Can We Save America’s Construction Industry? With George Carrillo – RFP 57 Transcript
George Carrillo (00:00): Construction touches every single sector of the economy. And it’s not just a driver of the economy. It’s a driver of individuals’ well-being. So when we really think about it, small business, construction, development, and the supply chain are all part of what society needs to find real success and happiness.
Gordon Lamphere (00:26): Hi, I’m Gordon Lamphere, and welcome to The Real Finds Podcast, the podcast where we have real conversations with key entrepreneurs, activists, and researchers shaping the real estate industry and, as a result, our world. On today’s podcast, we’ll be speaking with George Carrillo. George is a Marine and police veteran with a career in public health policy, and he’s the founder of the Hispanic Construction Council. On the podcast, we talk about growing labor shortages in the construction industry and whether there are public policy and entrepreneurial solutions. Further into the podcast, we discuss bonding capacity, immigration reform, and the growing trend toward resilient supply chains. If you’re interested in real estate and construction, today’s episode is well worth a listen. George, thank you so much for hopping on the podcast today.
George Carrillo (01:22): Thanks for having me, Gordon.
From Public Health to Construction
Gordon Lamphere (01:24): Can you tell me a little about yourself and what got you into construction and the world of building things?
George Carrillo (01:33): Sure. It started several years ago, when I was in state service as an executive managing social determinants of health. During the pandemic, we saw that we needed a lot of money for infrastructure and development in residential housing, hospitals, and urgent care facilities. I had a very large budget and a very large team to manage that for the State of Oregon, and that’s where my construction mindset, and thinking about how to be very creative with federal and state dollars, came into play.
After the pandemic, I decided to change careers, because people from across the nation said, “We really like your health perspective as it relates to construction, and what it means to be a healthy community. Would you consider teaming up to open a nonprofit?” So for the first time in my twenty-five-year career, I left government for the nonprofit world and tried this new adventure, and it’s been a wonderful experience. I use my lived experience and my knowledge from working in government, and as a police officer before that, to figure out how to help society thrive, using construction and recognizing that we need a really strong, stable workforce to keep the American dream alive here in the United States.
What Makes a Community Healthy
Gordon Lamphere (03:04): What does it mean to have a healthy community? People use a lot of different metrics. What metrics and gauges do you use to determine what a healthy community is and what we should be striving for?
George Carrillo (03:19): I look at it through the key pillars of the social determinants of health: economic security, food security, neighborhood and housing, safety within our community, and access to health care. I’d look at those five major pillars and work on individual plans with different departments to create a holistic approach. What also makes a society healthy is understanding how politics and government come into play and provide safety nets through social services in our communities. I’m a strong believer that we have to understand the role of government and how it participates in helping our communities. When you really think about it, it’s the most vulnerable people in our communities that we’re trying to help.
I’ve heard the rhetoric over the years about cash benefits and food stamps. I’ll tell you that in my career, both as a police officer and as an executive in state service, you don’t see as much fraud, or as many people building wealth on cash benefits or food stamps, as that rhetoric suggests. The untold stories and unseen faces are the children who rely on one meal a day, usually provided by their school; the mothers who are survivors of domestic violence; the seniors becoming homeless because they can’t afford the last stage of their lives; and the children born into a health system without appropriate health care or regular checkups. That’s what society is striving for: to give people not just equal opportunity, but equitable opportunity to achieve a good, sustainable life, because life is very short.
Why Construction Matters to Every Sector
Gordon Lamphere (05:26): How does all of this play into industrial construction and the American supply chain? We have a lot of listeners who are entrepreneurs, developers, contractors, or industrial occupiers. How does this factor into their daily lives and their bottom line?
George Carrillo (05:52): The thing is, we need small business. To be a healthy society, there’s one key pillar without which everything crumbles. We need shelter, infrastructure alongside it, and food. When we think about food and shelter, those are two things everybody needs. And as consumers, everything we see, from tables and cameras to roads, bridges, and the housing we live in, is made by someone. Construction touches every single sector of the economy, and everything we create needs the support of that supply chain. So the construction industry is a huge driver of the economy.
And it’s not just a driver of the economy. It’s a driver of individuals’ well-being. Construction provides basic needs: running water, clean drinking water, a place to use the restroom, a place to go home at the end of the day, relax, and be with our families. These are essential things so many people strive for. When they think of the American dream, they think of that home with the white picket fence, the community they come home to, walking their dogs and their kids in a safe neighborhood. So when we really think about it, small business, construction, development, and the supply chain are all part of what society needs to find real success and happiness.
The Construction Labor Shortage
Gordon Lamphere (07:37): Happiness is great, and I’m not somebody who wants the world to be unhappy. But most of our listeners tune in because they value economic productivity. How do happiness and a healthy labor pool factor into a successful economy and into addressing shortages in areas like construction? Depending on the metric, we’re talking about a worker shortage of somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 in the construction industry right now. What are you seeing, and how do employee happiness and health factor into the shortages in the construction labor supply chain?
George Carrillo (08:40): That’s a great question. In the construction industry, the workforce shortage numbers just keep climbing, and the situation isn’t getting better. We also have an aging workforce in construction. Roofers, for example, are one of the older groups in the industry, with an average age of about 48. They’re also more likely to get hurt, because they’re working at height. So we really need to start investing in young people exploring construction careers.
There’s also a real fact here: the Hispanic community accounts for more than 50 percent of the unskilled labor, especially. Go to any construction job site in the country, and you’ll see Hispanic workers predominantly doing that hard labor. Right now, with mass deportations happening and no clear direction from the administration on the end goal, I think every American can agree with the president that we want safe communities. We don’t want criminals, whether you call them undocumented criminals or illegal aliens, in our communities, and we support the president in deporting those individuals.
But we also need a plan. Both parties have kicked this can down the road for years, and now we’re between a rock and a hard place. We have to get these construction projects done, yet we have a labor deficit. By our agency’s calculations, there are between 700,000 and 900,000 undocumented immigrants in the construction industry. Right now, the H-2B visa program provides about 62,000 work visas, 40,000 of which are already accounted for by renewals. So there’s only room for about 20,000 new visas. Something is wrong there. The system is completely broken. If we ask everybody to leave, how do we get them back? We’re at a disadvantage right now. We’re about 20 percent behind on construction projects, and by our calculations there are over half a million
George Carrillo (11:06): open construction jobs right now. What happens if there’s a construction boom? Where will we get that workforce? If the president got his wish and deported everybody tomorrow, who would do these jobs? How would we keep up?
When we think about the happiness and safety of both workers and businesses, what we know right now is that everybody’s tired. They’re working long hours with a lot of overtime, and these are demanding jobs. Putting in an extra two to four hours on a construction job is very taxing. They’re working weekends with no time off. When people get injured, not many file workers’ comp claims, and when they do, it hurts the business owner too, because premiums go up. So everybody’s working as hard and as fast as they possibly can, yet we don’t have a real solution to create stability in the workforce. That’s what we’re advocating for with Congress: we can do both. We can secure our borders and our communities, but we also need a real solution to make sure this economy keeps scaling at the pace we need.
Solutions: Trades Education and Immigration Reform
Gordon Lamphere (12:28): What do you think some of the solutions are to the labor pains we’re going through right now? We have listeners across the political spectrum, conservative and liberal, and we get a lot of different voices on this podcast, so I don’t mind ticking off my audience. Tell me whatever you want. I’m sure people will tell me in the comments that it’s wrong, or agree with you. I’m just curious what you think the solution is.
George Carrillo (13:00): I think the solution isn’t just one lever we can push. We really have to recognize that Americans don’t want to do the work immigrants do. So how do we train our youth and get them more involved? Our education system has abandoned a lot of shop classes in early education. We don’t really promote the trades. We went on a sprint toward the idea that to be successful, you need a college degree. Now, with our aging workforce, we’re rethinking that strategy and saying we actually need more people in the trades.
But we have to understand what young people are looking for. What do they view as success? Do these jobs pay livable wages? Do they believe the hard labor actually produces a higher wage than the path they’re currently on? We really need to look at our education system and at how we’re investing federal and state tax dollars to educate the next generation.
As for the stability of our current workforce, we really do need to look at immigration. I don’t believe we need to give everybody amnesty. I think there’s an illusion that everybody wants to be an American citizen, and that’s just not true. We just don’t give people options to work right now. Let them go back home during the off-season, or come here on a work visa to complete a project and then be done. There are people who say, “Yes, I want to be here, but I don’t necessarily want to be a citizen. Give me a work visa, and give me an opportunity to be here legally, pay my taxes, and own property. And if, ten or twenty years down the road, I want to become a US citizen, allow me that opportunity.” I don’t think most undocumented people are asking to be citizens. They’re asking for a pathway to legal status. That’s what I’m pushing for and working with Congress on.
The Dignity Act
George Carrillo (15:25): I’ve had conversations with Congresswoman Salazar and Congresswoman Escobar, a Republican and a Democrat, who came together back in 2023 to create the Dignity Act. We’re asking them to put it back on the floor, get it to the Speaker, and have a vote on it. It’s a very comprehensive approach to fixing immigration. Not everybody qualifies. It’s not a blanket opportunity for everybody to stay. There are parameters, rules, and regulations in the policy that give essential workers who have been here for at least five years an opportunity. If you haven’t been here five years, there isn’t a pathway for you, and if you’ve previously been deported, you don’t have a pathway either. It’s really for the people who have been here at least five years.
It also includes funding for border security, and it provides a larger pool of workforce visas, not just for construction but for agriculture and other industries. It’s very comprehensive reform without amnesty. It simply creates a legal pathway for hardworking, taxpaying people who want to stay here and keep contributing to our economy and the growth of our industries.
I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can secure our borders and make our communities safe, and we can also pass comprehensive policy through Congress, get it signed by the president, and finally provide a level of stability. In today’s environment, especially with tariffs, there’s this whiplash effect. With immigration, you’re legal today and illegal tomorrow. Nobody likes that instability. The markets don’t like it, and business owners don’t like it. I think financial prosperity comes from stability in our policies, our trade agreements, our immigration policy, and our markets.
Tariffs and the Scarcity Mindset
Gordon Lamphere (17:40): I’d love to dig into that. For our investors and developers, one of the biggest things they’re trying to do is put together a three- to five-year forecast of policy and economic conditions, because getting something off the ground, like an industrial building, even a spec building without complex manufacturing, still takes about eighteen months to put together. One thing we’re getting nonstop calls from clients about is tariffs and the trade wars. That’s moving rapidly, and I won’t get into the intricacies of trade with Vietnam, Cambodia, or the EU, because it’s all changing. But how are you generally seeing the trade war and tariffs play out in the construction space you’re digging into every day?
George Carrillo (18:43): It’s hard to say, because things are moving so quickly with this administration. You watch the news and see the press push the president, and he stands very firm on his decisions, and then hours later it changes to something totally different. What I don’t appreciate about the administration is sometimes the smoke-and-mirrors effect: if you say something enough, it becomes true, when really it’s not. So with tariffs, it’s wait and see, and I think markets, businesses, and consumers are going to react to whatever is happening that day.
I think that hurts our supply chain, because the rhetoric pushes people into survival mode: “I can’t afford my cost of living today. I need to run out and buy more toilet paper, or buy this before prices go up.” We’ve already started to see people hoarding material. In some of my comments to the press, I’ve said it’s fine to buy bulk goods within reason, but understand that there are still four years before a new administration, and potentially four years of back-and-forth with trading partners. Hopefully it doesn’t last that long, but you can’t stockpile enough goods for four years. First, who has that kind of money? And second, we don’t know how the market will respond or what prices will look like. We can’t rob each other of the opportunity to buy goods, or we’ll find ourselves back in a COVID-era situation of low inventory and rising prices driven by inflation and availability. And we’re not in a health crisis this time. We’re in a crisis caused by trade policy and back-and-forth instability in the market.
Gordon Lamphere (20:59): A lot of our contractors and industrial clients have been hoarding, or at least storing in bulk, a variety of essential goods, and some international clients are nearshoring to Mexico or Canada, where the perceived risk of instability or tariff threats is at least minimized. Are you seeing that across the board in the construction industry, or is it regional?
George Carrillo (21:37): What I’m seeing is that some people, not all, are scared right now because their profit margins are thin. When Trump imposed tariffs on about 150 countries, it hit so many sectors of the supply chain that subcontractors and general contractors, especially GCs operating on smaller margins, felt it. When the total cost of goods goes up 4 to 6 percent, there goes all their profitability. So there are people who are scared of what’s happening.
On the subcontractor side, I’ve seen fear especially around HVAC units. Summer is coming, summers have been getting really hot, and demand for HVAC service is high. So there’s a scarcity mindset: “I need to go buy these parts now, before prices go up.” And with new development, look at data centers. A lot of people are investing in data centers, and we have an energy deficiency in this country to support them. But the critical tool that makes a data center work is cooling. Data centers need a lot of HVAC capacity, because they have to be really cold, and those commercial and industrial units are very expensive to replace and repair. So in that industry right now, I believe partly because of the timing of the season, there’s a scarcity mindset around those critical components.
Gordon Lamphere (23:08): Yeah.
Why Young People Aren’t Choosing Construction
Gordon Lamphere (23:28): Another critical component of the construction industry, which you mentioned earlier, is this: for anybody who doesn’t spend a lot of time on construction sites, and I do, you quickly notice there are very few people under the age of thirty. In our area, there’s a large Polish and Ukrainian population on construction sites, a large Hispanic population, and so on, but regardless, very few workers are under 30. I think that’s a huge cliff for the construction industry, and it’s definitely a worry. What are you seeing, and how can we get more young people interested in construction? If we don’t, I think it could be very detrimental to the general health of the American economy.
George Carrillo (24:40): When you look at our youth workforce, working at McDonald’s pays somewhere between $20 and $25 an hour. Young people look at that and say, “I can make this much at McDonald’s right now. Or if I work at Starbucks, I can make that much and get benefits, including college benefits, while I’m making lattes.” Compare that to our construction industry: an hourly rate, no health benefits, no college benefits.
Gordon Lamphere (25:13): Okay.
George Carrillo (25:38): What we’ve struggled with as an industry is educating young people about career trajectory. Look at a lot of other businesses, like car rental companies, where every employee is an associate on a career path to become a manager or even own a franchise. They see that trajectory. It’s the same at McDonald’s: “I’m starting at $20 or $25 an hour flipping fries, but I want to move to the drive-thru at $27 an hour, and eventually become a franchise owner.” Or, “This is good enough for now, because the college benefits Starbucks gives me are where I want to go.” It’s an investment. They’re investing in me, and I’m investing in them. The construction industry really needs to look at that. Wages are really good. It’s not that construction jobs don’t pay well. But they’re taxing.
And our youth are built different. That’s a big thing on TikTok: “I’m just built different.” And they are. They’re a very different generation from mine. My parents told me to keep my head down, work hard, and push through. They worked in factories their entire lives, and that’s not the career path I wanted. They pushed me toward a college education. My generation was all about going to college and not working in manufacturing. As parents, we want our kids to have a better life than we did. But in the education system and in the construction industry, we have to take some responsibility as business owners. What career paths, education, and benefits have we provided? Why would young people choose a really hard life over working at Starbucks? We have to take some ownership there.
In our education system, as I said, we really need to look at K through 8, high school, and even college, and at how we teach the essential skills my generation didn’t get. I never had shop class, not in elementary school and not in high school. I went to
George Carrillo (28:01): public school from K through 8 and a private high school. I was actually born and raised in Chicago and went to St. Patrick High School. I’m 46 years old, and I never once had shop. Put me on a construction site, and I’ll ask, “What the heck am I doing?” I understand it at a higher level, from the developer’s and general contractor’s perspective, but that’s the direction my generation was pushed.
If we’re going to shift that, we need to rethink what we’re teaching our kids. When they’re small, they naturally love construction. I remember putting my kids in front of the TV, and all they’d want to watch was construction videos on YouTube, or manufacturing lines spray-painting and building cars. They’re naturally drawn to it. We just fail to make the connection that there’s a real career and real opportunity there. With technological advancements, we also need to teach young people that construction isn’t done the way it was twenty years ago. The trajectory we’re on means there will be even more need for an engineering mindset, even in the heavy labor we do now.
And guess what? It’s pretty cool to drive a massive forklift or any kind of heavy machinery. My kids would stand in line to use it, and as an adult, I probably would too if you gave me the chance. But we’ve failed to keep that excitement alive for our youth, and to show them there’s a really good, rewarding life where you can look back and say, “I built that skyscraper. I built that dam. I built the road we’re driving on.” We haven’t been able to show that sense of pride, or that there’s a real future in construction.
Inspiring the Next Generation of GCs
Gordon Lamphere (30:15): That’s very true. With my children, one of our favorite things to do is drive or walk to local construction sites, including sites we’re working on as developers, investors, or brokers. My little ones love nothing more than seeing an excavator or a bulldozer, or even, silly enough, people putting up drywall.
Beyond getting the next generation into it, we also like to talk about inspiring the current generation to move up in the industry. My great-grandfather started in development in Chicagoland at a time when the Germans and the Dutch were the immigrant groups coming in and doing development and construction. Then it became the Italians and the Irish, and so on. Every immigrant group comes in, often starts at the bottom, moves up, and becomes the general contractors. How do we inspire the current wave of Hispanic immigrants to become the GCs who drive the next wave of skilled construction?
George Carrillo (31:55): I think the inspiration has to go beyond the Hispanic community. The Hispanic community is the fastest-growing minority group in the country, and of course we’re very large in construction, but we need help from all communities to fill this massive gap. We need to understand how young people communicate and what inspires them right now. I think social media is a good thing here: TikTok videos, YouTube Shorts, and so on, that show not only how you can move up in the industry but also the cool things you can do in it. Construction is so vast. It’s not just one thing. There are so many industries within the construction industry, so there are a lot of stories to tell and a lot of success stories to showcase. We need to do a better job of that, in the way young people receive information.
For the very youngest, ages two to five, before they even get to school, we should look at preschool programs. How can we invest some of our community outreach dollars to nurture that building instinct, whether through construction toys and dump trucks, or volunteering time to build something with kids, teaching them how to pick up a hammer and what it means to be safe on a construction project?
For high school students, how can we relate to them? I think about military recruiters. I’m a disabled veteran. I was in the Marines, and I remember when I was first influenced, in high school. I saw a Marine in dress blues and was so intrigued.
George Carrillo (34:21): That’s what sparked my interest. What are we doing as small business owners to go into high schools and educate students? Hold career days, and show them there are businesses that will invest in their future: “Come work for us, and we’ll put money in the bank so you can go to college, and give you scholarship opportunities. And if college isn’t the path for you, we’ll invest in you to earn higher certifications.”
I also think our unions need to do a better job of actively recruiting, especially in minority communities. Black and brown communities are severely underrepresented in unions. Unions pay higher rates and have better health benefits, and they do a lot of good. But they struggle to get people into their apprenticeship programs, through those programs, and into active membership. When people go through that process and fail, we lose them. They’re not going to say, “Now I’ll go work for an open shop.” They’re done and ready to move on to the next chapter of their career. So we need to be very mindful of union graduation rates. When I looked about a year ago, the graduation rate for minorities was severely low, around 38 percent. That’s really unacceptable. Unions need to look at how they restructure and provide proper education and a pathway to success, not a pathway of turning people down. That’s not a successful model.
Gordon Lamphere (36:15): I 100 percent agree with you on that. My grandfather was a Marine, so Marines are near and dear to our hearts. If the unions had one-tenth of the Marines’ advertising, that would be incredible, because nothing out there compares to those Marine commercials.
The Final Four: Smart Deregulation and the Bonding Capacity Problem
I’d like to get to the future and how you see the construction industry going. We’ve talked about a lot of change that needs to happen and a lot of issues in the current system, and you’ve mentioned all sorts of ideal outcomes. But on the current trajectory, where do you see things going over the next ten years?
George Carrillo (37:13): What I’m hoping is that we’re headed toward less regulation. I don’t believe in overregulation. I do believe in deregulating. It shouldn’t be so complicated for developers to get through the permitting process, and the same goes for general contractors and subcontractors. All that red tape is so costly. It creates massive delays, throws pricing off, keeps us from building what we need to build, and makes everything take forever.
What I like about the current trajectory is that we’ll see a lot of deregulation. But we also need to be careful and keep a healthy balance of regulation. We can’t just cut everything, or we’ll lose protections for businesses, consumers, and workers. But I do believe we’re on a path toward deregulation, which means we’ll work on projects faster and see profit margins start to increase.
What I’m hoping to hear from the president is more about opportunity zones. When he did that in his first administration, it really helped developers and communities. We started building more and seeing better development and more multifamily housing. We really need to boost our housing efforts. We’re 4.5 million homes short right now, and it’s going to take a long time to catch up. What’s great about that is there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity. You have to create the infrastructure to support that housing: more roads, bridges, water supply, sewage systems, schools, and shopping centers. It helps everything blossom. So I see a very bright future for construction, because if we tackle that problem, it will create a domino effect of more opportunity and more profitability.
George Carrillo (39:30): The challenge I see, as government dollars are invested in this development, is that government and industry really need to start thinking about bonding capacity. There’s so much insurance on these projects. If I do a private multifamily project, I don’t need bonding capacity, so everybody can participate. But government jobs require bonding capacity, and right now we have a serious problem, even among the big general contractors in the United States. Their bonding capacity is maxed out, and something has to give. There’s so much opportunity out there that nobody should worry about a lack of opportunity. What we need is smart deregulation, smart opportunities to work with government, and a rethinking of the bonding capacity structure, which is another major hindrance to our growth.
Gordon Lamphere (40:35): Can you go into bonding capacity a little further? I’m not sure our whole audience fully understands how it typically works. The developers listening do, but some of the investors and limited partners might not.
George Carrillo (40:55): Bonding capacity is essentially another form of insurance. On a government project, there’s a surety guaranteeing that the project will be completed. To work on a government project, you need enough liquid assets to show you can cover the project’s cost. The problem is that government-funded projects involve big dollars. If you’re pursuing a $10 million government contract or grant to build a multifamily development, you have to have that bonding security, the liquidity in your portfolio to show you can cover it, and a surety company willing to issue that bond so you can work on the project.
It’s a real hindrance. If the surety company says you have $10 million of capacity, great, you can work on that one government project, but you can’t take on any others, because your bonding capacity is maxed. In many cases, the government won’t release the bond until the project is completely finished, so you can’t work on two, three, four, or five projects at once. It’s crippling. It’s a glass ceiling for small general contractors trying to break through. Larger general contractors have massive bonding capacity, but they still have to show the liquidity to increase it and take on more jobs. Otherwise, they have to finish the projects in their portfolio before they can scale. So bonding capacity really hurts general contractors and subcontractors, and it keeps business owners at every level of construction from breaking through these glass ceilings if they want to work with the government.
Advice for Anyone Entering Construction
Gordon Lamphere (43:02): I couldn’t agree more. I’m more libertarian on a lot of things, so that’s no surprise. We’ve already talked about the future, so I’d like to talk briefly about how somebody who wants to get into the construction industry should start. A lot of people listening may not be in construction but know somebody who wants to get into it. What would your advice be?
George Carrillo (43:50): We probably all know somebody in construction, a friend or a neighbor. Reach out, ask questions, and be curious. You can also work with your local trade organizations. There are a lot of them supporting the construction industry. NAMC, the National Association of Minority Contractors, is a big one for minorities. The AGC is another national organization. Our organization, the Hispanic Construction Council, is there too, but we operate very differently from chapter organizations. We’re not a chapter organization. We focus on high-level critical thinking, policy changes, and the influence needed to make those changes. Also reach out to your local trade unions.
Unfortunately, in this environment, if you’re curious about construction, you have to put in the effort to reach out, because we don’t market and advertise the way other industries do to recruit people. So put in that effort, and don’t rely on just one source. Look at multiple sources to get a better understanding of what the construction industry looks like and where you might fit. Understand that it’s vast. It’s not just what you see driving down the road. There’s so much we don’t see that you really need to educate yourself. If you’re in college, you have an advantage: career counselors who can give you guidance. The same goes for high school students. Go to your career counselor and start having those conversations about the possibilities in the construction industry.
Book Recommendation: Start With Picture Books
Gordon Lamphere (45:51): Great advice. Another way we like to get advice is through books, literature, or nonfiction. I’m a big reader, even if it’s just periodicals. Is there a book you’d recommend to anyone interested in construction or anything related to it, or just a book in general you’d like to share with our audience?
George Carrillo (46:21): I’ve read a lot of books about the construction industry, and I’ll tell you, they’re really dry reads. Surprise, surprise.
Gordon Lamphere (46:34): Surprise, surprise.
George Carrillo (46:51): What I’m actually more drawn to are picture books, because you can see projects go from dirt to framing to completion, and all the different facets along the way. When people ask me about the construction industry, I tell them, “Go to Barnes & Noble and pick up a picture book about construction, even from the children’s section, and look at what’s being built and all the different things being built.” People tend to associate construction with housing. That’s one piece of it, but there’s so much more. When people look at those picture books, they come back and say, “George, that was great advice. It was really cool to see how people actually build skyscrapers. You see the cranes, but you never really look at what’s happening. I got to see it, and then I started researching on TikTok and YouTube and watching videos.” It sparks their interest. Nothing against black-and-white text, but it’s not super exciting, and I don’t want to recommend a book that turns someone off construction entirely: “If I can’t even get through this, I don’t want to know anything about it.” Picture books have honestly been the best approach. A lot of people respond to them.
Who Should Be Our Next Guest?
Gordon Lamphere (48:18): I’m not going to knock that. I was a lawyer in a previous life, and my favorite books back there are probably some of the architectural books with beautiful paintings and drawings. I won’t knock picture books at all. But there is one thing I’ll knock, and that’s if we don’t get a good answer to this last question, because it’s the whole point of the podcast. The Real Finds Podcast is all about finding people in the arena, in spaces that cater to real estate, construction, or real estate-related business. Who should be our next voice?
George Carrillo (49:00): One of my favorites in the industry is Luis Puig, and he’s actually in Chicago, with ALL Construction Group. He’s a wonderful individual with a great family. I’ve been to their offices, and it’s beautiful to see all the projects they’ve created over so many years. They went from a small general contractor way back in the day to the largest Hispanic general contractor, and the largest masonry contractor, in the city of Chicago. It’s wonderful to see success for a company, and for a very good, noble family in Chicago.
How to Reach George Carrillo
Gordon Lamphere (49:52): We’d love to have him on, and we’ll reach out to you to try to make that connection. The last question, and it’s also a very important one: if somebody wants to get in contact with you, what’s the best way?
George Carrillo (50:04): Please visit our website, HispanicConstructionCouncil.com. You can fill out a form there, and we’ll start sending you communications about everything we’re doing. Our annual report is coming out in about two weeks, with a lot of great information we’ll be sharing, not just about Hispanics in construction but about the industry as a whole and our projections for the future.
Gordon Lamphere (50:32): George, thank you so much for hopping on the podcast. We have to have you on in the future.
George Carrillo (50:36): Thank you so much, Gordon. I had a lot of fun today. Thanks.
Gordon Lamphere (50:39): Thanks again to George. We appreciate his insights. If you enjoyed the podcast, please give us a like, a five-star rating, and a review. Your comments, interactions, and subscriptions truly matter and help us continue to bring on quality guests. You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I’m Gordon Lamphere of The Real Finds Podcast. Thank you for listening.
Van Vlissingen and Co. has been the Midwest’s oldest commercial real estate brokerage, development, and management firm since 1879, and today is independently ranked the #1 commercial real estate agency in Chicagoland, home to the #1 independently ranked agent, Gordon Lamphere, and the region’s #1 ranked commercial property management team. If you own, manage, or invest in energy-adjacent, mixed-use, or transit-oriented property across Lake County, the North Shore, the Northwest and O’Hare corridors, DuPage and the I-88 corridor, Will County, or southern Wisconsin’s Pleasant Prairie, Kenosha, and Racine markets, contact Van Vlissingen and Co. at 📞 847-634-2300 or 🌐 vvco.com. For a market-wide view of where these dynamics sit today, see our State of the Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate Market for Q3 2026.