A Concrete Connection With Vanderbilt

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Before fans ever enjoyed a game from FirstBank Stadium’s new SRM South End Zone Suites, back when scaffolding and construction cranes still worked to bring Vandy United’s vision to life, Clark Lea talked about winning a national championship. The college football world rolled its eyes. Lea’s program was itself a work in progress, minus the scaffolding. Born and raised in Middle Tennessee and aware of the scale of the challenge that the coach embraced, SRM CEO Jeff Hollingshead momentarily rolled his eyes, too.

But only momentarily. When you’re in the concrete business, you know a thing or two about the importance of strong foundations.

“I really started to think about it, and how are you ever going to win one if you don’t start talking about it?” Hollingshead recalled. “You’ve got to put your dreams out there. You’ve got to speak those things into existence and then will your way to that. If you don’t put something out there on the wall and say, ‘Hey guys, we’re all going in this direction,’ how are you ever going to get there? So I give him a lot of credit. He’s done a phenomenal job building a culture around some big goals.”

SRM Concrete is a natural partner for Vanderbilt Athletics. Founded in Smyrna, Tennessee, SRM has grown into an industry leader with nationwide reach, employing more than 8,500 people and serving customers in 23 states. Like Vanderbilt, the ready-mix, aggregates and cement company is a proud part of the Middle Tennessee and Nashville community that has been its launch pad. But for Hollingshead, Lea’s words gave voice to more than strategic alignment. He flashed back to a conversation with his dad one night in the offices that fronted the company’s first plant—they didn’t need much space for the four people who did everything on the business side. After another long day on the job, they talked about becoming the biggest concrete producer in the state. It was an undeniably bold goal for a family-operated company. Some might even have rolled their eyes. But they made it happen, then turned their focus to becoming the biggest in the Southeast and the country.

If you’re brave enough to dare to grow, you might as well set big goals.

“This business has been the fabric of who I am as a person from the very beginning,” Hollingshead said. “I had a front row seat to the American dream. My dad started with nothing; he grew up in a trailer park. My mom grew up in a shack in Smyrna. I’ve seen firsthand that if you get up and work hard and never take no for an answer, you can be incredibly successful.”

Mike and Melissa Hollingshead, parents of Jeff and SRM Materials President Ryan Hollingshead, founded SRM in 1999. Mike was a concrete finisher, not an entrepreneur. But he built the business with that real-world expertise, scraping together enough capital for five used concrete trucks and building a concrete plant in the backyard. Even before that, when Jeff was in elementary school, he tagged along on his dad’s jobs. He wryly notes that “getting in the way” may have been the extent of his early contributions. But as a teenager, he was running his own SRM concrete crew—at one point working alongside former VandyBoys star and current St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Sonny Gray.

Hollingshead grew up thinking of a future that had more to do with concrete than the C-suites. He didn’t mind the hard work. He liked the camaraderie of the crews. College didn’t feel like part of the plan. But spurred on by the economic downturn in the first decade of this century, he decided there was value in extending his education and earned his undergraduate degree from Belmont—still working for SRM during the day.

A decade later, a similar impulse to keep growing led him to Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management to pursue his MBA. He was already SRM’s CEO by then, but the business had expanded from scarcely a hundred employees when he started to thousands. He was proud that SRM remained a family business with local roots and wanted to make sure the family reimained equipped to lead it.

“Had it not been Owen, it wouldn’t have been anywhere else,” Hollingshead said. “I knew the academic prestige that Vanderbilt has to offer because I’m from here. I never applied anywhere else. I wanted to be a part of that Vanderbilt community.”

He didn’t have time to hang out in the student section at games—in addition to juggling academic and work demands, he and his wife have a family of their own and he is Senior Pastor at Calvary Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He also followed the MBA program’s global route, which involved spending time in Brazil, Canada and Mexico during his second year. But not only did he come away with newfound knowledge and ideas, in addition to friendships that fill his text chains, he hired some of his fellow graduates.

He had to be willing to go back to school, just as he’s still willing to hop in a concrete truck and finish a job if necessary. As he looks to grow SRM without losing the culture that lifted it in the first place, his time at Owen only reinforced his conviction that whether it’s family, classmates or anyone else, people create success.

“Whatever it takes to do it, you’ve got to do it—especially in our business, it’s a blue collar business,” Hollingshead said. “You can never get to a place where you’re more important than anybody else on your team. We have titles because we’re forced to, not because we want to. No matter what, nothing can ever be successful without great people. It really doesn’t matter if it’s concrete, aggregates or cement—or if you’re selling coffee or cookies. If you don’t have great people, you’re not going to have a great business.”

These days, SRM aspires to be the largest construction materials provider in the country. After seeing the growth so far, no one will roll their eyes. But it remains an ambitious goal that will require perhaps tenfold growth in the years to come. It’s the same ambition that fuels Vandy United, including the SRM South End Zone Suites in a reimagined FirstBank Stadium. And watching from that or any other vantage point in the stadium, it’s what fans see fueling the Commodores as they open the same eyes that once rolled at Lea’s words.

“We’re kind of on parallel streams,” Hollingshead said. “Being the largest construction materials company in the country is a big goal, but I believe we can do it. I suspect that the folks around that locker room started to believe Coach Lea, too. It’s amazing what happens when you get people who have servant leadership, an unwavering work ethic, and faith in what they’re doing and what they are supporting. When you get the right people, you can move mountains in a hurry. Hopefully we both keep doing that.”