At the beginning of 2023, Epcon Communities announced two leadership changes—Joel Rhoades as CEO and Brooks Longfellow in the newly created chief operating officer role—that would position the company for future success and begin a process of cultural reinvention for the No. 57 company on the 2024 Builder 100 list.
Rhodes says a healthy culture requires everyone, including executives, to reflect on “what we do and why we do it” in order to become stronger as a company and ensure that new team members are on board with the overall vision. The new executives have put an emphasis on providing a remarkable experience for all stakeholders, both external customers and internal associates, with an understanding that being a great place to work translates externally in customer interactions.
“The leadership changes Epcon went through last year gave us the opportunity to take a fresh perspective on the company’s culture and values,” Longfellow tells Builder. “As we set goals for the future, it was also time to look at the present and ensure our company values were in line with achieving those goals.”
To begin the culture evaluation and focus, Longfellow and Rhoades held meetings with company executives to discuss what each saw as the important values for the company. After several meetings, five core values—integrity, empowerment, innovation, collaboration, and ownership—came into focus.
“Once we all agreed on the broad vision for the new company culture, we created an ambassadors group with employees from various departments. We spent time educating them on the new values and getting additional feedback,” Longfellow says. “After that, we recorded a video to introduce the new values to the entire company along with a document that explains them while the ambassadors help lead talks about values amongst their departments.”
Epcon vice president of human resources Pam Vallette has taken the lead in the culture reinvention process, which Longfellow says “is still a work in progress.” The company has identified its core values and “where we want to go,” and is now focusing on messaging to help make sure employees are living their values. This includes a focus on leadership training, to ensure managers are trained not only to be great managers for Epcon but also to ensure their teams are unified in their focus on the company’s mission and vision.
“Epcon created values that apply to day-to-day operations, so they should integrate well, and the values document we provided employees gave sample actions of how to achieve each of the five values,” Longfellow says.
Rhoades and Longfellow say while the documentation process is important for Epcon’s culture shift, communication and living the core values are equally important.
“Especially important is non-verbal communication. Culture has to be lived, not just talked about,” Rhoades says. “Culture also has to be embraced at every level of the organization, internalized by each associate, and demonstrated by our actions with each other as well as those outside the corporate family. This is definitely a work-in-progress, and something that can’t be neglected.”
The focus on culture comes at a critical time for Epcon, with the company planning to scale up and grow. As a result, Longfellow says the five core values have been added to the training process for new hires, with a focus on actionable representations of the core values so that employees can hold each other accountable.
“For example, empowerment means we contribute our own strengths and encourage employees to proactively seek information, resources, and solutions,” Longfellow says.
Rhoades says there is no substitute for focus and attention as it relates to culture, but Epcon is working to make culture “automatic” and something that becomes a “natural part of who we are and what we do.”
“Surround yourself with the best people. Invest in their success and that will pay huge dividends to the organization,” Longfellow says of the biggest lessons he’s learned in his career in industry. “[Additionally], don’t get distracted by the shiny object. Too many times organizations try to be something they are not. If you stay focused on what you are great at, you have a much better chance of succeeding.”
Growth Plans
In addition to unifying company culture, Rhoades and Longfellow say enhancing productivity and efficiency are key steps for the two as CEO and COO for Epcon Communities. The builder, focused on the 55-plus home buyer segment, has six corporate markets and 80 independent franchise builders in 28 states and closed 1,264 homes in 2023.
“There is incredible demand for the homes we build and the lifestyle that our communities provide. We are working to increase our capacity to meet that demand,” Rhoades says.
Epcon’s sole focus on the 55-plus buyer segment helps differentiate the company from others in the industry, Rhoades says. With a single buying cohort in mind, the company’s design, product selections, sales processes, and people are all singularly focused on meshing with buyers and meeting their desires.
“We tend to have smaller communities relative to other production builders, so it has a closer, more connected feel. We have nice amenities that our buyers use on a daily basis instead of amenities that people might use once a year or once every five years,” Longfellow says. “We are enhancing [our value-add] with a tremendous amount of time, effort, and money into training for sales, construction, and all parts of the business.”
Rhoades says Epcon is raising more capital to fund acquisition and development activity and hiring more associates in anticipation of future growth.
“With the growth that is planned in each of our markets, we have a big responsibility to evolve and improve our best practices in order to deliver a better result,” Longfellow says. “As everyone knows, with growth comes challenges and our job is to overcome those challenges as they arise. With our singular focus, we have been able to build a great foundation of best practices throughout our organization and we have an organization that can quickly adapt to the changing environment.”
In addition to a focus on Epcon’s long-term growth plans, Rhoades says his career in the industry has taught him to always be mindful of the cyclical nature of the industry and its impact on the business.
“There are so many external factors that can influence us and our success,” Rhoades says. “Without extraordinary management and a strong and sacrificial team, those outside forces can even control us. We have to be ever focused on our people and our product to maximize all that we can.”
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