Featured Speaker

Morgan Beavers | Business Operations Officer | Graylee Construction and Demolition LLC| Austin, Arkansas

Morgan Beavers is the Business Operations Officer of Graylee Construction and Demolition, LLC.

The company was founded in 2016 by Morgan’s husband, Sean Beavers. Sean has an extensive resume in heavy civil construction management and has supervised projects throughout his career before launching Graylee. His passion is construction, and together, they enjoy the process of creating something meaningful for the communities in which they work.

While completing a large project for an international firm, Sean and his crew worked extremely long hours seven days a week. At this point, Sean felt that the conditions that he and his team members were working under were unfair and that employees deserved better. That was when he founded Graylee Construction and Demolition not only to build projects that mattered and to build a company that treats its employees fairly and enriches their lives.

There have been many challenges over the last six years, and the resources and assistance that the SBA has provided have been crucial. Graylee has been a member of the 8(a) Business Development program since 2020, which has helped the firm flourish in the federal contracting field. Additionally, the Emerging Leaders Program was a great tool that helped refine Graylee’s business management capabilities.

Like most small businesses, Graylee had humble beginnings, with a few employees and smaller heavy-civil projects. Each year, Graylee has grown and has tackled larger and larger projects – including starting and completing a $1.71 million project in 2021.

“When Sean founded the company in 2016, I was still teaching chemistry in Cabot and working for Graylee after school. I completely understood Sean’s vision for the company and did everything in my power to help him realize it. We spent many late nights spent reviewing reports, putting proposals together, or working on project submittals after our kids were asleep. At the start, things were extremely challenging for both of us. Sean was wearing multiple hats within the company – CEO, superintendent, project manager, operator, and truck driver. I was working a full-time teaching job and also wearing multiple hats in the company – accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, benefits coordinator, networking, website designer, and more.

As the business grew, Sean was able to delegate more and more, and I was able to transition into working full-time for Graylee. Shifts that have not only made our company more efficient and profitable but also made our lives drastically better. Our company has faced so many challenges over the last six years – labor and material shortages, access to capital, and access to projects just to name a few! Operating a business in a rural area presents its own set of additional challenges. Our business, like most in rural areas, has to cover a large geographic footprint in order to have a high enough project and sales volume. This means that struggles like recent fuel cost inflation affect our business more than businesses that operate in more metropolitan places. However, the fact that we have been able to grow our business despite those challenges gives me such hope for the future of our business and others like ours."

SBA’s Elevating Small Business Webinar: Celebrating Rural Entrepreneurship