Nilson Goes has built a thriving firm—and achieved the American Dream—with Infinite Energy Construction.
The call that changed Nilson L. Goes’ life came in the middle of a garage sale.
It was 1992, and Goes had just earned his doctorate in electrical engineering as a foreign exchange student at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, Mo. He would soon return with his wife and children to their native Brazil, where he planned to resume his career as a college professor.
Then the phone rang, and everything changed.
It was the university’s placement director, who told Goes that there were two men in his office. They had seen Goes’ resume and wanted to speak to him about a position with their electrical contracting company in Kansas City. Could he visit with them right now?
“I said, ‘Hey, I’m having a garage sale,’” Goes recalled. “‘I’m in jeans and a T-shirt and tennis shoes.’ He said, ‘Come the way you are. They want to talk to you.’
“When I got over there, I sat down and said, ‘I’ve got a wife and four kids. I’m not here to waste your time or waste my time. I’m a foreigner, and to work here, I would need a company to sponsor my immigration process.’ They said, ‘Well, we think we’d be willing to sponsor that process.’”
Goes took the job as the company’s director of engineering, but it was a difficult decision.
“I had to give up everything that I had in Brazil,” he said. “But I decided to stay in America because I thought that this country would provide a lot of opportunities, not only for me, but for my kids, too.”
In 1996, Goes would go on to start his own business, Infinite Energy Construction.
Today it is a thriving electrical and general contracting firm with a national reputation for securing federal contracts. Infinite Energy’s annual revenues are $14 million.
And this spring, the U.S. Small Business Administration selected Goes as the Small Business Person of the Year for Missouri.
“I feel good, because of the recognition,” Goes said of the honor. “I think it’s very important. But what we are does not depend on my performance. It depends on everybody’s performance, everybody that comes here and works hard to make this company be successful.”
Shaky Start
When he began Infinite Energy Construction in the basement of his Blue Springs home, Goes had only himself to rely on. He found it tough going, even when offering his services to clients who knew him well through his previous employer.
“In the first couple of months I was in business, I contacted those people,” Goes said. “The first thing that they asked was, ‘OK, I know you, but do you have money? How are you going to afford a payroll? Do you have equipment? How are you going to do a job?’ I didn’t have a big company to back me up.”
Goes wondered if his embryonic enterprise would survive even its first year.
“Several times I thought that I was going to fail,” he said. “There was nothing happening.”
But Goes’ persistence paid off when he landed his first contract for $57,000 to do electrical remodeling and improvement at Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Independence. It was enough to get Infinite Energy Construction through 1996.
“At that time, $57,000 was a lot of money,” Goes said, “and we got a couple more jobs over there.”
Revenues increased to $300,000 in 1997, “and it was very tight,” Goes said. But in 1998, the company was able to take in $3 million. By 2001, it had dramatically increased revenues to $7.8 million, with plenty of jobs in the pipeline.
But those projects vanished in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy, due to a major pullback in construction spending. As a result, Infinite Energy Construction revenues for 2002 plummeted to $2.8 million. How did the company survive?
“That’s a question I’m still trying to answer,” Goes said. “Reaction time is very important. You can’t keep thinking things are going to get better next month. I was running a business for $8 million. I had trucks. I had vans. I needed to get rid of them very quickly.”
He also had to let good people go, which was very hard, Goes said. And he forsook his own paycheck for 18 months to keep the business alive.
Owners of construction companies that succumbed to post-9/11 challenges were perhaps slower to take action. What did Goes know that they didn’t?
“I think my background in engineering and logical decision-making helped me,” he said. “Up to this date, it helps me.”
Focusing On the Federal Market
With Goes at the helm, Infinite Energy Construction rebounded with revenues of $3.2 million in 2003, and income steadily grew to nearly $5 million in 2008 and 2009.
“It was a mix of planning and things happening at the right time,” Goes said.
A vital component to the company’s expansion was the decision to focus on the federal market, Goes said. “It was a key of our strategic planning and growth, pursuing military bases throughout the country, getting out of the Kansas City region and not depending only on the local market. Nowadays we have offices in California and Texas.”
The federal strategy paid off in a major way in 2010, when the company secured a five-year, $40 million master contract at Whiteman Air Force Base in Knob Noster, Mo.
“That gave us some stability,” Goes said. “We’ve performed more than 100 jobs there so far, and I’d say we have 50 to 60 going on right now. It’s quite a bit.”
Infinite Energy Construction’s extensive work at Whiteman—everything from laying gas and water lines to updating the lighting on the base’s tarmac—was preceded by Goes joining the SBA’s 8(a) business development program, which helps minority-owned businesses compete for federal contracts.
“It’s not going to provide you with contracts,” Goes said of the program. “But it kind of provides you with better opportunities. The idea is to level the playing field—even though, since I started this company, I’ve never marketed it as ‘we’re a minority-owned business.’
“We are a good business and a good contractor that happens to carry those certifications that sometimes help with the paperwork that people need. But most of our customers, after they start doing business with us, they even forget. They just do business with us.”
While known for general contracting nationally, Infinite Energy Construction specializes in electrical subcontracting in the Kansas City area. The company installed the power and controls for the big video screen at Kauffman Stadium, and it wired the concession stands at Arrowhead Stadium and the Sporting KC soccer complex.
Goes said it’s all about maintaining friendships with local general contractors such as JE Dunn Construction, Turner Construction Company and others.
“We don’t want to compete with them as a general contractor here,” Goes said. “We keep the relationship.”
‘A Dream Came True’
Does the 59-year-old foresee a time when he might be able to relax even a bit?
“I think it’s going to be around 2026,” he said with a laugh. “That feeling doesn’t come so easily to anybody that runs a construction company, believe me. Construction is a very risky business.”
When asked for his entrepreneurial advice, Goes smiled and said: “My father used to tell me that if advice was good, nobody would give it—they would charge for it.”
Goes did say that entrepreneurship requires a “different breed” that can “endure pressure 24-7.”
“You go to bed, and you think about the business,” he said. “You wake up, and you think about it. I used to say it’s like a dark cloud on top of your head. Everything that I own is collateral for something.”
Goes is glad to have son Nilson M. Goes as Infinite Energy Construction’s chief of operations and general manager, and daughter Nilce G. Palma as the company’s chief financial officer.
“For years, I wanted them to work for me, but I could not afford them, because they were too successful,” he said. “They are not working here because of nepotism. They bring something to the table.”
When Goes reflects on what he’s done to set the table for his children, he thinks about growing up “very, very poor” in Brazil and the choices he made as a young man to get a high-quality education.
“My friends used to tease me that I was an old man, even when I was a teenager,” he said. “Because when people were trying to have fun, I had my obligations, and I took care of those first. But education was the only way that allowed me to grow and do the best for my kids.
“If I had not come to this country, perhaps I would have had a good position in Brazil, because I always fought for everything. But I accomplished this here. I think it would be too conceited to say that I’m an example of the American Dream. But, for sure, a dream came true because I came to America.”
