Benjamin
Lee Stotts

I didn't grow up without. My father was a successful man, and we never lacked for anything. But money was never supposed to be a reason to avoid doing something yourself. If something broke, we fixed it. If something needed building, we figured out how to build it. My father could have paid someone to handle all of it, and he chose not to. He thought a person who could use their hands didn't need to depend on anyone, and he tried to pass that on to me. I'm glad he did.

I lost both of my parents while I was still in high school. Before I had the chance to show them anything. I had the family trust, so I wasn't left without support, but I was suddenly on my own in ways I wasn't ready for. I had to figure out a lot quickly. I still think about them in everything I do. Every project I take on is, honestly, an attempt to become someone they would have been proud of. I'm still working on that.

“Every community I've worked in has had skilled, eager, overlooked people. I started giving those people jobs. And the work got better.”

I got the formal training, the drafting courses, the structural engineering certifications. But what I learned on actual sites was different from what I learned in a classroom. The most useful thing I picked up was that the crew matters more than almost anything else, and the best crew isn't necessarily the most experienced one you can hire. It's the one that actually cares about the place where they're building. My father taught me not to pay your way out of hard work. I try to carry that onto every site I walk onto.

I carry no permanent payroll and have no fixed crew on retainer. I work alone in that sense. But I have never once built alone. Every structure I've been part of has had community hands in it. That is the truest thing I can say about this work. I hope my parents would have appreciated it.