MarketScale has been following infulential members of the AEC community through our Faces of Design series, chronicalling architects, designers, and influencers who set an example of excellence. For our final episode of season 1, we profiled Eric Edelson, the CEO of Fireclay Tile, who took a dying company during the 2008 recession and breathed life back into it. Now, it's worth several million dollars, and is growing at an unprecedented rate.

Rejoined by AEC contributor Bryce Stuckenschneider on this supplementary podcast to our main video on Edelson, we pull the curtain back and get more insight on his journey into the AEC industry, an industry he knew nothing about before joining the Fireclay team. His lack of experience but success regardless is a testament to the power of focused, thoughtful leadership. We analyze that methodology for leadership, how Edelson identified the issues at Fireclay, and the initiative he had to take to deliver bad news. But most importantly, Edelson explains to us how powerful software was the single most important change he brought to Fireclay, and why it saved the company.

Daniel Litwin: So obviously bringing technology into the picture helped revolutionize what Fireclay could do and I know you had some specific softwares that you were gung-ho about that, “Hey, look, we have to implement this into our daily operations because it’s going to empower us in ways that you don’t even imagine.” So that includes stuff like Salesforce, Asana, Zenefits. Tell me a bit about how you implemented those technologies and what your thought process was for, “Okay, why does this company need blank? Why does it need blank and how did it turn the company around?”

Eric Edelson: Yeah. So to paint the picture back in 2009, it was really bleak for this company. Sales were cratering. There was no money in the company, owed quite a bit of money to a variety of vendors and banks. So there was really nothing. We did a pretty quick immediately layoff. One of the things I really like about Paul is he acted quickly. So pretty much my first day we shut one of two factories that the company had down and had to lay off about eight people, which was really a struggle but at the same time it was absolutely necessary because there was no money.

And for the first six months, had Paul kind of structure our agreement. I said, “You know, when there’s money, I’ll pay myself what you’re paid,” which literally wasn’t very much money. Because I just felt like, “You know, any dollars to me in Day 1 wouldn’t really help the business.” So I took all of that money and really deployed it at software. So really quickly we took what they already had which is an old file maker process and they have this outdated accounting software. There’s a whole story about his accountant who quit about two weeks after I joined. It turned out she’s been embezzling about $30,000 behind Paul’s back.