Samet CEO Arthur Samet joined High Point University President Nido Qubein in the Power List interview, a partnership for discussion with some of the state’s most influential leaders. Business North Carolina’s annual Power List publication spotlights the state’s powerbrokers.
Arthur Samet is a second-generation family business owner who has helped create the largest general contractor based in North Carolina, with revenue of just under $1.5 billion last year. He earned a bachelor’s degree in communications at the University of Georgia, then an MBA at UNC Chapel Hill. The High Point-based company has about 500 employees involved in construction, real estate development, weatherproofing, roofing and siding. The contracting business extends from Richmond, Virginia, to Jacksonville, Florida. He’s active in many civic affairs, including board memberships at Cone Health and Triad Business Bank.
How was the Samet Corporation started and when?
It was April 1, 1961. My dad Norman Samet was a civil engineer in the facilities department at Burlington Industries, one of the largest companies in the world. He graduated from NC State with a civil engineering degree.
My grandfather was helping my uncle Harry Salmet and Larry Robinson move their furniture factory into a new building. He told my dad, if you want to start your company, I’ll hire you to build this first building. So my dad started Samet Construction Company and built that building for him. (The Globe Manufacturing structure was 16,000 square feet.) So my dad just continued to build the business around the furniture and textile industry around High Point and Greensboro.
When did you become CEO?
My father asked me to take that role in October of 2000. He was a fantastic leader. He stepped aside and let us scale the business. He asked some tough questions and we’d have to answer them, but he let us maintain the relevance of the company in today’s environment. He really gave us the opportunity.
How difficult is it to follow your dad in a business? You’ve grown the business tremendously since you’ve taken over and have done an exceptional job in interacting with leaders across North Carolina. Relational capital is the name of the game in many ways. But it must have been a tough thing at the very beginning.
There are a few factors that play into that. One, Norman always gave us opportunity and put us in a position to build our own reputation, our own credibility. He said, “I want to give you authority and responsibility. I don’t want to give you just one or the other because you can’t be successful.” So there were plenty of times when I was young and somebody would ask him to participate on a board or a committee, and he’d say, “why don’t you think about Arthur doing that?” He was great at putting people in positions to succeed.
The other piece is we always knew how hard dad worked. I consider I was born on third base, but I knew I didn’t hit the triple. I had to wake up every morning and make sure that I was earning my own keep. And so I really worked. I didn’t take an entitlement or anything for granted, and I wanted to not try and follow directly in Norman’s footsteps, but complement what he was doing. So I would join other networks or get continuing ed that would allow me to broaden the network, and bring something back to the organization rather than harvest what he had done.
How does a guy who majored in communications become such a smart guy running a large construction and development company?
Norman gave me the opportunity to really learn the business and work in different aspects of the business, but not keep me there so long that it held you back. Hiring the best team and the best people is what’s allowed us to build the business. I like to think of not breaking things just to break, but in a disruptive mentality. I don’t want to be the best contractor. I want to be the best company. I think my business experience and training allow me to bring a different perspective than an engineering, very in-the-box type of perspective.
So is Samet a construction company or a development company?
We’re both, the primary business is general construction. We’ve got six regional offices that span from Savannah, Charleston, Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh, Wilmington, and we’ve grown the business in concentric circles. Then we fill in those with some real estate development activities, again, focused on the customer. We want to control land sites that give the customer that ability to put their business where they need to put it.
You’re involved in the Chatham-Siler City Advanced Manufacturing megasite where Wolfspeed is making a $5 billion investment? Tell us about that.
It fell into our land strategy. Whether we’ve purchased the dirt ourselves or partnered with the landowners. In this case, the landowner who assembled that megasite saw the value that we could add to being on the team. So we’re partners in that site, and we help market and promote and really serve the customer when they show up to help get the deal done. We still have plenty of land available there, like 1,500 acres left for development. [Triangle Innovation Point megasite with] Vinfast is another example of a partnership with Kirk Bradley. They asked us to participate as well to help with that.
I’ve seen some of your major projects, such as a big one in Charlotte with apartments, retail. What makes for a good project?
We’ve got three high-rises going right now, two in Charlotte and one in Durham. I attend the meetings for those projects, but I’m not the guy bringing the deal in and closing the deal and building the deal. Seeing the young and older talent succeed makes me feel like the company is operating at the level it should operate at. We also have customers like Amazon or Chick-fil-A that have us building out their supply chain networks. They’re repeat customers, and they know that we will deliver and get them what they need in the timeframe that they need.
So tell me about a time you got really beat up. What happened?
Probably the most challenging projects occurred through COVID and the ramp up in inflation. We have long-term projects. We make commitments on the front end that we have to deliver on. Whether it was the inflation in materials or the lack of availability of materials or subcontractors who couldn’t afford their labor that they had committed to, we just had to compensate and deliver. At the end of the day, we had no choice but to satisfy the customer in the contract terms. There were a few projects that just the numbers were painful. At the end of the day, you learn from it, and you move forward. You don’t try and cut corners. You take your medicine and move forward.
Arthur, what’s on the horizon for your company?
We’re going to continue to build out our land positions across those different markets that we described. We’ll continue to expand our geographic footprint through those concentric circles. So I think you’ll see us with an office in the northern portion of Florida and in the mid-region of Virginia. We can travel with customers and be able to deliver. And then our weatherproofing and roofing company will continue to build out throughout the southeast and Mid-Atlantic region.
A lot of companies are out there trying to get construction deals. How do you beat the competition?
I really think it’s the experience that we give our customers. We lose projects sometimes because it may not be a fit for us or the customer. They’re great companies that we compete with. We can’t win ‘em all. But being able to diversify our business and serve multiple lines of business and maintaining a conservative balance sheet and really taking care of our people who ultimately take care of our customers, that’s the key to the success.
As long as I’ve known you, you smile a lot, you seem calm. You have a very gentle, responsive way with people. What keeps you in shape mentally and emotionally?
I would tell you that between my ears, it’s not as calm as on the exterior. I try to break away a little bit. I exercise, I run, I love to kiteboard, to be out on the boat and spend time with the family. The other thing is having a fantastic leadership team that allows me to step back from the business and observe and correct or advise.
How did you attract and retain an extraordinary leadership team?
It really comes back to how Norman treated us. When I bring somebody in, we don’t micromanage. We don’t tell them what we want. We bring them in because we want them to bring a fresh perspective or their talents into the organization. Whether it’s the head of organizational development and HR or marketing or operations, I want them to have a chief operating outlook. So everybody’s thinking about the same end-game, but bringing their core competencies and their respective disciplines to the table.
Our chief marketing person came from big companies. She said to me after about two weeks, “I don’t know why you hired me. I don’t have any construction experience.” Then a month and a half later, she came back and said, I looked at all your competitors’ websites, and now I know why you hired me. They look exactly the same as ours.” So that’s the kind of disruption or free thinking that I want to create in the business, and that gives me confidence.
Are your children going to follow your footsteps?
I have a 21-year-old, a 19-year-old, and a 15-year-old, and they’ve all started to express a little bit of interest in the business, but they have a long road ahead. One of my main goals is succession planning. I’m not as young as you think I am, and I’ve got to build out a professional management team to lead this organization at a minimum to fill the gap if the family has the desire, the capabilities and the opportunity to be in a leadership role.
Do you believe that the company will stay a family business?
I don’t know. Honestly, I’ve got to focus on what’s best for the organization. I am in a peer group with some gentlemen who are older than I am. One of the most poignant points somebody made when we were talking about whether a business maintained family control was to think about what’s best for the associates, what’s best for the business? I’ve made a commitment to 500 people. If we don’t have the balance sheet or the leadership in the family, I can’t just ride it to the bottom out of ego or selfishness. At this time, I see a path that it will maintain family ownership. But as you know, things change dramatically. ■