He works as well with volunteers and staff as he does with higher-ups. Weiss is “good at building relationships and making people feel obligated to meet their commitment,” says Brenda Sanders, NAHB staff vice president, joint venture education and designation programs, who worked with Weiss on NAHB’s Home Builder’s Institute in 1991. “He’s direct in his approach with people, and he knows what he’s talking about. He has a certain level of credibility and honesty and he’s very loyal. Once he sees you’re committed to the industry or project or job, he’s loyal about defending and supporting you.”
Weiss grew up on Diamond W Ranch, about 25 miles west of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in a town called Davie. The family owned about 6,000 acres, which it drained and planted with grass for beef cattle production. “I was a young cowpoke through high school,” says Weiss, who enjoyed the farm and hoped to become a large-animal veterinarian.
There are few things that Weiss won’t talk about, but legally changing his name to MM Weiss, his relationship with his father, and leaving the farm are off-limits. His father sold the ranch, and, Weiss writes via e-mail, there were no more cows in his future. “I decided to become an engineer because they got good jobs as soon as the sheepskin cometh, and I wanted to goeth.”
As to the decision to change his name, he relates a story about an accountant he employed who asked about it one too many times. Weiss fired him.
In 1959 Weiss received his B.S. in mechanical engineering and worked in the systems engineering section at NASA, Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Va., on what he describes as “a nucleus of Project Mercury [the first efforts at manned space flight].” When that was over, he returned to Miami to work for his father, who by then owned a chain of portrait studios. Weiss did some professional photography, learned about running a business, and also began working in commercial construction by managing the building of Pioneer City, a Western-theme park he owned with his father. It went bust in 1967 after just two years in operation, and Weiss went to work for a general contractor in Tallahassee.
The NASA years honed his engineering skills but also gave him his taste for teaching. A local steam and pipe fitters union asked Weiss to teach a course on air conditioning and refrigeration. But, he says, “The math [the students] needed to understand the subject was beyond their level.” Weiss divided the class and taught the math to those who needed it. “It was the most rewarding experience I’ve ever had,” he says, and it taught him a valuable lesson: He would never start a class without making sure he could reach everyone in it. That attitude, he says, helped him later in sales. “Clients don’t say, ‘I don’t understand,’ until they’re pissed,” Weiss says. “To exceed expectations, you have to make damn sure clients understand everything.”
As for the Pioneer City venture, having something like that go sour in such a brief time would make most people think twice about their business skills. Not Weiss. He believes that “risk is good for the soul — as long as you know that it may work or it may not, it’s OK,” he says. “It’s not like going to the craps table and trying to roll a 13.”
Weiss took what he learned in Florida and headed west to Martinsville, Ind., where, over the next few years, he opened Weiss Construction, a small general contracting business; helped form Deci-Ma Corp., as executive vice president, which developed apartments, retail space, and suburban office space; and moved to Carmel, an Indianapolis suburb, to start Weiss & Currise Home Building. That company — in one incarnation or another — would be his mainstay for 32 years.
Weiss brought the same perseverance and professionalism to building, and eventually to design/build remodeling, that he does to everything else. “I didn’t ever dread calling him. He didn’t ever make my input seem silly or ridiculous,” says Janet Gross, a client for whom Weiss has done several remodeling projects. “He was respectful of what we wanted to accomplish, and it felt like he was really a partner and not an adversary in getting things done.”
Fellow remodelers, such as Motsenbocker, owner of Jud Construction in nearby Muncie, Ind., enjoyed working with Weiss and learning from him. “It’s easy to fall into the same trap and do what you continue to do and get what you always got,” says Motsenbocker, who early on taught Weiss in a sales and marketing class. But Weiss taught Motsenbocker about the importance of “continuing to change and stay abreast of trends. Mike had more sophisticated systems [than I did in my business]. He has helped me get through that.”