The 2008 recession highlighted for Michelle Grau and her family-run business, Professional Construction Inc., a notion emphasized during her whole life: community is everything.
It was a year that nearly crushed PCI, leaving little money to pay employees and no salaries for Michelle and her husband, Mike. Mike Grau launched the business in 2004 with Michelle’s father, who died a year later but not before he taught his daughter what she needed to know to help run the business. While trying to keep their business alive, Michelle and Mike were also raising three young children and struggling to save their home from foreclosure.
“We just got to the point where we were losing everything,” Michelle said.
Surviving came with figuring out new ways to do business. That included becoming part of Milwaukee’s Emerging Business Enterprise, or EBE, program as well as a willingness to take any job anywhere. By 2010, PCI captured $4 million in business, she said. That grew to $10 million by 2019 and dipped in 2020 to $5 million, she added. PCI continues to re-build post-pandemic.
Today, the company specializes in commercial and residential remodeling and new construction with 24 employees based in Waukesha, and Michelle, as president, stresses service to the community that she said helped keep PCI alive when it was nearly lost. Her husband is the company’s vice president.
“They’ve seen the bottom and how close they were to losing it all. They figured it out and they fought through it,” said Jared Ashworth, an accounting specialist who has been with PCI for three years. “To get through that, and to be how successful they are now, they want to share it with everybody.”
Jennifer Antczak, an interior designer with PCI for five years, said Michelle Grau is a “devoted leader” who has worked to build a culture of community service at PCI. She said Grau looks at every situation within the company and in the community, and often asks, “How can we do better?”
The company commits time, funding and resources to organizations that include the Wisconsin Sports Group Futsal Academy, local little leagues, soccer teams, dance teams, the Mukwonago Lions Club, Children’s Heart Foundation and the Down Syndrome Association of Wisconsin, where Michelle serves on the philanthropy committee.
“Having the community rally around us when we needed work, even if it was small jobs, was huge,” Grau said. “If it wasn’t for them to help us to where we are, we wouldn’t be here, so giving back to the community is very important to us.”
She also gives kudos to her partner and husband, saying she couldn’t run the business without him.
“We are each other’s cheerleader every day,” she said.
