Jesse Cherian's Jabez Holdings grew from $1.5M to $8-10M in revenue after joining the SBA 8(a) program in 2008. Mentor-Protégé partnerships brought in nearly $100M in Department of Labor contracts and $30M in fabrication work over the past year.
Chapters
My name is Jesse Charian and I am the President and CEO of Jabez Holdings, Inc. And we have a DBA doing business as St. Fabrication, Jabez Construction and Jabez Coatings. And we are located here in Orting, Washington. So in 2002, when we bought the company, we only had six employees. One saw one iron worker, a few welders. St. Fabrication was doing about one and a half million dollars a year, and we grew that to around 3 to 4 million dollars a year about the time we entered the 8 program.
The 8 business development program is a program for socially and economically disadvantaged individuals that want to do business with the government in the federal world and expand their federal Footprint.
After entering the 8 program, we were within a few years operating at 8 to 10 million dollars a year. And that was pretty good, but it still wasn't the growth that we were experiencing today. So the Mentor Protege program is really like a Big Brother program. Very valuable in helping execute large projects. Enabled us on the general contracting side to now have almost 100 million DOL contracts through those joint ventures. And on our fabrication side as a manufacturer, we are over the last 12 months at $30 million. That kind of growth really has been completely sustained and brought about by the relationships that we garnered through our 8 involvement, the networking, the quality and caliber of the general contractors that we interface with, and just what we learned about how they do business. It's really enabled us to grow.
Jesse came into the 8 business development program in 2008. He was very hard working, very dedicated. He was willing to listen and learn and take advice. He also was big on relationship building. He had a great relationship with the business opportunity specialists in the 8A program, along with our resource partners, his mentors and the agencies.
We started in 2012 with our first sound transit project, the U240 Capitol Hill Station with Turner Construction. And that project is complicated and they take a level of project management that we would not be able to do had we not got that kind of training through the 8A program. As a general contractor. One thing I wish that other small business owners would know and understand is that the SBA is a resource. There is a wealth of experience and connectivity that the SBA has with businesses that are far larger than your own. And if you could get to know who those people are and who the players are, it would serve any small business well. I would like to thank the Seattle District SBA office for this award. It's really humbling. It's kind of unbelievable to me that I would be considered for this because my focus has been not traditional from many eight contractors. I remember the business opportunity specialist telling me this when we got into the program, that you may find that you're going to continue to be a general contractor and grow that business, but you may find that it's going to help you specialize and be a better subcontractor. And that's the route that we've taken. But the SBA has been invaluable to our company, and we're very grateful for this award and the opportunity.
