Speaker 1: If you love what you do and you love where
Speaker 1: you do it, don't let anything stop you from being successful.
Speaker 1: There put in the hours, put in the time, put
Speaker 1: in the work, put in the effort. At twenty one,
Speaker 1: Justin Messymore had just graduated college and was taking a
Speaker 1: year off from his education doing odd jobs to earn
Speaker 1: money for law school, or so he thought. On this
Speaker 1: edition of On the Job, brought to you by Express
Speaker 1: Employment Professionals, we'll learn how Justin Messimore worked himself into
Speaker 1: an opportunity he never could have imagined. If you want
Speaker 1: to find your next job, or if you're a company
Speaker 1: hoping to grow your work force, Express Employment Professionals is
Speaker 1: for you. Find more information at express prose dot com. Now,
Speaker 1: independent producer Philip Greitzer tells us the story of Justin
Speaker 1: Messymore's unexpected journey. In an industrial park on the south
Speaker 1: side of Hickory, North Carolina, is the headquarters of Gracia USA. Hi,
Speaker 1: how are you? That's Justin Messymore. He's wearing jeans, a
Speaker 1: north faced shirt, and has a tattoo on his right forearm.
Speaker 1: He looks more like a college student than the CEO
Speaker 1: and co owner of this midsize manufacturing company. Gracia is
Speaker 1: one of the few companies in the world that makes
Speaker 1: steel saw blade blanks that are used in the lumber, aircraft,
Speaker 1: and oil and gas industries. A saw blade blank is
Speaker 1: the circular steel part of a saw blade. Manufacturing blanks
Speaker 1: is an intricate process. It involves high tech lasers and
Speaker 1: a good deal of manual labor. We have three lasers
Speaker 1: that are constantly running and either the sheet or the round.
Speaker 1: The factory floor is about half the size of a
Speaker 1: football field, and considering that lots of cutting, hating and
Speaker 1: hammering is going on, it's incredibly neat. Employees go about
Speaker 1: their business, drive thing forklift trucks, loading steel blanks on palettes,
Speaker 1: operating cutting machines, and hammering the steel blanks. Since the
Speaker 1: blanks are used for precision cutting, they have to be
Speaker 1: perfectly flat. Using just a straight edge in a light,
Speaker 1: A man inspects the blanks. If he finds any irregularities,
Speaker 1: he puts the blank on an anvil and hammers it
Speaker 1: out by hand, just like an old fashioned blacksmith. The
Speaker 1: first time you saw this, messy Moore was impressed. How
Speaker 1: it's like, Really, it takes that much to make one
Speaker 1: of these things that I see on the shelf. It
Speaker 1: really blew my mind. And everyone has that same response
Speaker 1: whenever we bring them here for the first time. You
Speaker 1: would never imagine how much work that it takes to
Speaker 1: make something so simple as this. All blade back in
Speaker 1: two thousand eight, when Messymore graduated from Appalachian State University
Speaker 1: with a degree in business accounting. Accounting jobs were hard
Speaker 1: to find, so he returned home to Taylor's film, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: moved in with his parents, and took several part time jobs.
Speaker 1: He was twenty one and he was saving money to
Speaker 1: go to law school, and the goal was to save money,
Speaker 1: so renting an apartment was out of the question. Moving
Speaker 1: somewhere on my own was not even an option. So
Speaker 1: I worked with some friends and my parents knew. I
Speaker 1: painted some high school's. A friend of mine talked to
Speaker 1: me to selling insurance and annuities and things like that,
Speaker 1: so I did a lot of little things. A family
Speaker 1: friend suggested that the Hickory, North Carolina Office of Express
Speaker 1: Employment Professionals might help him find work. He completed an
Speaker 1: application and a few days later he was sent to
Speaker 1: Grasha for an interview. Gasha was looking for someone with
Speaker 1: his background. The next day the company called he got
Speaker 1: the job Messymore started the following Monday as an assistant
Speaker 1: to the accounting manager. The company's general manager, Klaus Jensen,
Speaker 1: really wanted to hire a financial officer, but getting an
Speaker 1: experienced one would be expensive and right now money was tight,
Speaker 1: So when accounting assistant would have to do, I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: let me see if I can get an assistant in first,
Speaker 1: and and see how he does, and see if he
Speaker 1: has any potential. If not, he would if I had
Speaker 1: to go out and hire an experience accountant, at least
Speaker 1: I would have somebody who already knew something. So so
Speaker 1: I called the Chimp Agency. It was express that we
Speaker 1: had worked with for people out in their plant, and
Speaker 1: shold them what I needed. Then they send out I
Speaker 1: believe five or six candidates, and one of them was Justin.
Speaker 1: Jensen planned for his new employee to handle basic accounting tasks,
Speaker 1: but the accounting manager had other things in mind. He
Speaker 1: had stacks of paper on his desk that were at
Speaker 1: least six inches to to one ft tall, and he
Speaker 1: knew where everything was, and they really wanted someone to
Speaker 1: just combine and help organize his office. And I started
Speaker 1: out doing that and knocked that out in a relatively
Speaker 1: quickly manner um. So once that was finished, they asked
Speaker 1: me to start updating some customer databases. I'm just calling
Speaker 1: customers finding out, you know, who's in charge of a R,
Speaker 1: A P. What do you have? New phone numbers, new
Speaker 1: email addresses, and things like that. A R and AP
Speaker 1: are accounts receivable and accounts payable money is owed to
Speaker 1: and owed by the company. Although these tasks were preparing
Speaker 1: me Symore to be a lawyer for now, he didn't mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was a college kid who was taking a gap year.
Speaker 1: I didn't intend for this to be a career path
Speaker 1: for me. It was. It was just a paycheck, it
Speaker 1: really was. So anything they asked me to do as
Speaker 1: long as the paycheck cashed at the end of the week,
Speaker 1: I was fine with it. In my mind, my career
Speaker 1: hadn't started, Yeah, But in reality, it was my career starting.
Speaker 1: Perhaps Jensen realized this too, because he asked me Symore
Speaker 1: to look a little more closely at the customer accounts.
Speaker 1: I was noticing that, you know, they had a lot
Speaker 1: of customers who were paying within always paying, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty days, thirty days thirty days and um, you know,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I wonder if these guys would
Speaker 1: be enticed to um pay earlier if you would offer
Speaker 1: them a discount, you know, get that money a little
Speaker 1: bit earlier. And the guys who are constantly paying in
Speaker 1: say like forty five to sixty days, I wonder if
Speaker 1: they would be willing to pay in thirty days if
Speaker 1: you started charging them a finance charge. And then the
Speaker 1: customers who are like really far past dude, or is
Speaker 1: anyone calling these people on a regular basis finally out, hey,
Speaker 1: where's this? Where's our money? Where are you? Where are
Speaker 1: you not paying? So there was a lot of small
Speaker 1: things that I noticed whenever I was going through those
Speaker 1: things that were easily addressed. Justin had no practical experience
Speaker 1: working with accounts receivable. I'm you know, I'm straight out
Speaker 1: of college. So all I really know is is the
Speaker 1: theory behind accounting. I've never really they've seen any real
Speaker 1: world practice behind any of it. But you know, in
Speaker 1: college you learned theories and theories are supposed to work
Speaker 1: in real world practice. Do I know if they're going
Speaker 1: to work or not? Absolutely not? But why do I
Speaker 1: have to lose by bringing them up or suggesting them.
Speaker 1: But he summoned up the courage and presented his ideas
Speaker 1: to the company executives. I really had nothing to lose
Speaker 1: by mentioning this to anybody. If they fire me, they
Speaker 1: fired me. I just go back to doing what I
Speaker 1: was doing before I got here. They implemented me Siemr's plan,
Speaker 1: and it worked. The company's cash flow improved. Soon Justin
Speaker 1: was taking on other tasks. I just took over stuff.
Speaker 1: It's funny. I took over a lot of the I stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, they had a person not working here, but
Speaker 1: they had an outside consultant. They were paying him somewhere
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood of eighty thousand dollars a year to
Speaker 1: to manage their their I T stuff, and they would
Speaker 1: call him in. It's like, don't call him, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: So I would go in there, reboot the server and
Speaker 1: saved them from having to call this guy in. I
Speaker 1: looked around. There was a company here in Hickory, contacted
Speaker 1: them and they would manage our day to day I
Speaker 1: T services for eight hundred bucks a month instead of
Speaker 1: the security monitoring service calling company managers. When the alarm
Speaker 1: went off, Justin told them. He'd take the costs there.
Speaker 1: There really wasn't anything I wouldn't do, and it's not
Speaker 1: even things that I was being asked to do. I
Speaker 1: just did them. I mean that's just the way that
Speaker 1: I've always been. If there was something that needed to
Speaker 1: be done, I would just take the initiative to do it,
Speaker 1: to do it. Justin was also doing things way outside
Speaker 1: his job description, pointed with snow um, I would make
Speaker 1: sure that I would I could. I would come here
Speaker 1: and open the plant and open the office for everybody.
Speaker 1: I've got a four wheel driveing Hiclough lived in Boone
Speaker 1: driving in the snows. Nothing for me. I'll just come
Speaker 1: in and do it. About the only thing Justin didn't
Speaker 1: do was sweep the floors. In the fall of two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, as his ninety day temporary employment contract
Speaker 1: was expired, Missy Moore was offered a permanent job, but
Speaker 1: he still wasn't sure that working at Grascia was going
Speaker 1: to be part of his career plan. At that point
Speaker 1: in time, I still didn't know where this was going
Speaker 1: to take me. The goal was still to start saving money.
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't know. Maybe the gap here turned
Speaker 1: into two years so still having my eye on the
Speaker 1: law school endgame. Stay at home and save as much
Speaker 1: money as possible. We're going to take a short break.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Philip Great Sir will bring Justin
Speaker 1: miss Moore's story up to date. You're listening to on
Speaker 1: the Job from Express Employment Professionals. One company is on
Speaker 1: a mission to put a million people to work each year.
Speaker 1: Sounds like a big number, doesn't it not to Express
Speaker 1: Employment Professionals seeking a skilled labor position or administrative order.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're an executive looking for a career that fits supporting.
Speaker 1: We take pride in connecting the right people with the
Speaker 1: right company. Express Employment Professionals is on a mission to
Speaker 1: put a million people to work each year. Let us help.
Speaker 1: We'll open words for you to go to express pros
Speaker 1: dot com to find a location near you. Now back
Speaker 1: to the story of the accounting assistant who thought he
Speaker 1: was taking time off from his career path but found
Speaker 1: an unexpected way forward instead. As Justin messymore took on
Speaker 1: more accounting and administrative duties. Klaus Jensen, the company manager,
Speaker 1: took note he was he was extremely organized, he was
Speaker 1: time efficient. We always thought be needed at East a
Speaker 1: person and a half, he found ways to to do
Speaker 1: it with just him. Soon Justin had an office all
Speaker 1: to himself. The two other people in the shared office
Speaker 1: had been let go. Justin took over their duties. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten, klass Jensen and a partner purchased
Speaker 1: Grusha and the company was not in good financial shape
Speaker 1: and I had to trim some personnel, and Justin Biden
Speaker 1: had shown me enough that I kind of chook the chance.
Speaker 1: Said Okay, let's try to do it with Justin on
Speaker 1: his own. Two years after he started working at Garcia,
Speaker 1: Messy Moore was head of the company's accounting unit. They
Speaker 1: basically told me that they wanted me to to be
Speaker 1: in charge of the company's finances on a much larger scale.
Speaker 1: It was like, okay, that's great, But they told me
Speaker 1: something that started concerning me. That they they knew a
Speaker 1: guy that they wanted to them to bring in on
Speaker 1: a more of a consulting basis. So, I mean, at
Speaker 1: that first point, I thought I was being promoted all
Speaker 1: the way to the top, but I thought I was
Speaker 1: still being kept underneath somebody. The consultant came in two
Speaker 1: to three days a week, then just every few weeks,
Speaker 1: and after a few months, the consultant told manager Jensen
Speaker 1: the company didn't really need his services at all. Messy
Speaker 1: Moore could do the job on his own. With the
Speaker 1: consultant no longer looking over his shoulder, Justin decided that
Speaker 1: working for Garcia would be his career. He started working
Speaker 1: even harder, eleven hour days, six day work weeks, and
Speaker 1: no vacations. Because I was the first person here, last
Speaker 1: person to leave when it snowed, when nobody else was
Speaker 1: in the office, I was answering the phone. I mean,
Speaker 1: I would work, do my accounting stuff. In the front office,
Speaker 1: I would take orders. I messed up a lot of
Speaker 1: orders because do you know how to take orders at
Speaker 1: the time. I'm not a sales guy, but somebody needed
Speaker 1: to be here to take the orders. He show management
Speaker 1: that he really cared. He set his sights to be
Speaker 1: the company's next CFO, chief financial officer. He was twenty
Speaker 1: five years old, going that extra mile doing whatever it takes,
Speaker 1: long hours, hard work. You know, it's a balance of
Speaker 1: hard work and intelligence. But I think that if you
Speaker 1: have to weigh the two hard works, going to outweigh
Speaker 1: intelligence every time. As Justin was gunning for the CFO job.
Speaker 1: Grass owner Klaus Jensen had plans of his own. He
Speaker 1: wanted to retire, and he wanted to leave the company
Speaker 1: in good hands. He set up an exit plan. First,
Speaker 1: he hired are a former colleague, Richard Comber, to be
Speaker 1: gross sales manager. Comber would handle the company's external operations
Speaker 1: while Missy Moore would manage finances. The two got along
Speaker 1: grade they were yinnin Yang. Comber was the idea man
Speaker 1: and Justin was the numbers guy. To Jensen, they look
Speaker 1: like perfect candidates to take over the company. Jensen began
Speaker 1: easing himself out of day to day management, leaving Messy
Speaker 1: Moore and Comber in charge. In three years, they were
Speaker 1: ready to buy the company, but they didn't have any money.
Speaker 1: I had student debt and I just bought a house,
Speaker 1: so I was you know, I wasn't debt. I mean
Speaker 1: I had a good income, but being that young, I
Speaker 1: really hadn't had much time to to save. A bank
Speaker 1: saw the company as an attractive investment and offered financing
Speaker 1: to the two to allow them to buy Grussia. Messy
Speaker 1: Moore was twenty eight, Comber was forty. In two thousand sixteen,
Speaker 1: Missy Moore and Comber purchased Grussia. They were fifty fifty partners.
Speaker 1: Eight years after he started as a temporary employee, Justin
Speaker 1: Missy Moore was now the chief executive officer and co
Speaker 1: owner of Garcia USA. When you visit Grasia's factory, the
Speaker 1: first thing that catches your eye is a huge banner
Speaker 1: that says everything is important. There's no detail too small.
Speaker 1: And it's that attention to detail mixed with intelligence, ambition
Speaker 1: and lots of hard work that got Missy Moore to
Speaker 1: the top. They saw this young hotshot accountant who had
Speaker 1: been working with the company was doing a great job
Speaker 1: managing the company's finances, was doing things above and beyond
Speaker 1: what a typical accountant should be doing. Kyles Jensen says,
Speaker 1: Justin deserved the top job. That's always a little bit
Speaker 1: of luck involved for all of us whereby and up. Obviously,
Speaker 1: he was lucky that I called expression and needed an
Speaker 1: accountant and and he got the job. But from Lynn
Speaker 1: on he can take credit for maximizing the situation and
Speaker 1: showing that he wash ready and having the ambition and
Speaker 1: the gouts to go for it. At the end of
Speaker 1: the day, you have to earn it, and he has
Speaker 1: learned it. Justin Messy Moore has been CEO for two years.
Speaker 1: He's digitous plans to become a lawyer. Still, when he's
Speaker 1: watching a Good Lawyer movie, he has day dreams of
Speaker 1: what it might have been. I feel like I just
Speaker 1: sit there and like I'd been great at that. I
Speaker 1: do feel great. I feel like I've been great at that,
Speaker 1: And that's the extent of my regret. But sitting where
Speaker 1: I am now, owning my own company, a living, breathing organism,
Speaker 1: the freedom that comes along with that, I couldn't be happier.
Speaker 1: That was independent producer Philip Greitzer with the story of
Speaker 1: Justin Messy Moore's rise from temporary worker to CEO. And
Speaker 1: that's all for this edition of On the Job from
Speaker 1: Express Employment Professionals. Find out more at Express pros dot
Speaker 1: com and you can listen to every podcast this season
Speaker 1: on Express pros dot com slash podcast. This podcast is
Speaker 1: produced by your host, Steve Mencher for Men's Media, I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Red Seat Ventures. You can subscribe on
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and iTunes, where we hope you'll leave
Speaker 1: a nice review that helps other folks find us, and
Speaker 1: of course you can listen and subscribe wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. See you next time. I'm the job