Before discussing the mechanics of how RiverWild became a brand for a family of companies, Reid Smith says it’s important to know the motivation behind starting the business.
“RiverWild was founded on a guiding principle to impact people and develop people. That’s our first priority,” says Smith, who started working with his wife, Jaclyn, in 2014. “My wife and I thought, ‘If you’ve got to work somewhere, why not pick a place where you will enjoy it and have pride in what you do.’”
A people-focused business approach gives employees freedom from micromanagement and the ability to create a work-life balance. That’s what he wanted, too, he says. Examples can be found in unlimited personal time off for managers and a 24-hour gym for RiverWild construction employees at the Clayton headquarters. Good employees get the job done without baby-sitting, he says. For clients, it involves being transparent, valuing long-term relationships and giving them access to decision-makers if problems arise.
He believes that’s the secret behind the success of a company that began in residential real estate a decade ago, but has evolved to include commercial construction, development, a faith-based foundation and the more recent enterprise of selling Wagyu beef. The latter is headquartered on a 1,200-acre Sampson County ranch that the Smiths purchased in 2021 for $7.19 million.
“We wanted to have a company that did it differently,” says Reid Smith.
Differences include establishing their One Compassion foundation, which provides a range of services from regional disaster relief, to providing toys at Christmas for Johnston County children and buying local farm products to donate to food banks. It logged more than 1,000 volunteer hours last year, served more than 2,300 meals and served 291 families.
“We knew when we started, that wherever the business went, it would take the community to help get us there, so we wanted to give back hand-in-hand,” he says.
RiverWild Construction President Nick McKeel says he could tell the company was different when he joined them in January 2021 as a project manager. It was then known as Providence Construction. 
By January 2022, McKeel was in his current role and the company had rebranded to RiverWild. “Our company’s ability to be proud of our faith and address that publicly is pretty cool,” says McKeel, a Wilson County native and 2007 East Carolina University grad with a degree in construction management. McKeel’s wife, Jenna, is a director at One Compassion.
Reid Smith is a Johnston County native. He and his wife, who’s from a Philadelphia suburb, met while both were on the golf teams at Campbell University. Both graduated in 2008. He earned a business degree, while she studied elementary education. By 2014, Jaclyn Smith had her real estate license and Reid Smith was a homebuilder. That was also the start of their business relationship. “She would list them and I would build the homes,” he says.
Within three years, the company expanded from a residential neighborhood developer to a construction company doing site work on larger industrial projects including schools, apartment complexes and grocery stores.
RiverWild provides grading work as well as water, sewer, stormwater and asphalt in preparing sites for construction. RiverWild tries to work within an hour’s drive of Clayton in Johnston County. That puts them in areas of high growth such as Raleigh and Durham, but also smaller communities like Apex, Garner and Selma.
“We’re just blessed to be in a good location economically. A lot of things happen here,” says McKeel. “The most rewarding thing to me is rather than just throwing out bids, we are able to have a lot of repeat business with key customers and owners.”
In construction, various companies fill different roles to move a project toward delivery. For RiverWild, that means weekly meetings and communication about the challenges of a project and a continuous snapshot of the status of the work, Smith says.
“We try to make sure that the client has all the information they need and that we’re communicating with them the best that we can,” Smith says. “We want to provide value engineering, save money, and be a partner with them, rather than it just be a business transaction.”
Anthony Gallo, a senior project manager for Raleigh-based Salisbury & Moore Construction, was at a different company when he worked with RiverWild in 2020 on construction of an elementary school in Johnston County. He has since worked with them on a water treatment plant in his current role.
RiverWild has the right people on the job site at the right time, while other companies often try to employ the same people on a variety of tasks at varying levels of quality. RiverWild workers do what they’ve promised, says Gallo. “What they’re doing is a testament to their hard work,” he says.
Smith says the company likes to tell clients “we bid it the way we’re going to build it.” If problems arise, a client can talk to a decision-maker to make it right. “We prioritize the longer-term relationship and the longer-term value with our clients rather than any short-term victory,” says Smith.
Everything starts with caring for the employee and the client, he adds. “The projects and business stuff takes care of itself when you start with caring for the people. Our clients feel that we care about them, their kids, their life journey. We just happen to do site work for them.”
In the first quarter of this year, RiverWild budgeted $6.7 million of revenue, but the company reached nearly $9.4 million, which was 159% more than the same period a year earlier.
Will to win
RiverWild also includes RiverWild Development, RiverWild Construction, RiverWild Homes, RiverWild Real Estate, Wilders, Wilders Wagyu and One Compassion. The “Wild” part of the name is an acronym for “Will to win; Intentional adaptability; Live compassionately; and Disciplined execution.”
The “Wild Way” can be seen at their ranch, where they provide birthing plans and toys and bubbles to keep calves entertained. “Happy, healthy cows make for a better experience for everyone. Food production is inevitable, but how our animals get to that end matters,” according to their website. They ship their Wagyu beef and Berkshire pork products online, while also selling at a general store near the ranch in Turkey, at farmers markets and in partnerships with several restaurants.
RiverWild enters 2025 with a good backlog of business although Smith says things have slowed overall compared with two or three years ago. “The inflation battle that the world is fighting right now is real. We’re not looking to grow just for the sake of growing,” he says. “Anything we do, we need to be intentional and impact our people in a positive way.”
He puts a premium on company culture. “It’s like a marriage,” he says. “You’ve got to earn it every day. We come to work every day to earn our people, to attract talent, to retain talent.”
And success? It’s more than just a number, Smith says.
“The people we’ve met, the people we get to do life with
every day, we have succeeded in that regard.” ■