American Dream Achieved
IBA, as an approximately fifty-year old business brokerage firm serving the entrepreneurial community of the Pacific Northwest, has been uniquely positioned since before the American Bicentennial celebration of 1976 to witness and hear the stories of thousands of people who have lived the American dream through entrepreneurship creating beloved businesses by employees, customers, and communities while finding personal fulfillment and financial prosperity through execution of their ideas, hard work, perseverance, and ability. In an effort to share these stories heard throughout the years by our team of business brokers, who are commonly regarded as the “best listeners” in the M&A industry, IBA has retained highly regarded writer, Nesha Ruther, to tell their stories. It is our goal to share one story a month. It is our hope that you will find the stories as inspirational and motivational as they are to us and the buyers who bought the businesses in IBA facilitated transactions in Washington, Oregon, and Alaska.
The Story of Chris Markham of ICON BIM
By Nesha Ruther
Chris Markham founded his own company in 2019, grew it to a national scale, and successfully sold the business, yet he still talks about his success with a degree of awe and amazement. Despite decades of hard work and perseverance, he tells his story as someone who can’t quite believe their luck. “I got a lot of experience out of pure happenstance,” he says. “Right place at the right time.”
Originally from Auburn, Washington, Chris entered the air force after graduating high school and got his degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. He then worked as a pilot for a decade, running business people between Seattle and LA.
In the wake of September 11th, he decided it was time for a career change. “It was a bad time for pilots,” he says. “My buddy was doing work with one of the big unions in town, doing some plumbing and pipe fitting. It made pretty good money, so he talked me into it.”
At the time, there were six to ten large Seattle-based companies who did major construction projects. These companies would work with the unions to pick up journeymen for each project. This allowed the companies to have the flexibility to select employees based on fluctuating demand, and allowed the journeyman to work as free agents, moving from job to job for multiple companies.
While Chris’ recollection of the story makes it sound like no big feat, becoming a journeyman actually requires a five-year apprenticeship. But Chris took to the new skill quickly and became an instructor at the very apprenticeship he was still undergoing. “Before I even graduated and became a journeyman, I was given the opportunity to come into the office and start doing some design work,” he says.
This design work was the novel process of 3D modeling. “The idea was that we could use a 3D model to basically make a digital twin of the project designs. We could coordinate everything in the 3D model so that it is prefabbed offsite, and on the day of installation everything snaps into place like Legos.” Chris says. Having experience as a journeyman, Chris was particularly equipped to look at a 3D model and understand what information the employees in the field would need to know. “I was a field guy, so I understood the installation process. It’s one thing to look at a 3D model and go ‘That’s a pretty picture and it looks like it’ll work,’ but the guys that install it need to have some input.”
When Chris began this work, it was an incredible novelty, more a case study than a tried and proven construction technique, but his experience as a pilot had led him to be appreciative of and adaptable to new technology. “The flight industry has to be up on technology, so I was positioned well for that. I was also a younger guy in a field of old timers,” Chris says. “Companies would want people that had experience, that really knew the trade, to draw a 3D model and have it be correct, that makes a lot of sense. The problem was, ten years ago, finding a guy that is 55 years old and has all the field experience but even knows how to send an email was rare. It was very difficult for a lot of people who didn’t know how to send an email to go into 3D modeling. That’s where I got an opportunity to come in.”
“Companies began realizing that there was a lot of ROI (Return on Investment) for doing this process via 3D modeling, and the better we got, the more ROI there was,” Chris says. “Contractors realized that having someone like me, who had the field experience and knew how to do the modeling was really valuable for a smooth installation.” This process would come to be known as BIM, Building Information Modeling.
Chris continued working in BIM for a number of years, bouncing around to different companies depending on the demand. He had an acute understanding that he was one of a limited few who understood this emerging technology, and therefore made an effort to keep his knowledge up to date. “I was always trying to stay on the cutting edge, because there’s always new software coming out. I was trying to position myself to take on projects that other people couldn’t because the technology was still so new.”
Chris may attribute his success to happenstance, but he also has a keen and observant eye. Chris understood he was a valuable commodity. And while he could continue working for other companies, he would be the one with the most robust understanding of new technology, limiting what these companies could do to further his knowledge and career. “BIM was becoming fashionable for companies to do, but at the same time, construction in general isn’t the best at technology. So not only did they sometimes have trouble wrapping their minds around what we were doing, but they definitely weren’t training people to come in and help us,” he says.
Moreso, Chris understood that there was a whole host of industries who would need to apply BIM in their construction, that had not yet made the leap. “Almost all large construction projects require BIM now. But what’s going to happen is that even smaller projects are going to need it. Let’s say you rent out a new office building downtown. They’re going to have a 3D model of their building and any of the construction or updates that will be done, if you need new bathrooms or anything like that, they’re going to grab the 3D model that was used when they originally built the building and continue with that process,” Chris says.
“I think we’ll even see building engineers, the people who make sure buildings are running properly, using BIM in the future. Especially with buildings like hospitals and all the different systems they need to have, all the medical gases, different pumps, crazy mechanical rooms. They spend a lot of time maintaining those. But as soon as your hospital is built with that 3D model, then all the maintenance going forward would be streamlined.”
Chris saw a technology that was still in its infancy but had no limitations in terms of what it could accomplish. The problem was that while more and more companies were using BIM in their processes, there was a shortage of experienced journeymen who had both the 3D modeling experience and the field knowledge to apply those techniques. He decided to fill that gap, not as an employee, but as an entrepreneur.
“When I was working for other companies, I felt a little stagnant in terms of my personal progression. I saw the adoption of BIM happening among local contractors, but they were having trouble finding people to do the work,” Chris says. “That is really where ICON, the company I created, had the advantage, we were the best in the market.”
To secure his first clients, Chris relied on his existing connections in the industry. “I had a handful of contractors who I had personally worked for, trusted, and enjoyed the people. I went to them, and I said, ‘Hey, when you get a project, instead of going to unions and asking for whoever they can call up, come to me.’ I sold it as a safety net if the work became too much for their team. Like ‘Go with the guys you really trust, but if the work gets too big for them, call me because otherwise you’re just rolling the dice on what you can get from the union.’ That’s how I got started,” he says.
ICON had their name, their niche, and their reputation, they were off to the races. Now, the only thing they needed were employees trained in 3D Modeling. Unfortunately, this is where the union model of distributing workers to different companies became a challenge. “We got guys from the union for a specific job, we train them in the BIM process and all the integration that needs to happen with that specific contractor, and then when the project is done, they’re dispatched to another company,” Chris explains. “We would find ourselves like, ‘Oh man, we could really use that guy, but the union just dispatched him somewhere else and now we don’t have anybody.’”
When lacking in journeymen, Chris would simply do the work himself. “I did some work for really cheap at first, just to get the ball rolling. But eventually I started getting more clients,” he says. “I got on LinkedIn and next thing you know people started hitting me up.”
In addition to BIM, Chris’ apprenticeship had focused on commercial plumbing and HVAC. “Clients started asking me if I could provide those other services in addition to BIM,” he says. From that point onward ICON’s growth was exponential. “I had to get an office, I had to get helpers, I had to get accountants, we ended up doubling every year.”
Chris had founded his business off being the one person who had both the field experience and the adaptability to learn new technology. Now he had to adapt to a new challenge: running a business. “I didn’t have a business degree so every step of building this company was a learning curve,” he says.
To fill in gaps in his own knowledge, Chris turned to others for mentorship and guidance. “I took advantage of the Small Business Administration, which has a mentorship program. Finding a good bookkeeper was worth its weight in gold. But it was always one thing after another: Business Insurance, IT, computers, cash flow, contracts, all the stuff that would never come across my plate as a regular employee,” he says.
Like all good entrepreneurs, Chris was often the last to get paid, if he got paid at all. “Union employees get paid weekly, and so if I have twelve guys on a job, I might not get paid for three to six months, we were at half a million dollars in payroll a month. The way that we grew was so aggressive that it was a challenge to have the cashflow to cover payments.”
Sometimes, this meant taking significant risks. In the early years of the business, Chris had a partner. But when Chris had to go to the banks for a line of credit, they asked for their homes as collateral. “Every owner had to put their house up and he wasn’t willing to do it.”
Even in describing this moment of uncertainty, Chris is understanding of his former business partner. “It’s a crazy gamble to take when the business could go under tomorrow. I felt comfortable with the product, but I understand why it was too much for him.”
As ICON’s sole owner, Chris placed his trust in the necessity of 3D modeling and continued to scale the company and branch out into new regions. But scaling the company meant finding clients without the relationships and goodwill Chris had spent years building in the Seattle area. “All our employees and clients were here, and we had one office that everyone came to. Our clients were companies I had worked for, people I knew and relationships I had built over years of working in the industry,” he says. “I had a guy working for me who had some salesman skills so I just cut him loose on doing sales. I was like, ‘Hey man, let’s do the sales stuff full-time. Let’s go nationwide.’” This employee not only found new clients for ICON but poured his insights into a sales and marketing program that they still use today.
In addition to securing new clientele, this salesman helped build ICON’s relationships with the unions and other contractors in new areas. This was incredibly important, because the unions control the labor force and are not going to send journeymen to people they don’t know or trust. “We found those large unions and built relationships, that gave us street cred we would not have had otherwise in these new markets.”
With this exponential growth came exponential challenges, including navigating the protocols of multiple differing unions. “Unions have highly particular ways that they deal with their benefits and pay, and it differs depending on location. In the beginning, I was just in Seattle, so I had to learn how to handle the Seattle unions and their paperwork, but every time we branched out there were new requirements. At one point we were signatory with 20 different unions. It was a lot to organize”
In addition to the logistical challenges was the fact that BIM was growing in popularity, and with higher demand came more competition. Chris and his team had to learn how to position their brand to stand out in an increasingly saturated industry. “We’re the most expensive,” Chris says candidly, “but we’re also the most experienced. We looked for clients who were willing to pay more, who understood that if they paid us, the drawings would be done right, we would do the work on time, when stuff leaves the fab shop and goes to the job site it’s all going to work. That’s what we provide.”
And while other companies could offer lower prices, they couldn’t touch ICON when it came to their quality and their success rate. “It’s common for our sales team to initiate contact with somebody and have them say ‘Why would we pay that? We can get it done for half the price, or we can ship it off to India or Vietnam and get it for pennies on the dollar.’ And its like, yeah, you can, but we’re the guys that know how it actually works and what actually goes into it.”
While this assurance of quality may not mean much to those who think saving money is synonymous with success, it meant everything to Chris and to his clients. “The good thing is that it is very rare for us to have a client that we wouldn’t work for again,” Chris says. Once ICON had shown their value, they had secured a client for life.
In some instances, however, cheaper and less conscientious companies created a negative association with BIM in the eyes of the clients. A client would go out on a limb to try a new technology, only to work with a company that, unlike ICON, cared little for quality. “It became an issue where there were companies offering BIM who couldn’t back up what they were selling,” Chris says. “We’d speak to prospective clients who would say, ‘We tried outsourcing our BIM work, we worked with XYZ company and it turned out horribly.’ We then had to convince them that we were different.”
Within five years of founding ICON, Chris ran a staff of 50 people and was scaling the company to a national level. This required not only new skills in salesmanship, but leadership as well. Like all things, Chris treats his managerial success with total humility. “I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time and have the background that I did. A managerial background was part of that, especially in the military. I had been a leader for a long time and had made a lot of mistakes, but I learned from those mistakes,” he says. “When it came to putting on the management hat, I think it was one thing I had a big advantage in. I understood morale and culture.”
Company culture can either be the silver bullet or the thing that breaks a business, and the fact that it is so abstract doesn’t help many entrepreneurs when it comes to creating a successful environment for their employees. “We had an amazing culture and I was very willing to take a few less dollars if it made my guys happier to work for me.”
Culture and employee morale can be particularly problematic in the construction industry, something Chris was very familiar with. “In construction there’s a lot of people who haven’t had formal education, so they handle business in a different way. When some of those people begin working their way up the ladder, it can be really rough.”
Hierarchy can be dicey under the best of circumstances, and the relationships between client and contractor are easily exacerbated. “I tried to find those pain points that happen to my guys and eliminate them. If we had a customer with a project manager who was difficult to work with, I would insert myself and try to take that off the employee,” Chris says.
Especially as the company grew and Chris had less established relationships with more of his staff, he made an increased effort to bridge the gap and show the people he worked with that he cared about them. “It used to be that everyone I worked with I would have a beer with on occasion but once we got up to 50 guys, half of them I had never met before,” he says. “I would always try to ask my leadership team about their guys and what’s happening. If somebody’s dad dies or something, I’m going to reach out to them personally.”
Chris understood what it was like to work in construction, and knew that small gestures could go a long way. “We might not throw the best parties,” he laughs. “but we did a lot of cool stuff, we would have poker games at the office every now and then. We’d have steak dinners. Every so often I would randomly shut down the office and take the guys out to lunch. I think that meant a lot to them.” Chris had seen firsthand the divide between management and operations. “It’s tough for us field guys because you bring us in, you want our expertise, we’re working in the office, but we’re still treated like operations guys,” he says.
Chris recalls one formative instance when he first began working in BIM: “There were two buildings, the management and the fab shop, we were over in the fab shop. They would have deliveries of food in the mornings: donuts and muffins, and the management staff would pick out all the stuff they wanted, and in the afternoons, they would bring us the leftovers when everything was stale. You’re paying these guys $150,000 a year to do design work for you and they’re not even worth a donut in the morning. I remember thinking ‘If I have a business, my guys aren’t going to feel like that.’”
Having been on the stale-donut side of it himself, it was important to Chris that everyone at ICON felt they were treated equally. “There’s no difference between my management people and my operations guys. The lowest person that works for me is still going to be treated the same as my top guy. I want everyone to feel like they are important. I want everyone who walks into my office to know that they have my attention and I care what they have to say.”
As ICON reached a national level, Chris began receiving interest from prospective brokers, urging him to sell his business. “I started getting emails from people asking if I’d be interested in selling the company, but these weren’t prospective buyers, they were practically real estate agents who would say ‘Hey do you want to sell your house?’” These emails went directly into the trash without a second thought.
It was because of this that Chris was so surprised when he received a genuine inquiry from Axel Krüger, the CEO of ENG, a BIM construction firm. “I got a message on LinkedIn that was just like ‘Hey, would you consider selling your company?’ It was really straightforward like that, and I almost brushed it off. But I clicked on his page and saw he was the CEO of a company ten times bigger than mine. I thought, ‘Let’s talk to this guy and see if he’s for real.’”
Axel was for real, and Chris began to seriously consider the option of selling ICON. “I started thinking, ‘How am I going to do this? I just barely know how to run a business, how am I going to figure out how to sell one,’” he says with a laugh.
Chris wisely chose that the best option was to not sell one himself but hire professional help. He found IBA and Gregory Kovsky and was immediately impressed by how much they reminded him of his own company: hard working individuals committed to quality.
“I can’t even imagine what it would have been like to sell my business without IBA. I could give my best recommendation and it would still fall short,” he says. “It was really that amazing. Gregory helped me through the process and gave me all the information I needed to do a great job with the sale.”
ICON and ENG completed a successful merger in July of 2024, but that didn’t mean IBA and Gregory were done helping Chris. Gregory not only helped Chris sell his business but guided him through a new and unfamiliar state: the sudden influx of wealth. “When you’re someone in my situation who doesn’t have a ton in the bank or a wealth management team, it is scary to suddenly come into a lot of money,” he says transparently. “Gregory helped me put together a team so that when the sale’s done, I knew my money was going to be taken care of and would be in the right hands.”
Chris had originally planned to sell the business and walk away, but as he got to know Axel and the team at ENG, a new opportunity emerged. “I realized I really liked them a lot and I saw myself in the role they wanted me to perform,” he says. Chris still is the CEO of ICON, but now as a separate division within ENG. “The company still runs the same, I just have more resources behind me.”
While some entrepreneurs crave retirement, Chris couldn’t be happier to be entering this new stage of his career. “I would be bored at home if I didn’t have something to do,” he laughs. “I’m actually really excited that this is how it turned out. I look at it as a challenge.”
Chris has, by all possible metrics, achieved the American dream, and yet it still doesn’t feel entirely real. “I deal with imposter syndrome quite a bit,” he says. “How do you go from doing an apprenticeship and putting pipes in to selling a business? There has to be a lot of pieces involved here and I can’t take all the credit. People I’ve hired, situations I’ve been in, things that I learned. I feel I was uniquely set up in the position that I got. I don’t know if its luck or hard work or a combination of all of it.”
And while it is certainly a combination of luck and hard work that has contributed to Chris’ success, it is also the unique opportunity embedded into the country where he lives and works. “America is uniquely set up to allow you to build yourself up,” he says. “There is less of a ceiling here than anywhere else in my opinion. It still takes a lot of luck and circumstance, but it’s there for the taking.”
Nesha Ruther
Nesha Ruther is a writer and editor from Takoma Park, Maryland. She received her BA in English Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin Madison, where she received a full tuition scholarship through the First Wave program based on academic and creative merits. She was a 2016 Young Arts winner in spoken word, a 2016 winner of the DC Commission of the Arts Larry Neal Writing Award, a 2017 winner of the Mochila Review Writing Award, which was judged by Nikki Giovanni, a 2020 winner of the University of Wisconsin’s Eudora Welty Fiction Thesis Award, and a 2022 Tin House Winter Workshop Participant. She has been commissioned to write and perform for the National Education Association, and has had work published in NarrativeNortheast, Angles Literary Magazine, Beltway Quarterly and more. She currently lives in Cincinnati Ohio, is a Lead Writer at Bond & Grace, and a co-host for the podcast Lit Talk (https://www.bondandgrace.com/the-lit-talk-podcast).