Why Mission: Empire Electrical Services Inc

Empire Electrical Solutions Inc. was founded in 2015 by Cole Cheatwood and his business partner Matt Waldrop; they bring a combined experience of nearly 40 years in the industry. Cheatwood was still in high school when he began working in the trades at the age of 17.

“It was just a great opportunity at first. A friend of a friend had an electrical business, and I was their shop guy during the end of my high school years. When I got out of high school, I worked there part-time while I was going to college and just stuck with it.”

Cheatwood earned a business degree from Cal State University Bakersfield and has traded the hot and dusty central valley for the cool foothills of San Luis Obispo. He and Waldrop have expanded operations up and down the state as far south as Goleta to as far north as San Jose with projects along the coast and stretching as far east as the central valley. According to Cheatwood, they do a whole lot of everything.

“The majority of our business is multi-family mixed use construction.  A lot of 100-unit up to 400-unit apartment complexes, some mixed- use commercial spaces, a few custom homes, and a bit of industrial public work projects like traffic signals, road controls, freeway lighting and things like that.”

While development has been booming in SLO over the last few years, Cheatwood knows expanding his footprint and remaining diversified is going to count in the long run.

“In the next two to five years we’re going to start seeing it tail off a little with space constraints in SLO so we’re looking to expand operations further south and north where we’ll still see some growth opportunities in large scale projects.”

That’s where Mission Bank came in, for Cheatwood and Waldrop finding a community bank that could help them achieve their goals was a huge priority.

“We had our accounts with a large national bank and as we started to grow and our needs for lending and credit lines increased, they just weren’t a good fit for us anymore.” Says Cheatwood. “Austin and Jin were really helpful in setting up our business accounts and credit lines, consolidating everything

under the Mission umbrella. They also introduced us to our current bonding agency.”

The relationship with the bonding agency and assistance with other items internally lead them to secure a bond on a federal project. Doors continue to open and Cheatwood is thankful for the partnership with Mission Bank.

“More recently we’ve been adding accounts and making some structural changes within the business and Austin and Jin have been super helpful in getting that going as well. So, it’s been really great for us to work with Mission, continue our growth and make more connections that will help us evolve.”