AU football teammates continue friendship with business partnership
One played offense as a center, while the other was on defense as a nose guard for the Ashland University football team.
One enjoys the production and personnel side of business, while the other thrives on sales.
While Jon Qualls and Kevin Lacey have their differences, they also have an incredible bond forged while wearing helmets, shoulder pads and cleats for the Eagles in the late 1990s and early 2000s that has continued beyond the football field as successful co-owners of Bo Lacey Construction since the early 2010s.
What started with brainstorming talks over campfires, “a card table in Kevin’s attic and a couple of guys,” has become a multimillion-dollar home improvement business headquartered between Ashland and Mansfield with three other locations in Norwalk, Mount Vernon and Circleville and nearly 40 full-time employees and many contract workers.
Their business model of specializing in roofing, siding, decks, windows and bathrooms has taken them from the $1 million to $3 million revenue range a year in their first six years to about $15 million last year.
Working well together with each other’s strengths and differences also has been a business model for prosperity.
“When we started this business, we decided Kevin would be sales and I would be personnel and production,” Qualls said. “We argue sometimes, yeah, but we both know our areas and we both knew what we had to do to make it work.”
“It is just like football,” Lacey said. “I was on defense, and he was offense, but we were on the same team. Here, it’s the same thing. Production is defense really and sales is offense, so we switched sides a little bit, but we’ve always had a common goal.”
A number of their employees are fellow AU grads
That common goal of providing high-quality home improvement service has been helped by a number of other AU grads who work for Qualls and Lacey:
- Jason Schwalm, director of production, graduated in 2005 and was a running back for the football team.
- Rob Klenk, director of sales, graduated in 2008 and was a nationals-qualifying thrower on the track and field team.
- Cody Blum, graduated in 2021 and was a long-distance runner for the Eagles.
- Maddy Hoehn, social media marketing manager, is a 2022 graduate.
Working with fellow AU grads has been an added bonus of working at Bo Lacey Construction, said Hoehn, who started at the company as an intern while still attending Ashland.
“The company’s commitment to excellence, strong leadership from Kevin and Jon, and a supportive, collaborative environment from the team make it a great place to build a career,” Hoehn said. “Kevin and Jon have a strong working relationship built on mutual respect and shared goals; I think that’s what makes them work great together.”
Bo Lacey Construction named in honor of Lacey's father
Their mutual respect for Kevin’s father, Bo, was the reason for the Bo Lacey Construction name once they started their business shortly after Bo’s death in 2012.
“We kept the name as a tribute to him,” said Qualls.
In 1984, Bo started his construction business in the small town of Greenwich, Ohio, where Kevin played football at South Central High School. That’s another difference from Qualls, who played his high school football at big-city powerhouse Cincinnati Moeller.
Bo Lacey Construction was actually much different under Bo, building custom homes and pole barns, then it is today.
“He was an individual and we are a corporation,” Kevin said about his dad, who was a huge AU football fan even before and after Kevin’s playing days. “I grew up helping him but thinking the last thing I was going to do was go into construction. I saw his struggles with employees and other things.”
Lacey is a 2002 AU graduate and Qualls is a 2003 grad
That’s why he majored in criminal justice at AU and, after his 2002 graduation, worked a number of years for Ohio Youth Services at several area juvenile detention centers. However, the construction gene didn’t completely leave him as he started flipping homes to fulfill his entrepreneurial spirit.
Qualls, who graduated in 2003 with a business administration degree, didn’t plan to work in the construction industry either, starting off with a national car rental company. Realizing he didn’t want to be in an office all day, he left for a storm restoration business.
Even though Qualls was living all over the country at this time, he would still return to Ashland, where Lacey has lived ever since his days at AU, to visit his friend and talk entrepreneurship.
“We always talked about branching off from his dad,” said Qualls, who is a godparent to Lacey’s son, a 16-year-old linebacker for the Ashland High School football team.
Family support helped start the business, which keeps growing
When the talking turned to action, Lacey’s son and his now 15-year-old daughter were toddlers, so Lacey wasn’t sure if his wife, Bridgit, would support him quitting his job with benefits and cashing out his retirement and their life savings.
“She was actually very supportive,” Lacey said.
Qualls’ wife, Adrienne, also has been very supportive, Qualls said. They live in Ashland with two daughters, 12 and 6 years old, and will eventually move into a home they are building in the Jeromesville area.
Bo Lacey Construction moved to its current location along U.S. 42 between Ashland and Mansfield in 2017 to accommodate its growth after being in a much smaller office in downtown Ashland for its first five years.
“When we built this office, we thought we would never run out of space,” Qualls said. “We had a weight room upstairs that was going to be awesome but, after six months, it became the marketing room.”
The two still lift weights together three or four days a week at a gym in Ashland – like they did when they were at AU.
Qualls and Lacey grateful to give back to Ashland University
They are both grateful that they are able to give back to the university in many ways now. They started an endowment scholarship about 10 years ago, recently donated money for the renovation of the eighth floor of the library for the Center for Career Calling that includes a conference room they can use anytime they want and plan to become more involved with the football program through alumni tailgates and sponsorships.
Even though the two are still competitive in a friendly way – while taking photos for this story Lacey jokingly asked the photographer “Whose traps (trapezoid muscles in the upper back, shoulders and neck) look bigger, me or Jon’s?” and then while later texting an AU football photo of the two to the writer of this article, Qualls pointed out to Lacey laughing: “My traps were bigger back then, too” – they have kept their egos in check when it comes to their business partnership.
“That’s when partnerships don’t work – when the egos get in the way,” Lacey said.
“It would be the same in football if the defensive line came to the offensive line or vice versa and said, ‘You’re the reason we’re losing football games.’” Quall said. “That couldn’t happen then, and it can’t happen now, or you’re not going to have many wins.”