Decorative Concrete Institute Offers Training around the World

In July 2003, Lee Ann Stape and I started the Decorative Concrete Institute out of the dining room of our Temple, Ga., home. Reflecting back to that date four years ago, little did we

In the beginning, Lee Ann and I left safe and secure positions to 1 venture into the great unknown of entrepreneurship. We started the company performing high-end installations. One of our first projects was a 9-yd. stamped concrete pool deck of which three of us installed - myself, Lee Ann and a helper with no concrete experience. Thank goodness for step retardation!

Over the course of the next four to six months, we continued to install while working toward our goal of becoming a full-fledged training institute. During this time we secured a 15,000-sq.-ft. building in Douglasville, Ga., and launched the Decorative Concrete Institute's training facility. While in the Douglasville location we helped and trained hundreds of students from all over the world while at the same time doing research and development on new products and techniques. Some incredible concrete masterpieces became permanent fixtures at this facility, ranging from polished concrete and concrete countertops to faux-finished, high-end epoxy applications.

After two years of operation in the Douglasville facility, we found property roughly two miles from our home and ultimately built a state-of-the-art facility in which we moved in over Labor Day weekend 2006. Since then we have trained hundreds of students while creating an awesome display of incredible decorative concrete applications.

Hopefully we will see many of you in the future who come to our facility to learn from us and let us help you take your business to the next level. If you would like to learn more about what we do, you can go to our website at www.decorativeconcreteinstitute.com and click on the DCI Virtual Tour to view some of these cool applications.

By the way, here are just a few of the accomplishments we've added to our resume since that 9-ft. stamped concrete pool deck:

* Our own product line

* Three decorative concrete guides that have sold more than 30,000 copies worldwide

* Two Bob Harris DVDs that have sold more than 600 copies worldwide

* Three professional DVDs produced for industry firms

* 35 online tool video segments for the Concrete Network

* 30+ professional trade publication articles on decorative concrete

* Four seminars each year at World of Concrete, plus seminars for the past three years at World of Concrete Mexico

* Training classes at locations ranging from New York to California and everywhere in between, as well as internationally in Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Greece and the Caribbean

* The start up of DCI-West (based in Phoenix) and DCI-Europe (based in France)

Needless to say, we hardly have had time to catch our breath with no visible signs of slowing down in the future!