Today we’d like to introduce you to Jordon Holdaway
Hi Jordon, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I was raised by a single mom, and lacked any respect for authority, I was rebellious and a thrill-seeker from a very young age. I based my life off a mindset of testing any and all boundaries, I found myself drifting into a life of drugs and criminal behavior during high school and continuing on into adulthood. Anti-social tendencies and an addiction to methamphetamine led to my first felony charges at the age of 23. This marked the beginning of many years in and out of prison as a career criminal and drug dealer. All told, my choices cost me 11 years of my life incarcerated with unimaginable damage done to my family and the community.
This path changed for me in 2016, when I applied for an interview at The Other Side Academy, with a 15-year prison sentence over my head, and was accepted. Upon arrival at TOSA, I came in with the mindset of an ex-convict and spent many months battling my old beliefs, and nearly threw away the opportunity to save my life. However, the choice to stay for nearly four years, own my behavior, face the damage that my choices had caused, and learn to put my community first, has given me the determination and purpose to spend the rest of my life putting the world together rather than tearing it apart.
I graduated from The Other Side Academy in 2020 and have been hired as General Manager of The Other Side Builders LLC, a commercial and residential general contractor that is one of the funding sources for The Other Side Academy. It serves as a vocational training school and social enterprise for students (like I once was), as they rebuild their lives. The Other Side Builders has been open for nearly five years, and we have grown from doing $100,000.00/yr. worth of general contracting to $5,000,000.00/yr. We have helped dozens of students learn new job skills and also placed them in competitive positions in the job market upon graduation from TOSA.
I have regained the trust and support of the community and I cherish the opportunity to help other broken individuals do the same.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Recreating oneself is never a smooth process. You build beliefs through your actions and relationships that became your reality more and more each day you live from them. The biggest struggle I faced on my journey was unwinding those beliefs I had created, and replacing them with new ones. I am a stubborn and independent person, so examining my behaviors and choices, and being accountable for the reality of them, was a process for me.
I had to start life over. I had to cut ties with nearly every relationship I had from the past and develop new ones. One of the biggest hurdles in creating new relationships, is making sure you’re not re-creating the same type of relationships you always did with new people. These were all battles that took place, but lead to so many breakthroughs and new paths to trek.
Today I only surround myself with people of integrity and consistency. That practice itself has not only given me the support and network to make great things happen, but it has elevated me personally in who I choose to be and how I show up. You are who you spend your time with, and you also are an influence upon others. If you can remember those principles, and make choices based upon right action, you can overcome any obstacle. If you loose site of those principles, you are destined to repeat negative consequences again and again.
We’ve been impressed with The Other Side Builders LLC, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
The Other Side Builders is a commercial & residential general contractor that helps fund The Other Side Academy. The Other Side Builders provides vocational training for the students of The Academy, who have made a commitment of 30 months to recreate themselves from the lost and broken individuals they were into honest, accountable, committed, contributing members of society. The Academy is a behavior based, peer-driven therapeutic community, and has incredibly high expectations of it’s students. The Builders share and reflect those immensely high standards in the work place. We are renowned for our punctuality, timelines, transparency, hard work, and followthrough. These are all principles that are being pounded into the students, and our workplace directly reflects all of these character-building traits.
Customers are usually jaded by previous contractors who have performed poorly (if even at all) in the past. This creates a market begging for companies that show up on time, work a full day, stick to their prices, and deliver on time. That is precisely what The Other Side Builders does. None of our workers use tobacco, so you don’t have smoke breaks interfering with production. Personal phones are not allowed on the job sites, so nobody is lost in social media when they’re supposed to be working. 8 hours for The Other Side Builders is 8 hours… not 3-4 like most other contractors.
The Other Side Builders barely advertises – as a matter of fact we have to pass on some work because our schedule is so full – most of our work comes from word of mouth referrals. Once someone uses our services, it’s not long after 3-4 more people on that block are recruiting our services. And 80% of our customers are repeat customers.
What sets us apart? Integrity. We understand we can’t teach it to our students if we don’t have it ourselves!
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
I believe the construction industry will never stop growing. I also believe that the industry of criminal and addiction treatment will always be essential. I believe the success of The Other Side Academy, and The Other Side Builders will not only continue for the next 10 years, but will actually shape the way these industries are held to a higher standard.
Pricing:
- Fixed-Price Bid Contracts
- Time and Material Contracts
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.theothersidebuilders.com
- Instagram: theothersidebuilders
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/jordon-holdaway-62aa32350
