BY IEC STAFF
Crafts people. That’s the title Jared Kredit, president and CEO of K2 Electric, Phoenix, AZ, respectfully labels the skilled electricians working in the field for K2 Electric. It’s where all other areas of the company focus their efforts so that the crafts people have what they need to excel at the job site.
K2 Electric has a rich history and its dramatic growth continues to this day.
“K2 Electric was founded by my parents, Dean and Marna, in 2003,” Jared says. “Dean was the active one in the business until 2019, and now he is mostly retired. My dad loves the trade, and he especially loved going out to solve complex problems for clients. My brother Nick joined in 2006, and he is currently a senior estimator. I joined in 2008, and my wife Natalie joined in 2020 as marketing manager.”
Family Super-Sized
The company puts much credit for its success on the fact that K2 Electric invites others into their family fold to join them in good and honest work. In fact, their website homepage states boldly:
Join Our Family
K2 Electric exists to cultivate employee, client, and community relationships through a company built on performance, operational excellence, and service. When you join our company, you are joining a family that is committed to each other’s growth and our clients’ success.
The words do not fall flat — they are backed by action.
“For a long time, I would look at things like what am I capable of, what can I do,” Jared says. “When I let that go and said instead what can the team do, that’s why we are where we are today. The difference between today and 20 years ago is we’re building a foundation that sets up what’s going to happen in the future.”
That involves a company wide focus on training and development, listening to and involving employees, and doing all it takes to build the best team. Natalie points to an annual survey to gather employee feedback on initiatives old and new, situations they’re facing, ideas they may have. She indicates that not only do they receive valuable information from all members of the K2 team, but it shows employees how truly valuable they are to us. Jared emphasizes that K2 doesn’t have it all figured out, but they work each day to be better and they never want to settle for mediocracy.
“Most exciting for me is the people,” Jared adds. “In general, the industry is filled with good salt of the earth folks,” Jared says. “We have an opportunity to impact the people that work here in a way that changes lives, changes their position from an economic standpoint, and their relationships at home. Not just what they do every day at work but really at the core of who they are. And when you do that, then that flows back into the business and the business is more successful and you can reinvest in the people.”
He shares a few examples. One is an early employee of the company who Jared went to school with from kindergarten through twelfth grade.
“Matt started college but it just wasn’t for him,” Jared explains. “When he was getting the business started, my dad asked Matt to come help him with a few small projects. Long story short, it became more than a side gig. He went full time and went through the IEC Apprenticeship Program. Then he came to my dad and said he’d like to start a service division for K2. He built that up, he became a K2 partner, and then decided he wanted to run his own business, so K2 bought him out. I think the opportunities he had — first on the trade side and then the business side — is something you can’t get at a Fortune 500 company; you need to be in a small to medium-sized business environment. He’s not even working with us at K2 any more, but it’s just a cool experience and shows how we operate.”
Another is Michael, Jared and Natalie’s neighbor’s nephew who was working retail and feeling frustrated about his ability to grow. He applied at K2, was hired, and he went through the IEC of Arizona Apprenticeship Program.
“By the end of his four years, he was moving into becoming a foreman,” Jared explains. “Recently we started our VDC Department, and he was just the right age with just the right technical skill set along with a real interest on the computer side of things and software technology, so now he is on the team leading this area of the business. So, in six to seven years, he went from a dead spot in the retail environment to helping grow an innovative new part of our business. Those are the kind of opportunities we can create for hardworking individuals in this industry.”
K2 Growth
“Neither Nick or I are electricians, but we grew up working summers with Dad,” Jared says. “Not having gone to college himself and being aware that the electrical contracting business can be risky and volatile, Dad encouraged us to go to college. I secured a business degree.”
In 2008, Jared joined the company. Nick had started with K2 in 2006.
“K2 was started in 2003 and by 2006, it started really gaining some growth,” Jared says. “At that time Arizona, like much of the country right before it all crumbled, had so much work. My school background in business coupled well with Dad’s passion for the trade. We felt this could be complementary — he can be focused on the craft side and I can be focused more on the administrative side. That was a couple years before I was going to finish college but I made the decision to continue working summers at K2 and when I graduated in 2008, I joined K2 full time.”
That was during the recession and the company truly had to come together and work to keep K2 open. By 2010, with the awarding of their first contract with Amazon, they grew to 50 employees and began their climb out of the recession. In 2011, they started the company’s Service Division. By 2012, the company experienced 5 times revenue growth over the previous year. The growth continued and Jared points to a number of significant moves for their continued progress:
- Established the Tucson Division (2015)
- Started the K2 Prefab Division (2017)
- Reached 130 employees and captured its first job order contracting (JOC) contract with the City of Scottsdale (2019)
- Achieved 43 percent revenue growth due to Increased industrial work (2020)
- Awarded the Ritz Carlton project — its largest project ever — while also being named a Top 10 Company for Best Places to Work (2021)
- Won first data center project, as well as the La Posada project in Tucson — its largest project to date (2022)
- Began the K2 Lean Journey, purchasing a 35,000 square foot prefab shop, hitting 200 employees, and reaching its largest revenue to date (2023)
- Employs more than 300 exceptional people! (2024)
The company’s core values (see sidebar) stand tall in the company’s success, says Jared. The values were officially established in 2017, allowing the whole team to better connect what the culture is all about and how it drives the company.
“Building relationships in this business; that’s fundamental to who we are,” Jared emphasizes. “And I think that in construction, in the space we’re in, that’s what we sell. There are a lot of people that have qualified electricians but it’s how do you take your team and the client’s team and solve problems together? That’s through relationship.”
Always Put People First
The overriding tenet of putting people first is lived with current — and future — employees, clients, and community. The company believes in servant leadership, genuine relationships, and a culture of good communication and trust so that a strong team is built to achieve success together.
“An important part of our culture is internally how we speak about the craft team members; without them we have no business and all team members not in a craft role are working to streamline things for the craft teams,” Jared says.
In addition to those surveys and respectful treatment for all employees, K2 Electric is no slacker when it comes to having fun.
Among those events and activities are the Founder’s Day summer picnic, annual Christmas party, monthly team lunches, field appreciation days, and numerous service projects, both locally and internationally. Twice a year, K2 sends a team to Mexico to home builds with 1Mission, a faith-based community development organization giving people in poverty the opportunity to earn a house by serving their community.
“Our team is predominantly pretty handy individuals, with most knowing how to do construction work,” Jared says. “Since our teams are so proficient and often bring our own tools, we get far along on our tasks pretty quickly and often actually move to help another group.”
Natalie adds local service projects include Feed My Starving Children, blood drives, a bark ‘n brunch, Operation Gratitude boxing care packages for military and first responders, among others. The company has a Community Service Committee that leads in this area, and Jared and Nick are big supporters of being involved in the community.
“Giving back is something that’s organic at K2,” Natalie adds. “Many of our employees are really involved in the community and they often bring opportunities to us and we love to support them.”
Those future employees? Jared says many new folks come to K2 as referrals from current employees who have seen the company is real and authentic and truly cares about its employees.
“Often people come in knowing that we want to be a place where people like to work,” he says. “They come in knowing that’s a priority for us because our people go tell their friends and former colleagues. That’s part of our culture.”
Another example of K2’s commitment to helping people grow? The Field Leadership Program. This leadership program launched in 2022 and the summer of 2024, its fifth cohort began.
“There is a lot of practicality in the program as we’re actually training people to do the next step in their career here at K2,” Jared explains. “It’s very company specific training for new foreman in addition to general leadership guidance. We wanted to have more growth and what we kept running into is we had a little more bandwidth in most areas but we just didn’t have any more foreman. Every time we try and grow, we end up promoting a foreman into a super or to project engineer and the challenge was we couldn’t take any more projects as we needed more people to be ready to go tackle a job as a foreman on the project.”
Starting this program saw an increase in identifying — or striving to be — those high ambition individuals who were ready to take the next step. There is a sense of pride to being asked to participate, and K2 leadership across the board take seriously their part in helping with this development.
“We’re still learning,” Jared concludes. “We have not perfected this, but we’re never going to stop trying. The love and passion that K2 leaders have for this industry is a true testament to their commitment to our company and to our employees.”
Mission: K2 Electric exists to cultivate employee, client, and community relationships through a company built on performance, operational excellence, and service.
Core Values
Safety is Essential
Safety must be everyone’s top priority; we train and empower our employees to recognize hazards and proactively take action to eliminate them to safely complete all projects.
Perform to be Preferred
Our personal commitment is demonstrated in our attitude and actions – from pre-construction to job completion. We are responsive and collaborative and go beyond what is expected to share information, support the entire team, and deliver a project with lasting value.
Genuine Relationships
Nothing is more essential to our success than our personal and business reputation. We nurture that privilege by acting with honesty, abiding by the Golden Rule, and demonstrating integrity in all business decisions.
Advancing our Team
Professional training and development of every employee is paramount to understand and serve the needs of our customers and prepare them as future leaders in our industry.