okay with it. I still tie off.

Jeff:
Yes, thank you.

Reda:
At least they’re safe.

Jeff:
Everyone ties off. Thank you. Good. OSHA.

Reda:
All of our people. Good. But I just like face it because as an immigrant too, you don’t have the privilege choosing what to do. So I faced it and I overcome it.

And I still ask everyone come to the interview to work with us. Are you scared of heights? And they said, yes. I laughed. I said, I’m scared of heights too. But welcome. That’s why I expanded more in the residential side because we have work in the ground too. We are not only a roofer company. We’re a builder. So we will fit you. We will create a job for you. to meet your need.

Jeff:
You know, I don’t know if that means that you have more faith than I do, or certainly the immigrants not really having the choice. You do what you can do and what is available to you. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re comfortable with that or not.

You have the same face, by the way. I watched – well, I watched the – so I went to the St. Louis Arch Museum in St. Louis and talking about the building of the St. Louis Arch. Well, the video – I have gone up twice. But the video of the creation of that said – this was at a time long ago where they knew from a calculation how many people would likely die on that project. It was a different time.

Reda:
Yeah, but thanks God no one died.

Jeff:
Yeah, and no one did. No one did die from that. I just remember coming out of that video, that educational video, thinking, look, if this was the only job in town, I would have to go home to my family and say, I’m sorry. We’re going to starve. Like there’s nothing else. It’s medical experiments for the rest of you. I can’t, we can’t do this anymore.

Reda:
I, I, it is a beautiful building. And I went out over there and I, I, I dream for Kansas city to have a very nice building. Not an arch, but if we can build a pyramid around the river or something.

Jeff:
Right, right. Yes, absolutely. Well, you’re stronger than I am, or that shows my privilege or whatever. It’s something.

I always ask a food question in the lightning round, and I’m curious if there is a food memory, because we all have these food memories of, oh, that thing from my childhood that I just have to have, or I walk into the house and smell whatever, and it hits you really hard in a deep part of your body. your memory. Do you have that food memory from childhood that still sticks with you, and what is that?

Reda:
Yeah, it’s the smell of bread, baked bread, because we cook our food from scratch back home. We make our own bread, cook our own dishes. It’s not pre-made stuff.

So it’s the smell of that bread coming out of the clay oven.

Jeff:
Is that an every day, every week?

Reda:
It’s like a once a week.

Jeff:
Once a week kind of thing, so you knew it was time to…

Reda:
So you smell that, and when that piece of loaf of bread comes up, that smell and that sound, it’s just beautiful.

Jeff:
Outstanding. Yeah, I’m hungry for it already.

I’m going to give you three key words that are really part of a philosophy here, and that’s mission, vision, and delegation. And you’ve thrown that out before, and the delegation part of it is the one that always makes me go, this is a guy who knows. Tell us what that means to you in that philosophy.

Reda:
Man. Yeah. When I started the company, I wore a lot of hats and I started doing stuff. And I found this, I started losing my sleep and losing my joyful spirit because of the stress of the economy and the job. I guess it should be a way.

And I, yeah, learn it as we go. And it makes sense because it helps everyone to grow. Like, it’s psychology. If you think about it, as humans, we are not the same. We’re different. Your vision, you see stuff different. You process, you smell different, you talk different, you walk different, eat different. So we cannot be the same in that.

So put the visions aside. But the mission, when this vision come out of you and say like, hey, actually, like let’s use a training facility. My vision for that to build a training facility and apartments and a community center. But when I cannot share this and someone, you cannot, Jeff, you cannot come and take it because this is my vision because it’s not yours. It did not come out of you.

But when it comes outside of you, outside of me, it became a mission. You can tag on in this mission. You can come rent a spot for your company in our place. You can associate it with that mission of good to the community.

But the hardest one, but the minute you will learn, that one is the best one. It’s delegation. I used to cry in praying. I said, God, like I will have like five people and I will be out of work. And God, like how I can provide for them. These people have families to provide for.

He sent me a job and I would run over to try to get any job. And I started doing this, but I started losing my, I started losing my sleep, as I said earlier. Then that, What to me is like, not God. You cannot provide for them. You cannot even provide for yourself.

So can you delegate this to me? In that moment, say, God, this is your business. God, these are your people. And you’re going to provide for them. Then that released me from that feeling.

Then I started teaching my God. It’s like, hey. I’m delegating this to you. We’re short on work next week. I don’t know what to do. And most of them are like, hey, don’t worry. We’re saving because we teach them about saving. Or they said, hey, God got us. Like, we did it before and we’ll do it again. And a day later, we’ll have a new job.

It just happens. Then I feel like, okay, so this is a system. And this is all of our leadership team too. If you are good at something, why don’t delegate it to you? Because that gives you a space to grow.

And if you grow and you find yourself, you will never leave us. And you’re going to be with us because you’re growing. You’re happy.

Jeff:
You know, the wisdom stats that are coming off here are amazing. Thank you so much. My next question in the lightning round is almost like, where did you get all this wisdom? Because we asked a question about a teacher or a mentor or someone in your past that gave you some advice that you, that sticks with you to this day.

And, and you know, what, what advice did you get from that, that mentor or teacher? Um, because you, you, you are certainly sharing a ton of it, um, with us today and I’m much appreciated.

Reda:
I will, I will not be fair if I say one, one person, because it was a great group of very good people, but I would say the family. Okay. Not only my dad, my mom, or my brothers, or my wife, no.

My family is the people who come and have the same heart and see me, give me a job, give me ability to success and say, hey, support the goodness you’re doing. Keep doing what you’re doing. That and above all of it, it’s just the Holy Spirit, God. I cannot do it without Him.

To be honest, I didn’t want to come to the United States from the first hand. We just came to help family. But when I came here, it’s like, oh, okay, I guess we’ll stay.

Jeff:
Here’s the path that we’re on, and there must be a reason that we’re here.

Reda:
And it’s so funny because my background is a special degree in theology and philosophy, not in construction. So coming here and turning around and be good and actually became one of the good roofers in the city. Union and not union jobs, too. And after that, how we can actually transfer this to a vehicle.

Jeff:
Do you consider yourself a philosopher roofer or philosopher construction person? That just seems like there’s a label that goes on there.

Reda:
I would consider myself a leader, not more than a boss or a philosopher, just because I don’t use a lot of the philosophy we studied. but to just like be like it doesn’t make sense like will someone would be struggling with some walls building stuff i cannot just sit and philosophically talk to

Jeff:
Right, right. Do you know what this wall does not exist?

Reda:
This wall does not or this wall in your mind only before this is the second hand of the exception this is this is an image of the of the wall

Jeff:
Perfect. I love everything about that. I’m thinking through show titles at this point for this episode. That’s all I can think about.

I will take you out of the lightning round. You’ve done a great job. Thank you so much.

Reda:
I’m sweating.

Jeff:
I know, I know. Because I’ve asked you so many questions that you had no idea were coming at you, I will allow you the opportunity to turn the tables. If you have a question for me that you want to throw out, whether it’s about marketing or anything else, World Cup teams, whatever it is you want. to throw out please throw it please feel free

Reda:
first who are you and second why why you do what you are doing

Jeff:
Oh who am i and why do i do what i’m doing that’s um you know how i think it’s fascinating how people define themselves and this does get at one of those culture kind of issues because um they’re it it takes you a certain amount of time uh in the united states i think before you stop defining yourself by your job title and you go, I’m a, I’m, I’m at some point you get to a, an age or a maturity level or a non, um, uh, commercial, um, kind of consumerist level where you stop defining yourself by your job title.

And you say, I’m a husband and a father and a, uh, you know, helper. Um, I, I probably am. I could define myself as a helper and an educator. and I would be perfectly fine with that definition about that.

Why do I do what I do? I probably need to define all of the pieces of me and all of the different compartments of what I do because I teach marketing as an adjunct professor for the last 25 years, which mostly means I’m old, but that’s step one.

But part of that is because I like that, you know, teaching is one of those things where it’s part improv, it’s part quiz show, it’s part crowd management and presentation, which is all fun and exciting.

But that kind of dovetails into the what I do like for a living and at EAG where I do marketing and I get to help entrepreneurs. figure out their marketing problems and having that first conversation with a business owner where we say, hey, what are your biggest struggles? What are your biggest pain points?

And you get to hear all of this and think about their industry and go, oh, wait a minute. So that means you compete against these people. And OK, so what are customers choosing you based on? That puzzle. All of that puzzle, there’s not a right answer.

There are some wrong answers. There’s not a right answer. There are a million different ways you can solve that problem. And that just brings in all of that creativity that AI doesn’t have, that AI isn’t going to be able to replace for you, where you put together the right puzzle fix. For their marketing program. That fits their budget. That gets them to where they want to go.

And that just is. I could do that all the time.

Reda:
Thank you so much for who you are. You’re accepted.

Jeff:
Thank you. This is very important.

Reda:
You feel you’re accepted from your community. And really what you do is matter. And you’re an important part of the community. So appreciate you.

Jeff:
Reda, I appreciate you. This has been the most cathartic thing ever.

Reda:
And maybe in the future we’ll make another broadcast about AI and data centers.

Jeff:
We could definitely go there.

Reda:
I’m really about it. And I’m leading a task force with Centurion July. Okay. Talking about how data centers are very harmful for our community and our society. And a question here. This is the last question. Who is going to not compete but actually defeat AI after the AI bubble will burst? And this is the last one.

Jeff:
I can’t think about AI without thinking about all of the collected wisdom that has ever been put out there in every sci-fi film that has ever been made from the 1950s to today. All of those sci-fi films talk about AI and if you don’t do things right, here’s everything bad that could possibly happen.

And it seems like we we don’t pay enough attention to those lessons because each of those films, you know, talks about what happens next and how do you defeat that? Um, the, the, everything from, from the Terminator films to the matrix, um, that’s really, you know, there’s, there’s a, I, I don’t view, um, AI as being threatening in that same way.

But I can see how it could get there. It’s still a tool. It’s still a tool we can use. And we should use it and we shouldn’t be afraid of it. But you need to understand – like if it were a tool and that tool is nuclear power, you need to understand some things about the whole physics of nuclear power before you put that into play.

So I tend to view it as definitely a tool but – Hey, we should do some thinking about this before we just jump into it.

Reda:
Okay. Maybe we’ll do a deep dive in this. But when you have our conversation right now, what do you have in your hand?

Jeff:
Notes for interview notes.

Reda:
Of paper.

Jeff:
Of paper, yes.

Reda:
Paper we’re going to defeat because it survived for thousands of years with the inventions. And we’re going to go back to it. And this is the healthiest way. It’s a connection with the paper.

Because it lets you expose your inside philosophy, character, without resistance. The AI doesn’t let you do that. You will tell them what you want to do.

Jeff:
Right, right.

Reda:
And they will fabricate around it. It’s a tool.

Jeff:
Yeah.

Reda:
But still, take perspective from you.

Jeff:
Yeah, good deep dive. Because, you know, one thing. Technology is a tool. I had a short story professor in my undergraduate program where we’re creative writing, kind of English major type people going into the advertising world or otherwise.

And the professor said that you can’t write. A story using a computer. It’s too far away. It’s too deconstructed. You need to write it out by hand.

And I heard that. And there’s some wisdom to it. I rejected that wisdom and I rejected it because a couple of things. One, I can type. almost as fast as i can think and so it gets out on the paper faster and so if you if you if you don’t

Reda:
yeah and you could speak to it you could you could transcribe you could do all kinds of things

Jeff:
Um and if i try to write something down i won’t be able to read my handwriting i’m not even gonna be able to get there so there’s some practicality that gets there

Reda:
i want you to know you’re accepted too

Jeff:
i appreciate that very much yes Thank you so much. Reda, you’ve done a great job in the interview. Tell everybody where they can find you, if they need to connect with you, if they need to find RK Contractors. Where do they go?

Reda:
You can find us on the internet or social media under RK Contractors. I’ll see Kansas City.

Jeff:
Perfect. Reda Ibrahim, founder and CEO of RK Contractors. Thanks for being with us today.

Reda:
Thank you so much for having me.

Jeff:
All right. And that is our show. Don’t forget to like and subscribe. Give us a five-star rating and review. Drop us a line on the website at E-A-G-A-D-V.com if you have any thoughts. Until then, we’ll be out here helping entrepreneurs with another small business miracle.